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Inigima

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Finally gave The Witcher 2 another try. After I got used to the combat and the UI it's really started to grow on me. Is there any word on when The Witcher 3 will come out? Because an open world version of this will be fucking amazing.

Also, Chris Avellone is a beast.

My personal guess is August-September. I got a word that they have already started the process of localization into other languages few weeks ago which normally happens fairly late in the developement.

They should be announcing the date soon though.

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Finally gave The Witcher 2 another try. After I got used to the combat and the UI it's really started to grow on me. Is there any word on when The Witcher 3 will come out? Because an open world version of this will be fucking amazing.

I wouldn't count on it coming earlier than October. If I'm not mistaken, CDPR have said that they're aiming for a Q4 2014 release date.

Also, they've said they overhauled the combat, taking notes from the Arkham games. That sounds amazing, can't wait to see it in action.

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Urgh, no. Obsidian's writers and storytellers are widely-regarded as the best in the business (Avellone is frequently cited - including by me :) - as the finest Western CRPG writer in the business, and Cain and McComb aren't too far behind) and BioWare's are...not. BioWare's best writers and designers have left over the past few years, most notably Drew Karpyshyn who co-created Mass Effect (and a lot of the problems in the third game can be laid at him being transferred from ME3 to The Old Republic) and three guys in particular who hated working on The Old Republic so much they left, formed Stoic Studios, made The Banner Saga and are currently basking in the glow of critical adulation and a sweet amount of game sales on Steam.

I'm not sure Drew staying on Mass Effect would've vastly improved the third game. It would've prevented the current ending, but from everything I've read his ending would've been something about how the Reapers have been trying to stop a dark matter apocalypse from destroying the universe, and somehow humans are special! and might be able to stop it. Which isn't super appealing to me either.

And a lot of the Mass Effect staff writers, guys like Patrick Weekes and Neil Pollner, who weren't in charge of the story direction, and were writing conversations and scripting scenarios, did a great job and are still there. (Another is John Dombrow, who was in charge of bringing together the entire Tuchanka set of missions, and probably did the best job of anyone in the whole "your choices matter" department, he ended up leaving this past July though and was one of the lead writers on Bioshock Infinite's story DLC.) Bioware has a lot of talent in its lower ranks, the folks who ensure that every modern Bioware games gets tons of praise for world-building, inter-party conversations and relationships, etc., no matter what other problems there are with it.

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If I'm not mistaken, CDPR have said that they're aiming for a Q4 2014 release date.

I hope not. In gamespeak, Q4 2014 would be January-March 2015 (they go by financial years, not actual ones). IIRC, CDPR have usually been pretty good about hitting their release dates.

The only question is whether it'll be a good idea to get the game on release or wait a year for the Enhanced Edition, as was wise with both the previous games.

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Well, according to CDPR President Adam Kiciński, the game is finished content wise. They are currently working on the details and the optimalization. The official date of release will probably be announced in a month or two.



As I said in my previous post, I think September release is definitely manageable.


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I'm not sure Drew staying on Mass Effect would've vastly improved the third game. It would've prevented the current ending, but from everything I've read his ending would've been something about how the Reapers have been trying to stop a dark matter apocalypse from destroying the universe, and somehow humans are special! and might be able to stop it. Which isn't super appealing to me either.

Just another variant of the "poor misunderstood Reapers" theme, only possibly even more cheesy than the one we got. Does this explain the Haestrom thing from ME2 that went exactly nowhere? Quite how one could shoehorn a justification for killing off all advanced civilisations into a "must save the universe from a dark matter catastrophe" is hard to conceptualise. And if it's a Milky Way centric theme then it places the galaxy at the centre of the univers, so to speak, which is as bad as making humanity a special kind of galactic flower. Unless the Reapers cleaned out all galaxies in the universe, in which case a 50,000 year cycle seems a tad short without having Santa's sleigh to hand.

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I hope not. In gamespeak, Q4 2014 would be January-March 2015 (they go by financial years, not actual ones). IIRC, CDPR have usually been pretty good about hitting their release dates.

The only question is whether it'll be a good idea to get the game on release or wait a year for the Enhanced Edition, as was wise with both the previous games.

I thought gamespeak was mostly calendar year when talking of quarters for game releases. Though quite commonly they talk in terms of northern hemisphere seasons: coming Spring 20XX, or Autumn/Fall 20XX.

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Just another variant of the "poor misunderstood Reapers" theme, only possibly even more cheesy than the one we got. Does this explain the Haestrom thing from ME2 that went exactly nowhere? Quite how one could shoehorn a justification for killing off all advanced civilisations into a "must save the universe from a dark matter catastrophe" is hard to conceptualise. And if it's a Milky Way centric theme then it places the galaxy at the centre of the univers, so to speak, which is as bad as making humanity a special kind of galactic flower. Unless the Reapers cleaned out all galaxies in the universe, in which case a 50,000 year cycle seems a tad short without having Santa's sleigh to hand.

Yup. That's what that mission was supposed to lead in to.

Of course, this idea is both 1) no better then the one we got and 2) no less inconsistent with ME1.

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Just another variant of the "poor misunderstood Reapers" theme, only possibly even more cheesy than the one we got. Does this explain the Haestrom thing from ME2 that went exactly nowhere? Quite how one could shoehorn a justification for killing off all advanced civilisations into a "must save the universe from a dark matter catastrophe" is hard to conceptualise. And if it's a Milky Way centric theme then it places the galaxy at the centre of the univers, so to speak, which is as bad as making humanity a special kind of galactic flower. Unless the Reapers cleaned out all galaxies in the universe, in which case a 50,000 year cycle seems a tad short without having Santa's sleigh to hand.

Universe and Galaxy may have been conflated there, but otherwise, yeah, agreed. I'm not sure either how the harvest is supposed to help, something about harnessing a species' latent biotic power or somesuch I'd imagine, but that's conjecture on my part. And yes, this'd be a continuation of the Haestrom thing, as well as the references on Illium about certain megacorps getting interested in dark energy, and a handful of other mentions in ME2.

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As I remember it:



What it was about is that dark matter/energy technology (ie - mass effect technology) somehow causes buildups of dark energy or something that causes what's happening to Haestrom to occur. It's like pollution I guess. Use too much and it destroys the galaxy or at least renders it uninhabitable for intelligent life.



The point of the Reapers is then to harvest all sentient life at the point where they start using enough technology that it becomes dangerous in order to stop them from killing everyone in the galaxy eventually.



I think also that the races present are harvested and their knowledge is put to use to try and solve the problem long term.




The idea was that at the end you'd have to decide whether the Reapers were right or not and whether to ultimately side with their plan to save the galaxy or destroy them and potentially end all life in the galaxy in the long term.


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I just completed Final Fantasy 8 for the first time. I remembered when it came out that I didn't like it because the Junction function *heh* was too complicated for my poor little mind. I actually didn't fully understand everything this time around until Disc 3, but once I did, I enjoyed it a lot more. Until that point I would use my GFs exclusively in battle and I didn't know that drawing magic from enemies actually strengthen my characters. Once I grasped what the game wanted me to learn, it became enjoyable.



I would still rank FF9 as my favorite PS1 Final Fantasy game, but FF8 comes pretty close. I really didn't like FF7 (I last played it a year ago), but I no doubt recognize the impact that it has had on the genre.



ETA: I've played one, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, and both thirteens. I'll be getting Lightning Returns on Feb. 11. Any recommendations as to what my next Final Fantasy game should be? I'm not interested in either eleven or fourteen since I don't have a PC that will support an MMO (or any PC game not name Gunbound for that matter).


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As I remember it:

What it was about is that dark matter/energy technology (ie - mass effect technology) somehow causes buildups of dark energy or something that causes what's happening to Haestrom to occur. It's like pollution I guess. Use too much and it destroys the galaxy or at least renders it uninhabitable for intelligent life.

The point of the Reapers is then to harvest all sentient life at the point where they start using enough technology that it becomes dangerous in order to stop them from killing everyone in the galaxy eventually.

I think also that the races present are harvested and their knowledge is put to use to try and solve the problem long term.

The idea was that at the end you'd have to decide whether the Reapers were right or not and whether to ultimately side with their plan to save the galaxy or destroy them and potentially end all life in the galaxy in the long term.

Yeah, I do remember something like that. Of course, considering ME1 said that the Reapers explicitly created the relays so that species would start using mass effect technology in the first place, this makes absolutely no sense.

There was definitely also something about humans being special snowflakes.

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I just completed Final Fantasy 8 for the first time. I remembered when it came out that I didn't like it because the Junction function *heh* was too complicated for my poor little mind. I actually didn't fully understand everything this time around until Disc 3, but once I did, I enjoyed it a lot more. Until that point I would use my GFs exclusively in battle and I didn't know that drawing magic from enemies actually strengthen my characters. Once I grasped what the game wanted me to learn, it became enjoyable.

I would still rank FF9 as my favorite PS1 Final Fantasy game, but FF8 comes pretty close. I really didn't like FF7 (I last played it a year ago), but I no doubt recognize the impact that it has had on the genre.

ETA: I've played one, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, and both thirteens. I'll be getting Lightning Returns on Feb. 11. Any recommendations as to what my next Final Fantasy game should be? I'm not interested in either eleven or fourteen since I don't have a PC that will support an MMO (or any PC game not name Gunbound for that matter).

IV. Without a doubt. I just finished replaying the 3D remake of it and The After Years on my iPhone.

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I hope not. In gamespeak, Q4 2014 would be January-March 2015 (they go by financial years, not actual ones). IIRC, CDPR have usually been pretty good about hitting their release dates.

The only question is whether it'll be a good idea to get the game on release or wait a year for the Enhanced Edition, as was wise with both the previous games.

People who purchased the game at or prior to release typically get the Enhanced Edition for free (or maybe that was only because I bought W2 through GOG) so its a moot point to wait for their enhanced edition anyhow.

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Yeah, I do remember something like that. Of course, considering ME1 said that the Reapers explicitly created the relays so that species would start using mass effect technology in the first place, this makes absolutely no sense.

There was definitely also something about humans being special snowflakes.

All three ME games are incompatible story-wise. ME2 and ME3 the least so, but still.

Apparently we need to expand the War Against Not-Planing-Shit-Out-In-Advance. Divert some troops from the sack of TVstan to pillage the frontiers of Videogamopia.

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I just completed Final Fantasy 8 for the first time.

...Any recommendations as to what my next Final Fantasy game should be? I'm not interested in either eleven or fourteen since I don't have a PC that will support an MMO (or any PC game not name Gunbound for that matter).

Yep, when I was playing that game (I think my freshman year of high school), I had a failed run where I was completely reliant on GFs. Not only does that make the game harder, but it makes the battles very tedious because you spend all your time waiting on the summon to come and then the animation to play out. Once you figure out that you need to be more or less constantly drawing and junctioning all the magic, things go way smoother. It's actually a great game, and I'm glad it's reputation lately seems to be on the up and up.

Regarding what you should play next... honestly, it sounds like you've played all the really good ones. I haven't played XII, so I can't speak to that one. I still haven't played X myself, though I know its well regarded, and I want to play it when the remake finally comes out. I really like V; it probably has the most fleshed out version of the jobs system. If you haven't played Tactics, you should stop whatever you're doing and play that one. It's probably the best Final Fantasy game. Be sure to play the "War of the Lions" version on iOS, Android, PSP, or Vita; it's the best version because it has an improved translation and addresses some gameplay problems.

I'm pretty stoked for Lightning Returns. I'll probably get it when I can see it for $40.

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