kanisatha

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. :(

I play pretty regularly, but I'm a very slow and deliberate player who loves to take my time and goof off within my games. I'm almost 300 hours of playtime in my current first playthrough of BG3 and yet only about 2/3 of the way through Act 2. I'm the kind of roleplayer who can easily spend half an hour trying to figure out which of my party members should get that new ring I just found. 😀

How far the UK has fallen. Barely a regional power now. Poor Victoria must be rolling furiously in her grave.

Picked up Avowed from the Steam winter sale. But since I'm still very far from finishing up my inaugural BG3 run, it'll be a while before I get to try it. Also picked up the ToEE remake.

Isn't Enshrouded one of those games where you cannot save the game anytime anywhere?

A danceable rendition of a Christmas carol 😀

Possibly. It's simply a question of the thing (humans) I am extremely disillusioned with versus another thing (future AI) that is still an unknown.

Yes, of course. That's why I said "highly evolved AI systems." So, not current AI systems, which I agree are hugely limited (and biased) by their human creators and maintainers. I'm talking future AI systems that can truly think for themselves, and thereby overcome and reject the initial biases and bull**** their human creators input into them. But that's unfortunately a rather long way off, and very likely well after I'm dead and gone. Very sad.

Wish you all a wonderful holiday season! 🍻

On AI use, sorry but I am hardcore in the opposite direction from most of you. Given my strong negative views of (most) humans (nature, capability, behavior), I can't wait for highly evolved AI systems to replace humans. I especially can't wait for AI systems to replace humans as drivers given the basic inability of most humans to properly operate an automobile.

Hehe, yeah, very much a part of my own large set of points that make me hate DnD mechanics. But at least they finally did away with fortitude, reflex, will saving throws, yet another one of those old stupid systems.

More on Divinity .... In another recent interview, Swen makes it a point to say that in this game they're putting in a lot of work to build out the setting/universe, because they learned from making BG3 how important it is to have a strong, well-developed and detailed universe where everything fits together and makes sense, which he admits has never been the case with their setting in past Divinity games. This matters hugely for me, because the #1 criticism I've had of the D:OS games, by far, is how utterly pathetic and trite the setting is in those games. Swen even specifically says that "world building" was never Larian's thing in the past, and that is a courageous and welcome Larian mea culpa. For me, world building is the foundation for a good RPG. So, if this indeed happens with Divinity, and I have no reason to believe it won't happen, then that goes a very long way to making me excited for this game. TB combat systems always suck, but I can hold my nose and live with that. It's these other essentials for a good RPG that matter most to me. https://www.ign.com/articles/if-you-like-baldurs-gate-3-this-is-gonna-be-great-larian-boss-swen-vincke-reveals-what-to-expect-from-divinity-in-first-interview-since-the-game-awards-announcement And in another separate interview, Swen also says that the rules/mechanics they will use in Divinity will NOT be the same as in the D:OS games, and will be something new that they create from everything they've learned from their past games. That's another huge YAY from me.

Yup, I saw an interview with Swen where he confirms it will be TB, party of four, will use early access, and is using a new version of their engine with supposedly several new capabilities that were not present in the old engine. Some of what they say has me interested, but will it be enough to overcome my dislike for TB combat and very intense dislike of the Rivellon setting? We'll see.

Do any of you have any thoughts on whether this new "Divinity" game from Larian will be turn-based or action combat? That may end up being the deciding factor for whether I care about it.

If this is correct, good to know. I was going by what Googling the question brought up, which was that XP is distributed in a split way where some XP situations grant a set amount of XP to everyone, including characters not in the active party, while other XP situations divide the XP award among the active party members.