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Topic: So, what're you playing? (Read 2188190 times)
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Mandella
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Posts: 1235
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I played the Xbox version of Dark Corners. It was a little glitchy but I never experienced the mess of bugs I've heard other people had. The ending was good and the hotel chase scene was one of the all-time greatest video game sequences I've ever experienced.
No doubt. One of the reasons I remember it so less than fondly was due to bugs (on the PC) that interrupted said fun gameplay. I'm recalling spending the better part of an hour sneaking through a warehouse only to get clipped and stuck on a crate edge within sight of the exit. After that I did find a Save Anywhere mod that some kind soul had made, so I could at least save scum my way through levels. But I did enjoy it enough to finish it even with all that...
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Sky
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Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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I played the Xbox version of Dark Corners. It was a little glitchy but I never experienced the mess of bugs I've heard other people had. The ending was good and the hotel chase scene was one of the all-time greatest video game sequences I've ever experienced.
I remember you mentioning that back in the day and it kinda turned me off, since I'm not a fan of chase scenes. I think the Sinking City was more my speed, but even that I burned out on pretty quick.
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HaemishM
Staff Emeritus
Posts: 42629
the Confederate flag underneath the stone in my class ring
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I did mention it, and honestly, it's so good, it's worth the experience even if you hate chase scenes. It's not so eyegougingly difficult that you feel completely out of control, and it is fucking terrifying in the context of the story and the presentation. The story is good throughout and the gameplay never quite rises to the level of immersiveness of that scene but as a whole, it's a really good game.
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Cyrrex
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Posts: 10603
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I had thought that defending Kaer Morhen was going to be the finally act in Witcher 3, but there is like a whole nuther act, and damn is it good. I somehow accidentally ended up choosing Yen over Triss, however, which is both wholly unimportant while also bothering me more than I care to admit.
In other news, I made it through the opening bits of Mass Effect 1 (remake, duh) with John Shepard. Sorry, but male Shepard simply does not work, that motherfucker is dead on the inside. Dropped two hours of progress, started over with Femshep, and all is right in the universe.
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"...maybe if you cleaned the piss out of the sunny d bottles under your desks and returned em, you could upgrade you vid cards, fucken lusers.." - Grunk
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Morat20
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Posts: 18529
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I had thought that defending Kaer Morhen was going to be the finally act in Witcher 3, but there is like a whole nuther act, and damn is it good. I somehow accidentally ended up choosing Yen over Triss, however, which is both wholly unimportant while also bothering me more than I care to admit.
In other news, I made it through the opening bits of Mass Effect 1 (remake, duh) with John Shepard. Sorry, but male Shepard simply does not work, that motherfucker is dead on the inside. Dropped two hours of progress, started over with Femshep, and all is right in the universe.
1. Yen is, of course, the correct choice. On the other hand, redhead..... 2. Yeah, there is a whole 'nother act. And two DLCs, both very good. 3. Yes, FemShep is BestShep.
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Khaldun
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Posts: 15158
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See, I ended up thinking Yen was absolutely not the right choice, and that's based on the callback to The Last Wish (which is a great quest and shows how well those guys understood the source material).
Anybody who has gotten through all of the Witcher 3 definitely needs to play the DLC which provides just a beautiful ending/extension of the story.
FemShep is the best Shep. I hadn't played a FemShep until the Legendary and I finally did it and there's no contest, FemShep is so much better.
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Cyrrex
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Posts: 10603
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I wasn't aware the DLC were worthwhile additions, will have to look at that. I think the problem with choosing either Yen or Triss is that whichever artists they gave the job of rendering them somehow managed to pull images of them straight from the primitive parts of my brain that determine....well, you get the point. More specifically, though, I don't feel I actually MADE a choice as such...it was just the sequencing of events or something. I did not hook up with Yen again until after I had already sent Triss along to Kaer Morhen. Oops. At least Keira Metz was polite enough not to ruin any of it.
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"...maybe if you cleaned the piss out of the sunny d bottles under your desks and returned em, you could upgrade you vid cards, fucken lusers.." - Grunk
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Mosesandstick
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Posts: 2474
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I remember the Yen/Triss thing being kind of funny in terms of how it resolved, but then if you have multiple relationships going on at once you shouldn't be surprised that someone might draw a line.
I think the Witcher 3 DLC is really good, I enjoyed it more than the main game.
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Khaldun
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Posts: 15158
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The last DLC with the vineyard and so on is really the best.
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Rasix
Moderator
Posts: 15024
I am the harbinger of your doom!
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Launched the ship in RimWorld. That was a hectic 14 day ordeal. By sure luck, I had enough Resurrector Mech Serum around for the couple of deaths that happened. Ended up with just enough cryosleep pods and everyone made it off the planet. So, many dead mechs. So many dead tribals. I got kind of lucky and the pirates didn't raid me at all.
Onto Pathfinder: Kingmaker. So far, so good. Pretty sure I'm fucking it up somehow. There seem to be a lot of "optional" encounters that just kick your ass inward.
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-Rasix
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Khaldun
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Posts: 15158
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Weird. I have actually never launched the ship in RimWorld. What happens?
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Rasix
Moderator
Posts: 15024
I am the harbinger of your doom!
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Weird. I have actually never launched the ship in RimWorld. What happens?
Once you start up the reactor, it's about 1-2 raids per day of about max size. This goes on for 14 days. It's pretty intense early on (100+ humans, 40+ mechs, etc), but it seems to taper off into more manageable raids toward the end of the countdown. Just about every raid is made up of breach capable mobs. I ran out of space to put all of the corpses and probably would have filled them with centipedes alone. It's best to turn off any form of corpse management and just let the bodies lie. It's pretty fun, but you need to micromanage a lot. I think the whole even took about 3-4 hours to play out. Once the reactor is ready to go, you just fill the cryosleep pods and blast off. You get a nice bit of music and then you're done. You could partially launch and then your colony would continue with whatever you have left.
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-Rasix
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Rasix
Moderator
Posts: 15024
I am the harbinger of your doom!
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Pathfinder: Kingmaker is pretty OK so far. Plays just like Baldur's Gate or Pillars of Eternity. Fun enough encounters and some well designed quest lines. The writing is abysmal. Horrendous dialog, it reads like an 11 year old playing with action figures. I'm not sure what really differentiates this property from just a generic D&D style game, but I'm fine with that.
I do not care for the kingdom management portion. I'm really close to just putting it on automatic. So, if you goof this up you can actually get your game into a fail state? Yeesh.
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-Rasix
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Mosesandstick
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Posts: 2474
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Speaking of CRPGs, I finished Baldurs Gate and moved on to Baldur's Gate 2. Almost amazing to think that BG2 came out only 2 years after BG, and that Planescape Torment was only 1 year after. BG almost seems like a test or a glorified engine compared to them. I'm not actually enjoying the combat that much in BG2. There's too much pre-buffing and weird specific counters. At least in BG1 my heavily statted main character could steamroll through most fights, especially when buffed. And the only way I've been able to stand playing both BG and BG2 is by playing the games at double speed.
I've also read a couple of Let's Plays. There's a really funny LP of Torment: Tides of Numenera where the player can't stand the writing and is constantly pointing out flaws with it, from failing "show don't tell", to contradictions in the main premise of the game, or pointing out how many of the game's choices are variations of the trolley problem. I think the writing as bad as he makes it out to be, but I'm glad I didn't play the game and went through an LP instead.
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Khaldun
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Posts: 15158
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Kingmaker's writing is pretty bad with the occasional good turn, yeah--like a DM whose campaign ideas are great but whose dialogue and encounter designs aren't so good.
It just feels frustrating--like this kind of Western CPRG should be in design terms seamless now and should be allowing really great writers to shine and do their stuff.
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Setanta
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1516
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Hotwheels Unleashed is more fun than I thought it would be. It reminds me of the original Trackmania and Sunrise and Micro Machines, but with a greater variety of cars. There's a bit of a grind/RNG to access cars, but I started with 2 of the more balanced ones as my first pull. Controls are great although a bit more controller focussed than Keyboard in the UI. Having said that, I play better with KB/M than I do with controller, which is where it matters. I haven't been game to try the track editor yet. All in all, I think this will be my new drop in, drop out game.
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"No man is an island. But if you strap a bunch of dead guys together it makes a damn fine raft."
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Khaldun
Terracotta Army
Posts: 15158
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Ungh, I didn't like the ending to Shadow of War. I kind of knew where it was going, and within a certain narrow range of coherency it's lore-possible, but it still feels kind of sour.
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Endie
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Posts: 6436
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It just feels frustrating--like this kind of Western CPRG should be in design terms seamless now and should be allowing really great writers to shine and do their stuff.
Very good point: I don't feel like the difference in engine capabilities between this and the old Icewind Dale type stuff is so huge that it justifies years being spent on new engines every couple of releases when a bunch of really good writers, level designers and graphic artists could put out two games a year for several years. The way that people used the NWN engine or even the community-driven ToEE modules was great. Once they fixed ToEE they then released effectively a whole new game with Keep on the Borderlands, for instance.
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My blog: http://endie.netTwitter - Endieposts "What else would one expect of Scottish sociopaths sipping their single malt Glenlivit [sic]?" Jack Thompson
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lamaros
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Posts: 8021
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Good writing in media is relatively rare, especially when you have people not familiar with a format writing for it.
I imagine the nature of video game production makes it difficult to hire good writers, and unattractive to stay in the industry if they are good. Especially on large titles where the amount of writing really needs a full on team.
I also imagine most of the plots are not designed by writers, but are set by developers, and the process is backwards compared to other formats which a grounded in narrative?
To game studios start from screenplay equivalents? Do they commission writers as one of the first steps? (And writers that are good for structure, plot and world building, not prose)
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Zetor
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Posts: 3269
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It just feels frustrating--like this kind of Western CPRG should be in design terms seamless now and should be allowing really great writers to shine and do their stuff.
Very good point: I don't feel like the difference in engine capabilities between this and the old Icewind Dale type stuff is so huge that it justifies years being spent on new engines every couple of releases when a bunch of really good writers, level designers and graphic artists could put out two games a year for several years. I'd love that (actually it takes me back to the Gold Box days where you'd get 2 or even 3 AD&D games a year from SSI). That said, I don't think that's a 1:1 comparison here, though. Wrath of the Righteous (using the same engine as Kingmaker) had its start-of-dev kickstarter in early 2020, and was released 1.5 years after that. The developer (Owlcat) is also a smallish Russian indie company instead of two large veteran dev teams (Bioware and Black Isle) being supported by one of the largest publishers at the time (Interplay). Also, the only IE game that had a short enough development cycle to support multiple games in 1 year was Icewind Dale 2, and it was maligned for it (both by the developers and the players). I have my issues with the Owlcat games (a lot of them*), but you can't say they are not ambitious. Kingmaker and Wrath are 130+ hour games each if you play the side content, that's like playing two completionist BG2+TOB's... they also have some (not too well implemented, but hey) strategic systems that try to replicate the systems from the pen-and-paper modules. They (especially Wrath) have an insane number of classes and mechanics implemented, and Pathfinder / 3.5e interactions are waaay more complex than the AD&D 2nd edition stuff the IE was made for (they tried to implement 3E for IWD2, but it didn't go too well IMO), especially in Wrath where they have an entire parallel system of progression via mythic levels. * my main problem is encounter design, which is very trash-heavy and I'm not a fan of the stat bloat on bosses (I play on Core diff). On writing I'm willing to give them a passing grade - especially since I have some sympathy for my fellow non-native speakers - it's really not that bad compared to other contemporary CRPGs. Also, I'm pretty sure that a lot of the writing is straight from the pen-and-paper adventure paths. It's shit compared to Disco Elysium of course, but that's true for almost all writing in video games. Good writing in media is relatively rare, especially when you have people not familiar with a format writing for it.
I imagine the nature of video game production makes it difficult to hire good writers, and unattractive to stay in the industry if they are good. Especially on large titles where the amount of writing really needs a full on team.
I also imagine most of the plots are not designed by writers, but are set by developers, and the process is backwards compared to other formats which a grounded in narrative?
To game studios start from screenplay equivalents? Do they commission writers as one of the first steps? (And writers that are good for structure, plot and world building, not prose)
I assume this is part of what the narrative designer does or is supposed to do. At least I think tools like Articy are intended for them. Incidentally, the Disco Elysium folks had an interesting talk this GDC about their approach to narrative design (though admittedly it does focus a lot on the details).
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« Last Edit: October 03, 2021, 12:12:27 AM by Zetor »
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Khaldun
Terracotta Army
Posts: 15158
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Doing some No Man's Sky again. Honestly, the degree to which the devs have just kept adding more and more free stuff is pretty much unprecedented in modern gaming--everybody everywhere that had anything bad to say about them needs to take it back. It's a really relaxing game to play now; I don't feel the need to play it obsessively ever but it's a great way to kill a few hours and see some interesting things.
The UI also is for some reason really easy for me to remember every time I come back to it from having not played it for a while.
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Phildo
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I've been pretty invested in Wrath of the Righteous, but I'll caution anyone who hasn't picked it up to wait at least a couple months for bug fixes. To Owlcat's credit, they're pumping out 1-2 patches a week right now, but it's sad that they're necessary because there are just so many bugs. But the core game is pretty good and they've made good strides with writing interesting companions compared to Kingmaker. It's certainly one of the more replayable CRPGs out there with each of the branching Mythic Paths having enough new story beats to keep it fresh.
As with Kingmaker, mods make it much better.
Re: Kingmaker itself, there's a simple mod that makes all Kingdom events take only 1 day and automatically succeed. That way, you can still build all the buildings that give you boosts to your crafters who can give you some really sweet loot by endgame and you don't have to worry about losing the game because some event ties you down for 14 days while ogres are running amok and wrecking your stability.
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Cyrrex
Terracotta Army
Posts: 10603
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Finally finished Witcher 3. Was obviously wrong about the whole Yen and Triss situation, they invited Geralt to an obvious trap disguised as a threeway, and then both basically dumped him. Pretty funny. I assume there are other ways this can resolve? Anyway, the whole damn thing was impressive, maybe the most engaging story ever in a video game. Better late than never, me finding this out.
Also blasted through ME1 legendary. The improvements made here made me forget that I thought the original ME1 had problems (looking at you, Mako). It looks great, and runs amazing. I forgot how much I liked these games, and I went too quickly to the end, accidentally skipping lots of side quests. Just started ME2. Pretty jarring to switch to different weapons and skill systems literally a day after finishing the other game, but still looking great.
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"...maybe if you cleaned the piss out of the sunny d bottles under your desks and returned em, you could upgrade you vid cards, fucken lusers.." - Grunk
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Rasix
Moderator
Posts: 15024
I am the harbinger of your doom!
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Re: Kingmaker itself, there's a simple mod that makes all Kingdom events take only 1 day and automatically succeed. That way, you can still build all the buildings that give you boosts to your crafters who can give you some really sweet loot by endgame and you don't have to worry about losing the game because some event ties you down for 14 days while ogres are running amok and wrecking your stability.
I probably should have done this. I just turned on auto management, because I just found the whole thing to not be very interesting and not wanting to lose the game based on something that seemed like a glorified side quest. I wonder if my autosave is before or after this change. I picked playing a sorceror. This has made some of the solo portions a giant pain in the ass. Outside of this aspect, it really hasn't been too limiting for party composition. You really get a bit of everything. Not a fan of no paladin thus far and the best healer being made out of paper, but it's manageable.
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-Rasix
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Cyrrex
Terracotta Army
Posts: 10603
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I don't know jack about Pathfinder rules, but am becoming pretty proficient with 5e. If I like the latter, will I like the former? These Pathfinder games are probably right up my alley if I can get past that part of it.
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"...maybe if you cleaned the piss out of the sunny d bottles under your desks and returned em, you could upgrade you vid cards, fucken lusers.." - Grunk
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Rendakor
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Posts: 10131
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Pathfinder is basically 3.75E, with an order of magnitude more complexity than 5e. I haven't played any of the PF video games, however.
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"i can't be a star citizen. they won't even give me a star green card"
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Rasix
Moderator
Posts: 15024
I am the harbinger of your doom!
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As someone that doesn't know the difference, it just feels like playing Pillars of Eternity or what I'd imagine to be the next Infinity engine iteration of Baldur's Gate 2 given an updated engine. I'm not min-maxing a thing, but I just know how to play this sort of game (not to WindupNutsack or rk47 levels of fucker, but well enough). It's been minimal reloads, but I haven't hit what I'd call any sort of difficulty spike yet.
I don't imagine you'd have any issues. Just have your son write you a spec script for a movie based on a RPG franchise to prepare you for the pain to come.
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-Rasix
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Soulflame
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Posts: 6486
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Pathfinder is basically 3.75E, with an order of magnitude more complexity than 5e. I haven't played any of the PF video games, however.
Just one order? X
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Phildo
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The Pathfinder system is very complicated in how you can build your characters. Whereas in D&D 5e you get approximately five chances to increase either an ability score or acquire a feat, Pathfinder lets you keep the ability scores as well as taking a feat every other level. And each class gives you a boatload of additional feats, abilities, spells, etc. Rendakor is right about it being an order of magnitude more complex. I think it works great as a video game system where you constantly unlock new abilities and your character is getting incrementally better, whereas in 5e I find a lot of leveling to be underwhelming. The variety of builds you can make in the Pathfinder games is staggering, to the point where you can find threads on Reddit where people talk about being unable to get out of the initial character creation screen for days. YMMV, but I think it's awesome.
*Pending bug fixes for a lot of classes in Wrath of the Righteous. Start with Kingmaker if you're interested while they fix things in the sequel.
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Khaldun
Terracotta Army
Posts: 15158
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Finally finished Witcher 3. Was obviously wrong about the whole Yen and Triss situation, they invited Geralt to an obvious trap disguised as a threeway, and then both basically dumped him. Pretty funny. I assume there are other ways this can resolve? Anyway, the whole damn thing was impressive, maybe the most engaging story ever in a video game. Better late than never, me finding this out.
Yes. Don't go for a threesome. You gotta commit pretty hard to one or the other. (you can moose around with Keira without a problem though)
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HaemishM
Staff Emeritus
Posts: 42629
the Confederate flag underneath the stone in my class ring
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I finished Call of Cthulhu (the more recent Chaosium/Cyanide Studios one). Even at the $7.49 I bought it for, I'm still not sure I got my money's worth. Unlike Dark Corners of the Earth, this is essentially just a walking simulator with a pixel hunt adventure game tacked on. The "investigation" mechanic that was I think supposed to be its big selling point is really just the ability to go into investigation mode in certain places, pixel hunt until the predefined choices hidden in the scene appear, watch a still motion recreation of what happened at this place (and sometimes it's not even remotely clear how the character could figure this out), then exit it. It has half-assed stealth mechanics in some areas that are "if you get caught, reload from your last save" types. The only thing approaching combat is later in the game when you are given a gun, but there's no real aiming needed, just put the gun in the vicinity of the dude, fire once and he goes down. The "RPG mechanics" amount to getting character points that you put into abilities, but I never really saw much effect from the points I put in. The story was all over the place, moving from chapter to chapter with characters just randomly showing up, sometimes without any real explanation. While there were some cool visuals and one nice jump scare, for the most part the game was ridiculously easy, and what interactivity existed was so barebones as to be on the level of Quicktime events. The models were butt ugly in a Bethesda sort of way. It started out ok, but most of the chapters consisted of one medium sized level with a few bits to discover and then you're off to the next chapter (14 total chapters).
Obviously, I wouldn't really recommend it even for big-time Lovecraft nerds.
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Sky
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Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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Yes. Don't go for a threesome. You gotta commit pretty hard to one or the other. (you can moose around with Keira without a problem though)
Possibly the most daunting thing about wanting to finish the game at some point is returning to my save that's maybe halfway through (but probably not, that game is looong)....and not remembering who I was favoring in that department...
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Khaldun
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Posts: 15158
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You can play both sides right up to the point that you have to send Triss off, I think. If you change your mind and declare your love and end up screwing her in the lighthouse (I think that's it?) you better stick to Triss. If you've already done the one about the Last Wish with Yennefer, same if you told her you actually love her and it's not the djnni curse.
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Cyrrex
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Posts: 10603
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Yeah, I just screwed everyone who crossed my path in whichever order they crossed it. Seems fair that I ended up with nothing. A fair metaphor for life.
Picked up Kingmaker, it was only 20 bucks, so low risk. I like it so far just fine, so pretty sure I will get my money's worth no matter where I end up on it. Some of it doesn't make a damn bit of sense to me in terms of some of these rules, but I am sure I will get used to it. Starting as a monk with all Dex and not Strength seems to not work as well as I would have hoped. Unless monks just suck. Only level 2...actually kind of cool that it doesn't let you level up like a rocket in the first 10 minutes.
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"...maybe if you cleaned the piss out of the sunny d bottles under your desks and returned em, you could upgrade you vid cards, fucken lusers.." - Grunk
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Khaldun
Terracotta Army
Posts: 15158
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Started Wrath of the Righteous. Pathfinder character creation makes me sooooo paranoid because some of the things that I think sound cool I'm aware are likely to turn out not to actually be cool.
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