Videogames Latest: Starfields of Glory

[Werthead]

16 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Is BioWare ever gonna make another mass effect or dragon age or original RPG or has EA killed them off permanently? And when is that fucking KOTOR remake coming out ? How hard can it be really…

The KotOR remake is on indefinite hold, Dragon Age: Dreadwolf is a 2024 or 2025 release, and Mass Effect 5 is in development.

3 hours ago, Ran said:

Epic Game Store has Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak for free this week. 

Outstanding game. I was at first disappointed it wasn't another space game (the incoming release of Homeworld 3 solves that though) and then that it was a ground combat RTS that looked like Ground Control but had inferior controls, but it's a very solid game with great atmosphere and outstanding music. And short enough (at 10 hours) that it's viable to run through it at different difficulty levels and try different approaches.

The Homeworld franchise is probably the single most underrated in all of gaming, and given that it's quite remarkable they've managed to chalk up five games in the series over 24 years (plus a tabletop RPG).

[Ser Not Appearing]

Phil Spencer said Starfield is more like Oblivion than Skyrim. Anybody with a good feel for both games have a thought on what that might mean?

 

 

 

[Ran]

59 minutes ago, Ser Not Appearing said:

Phil Spencer said Starfield is more like Oblivion than Skyrim. Anybody with a good feel for both games have a thought on what that might mean?

I would take that to mean that it has a more complete and engaging story narratives for its main storyline and side storylines. I've always gathered from the way people talked about Skyrim that the joy of it was primarily in the big open world and doing your own thing in it, whereas most seemed to think the story was thin and not front and center.

[Werthead]

57 minutes ago, Ser Not Appearing said:

Phil Spencer said Starfield is more like Oblivion than Skyrim. Anybody with a good feel for both games have a thought on what that might mean?

I'm assuming that at some point

Spoiler

You go through a magic space portal and appear inside a painting. You turn around and see the Hero of Kvatch. "First time, huh?"

I think in general he means that maybe you're not Walking Space God. In Oblivion you worked as Sean Bean's fixer and dogsbody, you yourself didn't save the world or solve all the world's problems single-handedly, you cleared things up for the guy who really did that. Some people disliked that so in Skyrim you were simultaneously the Head of the Mages Guild (even if you weren't a mage), the head of the Dark Brotherhood, the Dragonborn and the supreme hero of either the Imperial or Stormcloak faction.

It might also mean that for Starfield they really ramped up the side-quest design. Skyrim, for all its praise, has surprisingyly lacklustre side-quests. Most of BGS's other games had great side-quests but Skyrim was a bit flat on that score.

He might also mean it's easier to avoid any BS distractions. In Oblivion you had the Oblivion Gates everywhere, but you had to trigger them (which you could avoid by not going to Kvatch for ages) and when they did appear, you had tons of warning to avoid them. In Skyrim it was sometimes easy to miss a dragon until it landed on your head, even if you could not be arsed to fight it.

[Corvinus85]

8 hours ago, Ran said:

I would take that to mean that it has a more complete and engaging story narratives for its main storyline and side storylines. I've always gathered from the way people talked about Skyrim that the joy of it was primarily in the big open world and doing your own thing in it, whereas most seemed to think the story was thin and not front and center.

Which, given everything I've seen so far from Starfield, is a bit strange. It mainly looks to be a game with a huge open world. I would be surprised if the main story covers more than half of the game map.

[Toth]

Ah, great. This morning I saw a Shiny Poochyena, but only had two balls with me. It broke out of both of them...

[dog-days]

Somehow missed this. Obsidian Entertainment released a talking-heads-based documentary in four five parts to mark their twentieth anniversary. Linked to on the OE forums. The part I saw of it (1) was good, though it did feel as if there was a Chris-Avellone-shaped absence. I understand that apart from the now dismissed allegations against him, he fell out quite badly with OE. But the result was that the talking heads were more focused on the technical/graphics/management side, and not so much on the writing. 

(eta: Josh Sawyer has popped up to talk about PoE!) 

Edited August 25, 2023 by dog-days

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

Wasn’t Chris Avellone acquitted from those charges ?the alleged victims ended up retracting their statements.

[Gorn]

No, his split from Obsidian was in 2015, way before that. Apparently he was unhappy with decisions made by the rest of Obsidian owners and management, and they finally split over something about the company finances. According to him, most of Obsidian's problems were self-inflicted and their management ended up driving different publishers away for no good reason.

The split has been very bad, and I don't think there is any chance he will work with Obsidian again.

[dog-days]

I remember seeing some emails/messages from CA making the kind of statements about colleagues (re their incompetence) that once they became public would have made any further cooperation impossible. 

ETA: just walked down memory lane and Google'd it.  Ouch, CA did a lot of complaining in public. Some of the very personal remarks I'd thought were leaked emails just seem to be things he came out and said. 

Anyway, will try and watch more of the doc later. There was a bit of hype for Avowed at the end, though rather cautious hype. "Some people will really love it..." meaning others won't. And no Josh Sawyer of course. 

[IlyaP]

5 hours ago, dog-days said:

I remember seeing some emails/messages from CA making the kind of statements about colleagues (re their incompetence) that once they became public would have made any further cooperation impossible. 

ETA: just walked down memory lane and Google'd it.  Ouch, CA did a lot of complaining in public. Some of the very personal remarks I'd thought were leaked emails just seem to be things he came out and said. 

Anyway, will try and watch more of the doc later. There was a bit of hype for Avowed at the end, though rather cautious hype. "Some people will really love it..." meaning others won't. And no Josh Sawyer of course. 

Any chance you can provide some links to this? Would be interested in reading it this weekend. 

[IlyaP]

8 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Wasn’t Chris Avellone acquitted from those charges ?the alleged victims ended up retracting their statements.

Correct. And he got paid out to pay for legal fees and to continue paying for his mother's well-being (he's her caretaker).

[dog-days]

5 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Any chance you can provide some links to this? Would be interested in reading it this weekend. 

He seems to have made some comments that pull no punches on the RPG Codex. They condensed them into a Google Doc. Here's the thread for context. 

I'm not in either camp. Suspect the full story would be more complex. 

[Werthead]

CA's account obviously varies from what Obsidian have said, much more circumspectly.

Reading between the lines, it looks like Avellone was initially a high-profile member of the company and a critically-acclaimed game designer: Fallout 2 and Planescape: Torment were (and, to a certain demographic, still are) regarded as two of the greatest CRPGs of all time, and he was effective lead on both projects (after Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky bailed after early work on Fallout 2, and the titular producers on that game weren't as integral as Avellone). After those, he was not the lead on any more games. He was basically "just a writer" on Knights of the Old Republic 2 (although one of his responsibilities was for Kreia, the most important character in the game) and Neverwinter Nights 2. He was then a senior lead on Mask of the Betrayer, the first expansion for Neverwinter Nights 2, which was released to huge acclaim. But again he was not put on as lead on Alpha Protocol or - very surprisingly - Fallout: New Vegas, given his work on Fallout 2.

The explanation for that was that Josh Sawyer had put a ton of work into the OG Fallout 3: Van Buren when Black Isle/Interplay collapsed, and they wanted to recycle most of the plot and factions into New Vegas and it was just more polite to have Sawyer do it, whilst Avellone got first dibs on one of the expansions (he ended up doing Old World Blues, probably the best-received of the expansions). But it was a bit odd, given Avellone's profile, popularity and critical acclaim, that he kept being bypassed when it came to make the big games. In particular, Sawyer seemed to become their go-to guy, getting major roles on New Vegas, Aliens: Crucible (before its cancellation), Stormlands (also pre-cancellation) and Pillars of Eternity, whilst Avellone kept being "side-character guy."

Some of the things that have come out since then indicated that Avellone kept trying to turn every game Obsidian made into his kind of thing, and whilst his kind of thing was interesting, it also wasn't what either the studio or publishers were necessarily looking for in every title (Obsidian definitely had a reputation for being "dark" which saw them lose opportunities to make broader-appeal, populist games, like publishers were going, "Why would we hire Nine Inch Nails to produce the new N*Sync album?"). The other issue is that his work seemed to take quite a long time to come in. One complaint, especially after 2010 or so, is that his profile also saw him being invited to conventions and conferences and stuff and other Obsidian personnel were not getting the same recognition. There does seem to have been a credit thing going on, so Avellone was sometimes suggesting he played a much bigger role on KotOR 2 and Neverwinter Nights 2 than he really did. Really reading between the lines, some people also suggested he had a hard-partying thing going on which also impacted on his work.

The big split came after Pillars of Eternity. It looks like Avellone had his own pitch for what that game became, which was overlooked (again) in favour of Sawyer's proposal. Avellone then became "side-character guy" again, but what wrankled Avellone was that his name was prominently used in the Kickstarter campaign, even though his role was not going to be that big. Then a lot of stuff for the characters he developed was cut, meaning that he wasted a lot of work. Obsidian's take seems to be that Avellone was asked to develop x amount of material and instead showed up with y amount, which was five times more than they asked for and they had no time or budget to put in the game, so he kind of set himself up to fail there.

That seemed to be the final straw and he left Obsidian (he has a minor writing/consulting role on Tyranny, the co-development of which overlapped Pillars of Eternity). Between the rest of the company buying out his stake and him getting paid apparently silly money to just "consult" on games and be a "human stretch goal" for Kickstarter campaigns, he never really needed to make a game full-time again: he was just a "star" writer for Torment: Tides of Numenera (like Patrick Rothfuss!) who came in, wrote one character or one short story arc, and then left. 

[horangi]

It has been a weekend of video game triumphs.  After finally finishing the D4 campaign on hardcore, I finally beat the "Payback" origins scenario on Grand Admiral in Stellaris.  The scenario starts you in debt to not-Amazon, taxes you every 15 years of a ton of credits, and sends its "Fulfillment Center" titans after you if you step out of line.  I probably spent 150 hours of failed attempts over the last year before finally breaking through. 

[IlyaP]

22 hours ago, dog-days said:

He seems to have made some comments that pull no punches on the RPG Codex. They condensed them into a Google Doc. Here's the thread for context. 

I'm not in either camp. Suspect the full story would be more complex. 

The second link directs me back to this same thread?

[dog-days]

1 hour ago, IlyaP said:

The second link directs me back to this same thread?

Sorry, Ilya. Think I was posting from my phone. RPG Codex Link. 

[Toth]

Well, I did it. I guess I had more than enough charge because my provider kept making me charge or else they'd cancel my phone card for inactivity and I used it to get some mobile data to try and experience Pokemon Go the way it is supposed to be experienced.

And note to myself: Events start at 10, apparently. I thought I take my phone with me for my usual jogging trip, but it was too early and I didn't see anything event related. So far. Yesterday evening was better, with me being able to catch a couple of tiara Pikachus, one Goomy in a raid and... that's about it. Didn't see any shinies either. Also I just now read that you get 30 Pokeballs for using Adventure Incense. Good that the game never tells you that. I... I'm heartbroken, this means I could have gotten that shiny Poochyena easily if I knew that and fired the incense two days ago. -.-

I did however get two Beldums that I fed to my Metagross, so that's an advantage. On the downside, I ran into a Team Rocket GRUNT with a Snorlax, a Gardevoir and a Gyarados who utterly wrecked me. I'm still FAR away from trying out anything Raid related.

Edited August 27, 2023 by Toth

[IlyaP]

Having put Baldur's Gate 3 on pause until they sufficiently patch the game to make it what I'd have liked it to have been (read: complete and not missing entire parts of Act 3), I'm doubling-down on Solasta: Crown of the Magister, which is (frustratingly!) also turn-based, but intriguingly compelling despite that feature. The game is very pared down and straightforward, with good environments, three-dimensional and tactical gameplay (though not as crazy as what Larian does), and less open-world in approach. And it has a grid pattern for combat sequences, which I find really, really helpful during combat sequences. 

Edited August 27, 2023 by IlyaP

[IlyaP]

4 hours ago, dog-days said:

Sorry, Ilya. Think I was posting from my phone. RPG Codex Link. 

Thanks @dog-days. 

I tried reading through the comments, but, man, the design of the forum is painful - if there was a way to just filter out the various sigs and gifs and just have the pure text (a la here), it'd be a much stronger forum for it. (Several unmoderated anti-semitic posts didn't make this here boy, who was raised in a Jewish community, very comfortable.)