What are you Playing Now? Volume XIX: The New Beginning of the End of the Middle

[Tale]

Allow me to tell you about our lord and savior Dispatch. For all who yearn for the glory days of Telltale, he has risen again! Hallelujah!

[BruceVC]

I have finally decided to take the plunge and play Skyrim, its only been 14 years since its release

The hardest decision was what mod collection to use and I did loads of research around the best mod collections and how they change vanilla Skyrim and I finally decided on LoreRim v4 which is the last and final LoreRim version

This mod collection has over 4000 mods and uses Requiem as its foundation

But how can anyone install 4000 mods, who has the time for that and I have one word for that relevant question ..." Wabbajack " (WJ)

These are steps I followed and the timelines to install LoreRim and the issues I experienced
 

• Wabbajack downloaded all the mods in about 6-8 hours, I let it run overnight and with a Nexus Premium account I had no issues
• LoreRim V4 uses Skyrim AE edition and you need to install the relevant Creation Club (CC) mods or the Wabbajack install will fail. But WJ provides detailed logs on what is failing so I had to manually re-download 3 CC mods.
• Then I had about 10-12 Nexus mods that reported on being corrupted during the WJ installation. You just delete them from the WJ download and it downloads them again
• Finally it reported some access errors 1-2 times but you just shutdown WJ and restart it and then it worked, WJ remembers where it last failed so you dont have to ever start the whole process again

WJ then created my MO2 profile with all the 4000 mods in the correct MO2 load order

So the entire install of LoreRim and troubleshooting after the initial downloads took about 5 hours. Thats nothing compared to how long manually configuring 4000 mods would take as any modder will agree 


My next steps before I play
 

• Go through the post installation configuration advice and tips from the mod creator
• Install some additional mods and possibly some adult mods. There is a process to follow from the mod creator

I will make sure I save my working MO2 profile so I can easily role back

I dont plan to add many new mods but I want to play around before I start with LoreRim because now I understand the installation process

[melkathi]

Because of the imminent release of the StarCraft miniature wargame, I have started playing the original StarCraft.

I had a bit of a disagreement with General Edmund Duke. Raynor and I said we need to stop the zerg from killing whole planets. Duke asked "But do you condemn the sons of Korhal?"

We didn't. Now we are terrorists.

 

Obviously now the zerg are trying to eat Duke, so we have to save him.

We should have just sent him a message:

" When the zerg came for Mar Sara, I did nothing because my villa wasn't on Mar Sara.

When the zerg came for Chau Sara, I did nothing because my golf course was not on Chau Sara.

When the zerg finally came for me, there was noone left to save me."

Edited Thursday at 12:28 PM by melkathi

[Hurlshort]

Started Outer Worlds 2 (using Gamepass) and played through the tutorial. It was great. The graphics are improved from the original. So far so good. I don't think it will win you over if you didn't like the original, but it seems like a solid sequel so far. 

[melkathi]

Sometimes a solid sequel is all we need. Just have more fun of the fun we were already having.

[Wormerine]

On 9/27/2025 at 5:14 PM, melkathi said:

I finished the main plot in Hogwarts Legacy.

(...)

I understand criticism that it is less a game about going to wizarding school and more a run around kill stuff game. I don't know how a school simulator would have been fun though.

Seeing melathi's post about Hogwarts Legacy I decided to give it ago before Outer Worlds2. 

Yeah, I liked it more then I expected. I thought they managed to capture the universe rather well. Definitely the amount of murdering player does feels rather odd. And while I mostly found story to be fairly alright, there were couple points I felt the inability to react to things felt really odd. Main character doesn't really have a personality but the game also doesn't allow players to express themselves in spite of conversation options. There were quite a few things, especially in the latter part of the game, were I feel characters just move on from some things that really asked to be brought up. Overall, better then I expected. As I enjoyed early Harry Potter books and films in primary school, HL managed to pull my nostalgia strings.

Started Outer Worlds2 - looks promising so far. Opening mission promised reactivity that I missed in the original game had. Adding to it the overall buzz around the game, I think I will enjoy this one. 

[kanisatha]

I started playing BG3 about a week ago. I'm using a lot of mods, though all of them from among those available through the built-in mod manager. The most important mod being the one that gets me a 6-character party.

As I had expected, the game is okay but not amazing the way everyone likes to gush over it. It's definitely not worthy of all those 98, 99, 100 review scores it was given, calling into question the credibility of those reviewers. Among the things that I dislike are a horrible inventory system and hotbar system, poory designed UIs across the board, moving and organizing the party as a group being a huge pain in the ass, most containers in the environment being empty (and not getting clearly marked as such even after you check them), and all NPCs can be interracted with even though many dont have anything meaningful to say. Your own dialog options during conversations are often many and yet the range of different options is very limited, meaning many of the options are merely minor variations on saying the same thing.

Combat is also, as expected, rather tedious, but I can live with it from having a party of six and using low difficulty settings. But it is rather ridiculous the extent to which characters miss their attacks. I've gone through multiple rounds of combat where every single one of my six characters missed on their attack. But I'll grant this is a huge flaw of DnD and not the game per se (and why I love PoE mechanics so very much more).

Where the game does shine is in beautiful environments, and very nice character animations and cutscenes. The story is also good so far.

More to come.

[Lexx]

I've started a replay of BG3 as well, a few days ago. Getting close to Act 2 again, and I'm having way more fun with the game now than the first time, just because I know now how everything works, and how to best use the environment for my advantage. 

I think the game is pretty good. 

IMO, a party of 6 is really not necessary. Guess it would make combat a lot easier as well. Not sure why your people can't hit anything - I'm wrecking whatever crosses my path. Maybe you use the wrong weapons, etc?

If we'll get a PoE3 some day, I'd really love it to just use this game engine. All of the interactions and environments combined with Obsidians writing should end up pretty cool.

Edited Sunday at 04:54 PM by Lexx

[kanisatha]

4 hours ago, Lexx said:

If we'll get a PoE3 some day, I'd really love it to just use this game engine.

No way, because it's their engine that makes their inventory system, hotbar, and party formation and movement such a huge pain. Those are all issues following from the limitations of their engine.

[Lexx]

Dunno, didn't bother me / didn't feel worse than in PoE1/2.

[marelooke]

9 hours ago, kanisatha said:

I started playing BG3 about a week ago. I'm using a lot of mods, though all of them from among those available through the built-in mod manager. The most important mod being the one that gets me a 6-character party.

As I had expected, the game is okay but not amazing the way everyone likes to gush over it. It's definitely not worthy of all those 98, 99, 100 review scores it was given, calling into question the credibility of those reviewers. Among the things that I dislike are a horrible inventory system and hotbar system, poory designed UIs across the board, moving and organizing the party as a group being a huge pain in the ass, most containers in the environment being empty (and not getting clearly marked as such even after you check them), and all NPCs can be interracted with even though many dont have anything meaningful to say. Your own dialog options during conversations are often many and yet the range of different options is very limited, meaning many of the options are merely minor variations on saying the same thing.

Combat is also, as expected, rather tedious, but I can live with it from having a party of six and using low difficulty settings. But it is rather ridiculous the extent to which characters miss their attacks. I've gone through multiple rounds of combat where every single one of my six characters missed on their attack. But I'll grant this is a huge flaw of DnD and not the game per se (and why I love PoE mechanics so very much more).

Where the game does shine is in beautiful environments, and very nice character animations and cutscenes. The story is also good so far.

More to come.

There's some setting that fudges the dice and is intended to help avoid chains of bad rolls, in practice it seems to make rolls worse (or at least more "average"), turning it off seemed to at least improve things for me. May be in my head, may not be, there's been evidence collected to indicate the former, but since Larian doesn't disclose how the setting atually works and kept updating it there's no telling how accurate that evidence still is.

Anyway, may want to try turning it off (it's on by default) and see if that improves things for you, it did for me.

Edited yesterday at 12:44 AM by marelooke

[Wormerine]

On 11/2/2025 at 2:56 PM, kanisatha said:

Among the things that I dislike are a horrible inventory system and hotbar system, poory designed UIs across the board, moving and organizing the party as a group being a huge pain in the ass, most containers in the environment being empty (and not getting clearly marked as such even after you check them), and all NPCs can be interracted with even though many dont have anything meaningful to say.

Combat is also, as expected, rather tedious, but I can live with it from having a party of six and using low difficulty settings. But it is rather ridiculous the extent to which characters miss their attacks. I've gone through multiple rounds of combat where every single one of my six characters missed on their attack.

That's interesting. My complain was how missing was very rare due to Larian's tinkering with values and abundant source of guaranteed damage. 

I do have major gripe with some UI choices, mainly hotbar which I found to be frustratingly maintenance heavy. I avoided having druids because of that, as doing wildshape would completely wreck my hotbar after switching back to human form. 

I will do another playthrough using hardest setting at some point, but just too many other things to play meantime. 

 

Speaking of which I got distracted from Outer Worlds2 by Alters. Gave it a go maybe two evening ago and it got my full attention now. 

Oh, finished Hades2. It's like the first one, with slightly better gameplay, much worse narrative, much more content, and even more grind. I didn't care for it. 

[Theonlygarby]

I think i have become a full hater.  I just cannot get into outer worlds 2.  I think its a me problem because I enjoyed the first one.

If I had to justify it.  I do not like when games throw you right into the world with no buildup. 

 

New Vegas you start in a small unimportant town.  You wake up and talk to people in the town and you hear about the factions and political climate.  

 

Pillars your caravan gets attacked and you make your way to a small town.  You get eased into the world.

 

In outer worlds two you are an agent and you go on a mission.  Thing happens.  You are thrust into the world and factions with no time to ease into the world.

Even the first outer worlds eased you into the world.  You dealt with a minor dispute before seeing the wider picture.

I probably will start to enjoy it eventually but it feels like too much too fast.  I have a hard time caring about anything going on because it's thrown at you so quickly.

 

Combat is good.  Graphics are good.

[Hurlshort]

I went straight form playing the Outer Worlds DLC (Murder on floaty planet) to playing OW2, so it wasn't much of a transition. I also didn't run right to the town. I explored the landing pad and cracked some shellfish first. Otherwise I'd probably agree that it throws a lot of story and people at you early on. I'm pretty comfortable at level 8 now.

The perks are pretty dang cool. The weapons are nice and the inventory and crafting is a good upgrade from the original. The exploration is improved with a lot more verticality and movement (jump boots!) I hate my hat, but I keep it on because it gives me great bonuses. I'm stuck at work and can't wait to play until I get home, so typical Obsidian game for me.

[Wormerine]

27 minutes ago, Hurlshort said:

I went straight form playing the Outer Worlds DLC (Murder on floaty planet) to playing OW2, so it wasn't much of a transition. I also didn't run right to the town. I explored the landing pad and cracked some shellfish first. Otherwise I'd probably agree that it throws a lot of story and people at you early on. I'm pretty comfortable at level 8 now.

Probably played a bit less then yourself but not by much. Eh, I do struggle to get into the world and story so far, but otherwise it seems like a substantial upgrade. Hopefully it will click for me soon. 

[Theonlygarby]

I did walk around a little before heading to town. 

 

I think a big part of it is narrative baggage from being part of the earth directorate.  Like I can be a criminal who doesn't like the earth directorate and takes nothing serious.  yet they decided to make me captain?  Just in my mind you have to be a leader of some sort for the story to make sense.

 

If you had been just a regular soldier it would feel a lot more natural.  Starting off important takes something away from these types of games imo

Edited 13 hours ago by Theonlygarby

[MrBrown]

Playing a game called Seance of Blake Manor.

It's an adventure/investigation/deduction game with a horror theme, set in late 19th century Ireland. It's first person view and lots interactable things, but the major twist is there is a time limit. Time doesn't go forward in actual time, or movement or even changing areas, but only by interacting with things. So instead of clicking everything and then trying to figure out what to do, you have think about your actions constantly.

The mechanic was a huge turn off for me at first, it felt very arbitrary because it wasn't always obvious what thing had important info attached to it, and felt it encouraged save scumming. But once I got past the prologue, it seems there's much more leeway and it works fine. But maybe it'll all come crashing down on me later, when I find out I shouldn't have spent all that time going through ladies pants drawers.

[Wormerine]

7 hours ago, Theonlygarby said:

I think a big part of it is narrative baggage from being part of the earth directorate.  Like I can be a criminal who doesn't like the earth directorate and takes nothing serious.  yet they decided to make me captain?  Just in my mind you have to be a leader of some sort for the story to make sense.

If you had been just a regular soldier it would feel a lot more natural.  Starting off important takes something away from these types of games imo

Yeah, now that you mention it is rather odd, and at least for now feels unnecessary. 

Considering the other survivor is a complete rookie, we could have just played as a regular joe in the team who takes over due to ranking out the only other survivor. It could also explain why we might be willing to defect.

I am getting annoyed by the "corporate" jargon. I didn't mind it it OW1 as the whole concept was "What if Corporations started the colony". And I know this is very much an arm of the same movement, but just feels odd to me here and out of place. 

[BruceVC]

Im still finalizing my first Skyrim\LoreRim experience and I am  researching new mods 

So I decided to play Amnesia Bunker, its classic Amnesia good fun horror survival. The addition of the monster makes a great change and its nice having weapons

Its there best game so far 

I did decide to use 1 cheat mod. I loaded a mod that  gave me an endless torch, I got tired of the rats and the darkness mechanics so from the Arsenal onwards I used this Torch cheat 

I enjoyed the ending and how you deal with the monster but it did kill me about 5 times before I came right 

Spoiler

I used my shotgun to stun the monster then ran away to the damaged wooden bridge and waited till the monster jumped over and while it was scrabbling to climb up I shot it and it fell into the pit and died 

 

[Sven_]

6 hours ago, MrBrown said:

Playing a game called Seance of Blake Manor.

It's an adventure/investigation/deduction game with a horror theme, set in late 19th century Ireland. It's first person view and lots interactable things, but the major twist is there is a time limit. Time doesn't go forward in actual time, or movement or even changing areas, but only by interacting with things. So instead of clicking everything and then trying to figure out what to do, you have think about your actions constantly.

The mechanic was a huge turn off for me at first, it felt very arbitrary because it wasn't always obvious what thing had important info attached to it, and felt it encouraged save scumming. But once I got past the prologue, it seems there's much more leeway and it works fine. But maybe it'll all come crashing down on me later, when I find out I shouldn't have spent all that time going through ladies pants drawers.

Tried that too, only demo so far though. Seems really interesting, also with time being a bit of a factor. That makes it so you have to plan a bit ahead, as the place has an actual schedule with events taking place. It also gives off an illusion of a world with characters carrying their own agenda, rather than being frozen in time. Reminds me of The Last Express and Sierra's Colonel's Bequest (Laura Bow). Great mood also. Raw Fury seems really good in finding such games. On related note, I'd always wanted to check out the murder mystery DLC for The Outer Worlds. But I struggle to see how that would even work, given that the base game, to put it mildly, doesn't quite trust in your cognitive abilities. There's never any thinking or deduction or being "available" involved whatsoever. It's a completely AFK experience, like follow the dotted line (and pick up the ammo/ressources available in abundance), and you're done. Often times it doesn't make sense that you'd immediately know exactly where to go and what to do next, but it is what it is. Good idea for a DLC though, which can always be a bit more experimental/risky than the base games (see also NWN2)...


Speaking about AFK games... there's an auto-battler I tried that sort of has the potential to nail the Lt. Gorman Simulator experience. If you're asking who the hell Lt. Gorman is, maybe the rather unsubtle trailer makes it clear -- this is not an official Aliens licensed game at all, mind.  Seems a bit minimalist so far, the final release is said to get a story campaign tho...
 

 

 

@BruceVC The Bunker is one of my recent favs also. Really quite the rollercoaster. I think in some ways it even improves upon Alien Isolation with the "lonely stalker" in that in particular later on, you may not see the beast for minutes on end (provided you're keeping it low). Overexposure leads to familiarity -- and that's always hurtful when it comes to being scared. The moments of tension always are in the build-up, you KNOWING (and oft hearing) that there's something out there. But if it pops up over and over, eventually you're getting used to it. After experiencing the ending, the main menu music has a completely different feel to it too... 

A similar game in low-poly PSX aesthetics is Stay Out Of THe House. It's basically the same core idea, except that you're trapped inside of a house rather than inside of a bunker. And the thing out to get you is a cannibal serial killer. However, you can even lay and prepare traps... which your enemy may do also though. Also multiple ways to solve situations, and (I think) 2 endings. The goal is basically a low budget slasher sandbox. 

Edited 4 hours ago by Sven_

[BruceVC]

31 minutes ago, Sven_ said:

Tried that too, only demo so far though. Seems really interesting, also with time being a bit of a factor. That makes it so you have to plan a bit ahead, as the place has an actual schedule with events taking place. It also gives off an illusion of a world with characters carrying their own agenda, rather than being frozen in time. Reminds me of The Last Express and Sierra's Colonel's Bequest (Laura Bow). Great mood also. Raw Fury seems really good in finding such games. On related note, I'd always wanted to check out the murder mystery DLC for The Outer Worlds. But I struggle to see how that would even work, given that the base game, to put it mildly, doesn't quite trust in your cognitive abilities. There's never any thinking or deduction or being "available" involved whatsoever. It's a completely AFK experience, like follow the dotted line (and pick up the ammo/ressources available in abundance), and you're done. Often times it doesn't make sense that you'd immediately know exactly where to go and what to do next, but it is what it is. Good idea for a DLC though, which can always be a bit more experimental/risky than the base games (see also NWN2)...


Speaking about AFK games... there's an auto-battler I tried that sort of has the potential to nail the Lt. Gorman Simulator experience. If you're asking who the hell Lt. Gorman is, maybe the rather unsubtle trailer makes it clear -- this is not an official Aliens licensed game at all, mind.  Seems a bit minimalist so far, the final release is said to get a story campaign tho...
 

 

 

@BruceVC The Bunker is one of my recent favs also. Really quite the rollercoaster. I think in some ways it even improves upon Alien Isolation with the "lonely stalker" in that in particular later on, you may not see the beast for minutes on end (provided you're keeping it low). Overexposure leads to familiarity -- and that's always hurtful when it comes to being scared. The moments of tension always are in the build-up, you KNOWING (and oft hearing) that there's something out there. But if it pops up over and over, eventually you're getting used to it. After experiencing the ending, the main menu music has a completely different feel to it too... 

A similar game in low-poly PSX aesthetics is Stay Out Of THe House. It's basically the same core idea, except that you're trapped inside of a house rather than inside of a bunker. And the thing out to get you is a cannibal serial killer. However, you can even lay and prepare traps... which your enemy may do also though. Also multiple ways to solve situations, and 2 ending. The goal is basically a low budget movie slasher sandbox. 

And the lore of Bunker was interesting, as you find more notes you start to put together the madness what the soldiers experienced 

I ended up running away from the monster most of the time to the Administration Room , if it was front of me I would use one bullet to stun it and then run over it 

I even ran away from it after getting the dynamite because it found me , it started chasing me but I somehow got  through the tunnels you drain in the arsenal and survived 

 

[MrBrown]

1 hour ago, Sven_ said:

Tried that too, only demo so far though. Seems really interesting, also with time being a bit of a factor. That makes it so you have to plan a bit ahead, as the place has an actual schedule with events taking place. It also gives off an illusion of a world with characters carrying their own agenda, rather than being frozen in time. Reminds me of The Last Express and Sierra's Colonel's Bequest (Laura Bow). Great mood also. Raw Fury seems really good in finding such games. On related note, I'd always wanted to check out the murder mystery DLC for The Outer Worlds. But I struggle to see how that would even work, given that the base game, to put it mildly, doesn't quite trust in your cognitive abilities. There's never any thinking or deduction or being "available" involved whatsoever. It's a completely AFK experience, like follow the dotted line (and pick up the ammo/ressources available in abundance), and you're done. Often times it doesn't make sense that you'd immediately know exactly where to go and what to do next, but it is what it is. Good idea for a DLC though, which can always be a bit more experimental/risky than the base games (see also NWN2)...

The murder mystery DLC for Outer Worlds, isn't really much of a murder mystery...