What are you Playing Now? Whatever happens, at least we're out of that mudhole, Gilded Vale.

[marelooke]

7 hours ago, Tale said:

What's wrong with me? I now have 99 hours in Fallout 4. The only reason I picked it up again was because I heard great things about Far Harbor and wanted to give that a second chance. I'm almost 100 hours in and have not gone to that accursed island. I'm building themed robots to do supply chains between settlements...

I have time management issues.

Have you heard of this little game called Factorio?

Disclaimer: I will not be held responsible for any fallout (harr harr) of picking up Factorio.

(which, incidentally, I've been playing. It contains temporal magic, I swear, makes hours, and even whole days disappear)

[Chilloutman]

Playing bit of beta Darktide - really not sure if I dig this style of game - running same dungeon over and over again seems pretty boring and there is basically no character customization as far as I can see. I bought it because some of my friends want to play co-op and I didn't played anything co-op for some time but I really wonder what is big appeal of these games

[Sven_]

On 11/15/2022 at 12:11 PM, Lexx said:

Funny, just 2 days ago I finished a FNV playthrough again. First one in 7 years. Sure the game has issues, but it's still exceptionally well done and well written. One of the best RPGs of the last 20 years for sure. There is lots of great dialog in the game, the ending slides are great, the world has great atmosphere.

It's the only AAA RPG of the past ~15  years I played and enjoyed without any reservation (well, with the exception of the so-so gunplay).  Luckily I've yet to play all the DLC yet, and they're said to be some of the best ever developed. But look what's happened since even with Fallout in isolation. (The devs of these games increasingly develop RPGs for players who aren't actually that into the once core values of the genre in an attempt to ever increase their target audience).




Fallout New Vegas should have spawned at least a few AAA games that tried to top it at its own game -- but no. Speaking of which, I've yet to play Outer Worlds too. But what I've seen about it, it seems a stripped down and lesser version of NV (and there's even a quest compass leading you all over the place like witcher sensing breadcrumbs, despite the game not even being open world as such -- bugbear of mine). As there's more choice now than there was when NV came out, I went with different games so far.

Edited November 22, 2022 by Sven_

[Wormerine]

14 minutes ago, Sven_ said:

Speaking of which, I've yet to play Outer Worlds too. But what I've seen about it, it seems a stripped down and lesser version of NV

Any comparison to NV is a very surface level one. I think a better comparison would be Bioware title - multiple self-contained worlds that can be completed in any order and with couple outcomes to choose from. It’s a bit more complex then that but not by much. 

Edited November 22, 2022 by Wormerine

[Hurlshort]

Outer Worlds definitely has the feel of New Vegas. It is a much smaller scale, but the writing and characters are all fantastic in the same way. 

[Lexx]

Biggest issue is lack of the same modding capabilities that Bethsoft games offer. IMO no "Skyrim-killer" will ever be that without the ease of making mods for it.

[Sven_]

I tend to come back to this channel, as usually this guy shares a lot of my tastes and views. But back then, this bit alone was enought so shelf The Outer Worlds for the time being for me. The quest he shows may not be the perfect showcase for the entire game. But it's still pretty damn hollow (21:45 mins ins, if the linking didn't work correctly). Why is this even a "quest" when it literally boils down to following an arrow where to go? Unless it's a tutorial kind of thing, maybe. But even then that's pretty meh. (What follows about the "stealth" "sections is almost worse).
 

 

Edited November 23, 2022 by Sven_

[Wormerine]

40 minutes ago, Sven_ said:

The quest he shows may not be the perfect showcase for the entire game. But it's still pretty damn hollow (21:45 mins ins, if the linking didn't work correctly).

Nah, that’s pretty much the game. Pick a quest, follow the mark, smooth-shoot-shoot enemies, if there is choice to be made pick one. There are quests allowing for more approaches, but rarely anything that will impress an RPG veteran. Still, game is fun! It’s brief enough for the shallowness to become a chore (well, I thought DLCs made the game too long). 

[Zoraptor]

The dlcs are better than the base game and are, certainly for dlc, pretty long and involved. Their issue is that the base game isn't quite good enough for 'more of the same, but better' to be really worth it at the point you're likely to play them. So yeah, a bit of s struggle at points.

Main issue with the base game: just too much combat. It's certainly not that the combat is bad per se, it's OK; but it's too long, too much, too repetitive and there's not really enough other stuff post combat to make it worthwhile. Then add in respawning so you get to do a lot of the combat again... Outer Worlds is the absolute classic example of a game where nothing is really good, but also nothing is really bad. Which ends up being a bit disappointing because most Obsidian games even when they had significant problems also had stuff which was really good to balance it out. Still, the building blocks are there and a sequel with the quality of the dlcs and maybe 2/3 the combat would be very much worthwhile.

[Sven_]

39 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

Still, the building blocks are there and a sequel with the quality of the dlcs and maybe 2/3 the combat would be very much worthwhile.

I was intrigued when I read about the whodunnnit DLC. But then I wondered whether that even works, considering that the game railroads you this much. If that plays out as shown in the video, where the "detective work" is basically following a marker, then that's such a waste.  

Speaking of which, I'll definitely do a 2nd run of Pentiment (have already casually started, but not progressed much into act 1.

Edited November 23, 2022 by Sven_

[Lexx]

Complaining about the size / scope of Outer Worlds is a bit meh to me, since it was never advertised as a huge open world AAAAAA game. They always said it is a lower budget title, and thus ofc you can't have those huge worlds with crapton of NPCs and stuff.

My issue with the game was a different one -- it felt very formulaic. For almost every quest I already kind of knew what to expect and which paths I could pick to get through them. Also the game world consistently had those loot crates every few steps, which didn't felt organic at all.

 

About Pentiment, I wanted to be with the autopsy, but thought I had enough time to talk with some other people. So I did that first.. and then suddenly the ingame time skipped to night time. Since there isn't really any savesystem except for that checkpoint thing, I either have to restart or just go along with it. Probably will do the later now, since that seems to be the expected way to play the game, but still sad.

[Sven_]

2 hours ago, Lexx said:

About Pentiment, I wanted to be with the autopsy, but thought I had enough time to talk with some other people. So I did that first.. and then suddenly the ingame time skipped to night time. Since there isn't really any savesystem except for that checkpoint thing, I either have to restart or just go along with it. Probably will do the later now, since that seems to be the expected way to play the game, but still sad.

AFAIR both the dialogue (with Florian) as well as the journal was pretty explicit about this. It's one of the few "critical" decisions/challenges of the game later on as well: You have to make a decision which leads to follow, as going after each takes... time.  As such you're not going to see it all. There's a multiple-choice dialogue though usually later on, like: "This will take a bit of time. Are you sure you want to...?"

I recently compared Pentiment to Jordan Mechner's "The Last Express". Reason being: They're both narrative/adventure games, have a unique art style, not much in the way of traditional "puzzles", a historical backdrop, murder/mystery -- plus portray a confined space where time passes.

In "The Last Express", it's only actually real-time. The game takes place aboard the Orient Express on the verge of WW1. Passengers aboard that train move throughout the train just as the player's character. Naturally, you can miss stuff and make bad decisions. To lessen frustration, they had implemented a feature that actually allows you to rewind time at any one point.

The sense of place due to this (the confined space with finite characters, the time passing and the world not standing still just for you) is still pretty unique to this day. It's kind of a PC cult classic. No wonder "The Last Express" hadn't seen much imitators though, as back then it was a colossal flop with a then huge budget behind.

Edited November 23, 2022 by Sven_

[Humanoid]

Adding dedicated stealth gameplay to Outer Worlds would probably double my enjoyment of it. Without that fallback, it leaned too heavily into the shooter genre, which I do not play.

[Hawke64]

 There was dedicated stealth gameplay - you could skip quite a lot of the critical path by stealing an item, not to mention stealth kills.

Edited November 23, 2022 by Hawke64

[Humanoid]

Yeah, no stealth takedowns though.

[Sven_]

2 hours ago, Hawke64 said:

 There was dedicated stealth gameplay - you could skip quite a lot of the critical path by stealing an item, not to mention stealth kills.

It looks pretty bad in the video linked to above -- 23:30 mins onwards. (Mind you, whilst he seems to value the same things I do often, the guy's always fairly critical in general, still a stealth system that is "impossible to fail", even by deliberately attempting to **** up, that'd be pretty off-putting).

I mean, the dude's blowing his disguise by shooting people in the face, and all he's ever punished with is the guards begging him to stop doing it over and over? And as he argues, similar to the quest design shown beforehand that scene (follow the arrow, done), it'd be fitting to the whole design principle of the game in general: The game being absolutely terrified of any player failure, his/her own discovery, or anything, rail-roading him/her throughout the story from start to finish. With dialogue checks also being meaningless as they'd be impossible to fail most of the time, perks being simple stat/carry weight boosts (which Obsidian had already corrected in NV vs FO3), ammunition and loot/crap in abundance and more.

That's a sentiment (everything being weight- to meaningless) mass-expressed on a big German gaming forum I frequent also. Even if you wouldn't expect a super hardcore RPG experience, that'd be new grounds even for Bethesda.

Edited November 23, 2022 by Gorth
Lets not skip the word filter...

[Hawke64]

It's been a few years since I played it, but The Outer Worlds was as good as any first-person RPG with action elements can be - definitely beats TES IV - V by being more concise and having meaningful skill checks (as opposed to the mini-game in TESIV). Not sure about the difficulty - can't quite remember. But exploring in-doors areas was great and there was no railroading.

Pentiment. Played for an hour. The controls are uncomfortable - the MC does not seem to run by default, there are too many invisible walls, the mouse becomes inactive after using the keyboard. In terms of GUI, there are too many pointless animations, tooltips for NPCs are useless (they show the portrait; not the description of who the NPC is and how they are related to the MC or where they can be found), the map is 2D while the locations are mostly 1D. The pacing has been slow - some dialogues being unavoidable is the fault of the genre chosen - much harder to stealth through a cut-scene trigger in an adventure game than in an immersive sim or RPG. On the bright side, the MC's backgrounds have been referenced and they provide new dialogue options.
I guess, I've chosen a wrong time to play it - Pentiment needs longer sessions to appreciate it. I am also unfamiliar with the setting, which does not help.

[uuuhhii]

13 hours ago, Sven_ said:

I tend to come back to this channel, as usually this guy shares a lot of my tastes and views. But back then, this bit alone was enought so shelf The Outer Worlds for the time being for me. The quest he shows may not be the perfect showcase for the entire game. But it's still pretty damn hollow (21:45 mins ins, if the linking didn't work correctly). Why is this even a "quest" when it literally boils down to following an arrow where to go? Unless it's a tutorial kind of thing, maybe. But even then that's pretty meh. (What follows about the "stealth" "sections is almost worse).
 

 

that channel was mediocre at best

or maybe noah just set the standard too high

[Sven_]

3 hours ago, uuuhhii said:

that channel was mediocre at best

or maybe noah just set the standard too high

Noah Caldwell-Gervais? Yeah, he's pretty cool. One channel that should have more subscribers is Matt Chat. I can understand why he doesn't -- he covers a lot of oldschool (RPG) stuff, including in-depth interviews. Plus he's an academic more than an entertainer. There's no fancy editing, no joking, just a cool guy who loves RPGs, a camera and the games and developers. Still, yeah.


 

4 hours ago, Hawke64 said:

I guess, I've chosen a wrong time to play it - Pentiment needs longer sessions to appreciate it. I am also unfamiliar with the setting, which does not help.

Oh yeah, it's definitely not a game I'd recommend if you aren't into the mood for it. If you have the time, I'd recommend playing it during the holidays.... you'll understand later why.  

Edited November 23, 2022 by Sven_

[Tale]

Finally playing through Dark Pictures Anthology. Picked up a couple from Humble Bundle, the rest in a sale. As a big Until Dawn fan, I had to get around to it sometime...

First up is Man of Medan. Better than I expected from all I heard about it. The downside is the twist was so predictable I figured out half of it in the prologue and the other half of it from a single clue later on. What it's doing with secrets would be so much better if it wasn't telegraphed to hell and back. Some strong ambiguity that I need to really pour through every clue to figure out my interpretation is something I like doing with stories.

[Sven_]

So, Solasta. 

Damn this is actually real good. That is if you can accept a game that's narrative-wise is less about having an epic story, and more about providing a bit of context to pretty fun tactical combat. (I was more invested in Icewind Dale's narrative than this, though, tbh, Icewind Dale DOES have a pretty decent story for what is essentially a dungeon crawl). The voiced banter on the occasion can be good for a smile or so every once in a while. 

It's also cool to play a CRPG for a bit of a change that:

- doesn't need you to engage in repetitive buff orgies before like every fight
- has fighters being fighters, rather than for the sake of "balance" let them cast non-spells left and right (this is a party game anyway, what does it matter if casters can do more?)
- doesn't have epic +1 +2 +3 magic loot like everywhere, something that back for more traditional RPGs seems to have started with BG2 (my party is level 6 and still carrying standard weaponry)
- doesn't have an abundance of talens and feats that mostly bog down to like a +5% increase in hit chance anyway (ok, there could be a bit more options, in particular on level-up)

Mind you, a lot of this is down to the game simply being based on stripped-down D&D 5e, but the implemantion seems solid, the combat is fun, there's surprised to be had during travels as well, what's not to like? Also, the production values are on the occasion surprisingly solid for a game from a team of 20. If somebody would have shown me this beforehand, I couldn't have told whether this was BG3 or else (but then, according to Vincke, much of the extra budget of BG3 goes straight into cinematics... zzzz).  

Edited November 25, 2022 by Sven_

[Tale]

I finished Little Hope and may finish House of Ashes before the end of the day.

What to say on Little Hope. I remembered reading bad things about it, which is part of why I never touched Dark Pictures until now. But I was pleasantly surprised. Good characters, nice little mystery unfolding, and finishing off in a twist that had me think.

On the downside, thinking about that ending is a bad idea. At first I thought it was clever, then I thought it was dumb. And as I type this, I realize it's Silent Hill with the numbers filed off.

[Hawke64]

Ender Lilies. Defeated Hoenir, the Keeper of the Abyss, and Miriel, the Beloved. Not particularly fond of bosses with a lot of adds, especially when both cause collision damage and move swiftly/teleport. The MC now has even more tentacles and thick red veins on the legs, up to the knees. Which probably means that the ending is close. Also, the bosses gave the two traversal abilities I was missing, so going to backtrack and loot everything.
Story-wise, it is coming together - which character did what and why, though there are still some missing pieces.

[Wormerine]

16 hours ago, Sven_ said:

So, Solasta. 

Damn this is actually real good.

It is! I could point to all the things it is not doing well, but it won't change how much fun I had and am having with this game.

If there is one thing I would praise above anything else, is Solasta making D&D combat effortlessly engaging. The issue I have with every other D&D and D&D like RPG (Infinity Engine games, PoEs, BG3, Pathfinder) is that I find it difficult to connect with actual mechanics - you have layer of presentation, which doesn't communicate what is happening under the hood, and one needs to dive into combat log to figure out what is going on.

Solasta's brief on screen dice rolls I found so... welcoming. They constantly tell me what I rolled, what my chances to hit are, how my damage in claculated without me having to spend time doing research. There is also a more immediate feedback - upcasting a spell and seeing an extra die provides feedback that a flat number simply can't provide.

I think this is first D&D game that asks: "how can we well adapt the system" rather then "how can we make a game looking silimar to other games people like, and also make it D&D".

[MrBrown]

17 hours ago, Sven_ said:

Mind you, a lot of this is down to the game simply being based on stripped-down D&D 5e,

It's really not that stripped down. They're missing some specializations from some classes, mainly because those are not in the open license format, but other than that it's almost all there.

Some of the specializations they added are pretty boring, but I like their character backgrounds.