harmonea

harmonea, rok temu

People are clamoring around you in a huge chorus of it's fine just roll with it but frankly, I think your point of view is totally valid. While Larian did a great job making every path a valid way to the ending, you can really only ever lock yourself out of content with your choices.

Go too far down one of two branching paths? Hope you can pass a big fat skill check or two, or that one companion will bail. Hope you didn't like that character or want to see more of that content. (Oh, and if you do pass the skill checks, 10 minutes later the companion is like "ugh no it's fine you were right, forget I ever wanted to go that way even though I've been obsessed with it for the last 20 hours" in the name of railroading the character back in line.)

Get interested in the wrong quest too early? Hope you didn't want to finish the main side objective in that one area. No no, even though all the characters are still present, you don't get to finish it. Because we said so. Shoo along to the next place. Go. Get.

And here's hoping you don't get curious about the "evil" path - you lose multiple companions and a whole-ass cast of side characters that are meant to follow you through the game and gain one (1) bit of interesting new content to replace them. Is it still interesting? Absolutely, but it's a consolation prize compared to how much you lose.

It took me 3 playthroughs or so before I finally felt like I was on a save where I was having a good 80%+ of the intended experience. And yeah, you can replay it for what you missed, but not everyone has time for that, especially in a game this immense. I know I've started it up to make my fourth character about half a dozen times and Alt-F4ed during character creation as soon as I think about going through the parts I've thoroughly combed already.

BG3 is my GOTY by a long shot, but people should have more sympathy for this outlook. There are definitely right paths and wrong paths, and while they all lead to the end, the wrong paths have a lot less to look at and a healthy amount of rubbing your face in the fact that you did stuff in the wrong order ("Perhaps you could have...." ok thanks, narrator).

harmonea, rok temu

Article only mentions dungeons. Did they add it for story trials too? As far as I know that's only available for early 4-player trials and a couple of very recent additions. The Chrysalis, Steps of Faith, etc can still wipe a group of human players easily if their mechanics are ignored.

harmonea, rok temu

Mhm, that's one of the "very recent additions" I meant. The other being Memoria, but that's a sidequest.

Bit of a sensationalized headline, then. They're almost there, but not "entirely."

harmonea, rok temu

Are they still working on buffing the shit out of the same modern day protagonist as before or what? I only got about halfway through Odyssey (but looked up the ending) and skipped Valhalla.

harmonea, rok temu

Everyone's malding over spoilers and not realizing this isn't an actual ending that's coded into the game, it's just a funny side effect of a spell that malfunctioned during the end boss.

harmonea, rok temu

But then they wouldn't get so many clicks and reactions.

harmonea, rok temu

People can also apply the slightest semblance of critical thinking and realize most gaming journalism outfits, no matter their questionable quality, will realize they won't last long if there are true spoilers in the titles. Therefore this isn't really a spoiler.

Like they're obviously going to phrase things in ways that get more engagement, which is why it's a crucial skill on the internet today that readers need to think critically and not just accept headlines literally.

I'm not saying it's right, but jfc man, you have to develop skills to engage with the internet you have, not the internet you wish you had. I really feel no sympathy for people who thought this was a spoiler. At least this is a cheap lesson in gullibility instead of a costly one.

harmonea, rok temu

Guessing you didn't see the recent news about Epic doing a big layoff and shedding properties recently?

harmonea, rok temu

No, there was absolutely no claim that it was an innocent mistake, I'm not sure why that was written there. It's just a promise to look into it, no more no less.

harmonea, rok temu

Huh. I guess you're one of those that waits for people to tell you things in the comments, makes weird extrapolations about it, and jumps to conclusions rather than just clicking the OP link and absorbing the information there?

How did you even get that from what I said?

And literally the second tweet the dev made was "they've never sent any replies to me" so he's clearly been trying?

I'm usually more understanding of people missing information, but it took you more time and effort to jump to these conclusions and write a totally incorrect defense of Epic than it would have to just see that the info is right there.

harmonea, rok temu

The procedural content especially is, like, antithetical to the formula.

Agreed; I don't even understand why procedural generation is popular anymore. It was novel in its first uses, but where devs see convenient shortcuts and marketers see "infinite replayability," I see "this shit is all going to feel identical after like 5 tries tops."

Oh look, it's the skybox from 3 planets ago with the ruin from 2 planets ago and the enemy selection from 5 planets ago. And I think this might be a new shade of blue in the grass, or is that just the skybox casting a weird hue over everything?

Much refreshing, very discover, wow.

harmonea, rok temu

The fact that they even tried to pretend it wasn't retroactive because they didn't charge for old install counts. Like, does it charge games that were released under different terms? Yes? Then it's retroactive!

harmonea, rok temu

I love AC. Or... did.

AC Odyssey was the first one in the entire series I couldn't push myself to finish. I used to love just bumping around eliminating every single map icon, but Odyssey was way, way too big, and having my zen ruined by bounty hunters all the time was exhausting.

I heard Valhalla was even worse. It was the first one I skipped after playing each one since the original (even some of the 2D ones).

harmonea, rok temu

I'm glad you had fun with it. Do accept that my inability to have fun with it doesn't negate any of the enjoyment you got out of it. Respectfully, something this long instructing me of all the ways I must have played it wrong if I didn't enjoy it as much as you comes off as a little condescending. I'm sure it wasn't your intent, but like... I know I have the option to put it down or skip things. I know I can pay off bounties. I was there, these systems and ideas are not hard to find. But for me, the fact that I'm allowed to skip engaging with a system or put it down before I see all the devs put there for me to see is the opposite of a selling point.

For me, it's like I ordered a meal at a favorite restaurant, the plate came out with portions three times larger than expected and gorgeously plated but with so little seasoning I couldn't stomach it. Saying "you don't have to eat it all" and "there's salt on the table" doesn't make it a good meal.

We find different things fun, and that's okay. May we both have a good time with Mirage.

harmonea, rok temu (edited rok temu)

It's pretty much all he does unless he finds an Obra Dinn-tier darling.

Except for Gollum, he was weirdly defensive of that for a game that pulled every AAA anti-consumer trick in the book without at least the decency to be bland.

harmonea, rok temu

This is a hard question to answer, because the really unfun ones either get dropped so fast I forget I ever played them unless someone jogs my memory by naming them directly, or I'm willing to just shrug and say "this is probably great to some people, but it's not a genre I like." I guess for this category, I would point to The Witness. I heard so many recommendations for it, but aside from the occasional "oh, neat" when I saw how a puzzle was placed in the world instead of on a board, I couldn't tolerate it for nearly as long as it wanted me to keep doing the thing.

The game I memorably should have enjoyed - that I had the highest hopes for (and the biggest subsequent disappointment for) was Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice.

At first, I loved the deeply disturbed main character and grim Norse fantasy world being crafted around me, but the combat felt so disjointed from the story (on purpose) that it felt like there was one guy on the dev team who liked combat who everyone was afraid to piss off, so they had to make concessions and put one token immersion-wrecking battle in every so often. And it's mad that Senua has two entire character traits - "psychotic" and "warrior" - and one of them managed to feel immersion breaking.

Then the ending destroyed the bits of the game I DID like and made me feel like a tool for ever having bought into the grim fantasy world to begin with. That shit is everyone's most hated ending trope, and I walked away from the game feeling like I'd wasted my time.

At least it was short.

harmonea, rok temu

Oh, I'm positive yours is by far the more common experience - I haven't met anyone who agreed with me about it, haha. (But starting with "unpopular opinion, but..." is so tainted by popular opinions seeking attention that I couldn't bring myself to say it)

And yeah, the puzzles were simple, but the world was cool enough (until the ending loljk'd it all) that I enjoyed spending time in it even doing the simple stuff.

harmonea, rok temu

Bethesda the publisher does things differently than Bethesda the developer.

As a dev, they know their modding communities keep their games alive long, long past their expiration dates and will fuck with them as little as they possibly can - this takes them from games to household names to legends that everyone knows.

As a publisher pushing products that aren't intended to be modded, they drink the koolaid.

harmonea, rok temu (edited rok temu)

I didn't say they don't make good games. I said they drink the koolaid.

Context matters, and in the context of this thread (whether or not Bethesda games often have Denuvo) that means the anti-piracy "DRM is neat" koolaid (vs them avoiding DRM for self-developed games so they can be modded extensively).

harmonea, rok temu

Astarion's mocap in particular is just excellent. He's so deeply weird and it's completely appropriate. I love how during most normal gameplay, his whole body is constantly on the edge between breaking into raucous laughter or total exasperation. Kudos to the actor(s) and techs that put the whole package together.

harmonea, rok temu

Calling DnD bland always strikes me as funny. It's bland compared to most modern fantasy for the same reason Seinfeld is bland compared to most modern sitcoms: it's one of the the foundations upon which most of the rest of what we've consumed since its inception is built. We've seen all the innovations upon its formula, so going back to the original can feel lacking if you don't bother to think critically about why it feels that way.

The important thing is that even without all those innovations, they nailed the source material and created the richest experience they could within its boundaries. If it's not for you, it's not for you, and that's fine - no game is for everyone. But it's a pity you dismiss it so flippantly, and I hope one day you can grow to see what's executed well in a project even when its end goal isn't to your tastes. Or just grow out of trolling, whichever applies. I'm not going to pick that apart.

harmonea, rok temu

Oh, you might be right. That's even odder to me then; I haven't played any of the Horizon games myself, but I find their setting premise fascinating. Is it so poorly executed?

If I misunderstood, my bad, but I'll leave it since there are people who rant about BG3 in a similar direction.

harmonea, rok temu

That's a pity. Still, the setting (time period/tech levels/world population composition etc) is worth taking away as something good that people can learn from, I hope, even if they messed it up so badly.

harmonea, rok temu

Wow, that's a kind of dismissal that only those who have no idea how bad it gets can wield. Reading glasses help with clarity, but clarity is not the only issue with old eyes and other visual impairment. Sometimes you just plain need things bigger.

One day you'll look back on this exchange and cringe at the kind of person you used to be. Be better. Accessibility is important.

Signed, someone who's needed full-time prescription glasses for 35+ years and only recently started having to read small print on food and medicine containers with the zoom on my phone camera.

harmonea, rok temu

I agree removing the character entirely seems too far. The characters are designed differently enough that you would be leaving a reasonable number of people without their favorite playstyle entirely without a suitable replacement.

I get people not being able to look past the history, but I'm not sure there's any more reasonable course of action that can be taken. The name was the homage, not the kit, art, or lines. And now that name is gone.

I think those who are still upset about it would have to accept they fall under "Don't like? Don't engage" rather than calling for further action.

harmonea, rok temu

Because they don't want to be held to the new standard, obviously. They're comfortable and are preemptively taking offense at the idea of having to do more in the future. Like the normal kids who want to punch down the one overachiever who reminds the teacher to assign homework.

But this isn't a homework assignment; these are businesses competing for consumer dollars, and Larian is winning with their investment into a happy team and good product.

harmonea, rok temu

You're not wrong, but a lot of people aren't willing to invest the subscription fee and the hundreds of hours they'd need to see that for themselves. And even as someone who's all caught up on 14, I honestly can't blame them. Time is precious, and it's asking for a lot.

harmonea, rok temu

The brand suffers because people care about it. If no one cared, the brand would just wither and die, forgotten, like so many others have. This seems obvious enough that I really have to wonder, did you ask this question because you're actually surprised, or because you want to portray some weird image of being above all this?

harmonea, rok temu

Good luck with your game! However, if I can make a suggestion:

Think of a way to describe your creation without referencing another game. This might be the only time you're going to get it in front of my eyes, and I know nothing because I've never played the two games you used to compare it to (never even heard of one of them in fact), so I'm not going be hyped or follow it. (While it's true there's a trailer, I'm not in a spot where I can watch it.)

Marketing is important to success, use your limited eyeball time well!

harmonea, rok temu

I play a foreign-developed live service game in which one of the native-language voice actors has been under investigation for the better part of a year and has been unable to work. The dev has, with the VA's consent, had AI covering him the entire time so that his character wouldn't go unvoiced.

It's scary how you forget it's AI sometimes. I think the only complaint I've heard is the fact that sometimes his tone is wrong, because 80% or so of the content is side story with a nice, sweet tone while the main story content is serious, so sometimes the voice in the main story sounds side story sweet.

Which is to say: it really sucks, but the time of bootleg VAs is upon us. The AI is just too good already.

(Someone will ask: the game is Tears of Themis, and the VA being covered is the prolific Jiang Guangtao.)