marelooke
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Posts posted by marelooke
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"I dread to think that they might ruin him "a la Anders", returning characters could either be very good(if they stick to what the character is) or very bad(if they decide to try their hand at development)."
They didn't 'ruin' Anders. They had him 'grow', change, and adapt. He was already on the path in DA1. I enjoyed putting the psycho out of his misery. i knew he was crazy in DA1 the moment he wanted to have sex with a cat.
"its a fantasy - its the one way you'll see a guy actually acting right in a relationship".
\That's evil.
Okeeeee, it seems I'll need to pick up my (unfinished, due to a game breaking bug) Awakening playthrough again...
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Didn't see this posted here yet.
Varric easily is the best companion in the Dragon Age series, I'm glad he will be back (unless they manage to mangle him beyond recognition, of course
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Looks like it could be a fun game, but day 1 DLC *and* UPlay? I'll pass for now.
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Stealth without obfuscate is impossible in many areas, shadows aren't everywhere and the AI is far less forgiving when it comes to stance than more recent games, they have a wide range of view and the light metre has to be pretty low. The game is designed that way because of obfuscate and trance would be a lot less useful if stealth was easier, also I think all vampires are meant to have a element of stealth. If you put points in stealth and dexterity it doesn't take much for you to be invisible in the dark when crouched. A lot of the gameplay is based on the original Deus Ex, that game also had unforgiving stealth. The lighting system is a little bugged, like Deus Ex, sometimes areas that look dark are light and vice versa.
Well, the only quest I gave up on without Obfuscate was the one where you had to hide the webcams in the flat. There were a bunch of others that were kinda hard (the museum, the parking lot and the theatre come to mind), but not impossible.
the more I play the more I realize the biggest problem with this game is its engine. Source just wasn't meant for such games, unless you're a Valve engineer (another good example of this: E.Y.E.: DC)
Eh, EYE mostly suffered from badly explained overly complex mechanics resulting in a learning cliff that made EVE Online seem like Tetris in comparison.
I am getting sick of being stuck in doors, paper clippings on the floor etc. makes walking about a nightmare... I wish this game was made in ToEE's engine: turn-based, with prerendered backgrounds and isometric.
Never really noticed the problems you mention, but I avoided open combat if at all possible. I mean, I remember combat being clunky, but not getting stuck in doors...
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I'd be interested to see Europe for a change. That's still uncharted territory.
Personally, I would love to see Obsidian make a Fallout game(like NewVegas) set in the ruins of New York City. Would be worth it to see Deathclaws infesting Madison Square Garden.I didn't mind the setting of DA2 and in fact I actually liked that it all took place over the same small area. The problem is that that area was mostly crap, copy and pasted maps aside, the city was mostly boring and lifeless and had little interaction I thought the story was mostly fine until the 3rd act when it went completely off the rails
I don't know if I would. Quite a bit of the setting of Fallout is tied to the American 50's, Cold War paranoia especially, and I don't know if it would work as well in Europe.
That said, a Fallout(or Fallout-esqe game) set in London, Paris, Berlin, or Madrid would be pretty interesting.
Well aside from Europe dissolving into warring city-states I know rather little about the "old world" side of the Fallout universe, I guess that if the USSR was a thing then Berlin with the wall could make for some fun post apocalyptic politics if done right, especially since the adversaries are right next to one another unlike the US and China
(Visiting China and seeing the other side of that conflict also could be fun, though it would be a lot harder to make it immersive for a mostly Western audience I imagine)
Ehm, but I fear this might be slightly off-topic in this thread, unless BioWare is making a post-apocalyptic game? Come to think of it, the Berlin wall could make for a nicepost-apocalyptic Romeo and Juliet story, what do you think Bruce?
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I didn't mind the setting of DA2 and in fact I actually liked that it all took place over the same small area. The problem is that that area was mostly crap, copy and pasted maps aside, the city was mostly boring and lifeless and had little interaction
I thought the story was mostly fine until the 3rd act when it went completely off the rails
Personally, I would love to see Obsidian make a Fallout game(like NewVegas) set in the ruins of New York City. Would be worth it to see Deathclaws infesting Madison Square Garden.
I'd be interested to see Europe for a change. That's still uncharted territory.
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oh, so I assume since there isn't one, I'm stuck in this crapper for now
Yups, gotta run your errands for Mercurio and the Voermans first.
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Captain Morgane and the Golden Turtle is in the current sale. For some reason that title rang a bell but I can't recall why. Seems to have quite some negative comments. What do you guys think, is it any good?
I already grabbed the three Grotesque Tactics games, a bit of parody sounded like fun.
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This subject has come up before. Imho the best tutorials are those that are entirely separate from the main campaign and as such can be entirely ignored once one understands the mechanics (and, as a result of them being separate, can be rerun at one's leisure if a certain mechanic is unclear or one returns to a campaign after a long break)
Case in point: the tutorial of Baldur's Gate 2 (which, contrary to popular belief, was *not* Irenicus' dungeon as there was exactly 0 explanation of gameplay mechanics in there), I assume BG1 also had such a tutorial, but I never looked at it since I Played BG2 first, so I already knew the mechanics.
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I can't grasp the whole stealth thing in this game yet. Which is mostly due to me not seeing enemies when crouching. One of my abilities Was supposed to highlight their aura but it doesn't.
I think I will go with a malkavian today and see how it plays out.
Malkavians are also fairly Stealth oriented (they also have Obfuscate, for example)
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Yeah, but those always felt like simple line-for-line replacements for the normal dialogue in most cases, the NPCs generally don't react to them. That said, I played Malk first up, and only did 1.5 chapters on my subsequent non-Malk playthrough, so it's not a comprehensive analysis.
I'm not using it as a criticism as such, it's probably as far as they could go without creating a wholly separate campaign for each clan - but I've always considered it more jokey than insightful, and am fine with that.
Guess that depends. Sure generally the response is "Oh poor dear, you're so messed up!", but often you hear your character say stuff that (s)he couldn't possibly know yet. I mean, a Malkavian basically "spoils" bits of the ending when you're talk to the Seeress on the beach very early in chapter 1...
Also the (first) Malkavian conversation with Jeanette is a pretty big spoiler. I'm not sure if it keeps up this pace thoughout the game since I never made it very far past chapter one as Malkavian (I'm a wizard guy, so I tend to gravitate towards the Tremere and seriously, a katana wielding, stealthy, blood magic using vampire wizard, what's not to like?) but the spoilers early on made me very wary of ever recommending a Malkavian for a first playthrough. (though I'm pretty sure the "Omfg my character already knew that!" when figuring out the Jeanette thing afer totally having missed the references in earlier dialogue might be worth it), though I guess it'd only work for someone not aware that Malkavians can have insight into the future through their insanity (and as such might ignore/miss all the clues strewn through their conversations)
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Sir, your convoy awaits...
Those sheep need a good crutching, not something the average consumer would put up with. Unless rebranded as a ewe brazilian, perhaps. Plus one of the lambs looks like it has fly strike.
Yes, I am awaiting Sheep Shearing Simulator 2014, now that you ask.
Can't we just have a proper new Carmageddon? You know, to deal with all the sheep... ;-)
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http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/24cprc/leaked_screenshots_and_instruction_manual_for/
Some stuff from the World of Darkness MMO CCP was working on
Sad to say but judging by the synopsis RPS made it doesn't seem we're missing out on much. A shame really since CCP is one of the few companies I had any hope for of bringing some actual new stuff to the tiring line of WoW-clones. Maybe the issue was that it wasn't really CCP proper who was working on it.
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I'm also slightly worried about the lack of action in D:OS once you reach the first city early on since she got kinda bored already with all the text early in Jade Empire...
Hmm, youre the second person to mention this. I think it was Hassat Hunter that mentioned being ~16 hours in and there being little to no combat. Bummer.
Well, they added a (hidden) dungeon under the starting town (shown in the video in the last update), so it might not be *that* bad anymore. And given the interactivity of the environment it might turn out better than I imagine, still very excited for the release of this game
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I would've thought that Original Sin would be the opening gambit of that scheme.
Well, I've been trying to get her to expand beyond just platformers (she loves the Trines and Toki-Toris) and games that are playable with a controller (this is proving rather challenging, while I prefer to play games from the comfort of my desk she prefers to play games from the comfort of the couch...).
I'm also slightly worried about the lack of action in D:OS once you reach the first city early on since she got kinda bored already with all the text early in Jade Empire...
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Release date for Divinity: Original Sin is pegged as June 20, 2014.
I'm going to have to fast track my "getting gf into RPGs"-scheme...
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Last time my computer was working I was using a keyboard from the late 1980s. It is, in many ways, the tank of keyboards. I think it'd stop a bullet and still work.
That's why I bought a mechanical keyboard, except these are nowhere near the standards that IBM used to have.
These guys still make the original Model M (in the same factory) http://www.pckeyboard.com
I use one at work and still use my 1993 IBM Model M at home.
How well do those work to game on though (thinking Unreal Tournament and the likes)?
I've been considering a mechanical keyboard for a while (though probably not a Model M because the noise those make would make me rather unpopular at work. I used to have a colleague who had one and had to ask him to stop typing while I was on the phone with him because I couldn't understand a word he said. Also I prefer keyboards without slanted keys, much better ergonomically, though still fairly rare, alas)
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I want that outfit for a rogue, so I can roleplay as a Swashbuckler Errol Flynn-type, instead of that atrocious-tacky-cartoonish-looking one that looks like it was ported over from DA2's silly armor design department, currently showcased on their site.
One of their problems is their approach to rogues isn't what most people associate with rogues. The classes are Warrior, Also Warrior, and Mage.
Haven't looked closely at DA:I's classes yet but often I feel that there is: tanks, healers (luckily one can often get away without a dedicate healer role), ranged dps, melee dps, just like in MMOs.
Whether said ranged dps is a mage or a warrior specialized in archery makes very little difference in the grand scheme of things as aside from "flavour" they often play pretty much the same in combat. On top of that they usually give every melee class insane distance closing abilities such that being melee (rather than ranged) becomes rather irrelevant (eg. DA2's rogue/thief/whateveritwascalled) since getting around the battlefield is so easy that zero thought is required about positioning and the like (it's why I swapped my mage for a rogue in DA2, sturdier, same amount of damage and didn't run into LoS issues due to being on the edge of the battlefield).
I especially dislike specialized tank/healer roles (the addition of such to DA:O is one of the things I dislike most about that game, especially since you already have such a small party of which one will pretty much have to be a tank, iow Alistair or Shale (or the PC)).
The idea of a "tank" that "taunts" enemies (always wondered how you'd taunt something undead, "Hey you, zombie dude! Yer mom!") but does about zero damage is a (mostly) MMO mechanic that's been bleeding through to single player games.
It might've been an overly simplistic mechanic, but in that respect I preferred the IE games' "first come first get punched" attitude to encounters, especially combined with the enemies going for whoever hurt them the most, resulting in the player not being able to go bananas with their wizards unless they wanted to get more attention of $ENEMY than was healthy.
EDIT: a quick look at the (horrendously slow loading) DA:I website tells me that the holy MMO trinity will be present again, just like in DA2.
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^Many people felt Irenicus' Dungeon served as a tutorial level. There was even a mod allowing you to skip it and start outside the dungeon.
Many people were wrong then
Irenicus' Dungeon was a major part of the story. I can't blame them for wanting to skip it the umpteenth time through though (same as the entire Asylum/Underdark thing getting a bit old after the 7th time through)I reckon the NWN2 OC got this right. You had a neat tutorial (the fair), but you could pick a convo option with your step father immediately, which made you skip to the more urgent attack on the village. However, if you were a completionist, you missed out on a few xp by not doing all the stuff in the tutorial fair, which I do think is indeed fair.
I'm OCD enough to always go through it, and then be annoyed by it, but I'm quite willing to accept that that is just me
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I bought Dead Space 3 recently despite it being on Origin (due to it being on sale for a price I deemed acceptable
).Combat seems to be more clunky than I remember. I mean, I get hit way more often and Necromorphs in general seem to be faster and tougher than before, guess they want to force more use of stasis. There's also lots more of them on average. Seems they just went full out for a shooter feel (get jumped by loads of necromorphs all the time, spam health packs).
The weapon upgrade system also seems more complex, I personally don't really care for it very much so so far it hinders me more than anything.
Also I was aware Ellie got a makeover, but good lord, it's looks even worse ingame than on the screenshots I saw. Was that seriously really necessary?
And then she runs around with cleavage that wouldn't be out of place at some award ceremony, seriously is Isaac the only one with enough brains to wear a space suit when visiting derelict spaceships?
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The India rape frenzy the media stirred up is epitome of bombastic and misleading journalistic work. The rate of rape in the US is 28 to 100000 individuals. The worst indian city has a rate of 10 at same sample size. Even with severe under-reporting it is questionable whether the rate of rapes in India is higher than the US. The UK has 23 at same sample. Sweden has 53.
These are US Department of Justice statistics.
I have no particular affinity towards India but I hate this type of slander, rifling through other people's dirty laundry while knee deep in your own crap.
Those statistics to me say more about how acceptable it is for a woman to go to the authorities about it (and be taken serious) than about the actual number of rape crimes that happen.
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Character creation should, as has been pointed out before, come first, before any intro sequences.
Personally I'd prefer BG2's solution of making a dedicated tutorial level, entirely separate from the game, over making the first area of the game into a tutorial.
Imho this solves two common problems:
* having to go through the darn tutorial each time you start a new game (= annoying)
* having to use Google or restart the game if you missed something in the tutorial or took a long break and could use a refresher (happens to me pretty often)
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The new combat system looks good to me from what little I've seen. But as a caveat, I did enjoy the combat, even the filler, of Dragon Age 2. Quite frankly, as long as you give me a group of characters with particular strengths and weaknesses that require some degree of micro, I'm going to have a good time.
I'm far more worried about their implementation of choice and the fact that it's hard to evaluate that without playing it yourself. Thankfully Darrah clarified the outlandish ending claim to something a bit more workable. I think that shows a bit more self-awareness than previous.
The only micro-managing I remember doing in DA2 was picking particular party members. I probably also occasionally made them quaff a health potion, other than that I don't remember there being much reasons for touching them all that much.
Didn't dao have "regen to max outside combat"? I see numerous people talking about it like it's a welcome reversion from da2, but the last time we've seen bio do non-regenerating health was... Kotor?
Yeah, I'm not sure why this is seen as a step forward other than making the game arbitrarily more "hardcore." Wasn't it Avellone or Sawyer who pointed out that drinking a health potion when your health is low is neither difficult nor tactically interesting? To me, this should go into the dustbin of RPG features, along with "pre-buffing."
Whether regenerative or non-regenerative health are a good idea depends on how they're implemented. If it's more trouble to find somewhere to rest than to push through with less than maximum health then I feel it adds a tactical aspect, assuming the game is designed in such a way that going forward without maximum health is a viable option.
I more often find myself think "meh, he'll survive until my other character can murder the hell out of his assailant(s)" when the health just regenerates after a battle. Otoh if that's not the case I'll be a lot more careful with positioning knowing that otherwise I'm stuck with a squishy character on low health for however long it takes until the next opportunity to heal up.
I also find it slightly more enjoyable to come out of a battle severely bruised with the knowledge that carrying on is probably not a very good idea so I can return whence I came, heal up and go elsewhere rather than just getting wiped out. One could argue that this is possible with regenerative health as well but I feel that there a "close call" doesn't deter as much from trying to press onwards into territory above one's level anyway.
That said, I dislike prebuffing, I'm not psychic
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Ehm, nobody wondered where the skills are? Some kind of hotbar would be really nice, instead I see useless buttons for stuff like settings, the journal et all. Quite a lot of people will never use these once they learn the shortcuts and being able to free up that screen space for more useful stuff would be really nice.
As would a way to do most things with shortcuts of course, in BG2 I could do pretty much everything (including casting spells) using only shortcuts, freeing up the mouse to be used solely for environment interaction, which was really nice (and one of the reasons the PS:T UI is one of the worst ever, sorry, it sucks).
Another more recent game with a rather good UI was Dragon Age: Origins btw.
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Pictures of your games Part 4
in Computer and Console
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Sure, but the publishers of those with a bigger budget pay them more...
Anyway, looks like it might be worth picking up in a sale sometime.