Keyrock

Chaos a pre-order incentive? What the ****? Chaos is a critical part of the setting. Any version of this game that does not include chaos is flat out incomplete. This is really low, even for SEGA, they just keep finding ways to become an even scummier company.

InXile has filed a trademark for Autoduel. Filing a trademark, of course, doesn't guarantee a game will ever get made, or when it will happen. Also, I admit that I never played Autoduel, so I don't really know if it's an IP worth reviving. Still, as a fan of Steve Jackson's Car Wars, I'm interested in whatever becomes of this, as it may produce something that at least somewhat approximate the Car Wars experience.

It's John Woo: The Video Game, the only thing missing is doves.

I can't really disagree with that impression. 11-ish hours in and the game is very paint by numbers. It's enjoyable, but it's taken precisely zero risks so far and it's trying it's damnedest to tick off every single item on the fantasy RPG trope checklist. [shameless plug]If you're looking to see a video of it, I'm doing an LP of the game. Here's a link to part 1. It's rather non-spoilery as it's just character creation and the tutorial at the beginning. If you proceed to part 2 and beyond, then you'll be getting into spoiler territory, as that's the game proper.[/shameless plug]

Catacombs, what would a fantasy RPG be without them? Original? Refreshing?

Bruce's wet dream of a totalitarian world where we're all told what to do, where to go, who to associate with, what to believe, what we can and can't say, what we are allowed to eat, what time of day we are allowed to take out regimented 3 minute shower, and what color of issued uniform we are allowed to wear, for the greater good, of course, is one small step closer to reality. Rejoice!

So long as the esteemed Mr. Fargo doesn't pull a Curt Schilling, I see this as a good thing. Given Mr. Fargo's extensive experience in video game developing and publishing, I think he'll do just fine.

This video is a couple months old, but I don't think it was posted here. If it was, my apologies.

The simplest way of explaining my (admittedly limited) experiences with Sword Coast Legends is that this game is a lot more Dragon Age: Origins than it is D&D.

Yeah, I'm enjoying it more than Pillars combat, probably largely due to it being less cumbersome and flowing better. Not having to babysit every character every second of a battle does wonders for my sanity. Agreed 100%. I don't want to turn barks off completely, but having the character bark every. single. time. I click to move to a spot is driving me mad. Edit: Looks like they added an option to turn barks frequency down, it's supposedly in the audio options. I'll check it out when I get home. Edit 2: The option to lower the frequency of barks is called "Command Sounds". I initially though it was controlling the volume of barks, but if you mouse over it, it tells you that it governs the frequency of barks.

I'll give the game credit in that department. The companion AI has been impressively competent in my experiences so far; I can mostly control one character and the rest of the party don't act like complete idiots when I leave them to their own devices.

McDonalds is a loose interpretation of the term restaurant, technically it is a place where you can order a meal, though it's closer to mass produced food you can buy at a supermarket than the freshly prepared food people generally associate with "restaurant". Sword Coast Legends is a loose interpretation of D&D, technically it is a game in a D&D setting using a really loose interpretation of D&D rules. Hence my analogy. Okay, maybe my analogy isn't the greatest. The point is that the game takes a lot of liberties with D&D rules. How much that bothers you will have a great impact on how much you will enjoy the game.

I've had fun with it so far, granted, it's still early in the game, I could certainly still grow to hate it. Basically, don't look at it as a D&D game and your chances of enjoying the game will rise significantly. If you're dead set on an authentic D&D experience, this game is not it and you will be disappointed. If you can get past the fact that this game is about as D&D as McDonalds is a restaurant, then there's fun to be had here.

Confession: I spent entirely too long triggering that goblin torture device. Sure, it was just shooting flame at a shackled skeleton, but it was still satisfying.

Sword Coast Legends My Cleric Bregin.

I was pretty underwhelmed by the trailer. I guess my inner Star Wars fanboy died a long time ago, killed by the poison pumping through my black heart, also Jar Jar Binks, also also Emo Anakin Skywalker.

I started the game up this morning. I didn't have much time before work, so I only did character creation and the quick tutorial at the beginning. The game has an alarming lack of orcs, so I was forced to choose the next coolest fantasy race, which clearly is dwarves, and made a cleric (class selection is pretty limited too). So far I've seen a few swords and there was some mumbo jumbo about some elven goddess crying, because those skinny, pointy-eared bastards always gotta be overly dramatic like that, and a tear falling to the ground, or some junk, so I guess that counts as a legend. I've yet to encounter any coasts, but I barely started the game. When I get home from work I'll set off on my quest to find a coast to fulfill the ancient prophecy game's title. Too early to say anything about the quality of the game. I will say that the lack of screen edge scrolling is a bother. How do you not implement that in an isometric game? That's pretty standard.

It's not, what's out there is still a pre-release build. The final build comes out tomorrow.

It's definitely not a memory problem for me, I have 32 GB of RAM and 12 GB of vRAM. Even if I am getting the memory leak that the game reportedly has, it would have to leak for a really long time on my system.

For me it's everywhere. The first 2 1/2 - 3 hours I played I got real lucky, it only crashed once, but since then it's just been ridiculous, I had to save before every screen load because it seemed like there's was about a 35-40% chance that it would CTD every time it loaded a new area. For you does it crash in the middle of gameplay or just on area loads, like for me?

I think I'm going to hold off a few weeks on playing this. The game is in rough shape. I've had the game crash at least 30 times so far. It only crashes during loading or unloading (entering a new area, loading a save game), but it's still extremely irritating. I've had the game crash 3 times in a row trying to load a save game. It's not worth dealing with. I'm just going to have to put my current playthrough on hold for now.

Thanks for that! Gonna check it out. I've tweaked it a bit since first uploading it (it's still called the same name). I basically have all the stuff I commonly use with the exception of the hotkeys to select each individual character and the hotkeys to use items; there just aren't enough buttons on the controller to map F1-F7 and number keys 1-0 and do all other basic functions. Pretty much everything else I use is there, though: Mouse movement, left and right click, camera zoom, camera rotate, camera pan, stand, crouch, reload, swap weapon, select group/deselect group, char sheet, log book, map, escape, and enter. I'll likely mess with it some more, maybe adjust the sensitivity of the "mouse" movement a bit.

@Bartimaeus - You might be right about Diablo, it's been a long while. Titan Quest does scale, though it's a limited scale. The first area might scale from 1-5, the next from 5-10, the next from 10-20, and so on. Enemies will scale with you to a point, but will cap out eventually, so if you grind an area long enough you'll reach a point where the enemier stay the same level and you keep getting stronger. By the same token, if you manage to run ahead far enough, you can run into an area with enemies way too powerful for you, and get obliterated. It's the same system its spiritual successor, Grim Dawn, is using. Torchlight definitely level scales, I'm not sure if it's limited or not. Anyway, the point is that I feel it's a necessary evil for those types of games where the developers expect players to farm areas/bosses again and again and again as they try to get certain drops (to complete sets or whatever). Without level scaling the bosses you farm would quickly become childishly easy and the gear you get would be underleveled and thus useless.

Okay, let me try to understand what you are saying (no offense, I understand English is not your first language given your location). What you are saying is that leveling is irrelevant in games with level scaling because enemies scale with you, in this case, I agree completely, level scaling sucks. It is somewhat necessary in a game like Diablo/TitanQuest/Torchlight, etc. because in those games you are meant to run through the same areas again and again to farm and if levels are static then there would be no challenge after the first time. Those games are far more about loot than character progression anyway. As for examples where enemy level/strength is fixed, I disagree wholeheartedly. In my opinion, this is what RPGs should be all about. You encounter a challenge that is extremely difficult because you are low level. You can choose to do it now and surely perish or go out, get stronger, and meet the challenge when you are ready. To me, that's a critical part of video game RPGs, building your characters up until they can meet a challenge. As for what you are suggesting, if I understand correctly, is a game where character progression is not so much due to your character becoming much stronger, stat wise, but by becoming stronger because you, the player, have learned to play the character better. That game exists. It's called Bayonetta (1 & 2) and it's an AWESOME game, but it's not an RPG. Go play some spectacle fighters, it seems to be what you're looking for.

Wow, I didn't expect the Steam Controller to work this well as a mouse. I mean, it's not as comfortable as my trackball for getting around my desktop, but it's shockingly competent. The haptic feedback is really neat. It's subtle, it kinda hard to describe, but it feels "right", for lack of a better word. Edit: I just tried the controller in Wasteland 2 a game that does not have an already existing official Steam Controller setup and made one myself . it was easy and intuitive and the controller config is really robust, quite impressive. I made a scheme that works pretty well for me and uploaded it to public space. If you want to check it out, it's called "Wasteland 2 - Keyrock 1". I'll tinker with it some more in the future. Edit 2: Tried it in Q.U.B.E., a first person puzzle game. I can get a decent setup, one I could live with if mice and keyboards didn't exist, but no way can I see this controller replacing m&kb for FPS. Th config utility for the controller is really great and you can dial that trackpad in pretty well, but it's never going to be as precise as a mouse, that's just not happening. Any isometric game, on the other hand, I can see this controller working great, especially one that's turn-based or one that you can pause. I'm not sure how well it would perform under the time pressure of RTS, but I don't play RTS anyway, so I won't be the one to test that theory. But games like Civ, Age of Wonders, RTwP RPGs, turn-based RPGs, I think this controller will work really well with those. I played Wasteland 2 with the controller, using it like m&kb, not using the xbox controller setting for it, and after a bit of getting used to the controller (it didn't take long), I was quite comfortable with it and honestly didn't miss m&kb very much.