MrBrown

I think the color palette in Avowed is fine. There's lots of colors, but they're a bit drab, so it's not the psychedelic environment of Outer Worlds.

17 hours into Avowed. finished the first gameplay area. Felt like writing something. (Not sure how many areas total, they mention 4 settlements, so maybe 4+?) Generally, I feel it's good, but not great. That might still change, of course. + Story. I kinda feel like I know where the story is going, but we'll see. It certainly advanced a great deal in the first area. So far seems to fit in the universe well enough. + There's lots of decisions you can make about stuff. Quests resolutions, story etc. No idea how much meat there actually is behind those decisions yet, since I only played once. There seem to be two main dimensions you make decisions around, whether you want strict or more lax rule in the Living Lands, and about the fantasy stuff going on. Maybe it'll get more complicated in the end, dunno. + Exploration: Lots of parkour, but because the town layouts are realistic, it's fun enough. By default the game highlights treasure with both visual and audio clues, and the game is basically designed around it, ie. there's stuff you're very unlikely to find if you don't have the cues on. But due to the itemization (below), it doesn't matter much if you miss treasure. + Combat is fun. Very explosive, probably even if you weren't throwing around fireballs. I'm playing a pure wizard, wands and spellbooks and so on. I use the book of elements and book of greater elements, so it's fireballs and chain lightning etc. Bit of a glass cannon, I win most combats by killing stuff before they get in my face. I lose when there's too many coming for different directions. Thankfully the first companion you find has taunt abilities, so that helps a lot. Enemy AI often prioritizes the PC, and ranged enemies don't seem to ever miss, so that's hard for my wizard. Aiming AoE spells is hard unless you have the high ground. - Itemization. Because you're only equipping a single character and there's a upgrade/crafting system, 95% of what you find is materials to upgrade your items, so it isn't very interesting. - The starting area has only 2 companions, so it's either them or none at all. At least I didn't find either annoying. - Encounter design isn't very varied. First area has basically 4-5 different enemy groups, so it's always a mix of them, even if there doesn't seem to be any reason why Xaurips, spiders and bears are hanging together. It gets repetitive. Hopefully there's different enemies in future areas.

I had it take about an hour in other games, something like 15min for Avowed. I guess it just happens.

I had that text too, it took something like 3-5 mins for me. After that it started the game, and compiled shaders for about 15mins.

5 hours into Avowed. Seems good. More linear than Skyrim, but still a bit open-worldy. Maybe Witcher 3 is a good comparison? Feels like the PC has too much special stuff thrown at them. You're the king's envoy, but also some kind of special godlike. Just either one could have made an interesting story. Only bug I've ran into so far is people's hair having that problem of springing down from default position when a new camera angle is loaded.

I think some people who are more about ownership of their character might be scared by having mushrooms on your face.

Is that a good thing? Didn't they do the NWN:EE, which I think went over well.

This is it. If it was good, yeah, it'd sell more, but 3 million was too much. DA:I supposedly sold 12million in the long term (said in 2024) and RPGs supposedly have good long term sales, so 3 million in a few months is probably way too much given the 10 year break in the franchise. And people are treating it like a 1.5 million in sales is as bad as the 50 players of Concord.

I wouldn't call DAVe writing woke. There's one character that's very in-your-face trans, but that's about it. The writing has other problems. There's no moral depth, it's naive, the PC isn't allowed to be anything but super-heroic, NPCs are morally one-dimensional, and it's very non-confrontational. If you want to call all that woke, then I guess it is it.

I literally couldn't have her in my party because I found the accent too annoying.

Or when saves get corrupts. Recently played Mass Effect Andromeda, where there was a bug that autosaves that occurred when your vehicle was in the air would be corrupt. And if you died, that's where it would try to load the game. And autosaves would be tagged by time only, so it was hard to find the right one. And loading an autosave the game would always try to make a new one, so it got even more confusing.

I got my first shrine today. Forgot what the full name is, the things that give you extra witchy powers. I'm 220 paragon, playing on T4.

So, Civ7 early access is out, and people are already up in arms about it. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1295660/Sid_Meiers_Civilization_VII/ My opinion, TL;DR: It's not bad. Nothing super great so far, but nothing super bad either. Some small QoL things that should be fixed. I might be more into it if I hadn't recently gotten into a civ reminiscence period and played the older ones. I played about 5 hours. A short list from the complaints I've seen: - Lack of variance in game settings. Ie. maps settings, etc. Yeah, it's not as varied as in previous civs, but there's still a bunch. I'm not sure, but I think the game blocks some settings if you have the tutorials set on, so deactivating those might open up more. - Bad UI: It has that problem of everything can only be done one way, and clicking on the wrong button just closes stuff. So can be annoying until you learn it. But once I found out how everything works, I found it intuitive. - Lack of automation: I miss explorer automation. Apparently some people want city automation, never used it myself in previous games. - Too many pop-ups and alerts: Compared to previous civs, the game is a lot faster, meaning more stuff happens each turn. So it can feel you're boggled down in pop-ups, but it's not a big deal. Or maybe I'm just too used to Paradox games? More my personal opinions: - The leader animations are still a bit cartoony. Less than 6, but not as realistic as 5. I prefer more realistic. - There's a bit of "bonuses to everything" problem. Leaders and civilizations give bonuses to 3-4 things, with several conditions. Buildings give 2-3 resources, with several conditions for bonuses. So stuff lacks mechanical identity, and everything seems to do a bit of everything. - One small problem I had with civs 5 and 6 is that there's lots of leader dialogue, but you never hear the ones of the leader you're playing. In 7 they have this great diplomacy screen where the leaders are facing each other... but then there's no dialogue. Missed opportunity IMO.

Doesn't seem like they've learned much. https://twistedvoxel.com/ea-ceo-dragon-age-the-veilguard-failed-due-to-lack-of-live-service-elements/

I enjoyed it a while, but then I noticed you need to play in a party to get all the season achievements. Meh.

He likes it because it's like Oblivion.

I guess it means the new ME game is still very early in development, before they need a bigger crew to create all the content. Meaning, it's several years away.

Caught a bit of a nostalgia bug, and played a bit of Civ4. Was quickly reminded of how much better 5 and 6 were. Though I could listen to Baba Yetu 24/7.

You can re-spec pretty extensively.

https://gamerant.com/dragon-age-the-veilguard-sales-underperformed-ea-expectations/ For comparison: https://gamerant.com/dragon-age-the-veilguard-launch-sales-inquisition-comparison-analyst/

Yay! Endless Legend and Endless Space 2 are probably their best games, so no surprise they decided to do this.

Hmm, I'm having no problems. Maybe it's just you?

https://www.videogamer.com/news/baldurs-gate-3-dev-reveals-the-real-reason-the-games-industry-is-in-the-st-right-now/ Looks like we're having this discussion now. (About raising prices) Which, to me, is a sure sign it'll happen.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/gta-6-costing-as-much-as-100-could-help-video-game-industry-rebound-in-2025-analyst-says/1100-6528832/ And you people complain about 70...