Valve only cares if you're setting your VPN to a different region to take advantage of differences in currency exchange rates. It used to be really popular to buy the version of a game released for random eastern European countries with poorer economies for a lot less than you'd spend in USD, until Valve started cracking down on that.
As long as any purchases you make from your account are done from the correct country for the content you're buying (and as long as the billing address on your credit card also matches the correct country), the VPN shouldn't set off any red flags or result in any bans.
Yup, as long as all your Steam Store and payment method settings match the country you're buying from, you should be good. My roommate games on Steam from a VPN all the time and has had no issues in the several years that he's done that (though I don't believe he's using the VPN to change his location, just to hide his IP).
So, I’m excited for this game, but after being burned one too many times on preorders, I’ve made it a personal policy to refuse to engage any sort of preorder.
GOG. DRM-free support needs all the help it can get. I have nothing but respect for Steam, so it's my secondary choice. The only exception is if it's a game that's been out for a while and there's been discrepancies between GOG and Steam support (or a dev/publisher with a history of said issues), in which case I'll go with the one that's better supported.
On top of some of the commentary here, I’d like to add that I think there’s a real chance that WoTC’s put some money behind getting it heavily reviewed/boosted, and so more articles about it and wider attention. That is not to undercut its quality, just that I think its layers of support. (I’ll admit there’s more than a little bit of my distrust of WoTC in that. Like after all their other scandals they need a win to try and suck newbies into the game after so much messing up. And I don’t even mean in the last year or something, their release quality for 5e has been abysmal for a long time.)
Additionally Larian played the early access thing very well. Not only did they listen to their ongoing players, and even netted some “tried it didn’t like it” people back, it gave time for everyone who was perhaps too into the older isometric BG1&2 titles (like me) to realize the game didn’t seem quite like it was for them and not pick it up. So you get clear, mostly good(if outdated) information out there for people to use in researching if they wanted to buy it, helping to avoid a lot of the knee-jerk hate that stuff like Fallout 4 and 76 got from misplaced expectations that could dull the release.
I didn’t hear about it when it released, only got it on sale earlier this year. Apparently all this time the perfect game for me had already been out there just existing slightly outside the range of my awareness.
It is a high quality pixel art narrative RPG with a single character class that can branch any way they like, in a pseudo-MMO(single player game where the game is lore-wise an MMO that you are one character in, rest of the characters in the game are “other players” but are of course just narrative to us the real world player, but to our in-game player they are their real life friends and you know them separate from their characters). The pseudo-MMO has 5 classes, but your character is the jack of all trades class. So your various party members will be better than you at their one specialty, but if you are extremely selective, you can nearly match them at the same level if you pick only stuff for that one path. The trade off is that this class is supposed to be much harder to play.
But anyway, enough about that, the actual story of the game is awesome and I don’t want to spoil anything specific. Your character starts out unable to talk due to a malfunction of the “game”, but slowly gains more words, it’s not a gameplay mechanic, just a narrative mechanic, but it’s crazy endearing. Kind of like a “little mermaid” type scenario. She still has full control of her facial expressions and body language, and speaking of, there must be thousands of facial expressions. They did not skip out on any work in the pixel art department.
The exploration parts of the game are kind of zelda style platforming puzzles with more of an agility focus. Combat is real-time but somewhat easy, with more of a focus on stringing fights together and trying to survive as many back to back in quick succession as possible. The longer you stay in combat and string fights together, the less overall monsters you have to kill to get all the loot from a zone. Though the max monsters you need to kill at the worst is pretty low. Like 50-100 per zone. And even then it’s optional, but better.
They also have dungeons, these are also pretty similar to old school zelda, but quicker and tighter. Speaking of, character movement/control is very agile for a pixel art game. I’m not generally great at it in other games, but I love it in this game.
Ok, well I should probably stop now. I could probably go on for hours, it’s an amazing game that I’m sad I didn’t hear about til recently, but at least I did eventually hear of it. Now I feel I have to make sure other people don’t miss out on it like I almost did.
Edit: bah one more thing, character development is pretty robust. I built my entire character around thorns damage and blocking. It’s entirely possible to go through the game this way, in fact it makes some fights kind of silly. But it’s also entirely possible to never have any thorns and even to never block a single hit. But the thorns mechanic alone is pretty deep. There are several components that affect how much damage you will reflect when blocking a hit, how much the hit would have been, how much you lowered it by blocking it, how much baseline “pin body”(thorns) you have and how much defense the monster has. So a boss hitting you for 100 that you reduce down to 50 is gonna hit them back pretty hard, but so is a monster hitting you for what would have been a string of 10 hits of 3 damage, but you reduced them all to 0. Since there is a baseline, those 10 hits trigger pretty close to your minimum amount, but it’s probably alot more than 3, and certainly more than the 0 they actually did to you. There is also perfect guarding, completely unnecessary, but since my character is all about blocking, I decided to practice perfect guarding, and I got pretty good at it. Also when I perfect block a melee hit, it stuns them for 2 seconds. And perfect blocks inherently double thorns damage, like as if it was a crit.
All the mechanics seem as deep and well planned out as that too. And there are alot of mechanics. The 4 main disciplines are tank, ranged damage, melee damage and caster. Though caster is mostly just using more skills instead of auto attacks while still being either melee or ranged. Just get way more mana regen. And of course the idea is to blend and not just specialize in one, but you can also specialize. Ranged damage is done by way of shooting “spheres”, it’s also a pretty important aspect of alot of puzzle solving, but you don’t need any points in ranged damage to solve puzzles with it. I have no points in any type of damage other than thorns. My character has more than double defense versus attack. Hehe.
There is a relatively limited selection of gear, but you will likely always find something you want. Kind of similar to a final fantasy game, no unnecessary gear, just a bunch of stuff that “isn’t for you this play through”, but your party members might like what you don’t. They of course have their own money and choose when and what new gear they buy. Though bringing them to a shop that has what they want will prompt it, otherwise they’ll go shopping on their own time when not in your party.
Outerwilds is a beautiful game and quite short, try to go in as blind as possible. It’s space archaeology.
Gris is an art game that’s about 3hrs long. Very pretty, very zen.
Into the breach, is a puzzle game (chess vibes) where you are time travellers saving the world from insect aliens. has a long time to beat, but play sessions are fairly short. I think it’s a great game for when you are taking short breaks between something else. it might be a tad too on the roguelike side for you, but it’s primarily about solving puzzles.
Carrion is a puzzle-horror game that took me about 5hrs to beat, it’s extremely satisfying
Nauticrawl is a very esoteric game, you pilot a sub at the bottom of the ocean and have to learn from scratch how to pilot it. If you like doing stuff with no instructions you’ll enjoy it.
Not for broadcast is a shortish (~20hrs) game where you control a live action broadcast and get points for how well you do cuts… or censor people
Superliminal is a 3hr puzzle game that plays with size and perspective.
Some games, like the Pathfinder games by Owlcat, use that initial input to determine if you are playing with mouse/keyboard or a gamepad. Depending on that, you get presented with a different UI in the main menu.
Another reason for such a screen could also be Xbox support. Nowadays it’s no longer necessary, because user-handling has been vastly improved with the GDK, but before the GDK was released a splash screen was the most user-friendly way to do user-handling in a single-player or online-multiplayer game on Xbox.
I get your point. And kind of agree for the most part. But idk, some title screens are nice to look at. Having the option to just view it until I’m ready to go on is nice imo. One button press isn’t all that bad. But yeah when loading or dlc checking has to be done after pressing the button it’s more annoying. That should happen before imo
You support more unethical bullshit buying avocados and meat than you do video games. To even give the issues you’ve mentioned as much attention as you have, while ignoring the much less ethical things you purchase far more often, shows how disingenuous and shallow your objection to those products really is, and it leads to more problems than it solves.
For example, Balders Gate 3 is a pretty fantastic game, with no micro transactions or as far as I can see any other form of end user manipulation.
They’re also one of the few studios I’ve seen recently that the devs dont seem burnt out on, which says a lot about how they were managed.
And they just license the content from wizards, to go “oh they’re tangentially related so it’s evil!” (Which you also did with hogwarts legacy) denies all the hundreds and thousands of passionate developers of a chance.
Indie games are a great alternative, true, but as others have said indies can be as toxic as the big companies when they want to be. Not to mention the long term consequences of that direction being developers can’t work together to make AAA games anymore, because according to your rules if a shithead makes it to the top everyone else’s work should be thrown away.
Mine is simply a more specific example of the “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” argument that has been repeated here many times.
You mean the argument saying we cannot fix the system without abolishing the system? You’re using it to instead justify the inequities of the system and henceforth ignoring them because you completely missed the point of the phrase?
You know what an example is? Regardless of whether I agree with him or not, those were examples. They good list a whole bunch of other foods or shampoos or drinks or whatever the hell you can imagine. The poster was trying to make a point. Fixating on the examples and giving personal examples of people you specifically don’t do the two things the poster mentioned doesn’t make the argument lose its merit.
My personal opinion on the subject is very different than the poster’s, which can be summarized to that I don’t oppose art because I don’t like the artist, I won’t stop reading Lovecraft or listening to Vivaldi because they were trash people, because their art is great. So I don’t in fact agree with what the poster said, but clinging to personal examples to refute an argument while ignoring the global average which is what the argument was using is disingenuous.
With the same logic, since the people you know don’t eat meat, that’d mean there’s no problem with the meat eating in the world, which I’m sure you’d rush to point out the absurdity of logic there.
My personal opinion on the subject is very different than the poster’s, which can be summarized to that I don’t oppose art because I don’t like the artist, I won’t stop reading Lovecraft or listening to Vivaldi because they were trash people, because their art is great. So I don’t in fact agree with what the poster said
OP did not say they did not want to play the games. They said they could not play their games because that would be giving money to the studios; that which is a form of support. The relevant sentence is here:
I can’t play them because it’d be giving those companies/people money
I am fairly sure that OP would love to play the games they cite. And that they love the art. But that is not the point. The point is whether or not they are willing to support the bad practices from the studio. Because if they did buy the game, indirectly it would be supporting those bad practices.
Your initial point (the “global average” of it) was that there are more serious things to care in the world - you were assuming that OP had to be doing something else such as buying non-local food which is bad for the planet, and you were more or less saying that it is stupid for them to care about what happens in the game industry when they most probably do not care about the food they eat.
My point was that you were doing moral assumptions about OP - I pointed your specific avocado example, but even more generally than that, you were assuming that OP had to be doing something wrong somewhere in the context of ecology.
Well, now, my last and final point is that OP may be someone who is careful about what they buy generally speaking (not just avocados), whether it be shampoo or whatever. Again, I do know people who are very careful about what they buy. They will try their best to never buy something new for instance ; buying from second-hand places for example. And they will try their best to almost never waste something. If OP were to be someone like that, then your whole point would not apply to them. Hence my initial point.
I did not get your meta-logical reasoning on your last paragraph. But I will leave it at that because I am not sure continuing this discussion is fruitful.
You’re right it’s not, since neither did I comment on the original poster’s message, but the one’s you were responding to, nor did I assume anything about the original poster. And I’m certain I was not the person you originally replied to either.
Maybe pay more attention next time? If you’re interested in my answer to the OP, I have that below in another comment that answers to the OP, not you answering to someone else that commented on the OP.
Apologies - I am not good with names and the “Show context” feature only shows one message. I did not even realize I was talking to a different person. Thanks for clarifying
I appreciate your thought-out response. I’m going to respond as best I can to your points.
I struggle with moral/ethical conundrums in all areas of my life. The current discussion is games, but I really do consider the harm I might be causing any time I buy things. There are some harms that I cannot avoid, such as the purchase of gasoline (my current income is low and I cannot afford a greenee car). Others, such as food purchases, are limited in what I can do… But I try anyway. I have an app for telling me about ethical sourcing by company/product which I use at the store. Clothing, sadly, tends to be unethical no matter what, unless I make my own clothes - I sadly don’t have the time or money to do so.
With video games, which are themselves a luxury, I have so many choices of what to play that I feel I have much more ability to decide what not to play, based on how I feel about where my money is going.
I should also acknowledge that I don’t think any of these games/developers will suffer as a result of me not purchasing them. Developers/programmers also do not make income based on sales, and layoffs happen after the release of many major AAA games, simply because they don’t need that large team anymore (I don’t agree with this practice at all, and I think it’s horrible to do to people who already don’t make enough for their work, but it’s relatively industry standard). The gaming community is also waaaay too large for any kind of boycott to be effective. I’m just trying to be mindful about my purchases based on my own feeling.
I think you raise a fair point about indie games. I think it’s a good reminder to me to look into those as well. As long as there’s no major publicized controversy surrounding an indie company, however, there’s no information I can use to steer me away from it. But, I appreciate your reminder not to blindly purchase indie games just because the company is “indie.”
Overall, I appreciate you taking the time to respond to me. I will be considering your points as I move forward.
As far as I know, Larian is not such a company like you mention. Everything they’ve done or said so far, to my knowledge, both referring to BG3 and their previous games is classes above the average for the industry.
Of course it’s your decision to not buy their game based on the fact they had to use WotC’s IP, but you’re punishing an actually good developer for something they did not have a choice on (WotC’s ethics and way of running things).
Truth is like that you’re not hurting them, and most importantly not hurting WotC who’d get a small percentage of a small percentage of your sale. Couple of bucks at best is nothing to WotC’s bottom line.
But that’s your prerogative and that’s fine. However, I do suggest you play the game, cracked if you must because so far with about 20h in, it’s an amazing game from a great company. Maybe it won’t make you buy it, but at least it might make you consider supporting their other, or future, games that are not connected with WotC. Because the last few years we’re fast to point fingers to others, but forget to reward the few that do things properly.
Really none. The game walks you through rolls and what each thing does.
Having a little knowledge of how D&D works only serves to make the leveling up process go quicker since you have ideas on how to allocate stats or what specialties you take without reading through everything.
Yeah I think OP is looking at this from the wrong way. As opposed to a normal game you’ve never played before in which you have to learn the mechanics completely from scratch, with BG3, if you have any knowledge of 5e, you’ll be able to pick it up easier.
The only argument for piracy being bad is that it is stealing because they lost a sale they would have otherwise gotten. You already bought the game. Therefore, there is no lost sale. There’s not a single moral argument against it now.
That being said, your ISP can’t tell the difference, so make sure you use a VPN (especially if torrenting)
And that argument is BS anyway, because there’s no such thing as “potential profit” even though companies say there is.
When I pirated the most games I had no money. If I didn’t pirate it, I’d go play on the street or whatever lol. Not going to buy what you literally can’t.
Same goes for denuvo and the “always online” for single player games crap. I’m not buying any games using those on principle.
I don’t disagree, I brought it up just because it’s the only argument against piracy that holds any merit at all )even if little) and is, in this case, completely irrelevant anyway.
As far as I know ow most paid VPNs allow it, a lot of free ones don’t. I can say from experience that Windscribe allows torrenting, although there is a 10gb limit per month on free accounts (there is a way to get around that tho)
When the big brother dies in Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. The game is short, but does a great job of getting you emotionally attached to these brothers. Even through the controls, you control both brothers at once with each getting half of your controller. When he dies, it also essentially kills half of your controller. I found myself trying to move the brothers together as I have for the rest of the game.
Such a great way to implement gameplay into the emotions of a game. It was like after someone died in real life, you keep thinking about messaging them all the cool things you find that they’d like only to realize they’re not there. You just sent a meme to a phone number that hasn’t been paid for in months. Maybe you even start paying the phone bill so you can keep hearing their voicemail. Continuing to reach for half of the controller that can’t do anything now is just amazing.
I was playing this game with my 4 yo daughter, giving her a controller pretending she was controlling the younger brother. We would talk to the characters as if the younger brother was her and the elder brother was me. It was an amazing experience. Then the elder brother dies, and it’s not even a quick thing. There’s a whole big segment of the younger brother carrying the elder brother’s body and burying it. My daughter doesn’t exactly understands what is happening, but keeps getting more and more upset and scared, and keeps asking me why I wouldn’t wake up. That segment fucked me up as I was trying to get through that part while also trying to comfort my daughter.
I cried that whole bit with the controller feeling like you’re missing an arm. So exact a representation of grief.
But the last scene, where the father simply falls to his knees at his son’s grave. He’s been granted his life back at a price no human parent would ever, ever accept. I cried racking sobs. It was so awful and true.
This game is my answer as well. I held it together through big big brother’s burial. When I lost it was in the epilogue when I realized I needed to press big brother’s action button for little brother to pull the big lever. I literally wept as I pressed that button.
Hate soulslike stuff other than combat, bonus points when there’s no checkpoint before a boss fight so you have to redo 50 fights just to die again and repeat the process until you’ve learned the boss moved… or shot yourself. Oh and you can’t pause so tough luck if you ordered food or kids want something. Fromsoft are masters or marketing to sell this bullshit as something great
Also hate unskippable cutscenes, good story like witcher, ffvii remake or kotor defends itself. If you feel the need to do it chances are your story is bad and so you shouldn’t. Just look at ghost of tsushima, good combat, great world and visuals. Easily an 8/10 or better potential but mostly bad story without skips makes it tedious and just not fun. A samurai fetching herbs for peasants 😂 Bonus points if you can’t even pause the mighty cutscene
bonus points when there’s no checkpoint before a boss fight so you have to redo 50 fights just to die again and repeat the process
DS1 I feel is decent with this (could be Stockholm syndrome) and Elden Ring removes the issue almost completely. But Jesus Christ DS2 was awful in this regard. At least they added the mechanic where mobs stop respawning after you’ve killed them N times; I removed every single enemy from along the Smelter Demon corpse run lmao
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