Videogames Thread: Steaming Ahead

[Werthead]

I saw a bonkers thing from the ending of Starfield (major spoilers):

Spoiler

In one of the possible endings, you return to the Lodge having gone through the Unity and find four duplicates of yourself, from parallel timelines. Four have sided with each of the major factions (UNC, Constellation, Crimson Fleet, Freestar Collective) and spout those groups' slogans. The fifth is a "lone wolf" who's only line is "I work alone!" and the others mock them for that. If you can get this ending, you can even recruit one of the duplicates as a companion character in New Game+.

Apparently there's a fair number of variant endings leading into NG+, in which things can get very strange.

 

[Arakasi]

Picked up the “new” Nobunagas Ambition game Awakening and started getting into it. I find as time has gone by I prefer this series by far to Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Mainly due to the far more rulers. RotK really you never get over 15-20 and o find only two scenarios playable (189 and 194). Later on Wei is just too powerful. However ambition has a “bigger” map and only a couple scenarios where Oda is too strong. One thing I wish this game had is an earlier starting scenario. I think 1546 is the earliest here while previous games had one in the 1530s.

Anyway getting into it and it’s pretty tough so far. Battles seem good but a bit torn on the node/network maps compared to previous 2d open battlefields. Covert actions thankfully are much better here than recently. Also a lot of good civil options although the city layout system is a bit weak. Difficulty is quite tough. I’m playing as Chosokabe and while I’ve finally managed to mostly take Shikoku I might have to restart this game with lower AI aggressiveness. I turned off events because I find them annoying to play with (funny enough you can turn off individual events but not gone down that road). Anyway Mori is a beast as usual to the north and Imagawa has pulled off his dream from reality in absorbing Oda, Tokugawa, Saito and others and reaching the capital. Since I don’t want to be bogged down in massive fights against Daimyos with double my land I’ll probably restart with lower expansion on the AI part.

[Slurktan]

1 hour ago, Arakasi said:

Picked up the “new” Nobunagas Ambition game Awakening and started getting into it. I find as time has gone by I prefer this series by far to Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Mainly due to the far more rulers. RotK really you never get over 15-20 and o find only two scenarios playable (189 and 194). Later on Wei is just too powerful. However ambition has a “bigger” map and only a couple scenarios where Oda is too strong. One thing I wish this game had is an earlier starting scenario. I think 1546 is the earliest here while previous games had one in the 1530s.

Anyway getting into it and it’s pretty tough so far. Battles seem good but a bit torn on the node/network maps compared to previous 2d open battlefields. Covert actions thankfully are much better here than recently. Also a lot of good civil options although the city layout system is a bit weak. Difficulty is quite tough. I’m playing as Chosokabe and while I’ve finally managed to mostly take Shikoku I might have to restart this game with lower AI aggressiveness. I turned off events because I find them annoying to play with (funny enough you can turn off individual events but not gone down that road). Anyway Mori is a beast as usual to the north and Imagawa has pulled off his dream from reality in absorbing Oda, Tokugawa, Saito and others and reaching the capital. Since I don’t want to be bogged down in massive fights against Daimyos with double my land I’ll probably restart with lower expansion on the AI part.

Did you play XIV? Granted they are DLC but there is a lot of "what if" scenarios that go into the later period where Wei isnt quite the powerhouse. One especially is my favourite where the what if is Cao Cao dies in like 209 so Wei is split into factions for 4 of his sons.  Liu Bei only has northern Jing, Sun Quan Wu plus Jiang Ling and Shou Chun, Liu Zhang Shu, and Ma Teng holds Xi. 

There's multiple other early year scenarios that are good too like 191, 196, the Emperor Lu Bu one in 197, 198 etc.

[Corvinus85]

On 9/24/2023 at 9:09 AM, Werthead said:

I think it was the mission combo.

  Hide contents

That mission came up at the exact time the UC Vanguard questline culminated. The terrormorphs show up in that storyline. It's just that I triggered the two missions right after one another, resulting in unexpected extra mayhem.

 

I started the UC Vanguard quest line now, and got to that part. Actually now I'm at the part where I needed to secure the codes of the ambassadors. Interesting that the game encourages you early to sign up for the Vanguard, especially with all the lore dump that happens. At level 33 and with the weapons I had I made quick work of those terrormorphs, not sure how it would have worked out at levels 10-15.

[Arakasi]

1 hour ago, Slurktan said:

Did you play XIV? Granted they are DLC but there is a lot of "what if" scenarios that go into the later period where Wei isnt quite the powerhouse. One especially is my favourite where the what if is Cao Cao dies in like 209 so Wei is split into factions for 4 of his sons.  Liu Bei only has northern Jing, Sun Quan Wu plus Jiang Ling and Shou Chun, Liu Zhang Shu, and Ma Teng holds Xi. 

There's multiple other early year scenarios that are good too like 191, 196, the Emperor Lu Bu one in 197, 198 etc.

I don’t think so? Also find RotK has gone a bit too far into the play as a non ruler and I don’t find that playstyle engaging. Running around and having conversations is not the type of gameplay I like. Nobunaga games I find just give the superior ruler playstyle.

Even with what you describe Wei in 209 divided by four is still too few factions. Wei at that time is half the map. But yeah in general I only find three kingdoms playable from post yellow turbans to Lu Bu’s fall. After that Cao Cao is just too strong. I have never liked to play against huge kingdoms like that because it becomes a boring grind. Like could you play Civ where someone starts off with 3 cities and you have one? Sure I guess you could but I don’t think it would be fun. I like early Nobunaga scenarios (anything til early 1560s) where there is usually 40-50 choices and plenty of weak but not too weak options to try out. Especially if you can nibble around the edges while the big Daimyos bash on each other in the center.

[Ser Not Appearing]

11 hours ago, Werthead said:

I saw a bonkers thing from the ending of Starfield (major spoilers):

  Hide contents

In one of the possible endings, you return to the Lodge having gone through the Unity and find four duplicates of yourself, from parallel timelines. Four have sided with each of the major factions (UNC, Constellation, Crimson Fleet, Freestar Collective) and spout those groups' slogans. The fifth is a "lone wolf" who's only line is "I work alone!" and the others mock them for that. If you can get this ending, you can even recruit one of the duplicates as a companion character in New Game+.

Apparently there's a fair number of variant endings leading into NG+, in which things can get very strange.

 

 

That's honestly awesome.

[Darryk]

On 9/20/2023 at 4:03 PM, Werthead said:

RPS has done it's reader-nominated Top 25 CRPGs ever list.

I'd probably agree, although I'm pretty sure last year they made it a Top 100 but whatever. Also, technically, Mass Effect 2 is on here twice.

1. Disco Elysium
2. The Witcher III: Wild Hunt
3. Planescape: Torment
4. Baldur's Gate III
5. Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn
6. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
7. Deus Ex
8. Dragon Age: Origins
9. Fallout: New Vegas
10. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
11. Divinity: Original Sin II
12. Mass Effect 2
13. Fallout
14. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
15. Elden Ring
16. Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
17. Mass Effect: Legendary Edition
18. Dark Souls
19. Chrono Trigger
20. Baldur's Gate
21. Fallout 2
22. Arcanum: Of Steelworks and Magick Obscura
23. Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
24. Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous
25. Final Fantasy VI

It's a pretty good list. Baldur's Gate 1 and Fallout 2 would be higher for me (I preferred Fallout 2 to Fallout 1).

The Quest for Glory games are a personal favourite of mine but probably way too old and obscure to make the list.

[Slurktan]

19 hours ago, Arakasi said:

I don’t think so? Also find RotK has gone a bit too far into the play as a non ruler and I don’t find that playstyle engaging. Running around and having conversations is not the type of gameplay I like. Nobunaga games I find just give the superior ruler playstyle.

Even with what you describe Wei in 209 divided by four is still too few factions. Wei at that time is half the map. But yeah in general I only find three kingdoms playable from post yellow turbans to Lu Bu’s fall. After that Cao Cao is just too strong. I have never liked to play against huge kingdoms like that because it becomes a boring grind. Like could you play Civ where someone starts off with 3 cities and you have one? Sure I guess you could but I don’t think it would be fun. I like early Nobunaga scenarios (anything til early 1560s) where there is usually 40-50 choices and plenty of weak but not too weak options to try out. Especially if you can nibble around the edges while the big Daimyos bash on each other in the center.

RotK 9, 11, 13, 14 are all Ruler only but fair.  I'm kind of the opposite in ROTK now honestly and is why I don't really play any of the Nobunaga's; Starting where everybody is small makes the game incredibly easy and incredibly boring. The AI is never good enough to provide even a meager challenge in those scenarios.

[dog-days]

3 hours ago, Darryk said:

It's a pretty good list. Baldur's Gate 1 and Fallout 2 would be higher for me (I preferred Fallout 2 to Fallout 1).

The Quest for Glory games are a personal favourite of mine but probably way too old and obscure to make the list.

I'd also put Baldur's Gate 1 higher. 

Also, Pillars of Eternity 2 should be higher and Pillars of Eternity 1 should be:

a) on the list and

b) higher

Okay, they were conceived partly as tributes to the classic IE games, but they did their own thing -- and did it very well -- in terms of plot, characters and setting. 

Also, I'm now playing the Witcher 3 expansion Blood and Wine having finished the main quest and Hearts of Stone. It should be nowhere near number 2. I'm not even sure I'd put it on the list. 

[Arakasi]

27 minutes ago, Slurktan said:

RotK 9, 11, 13, 14 are all Ruler only but fair.  I'm kind of the opposite in ROTK now honestly and is why I don't really play any of the Nobunaga's; Starting where everybody is small makes the game incredibly easy and incredibly boring. The AI is never good enough to provide even a meager challenge in those scenarios.

I can see that but I like building from one city. I almost never play any ruler where I start with two cities. I prefer the early game start from nothing playstyle. And I don’t mind stronger rulers than me but I don’t like starting with facing off against some ten city ruler since it promotes cheese play tactics against large forces to even survive.

Edited September 26, 2023 by Arakasi

[Werthead]

30 minutes ago, dog-days said:

I'd also put Baldur's Gate 1 higher. 

Also, Pillars of Eternity 2 should be higher and Pillars of Eternity 1 should be:

a) on the list and

b) higher

Okay, they were conceived partly as tributes to the classic IE games, but they did their own thing -- and did it very well -- in terms of plot, characters and setting. 

Also, I'm now playing the Witcher 3 expansion Blood and Wine having finished the main quest and Hearts of Stone. It should be nowhere near number 2. I'm not even sure I'd put it on the list. 

I don't think PoE1 was very good. Combat was poor, the story never really took off for me. It was good as a statement of intent, but the execution was so-so.

What I would do is put the outstanding Tyranny on there. And definitely drop Mass Effect 2, that's redundant (and ME2, whilst a good game taken purely on its own merits, also massively derails the entire trilogy, causing a shit-ton of problems that ME3 failed to address). I also wish they'd combined BG1 and BG2 in an effective Legendary Edition as one game, allowing you to go from BG1 to Siege of Dragonspear (optionally) to BG2 to Throne of Bhaal in one seamless experience. That would allow us to get them both on the same list (as BG2 is better, but BG1 arguably has the more iconic opening, shades of the relationship between A New Hope and Empire).

[dog-days]

3 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I don't think PoE1 was very good. Combat was poor, the story never really took off for me. It was good as a statement of intent, but the execution was so-so.

What I would do is put the outstanding Tyranny on there. And definitely drop Mass Effect 2, that's redundant (and ME2, whilst a good game taken purely on its own merits, also massively derails the entire trilogy, causing a shit-ton of problems that ME3 failed to address). I also wish they'd combined BG1 and BG2 in an effective Legendary Edition as one game, allowing you to go from BG1 to Siege of Dragonspear (optionally) to BG2 to Throne of Bhaal in one seamless experience. That would allow us to get them both on the same list (as BG2 is better, but BG1 arguably has the more iconic opening, shades of the relationship between A New Hope and Empire).

Tyranny for me was just dull grim-dark stuff to slit your wrists by. I'll give you that was slightly less boring than Witcher 3. 

The plot of PoE was stronger than PoE2 and was interwoven with the setting in really powerful ways. Plus it had a good villain – better than BG2's in terms of characterisation if not voice acting and design. 

Combat was fine – it felt like typical lowish level IE combat to me, complete with the 'oh no, I am being beaten up by a small wolf' experience. 

BG1 had a wide-openness that BG2 didn't. It was verging on open world. And normally I'm not a fan of open world games, but BG1's open meadows with random weird quests were pretty engaging. 

[Durckad]

I understand that BG3 is in the zeitgeist at the moment, but it feels far too early to be putting that on a list like this. Let it marinate for at very least a year, let alone a month. Especially on such a long ass game.

As for Mass Effect, I am very conflicted on it. While I definitely agree with Wert on ME2's shortcomings, if I had to pick one game from the trilogy that was the most deserving of being on a list like this, it would be ME2. I do love ME1 quite a bit for the world-building and story and ME3 for the gameplay, neither one really feels like they come together fully in the end in a way that ME2 does despite it's pointless story digressions that really help to derail the trilogy in the end.

On the Legendary Edition, I could certainly see it belonging on the list, if not as high as it is, but I really need to play the whole trilogy again first. It is very much a journey before destination type of game (and it really depends upon how much you judge the destination the game arrives at in ME3...), but man is it a journey.

If I had to absolutely pick one, I would go with the Legendary Edition, but if ME2 replaced it, I wouldn't care much, but both should be knocked down a few paces to somewhere between 23 to 25 or so.

I'd quibble on the placement of a couple of others (Disco Elysium at #1? It's really good, but greatest RPG of all time good?) but it's a really solid list, IMO.

[Toth]

The Ahsoka show oddly gave me a little post-Endor crave and so I continued where I left off in my Star Wars Interworlds playthrough, a mod for X4.

I found that routine patrol missions in Ord Mantell pay ludicrously well. 20 minutes of uneventfully flying around, only occasionally shooting at lone criminals and hearing from the occasional Mandalorian incursion through comms, which get obliterated by a Star Destroyer parked right at the hyperspace entry point, pays about 340.000 credits. It feels like I'm ripping off the Imperial Remnant. But oh well, it DID help me buy two mining vessels just now and I've spend the last couple of minutes fiddling with the order menus to figure out how to set them on auto-mining. Damn, the X series was always criticized for its clunky UI, but I feel like at some point in the development of X4 they have just started to hide options just to screw with you.

Another mod related oddity was me now accepting a mission to free a corvette stuck in a mine field. I was thoroughly surprised that the corvette in question belonged to the Chiss Ascendency. And even more confused that it was marked as hostile. Apparently Chiss and Imperials are enemies here? How? Why? I would have expected them to be neutral to everyone.

In any case, found cruising around with my TIE Shuttle once again quite relaxing. Still hope I can soon scrounge together enough money to build a station and rise in my rank to get access to half-decent ships than just fragile old TIEs.

[Werthead]

4 hours ago, Durckad said:

I understand that BG3 is in the zeitgeist at the moment, but it feels far too early to be putting that on a list like this. Let it marinate for at very least a year, let alone a month. Especially on such a long ass game.

I think you can tell already that it deserves to be on the list. The only reason I'd knock it down right now is the fucking terrible technical state for the latter third of the game (worse than Cyberpunk 2077 on release, frankly, and they only got away with it by polishing the front end of the game until it shone and everyone was committed and invested and willing to power through the bullshit at the arse end of the game) and the total inability to give Karlach (and Karlach alone) a good ending. Those should both get fixed eventually, though.

But in terms of graphics, writing, vocal performances, the mix of humour and pathos and the sheer reactability of the game, there's not much else out there, if anything (even the Divinity: Original Sin duology have a problem with poor writing, and a smaller scope), to compare with it.

[Slurktan]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

 (worse than Cyberpunk 2077 on release, frankly

It hasn't been delisted on the PSN yet so don't be an idiot just because it happens to be a game you love.

[Arakasi]

I’d agree with Durk top five is too high.

[IlyaP]

36 minutes ago, Slurktan said:

It hasn't been delisted on the PSN yet so don't be an idiot just because it happens to be a game you love.

It's not even out on as many consoles as CP77, yeah? (I'm not a console person, so I defer to the consolers here to speak to this.)

[IlyaP]

Apropos of Infinity Engine games discussions above, and Pillars of Eternity, Tim Cain released a video on Pillars of Eternity a few days ago. 

 

[horangi]

Pushing ahead with my multiplayer BG3 game.  Its slow going when you can only play a couple hours every other week due to scheduling all three of us at the same time and the game is definitely rough around the edges with multiplayer/cross platform support so we've probably wasted 2 hours total trying to get it to load up correctly.  Outstanding game, but why do they have rope, that staple of D&D problem solving, in the game when its not usable.  We found an area where the entrance to another dungeon was high above us, we had a flying potion, but apparently we cant tie the rope to bring up the rest of the party.  I get it would be a bit game breaking or challenging to code to have it totally free form, but having designated anchor spots (such as the iron gate that served as a door) when its a reasonable choice would have been nice.  Or just remove the rope so we don't spend 10 minutes trying to figure out how to use it.