Videogames: All Valves on Deck

[Corvinus85]

Sega put out a survey to gauge people's interests, with a focus on Total War, though there were other questions. One question was about possible SFF settings for a Total War game. The choices were: Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Star Trek, Clash of the Titans, Game of Thrones, Warcraft, The Witcher, Dune, Battlestar Galactica, Warhammer 40K, Dungeons & Dragons, and... Marvel? 

The most baffling has to be Marvel, but BSG isn't that far behind. That would basically have to be just in space, thus making it like Homeworld.

There was also a question about possible historical settings and the choices were: The Byzantine Empire (period not given), WW1, WW2, Medieval Era, Spanish Conquest of the Americas, the Viking Age, The Ottoman Empire (period not given), The Vietnam War, Ancient India (period not given).

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

1 hour ago, Corvinus85 said:

Sega put out a survey to gauge people's interests, with a focus on Total War, though there were other questions. One question was about possible SFF settings for a Total War game. The choices were: Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Star Trek, Clash of the Titans, Game of Thrones, Warcraft, The Witcher, Dune, Battlestar Galactica, Warhammer 40K, Dungeons & Dragons, and... Marvel? 

The most baffling has to be Marvel, but BSG isn't that far behind. That would basically have to be just in space, thus making it like Homeworld.

There was also a question about possible historical settings and the choices were: The Byzantine Empire (period not given), WW1, WW2, Medieval Era, Spanish Conquest of the Americas, the Viking Age, The Ottoman Empire (period not given), The Vietnam War, Ancient India (period not given).

They’re just not interested in doing a mid 19th century game are they ? (Kinda like Crimean War - till start of WW1) cause that would’ve been my pick for sure :/  I loved Fall of the Samurai level of technology in the battles.

Edited February 2 by Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II

[IlyaP]

How's act 3 of Baldur's Gate 3? Has the latest hotfix improved the bugs? 

And do we know when the next patch/hotfix is due for release?

[Poobah]

I recently completed a campaign and didn't find any major bugs. There's still some potential for sequence breaking dialogue, but I never really played A3 when it was supposed to be truly broken so I don't really have a point of comparison for you. 

[IlyaP]

Sequence-breaking dialogue?

[Heartofice]

1 hour ago, IlyaP said:

How's act 3 of Baldur's Gate 3? Has the latest hotfix improved the bugs? 

And do we know when the next patch/hotfix is due for release?

Can't talk about it in terms of bugs.. but it's.. a bit dull. I know they have talked about the storytelling for Act 3 in interviews, but it really does just throw you back to square one a bit and the momentum totally dies. I still haven't finished the game. 

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

1 hour ago, IlyaP said:

How's act 3 of Baldur's Gate 3? Has the latest hotfix improved the bugs? 

And do we know when the next patch/hotfix is due for release?

It’s a miracle! You’ve finally gotten over your hatred for turn based combat  

[IlyaP]

26 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

It’s a miracle! You’ve finally gotten over your hatred for turn based combat  

Oh no, I still hate it. Passionately. I just want to not have to deal with obnoxious graphical defects in act 3, and then finish the game and never return to it again. Turn-based games are *not* for me.

[Fez]

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

Can't talk about it in terms of bugs.. but it's.. a bit dull. I know they have talked about the storytelling for Act 3 in interviews, but it really does just throw you back to square one a bit and the momentum totally dies. I still haven't finished the game. 

Yeah, honestly as much as I love the game overall, Act 3 completely kills my interest in the game. The last time I played, I managed to plough through Rivington but once I hit the lower city I just had no desire to keep going (it also didn't help that Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth just released and is incredible). It's actually too open-ended, and too disconnected from everything you've been doing up to that point. Act I is open-ended, but it's also very tight in that everything you do relates to learning about your tadpole and possible options for getting rid of it. Act II is extremely focused. And then Act III is open-ended again, and not really in service of anything specific. I hope a director's cut eventually changes it as much act IV of Divinity Original Sin 2 got changed.

[IlyaP]

7 minutes ago, Fez said:

I hope a director's cut eventually changes it as much act IV of Divinity Original Sin 2 got changed

I've heard Larian fixed a lot in DOS2, especially the latter half. How much got tweaked in the game between release and the current edition?

[Poobah]

1 hour ago, IlyaP said:

Sequence-breaking dialogue?

There's at least one instance I clearly recall, though I vaguely recall other instances where basically an NPC references something I don't know about yet because I'm not supposed to have ninja'd my way in to their location, and a few where (and this is more my fault than the games) companions will discuss talking points we already handled because I forgot to check back in with them frequently enough and their dialogue got backed up. This was, I think, because by the end of the game the power of your party is so high that the sheer amount of stuff you can get done in one "day" is enormous, and I felt weird about resting unnecessarily often. 

Personally contrary to the replies so far I enjoyed Act 3 a lot. Great conclusions to a lot of arcs, and a bunch of interesting and challenging encounters (less so if you just long rest constantly as you are easily able to, not that some kinda time limit or serious constraint to force resource management would help really, just force certain classes to the fore). I'm not they biggest fan of Rivington, but once I hit Wyrm's Rock almost everything felt relevant and important and if anything Act 3 has too much content, it's absolutely stuffed full. 

[Heartofice]

27 minutes ago, Fez said:

Yeah, honestly as much as I love the game overall, Act 3 completely kills my interest in the game. The last time I played, I managed to plough through Rivington but once I hit the lower city I just had no desire to keep going (it also didn't help that Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth just released and is incredible). It's actually too open-ended, and too disconnected from everything you've been doing up to that point. Act I is open-ended, but it's also very tight in that everything you do relates to learning about your tadpole and possible options for getting rid of it. Act II is extremely focused. And then Act III is open-ended again, and not really in service of anything specific. I hope a director's cut eventually changes it as much act IV of Divinity Original Sin 2 got changed.

Yeah completely agree. Its the lack of focus that is killing it for me. I don't really know where to go first and it all feels too big. Act 1 is big but it really scales at an appropriate pace. Act 3 I just get thrown into Rivington and no idea what I should be doing next. Too many options, and no real direction. 

[IlyaP]

7 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Yeah completely agree. Its the lack of focus that is killing it for me. I don't really know where to go first and it all feels too big. Act 1 is big but it really scales at an appropriate pace. Act 3 I just get thrown into Rivington and no idea what I should be doing next. Too many options, and no real direction. 

So it's a bit like chapter 1 of DOS2, where you're thrown into Fort Joy with no real guidance on what to do or where to go?

[Fez]

42 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

I've heard Larian fixed a lot in DOS2, especially the latter half. How much got tweaked in the game between release and the current edition?

A lot. They substantially reworked the narrative of Act IV, with new quests, changes in flow between existing quests (to better tie events together), and more companion reactivity to events. Apparently over 150,000 words of text were changed and 130,000 new words were recorded by the VAs per https://www.neoseeker.com/divinity-original-sin-ii/guides/Definitive_Edition_Differences

They also made a bunch of balancing and leveling changes throughout the game.

[Whiskeyjack]

4 hours ago, IlyaP said:

How's act 3 of Baldur's Gate 3? Has the latest hotfix improved the bugs? 

And do we know when the next patch/hotfix is due for release?

I just finished the game yesterday.  Did not have any bugs in Act 3, except for Lady Jannath's Estate, which crashed a few times.  That's probably the only thing I didn't complete in the game, but its a minor side quest so not really missing anything by skipping it.

Also, I'm way more on the side of Poobah - thought Act 3 was excellent.  Yeah, there is a lot to do, but none of it really felt like the type of filler you'd see in a game like Dragon Age Inquisition.  A lot of the missions had strong connections to the main story and characters.  And the side content was also pretty good.  Just move through the city one building at a time, and if/when you end up with a handful of active quests, decide which one to focus on and tackle them one by one.

That said, I would definitely recommend handling some of the main sections in a specific order.  You don't have to rush anything, and things that seem like they would be on timers usually aren't triggered until you actually enter the area in question and start progressing it.  But personally, I think you want to make sure you (vague story spoiler) -

Spoiler

Handle the Orin situation before you go to the Steel Watch Foundry / Gortash stuff.  You can attend the Gortash coronation, but after that I personally left everything connected to him as the final series of missions in the city, and it worked out well.  Have heard of others doing it differently and running into issues. 

Anyway - think it was an amazing game.  Have never played a game with such an extensive degree of customization in how you can build your characters.  And felt like all of my decisions had an impact on how things played out.  Also thought all of the character arcs had impactful endings and excellent writing - especially Karlach, Shadowheart, Astarion, and Gale. 

Would recommend going back to it, unless you have a reason to think you'll run into issues.  For what its worth, I was playing on PS5.

[Whiskeyjack]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

 And then Act III is open-ended again, and not really in service of anything specific.

I feel like you maybe didn't get deep enough into Act 3?  The coronation at Wyrm's Rock gives you some direction, and if you progress through the Lower City its pretty clear which areas are connected to which characters.  There is definitely a lot of side content too, so maybe you got bogged down with that.  But there's also a strong narrative and quest (or multiple quests) for each companion, with most of them also linked to the main story.

[Heartofice]

8 minutes ago, Whiskeyjack said:

I feel like you maybe didn't get deep enough into Act 3?  The coronation at Wyrm's Rock gives you some direction, and if you progress through the Lower City its pretty clear which areas are connected to which characters.  There is definitely a lot of side content too, so maybe you got bogged down with that.  But there's also a strong narrative and quest (or multiple quests) for each companion, with most of them also linked to the main story.

It does take a while to get to that point however, and the landscape is big, you tend to just wander around for a while. Part of it I think is that there are so many citizens, none of which really are anything more than background. It feels a bit overwhelming.

[Fez]

26 minutes ago, Whiskeyjack said:

I feel like you maybe didn't get deep enough into Act 3?  The coronation at Wyrm's Rock gives you some direction, and if you progress through the Lower City its pretty clear which areas are connected to which characters.  There is definitely a lot of side content too, so maybe you got bogged down with that.  But there's also a strong narrative and quest (or multiple quests) for each companion, with most of them also linked to the main story.

Maybe. But the issue is:

Spoiler

I'm playing as the Dark Urge and I felt it made sense to side with Gortash at Wyrm's Rock (also, I have Minthara; which means no Karlach or Wyll connections to anything; so I don't care about Ravengard for instance). And I happen to know, despite not reaching that point, that Gortash never betrays you (at least if you're the Urge, not sure about for other PCs) and I don't feel like it would make sense to betray Gortash. Which means a lot of the Act 3 content kinda just feels "there" without good reasons for me to do it.

 

[Werthead]

11 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

Sega put out a survey to gauge people's interests, with a focus on Total War, though there were other questions. One question was about possible SFF settings for a Total War game. The choices were: Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Star Trek, Clash of the Titans, Game of Thrones, Warcraft, The Witcher, Dune, Battlestar Galactica, Warhammer 40K, Dungeons & Dragons, and... Marvel? 

The most baffling has to be Marvel, but BSG isn't that far behind. That would basically have to be just in space, thus making it like Homeworld.

There was also a question about possible historical settings and the choices were: The Byzantine Empire (period not given), WW1, WW2, Medieval Era, Spanish Conquest of the Americas, the Viking Age, The Ottoman Empire (period not given), The Vietnam War, Ancient India (period not given).

It's worth noting that three years ago CA were actively discussing Middle-earth and The Witcher as possibilities for their next SFF projects. 40K was also an obvious, hugely popular discussion, even if how you'd make it work was a bit up in the air.

I am hopeful this is Sega realising that the next Total War needs a really big investment and more time to make it work, and needs to be built on better and newer tech, and they can't keep struggling on as they have been.

5 hours ago, IlyaP said:

How's act 3 of Baldur's Gate 3? Has the latest hotfix improved the bugs? 

And do we know when the next patch/hotfix is due for release?

It's fully playable now. Most of the crippling, critical problems were solved a few patches back and the last few have been putting out fires.

I do think that Act III is very, very messy from a plot structure/pacing POV. You should have either started in the huge city and spent time running around doing these minor quests and bigger-but-still-tertiary arcs before or as the main plot kicked in (like BG2), or they should have perhaps streamlined the ending and made it a bit more focused despite being in this cool big city (like BG1). As it stands, Acts 1+2 could almost be one game and Act 3 a sequel to that game, where the pacing would have made a lot more sense.

[Kalbear]

I get the feeling of Act 3 being way too much. There are a LOT of people to talk to, there's a lot of very dense conversations  and a bunch of different points of interest and a lot of people to talk with (or worse, you have to figure out who to talk with). It also has the problem that you can accidentally lock yourself out of certain things if you don't do them in just the right way, or you need certain people in your party to get clues about what to do next in really random places (like Shadowheart with the refugees and Ferg, or Astarion in the flophouse). 

I'd put it slightly differently - Act 1 has a number of quest hubs that feel connected to each other but largely self-focused - the Grove, Wither's area, the Underdark, the forge, the goblin encampment, the monastery, along with a fairly decent amount of breadcrumbs for quests to go back and forth in them (Wyll/Karlach, the Zhentarim, Auntie Ethel and Kagha, underdark and sussur + the special weapon, etc). Act 3 throws you right into Rivington with a bunch of different questlines that go all over the place and feel totally unrelated - the murders, the circus, Orin shenanigans, Cazador, the Sharran stuff, probably a few others I'm forgetting - and they're all put right next to each other. 

IMO, they could have had fewer things to do in Act 3, especially to start, and it would have been fine. Especially since one big problem of the endgame is hitting the level cap super early and then not getting any real rewards for some of these big-ass fights.