Still playing Baldur’s Gate 3. I really enjoyed Divinity: Original Sin 2 and I’m quite happy that this is an improvement in virtually all respects (the soundtrack being the only letdown so far). I’m especially happy that my biggest problem with D:OS2–the insanely tight level curve–is mostly gone here. It’s still a bit tight in Act 1, but I just started Act 3 and I’ve skipped a entire zone and a half now without being underleveled. I cannot overstate how important it is for roleplaying to not be required to comb the map or do nonsense like getting XP for persuasion successes and then turning around and killing to squeeze out every last point.
There are some negatives here, especially with bugs. Biggest one is Lae’zel simply vanishing from my camp. I found her wandering around a zone later but she wouldn’t join the party even with the dialogue indicating she was. Pretty sure she’s permanently gone now. A bunch of random skills and gear are either outright broken or are inconsistent. Fortunately there are workarounds for that part, but I’m honestly a little surprised to see a game lacking polish like this score as highly as it has in reviews.
I’ve finally moved on with the main story, with the plot progression essentially pausing for 50 hours while I poked around. What’s standing out to me now is that this game is a prime example of “great script writing, mediocre story writing.” The core narrative does hit on some of my personal favorite tropes, like shifting pantheons and otherwise huge stakes, but this story desperately needed more from the antagonists early on. There’s no reason one of them couldn’t have shown up in person to harass the party in Act 1. Merely dealing with underlings of varying narrative quality feels limp. That said, so many of the dialogues are absolutely fantastic, right up there with the best of Bioware’s work that the game is emulating. Better yet, they are paired with engrossing motion capture and impeccable voice acting. Still a shame not to be hearing Alix Wilton Regan in a Larian game, though.
Since Microsoft’s parity issues, I decided to buy Divinity Original Sin 2 to support Larian. I like the stand they made (as opposed to how CDPR did with Cyberpunk), and figured they deserve the cash.
While the graphics could be better, and that it’s at times difficult to focus on such a dialogue heavy game, I noticed that I’ve already spent 20 hours with it and have barely escaped what could be called the tutorial area (fort joy).
I love it. I’m playing 4 custom characters, all necromancers, two melee oriented, two ranged, and it’s a total crap fest of a party, but I’m making it work real well.
Fort Joy is the best and largest part of the game, enjoy it! I guess Fort Joy resembles wher Larian wanted to go with the game, the last 2 acts are not even close in comparison
You’re probably too young to remember when computers were a huge pia to use. Your MIL probably knows more about PCs than you do if she worked in an office in the 80s and 90s.
It is odd being in the gen X and millenial cohorts and being two generations trapped between ones that either had little to no experience with computers or have only used smart tech that simplified everything down.
I’m 18, so also Gen Z I guess. But growing up all I did was try to bypass WiFi and device time limits & content filters. Later I got more into programming (due to mental health I’ve been letting that slip unfortunately), and currently I’m looking to study AI and CompSci.
And I constantly wonder why other people aren’t as interested in this stuff. And are completely helpless in troubleshooting. I kind of want to buy a PC for my siblings to get them interested too, but I don’t have high hopes of it working…
I don’t know if I was trying to make a point here but I’ll post anyways, enjoy
There’s always going to be people interested on computing more so than their average cohort, if there weren’t boomers into it we wouldn’t have got anywhere with the tech to begin with.
However simply owning a computer between the 70s to 2010 odd meant you had to do a lot more problem solving and fiddling that lead to a better understanding of how stuff worked across the generation as a whole in comparison. Whether it was learning to use BASIC on your micro computer or having to mess about with drivers in Win 98.
The exception rather than the rule. I’ve seen several articles claiming your lot don’t know that computers have a file system. Ie they use the search function to find their files and don’t pay attention to where things are saved. Ie the computer is a large bucket full of my shit and the only way to access it is by telling the computer to rummage through it.
It’s fine for me. I just got hired as a “programmer” despite having extremely basic python skills and ability to use Linux. I’m quite happy to be “settled for”.
With the risk of being tagged as a car analogy, its similar to the experience with internal combustion engine cars, shifted by two generations. My parents (boomers) and the Silent gen often knew cars backwards and forwards because it was the only way to get them to work reliably, not unlike computers of the (60s) 70s and 80s. Those older were pretty resistant/baffled, and those after tend to just see them as appliances - being regularly ridiculed by boomers for things like not knowing how to change the transmission fluid (no longer necessary in many CVTs), drive a stick shift (rare on modern US vehicles), or brake “properly” (aka pumping brakes, which in an ABS enabled system is not recommended).
“lifetime” fluid doesn’t mean what you think it does. It means the lifetime of the transmission, which will fail if you don’t change the fluid at some point.
Any time a manufacturer has said that it has turned out to be b.s. and someone figures out that some off the shelf fluid works better than the stuff they put in at the factory.
lifetime fluid usually means “lifetime of the warranty” There are incredible high tech oils now that can easily last 100k mi in their intended use but they don’t work forever.
while we are on this topic the Detroit recommended oil change interval for the semi I drove was 85k miles, so basically slightly more than anually. Completely blew my mind, though in between oil changes they also took samples and tested them which is a big part of what makes that possible otherwise you’d change it at 35k to be safe. also the things took 5 gallons of motor oil, so a smaller proportion of the oil is being pummeled by the crankshaft bearings and piston seals, at least that’s how it was explained to me.
That and it’s a tire-screeching exit from the abusive road we thought gaming was going down. Microtransactions, lootboxes etc. Baldur’s Gate 3 is refreshing from that perspective and, like me, I think many are amazed that it’s actually working.
I see nothing revolutionary about a game not having things like microtransactions and loot boxes. Those are mostly restricted to multiplayer games, and the industry never stopped making good single-player games without that bullshit.
Only played the first one which was pretty good. It’s super big on character customization as it has a million race/class combinations. A bit more extreme than the rest
I'm not a Linux fan, but even disregarding the OS (SteamOS vs Windows), the fact that most of these "killers" don't come with touch pads of any kind makes them an instant loss. So many PC games use a mouse, I'm not using a fiddly thumbstick in its place.
Without the trackpads, the Steam Deck would be considerably less useful. They open up a huge variety of games that would be practically unplayable with sticks alone. Disregarding them simply for more power is foolish.
Ally is worse than the steam deck in everything unless it’s plugged in and you’re using a keyboard and mouse, at that point you should get a laptop
Emulators also have no issue
The res is lower so it can play higher demanding games, necessary res scales with screen size, a 1 cm screen doesn’t matter if it’s 10 pixels or 10 million but a 200 cm screen you’d want the 10 million
Rivals might compete but they aren’t big enough to handle volume (you might be waiting a long time)
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines has special lines that unlock according to your character build. Unlike a single Charisma skill, they’re divided into skills like ‘Intimidation’, ‘Seduction’, ‘Erudite’, etc. Intimidate options appear in ALL CAPS HULK SPEAK, seductive options are in italic in handwriting, and Erudite appears in blue. If you lose your humanity and become too bestial, dialogue starts disappearing as you’re too far gone to understand it and NPCs start being too scared to talk to you.
I’ve learned my lesson to never buy again from any other than Steam.
Every other launcher except GOG Galaxy are pure trash. And about a year ago I switched to Linux, so now I only buy from Steam. They make gaming better for everyone, they know it’s a win-win situation.
This wasn’t wholly your question but you might like to look into what NOT to do with LA Noire. Originally the game’s dialogue options were labeled, “Coax,” “Force,” and “Lie.” You play a 1940’s police detective who has to solve crimes, so dialogue naturally comes up when you are interviewing witnesses or interrogating suspects. However, Rockstar as publisher made a shock change late in development where the devs had to change the options to “Truth,” “Doubt,” and “Lie.” These options, however, don’t actually quite fit with the actual dialogue of the game. Something I noticed a lot when I played the game was when I selected “Doubt,” to theoretically doubt what I thought was an obvious logical error or a half-truth, phelps instead just started screaming at the top of his lungs about executing people. Or other times I’d select “Truth” because the witness wasn’t lying but just being cautious with their words. It turns out that option was ‘wrong’ because I didn’t force out the key info I needed.
It wasn’t until I learned later on in my playthrough of this fatal publisher error that I instantly became way better at the game. Just had to switch around the words in my mind to what the original devs intended. Later releases of the game had “Truth” and “Doubt” changed to “Good cop” and “bad cop” but both of those also don’t really fit too well. Phelps isn’t always bad cop when forcing the truth, sometimes he’s just yelling because the witness is an asshole.
The reason Lie was never changed is because when you select Lie, you’re doubting their version and coming up with evidence to prove the contrary, like in Ace Attorney.
Just a little thing to keep in mind about dialogue options. Even though the words “Coax” and “Force” sound a little… advanced I guess, they still work way better mentally just because they actually describe the options. Truth and Doubt might help you reach a younger or less intelligent audience, but they don’t work because they don’t actually describe what the options give.
This was a meme for some time, like he’s talking to a little girl and suddenly screaming at her. Didn’t know the labels changed but that the dialog a huge joke.
This. I love GoG for what they do and their whole ethos, but I have damn near my entire collection already on Steam and like to condense as much as I can as hard as that may be. Steam is still by and far the best launcher, but every year GoG Galaxy gets a little bit closer to being an actual contender; literally all the rest are absolutely terrible dumpster fires.
Why is that by the way? On my PC I have Amazon, Battle.net, EA, Epic, GoG Galaxy 2.0, Itchio, Rockstar, and Uplay clients (along with some individual game launchers) and not a single one comes close to being as feature rich, streamlined, and just clearly built for the customer/player as Steam is. I know Valve has a lot more experience under their belt but it feels like the others aren’t even trying. Most of them are just in your face about their store fronts and barely function as a library after the fact.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne