Companies are terrified of AI making their work obsolete. To such a degree they are trying to do it first. Thankfully AI is so painfully bad that the companies that have tried this are failing hard.
Loving the game, do agree though that it starts to get a bit muddled and confusing - at times it feels like I’m not really sure which quests I’m doing, why I’m doing it or what I’m trying to achieve – very realistic to real life in that regard but it can feel a bit of a chore
I kind of stopped paying attention to side quests. In a lot of RPGs, I feel like they’re discrete, separate errands, and usually contained within the area where they’re given. BG3 side quests seem a lot more integrated, in the sense that I’ll often just happen along the next step in one as I pursue main quest. If not, then it may be because the next step is in the next Act. And some of them seem to be mutually exclusive.
Maybe because it’s my first play through, but I’m now in ‘if it happens, it happens’ mode, and I’m confident that there are enough opportunities for me to make different choices to have a substantially different experience next time.
Running on Windows 11 with a 6900XT and Vulkan and DX11 look effectively identical as far as I can tell but Vulkan runs a lot faster and doesn't stutter when loading a new area.
Unfortunately though it tends to crash on tab out which means I need to use DX11 because I play with friends.
Yes. It’s not really meant as a visual improvement but as an efficiency improvement. Sadly it does seem (for some, myself included) that the Vulkan build needs a bit of work. For me it crashes all the time, and Larian themselves mentioned that it isn’t quite as stable as the DX11 build.
What is “9070-series” supposed to be? “9070” isn’t a series but a specific graphics card! If you want to reference the whole series, then say “9000-series”!
Technically they just announced the 9070 and the 9070 XT, so there are two different designs that could be considered part of the “9070-series”. They could also be saying “series” because most of the 9070s on the market will be AIB boards with slightly different feature sets.
It doesn’t say this in the article, but they mention it in the DF video: they couldn’t tell which card it was on exactly, it was a 9070 or 9070 XT engineering sample.
I think there’s a marketing slide from AMD saying they’re renaming their GPUs to better match competition. So 9070 series cards are supposed to match 5070 series cards, that’ll be 5070, 5070 Ti as of now and super later on.
They’re not saying it but I think it’s likely this is because of all the big games coming out in February. Civ 7, Avowed, and Monster Hunter Wilds are the three big ones and those take up a lot of time. Shadows would get lost in the weeds. Meanwhile there isn’t really a big game coming out in March. So perfect time.
Some games fix this issue by making the player trigger the change they want and bring the fight to the big powerful threat themselves, on their terms.
In fact one of my favorite RPG has the player characters being the ones trying to end the world as they know it.
I do think the extreme example, the old RPG trope of the big bad looming over in the red-tinted sky and being just minutes from firing the world busting laser while you finish your quest list, is rather cringe. Maybe don’t invoke this in a game where time is basically irrelevent.
It’s not an RPG, but I think Owlboy handled it expertly.
Each level, Owlboy is out to handle some dangerous issue that is happening. By the end of the level, he succeeds.
The thing is, in the background, other things are happening. Almost every time you “succeed” the story moves forward to tell you, “oh, while you were doing that, THIS was happening that made all you just did basically pointless and we’re all even more screwed than before you started this level.”
So, it keenly points out the enemies aren’t waiting around, in fact, they’re doing dastardly things while you’re busy trying to save the day, so much so that your character continues to feel like a failure despite many successes. I think it’s a great way to present and write a story, to show that your character isn’t the only one in the wider world that things are happening to and can’t handle all problems at once. Things happen outside of their control and outside of their vision, just like in our real lives.
I feel like FromSoft's games have a nice solution to this in that generally speaking, the world has basically already ended and you're fighting through the wreckage to try to pick it up again. Not a viable option for every story, though, of course
I would quite like to see a game in which the events play out both without a completely fixed schedule and without being within the player's control. If we take Skyrim as an example, since everyone already knows how that one works, imagine if:
Civil war battles happen whether you are there or not. You get some notice about them or can maybe even ride in at the last moment to turn the tide, but they're happening with or without you.
Your sidequests to win over jarls and find powerful artifacts stack the odds in your chosen side's favour. Intercepting the messenger on that one mission allows you to avert an otherwise guaranteed loss for your side.
Alduin is also doing stuff on his own schedule. If you leave him unchecked, one of your allied jarls might have their army decimated trying to hold off a dragon attack without you.
If you leave Alduin unchallenged long enough, jarls start defecting to the Dragon Cult and directing dragons with armies as backup towards your side, knowing that you are fighting for them and are the biggest threat on the board.
Leaving your civil war side unsupported means that Balgruuf won't agree to help trap Odahving. You then have to track down info about the portal to Sovngarde in an ancient scroll and take the long and arduous journey up the mountainside yourself on foot, leaving your civil war side without you for days on end
You'd need to make sure that the player has control over when these events start, but it already does gate dragons behind that first quest to defend Whiterun. You want to just mess about in caves for the first twenty hours, sure, go ahead.
Obviously Skyrim was never going to do this because it isn't trying to be that kind of game. It wanted to be a do anything go anywhere power fantasy, and that's fine. But I would like more games to do this sort of thing. I think some of Paradox's strategy games actually do quite a good job of creating this feeling, but the gameplay is completely different (and it only works until you get good enough to just break the mechanics in half for most of them)
I feel like FromSoft’s games have a nice solution to this in that generally speaking, the world has basically already ended and you’re fighting through the wreckage to try to pick it up again. Not a viable option for every story, though, of course
It sounds like it could be so cool. Asymmetrical multiplayer has so many unexplored possibilities.
BUT
Arkane had never developed a co-op game before Microsoft got their hands on them and we all saw how Redfall did. I have to remain cautiously optimistic about this
That’s true, and fair. I am optimistic though since from what I understand Arkane didn’t want to develop a multiplayer game. Sounds like this has been something remedy wanted to do
I was just about to comment that it all makes sense now. Since Musk has no friends, he hasn’t unlocked empathy yet. Someone just needs to befriend the guy, somehow.
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