Video Games - Legendary Edition

[A True Kaniggit]

17 minutes ago, RumHam said:

On Xbox one it only installed the first one even though I have the space. I have to hit install for the other two games. 

Must be different between the systems. I didn’t get an option. It went ahead and put all 3 on my PS4.

Edit: Oops. Seems you’re still chatting about Halo. 

[Werthead]

7 minutes ago, RumHam said:

On Xbox one it only installed the first one even though I have the space. I have to hit install for the other two games. 

Oh wait, really? On Steam it reportedly doesn't give you a choice (I haven't bought it yet), it's either install the whole thing or nothing.

With the Master Chief collection you effectively install a launcher, then go into the launcher and download the specific game or games you want, which people got annoyed by initially but actually works out better if you haven't got the hard drive space for all six games.

[RumHam]

6 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Oh wait, really? On Steam it reportedly doesn't give you a choice (I haven't bought it yet), it's either install the whole thing or nothing.

With the Master Chief collection you effectively install a launcher, then go into the launcher and download the specific game or games you want, which people got annoyed by initially but actually works out better if you haven't got the hard drive space for all six games.

Yeah, I didn't understand how it could have downloaded and installed so fast and that was why. I'm playing the first one now and the other two are not installed. 

Edit: it's only using 21.3 gb

[Clueless Northman]

5 hours ago, Werthead said:

That's also not right either, Skyrim with the HD texture pack installed takes it to around 20GB, and with the DLCs to around 25GB. That's quite big for a game that's ten years old.

Weird, my Skyrim Special Edition folder is just 13-14 Gb. Maybe some parts are stored somewhere else. Or Bethesday really did a great job when doing it. As for music, there's basically 5 h of it in the complete game (with all expansions).

What I don't really get is recent computer disk sizes. For 2 decades it massively increased all along and every time I bought a new comp, HD was several times bigger than previous one. I got 2T of disks back in 2013-14, but I couldn't easily find any storage bigger than 2.5 T in 2019 (granted, there's a 1T SSD in the lot, but still, it's like PC makers assumed we didn't need bigger storage in the last 7 years, which is totally absurd.

[IlyaP]

11 hours ago, Werthead said:

My fairly completionist playthrough of the game plus all DLC took about 130 hours, and that's at the low end of things amongst people I know. It's a pretty big title by any measure, even if it doesn't have (by a long shot) the biggest open-world map ever, or the best story.

Accurate. 

I'm on 457 hours and counting. 

[IlyaP]

8 hours ago, Werthead said:

That's also not right either, Skyrim with the HD texture pack installed takes it to around 20GB, and with the DLCs to around 25GB. That's quite big for a game that's ten years old.

And if you have mods, then OH BOY, get ready for some large folders. My Skyrim folder got to about 65-70 gigs after I'd installed a few necessary mods, texture packs, Sky UI, Open Cities, etc. 

[Werthead]

10 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Accurate. 

I'm on 457 hours and counting. 

Yup, I've only ever done one playthrough. I'm thinking of doing another, maybe later this year, though if Starfield is really coming in the autumn, maybe not.

[Derfel Cadarn]

Got the Planescape Torment/Icewind Dale and Baldurs Gate 1+2 for PS4, since my PC is 6.5 years old and probably not got much life left. Will see how they handle with controller; if there’s a way to use a mouse/keyboard, that’d be great

[briantw]

12 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Accurate. 

I'm on 457 hours and counting. 

The map may not have been huge compared to other open world games, but it definitely didn't feel like there was any shortage of things to do in Skyrim.  I think it really helped that every dungeon/cave was designed by hand rather than the copy/paste lazy feeling all of Oblivion's dungeons had that reminded me of the first Halo.

[RumHam]

1 hour ago, briantw said:

The map may not have been huge compared to other open world games, but it definitely didn't feel like there was any shortage of things to do in Skyrim.  I think it really helped that every dungeon/cave was designed by hand rather than the copy/paste lazy feeling all of Oblivion's dungeons had that reminded me of the first Halo.

But they all still looked the same and had the same dragur enemies mostly. Even a lot of the same "spin the three circles" puzzles. I was a bit  disappointed by that. 

[Impmk2]

Getting towards the end of my Baldurs Gate series playthrough. Just started Throne of Bhaal. They've held up pretty well, though the 2e mechanics are dated and allow for some pretty cheesy solutions to boss fights, I'm still very much enjoying them.

Not sure where people get the 200-300hr figure for a BG2 playthrough. Steam clocked me at about 60hrs for BG2, and I was being reasonably completionist, was well over the vanilla game xp cap when I hit the final boss fight, don't think I missed much. Even if that number includes ToB I can't see it.

[Stannis Eats No Peaches]

I’ve started playing Below Zero, which is fun so far, but the beginning of the game doesn’t feel as organic. The first game says “right, your ship crashed, try to survive” and it unfolds organically with the exploration. I imagine Below Zero will unfold like that too, but one of the first things I had to do was read a few data logs to figure out why I was on the planet.

Pokemon Snap has been great! Fuming that there is no Gyrados in the game though.

I’ll put Mass Effect on my wish list, but I have so many games to play I’m not in a hurry.

[Werthead]

Someone has made a car mod for Microsoft Flight Simulator, so that means you can now drive a car around a 1:1, scaled-correctly complete replica of the entire Earth.

Obviously there are some (extreme) limitations to this. MFS is designed to be played from 30,000 feet in the air, so the graphical fidelity at ground zero is way below what you'd expect from a modern game. It is surprising how well the 3D buildings hold up at extreme close range (even outside the fantastic-looking airports), but foliage is hit and miss. You'll also run into photogrammetry errors, like buildings which the game renders as pictures the ground. The car models the game automatically generates (apart from the one you drive) are also dogshit, but that's unsurprising because they were never meant to be seen from this close-up.

But as a proof of concept it's possible to do this, it's quite startling. Give it another ten years and maybe we'll get a Forza game which spans the entire planet in 4K levels of detail.

[IlyaP]

10 hours ago, briantw said:

The map may not have been huge compared to other open world games, but it definitely didn't feel like there was any shortage of things to do in Skyrim.  I think it really helped that every dungeon/cave was designed by hand rather than the copy/paste lazy feeling all of Oblivion's dungeons had that reminded me of the first Halo.

This definitely helped matters. As did the wonderful amount of mods that added new stories and locations and quests once the main stories were all wrapped up - including new radiance quests, new islands/maps to explore, as well as storyline expansions. 

And of course, Thomas the Tank Engine. *shudder*

[IlyaP]

4 hours ago, Impmk2 said:

Not sure where people get the 200-300hr figure for a BG2 playthrough. Steam clocked me at about 60hrs for BG2, and I was being reasonably completionist, was well over the vanilla game xp cap when I hit the final boss fight, don't think I missed much. Even if that number includes ToB I can't see it.

Looking at Steam right now: my playtime on Baldur's Gate II (including Throne of Bhaal and Siege of Dragonspear) was 100.6 hours. 

A completionist run-through of BG 2 alone can take 136 hours, and adding ToB and SoD on top can push it up to 200 hours. If you want to explore every character's arc, do every quest, etc. 

[Gorn]

Yeah, pretty much the entire Chapter 2 of BG2, which contains half of its content, was entirely optional and could have been skipped. Every class had a dedicated multi-hour quest that would result in the player character winning a stronghold (each of which had its own minor quests), and you could also play the quests for every other class as well.

Looking back on it, the amount of high-quality writing and storytelling in that game remains impressive, and all of that 100+ hours of content was hand-crafted. Jon Irenicus was also one of the best villains in gaming.

I get misty-eyed just thinking back it. It was the game that made me love gaming in general, and RPGs in particular.

[RumHam]

On 5/14/2021 at 7:24 PM, A True Kaniggit said:

Must be different between the systems. I didn’t get an option. It went ahead and put all 3 on my PS4.

Edit: Oops. Seems you’re still chatting about Halo. 

To be clear I was talking about Mass Effect. I don't know why the other platforms apparently install all three games automatically. Maybe something to do with x-box's "smart delivery" system? 

[Impmk2]

6 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Looking at Steam right now: my playtime on Baldur's Gate II (including Throne of Bhaal and Siege of Dragonspear) was 100.6 hours. 

A completionist run-through of BG 2 alone can take 136 hours, and adding ToB and SoD on top can push it up to 200 hours. If you want to explore every character's arc, do every quest, etc. 

I guess for a first time player maybe? I played the game a lot back between 2000-2005, a few good / evil run throughs with the various companions, and seemed I still had a pretty good memory for it. I knew pretty much what order I wanted to do the various quests going in and didn't mess about too much. SoD is a BG1EE expansion? I don't really think it counts.

This run I did pretty much everything in chapter 2 aside from picking up all the random companions I wasn't going to take through to ToB and doing their content - so all possible stronghold quests, quests associated with Aerie, Jahiera, Keldorn (poor Minsc and Yoshimo don't get much). Killed all the various dragons, Kangaxx, twisted rune etc. Went into every building and talked to all the named NPCs I could find, then checked various guides / wiki to make sure I hadn't missed anything major and went back and did a few things I'd still managed to skip. If there's more than another few hours of content I didn't find I'd be surprised.

So yeah, reasonably completionist. Unless ToB is far larger than I remember I'm pretty sure you'd have to be going really slowly (trying to do quests you weren't levelled enough for with a sub-optimal party, doubling back and dying a lot) and reading all the random book content to push it up above 200hrs.

[Slurktan]

11 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Looking at Steam right now: my playtime on Baldur's Gate II (including Throne of Bhaal and Siege of Dragonspear) was 100.6 hours. 

A completionist run-through of BG 2 alone can take 136 hours, and adding ToB and SoD on top can push it up to 200 hours. If you want to explore every character's arc, do every quest, etc. 

Why 136 hours exactly?

[Clueless Northman]

That's the average or median in Howlongtobeat, I suppose.

I always think in terms of first playthrough, trying to do everything, bar starting a completely new game. For Elder Scrolls, this means keeping a save when having to choose between vampires, werewolves and whatever, Stormcloaks or Imperials, and doing both sides in a row.

With Skyrim (and official expansions/DLC), I think of "playtime" as in doing everything, every bloody dungeon and all faction and misc quests (though not the infinite loop of radiant quests "Do you have work for me now") and fully building with bought or mined materials all 3 personal houses, I guesstimate a complete thorough playthrough would take me 400 hours; was 270 for Oblivion, and most probably above 500 for Morrowind.

BG1 and Tales of Sword Coast was probably 100 hours. BG2 was indeed close to 180, iirc - at least 30h for Throne of Bhaal. Of course, next playthroughs are faster because I click through most dialogues/texts and already know where things are and don't have to run here and there like a headless chicken, and I already know the fight strategies - even if I play with different classes/builds. That clearly cuts time by 1/4 to 1/3.

I'm also quite the hoarder, so when I find magic items, scrolls and potions, I keep them all and store them somewhere, so there's probably way more travel from questing area to my base/treasure room than most people, because I tend to run out of space / hit weight limit after a couple of levels/dungeons.

All in all, for most RPGs, my play time is above the completionist average. For other kinds of games, say adventures or shooters, games like Metro, Batman or Max Payne for instance, I'm between the Howlongtobeat standard main+ and standard completionist times.