sorophx

yeah, my Elden Ring screenies look nowhere near as good but I'll post them anyway!

Spoilers ahead, but there's a list of enemy levels for each area which kinda tells you the natural order of progressing. So, depending on where in Caelid you are you could be way outside your intended zone. my char is level 101 and I still haven't even gone to Redmane Castle, I want to get a couple of quests done before that. But I do occasionally get my ass kicked in Caelid (I found Millicent's quest really hard in the beginning).

why is this game so beautiful

no fans of Shadow of the Horned Rat or Dark Omen? for shame

so, to toss my two cents into the Elden Ring discussion pit, it's the game of the decade for me and the best RPG since Persona 5. someone here compared it to Conan Exiles, it actually feels very similar in terms of how the world is designed, although technically ER is vastly superior. it also reminds me of Final Fantasy for some reason. I've been told by the people that own a Switch, that ER is basically a Zelda game, but I'll have to take their word for it. and just to clarify, the only two games from this company I played in the past were Bloodborne and Sekiro, and I hated both. Bloodborne due to terrible controls, Sekiro due to terrible vertical level design. Elden Ring on PC fixes most of these issues for me (although, the combat in Sekiro is superior in my opinion, would love to have that as an option in ER). anyway, I won't write a review or anything (I have a lot to say, but I'll keep it to myself), I'll just address a few issues other obsidianites brought up recently. namely, GRRM's involvement and the whole plot thing, combat, the open world and role-playing aspects. not sure how many of you have read ancient literature (Norse sagas, Greek myths etc.), but one of the things that makes GRRM's writing stand out is how he emulates story beats and styles that are often encountered in those early examples of storytelling. and you can see a lot of that in ER. I won't spoil anything here, but the influence is very noticeable, it gives the game this incredible atmosphere. I did catch myself many times feeling like I was actually experiencing a fairy tale. love the quest design, easily the best approach to doing quests in an open world game IMO. you get to an NPC and talk to him, he/she drops a hint on what you should do next, and that's it. on the one hand it makes quests easily missed, on the other, you aren't required to complete any of them, so when you do stumble across a quest resolution if feels very rewarding. some of the quests are incredibly story-rich and all of them have tragic resolutions. everything else in the game's story is traditional FromSoft stuff with the elder gods and demi-gods doing their thing far as I can tell, not interested in any of that personally. but that's just fluff that never interested me in games. combat on its base level is mediocre due to how heavily enemy design relies on the player evading attacks and not blocking. even though parrying and countering are a thing, they're very situational, while evading is universal across all enemy types. personally I think it should be the other way around (like in Sekiro, where the emphasis is on parrying and countering), but I can make parry/counter work with certain builds, so at least it's an option if you're willing to invest the time into making it work. as for the open world, again, it's some of the best design I've seen. games like the Witcher 3 or Skyrim don't even come close (even though they're clear influences, as well as Assassin's Creed, I'm sure). the variety of environments, the attention to detail, the hundred different enemy types representing warring factions and poor creatures stuck between them - all of that makes the game world a joy to just traverse and take in the sights. as for the role-playing part, I love that the game has at least three secret endings and another three unlockable variations of the base ending, all of which require you to jump through hoops to reach but all of which are optional and skippable entirely. I really enjoy building up my character and trying different approaches with bosses I can't beat. for example, I was having trouble with one particular boss (the first Crucible Knight you meet in Limgrave) and just couldn't get through no matter how much I tried spamming skills. I then tried parrying and just couldn't get a hang of it, but then I found an ash of war that added a special kind of parry to a shield of my choice, and that was the winning recipe for me. I like how crafting isn't forced down my throat and can be ignored completely. I like how intuitive the stats scaling is. unlike some other games I didn't need to go through millions of guides to figure out how to build my character. the equipment screen makes it self-evident. anyway, I'll just stop here before this turns into a wall of text. one downside is the UI of course, it's borderline unusable but can be customized somewhat which makes it bearable.

so much Elden Ring talk makes me want to share my screenies

this is kind of depressing, tbh, since I think Deadfire is vastly superior to both of those games. but I didn't finish it anyway, because it has too much content. I wish there was a "resolve combat automatically" button. but to be fair, I never finished either of the DOS or PF games, even though I own them. they are just complete crap in my unprofessional opinion.

that 10 USD coupon from Epic finally made me buy Cyberpunk 2077. can't say I regret the purchase, it's an interesting game, although terribly flawed. so far the feeling I get the most is "this is Call of Duty with an open world". not necessarily a bad thing, but take me out of the experiences in some instances (world missions are almost always bugged/crap). love all the secondary characters, though

Disco Elysium is a weird little game, that's for sure, but it has heart

I thought it was really bad. writing is absolutely terrible. the few starting quests are really badly designed, which doesn't show the game in a good light. managed to get 5 hours in before calling it quits. honestly, I'd rather replay Fallout 1 and 2 instead.

this is why I uninstalled Underrail after the first area. damn, getting old sucks

I'm more interested in Ghost of Tsushima on PC

damn, guys. I knew the game wasn't all that good when compared to BG2, but reading this thread is outright depressing

oh, the running around is definitely inspired by Borderlands, all those barrels carefully placed near enemy spawns etc. but Borderlands was never a good shooter either maybe I'm too picky I dunno, but OW could've been so much more

actually managed to nab The Outer Worlds on a sale, played it for a bit (got the character to level 27, game doesn't seem to be anywhere near the end though, so it's pretty big in terms of content, which is not a good thing, more on that below) and I have conflicting feelings about it. now, I'd never even discuss it with people, but since this is the Obsidian Forum I am curious if anyone else here feels the same way I do about OW. on the one hand it's pretty impressive visually. graphics are nice, animations are nice when they don't bug out, voice acting is pretty good as far as my tastes are concerned. shooting mechanics are meh, but that's because of how confused the game is about its combat mechanics (with all the damage types and enemy types it's very hard to keep track of what damages what), but that brings me to my first big gripe with the game: it should never have been a first-person shooter. when the game was announced I immediately thought to myself, "ah, Obsidz are making a spiritual successor to New Vegas with a KOTOR twist to it, nice!" -- I couldn't have been further from the truth. in all fairness, if OW was anything like NV I would've loved it. unfortunately it isn't. my guess is the general concept was closer to "Dishonored with a bit of Bioshock", and I'm going off on a tangent here, but neither games were particularly good to begin with, but at least they weren't too repetitive (at least they didn't feel repetitive to me, but I dropped them after about 5 hours with each, since they're terrible shooters as well). New Vegas worked because it was an open world game (which meant approaching any area from any side you wanted), and with a proper build you could make your character pretty powerful early on, which removed all the tedium from going around and clearing the wasteland. in OW you go around wasting hours upon hours killing randomly placed enemies that have a million HP each, I actually had to buy ammo after a few encounters in a particularly nasty area because I was spending around 200 rounds for my primary weapon each encounter there. and the only time you actually get a rest from all that mindless combat is when you're moving around a quest area. in fact, more than once I caught myself thinking, "is this what Fallout 2 would've played like if it was a first-person shooter?" -- and some episodes in OW really made me feel like I was playing a Fallout 2 remake. the game world is built in a very similar way, with quest hubs, empty spaces between them where you sometimes get random encounters etc. anyway, to make this long story short: this game should either have been an adventure game with minimal combat and hence -- with less filler areas to have to traverse; or it should've been a full-blown shooter without all the weird role-playing elements that make combat such a chore, relying instead on the player's skill and approach to winning each firefight. in the end it's neither tactical nor skill-based, which begs the question of why OT even has combat. my biggest issue is having to visit the same locations multiple times -- it's amazing that in the year of our Lord 2021 we still can't figure out a way to complete quests without walking up to the quest giver (and that's in a game about the Space Age!). I honestly expected an OG Star Trek-inspired adventure, where your time would be split evenly between visiting weird planets and having weird scenarios aboard your ship. instead I got another KOTOR, which already felt outdated when it first came out.

read a review today which completely destroyed the game, very badly executed Assassin's Creed clone with cute animals. I wasn't interested in the game to begin with, but the studio that made it used to make decent games, so I'm a bit surprised they actually released it in its current state.

tried buying The Outer Worlds on the EGS mega sale, but the store kept charging 0 USD for it and immediately rejecting the transaction... guess it's not meant to be, so I just bought Pathless. and boy do I like its visuals you can even pet the eagle!

saw the 50% discount, still too much to pay for a game I won't play for another year maybe next Easter I'll post my character in the newest iteration of this thread too

finally got to playing Nier:Automata, and while I know a lot of people love that game, I just don't see why. maybe it's because I'm playing on PC with M+KB, but combat feels unfair most of the time. encounters are very poorly designed, and because the controls are so bad on PC by default, I keep dying so often it really feels like an exercise in frustration. I finally dropped the game after a boss fight where I had to play a bullet-hell portion, and the game switched controls as part of the "challenge", that was the last straw since you can't do diagonal movement on KB... I'm sure there's a good game under it all, I just don't have it in me to sift through all the crap to get to it. I have to say, visually it's really appealing, combat itself feels nice when it actually works, and some of the locations are very well designed (love the factory area). I've heard there are mods that fix controls on PC, maybe I'll try those out before giving up completely, but there's no way I'm ever playing Nier:Replicant, where all of these problems are magnified.

holy hell, this thread is still going! hats off to Shady and the rest of you, good obsidianites, for keeping it alive

game engines don't make games. rather, the engine you choose will determine what you can't do. everything else is more or less the same across engines. the bulk of the work is building a game on top of the tech. and I think NWN 2 used the same tech as NWN (and it was also used for both KOTORs).

another day in the West, among lowlifes and degenerates but every now and then you just have to take a break from the wild life of an outlaw man, this game can be breathtaking

well, that's the question: which one of the two you'd hate losing access to more?

actually, I still see articles about KOTOR II pop up every now and then, 15+ years after the game's initial release. and yeah, you're probably right about HK and Kreia being the characters that are quoted the most. I say it's historically significant mainly thanks to its IP. nobody outside the small circle of Infinity Engine RTWP fans knows about PoE, and I'd argue even the extremely well made and critically acclaimed New Vegas is nowhere near as well known as KOTOR II. it's culturally significant precisely because it deconstructs the SW mythos in a believable way, and at the same time it expands and enriches the SW universe. MotB tried to do something similar, but its scope was too limiting, its characters - too forgettable (IMO), and it was weighted down by its mechanics. Alpha Protocol was another great concept wrapped inside a mediocre shooter, unfortunately, even though I do love its reactivity. I also don't see any particular value in Obsidian "having control over their own IP" as a gamer. I couldn't care less what world the game takes place in. I also think Obsidian was at its best when making sequels to other companies' games, because their sequels would be better than the originals. every time Obsidian released a game I'd closely watch their announcements because it was exciting for me to think what other worlds they could put their spin on. in short, games like KOTOR II come around once in a blue moon: it's a great idea built around an already good game, only flaw being its unfinished state. and the fact that KOTOR II, Alpha Protocol and MotB are brought up the most in a lot of discussions about Obsidian to me is a testament to these games' significance, with KOTOR II obviously being the most important because it paved the way for the rest of them (both in materialistic and idealistic sense).

yup, I see it the same way, that's why I chose it over Fallout New Vegas (close second) and Alpha Protocol (flawed gem, but unfortunately nowhere near as important historically)