WorstUsernameEver

<.< I have time between compilations. Shut up and get back to work, you monkey. (I'm not serious, and actually find the trend of chastizing devs for having free time a little bit troubling.) Getting back on topic, I'm replaying The Witcher 2. I have to say I'm enjoying the story a lot more this time around, and some of the subtle additions from Enhanced Edition, such as the brief cutscenes narrated by Dandelion, help tie things together and set the mood in a way that the original v1.0 lacked. However, even with all the improvements, combat still feels like an annoying chore I have to get through rather than something I enjoy, itemization feels like it's in a really bad spot compared to the original with simply too many items and don't feel meaningfully different, the dialogue can feel slightly unpolished at times*, and there are points where I wish CDPR took a slightly more naturalistic approach to design quests (they're well designed, but they feel a bit artificial in their branching sometimes). The branching story is impressive though, no matter what the Codex says about it. Hopefully the itemization, combat and those little niggling quest design problems will be solved. I'd have been happy if CDPR focused on that, but they jumped at the opportunity to do open-world. I hope that turns out right, but meh, still not seeing how it was a good fit for the series: at most I find myself wishing "maybe this area could have been larger and included a few more optional secret" not "I want to ride to that spot in the horizon!". * not nearly as bad as TW1's pre-EE dialogue though

Ah good to hear that I was wrong then! Glad this was resolved.

I have the feeling that a well-realized soundscape doesn't coincide with immersion in Rhamnetin's mind given he specifically refers camera and the combat system. In fact, I can see many people complaining about V:TMB being "immersion breaking" because of the dice-roll based shooting.

If I understood things from the Codex preview correctly, they're called hirelings and provide some bonuses to your party rather than actively participating in combat.

I'm not sure if I can be of much help here, but I remember J.E. Sawyer mentioning that the version of GECK they shipped to people had version control gutted out.

I thought you meant "press sneak ****s".

I'm not aware of insults that target straight men specifically because of their masculinity or their being straight. Granted, I'm not a native speaker and I honestly have only a perfunctory knowledge of discourse analysis, so I'm not going to tackle whether the word Maria Caliban questioned should be used or not, but the point to me seemed rather clear and has nothing to do with protecting women, gays, intersex, or what have you, from being called out as awful, awful people.

The druid has shapeshifting capabilities, though they have said that the animal forms will be anthropomorphic and still get the ability to cast spells. They also called the ability Spiritshift because I guess they were having a terrible day and couldn't think of something better.

Sure, not every PC port is good, and so what? I never argued all of them are made equal, simply that we're seeing more good ports compared to the beginning (and middle, really) of this console generation.

I haven't asked for how the dev justified their design choices, I already know what they said about it*, I asked if there's someone out there who's actually happy about jump being cut from the game. * "Jumping, bouncing up and down, kind of broke the immersion … We didn’t want you to be the master thief and you just tend to fall off stuff all the time."

There's actually been a number of good PC ports coming out recently, like Dishonored, Borderlands 2, Far Cry 3 (and its cousin Blood Dragon) just to name a few. We're definitely not in 2006 anymore in terms of PC ports.

Is there a target audience that actually doesn't want the option to jump to better enjoy the story of "Garrett the master thief"? My question is more or less genuine, because to be honest my guess would be no, but you never know..

Yeah, also the dxhr trailer wasn't really related to the game, either, so I'll just wait for the game to get released before I decide whether it sucks or not. To be fair, they didn't cut jumping from Deus Ex because of "narrative reasons", so it was a bit more understandable to have confidence in that team's efforts.

Avoiding the final battle is something that's possible even in the combat-heavy Fallout 3. It's a fine feature, but not all that novel.

Define immersive and don't forget to explain why that should be a goal of every role-playing game, then maybe I'll be able to see the logic.

Technically Jay Wilson, but I can't imagine him leaving the team would make the auction house any easier to remove.

They actually said they'd like to do it, but at this point it's just not feasible for the PC version. The console versions won't have auction.

I'm not sure what exactly you mean by "details" (are we talking about armors or environments? are we talking about how realistically the materials are rendered? how elaborate the textures are? how elaborate and cluttered the environments you navigate in are? there are significant differences between the two titles in ALL of these categories) but honestly, that looks more like you having image quality and eyesight problems than an actual con of the aforementioned titles' visual direction.

The whole "find another planet to colonize" was the original plan for the Enclave, with the Vault used to analyze the effects such a long journey would have on the astronauts and all the various problems it might entail (scarcity, malfunctions, etc.) This is technically non-canon, given no game makes mention of it, but that was the plan while writing the Enclave in Fallout 2. "Frozen ex-government guy" is also pretty close to the original idea for the canceled Van Buren's antagonist Presper, when the storyline was still penned by Chris Avellone. That said, I think a short section (or a DLC*) sent in a similar location would be more effective than a full-length game. * just don't do it like Motership Zeta or the worst parts of Old World Blues

It really strikes me as weird that you put The Witcher 2 in the same category as Oblivion. The differences in terms of art, both in terms of direction and quality*, are pretty obvious to me. * I'm not just talking about the quality of the assets, but also of the designs. There's a lot of painstakingly researched stuff in there, check the art book!

It's more or less an open secret that while WB Games Montreal works on Arkham Origins, Rocksteady is working on their next-gen Batman.

You mean Denuclearized in this case.

It's boring Wals. But the setting is charming and good-looking, so you might still want to give it a try, if you go into it with low expectations.

Looks great. I'm actually pretty happy about the armor design too, when put together like that they look distinctive and varied enough. Honestly, if I didn't know beforehand, I'd have thought the characteres were sprites. By no means that's a bad thing.

Maybe, like cats, horses don't exist in Fallout. Good eatin'. Yeah, according to the Fallout Bible they're extinct. I don't think there's any info concerning that in the game, not that I remember at least, but at this point, considering more or less all the Fallout games have depicted a world without horses, it might be better to just keep rolling with it.