kanisatha

Finished BG3 and started on Civ 5. Still my favorite Civ game. Need a break from cRPGs after hundreds of hours slogging through BG3. 😛

Unfortunately, they need to be available on network/cable for me to watch. That's why I thought of giving Marshals a go, but then I saw some reviews which say essentially the same things you all are saying. 😞

Just backed it.

An interesting idea. I personally would prefer a more laid-back city-building sandbox type of game. Survival games tend to stress me out too much.

Any of you fans of Yellowstone? If so, what're your thoughts on the new Marshals spin-off?

I've been continuing on with my very first BG3 playthrough and am now, finally after months!, almost at the end, about to head out to the final confrontation. And, nothing has changed in my view of the game. As I've said before, the game is fantastic on such things as graphics, cinematics, and cut scenes, the game is very big, and its main story is quite epic and compelling (though with some questionable areas). But in so many other ways, ways that are much more important to a CRPG, it is a weak game. Most of the companions were not at all likeable, with the mild exceptions only of Karlach and, surprisingly, Minthara. The rest were all whiney, angst-ridden prima donnas. I especially hated what they had done to both Jaheira and Minsc, and was utterly appalled by the "new canon" for Viconia. The side quests were meh, and a lot of the areas in Act II were a slog. Despite the claim that combat encounters were/would be fewer in number and more interesting, I found the number of encounters to be no less/different than in any other RTwP RPG and, as I'd expected for TB combat, very frustrating and aggravating and boring. Thankfully, due to mods allowing me to go with larger parties, I was able to breeze through virtually every combat encounter within 2-3 rounds. Not being able to "pause" the game during real-time exploration was a huge pain, especially when trying to be stealthy (and being forced to go into TB mode), as was how party movement is set up, with, for example, party members walking through traps and mines they themselves just announced having discovered. And the UIs were atrocious across the board. The quick access bar was surely the worst, but other UIs were pretty bad/non-intuitive as well, including inventory management. This is not by any means an exhaustive list of the ways the game falls short, but covers some of the biggest failings in my personal opinion. My rating of the game would be a C+ (77/100).

I saw this too. NATO is a dead alliance walking. It is the frontline NATO states that need to wake up and stop counting on NATO to protect them. And the reason NATO is a dead alliance has nothing to do with Trump, who is a convenient scapegoat. The real cause of NATO's death is the major European states (France, Germany, UK, Spain and Italy) selfishly, despicably only caring about themselves and counting on Eastern European states serving as an expendable buffer between themselves and Russia.

So, Obsidian apparently has four projects currently underway. Wrapping up Grounded 2 and Avowed are surely among them. But what are the others? Does anyone here have any info on what's next from Obsidian? It's been way too long since they've released a game that had direct appeal for me, but I still remain very hopeful.

I'll just say I (largely) agree with the article and leave it at that. And there have been several other articles too making this same point.

There's also footage of F-35s scoring their first air combat kills, against MiG-29s.

Yes, three, unfortunately. But all six crew recovered in good shape. Those are really valuable aircraft.

That second part is easy to fix. Like me, don't have any social media accounts. ☺️

Romances in video games, and especially RPGs, is a very shallow and silly thing. I have absolutely no use for the utterly contrived system that is romances in my RPGs. That said, if including romances doesn't cost the developer too much, and it serves to sell the game to a whole bunch of people who otherwise would not have bought the game (which in itself says a lot to me about those people), then I am all for it. RPG developers should do whatever it takes to make it possible for niche RPGs to continue to be made, even if that means including in those games pointless and silly systems. BG3 is a great example of this. It is full of utterly ridiculous, pointless, and shallow systems that should never have been included in that game. But Larian correctly judged that including those systems in their game would help boost sales, and they were right about that.

I have to agree. I'm also the key target audience for Avowed but, because I don't have Gamepass, chose to wait for the game to be on sale rather than buy it at launch for that very high retail price. I still bought it only at 20% off, but would've bought it at launch paying full price had that price been reasonable.

The problem here is MS having a target of 30% profit for their games. So if Avowed/TOW2 came in at 20% profit, which by any measure would be a success story, the mere mention of them "not meeting sales targets" sets off an avalanche of "the games bombed/were a failure" type of unfair asinine comments which undermines those games and Obsidian's reputation. :(