marelooke

Right, I'm aware of those last two as they were all over the net, was bit hard to miss, even though I tried () as I don't tend to follow games I intend to play at a later date very much until I do actually get to them (Avoiding hype saves on disappointment. Which is likely why I didn't mind CP2077 as much as most seemed to) Personally I wasn't a terribly big fan of how the origins worked in D:OS2 so I kinda skipped over them, creating my own character in BG3 and I just assumed M&H were origins as well... Mea culpa. In retrospect I guess that'd have been quite the feat to pull off storytelling-wise so I probably should've figured that one out... It does really seem M&H weren't intended to be in the party together, it is rather noticeable in Act 2 as Minthara takes Halsin's spot in the camp, displaying him, which sticks out as a sore thumb because... There's at least one camp site where she's just standing inside a table too, so yeah... Honestly, from a story pacing perspective Halsin doesn't really make much sense to begin with, most of the Act 2 he's just chilling in camp, and by the time he decides to get off his arse and join you Jaheira is basically right around the corner. If they wanted a druid companion I feel they could've potentially done something interesting with Kagha, depending on how that got resolved.

Phew, at least the last ME games were great successes that were clearly better handled than the Dragon Age games. Can't wait to see what the next one brings!

More Baldur's Gate 3. Getting to the end of Act 2. Combat generally isn't a problem anymore, and with the higher levels, better gear, and after turning karmic dice off I can get through a couple of encounters at least without everyone being near death and/or "long rest"-spamming. Thankfully, as there is a lot of combat given how persuasive my Wizard is... Some thoughts: Build suggestions for the builds the companions start out with would have been nice for those of us that want to stick with these thematic builds. Someone at Larian has a hard-on for chaining increasingly difficult dialogue checks, either just harder and harder ones (usually Persuasion) or ones relying on totally different attributes. Bonus points for the only significant outcome being achieved by passing all of them, and failing any of them leading to combat. Dialogue/storytelling in Act 2 is kinda...disappointing in a few places. Major Act 2 spoilers: The two last "Origin story" companions you can pick up feel severely undercooked as companions, at least so far in Act 2. They often don't have dialogue for significant events other companions do comment on, and seem to not react in any way to many actions you can take during the Act (meaning no comments, nor approval/disapproval). Why does the druid just chill in camp for half the act before becoming an actual companion? The above two companions also make going back to Act 1 areas annoying as hell as they will just drop most of their inventory in a bag on your player character, even when they're not in your active party at the time, as if they are permanently leaving the party. Thankfully when going back to Act 2 areas they're still just in camp, but you get to re-equip all of their stuff. Annoying. That "other skill tree". Bringing the Paladin into the party... Really liked the interaction between Withers and that one NPC. Do wish we'd have more conversation options with the guy chilling in our camp though.

Hmm... Honestly wouldn't surprise me in the least. Then again, buying games on release is just gambling anyway. We'll see in a few months where the opinions land.

It's also full of content that avoids at all costs to express an actual opinion in fear of losing viewers, access to preview copies, or because they don't want to sound "negative", or whatever else may be the case. Does one have to be rude about it? Obviously not, and personal attacks are obviously a no-go. But if a game is bad, or strictly a downgrade to its predecessor, then it's not doing anyone a service (least of all the people actually building the game) by clutching to every single bit of positive news and spending as little time as possible on the negatives, or trying to turn negatives into positives just to avoid being seen as "negative". With regards to Mort, I don't watch him, so I can't speak to his general tone, but from what I've seen of Veilguard it further simplifies everything about Inquisition (narrative, combat, companions,...), so him calling it "the best Dragon Age ever" (or something to that extent) makes his opinion questionable, at best, from the perspective of someone that enjoys RPGs. Then again maybe he's just not much of an RPG player. Did he review Baldur's Gate 3? That could be interesting to contrast if he did...

Been making my way through the Underdark in BG3. Gotta admit, combat indeed picked up after hitting level 5.

Man, must be nice to have such low standards, at least, based on other long reviews I've seen it's just further into "offline MMO" territory from DA:I. If he's into that sort of thing, more power to him, I guess...

Yeah, so they changed the whole flight system after that announcement and are still massively tweaking/balancing it. I do not for a moment believe Squadron 42 was actually feature complete last year. In fact it almost seems CIG is turning quite desperate as they seem to have thrown out most of their ambitious plans for Star Citizen and appear to be settling for "first person EVE" (no "sov" though) with a slowed down "mode switching" flight system instead of the rather fluid system they had before, just so they can get something out of the door before we all die of old age (or, more likely, before they get into major trouble with their investors)

Wait, what? Did they add an Elf race while I wasn't looking? (which has been an expansion or two, mind...)

Parked ME: Andromeda because it, well, bored me, probably get back to it later, maybe. Instead I've started playing BG3 since I picked that up when it was on sale. Game started out well enough, reminded me a bit of DA:O early on ("kinda yank, but has potential"), while the camera resulted in NWN2 flashbacks, but then the shortcomings of DnD RNG (without a sane DM to temper it) combined with Larian's signature encounter design started kicking in. I'm not even sure I'm having fun at this point, doesn't feel like I'm making reasonable progress in the story with regards to time spent, and I'm starting to actually dread combat encounters. Been told it gets better after level5 (level 4 atm), we'll see...

Been a while, but haven't really played much worth reporting on, so quick summary of the past few months. Final Fantasy XIV new expansion was released. And well..."Meh." is the nicest thing I can say about Dawntrail. Reached Legendary Rank 3 in Warframe by playing on and off for a decade. The previous quest ("Jade Shadows") was...interesting, given its themes. Can't say I've ever seen a warning stating "This quest contains scenes of trauma related to motherhood" before. New major plot development (Warframe 1999) looks more interesting than I was expecting. Got dragged into some time in The First Descendant. It's a Nexon game with ideas stolen from Warframe and Destiny without understanding how, and why, they work in those other games. Maybe it's an improvement given how Destiny is doing (haven't touched since before they started deleting content, so...hearsay), but I'd just recommend playing Warframe instead of TFD. Back to more positive news, I've been playing quite a bit of Warhammer 40.000: Darktide and have been enjoying it immensely. As far as I'm concerned the main thing keeping me from outright recommending it to Left4Dead/Vermintide enjoyers (note, haven't played a lot of VT2, so dunno how it compares there) would be the multiple layers of RNG in the "crafting" system, which should (finally) be getting reworked end of September. Combat is tight, atmosphere is absolutely great (the music... ), and I do greatly enjoy the banter between the different characters. Also another attempt at finishing Mass Effect: Andromeda. Game starts of pretty strong and then just falls flat on its (supposedly, tired) face. I'm at the point where I gotta deal with the "exiles" and I really can't be made to care about that "faction" at all. Oh well, trying to power through.

Pretty much what I do, since I also upload my screenshots to my own domain I haven't opened the Steam Screenshots window in very long time. Anyway, haven't really been feeling like playing much that really engages the brain, thankfully there's the kinda brain dead, but cinematic, nature of much of Star Citizen's currently available game loops, like cargo hauling (well, when not dodging (wannabe) pirates anyway)... Star Citizen regularly has a soft reset, where one of the things that resets is your starting location. Recently I've been using that opportunity to move around the Stanton-system and until the last reset (earlier this week), I was based out of Hurston (capital: Lorville), home of Hurston Dynamics. My favourite "large" combat ship: the Constellation Andromeda. Tanky, big pew pew, and missiles for daaaaays. Landing one of these elegantly is a bit of an art. Hitting the chin against the floor is a pretty real possibility with the landing gear that far back... Finally saved up for one of these: an Aegis Eclipse. Resulting in probably one of my favourite screenshots so far. My, so far, last addition to the fleet is a MISC Reliant Tana because it has a great "bubble" ****pit, while still being decently fast in atmosphere, which makes zipping around planets taking in the sights a pretty great experience. (and if that ship makes you think of some other ship in some other universe, the person that designed this apparently ended up moving to LucasFilm...)

In Steam's settings under "In Game" there's an option to save an uncompressed copy of your screenshots. And to stay on topic here's a screenshot

Played an completed The Chant, it's sort of an interesting occult horror-ish game. It's ... OK (I mean, I finished the main game), not sure if, or when I'll get to the DLC though. 6/10 I'd say. Picked up Mass Effect: Andromeda in a sale and it starts out decent enough (I'm pretty early in, I assume anyway, as I just completed my crew), well, story-wise anyway. But graphics, dialogues, characters, and their motivations (including the PCs, tbh) etc. all seem a pretty clear downgrade over the previous games. Feels like a game with potential that a committee got their hands on. At least it hasn't bored me into no longer wanting to boot it up, so far anyway, unlike Bethesda's latest attempt.

Starting from scratch is how I end up with relatively many characters (7 on my "main" Exiled Lands save, 3 in Siptah, and 2 in a very "throw all the mods at it and see when it breaks"-game). I just keep the same save and swap between them occasionally to fix up damage done by patches, or to continue/expand some build when new things release or new ideas come up. Doing it this way also means I kinda force myself to be a bit more creative than I'd otherwise be when choosing base locations as some spots are now already occupied by previous characters. Modwise I've mostly been running the same ones for years now as I try to keep my save as stable as possible given I don't tend start over from scratch.

Well, I have multiple characters on this server, many over lvl100, so yeah, just having a go at the place was a bit easier for me I'll probably have to build a base purely for triggering purge attacks, my usual, extremely large, bases are way too prone to them spawning inside, an issue I've been told isn't solved with the new system

Checked it out and they do look Stygian (don't always sound it ), also seem to respawn infinitely on a very short timer, combined with the broken combat system(*) I think I'll give it a pass for the time being. Ironically enough one of my characters has a base right across from the new fortress, so that is convenient... (*) modders will fix it: "Chapter 3 Combat HotFix (by Xevyr)", so we can attack in the direction we're looking again. Of all the obnoxious changes they've done over the years this one truly does take the cake, at least it was apparently easily modded out.

You confused me, and I have lots of hours into this game. Hmm, I wonder how ma... *checks Steam* ... errr, let's talk about something else... Anyway, marking these as spoilers in case you want to discover things for yourself, since they concern specific locations/mechanics (that you may not even be aware exist at this point, depending on how much the marketing material spoiled) With regards to the Stygian stronghold: With regards to packing up and moving: That said, after playing...this many hours...I generally run with a mod that removes the level cap so weight limits aren't that much of a concern, and when I build a new base there's generally little reason to drag all that many things along.

New Star Citizen patch dropped (3.22), and the thing that excites me most is the new and upgraded ... hairstyles I did look for a screenshot with the old hair, but all I got are ones from character creation, or NPCs, because pretty much nobody, including yours truly, took off their helmets like, ever... and at least for now many people actually do. It's kinda crazy how much better all characters look by just pimping the hair... Really interested to see what the impact of the new character creation tool will be as it will add even more options (and not just for the hair ), what we got now is just a little teaser, compared to what they showcased at Citizen Con. If nothing else the ability to actually export/import your character so you don't have to re-do things every major patch will be very welcome...

Was just flying around, looting outposts for free armour/weapons, you know, as you do When I noticed someone had parked a Reclaimer on a hill outside, leading to some pretty eery atmosphere... Especially with Crusader in the night sky... Felt the urge to go running around trying to make better screenshots, but I couldn't be sure the Cutter parked outside the outpost, or the Reclaimer itself were unmanned, and I didn't feel like getting shot. So I just circled the area a bit and decided to just peace out after a while.

Haven't really been gaming much outside of a lot of The Division 2 (crashiest game I've had the honour of playing in a while), and the ongoing raiding in FF XIV (finally cleared the final savage boss and got my BIS set for the first time ever. Party!). Aside from that I've been mostly poking at Star Citizen after I sorta lost interest in Elite Dangerous since it feels like it's in maintenance mode on top of being actively new-player hostile (think I've mentioned that part before, but it's been a while ) It's one of the things I really enjoy about Star Citizen, there's an out-of-MMO component (Arena Commander) where you can practice against AI (can also play with/against players without having to deal with...MMO-things), so you don't blow all your starting money on rookie mistakes, like having no idea what the flight controls are. Don't know if I mentioned it before, but I sprang for a HOSAS (dual stick) setup and it's been a game changer, really. Recently I also added face-tracking to look around during flight, which was another game-changer. Unlike what the manufacturers of stuff like the Tobii Eye Tracker would want you to believe for this purpose all you need is a halfway decent webcam where refresh rate and ability to discern things in the dark are the most important (unless you like to play in bright rooms, I guess). Personally I got a Nexigo N660P (as it supports 60fps, which is more important for tracking than resolution) which I use with OpenTrack/AITrack and it's been pretty great. Bonus is that you now also have a halfway decent webcam for...webcam things It does measurably impact CPU usage though, which I doubt is really a problem with any modern CPU, but figured it worth mentioning.

Been a little while, IAE2953 (Intergalactic Aerospace Expo) has come and gone, so got to mess around with lots of ships during the free fly... Alien ships: Human stuff: One of my favourites, the RSI Constellation Andromeda: One of the things that's really hard to convey is the sense of scale, some of these things are just massive:

Just casually flying my Tie Interceptor Fury over Hoth Microtech, taking in the sights.

How's the later game? Enemies feel quite a bit more bullet-spongy at low levels (I started a new character), and given that there's level scaling now that's a bit of a worry. Also seems to be impossible to sneak up on cyberpsychos now? Has anyone managed? If so I guess my pure stealth build is out of the window... Fighting them sure as hell isn't an option early game when you're all in on Cool. Unless they get stuck, of course... Do get a lot more income from jobs, so that's nice, shouldn't be too hard to pay off Vic before The Heist from the looks of it. New police system seems worse, for the way I play anyway, than before, which is a merc, not a gta-thug/cyberpsycho. Seen some pretty epic shootouts and police just ignores them entirely. They're also everywherel, and here I thought the NCPD was understaffed...

Just got to the point where you are forced into in Starfield, I'm sure they give you absolutely no choice in the matter because of some story reason that the writers couldn't be bothered find a more creative way to deal with. Keeping my "called it" cared handy. Ugh