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Video Games: Shadow of the Rise of the Live Madden War III- HD Remaster


Fez

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 But the thing is, the kingdom stuff is the main hook of Pathfinder, both the tabletop and the video game. It's what makes it different from D&D (among some other things)

 

You mean Pathfinder: Kingmaker (the module)? The kingdom stuff isn't a huge part of Pathfinder overall, although I believe after Kingmaker they did incorporate some of the kingdom management stuff into the metagame. But the whole thing was "creatively inspired" by the Birthright campaign setting for D&D anyway (and earlier modules had elements of combining kingdom or town management and RPGing, and there were ideas for using Greyhawk Wars alongside a standard D&D campaign as well).

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21 hours ago, Werthead said:

You mean Pathfinder: Kingmaker (the module)? The kingdom stuff isn't a huge part of Pathfinder overall, although I believe after Kingmaker they did incorporate some of the kingdom management stuff into the metagame. But the whole thing was "creatively inspired" by the Birthright campaign setting for D&D anyway (and earlier modules had elements of combining kingdom or town management and RPGing, and there were ideas for using Greyhawk Wars alongside a standard D&D campaign as well).

To be honest, I don't know much of the details of the overall lineage of tabletop gaming. I didn't realize there was a Pathfinder beyond Pathfinder: Kingmaker; I thought Pathfinder: Kingmaker was the spin-off from D&D (e3.5?), not that it was a module for the spinoff.

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41 minutes ago, Fez said:

To be honest, I don't know much of the details of the overall lineage of tabletop gaming. I didn't realize there was a Pathfinder beyond Pathfinder: Kingmaker; I thought Pathfinder: Kingmaker was the spin-off from D&D (e3.5?), not that it was a module for the spinoff.

Pathfinder is a Dungeons and Dragons clone RPG, created in 2008 because the creators didn't like the direction that Hasbro was taking D&D in for its 4th edition (which was an utterly unmitigated disaster, bombed in sales and was critically torn to shreds). Pathfinder therefore was a continuation of the D&D 3rd Edition rule set. Kingmaker was one of the adventure modules for Pathfinder.

Pathfinder's fortunes have dwindled somewhat since D&D 5th Edition came out in 2014 and was a huge, roaring success, but it's still reasonably popular (and is getting a 2nd edition this year).

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Okay, so tomorrow we get confirmation of WTF Obsidian have been working on in the background for the last few years. At the moment it looks like it's going to be a retro-SF game, set in space in the future of an alternative 1930s Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon style alternative history. Think Fallout but with the 1930s instead of the 1950s and no nuclear war. Since this new game is the baby of Tim Cain (the original creator of the entire Fallout franchise) that does make sense.

Apparently Dragon Age 4 will be unveiled this month as well (as discussed a page or two back). And on Friday Ubisoft will apparently announce Far Cry 6, a post-apocalyptic game which will apparently canonise the "more favourable" Far Cry 5 ending (which still ends with North American being devastated in a nuclear surprise attack launched by North Korea, because that's possible somehow).

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8 hours ago, Werthead said:

Okay, so tomorrow we get confirmation of WTF Obsidian have been working on in the background for the last few years. At the moment it looks like it's going to be a retro-SF game, set in space in the future of an alternative 1930s Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon style alternative history. Think Fallout but with the 1930s instead of the 1950s and no nuclear war. Since this new game is the baby of Tim Cain (the original creator of the entire Fallout franchise) that does make sense.

Apparently Dragon Age 4 will be unveiled this month as well (as discussed a page or two back). And on Friday Ubisoft will apparently announce Far Cry 6, a post-apocalyptic game which will apparently canonise the "more favourable" Far Cry 5 ending (which still ends with North American being devastated in a nuclear surprise attack launched by North Korea, because that's possible somehow).

Post-Apocalyptic Far Cry you say? Now that sounds worthwhile! Maybe a call back to Far Cry Instincts: Predator where you're morphing into a more perfect killer over the game.

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Wow, I have not been paying attention. Apparently a couple weeks ago Creative Assembly released all DLC for free to everyone who owns TW: Napoleon, TW: Empire, and TW: Medieval II. I only just noticed the updates in my steam library.

Considering I didn't own a single DLC for any of these games, guess I'll go see what it adds.

 

Edit: ..........Many hours from now when they finish installing again.

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7 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

Wow, I have not been paying attention. Apparently a couple weeks ago Creative Assembly released all DLC for free to everyone who owns TW: Napoleon, TW: Empire, and TW: Medieval II. I only just noticed the updates in my steam library. Considering I didn't own a single DLC for any of these games, guess I'll go see what it adds.

Yeah what's your findings? I can't seem to make heads or tails of what I do or don't have.

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16 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Yeah what's your findings? I can't seem to make heads or tails of what I do or don't have.

It's gonna be a few hours until they're downloaded. But scrolling through the DLC it looks like a whole bunch of unit packs and a couple campaigns. They only released everything that was previously developed. Nothing new to game play or anything like that.

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Creative Assembly are doing very well recently. I'm startled to see them continuing to add new content to and re-developing Rome II more than five years after release to remove the last niggling problems from the game.

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Been playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider.  Fun game.  I like that they've shifted the focus more toward puzzles and platforming and less toward combat.  I'm over halfway through the game and I've probably only killed a few dozen enemy soldiers.  That number was probably in the hundreds by this point in the previous two games.  The best part of the game, much like the last one, are the tombs you can find in the wilderness, although in this game there are also tombs that you explore and solve as part of the main story and some that you are sent to via side quests as well.  

I love the focus on the puzzles.  You can even crank up the puzzle difficulty independent of combat and platforming, which is a nice touch.  Most of them tend to be easy enough to solve.  I've never been stuck for more than a couple of minutes, so it finds a nice balance between challenge and frustration.  There's only been one puzzle that I found frustrating, and that was due more to poor design than anything on my end, as a google search confirmed that a ton of people had issues with that puzzle for the same reason.  

I hope that, going forward, they start to develop the stealth aspect of the game a bit more as well.  I feel like better stealth would be an awesome fit for this franchise.  She's not a soldier, and it's frankly pretty ridiculous that she keeps going up against legions of trained mercenaries and mowing them all down with ease, a similar complaint I have of the Uncharted series.  Stealth seems like a natural fit for Lara's character.  She should be winning fights by outsmarting and sneaking up on enemies, not through sheer firepower.  The stealth in Shadow is there, but it's not particularly good.  Like in many games with optional stealth, you pretty much sneak around as long as you can, but as soon as the first guard catches you you're probably just better off switching to your assault rifle and murdering everyone that way than trying to hide until the guards go back to patrolling.  Assassin's Creed vastly improved their stealth in Odyssey (it may have been the same in Origins, but I didn't play that one) and I'd like to see the same in Tomb Raider.

But as I said, the tombs in this game have mostly been awesome.  They've got a great sense of atmosphere and they all have a different visual flair as well.  The best one so far was a Spanish galleon that was found inside a massive cave complex which tasked Lara with figuring out a way to break through the deck into the captain's quarters.  There are also a ton of them.  I've done at least five or six so far and I'm only about halfway through the game, and that's not counting the ones that were a part of the main story or side quests (which aren't marked on the map like the bonus ones are, as you can only access them as a part of their respective missions).

My main complaint is that swimming sucks.  Lara's controls get a little wonky the second you get any momentum, and it can make it hard to get where you're trying to go, especially if that's a small cave entrance underwater.  Also, piranhas can eat a dick.  They are basically the only thing in this game, outside of environmental deaths, that can kill you instantly, and it always feels like bullshit.  The second they see you, you are fucked.  Instead of making the segments where you have to navigate around them tense, it just makes those segments annoying, because sometimes you'll miss cover (there are plants underwater you can hide in) because of the aforementioned control issues, dying due to no fault of your own.  There are eels too, but you can stab and kill those, so they mostly just waste five seconds of your time and do some minor damage.  Anyway, the piranhas are probably the reason I won't 100% this game, because I have zero interest in going back to any of the big underwater sections that have them. 

Oh yeah, and the deaths in this game are still hilariously over the top.  I'll often get myself killed just to watch the death scenes.  They're laugh out loud funny in their ridiculousness sometimes.  

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My thoughts on Fallout 3 after spending 35 hours back in the Capital Wasteland (albeit heavily-modded, because without mods the game looks so awful as to be essentially unplayable).

I'll do a follow up in a few days on what mods I used to make the game look so much better.

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On 12/5/2018 at 8:52 PM, Werthead said:

Pathfinder is a Dungeons and Dragons clone RPG, created in 2008 because the creators didn't like the direction that Hasbro was taking D&D in for its 4th edition

That's an inaccurate revisionist retelling of what happened. Paizo was actually hoping to continue working in cooperation on D&D through the upcoming 4E with WotC. The issue had to do, in part, with changes that Hasbro/WotC made in regards to (1) the cancellation of the magazines that Paizo was licensed to publish (i.e., Dragon, Dungeon, and Polyhedron), which were the lifeblood of Paizo's revenue as a company, and (2) increased legal Game System Requirement restrictions that WotC made for Third-Party Publishers for D&D 4E. When WotC informed Paizo of these upcoming changes, Paizo was faced with a backs-to-the-wall dilemma about the future of their company. When brainstorming possible ideas, one of their staffers, Jason Bulmahn, basically proposed his house rules for D&D 3.5. The board of Paizo opted for this as it would potentially allow them at least a short-term revenue stream once their contracts with WotC expired. This became the kernel for Pathfinder. Pathfinder's success was unexpected but welcome for the company. The intent for creating Pathfinder, however, was never about any actual creative disdain for 4E (or its design) - that was something branded about angry 4e-haters - but, rather, as a stop-gap measure to save the company. And indeed, since the time of the initial publication of Pathfinder, Paizo has hired developers for 4E on their staff, and Pathfinder 2 shows significant signs of 4E-inspired influences (as does 5E for that matter). 

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The Outer Worlds looks legitimately excellent, and Obsidian timed that to absolute perfection. "FROM THE ORIGINAL CREATORS OF FALLOUT AND NEW VEGAS AND PEOPLE WHO HAD ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH FALLOUT 76!"

Although I now have a vision of The Outer Worlds doing amazingly well and selling 20 million copies and Obsidian suddenly realising they sold out to Microsoft when they didn't need to. Hmm.

Meanwhile, Far Cry: New Dawn looks legitimately terrible. They've just taken the Far Cry 5 map and put Fallout on it.

9 hours ago, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

That's an inaccurate revisionist retelling of what happened.

Not in the slightest. Paizo wanted to survive as a company, sure, and WotC issuing a more restrictive version of the licence was part of that. However, the severe dumbing down of the game between 3E and 4E also played a part, once it became clear that 4E was not just throwing the baby out with the bathwater but setting the baby on fire and getting a new bath. One with lots of holes in it.

There is also the fact that the extremely chill and relaxed OGL for 3E made an enormous amount of money for D&D-related material from 3rd parties, which Hasbro seems to have had a significant issue with, hence why for 4E they went in a more restrictive direction designed to drain money from consumers with maximum efficiency for minimum effort (and then chilled slightly, but not back to 3E levels, for 5E).

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13 hours ago, Werthead said:

Not in the slightest. Paizo wanted to survive as a company, sure, and WotC issuing a more restrictive version of the licence was part of that. However, the severe dumbing down of the game between 3E and 4E also played a part, once it became clear that 4E was not just throwing the baby out with the bathwater but setting the baby on fire and getting a new bath. One with lots of holes in it.

There is also the fact that the extremely chill and relaxed OGL for 3E made an enormous amount of money for D&D-related material from 3rd parties, which Hasbro seems to have had a significant issue with, hence why for 4E they went in a more restrictive direction designed to drain money from consumers with maximum efficiency for minimum effort (and then chilled slightly, but not back to 3E levels, for 5E).

Respectfully, you are wrong here, Wert. This was the narrative that became retroactively imposed on Pathfinder's history by fans of Pathfinder and detractors of 4e - perhaps likely including yourself here - rather than one that reflects what actually was transpiring at Paizo. I had already mentioned the latter paragraph as well, so that does not rebuff anything that I said in that regard. 

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What do you guys think of Lords of the Fallen? I'm playing it (bought it last year I think), and I have to say it's not nearly so bad as I remember hearing. It's pretty, it's a Dark Souls clone, but it's different because of the sustained narrative. I like it but it's very short, and seems underdeveloped. I guess it was super glitchy upon release?

Some of the fighting mechanics are bad at times, but it's still much easier than Dark Souls. I played for a couple of hours before dying, which is actually quite long considering I'm about to beat the game at 12 hours. It's a much smaller game, but I think it serves the game well. It's very interconnected much like the first Dark Souls.

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