IlyaP

Point to the number of adults here who have rich and developed social lives, partners/spouses/whatever, jobs, who still get exercise in their day, plenty of sleep, and do all sorts of other shit. It's a valid hobby. I have friends who had babies and kept the baby in the rocker next to them hoping the damn thing would go the frell to sleep while they played any number of games to keep themselves sane. As a friend recently said to me: "We're the first generation that's normalised videogaming as a valid hobby, and when we have kids, none of us are going to be shaming each other for playing whatever we enjoy while the baby sleeps next to us as we rock it sleep or breast feed it or whatever." My parents eventually came around to it because I also made a job out of it as a games journalist and travelled around North America, got paid, etc., but that's obviously outside the norm. So just collect stories from here, about the well-adjusted folks here who went "yeah, I'm not into sports, or working on cars, but hell, I can assemble a computer, I can teach computer literacy, and fix stuff, and have unconsciously come to accept that my skills are taken for granted by my elderly relatives who think I can somehow MacGuyver an EMP and fix their computer in five minutes time". If that's not good enough, show them My Grandpa and Asheron's Call and tell them about Shirley Curry. And then ask them how they like them apples.

Oh I've yet to finish DOS2. I'm still making my way through it. I know the combat gets absolutely ridiculous in later parts of the game, but that's a future me problem, as far as I'm concerned.

It's not...I struggle to think of it as a spoiler, since the game makes it clear from the get-go that part of your goal is to get off the island - which would logically involve a ship. And at some point you've got to get off the island - otherwise the game would be extremely short.

They rejoin the party early in Chapter 2, mid-way through a ship sequence, so the above isn't exactly accurate.

I only played it for the first time recently and thought it was fine?

None of the above had (or have) bad interfaces or graphics, and all of them are constantly being updated by fans (eg Morrowind Graphics Extender, Deus Ex: Revision, the recent remaster of Chrono Trigger, etc.) It's become easier than ever to play these classic games. And between the numerous mods on Moddb and Nexusmods, it's easier than ever to update the textures, skyboxes, models, and more (as has been the case, for example, with the amazing work that the fan modding community has put into KotOR 2, for example.). That said, graphics aren't everything, and painterly, or cartoonish, stylised, etc., graphics, are to many far more pleasing than hyper-realistic, uncanny valley stuff, as the former has a style its own that ages better than the latest "hyper-real fx!" that feel dated and rubbery within a few years. Which is to say, horses for courses and de gustibus non est disputandum, as always. Anyway, those older games are terrific, dude, and a lot of fun, and work on modern systems. Hell, Chrono Trigger's remaster even got brand new 1080p cutscenes, a modern control scheme, updated UI, graphical updates, and more - not unlike the recent Quake/Quake 2 remasters. You're missing out on some terrific games that won't tax your system and are full of ingenuity and heart!

You're also going to not understand some of the narrative twists taking place in FF7: Remake without playing the original FF7, as it's not a 1:1 remake, but...something....else. (I'm obviously trying to not spoil anything here, because that's a jack move, and it's worth going into both blind to the ways in which they play with time, narrative, structure, and exploration.) It's also a weird position to take as a gamer, of "I'm not gonna play old games! Nyar! I'ma twist mah moustache!" like, sure you...can? But...that's pretty weird to not check out the games that influenced so many games and were foundational in their genres, the way BG1/2 were for isometric cRPGs, Diablo 1/2 were for aRPG, Betrayal at Krondor for open world cRPGs, Doom for FPS, Deus Ex for immersive sims, Chrono Trigger for JRPGs (which influenced everything from Anachronox to BG3, in terms of its multiple endings, different gameplay mechanics/styles, and even NG+, which all started with a young boy who just wanted to go to the local fair), etc. It'd be like saying you're willing to play Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, but not Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind because there's too much text to read (a legit complaint I've heard in the past). Like, sure you can just play new games, and maybe you're just trollin' for lulz, but like, dude, you're missing out. Chrono Trigger also (arguably) popularised combination attacks in RPGs, and showed how to write villains with pathos and nuance in a videogame. It is a literally ground-breaking game. It is, for want of a better word, The Lord of the Rings of the genre, in a way, for so, so many people.

It's a different generation/style of JRPG. Like, it's good I guess if you want to get a feel for where they differ from a US rpg. A good midway point to give one a feel of the best of both worlds is Anachronox, but if you're going to dive into that world and want to get a taste of the classic games that defined the genre for many gamers and developers alike, Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6 ought to be at the top of your list.

And back to mud itself was apparently used as recently as the mid-1800s, as I learned today.

You can't romance everyone, and the "sex scenes" are basically narrated in-game, and they are all achieved by selecting the right dialogue prompts. And you will want to sleep to heal. Steal a few bedrolls, as they're portable health kits, basically.

You may notice the music sounds a bit familiar, as Slavov created a sonic landscape for DOS2 after taking over for Kirill Pokrovsky (DOS1 composer), and many of the ideas, leitmotifs, progressions, and structures carried over from DOS2 into BG3.

Finally watching Star Trek: Deep Space 9, after hearing friends rave about it for years and years. It is pleasant so far. Only ten episodes in and oh lordy, Wallace Shawn is already Wallace Shawning about wonderfully!

It's been on my radar for a while. Tried it a few years ago, but found even then that with community patches it was still a bit janky. But I'll have a look-see tonight after dinner, to see about new community developments.

(I apparently wrote a goddamn essay by accident. Oops.)

Oh I know. I did the fight the other day, before summarily beating Raphael into the ground in five short minutes because Laezel is a goddamn psychopath with five attacks. Yug's still a grossly underwritten character, and I wish there were more backstory to him, as he's one of the legitimately more interesting characters in the game. A creepy ending doth not =/= meaningful in-game consequences, however. If we make decisions only because of The Ending and not because of Different In-Game Roleplaying Choices it provides the $Char_Name, then that's not really a design choice that I'll find particularly rewarding. Even though, duh, a cRPG can only do and offer so much, but I'd rather have some kind of system like the reputation system in the original Baldur's Gate, where one's choices actively affected how people in the game responded to my character and party, which then affected the choices that could be made, and how easy or difficult a choice would be from a RP or combat perspective. (Early era Bioware really leaned into role-playing in a way post-EA Bioware really did not.) As to finishing it - I finished it at a point that felt satisfying. I got to the stem, and got insanely annoyed at the way the game artificially prolonged the game with new waves of endless combatants to suffer while I dodged intergalactic missiles, and Alt+F4'd out of it and read about the ending, which is basically just more combat, and then "Everyone run for the portal!". (I'm not a combat guy in games; give me as many and whatever RP options you got, but I'm really more about story and lore and choices. Combat is a low second-tier point of concern for me.) As I was telling my other half yesterday: this game is heavy on interactivity and colliding systems, but mostly it's more about object interaction, about vertical object interactivity (or as I joked about with DOS2: "Creative ways to light people on fire"). But from a role-playing perspective...that's not Larian's strong suit. At least not recently*. And so to reach an ending that, as I told her, "felt like Bioware 15 years ago felt a bit regressive, like 'We're still doing this?' Really?" And once again, I found myself pining for Solasta: Crown of the Magister's ending, which wasn't nearly as odious in its length, and instead, was built around a kind of Alamo situation, waiting for help to show up, and finding creative ways of surviving until the calvary showed up to help out. It's a terrific and ridiculously fun game, and once the inevitable Deluxe Edition is released, I'll no doubt play it through a second time, but there's too much parasocial-baiting tittilation that's devoid of meaningful narrative and choice consequences, and a lack of interesting thematic exploration beyond (charitably) "freedom" and "enslavement/fear". Which, really, captures the free-form play of a TTRPG, which is not the same thing as a narrative-driven cRPG (thus the rule of "never make your D&D campaign your novel"). *I've only played DOS 1 & 2 and BG3; have owned Divine Divinity/Beyond Divinity/Divinity II for ages, but have yet to get around to them.

And being unable to highlight this to him at any point during the game? A missed opportunity for some interesting character reflection and increased RP options. You can avoid battling him by just convincing him to kill himself. It's how I avoided what by all accounts was a tedious, unbalanced, and egregiously long fight. You monster! ALL HE WANTED WAS SOME GOOD GRASS TO CHEW ON. You mean the Bioware Factor? "Everyone you save then shows up for a speech, and to rally around you!" I damn near rolled my eyes out of the back of my skull when I hit that point. You've been to their cave, right? You know it's an atrocious, buggy mess full of broken camera movements, clipping problems, audio bugs, etc. Nope. She's an established character in D&D lore. Many have asked this same question, but I've yet to see any comment or suggestion from anyone at WotC that this is the case.

Only if it actually had actual consequences to and benefits from relationships and actually affected things in-game, from a narrative and role-playing perspective. Which at the moment, obviously, it doesn't.

And just wait till you try to try to play 5th edition after playing BG3...

All good. Not sure who found issue with the voice acting. Like, the acting is, across the board, fantastic. I don't disagree, it's just a question of personal taste. I didn't find their characters to be interesting or memorable the way I did Morte, Eder, Varric, Anomen, Yoshimo, Boots, Hawke, Morrigan, Amiri, HK-47, or Kreia, to name a few from just a few cRPGs that I've played over the years. Again, this is not to cast aspersions at them - I know many a player has connected with some of the cast, and that's absolutely fine. I personally found them wanting, and that's 100% a me thing. I did do his story beats (I went and did all the companion quests, as I'm a completionist by nature), and found it all just so meh. "Can a truly vile, evil person who's damned hundreds of people find redemption and still be allowed to live and not face any kind of legal justice for his actions?!" Uh... I initially thought he might have had some redeeming or interesting qualities as well, having previously been (essentially) a spymaster. Instead, he just turned out to be a petty berk. Alas.

The backstory of what he was trying to do with the magic that ultimately backfired on him, and then later on, when he finds out more information on Karsus in the vault in Lorroakan's vault, his greediness comes to the fore again, and it's like "brotha, did you learn nothing between when I pulled your arse out of a stone and now?" (If you pay attention to the nuances in his dialogue, with him talking about wanting to become a god, etc., and all the hubris comes back out that was alluded to as being his downfall prior to the start of the game.

The Iron Throne undersea base is where you need to go - I found it by accident after finding crying umberlee fanatics by accident after finding and blowing up the foundry by accident because Act 3 is chaotic randomness personified. But if you save him - and Omirlee (sp?) the illithid that hangs out with the spores in the underdark, you render the contract with Miroza null and void.

Speaking of which - how is The God is Not Willing in comparison to the mainline Malaz novels? Any good?

Wasn't me who said that. Not sure who - but definitely not me. (I thought all the voice actors were exceptional, and I hope they all get more work as a result of the well-earned success of this game.) Wouldn't dispute or disagree with the above sentiment at all!

Excellent! I never saw that option in-game, when I started. I really didn't care much for the characters in the game, and it's entirely a subjective experience, but for this here gamer, I found most of them unpleasant or uninteresting.

Ditto. I loved me my Karlach, she felt relatable. I liked her, and appreciated that at least she and Wyll weren't fucking psychopaths or egomaniacs, unlike everyone else that can join the party. Gale's an egomaniac, Astarion's a mass murderer, Lae'zel, Minthara, and Shadowheart are religious fanatics, and Minsc and Jaheira have no business being in this game. Leaving only Our Gal Karly and Well-Intentioned Wyll. I loved the gameplay loops, systems, music, art, and some of the designs in this game, but man, the character party options left me *cold* with the exception of Karlach and Wyll, and I'd much rather have preferred to have the ability to create my own party or obtain hirelings, like in NWN or Pillars.