Videogames - Meanwhile in Poland.

[Werthead]

4 hours ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

I did not even play Dragon Age 2 because it seemed way too consolified to me. I never finished the Awakening because my characters were always way too OP at that point and the game stopped being fun. It is a bit like BG2: Throne of Bhaal in that regard. 

Dragon Age II is excellent, at least in terms of story and character (in terms of environments and variety, not so much). It's not hugely more consolified than Mass Effect 2 and it has some really great ideas, particularly the tight focus which would have worked better if it hadn't been forced on them at gunpoint by EA. I enjoyed it vastly more than Inquisition (which still makes me break out in hives whenever I think about it).

[Rhom]

32 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Dragon Age II is excellent, at least in terms of story and character (in terms of environments and variety, not so much). It's not hugely more consolified than Mass Effect 2 and it has some really great ideas, particularly the tight focus which would have worked better if it hadn't been forced on them at gunpoint by EA. I enjoyed it vastly more than Inquisition (which still makes me break out in hives whenever I think about it).

Agreed.  DA2 had flaws, but I enjoyed it.  DA:I was awful.  How it managed to win game of the year awards while ME:A (which was rightly called Inquisition in Space) got blasted into the cancellation of all DLC is beyond me.

I actually enjoyed ME:A's gameplay, so that redeemed the game in my eyes.  Inquisition though... gameplay was shit.  Suffered from the worst of open world-itis.  Characters were dull.  Nothing to redeem it.

[briantw]

34 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Dragon Age II is excellent, at least in terms of story and character (in terms of environments and variety, not so much). It's not hugely more consolified than Mass Effect 2 and it has some really great ideas, particularly the tight focus which would have worked better if it hadn't been forced on them at gunpoint by EA. I enjoyed it vastly more than Inquisition (which still makes me break out in hives whenever I think about it).

It's been ages, but if I recall the real issue with Dragon Age II wasn't the quality of the story so much as the game not being done when they shipped it due to EA forcing a deadline on them.

[Werthead]

12 minutes ago, briantw said:

It's been ages, but if I recall the real issue with Dragon Age II wasn't the quality of the story so much as the game not being done when they shipped it due to EA forcing a deadline on them.

The making of DA2 was a total clusterfuck. EA took over whilst DA:O was in development and they were horrified at the amount of money that BioWare had spent on a single-player-only, PC-only CRPG that they'd been working on for five years, so mandated both shitty console ports of DA:O, that horrible marketing campaign and a "quickie" sequel they had to churn out in 18 months with a very small budget.

When you realise that, DA2 being as okay as it was is surprising. I actually quite liked its "fantasy Babylon 5" vibe that forced BioWare to do something different to its norm.

[Inkdaub]

My goal is to unlock Mechagnomes as an allied race by Nov 23 for Shadowlands release.  I have unlocked Vulpera and Void Elves already.  We'll see what happens.

[Caligula_K3]

Count me in among those who love Dragon Age II and Inquisition, despite their flaws. DA II is plotwise and characterwise the best of the series (well... until the ending) and I love it's low scale approach to a fantasy RPG. Of course, it is rushed and the levels get very repetitive. Inquisition is a great game too, but you have to be willing to just ignore the bloat and focus on the stuff that's actually good (dragonfights, exploring some of the more fleshed out zones, and especially the companion quests). If you do, there's more than enough excellent content for a 50-60 hour playthrough.

Out of all three Dragon Age games, the one that's usually held up as best is by far my least favourite: Origins. People complain about the bloat in Inquisition, but again, you can ignore it. Whereas in Origins, you will always have to slog through the Fade and the Deep Roads and the villain of the game will always be an evil dragon and his hordes of orcs who are completely uninteresting.

(I do understand that people enjoy Origins' tactical combat much more than I do; give me action RPG any day).

[felice]

I'd really like to see DA2 remade with the Inquisition engine. If nothing else, just not reusing the same few locations over and over again would be a big improvement. Though more extensive changes would also be nice, eg if Hawke is a mage, that should get a lot more acknowledgement in-story.

[The Anti-Targ]

7 hours ago, Werthead said:

Dragon Age II is excellent, at least in terms of story and character (in terms of environments and variety, not so much). It's not hugely more consolified than Mass Effect 2 and it has some really great ideas, particularly the tight focus which would have worked better if it hadn't been forced on them at gunpoint by EA. I enjoyed it vastly more than Inquisition (which still makes me break out in hives whenever I think about it).

Narratively and character-wise DA2 is my favourite. For scope and Scale DA:I. Over all DA:O because it was more classically BG / Icewindale, and it was the first ever such game on console (that I can recall) which excited me greatly at the time.

In other news, I believe Chloe Fraser has been cast for the Uncharted movie, but not Elena. Makes sense since Uncharted: DF was Elena's "origin" story in the games, whereas there's ambiguity  in the games about when and how Nate and Chloe met. I suspect this movie will be the origin of how they met. Assuming, and it's a big assumption, the first movie does well enough to earn a sequel I would like to see Elena introduced as her own protagonist before getting entangled with Nate. How did she wind up shooting a doco with Nate?

[Fez]

AC: Vahalla seems... decent, so far. Not sure its doing anything different yet from Origins or Odyssey, but I liked those games well enough, so that's fine. Combat feels a little off though, I'm wondering if some polishing suffered from COVID issues but that Ubisoft refused to delay. Nothing game breaking, but a little meh. I do like the raiding mechanic. And it's too early to tell on the writing/story front, but I do like the voice acting.

[briantw]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

AC: Vahalla seems... decent, so far. Not sure its doing anything different yet from Origins or Odyssey, but I liked those games well enough, so that's fine. Combat feels a little off though, I'm wondering if some polishing suffered from COVID issues but that Ubisoft refused to delay. Nothing game breaking, but a little meh. I do like the raiding mechanic. And it's too early to tell on the writing/story front, but I do like the voice acting.

I went with a female in Odyssey because all reports were that the male voice actor was hot garbage (and the female one was great), but I went with the dude for this one because I saw it was the guy who plays Cnut in The Last Kingdom.  

I agree that the combat, and controls in general, feel a bit jankier than they did in Odyssey.  

I'm a sucker for anything Norse, though.  

[Fez]

I got to the first "modern day" section of AC: Valhalla, which is still quite early in the game, and there's a couple explicit mentions of COVID there. It really threw me for a loop. I assume it's just a bit of worldbuilding, since the main narrative would've been written before the pandemic started. But it did get me to start wondering if COVID is going to be an explicit part of some "real world" games over the next few years. I hadn't thought about it before, since so many games are set in other worlds, but not all of them are.

[Jace, Extat]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

I got to the first "modern day" section of AC: Valhalla, which is still quite early in the game, and there's a couple explicit mentions of COVID there. It really threw me for a loop. I assume it's just a bit of worldbuilding, since the main narrative would've been written before the pandemic started. But it did get me to start wondering if COVID is going to be an explicit part of some "real world" games over the next few years. I hadn't thought about it before, since so many games are set in other worlds, but not all of them are.

There's going to be an infestion of shitty pandemic/isolation fiction in the coming years.

[RumHam]

41 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

There's going to be an infestion of shitty pandemic/isolation fiction in the coming years.

With Michael Bay getting us started:

 

[Maltaran]

3 hours ago, Fez said:

I got to the first "modern day" section of AC: Valhalla, which is still quite early in the game, and there's a couple explicit mentions of COVID there. It really threw me for a loop. I assume it's just a bit of worldbuilding, since the main narrative would've been written before the pandemic started. But it did get me to start wondering if COVID is going to be an explicit part of some "real world" games over the next few years. I hadn't thought about it before, since so many games are set in other worlds, but not all of them are.

I was just happy to see Shaun Hastings again.

[Fez]

1 hour ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

There's going to be an infestion of shitty pandemic/isolation fiction in the coming years.

With books/movies/TV I absolutely agree. But for some reason I kinda figured video games wouldn't.

[Luzifer's right hand]

I'm getting the hang of XCOM2. I'm a bit of a masochist and I played 20 hours so far and I'm on ironman campaign 9(The first 2 ended during the first mission...). There are some crazy difficulty spikes and some situational abilities are OP as fuck if you can use them. I cleared an entire map with the reaper ability that lets you blow up cars and stuff from a distance while the rest of my squad hid in a corner.

[Poobah]

2 hours ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

I'm getting the hang of XCOM2. I'm a bit of a masochist and I played 20 hours so far and I'm on ironman campaign 9(The first 2 ended during the first mission...). There are some crazy difficulty spikes and some situational abilities are OP as fuck if you can use them. I cleared an entire map with the reaper ability that lets you blow up cars and stuff from a distance while the rest of my squad hid in a corner.

In general but especially playing Ironman Reapers will get you far. Their scouting abilities in particular are absolutely phenomenal and can insulate you from most surprise bullshit the game might throw at ya.

[Clueless Northman]

Hmmm, Elite Dangerous will be free on Epic Store, 1 week from now. As if I hadn't enough games in my backlog. But I've wanted to play it for so long. I'm doomed. I really need several weeks of lockdown and complete stop of all non-essential economy (or basically special vacations paid by the government), right now

[Luzifer's right hand]

5 hours ago, Poobah said:

In general but especially playing Ironman Reapers will get you far. Their scouting abilities in particular are absolutely phenomenal and can insulate you from most surprise bullshit the game might throw at ya.

I just finished a map with the high explosives sitrep... Some of the mechanics are much more fun than those of XCOM:EW. I'm glad that I waited until all the DLCs got released though. 

28 minutes ago, Clueless Northman said:

Hmmm, Elite Dangerous will be free on Epic Store, 1 week from now. As if I hadn't enough games in my backlog. But I've wanted to play it for so long. I'm doomed. I really need several weeks of lockdown and complete stop of all non-essential economy (or basically special vacations paid by the government), right now

I have yet to install a single game with the epic launcher but I got a lot of games in library... 

[Rhom]

So my local Target had a sign earlier this week that PS5/XboxSX would only be available via pick-up and would not be on the shelves.  So I asked the dude in electronics about it and he said he really wasn't certain but that the local inventory would go up online at some point and then buyers could come pick it up.  He said to try being online at 12.

So I'm up last night and I try.  No luck.

This morning, I see some comments online that Target made the PS5 available to order for store pick up at 1:30 AM.  WTF????