one-armed dwarf

It would be reputationally damaging for them to put out a multi-tiered hardware offering and then say that actually S isn't going to give you the same offerings as they promised. They kinda have to stick with it, I think. Or wait a long while before considering dropping this parity clause

Was looking at one of those, or one of those things where you can put a SSD inside a saturn and play like that I don't even have a Saturn, but want to get one to play the game in that spoiler. Was messing around with it in an emulator not long ago and the cinematics are something else for that time period.

Based on what DF thinks, the BG3 issue was to do with RAM and the way players can move really far away from each other, with the things it has to keep in memory. It's a systemic limitation with how the game works, at least for the moment. But it's not like BG3 is super well optimised as is, it's got some bits where you really feel it creaking even on a powerful machine and not necessarily in a way that makes sense (spending nearly 30 seconds trying to figure out a single goblin move, for instance). If the forza stuff is purely visual though you'd think they could squeeze it in eventually, assuming its scalable (Sorry, not trying to put BG stuff in every thread but it seemed sort of germane here, with regard to parity clauses and all)

Curious how many of these have actually completed it. Some have, but I notice a few are just talking about acts 1 and 2, and not act 3 which is apparently quite a bit more buggy from what I gathered reading the resetera thread on it Playing on PS5 might be a privilege here cause a lot of that info will be out by that point (Elden Ring had this a bit too, most reviews were based off Limgrave and Liurna if I recall)

I'm still in Act 1. A lot of the big encounters in tactician can take me an hour or more to figure out. One in particular involving a particularly mean granny took me nearly a whole weekend. There's optimal synergies to find between classes, prepared spells and player positioning, but your approach has to be watertight or at least your way of adjusting to RNG curveballs has to also be very good. Right now, I'm finding that buffing the barbarians' jump, equipping them with a jump AOE and letting them go to town with rage attacks is a very brainy way of doing things There's certain things that annoy me. Alluded to this about the poor onboarding, but I think the game needs a bit of a guiding hand when it comes to completing quests and exploring. Even with the freedom, there is clearly an intended path more or less through its world and quests. You notice this if you do a bunch of activities in act 1 and then activate a much earlier quest later on. You get dialogue options which indicate that you've not learned things you've learned (eg, 'Who is the Absolute?' when talking to these random guys in the forest, also asking for tips on finding this druid when that quest was done). For a game that is praised for its reactivity, these issues do stick out like a sore thumb. To be fair, I've also had quest lines where NPCs clearly have unique reactions to things that have occurred that would not happen if I attempted things in a different order, so I just think it's a case of where they miss a few things at times. The way the different quests, both side and main, interweave and develop the story and characters as you progress is really impressive. But it might be a very delicate construction. One tip I heard was to regularly use 'long rest', as this also activates other NPC interactions and main story events which unlock options to deal with main quest objectives that you otherwise would not have if you did not (one of the most interesting main story spoilers concerns this). Tactician has forced me to long rest regularly enough, once I've completely drained everyone's spell slots. So at least that side of things has worked out well enough. But I think the game needs to offer a level indicator like most RPGs do for side content, cause simply throwing some level 6 fighter menace at you when you're level 4 and had no idea to expect that kinda takes you out of it, and encourage long rest if optional solutions or story beats are going to be lost. You have to be careful with long rest as well tho, as there might be some quests which lead to bad outcomes if a lot of time passes (not sure on which, or how long, or how often this occurs. But I know it's a thing) The game is very good but there's clearly some badly needed design optimisations there. Not even going to get into the inventory management, it's horrible. Trust me (on keyboard anyway) Other than all those problems tho, still might be a 10 or near to it? Depends on how the rest goes.

Oh, Deus Ex is also a 10. Can't believe I forgot that one. Yeah the individual gameplay elements of it suck but it's still the most flexible game of that type in my view. To me 10 is more about overall excellence than perfection anyway Lots of stuff like TOTK, Prey and maybe even Baldur's Gate 3 give it a good challenge in that dept tho

Question says no TOTK but says nothing about BOTW, that's a 10 imo and better than TOTK as well. I'd also give Morrowind a 10, better than Skyrim and Oblivion. Re4 is also a 10 and I think both the VR port and overhauled remake support how timeless its encounter design and pacing is, in the case of the latter it's cause the best parts are lifted straight from it.

Another trailer This is clearly a trailer designed to set minds at ease if you played the original game*, while looking a bit baffling if you've not. Reason being is the demo from a few years ago was poorly received as being a bit too action focused, while this trailer focuses a lot on social interactions and the prison hierarchy Looks like they've got the right idea though, ending it with the MC getting his face smashed in. *or Elex, or Risen, which also do the same thing Gothic does

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197996470719/

Sleep deprivation debuff, can't stop playing Baldur's Gate. -1 to concentration and work performance. Spent hours on this optional quest where I got to make a permanent, and extremely stupid decision to my character. But I'm here for the consequences. Also this quest goes on and on and the unique assets and story beats are very good. Fuck Witcher 3. pff I'm taking it very slow as I'm on tactician difficulty, but I had a thing where I forgot to kill someone in some base full of enemies and because of actions I took there were too many aggroed enemies to get back inside. It was a literal army. So I split the party and had 2 members just hang out in the druid's grove and had to send off my two rogues by themselves to sneak in and use a certain assist to kill the NPC for me. It was like Sam and Frodo creeping into Mordor, and I used flight scrolls to sneak underneath the drawbridge and stealth attacks to kill some pissing and/or pissed goblins. also emergent gameplay init (All act 1 spoilers btw)

Its disappointing but also unsurprising given the vastness of the game and countless interactions. Scripted and unscripted interactions, AI routines, the different ways quests can be resolved by different classes and consequences get carried forward Also the test period was just for act 1, which as far as I see seems pretty solid. That part of the game is definitely in a releasable state. The rest? Will have to see, I imagine it gets a bit hairier The only bugs I've encountered so far is the hud disappearing once in combat when selecting lazlael, and movement not working this one time during an extended stealth combat interaction. Save reload fixed both, pretty annoying but nothing that has fucked a quest line up or anything

My kinda shit The Silent Hill vibes are no accident I'm sure

Yeah it would work totally fine like that There's one small 'real time' element to the turn based stuff it in that if you have accidentally triggered some combat with some enemies, and some non-hostile enemies in the next room wander in while you're picking abilities, then they get pulled into the (turn based) action. But that will probably happen anyway even with a native play session

Reviews are trickling in day by day and it's hard to find a single one that doesn't declare it a masterpiece of reactive RPG design https://www.theguardian.com/games/2023/aug/09/baldurs-gate-3-review-pc-mac-ps5-larian It's definitely the most daunted I've been by a game for a while. I absolutely don't want to look at any kind of spoiler free 'guide' cause I'm worried by the stuff I don't know that I don't know yet, with how much you can apparently do in this game It has that Deux Ex thing of 'I wonder if this works?', and a lot of the time it does, and even then there's unexpected side effects you wouldn't have considered, but all the time the game is hinting at them gameplay spoiler

Sony really needs to relax that whole thing where PS4 controllers don't work on PS5 games, at least if they want ps5 as de facto standard for tournaments. It's a bit much to expect all 7000 contestants to make that upgrade, given that these fighting game controllers can be just south of 300 euro in some cases.

People were reporting melted usb cables over the weekend at evo, seems the rear usbs on PS5 can get very hot https://www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/ps5s-reportedly-melting-usb-ports-tips-to-avoid-disaster/ A bit awkward for Sony given that they own EVO now

Having a better time with this. It's a very slow burn, and again if I provide the DnD neophyte perspective (I've tried it in real life a bit, and PST is the only video game of it I've completed), it's that you've really got to be patient with it. It's not likely to be something you just click with initially but that doesn't mean you should sod it off too hastily. One thing that helped with me is I went and downloaded the guidebook for DnD 5e, the tabletop version. You can google it. It's obviously not a like for like, but at the same time the interpretation of those rules in this game are closer than you'd imagine. Near every gameplay concept I find in the game that I want to read up more of, it's in the guidebook as well. Even better, the guidebook has lore for each of the races, which helps to get into the role playing experience of what you choose. For me, I did not understand some of the stuff people were saying to Tieflings. Now that I read it up, there's a backstory involving an ancestor selling the race out to infernal gods (context for the race, not a spoiler), and that can inform my dialog choices here out. As mentioned the gameplay interactions can be fun. These aren't story spoilers, but I'll hide them anyway in case people want to make their own combat strategies. I'm playing a rogue, so in this one combat encounter I had You can also respec, which is good cause I accidentally took on a barbarian level for my rogue, which I definitely don't want or need. --- late edit but the respec lets you completely change your class. So you're free to completely fuck things up early on, though your background really should gel with whatever class you pick and that's a thing you can't change Overall impression is the game tries to be accessible and forgiving with aspects such as these, but all without being dumbed down in any shape or form. Definitely turning around on it in a big way and getting impressed by the reactivity and interactivity. If it keeps it up, well maybe it's another GOTY and 2023's quality for releases can hardly be in dispute at this point

They wisely decided to just port as is, than attempt another horrible tarted up 'remake'. That said, it seems if you have an xbox you don't have any reason to bother with this.

EVO was this weekend, it's a bank holiday today so caught up on the SF stuff today cause otherwise I would have been up til 6am. Watched marvel, tekken and strive too. Marvel was inscrutable and people seemed pretty displeased that the finals were a 'zero may cry' mirror. Strive was the nago and happy chaos show, so pretty dull and uninteractive. That game badly needs something cause it's gotten so stale to watch and it's been like that for a long time now. SF was really good tho, lots of extremely close matches exhibiting expert mastery of all those system mechanics. The reads, the risk calculations, you just learn a lot watching those dudes. Very impressive first evo showing for that game at that kinda level on a stage as big as that

Here's a video of some disgusting garbage

Dangerman bought that a while back I think, I watched a video on it before and it looks really good. Very weighty physics to its combat You'd have to download a translation patch for it tho, and play on a hacked PS2 or emulator.

DnD is on the mind right now so I'll say Planescape Torment* is one of the most absorbing RPGs I've ever played. Felt like an interactive fantasy novel. Even if BG3 is clearly more mechanically refined and richly featured, its world isn't as well rendered (so far) as what PS:T does with text alone *Though technically speaking it shares a world space with other DnD games, including Baldur's Gate. But still. They made a game later on called Torment: Tides of Numenera, but I don't think the two are really connected due to licensing issues.

This number might change, but this is the 9th most popular game on steam ever, currently with just over 700k concurrent players. I guess one small part of it is that it's one of those rare occasions where an exciting new exclusive is on PC for once, even if only for a few weeks. Other than that it's a genre which has always courted that audience, and with huge anticipation from both the early access and Divinity games. It's a pretty big deal for a sequel to a 20+ year old game Hopefully it passes out Harry Potter, cause fuck Rowling and all (also wtf is goose goose duck, actually don't want to know tbh)

I've played about the same amount I think in terms of progress and am ambivalent. DnD is a thing I've tried before and not totally clicked with, so that's not unexpected. But I find elements here obtusely frustrating, not sure what to get into about why though because of spoilers. I guess to keep it as vague as possible, there's a character that can join your party that makes life really fucking hard for you if they die in battle, and that's what happened here. I completed a really cool larger scale fight with lots of ranged attacks, buffs, sneaking around for sneak attacks and using the high ground for advantage. But this one person died, and afterwards something happened which made it so difficult to progress that I just threw away that save entirely and went back Yeah, I'm writing this post on a sort of tilt, and with a bit of clarity of mind there's probably some mechanic that I've missed out on here that makes it more easy to manage. But can git to fuck. cunt

Diaphone did this big video on this character. I'm not fully familiar with what he's saying wrt the system mechanics, seems like 'fuse' is a big deal. But main takeaway is these matches are long, and it looks mad technical. I think that's cool though, considering how quickly things can end in a SF match it often doesn't feel like you've had a chance to develop a sense of your opponent's tendencies until it's over (especially if they don't rematch). It can feel gimmicky. Here you got to work hard for those wins