kanisatha

I wouldn't mind having some recommendations for: (1) space exploration games, and (2) realistic medieval sims, if you have the time.

If you find anything, please post in the "new games" forum.

As a huge military history buff, I love movies of 20th century wars. But this one looked suspect from its trailer, as yet another effort by today's movie-makers to 'reimage' history based on their values and feelings. So this is useful feedback.

I have four KS-backed games out there whose release I'm waiting on, so those would be at the top of my list: P:WotR, Black Geyser, Realms Beyond, and Solasta. I have CP2077 on my wishlist but I will wait to buy it. Same for CK3. Whenever Dark Alliance comes out I will at least take a look at it. BG3 I'm not excited about, but I can see myself picking it up years from now at a bargain price. Games further out in the timeline that I am definitely excited about are: Avowed, DA4, Starfield, and the next Witcher game.

Haven't heard of DoubleBear, but for inXile are you speaking of it as an offshoot of Black Isle? I was thinking more in terms of the many tiny little offshoot studios that have been created by somewhat well-known figures leaving big studios in the past few years.

So many different offshoot companies have been created in recent years it's hard to keep track of them all. But as far as I know, none has yet come out with an actual game (at least among RPG studios). So I have to wonder how many of these will actually amount to anything.

Yeah we don't know enough about Avowed to say one way or the other. Maybe I'm just needlessly panicking. I just want Avowed (and Bethesda's Starfield for that matter) to not get derailed in any way.

Given today's blockbuster news, if Avowed is Obsidian's "Skyrim clone" game and Microsoft now owns the actual Skyrim/TES, where does that leave Avowed? Doesn't Avowed risk becoming a duplicative, and therefore redundant game for MS?

Yeah these are exactly my feelings as well. When MS bought up Obsidian (and inXile) I was one of those happy about it, precisely because it made Obsidian the top-dog RPG studio within the MS empire. Now, the new top-dog is Bethesda, and the top-dog always gets the biggest slice of the pie. So where does that leave the smaller entities like Obsidian? I hope someone at MS addresses this question at some point.

Secret NGAD fighter flies, sets records, raises a lot of questions

Agreed. It's what I've been arguing as well.

That is a good bet. That's what the SETI program has largely been all about, continuously scanning the radiation spectrum for any wave signals that may be artificial because radio signals would be the most basic way for us to receive signals from some other civilization. Technically it is possible there could be technologically advanced life that has, for whatever reason, chosen not to broadcast anything using radio waves, or else developed a way to limit the spread of their broadcasts. I would say it is unlikely, but who knows? The more likely event is that technologically advanced life forms are at least several hundred, if not several thousand, light years away, and their signals have not yet reached us. At least I hope so, for the sake of our survival. 😉

Yup. What @majestic said, though I think signal strength will remain sufficient well into a signal's travel into our galaxy. The closest, the Alpha Centauri system, is about 4.2 light years away. Proxima Centauri b is the closest known exoplanet. The Gliese, Eridani, and Trappist systems (@ 15-16, 20-22, and 39.5 light years respectively), all have multiple terrestrial exoplanets within the habitable zone.

Traveling at the speed of light since what, the 1930s? Sure, they have reached nearby star systems.

I am a very strictly beer guy, but recently tried some Disaronno and really loved it. Can any of you recommend other similar liqueurs I might therefore enjoy for me to try?

Oh, "they" already know. From the moment we broadcast our very first radio signal, "they" have known. 😉

I guess because CBS doesn't have any shows to put on because of Covid, they are going to be running ST: Discovery on the broadcast CBS channel. So I finally get to watch it. Based on all I've read here I have very low expectations. But it *is* ST, so I'll give it a go.

Seems like someone's decided they're going to try and squeeze every last dollar they can out of that franchise before they drive it into the ground.

Yup, Jaethal kicks ass as a fighting healer.

This is the greatest tragedy of PoE2. You are absolutely correct about its RTwP implementation. It is superb. And as such the tragedy is Obsidian (and perhaps other cRPG studios as well such as Owlcat) learning some sort of false lesson here that RTwP = poor sales and abandoning their excellent RTwP sytem.

I am not convinced of this at all. Even a recent poll done by a major gaming website in the aftermath of BG3 being announced as TB, shows support for TB v. RTwP at 53% to 47%. Polls on the Larian BG3 subforum themselves also are similar. What I find is that TB fans are about 51-55% but make 90% of the noise, and that's what people (and cRPG developers) are reacting to.

100% agree. If you can't directly control them, they are just frustrating and aggravating to have with you and only serve to get in your way.

These are things I also agree are very frustrating in P:Km (though not nearly enough for me to quit the game; I just play on low difficulty). But I feel these are things that result from a game design and development team that is (a) passionate but completely inexperienced, and (b) very small in number. If they had had a bigger team that also included some experienced devs, someone in the team would've said something the moment they noticed these kinds of situations in the game. You can tell this was the case because when these types of issues were brought up in their forum or elsewhere, the devs were genuinely surprised. The good news is that instead of digging in their heels and insisting they were right and knew what they were doing, they immediately acted to try and fix as many of these issues as possible. But there were just too many of them in the game for the devs to fix them all, and there can be no substitute to not designing a game this way in the first place. So I am (cautiously) optimistic things will be different in the next game because their development team is now both more experienced and a whole lot bigger.

I think the need for that video, as minimal in details as it was, is because so much has been written in recent months and years about how Bioware has lost its way and that even if they make a new DA game it will end up being a completely different game than the first three and be filled with microtransactions and "active" elements and so on. So the video's purpose was to reassure hardcore DA fans like you and me, saying in effect: "Don't fear. Don't listen to the doomsayers. This game will have those RPG elements from the previous games that you love so much and expect in a DA game, only if anything even more iterated and better." And it certainly had that effect on me, and I am now hyped for this game. 😎 I'm right there with you. 😀

You are absolutely correct here, but at least for me (yes, I'm a huge DA franchise fan) it was valuable as a calming and reassuring video.