melkathi

The Skazz challenge: Cultist Joyous Forest is the first to storm the castle (and having fun doing so) : After everyone ran away from the Liche Queen and wouldn't go back to face her for all the gold in the Kingdom ("all the gold" is relative of course, add enough 0s to the number and some heroes will think about it), the Rogues hung around waiting for someone else to charge in so they could swoop in and cash in on the bounty. Cultist Yellow Boulder, followed by Cultist Pleasant Sea shifted into bear form and did just that.

That will be extra challenging, as the game starts you with two temples of Agrela

Tried playing Majesty Northern Expansion and remembered why I never finish those missions. They are just not fun.

I just reached Defiance Bay...

Undead attack the kingdom. All paladins fled in terror. Half a dozen gnomes died trying to keep the guard tower standing. One heroic healer of Agrela holds her ground and is surrounded by eight skeletons. Three more healers rush to her aid. One of them will not survive the fight. Saru the Calmbringer, barely visible in the melee in the screenshot will survive and end up the highest level hero in this quest (17). The Heroes find the castle of the Liche Queen. A band of Paladins, Rogues, Wizards, Rangers, and Solarii will tear it down. As the Liche Queen emerges all of them will flee. All of them? Not all. One Paladin is hit with a paralyze spell. As the Liche Queen and her minions surround her, a second Paladin decides to protect her incapacitated sister. The undead surround them and find out why in Majesty you never surround high level Paladins.

Whoah! Kingmaker... Or to quote one of my favourite games of all times: "I always wanted one of these!" Or "What a delicious looking reward..." Or "Oooh, pretty star!"

Depression spiked today. Forum said I got quoted, but I can't read/reply. Please don't take it personally if I ignore you. I put my energy into replying to work emails, wishing friends happy birthday and posting this disclaimer

Alpha Protocol was fantastic in it's choices. And they mostly all made sense (the museum bombing is always strange - Thorton choosing to save one person over many. But eh, I took that option on the Veteran playthrough, roleplaying it that he had seen too many friends die and couldn't sacrifice her as well). Outer Worlds, the two sides both make valid arguments. Even though the Board are bastards, there is perfectly good reason to side with them. Until you do the maths. But their point about Phineas' plan being too risky is valid.

No. The number of choices is irrelevant to validity of choices: New Vegas, Caesars Legions slaughters people, tortures people, enslaves people. The NCR collects taxes and has nepotism and a certain level of corruption. Obsidian wants you to accept in that game that slavery = taxes as similar evil. Or that slaughtering whole villages because you can is the same as a politician pulling strings not to have their kid send to the front lines. The third option (Mr House), joining neither side does not make Caesar's Legion more valid as a moral choice. The CIA funded and trained death squads during the Greek civil war. It is recorded as "successful anti-communist operation" or something like that. The people they trained and armed though were the Nazi collaborators. I grew up in Thessaloniki where 46 thousand people were send to Auschwitz. The people who aided in that were then given arms and funds by the US. No even remotely decent human being would accept that. Therefor the myth needs to be created that there is no black and white, only gray, and two opposite sides in a war are both valid. And because we are getting bombarded with that in popular media - be it tv series, movies, comics, literature, or gaming - for decades now, the generation creating content now is propagating this without an agenda, instead believing this to be how they show open-mindedness. Of course for US dominated entertainment, the argument could also be made that it is the unhealed scars of the Vietnam War that had divided the country, which makes US entertainment pathologically try to make both sides in an argument acceptable. Again though, as we are now dealing with generations who have no clue what the Vietnam War was, we would be dealing with content creators not knowing why it is they create how and what they create.

So does not listening to fans. In the end: devs just make crap games.

Moral gray areas in games are a lie. Trying to give players two equally valid moral sides (NCR vs Caesar's Legion for example. Or Jedi vs Sith) has never worked, as the sides have never been equally valid. It all is a result of ingrained post-WWII propaganda, from when certain governments found themselves needing to make acceptable that they were supporting Nazi collaborators/organizations in various countries.

Workshop support. Haven't tried any of the community made quests yet, but may do once I am done replaying all the original and expansion ones.

Do you own Majesty Gold HD on Steam?

A tier 1 Krypta and Fervus will fill the map with an army though. High level cultists will just charm half the monsters on some maps. (Warriors of Discord are useless) Good thing about paladins is that they are even more likely to go after reward flags than rogues. Not for the money, but because they deem your mandate just.

The problem with the Paladin route is lasting long enough to afford them.

Seas of water, Seas of time, Both isolate Ardania.

Story is pretty linear as far as I recall, though Winter Wolves always tried to work in some branching. Loren has some choices of who joins your party etc. You choose between two predetermined characters (Saren male/ Elenor female), and choose their class.

Auditioning for Led Zeppelin? You come from the land of ice and snow? (The immigrant song being inspired by Led Zeppelin playing Majesty's Northern Expansion - as is well known)

Oblivious henchman

Your first screenshoting post? Welcome to the screenshot family. It is a bit like the hotel California. You are welcome here, but once you are in, you are in for life.

Bad decisions is Chambara's middle name.

I finished The Outer Worlds the other day and found it ultimately forgettable. A time filler that does nothing wrong but also nothing so right it would stand out. The dystopian setting is interesting enough, but grows stale as the repetition of brainwashed and/or resigned npcs quoting the company slogans loses the effect once you have finished exploring Edgewar the first time. The sociopolitical commentary shies away from actually making a stand and commenting, leaving it as little more than tropes. The presentation of the story through texts on computer terminals, while an obvious choice, is also one we have gone through repeatedly in FO3, FONV, and those who could bear through it FO4, and it just strengthens the constant comparison to the big franchise, were TOW falls short, similar how DA Inquisition could never compare to a TES game: it provides a feeling of open world exploration without being an open world game. So while you aren't constrained to narrow, small maps similar to DAO or KOTOR, the maps do end quickly and the player soon realized the game is smaller than they first thought. The party members are a mixed thing. They are refreshingly human instead of the compulsion in other games to try and get the most unique, weird, strange character the writers could come up with, and their personal stories are are also refreshingly normal and believable Bonus: they don't all try to sleep with you, meaning talking to them (if you talk to them, as there is no real reason to do so) is not a minefield of romance triggers. But just as they are refreshingly normal, they are also rather forgettable and become a choice of skill boosts. The game has a decent length, but the end seems rushed, as if they ran out of time and held things back for DLC. This feeling is underlined by the instance of a certain quest (which Tale mentioned in a post he had hoped to agree to then sabotage but couldn't) which does not have multiple solutions, even though 40 hours of game have up to that point instilled the expectation of choice in the player. Did they just run out of time here? It doesn't fit the game's philosophy. Cut corners also seem to be the conversation skill and ability checks which lead to nothing but 30 odd xp and one additional line of dialogue. The player is teased that with a higher stat or skill the conversation could go differently, but it doesn't. And on the same line, the character background seems to be a lost opportunity for some extra dialogue choices here and there. A mascot character for example knows nothing if tossball (the sport they were cheering for professionally) or does not feel a certain kinship with Moon Boy? Omissions that stick out. Verdict: Bought it on sale. Was positively surprised to find it a longer game than expected. Finished it. Uninstalled it. Will never play again. Did not feel I wasted my money, but time could equally have been send on another game.

As my grandad always said: You haven't lived until you have been eaten by a grue. (he never said that, but if I had grandkids, I'd tell them that, just so they could quote me)