Enoch

I look forward to the new console generation because it will presumably free developers to design levels larger than a shoebox.

The Metrics say it's working, but .

I've never seen the appeal of using the Earth maps for Civ games. Uncertainty about what's over that next hill is just such a major element of early-mid gameplay. The "fractal" map script tends to make terrain that is fun to play on, IMO.

I've now played BL1 for an hour or two. I remain not very good at shooters. But no motion-sickness issues yet, so that's a plus. One thing is puzzling: I've leveled-up a few times, but there's this whole ability-selection screen that I haven't been able to interact with at all. At what point do you actually get to specialize your character?

I only watched the first bit, but Chris appears to have built pretty much the same character I did the first time I played the game. The screwed up XP system pretty much dooms this kind of character to long-term ineffectiveness, unless he starts picking up some spellcasting. Once he picks up some Ogres, they'll be doing most of the damage for him in combat, and he won't be getting nearly as much XP from combat unless the main character gets her hands dirty.

Hey, buildings that are larger on the inside than they are on the outside make for the best houses!

I'm just going to leave this here.

Been awhile since I played it, but I remember being very happy to find and install a mod that clearly indicated the major roads on the in-game map.

Actually, now that I think about it, I probably played the Intellivision Dungeons & Dragons game before I did M&M1. But the license from TSR is really the only thing that would make one call that particular game a CRPG.

Thanks for the input, everybody. Does the melee work OK? A tank-y character might suit my rudimentary FPS skills, but I usually find melee options in first-person games to be rather awkward. Funny you should mention spousal play, LC, as I believe this purchase was motivated largely by my friend looking for games that his wife might enjoy in co-op.

So, one of the 2 friends I have on Steam recently bought a 4-pack of Borderlands 1 and gave me a copy. I'm not much of a shooter fan-- generally, shooter gameplay that lacks a tactical pause option (e.g., Mass Effect, or FO3/NV's VATS) tends to stress me out to the point where I'm not really enjoying myself. But co-op with actual friends does make otherwise mediocre entertainment more fun, so I'll give it a shot. What should I know, going in?

I can one-up the thread starter. My first CRPG was Might and Magic: Secret of the Inner Sanctum. My uncle, who lived with my grandparents when I was little (yeah, the whole "living with his parents until well into his late 20s" thing made him a pretty stereotypical RPG gamer), had a C64 with that on it. I used to play it when visiting-- at least when I could get my uncles and grandfather off of it.

As many of you may recall, I am an employee of the United States government. I am working from home today, and I am this close to convincing myself that "playing Civilization" counts as "working from home," provided that I am playing as Washington. All this "statutory analysis" and "legislative history research" stuff pales in comparison to the importance of "defending America against Aztec invasion" and "researching Currency."

After finishing ME3, I've started getting back into Civ 5. (I picked the expansion up in the holiday Steam sale.) I'm liking what I see of the "Gods + Kings" changes so far (although I haven't gotten far enough into a game to see the espionage system). But, moreso than that, I'm appreciating the year's worth of balance and gameplay patches that have been applied since I last played a game. Optimal play in early versions of Civ 5 was dominated by wacky tech-beelines and counterintuitive exploits. ("Research past the halfway point of techs to eliminate them from the possible random techs you get from a Wonder or research agreement!") The powerful strategies are much more logical now, which makes the game feel more like managing an ancient (or whatever) empire and less like an exercise in spotting arbitrage opportunities.

I enjoyed it, mostly. And I really don't enjoy any shooters that don't give me the "tactical pause" option that is in the ME games. I played as a Sentinel, kept my gear weight low, spec'ed everything to max recharge rate, and Warp/Overload/Throw'ed everything I saw. On the other hand, I felt like the encounter design was a little half-hearted. Nearly everything was simply "survive a wave of 5 types of Cerberus, 5 types of Reaper, or 4 types of Geth." And apart from the ultra-slow banshee missile and a couple combat drones on the Geth missions, none of them used any biotic/tech powers on me, as far as I could tell. I haven't done a precise count, but that feels like a significant step back from ME2's range of opponents. And there was certainly nothing like, say, the sun-and-shadow game on Haestrom, the high winds on Thane's recruitment mission, or the big Thresher Maw fight. Without the fun bits of variety, the game got somewhat repetitive. No, you need to pick every available paragon/renegade option when talking to TIM (and consistently, so always the one or the other), and there's one in the first dialogue with him on Mars that is easy to miss. [snip] You could always get the three main endings without DLC or MP, it was the hidden additional "destroy" epilogue that required (requires? I still don't know if the threshold for that was changed) MP to boost the readiness. My final EMS was something like 3500, and I didn't see any indication that the "destroy" results I got were less than optimal. The kid said that the damage would be low because the crucible was in pretty good condition, or something like that. As for the TIM dialogue, what do you gain by convincing him? I seem to recall those first persuasion options on Mars being greyed out at the time, so that's probably why I couldn't talk him down.

The "extended cut" changes lowered that threshold a bit, such that all 3 options were open to me, despite not doing any of the multiplayer or subsequent DLC. (There's also the "you lose" option of shooting the kid in the head, which I tried on a whim on my first pass. The nearest save point, though, is before all that "walking incredibly slowly" stuff, so that was totally not worth it.) I elided the "Contol" and "Synthesis" options together in my earlier post because I felt that they were both equally speculative and well beyond the scope of the job I was trying to accomplish. Shep is a soldier, not a philosopher, and she's certainly not the type to trust a murderous ancient space AI when told that she can upload her brain or fundamentally alter the nature of all life throughout the galaxy. She found her target and pulled the trigger. (Then she reloaded her game and found the better target.)

If that's what you're looking for in RPG companions then perhaps you should ask Maria if you could join her D&D group? Not quite sure what you're referring to there. Anyhow, I don't mean to suggest that such is the only way to make a character interesting. It was just something appealing about many ME2 characters that was absent in ME3. So, I have now finished the game. And, yeah, that was pretty lame. The "choice" as I saw it amounted to either "do your goddamn job" or "trust the word of the insane AI that created the Reapers in the first place." And, as a gameplay matter, the whole "spend 5 minutes limping forward at the slowest possible speed" didn't heighten the drama or tension. It just irritated me. The final persuade options with TIM were greyed-out, but I don't really see what "winning" that would've gotten me. I guess Anderson could have survived?

I'm guessing that the "Greed" thing was a simplification. Many of the dieties in polytheistic cultures had what we would consider character flaws, in addition to their divine aspects. Zeus was kind of a jackass. Dionysius was a drunk. Hera was often jealous to the point of murder. If, say, P:E includes a god of trade and commerce, it wouldn't be much of a stretch for the P:E equivalent of dirty, stinkin' hippies (read: druids) to deride that diety as a "god of greed." Perhaps the rough equivalent of Hermes then? I have played in a classical-Greek-set PnP campaign that included a Priest of Hermes in the group. This particular priest ran a gambling den on the side. (My character was the party's thief, and also a follower of Hermes.)

I'm guessing that the "Greed" thing was a simplification. Many of the dieties in polytheistic cultures had what we would consider character flaws, in addition to their divine aspects. Zeus was kind of a jackass. Dionysius was a drunk. Hera was often jealous to the point of murder. If, say, P:E includes a god of trade and commerce, it wouldn't be much of a stretch for the P:E equivalent of dirty, stinkin' hippies (read: druids) to deride that diety as a "god of greed."

Personally, I like the approach that religions reflect the worldviews and the lives of societies/individuals just like in our world. However, what's with the god of greed in this update and the early mention of gods scheming? For example, people who worship a god of wealth can earn a reputation of being greedy from other people. However, if a certain people worship "god of greed", then, how can they earn social trust in the first place? Simply, I cannot come up with even a possible example. Something that strikes me as slightly irregular about RPG implementations of pantheons is the concept of people only praying to a specific god. CRPGs like NWN2 have you pick a particular god to worship, as if that is your only choice. Yet in ancient societies with multiple gods, the people would often pray to many deities. A city like Athens would have a tutelary deity, but there would be other temples to other gods worshiped on particular days of the year. Wouldn't it make more sense to be able to choose multiple deities that you favor? Say your top 3? The most historically cogent way to handle it would be to select a Pantheon (with choices possibly limited by race or nationality), and a Patron within that pantheon. Someone raised in a culture that honors the Olympian pantheon might participate in festivals and offer sacrifices to all 12 dieties, even if they entered a holy order devoted to one of them in particular. Just because you select a single god as your patron doesn't necessarily limit one to only worshipping in a single temple. Being in a family or occupation that honored primarily Hermes didn't mean that you could never attend a feastday honoring Artemis, or offer a sacrifice to Hera when your wife was pregnant.

I think what I'm missing is the sense-- which saturated ME2 and was the case at least with ME1 Wrex-- that these folks were earnestly dangerous. Miranda and Jacob were working for TIM; Samara brought merciless justice based on a Code that only she really understood; Grunt and Jack were the results of mad-scientist experiments; Mordin was a mad scientist; every Zaeed story ends with "everybody died but me"; even Garrus was coming off his "I'm Batman" episode. Not one of the joinable folks in ME3 has that edge. The closest thing is EDI, in that we're all dead if it decides that it wants to go back to its creators at Cerberus or join its AI brethren with the Reapers or Geth. But that'd be a pretty unfair end to the narrative, so its loyalty is pretty much plot-armored.

Wait, you can lower resistance an neutral party without making it attack? I tended to rely on brute force for BG2 dragonfights. Hasted fighters, summoned elementals and aerial servants, etc. Wizard-types would be on-hand with appropriate counter-spells, but the prospect of lowering resistances and saving throws just felt like it took too many combat rounds for too-uncertain results. I had better luck with crossbow bolts. (Seriously-- my first Firkraag kill was attributed to a critical hit from Jan Jansen.)

Actually on-topic: I've reached the breathing space after the first leg of the final mission. The cutscenes make me roll my eyes just like the endgame-ish cutscenes in the first ME game did! (Also, is there some way to pause a cutscene that I have gotten this far without noticing? I think I've tried everything, but I also managed to get to the penultimate mission before realizing that my companion outfits gave them bonuses, so I could probably have missed something.) I do miss ME2's companion variety. I usually tend to dislike whatever characters Bioware pushes at the audience the hardest, but I also usually find folks to enjoy a bit further down the companion roster. ME3 was a bit different in that all the companions erred on the side of being inoffensive and uninteresting. Nobody really inspired Alistair-level disdain (not even Tali-- although I did have to protect her people from their own idiocy, it was a welcome relief to not have to rescue her yet again) But nobody really interested or entertained me to the degree that a Jolee, Shale, Wrex, or Mordin did. Garrus and Kaiden are the same rather bland guys they've always been. The new guy needed a lesson in dealing with superior officers, but he didn't bother me. The EDI-Joker thing was entertaining only to the degree that telling them "no" was satisfying. (I will give Bio credit in that they do occasionally do give you that opportunity to vent at a character who the game otherwise seems to assume you'll like. The "I put up with a lot of **** from you because you're a good pilot, but you need to shut the hell up and do your job" chat would've only been better if Shep had deliberately called him "Lieutenant Moreau." That was almost as good as finally telling Morrigan how insane she was.) Which leaves Javik and Liara. And, while I do enjoy ME2-3 Liara far more than that naif who was in ME1, the most entertaining part about her was her interaction with Javik. So he's my favorite of the companions. Although, were he in ME2, I doubt he'd crack the top 3.

Oh, what did poor Thassyl'xillia ever do to you?

You know what would be awesome? An open-galaxy space trading/piracy game in the ME universe. Search uncharted worlds for artifacts and resources. Smuggle red sand from Ilium to Thessia. Hire mercenaries and hope they don't betray you. Evade the Turian authorities. Buy and sell tidbits to information brokers. Get a letter of marque from the Alliance to disrupt Batarian slave traders. Help out Spectre or STG agents in return for access to cutting edge tech. It doesn't really play into Bioware's strengths as a studio, but I can't help but imagine the possibilities. I'm at the point in the game where the window to do a DLC mission is rapidly closing (I have no sidequests open, and the next main quest is the Cerberus base), and I'm probably going to pass. I played a few of the ME2 DLCs (Shadowbroker and whatever the Kasumi one was called), as well as the Javik one for ME3, and found them generally worthwhile. But add-on content at this point feels extra-tangential, given that nearly everything else I've been doing has been wrapping up old plot threads, rather than exploring new ones. (Also, the inconvenience of dealing with their silly "bioware points" system is no small part of this decision. You'd think that they would have dropped that nonsense when they started requiring Origin.)