Random video game news... the critical eyes have it

[InsaneCommander]

2 hours ago, Wormerine said:

Yes. They looked at a Druid and thought “could you have sex with it when it’s in bear form?”

*Checks the list of Wild Shape options in BG3.

Wenduag suddenly looks a lot more attractive in WotR. At least she is not a literal spider.

[HoonDing]

[Keyrock]

10 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

*Checks the list of Wild Shape options in BG3.

Wenduag suddenly looks a lot more attractive in WotR. At least she is not a literal spider.

Meh, Middle Earth beat Pathfinder to sexy spider:

[Hawke64]

Watched the romance cut-scene on YouTube. The "bear" was a buff (half?)elf druid and anything above the age rating was covered by grass and twigs. Not counting the general weirdness of streaming emotional player-driven moments in front of a howling audience, it seemed fine.

Curious if the general narrative style is closer to Baldur's Gate or Divinity (grimdark gore with "lol so random").

3 hours ago, Wormerine said:

My gripes with the title seem to be left predictably left untouched, and difficult mode seems to just crank to 11 Larian’s cheese mechanics.

I was certain that Larian has toned downed the barrels and surface effects during the EA and D&D 5e should be relatively harder to break than D:OS. Though, I have not watched the whole show, only the articles and some clips.

[InsaneCommander]

2 hours ago, Keyrock said:

Meh, Middle Earth beat Pathfinder to sexy spider:

No doubt about that. But we are not talking about sexy anymore. It's about bizarre. Just wait until you go to the "Pictures of Your Games" thread and someone posts a romance scene with a raven or a deep rothé. Covered by grass, of course.

[Bartimaeus]

3 hours ago, Keyrock said:

Meh, Middle Earth beat Pathfinder to sexy spider:

i'm confused, where's the cute spider? i expected shelob, but all i get is some lady? sorry but a half-dressed bint with pale skin, black hair, and full-on uncanny valley just doesn't make a spider

(e): Lmao, I did a reverse image search and apparently this literally is Shelob. Alright, whoever designed this atrocity gets thrown out the nearest window.

Edited July 8, 2023 by Bartimaeus

[uuuhhii]

anadi illustration in pathfinder 2e are pretty cute

 

[Keyrock]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

i'm confused, where's the cute spider? i expected shelob, but all i get is some lady? sorry but a half-dressed bint with pale skin, black hair, and full-on uncanny valley just doesn't make a spider

(e): Lmao, I did a reverse image search and apparently this literally is Shelob. Alright, whoever designed this atrocity gets thrown out the nearest window.

In fairness, her mother Ungoliant was a spirit that just happened to take the form of a spider and could, presumably, assume a different form. It's not that much of a stretch to think Shelob could do the same... Okay, it's a bit of a stretch.

[Zoraptor]

1 hour ago, InsaneCommander said:

But we are not talking about sexy anymore. It's about bizarre.

Can Larian out bizarre Dragon Age Origins sexy time? It's quite a challenge...

(I guess I could watch the video in question to judge for myself but it's far more fun to just lol at the description)

[uuuhhii]

1 hour ago, Zoraptor said:

Can Larian out bizarre Dragon Age Origins sexy time? It's quite a challenge...

(I guess I could watch the video in question to judge for myself but it's far more fun to just lol at the description)

still remember dao sex scene bugged and main character are a dwarf in full plate

laughing the whole cutscene

[Bartimaeus]

2 hours ago, Keyrock said:

In fairness, her mother Ungoliant was a spirit that just happened to take the form of a spider and could, presumably, assume a different form. It's not that much of a stretch to think Shelob could do the same... Okay, it's a bit of a stretch.

but why would she in the first place, she was much cuter and certainly more approachable as a spider

oh yes, just the cutest and exactly like how I remember her

Spoiler

note: not actually shelob, just one of her goofy kids from the ancient animated films

Edited July 9, 2023 by Bartimaeus

[bugarup]

DAO's sex stuff was just kind of...awkward, nothing too bizarre? Anyway, I cringed wayyyyyy worse at the singing scene in Inquisition than DAO's sex. That said, from my experience with Larian, in the bizarre & lolrandom department they easily run circles around Bioware...though waitwaitwait.  Bioware allowed you to romance Iron Bull, I doubt the bear could cause worse internal damage.

[Wormerine]

20 hours ago, BruceVC said:

That bear sex scene is a tiny, optional part of the overall game with the gay Vampire as far as I remember. It really shouldn't be  seen as a reflection of the other features like the monk class and other 2 new races and the character customization looks very impressive? 

A weird bear sex scenes won’t bring down an otherwise great game - I don’t think BG3 is great though. Bear sex is just another weird thing that Larian seems so very proud of. I never claimed bear sex isn‘t precisely what one should expect from Larian - but I am also not sure why it is there to begin with. I don’t like many narrative aspects of BG3, and unfortunately after two solid PfH this is where Larian put their focus.

As to other stuff you mentioned it’s all fine. They said they will do Player Handbook so Monk and Half-Orc/Dragonborn are bare (bear?) minimum I would expect.  It seems they finally made proper UI for character creator, which is good, but again nothing to blow my socks off. Does the creator have very necessary class preview? So far it seems it does not. Of so than it is still very much the worst character creator I have seen in a while - with Solasta, Pathfinders and PoE2 fairing much much better.

I have questions about implementation of some of the monk abilities, including why some of the reactions didn’t work during the stream when they should, and why they were able to use flurry of blows without using main attack first. Deflect missles seem to work occasionally - also deflecting missle didn’t seem to impact Larian’s homebrew AOE fire arrow. So you catch and throw back an arrow and yet it’s AOE effect still hits you. Like so many aspects of BG3 it seems half-implemented.

 In general my main takeaway from the showcase is that the game seems to be in dangerously buggy and unstable state considering it is releasIng in a couple weeks time. Tactician mode just looked awful. 

I still have hope for BG3 - I hope modding will be passionate enough to make something of it. But to be honest, I just expected to see something of higher quality with the game being so close to release, and Larian confidently moving release date forward by a month. Meantime they released a video praising how great their cinematics are, while in that very own showcase basic shot/reverse shot conversations aren’t properly blocked, with a game being about as buggy as ever.

BG3 has so much potential, but it seems 1.0 will not be getting rid of “pre-alpha” feel of he early access.

there are positives. Some deeper digging suggests we finally got a keychain, so not to pollute our inventory with endless pile of keys.I am sure there is more but Larian chose to focus on fluff instead. Perhaps not a bad game, but bad marketing at least for me.

[Humanoid]

23 minutes ago, bugarup said:

nothing too bizarre

Morrigan wears more clothes during sex than she does while adventuring.

[the_dog_days]

8 minutes ago, Humanoid said:

Morrigan wears more clothes during sex than she does while adventuring.

Wow. Kink shaming. 

[MrBrown]

55 minutes ago, Wormerine said:

there are positives. Some deeper digging suggests we finally got a keychain, so not to pollute our inventory with endless pile of keys.

We're still doing this **** in 2023?

Edited July 9, 2023 by MrBrown

[Zoraptor]

10 hours ago, bugarup said:

DAO's sex stuff was just kind of...awkward, nothing too bizarre?

Super awkward <--> bizarre, and I'd say it was super awkward, not just run of the mill awkward like Miranda butt shots.

It was the most bugged part of the game, the models were uncanny valley, they were very obviously intended to be a bit more, hmm, Witcher 2 than they ended up being to keep a lower rating hence the absolutely ludicrous underwear, they didn't really work if you were a dwarf and the overall reaction to the scenes elicited either outright laughter or staring incredulously. Or both. End effect: Barbie and Ken doll (or half scale equivalent, for a dwarf) sex scene, but done oh so deadly seriously.

Certainly not as disappointing as the inability to enslave nations with necromancy, but just as certainly not the grimdarkesque atmosphere they were trying to go for otherwise and more something you'd expect as satire from Team America.

[Keyrock]

Project director describes Clockwork Revolution as love child of Arcanum and VtM: Bloodlines 

[HoonDing]

I never understood why western devs don't just use pixelization like those Japanese games.

[melkathi]

Saints Row does

[Gfted1]

GRIME free on Epic: GRIME | Download and Buy Today - Epic Games Store

[BruceVC]

Guys I just watched this video and I cant stress enough how brilliant BG3 is going to be. I strongly recommend for anyone who has doubts about BG3 to watch this. In summary

 

• 600 spells
• real and logical differences on difficulty level
• very deep character customization
• the vastness of the city of BG and all the activities
• real C&C and its impact
• small but noticeable features like talking to animals and a displacer beast
• many of the NPCS you can interact with
• the starting region has 30% more content than what you experienced in early access

[HoonDing]

"600 spells "

[Wormerine]

43 minutes ago, HoonDing said:

"600 spells "

As you should. If I remember correctly they count each a category of a spell as a separate thing (so chromatic orb is counted separately for each of its variants)

1 hour ago, BruceVC said:

Guys I just watched this video

Thanks, I am gonna watch later. Over at Larian’s forum community manager who got invited over mentioned some really promising things as well that weren’t highlighter in the PfH. 

Edited July 10, 2023 by Wormerine

[BruceVC]

1 minute ago, Wormerine said:

As you should. If I remember correctly they count each a category of a spell as a separate thing (so chromatic orb is counted separately for each of its variants)

Thanks, I am gonna watch later. Over at Larian’s forum community manager who got invited over mentioned some really promising things as well that weren’t highlighter in the PfH. 

Wormie I posted it to alleviate your concerns and others, its a very convincing  video and includes loads of mechanics we weren't sure of