WDeranged

I treated myself to a cripplingly expensive OLED during lockdown so my lounge is now my cinema. I've very much enjoyed discovering what 4k and HDR is all about but strangely the film that entertained me the most was The Lighthouse.

Thanks GD. It's been a hectic few years, regardless of the pandemic. Not been gaming as much but I still like to peek in here now and then.

Last haircut I had was my ex girlfriends dog clippers...nine months ago.

I'm afraid consolidation is going be the word of the decade after the pandemic.

Like most people I'm fairly shocked. Obviously my first thought was OMFG NEW VEGAS 2.0, but who knows. Weirdly enough I feel more comfortable with Microsoft than Zenimax, it's maybe Stockholm Syndrome but I don't much like the way Zenimax has gone lately.

I'm boycotting this pos if I can't mod in some big titty anime babes.

Looks great. I loved Outer Worlds but I'll bet performance will be just like the base game. Constant stuttering and streaming issues

I'm still in a state of mild shock from learning about this. Skyrim in Aedyr would be my dream game. Though, the Unreal Engine gives me concerns, it's bloody awful at open world stuff, constant stutters and janky asset streaming. Fingers crossed they're using a more recent version that's tooled up for the new consoles, seems they're really pushing for ultra fast asset streaming this gen. Anyone know if any of staff from Tyranny are involved? I loved the world and characters in that game, it veered into the weird and I appreciated it.

Yup. This one was bothering me too.

Ok. Just sent that email. I do hope you guys can fix or at least greatly reduce the issue, it's very jarring.

I've tweaked everything I can but I'm getting the same old asset streaming stutters that I see in most other semi-open world Unreal engine games. Reducing textures and world detail to low alleviates it somewhat but it's not a perfect fix. i7 4790k 1080 Ti 16GB Ram Windows 7 on SSD.

Sorry Daven. My father died six years ago. The cancer was killing him but luckily a burst aortic aneurysm took him quickly.

I replayed Fallout 4 last year and found I was (still) deeply annoyed by the writing, mechanical shortcomings and just the general vibe so I decided to give the gog version of Fallout 3 a whirl. It seems that with some effort it's now possible (thanks to a few recent mods) to play the game without tearing out your hair due to bugs and random ctd's. 20 hours in and not a single crash so far, this is completely unheard of in my experience. Under the shadow of Fallout 4 the game holds up astonishingly well to New Vegas, a game which I have now plumbed to the deepest level. Yeah there's plenty of dumb stuff if you want to look for it but the writing, quests and world design range from acceptably good to excellent. Even the much maligned metro system is a joy to me, a seemingly endless mega-dungeon with masses of hidden nooks and secrets. There really are significant quests and locations you will never see unless you delve deep into the game, by comparison even New Vegas pushes all it's content right up front and there's very little reward for extended exploration. So yeah, having a blast so far.

You wouldn't criticise a musician for having already bought his instrument...

Bummer

I've spent medically inadvisable amounts of time with Skyrim. It's been a few years since I last played but god help me I'm gonna have one more go when my usual winter lockdown kicks in.

Yeah I've been meaning to try it for years but I never managed it. This time around I'm determined, even if it does feel like going against the grain.

Playing New Vegas again. This time I'm aiming to join the Legion but up until meeting Caesar the game doesn't really give you many ideological reasons to do so. I'm finding it hard not to be my same old helpful self as I quest my way around the Mojave but I'm determined for my character to have some sort of revelation along the way. From a gameplay perspective I'm finally starting to feel the age of the engine. Fallout 4 might be a giant sucking wound as far as RPG mechanics but it is a far more enjoyable ride in the moment.

1. Skyrim 2. Skyrim 3. Skyrim.

That stuff in my belly button...what the **** is it?

I've been so wrapped up in my own drama that I missed TB passing. Been listening to him for years in a love/hate kind of way. I always respected his fanatical dedication to quality PC ports. Gonna go watch the memorial podcast. RIP.

Hakuna Matata?

Yes, at least the companion quality seems to be going up each game (hope I didn't jinx it now), Nick Valentine is pretty nice and he easily gets the most screen time out of all of them with the ties into Far-Harbor. If they'd just fix the main story thing and deepen out the companion backgrounds more that's all I want. Because honestly, all most (or maybe I'm the odd one out *cough*) people want from a TES game is an excuse to roam around, trying to tell a deep and engaging overarching story in an open world setting seems a bit beyond Bethesda. They should have just stopped at the cryogenically frozen part, ditched the "kidnapped child" bollocks and played the "fish out of water" element out a bit more (more references to the old world, more banter with Ghouls, maybe run into some (more) acquaintances from before the war that got Ghoulified (and are not feral..), etc. Try to keep the initial "what the hell hapened to the world" vibe from the start going. Other than that, it's mostly fixing all the broken stuff in the game. And boy, is there a lot to fix, with the loading times in certain areas (central Boston mostly) and the utterly broken settler and companion behaviour kind of being the top of my list currently (and their treatment of mods, of course, but that's not really a technical issue...). Yeah the companions are pretty decent for a Bethesda game. Right now I'm wandering around with Deacon and he's made me chuckle. I especially like the way his costume changes tend to match the environment, baseball gear for Diamond City and a lab coat around Cabot House. Loading speeds are (insanely...) tied to vsync, Load Accelerator cuts down those two minute monsters to 15 seconds, it's essential.