I adore the walking dead games, they totally spoiled the TV show for me as the characters were soo much better. Lee and Clem at the end of the first game was such an emotional gut punch, one of the few times a game made me cry.
Lee and Clem had such a great story, nothing else I played in the series even came close. I'd even go so far to say that it wins over most other kid/dad duos in games.
I’ve really enjoyed many of the IP based games over the years, Star Wars, Marvel, Indiana Jones and even Lego GTA. Oh sorry, Lego City: Undercover.
The one that really disappointed me was Lego: Worlds. I thought it would be fun to build with unlimited bricks virtually but it’s just not for me.
I like to have physical bricks in front of me which give me ideas as I build. Finding different bricks in the pile gives me new ideas as I build. That’s not something than happens with the game.
On the flip side, playing with the 80s Space sets was a huge nostalgia kick for me.
Love both, and very excited for their next game, No Rest for the Wicked - which I don’t know if it’s been said explicitly, but is rumored to also be a Metroidvania.
I know it might be a little cliché, but I would still rank Hollow Knight as my #1 Metroidvania, but these two are my #2A and #2B, even after loving the new Prince of Persia. The level of polish is incredible and Wisps just cranked it up even more.
I know people don’t like to create accounts, but Larian seems to be doing fine when I created the vault account(for their prior kickstarter redeem etc.) It doesn’t work with launcher and I contact support to then know they have a new system so they can link steam/twitch/gog for their game specific feature(cross save and twitch integration). So if you ever want to do a session in the future using the twitch integration, you would have to register account to be able to link and use that. It lets viewer check character build/inventory and quest logs, so you can have like 3 viewer like your buddy playing together while you control the choice, your buddy can vote for decision making or direct their character’s combat choice. At worst you can be the only viewer to your stream and just use it as a 2nd screen to have over view of character build or inventory.
OP is concerned about their privacy, rightfully so. Them requiring you to make an online account after you have purchased the game is entirely unjustified. They could already tie information to the account with which you purchased a licence.
Connecting Twitch and whatnot would work against your privacy: even if Larian does not do anything bad, they will share data with these connected accounts.
Yep I understand those and just saying the obvious reason why one might want to create account, and you can skip or disable launcher entirely as mentioned in this thread.
Cross save( especially between consoles<->PC ) requires linking accounts, Larian disabled it now because of a hotfix bug since PS5 version is not released yet and causing PC player issues.
And I honestly don’t know what kind of threat Twitch has over your privacy on a fresh Larian account. See here is a brief breakdown what they can see:
Larian: they now know I have a twitch account, potentially my twitch account’s email address.
Twitch: they now know I have BG3, on top of Rocket League and some games I used too stream with a friend. And I am on that garbage tier cause the account is a burner(to sign up stuff that might get spam mails), I never spent a dime on twitch, my user experience data is probably worst since I only go straight to the channel I want to get drops with and never “browse the recommendation”. BG3 I had to go to the game’s page and click on the drop enabled one then afk for 2 hours then I just close it.
So unless there is some secret tech I am not aware of, please do let me know why and what else might be shared that have threat to my personal info/privacy.
Larian has access to your game saves, and so if they wanted they could deduce your play style and so parts of your personality from it, things which are useful for targeted ads and other things.
If you say Larian can be trusted, this is probably not much of a concern, I mention this only because of Twitch. Twitch relies on data mining, and if Larian analyzed your saves for things like above, they they would have things to trade. But I have no idea about BD3, maybe they know more significant things than that.
With Twitch, it’s a little different.
First, they obviously (because they have personal recommendations) collect information on your interests, like what content do you prefer, but as you said this does not apply to you.
However Twitch also has several mechanisms for getting you to give up your phone number or email address: they don’t support standard time based 2FA authentication, instead they can only send codes in SMS or email, and 2FA is required if you want to stream (even only once) or get your own API key to be use for archiving programs and such using the twitch API.
The problem is not actually connecting Twitch with your Larian account, it is connecting it with anything at all, and if the other connected account also does data mining then it’s even worse, because if the collected information gets to Twitch, they will probably be able to tie it to a real world identity (like a phone number, payment account, or a honest primary email address (that may even include your real name)), but also some history on how easy is it to get you to spend money, or just how easy it is to get your attention, and then pass it all off as something even more valuable to “business partners”.
Also, I’m not actually sure if Twitch would bother with support for connecting accounts of services from which they can’t extract much value.
So my main point is that I don’t know about Larian, but Twitch is only in it to gain something from it, and they would scoop up whatever Larian makes available.
I am pretty sure they can’t give information to 3rd party other than the necessary part since they are EU based. And usually when you link account, it’s where you started the linking asking information from the target platform. In this case it’s Larian asking Twitch for auth so that a Twitch user is linked to a Larian account so they can access your viewing time and distribute the drop. (No, you don’t need to link if you are just viewer and not wanting the drop, it’s the streamer needs to the twitch integration like the voting extension, etc. I still have mine disabled. ) It’s usually outlined when you try to link and it will show what’s requested during the linking process.
Maybe I am not really careful from your perspective, but I have like 5 gmail/yahoo/proton email accounts that does different things depending on the information I want to share with the registered site. Didn’t go crazy like some one site per e-mail account, but it’s sufficiently safe over the years. I have never had a data breach/account stolen with my practice so far. (or getting unwanted emails on my banking/work related account.)
As for hiding my identity entirely from internet it’s probably a bit too late to the big corps cause stupid me registered a FB like every “dumb fucks” that did, oh, and google too when I do business with them.
Just to let you know, while you are adding to the conversation in some ways, in many ways you are distracting from it. I know you likely have good intentions, but you have pivoted completely away from the original ask and are muddying the waters of the conversation a little with the additional input in the complete opposite direction.
The twitch integration may have nice features but the OP, myself, and likely many others don’t care and just want to play our game in peace without constant studio specific launchers and accounts and etc. Bringing twitch integration up makes now us focus on that as the discussion point rather than the clearly user antagonistic features such as lack of a button to skip creating an account.
I only created this after so many post of “I don’t know why Larian would need to put up a launcher and ask for an account”. It’s to show what it actually do and why they needed it. And of course the user can just go with other higher voted comment thread. I think it is a legit reason and usage to ask you to create account and using the feature they provided, and it’s also totally fine that you don’t. (I didn’t created an account when I was checking back and forth with Larian support about the vault account I used to use for their website. I just skip and play EA as always until like 4~5 days later a guy explained this new account situation. I created account like 1 day before launch since I want to get the twitch drop.)
This is really cool! But – and I mean no disrespect – it’s not really Tarot (or at least not the Major Arcana). Tarot is about symbology, whereas these cards are akin to the Minor Arcana royalty – Page, Knight, Queen, and King. The art of the Major Arcana is specifically designed to contain certain symbols which can be used for readings. Of course, there are plenty of decks out there that do not conform to this, but they aren’t particularly useful as Tarot. It would be really cool to recreate this symbology as Major Arcana cards in the context in Elden Ring though!
Yeah, no worries! It’s not like I’m trying to really make a proper tarot card deck after all, as I am no mystic! I used the symbolism of the characters own stories to determine which cards I wanted to use. Some of them were a bit of a challenge of course!
Ah, I missed that comment. They even build an entire physics engine for this website, to resemble the physics in Half-Life 2. Objects like text and images interact with each other and stack on top. Love it!
Outer wilds felt really good to play, optimistic nihilism and a happy lonliness. One moment that really stood out to me was when I followed a certain object out of the solar system, spent pretty much 20minutes drifting in space listening to the other astronauts play together planets apart and watching the stars
spoilerWatching the stars slowly blink out and realizing that I won’t be able to save the sun, that it’s the whole universe going away. Givining in to the inevitability of it all ending and just watching everything end.
It’s one of the most peaceful times I’ve had with a game, and playing it in the middle of covid I cried happy tears. Go in as blind as you can.
It’s a gorgeous game experience. Not to mention they put so many other gamedevs to shame with their technical accomplishments (especially in the expansion – flooding waves in a ringworld!).
Don’t look up spoilers. Get yourself a copy and play it. Find somewhere to land :)
I was unsure if choosing a specific visual novel would make the discussion too limited, so I decided to go with the genre as a whole for this thread.
Still, I sneakily used my favorite visual novel as the image: Steins;Gate! It was my first game in the genre. I bought it on a whim for PS Vita, after seeing the glowing review headlines that applauded it for its great story and music. Little did I know that this meant only story and music: there was barely any gameplay! This together with the fact that some of the tropes felt really strange to me at the time (I was not really into anime culture) made me regret my purchase and almost stop playing.
But somehow the story got its hooks in me. Only a tiny bit at first, but day after day I became more engrossed and looking forward to my play session. I read it mostly during the night while in bed, and it really took over my life for some time. Eventually I finished all routes and achieved the true ending, which is one of my favorite endings and stories in videogames as a whole.
Since then I’ve played lots of others. Some quick thoughts:
-999: a bit disappointing, the story felt very contrived and not as great as others experienced it.
-Virtue’s last reward: a real step up from the previous game, complex and satisfying story with a very meta twist to it!
-Zero Time Dilemma: often described as the worst in the series, but somehow this story really grabbed me from start to finish. The stakes were extremely high and while the story was very convoluted, the payoff worked for me.
-Danganronpa 1 and 2: very strange and over the top, but extremely well written mysteries with great presentation and soundtrack
-Ace Attorney: the first game in the series. I played it on switch and liked it, but didn’t love it. The humor felt to childlike for me at times.
-Planetarian: fantastic little gem of a game. Most visual novels will demand dozens of hours of your time, but this can be finished in less than 5 hours. Absolutely amazing.
-Muv-Luv Extra: I am currently finishing all routes for the first game in this trilogy, as I have heard multiple times that the 3rd one is incredible. I liked it most when it was just funny nonsense (it can be quite hilarious at times). The serious parts really didn’t hit home for me and a lot of the content feels a bit problematic and strange. I suppose some of this is culture, some of it satire and it was originally an erotic game so that might have something to do with it.
A little surprised to hear Zero Time Dilemma is seen as the weakest game of the trilogy. I played them all in a vacuum, never really engaging with the communities around the franchise, and I would never have said that myself.
If I had to pick, I’d argue that Virtue’s Last Reward was the “worst” one, but I am not happy about writing that. It was a great game that I enjoyed start to end, but ending on a “this will only make sense when the 3rd game releases in X years!” note leaves a really sour taste in my mouth. The other two games are complete experiences, and when I am playing a visual novel, the last thing I want is a cliffhanger “join us next time to find out!”
That said I think I enjoyed puzzles and philosophical musings of it the most out of the three? So my opinion is more about what was bad than what was good and should probably be discarded anyway.
It was a great game that I enjoyed start to end, but ending on a "this will only make sense when the 3rd game releases in X years!" note leaves a really sour taste in my mouth.
Well, one problem with ZTD is that it completely ignored the teaser in VLR's epilogue. Actively contradicted it even.
I don't think the teaser made VLR feel incomplete though, since it was also completely disconnected from VLR's otherwise self-contained story.
I’m too baked to write a genuine answer rn but this is my favorite game. It isn’t my most played but it is certainly my most enjoyed. Something about its dance like cambat really appeals to me
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