Coelacanth

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

It’s both the saddest game I’ve ever played and perhaps the most uplifting one. It balances the knife’s edge between nihilism and hope so well. It can also be hysterically funny, yes. It’s truly unique in terms of writing.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

I’ve also watched some streams, and the performance hasn’t even been my biggest concern. I’m just… not interested? It hasn’t been gripping me. Even though there are these shiny new things and bells and whistles, it still just looks like another Bethesda game to me, but with a blander setting this time. Though maybe it’s more fun to play than watch. I just haven’t really seen anything that makes me go “goddamn I gotta get a piece of that”.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

Pandora Tomorrow is basically more of the same, and Chaos Theory is pretty much the peak Splinter Cell, so you have those two.

I think Double Agent was still okay, but it had a weird thing where there where two versions developed in parallel and they were quite different.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

Yeah, I think I never was able to play the real version. Maybe I can find a disc. I still have an old original Xbox lying around.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

I have less experience with BG1 than BG2 since I don’t find myself itching to replay it as often. I did do a full playthrough of it five or so years ago, though. Not Enhanced Edition, though.

The encounter design really does feel aged and it can often be a case of the developers unfun/poor encounter design versus your attempts to cheese it. Line of sight/Fog of War abuse, stacking Skull Traps etc. There is also the tried and true method of blocking physical access to your team by a horde of summons and pelting away with arrows. Arrow of Dispelling is particularly powerful.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

Oh yeah I do. Wow that takes me back. Stamina, kicks, acrobatics, finishing animations and beheadings. That was a great mod.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

I have a really complicated relationship with FFXV because while it’s an objectively pretty bad game, I enjoyed it way more than I reasonably should for a game of its quality. Maybe it was the fishing minigame.

I absolutely agree with the overambition being one of the downfalls of the game. They wanted to go too big and create some kind of multimedia “experience” where you had a movie, a novel and many many DLCs to spread the content over.

The end result is an empty shell of a game, and even after watching the movie first and pausing the main story at the appropriate points to play the DLCs (I didn’t play on launch and bought the complete edition), I was still missing context and having beats not land because apparently crucial backstory was meant to be told through the Lunafreya DLC that never got released because the game did poorly.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

You can indeed drive the car, but you couldn’t on launch. You can even put on some monster truck off-road wheels, I think.

The Prompto thing is a perfect example of the game shipping as incomplete. I did as was apparently intended and stopped playing the main game when he disappeared for a bit to play his DLC, and it does give a much better context. The lines after he comes back would barely make sense if I hadn’t.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

While I wasn’t hugely excited about Mitsoda’s thin-blood idea, I’m even less excited about being an awakened Elder. Also, knowing the heart and soul of the original will be missing does not fill me with optimism.

The content of the trailer gives me nothing to work with really, either. It will have first-person action combat, that’s about it, and it’s the last thing anyone excited for a Bloodlines sequel would care about.

I know characters, writing and atmosphere can be hard to get across in a trailer but I would have liked something more. The previous trailer at least had similar undertones to the first game, you could tell it had some of the same people involved and it gave me some optimism.

It Paradox wanted me to get me on board for this attempt they could have at least used one of Rik Schaffer’s new tracks for the trailer, but I assume he has been scrapped too.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

Fallout 1 & 2 are absolutely phenomenal classic games, but they are very old school (they’re 90’s releases, after all) so you have to be up for that. Not just graphically, but game design too. If you’re okay with that, they’re really worthwhile experiences, and I might even prefer Fallout 2 over unmodded New Vegas.

As is usually the case with games from this era, look for the unofficial patch and the Restoration Project, too.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

I agree. I really admired their persistence with it and it would be nice to have some actual competition to Unreal.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

Patch 2 came out yesterday and was supposed to address some Act 3 issues. Have you played since then? I’ve also noticed some bugs in Act 3 but nothing gamebreaking thankfully.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

Yeah I feel this too with games that really hit me. You get so invested in your character and your playthrough that you don’t want to let go of your save, so instead of committing down the last stretch of main quest you maybe boot it up, scrounge out a fight somewhere or do some small remaining side quest, then run around town mindlessly a bit and shut down the game.

I had that happen with Cyberpunk earlier this year and I’m feeling it starting to set in with BG3. The allure of a second playthrough is stronger here, though, so that might help me stay the course.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

That sounds about exactly what I expected.

There are people who have hungered for a new Bethesda Game^TM for almost a decade, and Starfield will ladle out another big helping, and I’m happy for them that they have many hours of enjoyment coming.

I’m just, kind of full, when it comes to that dish.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

Was it the engine or the ruleset? It’s widely accepted that D&D 5E is sorta hot garbage at higher levels so I was assuming that’s what Larian was referring to.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

Epic narratives have their place, but if you follow the 5E rules they don’t work well mechanically.

Fighting actual Gods in D&D should be fairly comfortable for a party of level 20 characters, which is part of the problem. The way the scaling of character power compared to enemy power works, fighting a group of goblins on the dirt road as a level 1 party is magnitudes more challenging than fighting an actual God as a level 20 party.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

I would have been interested in seeing it but my save was completely hardlocked out of it. In contrast to basically every other character she never ever came on to me (middle of Act 3 currently).

I must have done something in the wrong order, I’ve heard others have had trouble with it as well.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

The romances could do with a bit of an overhaul, in my opinion. Feels like several of them have weird pacing, and so many characters go from 0-100 in the blink of an eye. You say a single affirmation to Halsin and he acts like he’s been in love with you his whole life and you’re soulmates. Dude, I just offered you a drink at a celebration out of common courtesy.

With every other NPC being so horny it’s actually been refreshing to have Karlach just behave like a buddy in my playthrough, but in general for the Karlach romance to be so fiddly you need to follow a guide to not lock yourself out of it just sounds… poorly implemented.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

That would explain it, though not make it any less poorly designed. I also picked her up just at the very end of Act 1 and already had plenty of the item needed.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

I remember the time when I was really excited about this game. The original writer and composer were both returning, it looked so promising. But we all know what happened, and after Rik Schaffer himself said the soul of the project left when Brian Mitsoda was fired my expectations are firmly settled at the bottom.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

I agree, and it comes through in the companions, too. And despite them singling out Jaheira in the article I have a hard time recognising much of her, except for the appearance. Maybe the hundred years passing is the excuse but I wish her bossy, sarcastic, witty personality was more present and recognisable.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the game and it has been monopolizing my attention but it’s still not beating the Divinity 3 allegations (though I’m only at the end of Act 2, still).

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

Baldur’s Gate 2 is one of my favourite games of all time, and I was extremely worried and sceptical that BG3 could live up to the hype and the name of the franchise.

To the first point, it definitely has. The game is fantastic, deep, fun and absorbing, with gorgeous environments, interesting nooks, crannies and dungeons to explore and lots of fun making custom multiclass combos for your character.

It does a good job of creating a facsimile of playing Pen-and-Paper D&D with an abundance of skill checks and visible Dice Rolls, and if you decide to roll with your failures instead of save-scumming it has lots of different permutations for events and decisions can have serious consequences.

When it comes to how it relates to the previous games, I’m at the end of Act 2 and have yet to discover a real reason for this game to be called “Baldur’s Gate 3”. So far it has been entirely standalone, narratively. There might still be connections further down the road, however.

The real difference is in the writing. If what you love about the old Baldur’s Gates were the characters and the writing and you want and expect more of that then you will be disappointed. First of all, this game takes place 100 years after BG2 so expect very few familiar faces. The one returning character I’ve encountered so far has not felt particularly recognisable, either. It’s a damn good game, but it definitely feels like an unmistakably Larian game, and not a Baldur’s Gate game, writing wise. It particularly comes through in the companions.

As someone who adores the old games, I still recommend trying it as I’m having a lot of fun with it, but you might want to pretend it’s called “Divinity: Faerun” and not Baldur’s Gate 3 to enjoy it fully.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

Absolutely agreed. I asked one person if they wanted to share a drink at a celebration (that’s just social decorum, right?) and have done no flirting before or after that and now that person talks to me like they’ve been in love with me their whole life.

And I get the idea that you want to let everyone sleep with their favorite NPC regardless of who they’re playing as but it just feels weird to me that everyone is so both pansexual and horny. It makes me feel like nobody has any preferences and just falls in love with you because you’re the main character.

And in general it also lessens the sense of camaraderie a bit for me when it comes down to sex so much. I wish some companions had other interests and had no desire to get in your pants.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

I can’t say anything about the ending but as of the end of Act 2 at least one romance can have an influence on the main story.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

It’s made worse by Larians decision to absolutely juice the approval gains when going from Early Access to Full Release, apparently. Makes everything move way too fast and really exacerbates the issue.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

I think there is already a mod that turns off all approval gains, but beware that I think this also blocks off several companions’ personal quests, since they’re related to the relationship. At least that’s what I heard.

The mod I’m using tweaks approval so the gains are smaller for little stuff, losses are bigger and important story decisions etc become more significant (in both directions). I unfortunately didn’t find it until I was already near-max with several companions but it should in theory make it more difficult to end up with everyone being in love with you before the third long rest.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

I feel like there might be room for an old school PC gaming community here on Lemmy. There is usually a console/arcade game focus on the retro gaming communities, but it would be great to have a place to discuss releases from that 1990-2009 or so era.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

WallSoGB really just burst onto the scene last year and established himself as one of the absolute top tier FNV modders alongside lStewieAl, Xilandro et al.

Incredible the things people are doing with this game. We got true picture-in-picture scopes earlier this year, now real time reflections. What’s next?

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

That hasn’t really been my experience. If you just want to play the game you can stick to the performance, anti-crash, stability and bug fix mods and have a very stable game.

Learning to expand your load order beyond that can be exhausting (and probably takes some work in Wrye Flash and xEdit), but I played through the entire campaign and all DLCs last year with like 400+ mods and had no crashes and only one real bug.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

It depends on what types of mods you have installed, and when they came out. Leveled lists used to be a reason, but many modern F:NV mods instead add entries to leveled lists via scripts on startup (thanks JIP!) and so are all compatible with each other.

I needed Bash for Cell edits primarily, because I wanted to use the old Interior Lighting Overhaul since I think it looks better than the newer scripted ones.

Wrye Flash is also great to combine patches into a single file to keep the load order down. Even with the mod limit remover, F:NV gets unstable if it has too many .esp’s loaded. The patch combining feature is automatic and easy to use.

I did spend a huge amount of time creating a personal compatibility patch in xEdit. It’s extremely simple to do manually once you learn it, but can take time. I had several overhauls like CCO and Vicious Wastes that I wanted to combine, with overlaps where I wanted to use the CCO version for some things and the VW for others, for example. I also had to do some manual edits to make sure I got the Brave New World faces and voices working with New Vegas Redesigned 3, the auto-patch missed some.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

Even BG2 had more interjections from your party members than BG3 I think, and I get that it was mostly text but still, that was 23 years ago. In BG3 someone sometimes adds a comment at the beginning or end of a conversation, but it seems like they rarely if ever butt in in the middle.

The whole “X Approves/Y Disapproves” definitely feels a little telling, not showing and I wish they would comment on what’s going on instead, even if it was only recycling a handful of general comments from a pool.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

Oh it was definitely rare that an interjection would actually change the outcome of the dialogues, but that color and flavor you mentioned does a lot to make characters feel more alive. Same goes for the way party members just randomly start conversations when walking around in BG2.

Worth noting I always play with the Gibberlings Fixpack installed. IIRC the vanilla game is really sensitive about party members having to be physically close to the talking NPC to interject into dialogues.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

Even Baldur’s Gate 3 should be playable with one hand if you’re after something more modern.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

I actually think BG 1&2 might be harder because of Real Time with Pause, come to think of it. Though if you have a mouse with rebind-able extra buttons it’d be alright, just set pause to a thumb button and you’re good to go.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

I love Disco Elysium with all my heart, but suggesting it to a person who talks with emphasis about combat systems and strategic depth is sort of dangerous.

Disco Elysium is a novel masquerading as a game. If you like that and approach it as such, it can be extremely rewarding, but there isn’t much gameplay to be had.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

Summons are a really powerful way to deplete enemy spells, just send them in one by one. Summon Skeletons is good for this.

As you move onto BG2, using spells to counter enemy protections becomes more important, like using Breach to deal with Stoneskin etc. Though as a caveat, I’ve been using Sword Coast Stratagems so long I barely remember what combat is like without it.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

I have actually pondered a “classic gaming” or “old school games” type community for these types of (primarily) PC games from the era up to maybe 2010.

Retro Gaming communities typically focus more on old console and/or arcade type stuff.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

I agree. I also think 2 of the 3 endings to B&W are sort of terrible, which soured me on it a little. And the one ending I liked is kind of hidden and obnoxious to get.

B&W was like a nice vacation as Geralt headed into retirement. Pretty landscapes and some fun new skills to play with (loved that you could finally make a crossbow build work).

HoS was just pure, spooky, tragic Witcher goodness. And like you say, the fact that it’s shorter and more focused lead to the writing being tighter and the storytelling working much better.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

What would be a good name for it? Sadly I don’t think I have it in me to moderate, so I hesitate to create it myself.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

Also, what would be the appropriate cutoff for the timeframe? I just threw 2010 out there, but maybe even slightly later? What is a good milestone to cut off at? I was thinking starting at 1993 with the release of Doom.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

I still have to finish FF8 some day. I started it and kind of liked it, but never got into it. Maybe now some of the fan made HD graphics mods for the remaster are finished.

FF6 is peak, though. I have an emulator on my phone with the Woolsey-uncensored romhack version. Love that game.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

Is taking on encounters while underleveled as much of a death sentence in BG3 as it was in D:OS2?

I’m early still so only got into one such fight at this point where I got the warning message recommending me to flee. I was level 3 versus level 5s, and the encounter was perfectly doable (playing on medium, not Tactician, mind).

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

Party member death in BG 1&2 could be pretty rough yeah, especially in 1, and there were plenty of effects that prevented resurrection, even. Plus, characters dropped all items on Death, so picking everything up and re-equipping it after resurrection was punishment itself, haha.

Death is basically a non-threat in D&D 5E, but I haven’t looked into whether Larian has added any house rules to make it more punishing. In general I’m not a huge fan of the 5E ruleset so we’ll see how I feel about BG3 combat as I get further in. So far it seems more like death is handled like it was in Divinity, with plenty of Revivify Scrolls already.

I turned off Karmic Dice on principle, but maybe that was a mistake. So far the biggest challenge has been terrible luck. I’ve missed so many 80%+ attacks, often in a row. Feels very frustrating.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

I was thinking Doom as a sort of watershed moment in gaming, and going earlier than that and you could argue those titles belong on the already-existing retro gaming communities.1993 actually had both Doom and the first FIFA, it’s got a lot going for it as a start year.

Looking at releases for 2013 though we have things like GTA V, BioShock: Infinite and The Last of Us. I definitely would hesitate to call those “old school games”. 2011 has Skyrim. Does that qualify? Otherwise I’m starting to feel more drawn to the 1990-2010 timeframe; nice round numbers and should sort of capture the era of classic gaming. 2010 has Red Dead Redemption 1, Mass Effect 2 and Civilization 5. Is it fair to say those are some of the last old school games or do we need to go older? A two decade window seems good.

I agree that an open ended timeframe would lead to lost focus over time. If it’s 10+ years old as the criteria, it would mean we’re just 2 years away from The Witcher 3 qualifying for a community meant for stuff like Fallout 1&2. That just feels… wrong.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

If you don’t care about round numbers and it being exactly two decades you could also do 1993-2009, starting with Doom and ending with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. There is a different kind of symmetry to that, and I honestly kind of like it.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

Very fair points as well about those games. I think maybe a looser guideline would be more appropriate than strict dates. I really like the Doom - CoD: MW2 bookending to encapsulate that golden era of gaming, but I wouldn’t delete any post about Civ 1, if I was actually running the community.

And yeah, time flies. It was equally scary earlier when I realized Witcher 3 is almost ten years old.

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

That makes me really happy to hear! It’s pretty much the definition of a “flawed gem” in gaming, it’s easy to see why it’s become a cult classic.

Where did you buy it, GOG? You, uh… did install the unofficial patch, right?

Coelacanth, 2 lata temu

I actually have some opinions on the Plus Patch. I want to phrase this really carefully as Wesp5 is a hero for his work and dedication through the years, but he started taking a lot of liberties the last maybe 5-7 years, and the Plus Patch now contains stuff that is more mod than patch/restoration.

It has gotten to the point where I wish there were 3 tiers of unofficial patch, not two. The vanilla patch is only bugfixes, and lots of the stuff added back in the Plus Patch was actually good but just missing due to poor code or not being completely finished but 90% there. I wish there was a patch with just the bugfixes and those most obvious content restorations.

In the Plus Patch as it exists today, though, you have a lot of stuff that was cut for a reason shoehorned in, like unused OST tracks Wesp5 has inserted according to personal taste, or areas (and a quest) that were barely started where he himself filled in the blanks. And even complete mod content that - while they could be argued to be improvements - are alterations to the game according to Wesp5’s vision.

You still need the basic patch to even run the game, of course, otherwise it’s literally unplayable. But these days I recommend the Plus Patch for a second playthrough. Playing as Malkavian is a good enough reason for a second playthrough, anyway.