melkathi

As opposed to the "So you like vampire? Well, let me tell you my awesome rewrite of the setting!"

I would not know. New World of Darkness was not something I would have touched with a barge pole.

Have that on my shelf as well. The one I played the most was Hunter, but I gave all my books away when I moved from the UK to Greece. Too much weight.

On that note, I wish someone brought out a Changeling the Dreaming game.

I'm a Dead State backer, so I am very willing to trust Brian Mitsoda to deliver great writing. I just hope it will be Vampire the Masquerade.

They haven't been instilling any faith in me that it will be great narratively in the WoD. What they have been showing is too much own ideas. Ah, well, we'll see when it comes out. But they got me from considering pre-ordering to waiting for sale.

Probably. The game could be anything. And the whole no clan, thinblood disciplines just further seen to disassociate everything I see from a well established setting. The knew embraced fledgling who jumps around like spidervampire and throws people about with telekinesis.

Started my Impossible playthrough. Different game altogether.

I can't put a finger to it, but there is something about Bloodlines promotionals that makes me less interested in playing the game.

It's called Sex Appeal.

And before that the Conan MMO by Funcom.

Can't watch those trailers. What makes people think that dropping in words that way will make people interested and not dizzy?

Check your steam activity feed. He's your friend too!

I just checked. I have so far posted 229 Mordheim screenshots.

Nope, no dwarven treasure hunters. The game didn't do well enough for them to look into the extra warbands that were added through wyrdstone magazine. And as it is a GW license, anything that was added after they discontinued the miniature game, may have been added by Tuomas and be as good as official, but it won't be covered by official licenses. Human Mercenaries, Chaos Cult, Skaven, Sisters of Sigmar, Vampires, and Witch Hunters. That's the warbands in the game.

Taking the chaos spawn out for a walk: Ogre enforcing social distancing:

I may have spend too much energy on this matter

Noticed a friend installing voice mods for XCOM2. Alpha Protocol SIE voice pack, Alpha Protocol Scarlet Lake voice pack, Alpha Protocol Mike Thorton voice pack. Noticed an inexcusable lack of a Sis voice pack.

I thought it was a test to see if we actually read your posts.

Ghost of a Tale is both 4 and 16 on your list.

Nominating Zephyr as the worst written character 2020. They took an interesting concept: a human who (probably as a teenager) was turned through the gene-therapy into a hybrid, broke free and joined the skirmishers, and now tries to find out who she was before they turned her into a hybrid soldier. And they turned it into "Look, this character has an overdone Aussie accent. LOL!1!1" (Yes, you can feel that the writer thought LOL with capital letters, multiple exclamation marks and typos for some of those exclamation marks). She actually gets a two-part barracks dialogue with Terminal, where Terminal (being the idiot she is (another character concept wasted by hack writers)) makes fun of Zephyr's accent. Not once, but you get two interactions because one wasn't enough to underline that hey, we added an Aussie accent! It's as if they had someone who can write supervise part of the work (Gray Phoenix investigation, dialogue between certain characters, the character backgrounds, some of the archive texts) - the parts they felt were important for telling the story they wanted - and then let the writing team fill the rest of the needed text with every stupid idea they threw out there over beer and pizza. It reminds me of the difference in quality in Guild Wars 2, where the Asura and Sylvari had interesting writing, while the Norn were bland as can be, while the Humans were cringe worthy. Or Old Republic, with the great writing for some classes and the, well, writing for others. Especially the drop in quality for Smugglers past act 1, where you could tell that they just needed two more acts written and be done. And then the intern who wrote those actually did leave, and everyone who had made snarky remarks "Did they let the intern write this?" felt like an idiot, because they had never expected the answer to be "yes". Now with my dislike for Terminal, you'd think I'd nominate her, but at least there was an attempt to write the character. A failed attempt mostly, but an attempt non the less. The girl who watched Advent kill her parents, then got taken in by a lady, only to have Advent kill the foster mother as well. Buried underneath rubble when Advent razed the Haven she had been living in, she was dug out by the Resistance. All this death and destruction changed her demeanor. Her clown attitude is a coping mechanism for all the death and destruction in her life, and her suicidal tendencies. And there is a dialogue with Godmother where she seems to halfheartedly reach out to talk about it. And there is a dialogue with Blueblood where he addresses the situation. But if you don't get those to trigger (and I for example didn't have Blueblood on my first playthrough), then all you see is an annoying clown. And that is a failure on the writers' part, but the attempt was there. Zephyr though they didn't even try. Her in-mission comments add nothing. They say nothing about her character. They are just delivered with an Aussie accent. With Claymore and Shelter I understand why they didn't try. The characters are boring. But at least Shelter has some comments about psionics. If you want to be generous, you could even recognize a hint of his reluctance to use his abilities. Torque, Axiom, and Verge are great characters. Cherub is good, but I understand why he can be annoying. It isn't easy to write a mentally 5 year old in the body of a soldier. He knows how to fight, but socially and all the non-combat knowledge is underdeveloped. Godmother works as a character. The veteran of the squad who has been fighting since the aliens first invaded, and who doesn't really have a life anymore beyond being den-mother to whatever unit she is with. There is nothing to stand out in the writing, but some characters don't need to. Blueblood is similar. As the cop of the team, he just fits in with the game setting. And Patchwork exists. Amazing character gameplay wise. Had to count how many characters I had mentioned and work out who I had missed to remember to list her. Jane Kelly is there to drive the plot. She fills the role of the councilman from previous games. It means she doesn't get to have much personality development, but it is better that way. The text she gets is required for the plot, not to showcase her as a person. So I am happy they refrained from distracting from the plot with character building. Whisper has some good writing when he welcomes new squad members. It is the part where you get to see that he is the person who is trying his best to make Chimera Squad work. He goes out of his way to know everyone on his squad and make everyone feel comfortable in this pilot project. And during random missions he is what Bradford wasn't: someone who gives you one line of your objective and leaves you in peace. Story missions he can get annoying though. They had to make those stand out and give him extra text. They let the hacks write it.

Imgur is acting up again, not finding my images. No Mordheim today.

Wouldn't be surprising if they announced something shortly after the GoG release - get people to talk a bit about the old games to raise anticipation for a new one.

Oooops. Yeah, until they patch the game, I'd advise against ironman. You could try to friendly fire kill your team which will cause the mission to restart.

On my second playthrough of Chimera Squad (the investigations change slightly based on the order you play them in and what Dark Event you choose to prevent). I think the main problem I have with the game is that devs do not understand how repetition makes things stand out. When you head out to a mission, the squad rides out in an APC. The way the parking spot is modeled makes that maneuver by the APC pretty much impossible - basically the non visible side of the APC must be clipping through walls. On mission return they play the clip backward, which makes the parking painfully unrealistic. Now if those videos were only played a couple of times, most people wouldn't give it that much thought. Most likely my initial thought "Heh, that APC drives the way I do in Saints Row" is as far as I would have gotten. But I have seen it over 50 times in my first playthrough. Over 50 times leaving the base, over 50 times returning. That is when the "little things" have the time to stand out. If you will have players stare at a specific video repeatedly, more than anything else in the game, then you shouldn't cut corners there. Same with the writing. Whisper (the not-Bradford of the game) is written as the person who tries hard to build team moral. He tries to strengthen camaraderie, is friendly and jovial. He also is the person who does mission briefings, which means this joviality is part of every mission. At the same time, one of the starting squaddies, and the game's only dedicated healer is also the team's joker. Terminal is just one joke after the other. But as she is someone everyone will have on their team, and because her levity will be part of her interaction with every otherwise not funny character, it upsets the balance. The game's writing is fine. The story is fine. The characters are fine. But the devs didn't consider how much facetime certain aspects would have and how all that would interact with everything else.