What are you playing at the moment?

[LexW]

Dwarf Fortress for example would be impossible to do in photorealism.

I’m pretty sure we’ll have something that is to all intents and purposes photorealistic Dwarf Fortress replete with procedurally generated dialogue, facial expressions, and so on, by 2050 at the latest at the current rate. I’d be unsurprised to see it by 2035.

I guess your point is it wouldn’t be as charming/engaging? But I suspect whilst you might lose some small number of people who prefer to “leave it to the imagination”, you’d gain huge hordes of people who wanted to immerse themselves in this generated world.

Agree: re: ME, though, the whole “cinematic” approach is what defined that series, and why the move to open-world was a mistake (and why the open-world bits of earlier games were among the least effective).

Weird, I had the exact opposite experience. I never really clicked with any of the top down rpg games like Baldur’s Gate at the time, but KotOR drew me in so much. The top down 2d ones always felt so sterile and detached, whereas the 3d ones immediately felt more like a place that I could inhabit and explore.

I don’t think it’s a maturity thing. I was hugely drawn in by isometric RPGs like Ultima 6/7 when I was like, barely double-digits, and loved Fallout 1/2 to pieces, but when BG1 came out, I also felt very distanced from it.

I think a lot of it comes down to the precise implementation of the engine. Infinity Engine was extremely zoomed-out, and in most of the games, didn’t really show the characters even in dialogue (I seem to think PST did a bit more, but maybe I’m wrong) as anything but fixed portraits.

Playing Pillars of Eternity, more recently, I found that it didn’t feel as distancing, but there was clearly less of a strong connection than in Bioware games where I could really see the characters. Then again, with The Outer Worlds, I felt pretty distanced/disconnected, despite a more Bioware-ish perspective.

I do think having 3D dialogue and so on does help draw most people into the game a lot.

[Sarfrin]

I’m pretty sure we’ll have something that is to all intents and purposes photorealistic Dwarf Fortress replete with procedurally generated dialogue, facial expressions, and so on, by 2050 at the latest at the current rate. I’d be unsurprised to see it by 2035.

Except it’ll be real life and we’ll all be scavenging in the remains of civilisation (with happy British fish).

[zagibu]

I’m pretty sure we’ll have something that is to all intents and purposes photorealistic Dwarf Fortress replete with procedurally generated dialogue, facial expressions, and so on, by 2050 at the latest at the current rate.

It wouldn’t work. The effort of animating all the systems that are in DF is not feasible. Also, DF makes unrealistic abstractions such as huge dragons only occupying a single tile, very lenient interpretations of height etc. It simply wouldn’t work.

[LexW]

I think you’re having some difficulty with “to all intents and purposes”.

[Similar]

Tried Dishonored again after bouncing off it some years back, and I did manage to get out of the prison and sewers this time, but it still feels kind of clumsy. I certainly don’t feel like a skilled assassin or anything like that. Probably some of it gets better when you get some upgrades, but it’s not very compelling, so I doubt I’ll get far.

Then I tried Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. I’ve never played any Kojima anything, or any console anything, for that matter, so I don’t know what I expected, but … it wasn’t an hour+ long intro with weird mystical stuff. Or going through a full fledged face customizing sequence only to have the custom face dropped seconds after finishing it. Or guns that run out of battery (? It looks like a battery symbol, but maybe it’s something else) and then won’t fire.
Which isn’t to say I disliked it, exactly (and there’s only so many times you can say “WTF?” before you just kind of give up and go with the flow), aside from the clumsy movement; it’s quite controller focused, even if it seems like a decent port, so M+KB movement feels pretty sluggish. Aiming too, though I think I’ve figured some of the settings out for that.
And checkpoint saves can go rot, of course.

Made it to Afghanistan and it’s really quite pretty (some oddities with binoculars, though; things get blurry when you zoom in and some faraway LODs have more detail than close ones).
I might spend some more time with it.

[Sarfrin]

Tried Dishonored again after bouncing off it some years back, and I did manage to get out of the prison and sewers this time, but it still feels kind of clumsy. I certainly don’t feel like a skilled assassin or anything like that. Probably some of it gets better when you get some upgrades, but it’s not very compelling, so I doubt I’ll get far.

I bounced off that first part twice. It feels a lot better once you really get going.

So I finished the main plot in AC Valhalla. I have to say it was a really crappy ending. I still haven’t eliminated all of the Order because that would require killing over a dozen zealots and I have no interest at all in doing those fights. I might have done it if it was going to lead to some sort of resolution, but I looked it up and it really doesn’t seem worth it.
To add a spoilery bit so the ending has Basim, who Eivor defeated in her lifetime, coming back to life in the future and using her remains to steal her skills and restart the Order she also defeated, Meanwhile, she decides to let King Aelfred, who double crossed her and set a trap that led to several of her friends being killed, live out his life in peaceful obscurity despite him also being head of the order she hates, There’s nothing you can do about either of these things. After 150 hours, that’s a shitty ending for Eivor.

[BillButNotBen]

Shoulder pain means I’ve sadly put Dragonfall on hold for a while and I was looking for something I could play with a controller.

Gave BalisticNG a go. It is basically a modern version of Wipepout and, I venture to guess, a pretty faithful version.

Which is to say, I spend most of my time bashing into the walls and then exploding. I remember having similar issues in Wipeout, but I don’t remember it being quite this hard! I jsut haven’t worked out the best cornering technique yet… the airbrakes seem to help not at all, and taking your foot off the gas seems only mildly effective. (and feels weird as it seems like the kind of racing game where you should be at full throttle all the time).

I’m clicking with it a bit better than I did back when I bounced off the early access version. And if feels nice and very fast when you get into a section where you aren’t bouncing off the walls. The problem is that once I hit one wall it then tends to set off a chain reaction where I bounce off the sides 3 or 4 times in quick succession and lose all my shield and position.

It also seems like the mario-kart style weapon pickups are way too frequent. You get one every 10 seconds, so the best idea seems to just automatically fire it off as soon as you get it, with little regard for tactics - as opposed to Mario Kart where you can sometimes be hanging on to weapons to use them at the best moment.

If the steering clicks, I imagine it’ll be very good. I always kinda preferred F-Zero or Mario Kart though.

so I don’t know what I expected, but … it wasn’t an hour+ long intro with weird mystical stuff.

Really? That sounds like exactly what I’d expect from a Kojima game

[Skalpadda]

Tried Dishonored again after bouncing off it some years back, and I did manage to get out of the prison and sewers this time, but it still feels kind of clumsy. I certainly don’t feel like a skilled assassin or anything like that. Probably some of it gets better when you get some upgrades, but it’s not very compelling, so I doubt I’ll get far.

The powers and gadgets make an enormous difference and open up a lot of creative options and different routes through the levels, and the level design also gradually gets more interesting to match after the first level. I say give the next few levels a go if feeling weak and vulnerable is your biggest problem with the game.

[Kajo]

Then I tried Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. I’ve never played any Kojima anything, or any console anything, for that matter, so I don’t know what I expected

I played MGS on the first playstation and that first of Phantom Pain part left me with one of the biggest WTF moment of gaming for me

[Similar]

So I finished the main plot in AC Valhalla. I have to say it was a really crappy ending. I still haven’t eliminated all of the Order because that would require killing over a dozen zealots and I have no interest at all in doing those fights. I might have done it if it was going to lead to some sort of resolution, but I looked it up and it really doesn’t seem worth it.
To add a spoilery bit […]

ouch, that sounds really bad. And also like something that can’t be fixed in DLCs.
Weird design.

The powers and gadgets make an enormous difference and open up a lot of creative options and different routes through the levels, and the level design also gradually gets more interesting to match after the first level. I say give the next few levels a go if feeling weak and vulnerable is your biggest problem with the game.

It wasn’t so much that, more a lack of fluidity, I think. Though, another thing was what felt like a very severe lack of awareness, but the vision bone thing probably helps a lot with that (and I should adjust the FOV too, I think).
Also not sure the setting works for me, or the way it’s made, at least, but maybe that gets more immersive too. So far it feels a bit too unreal.

[Skalpadda]

Upping the FoV and turning off headbob were absolute musts for me. It was bad enough to give me motion sickness in the first level. In terms of awareness, you get to see though walls (including vision cones) later on, and in most levels you can climb walls and roofs or blink around among the rafters of buildings to get a safe overview, so that gets much better.

[LexW]

Lack of fluidity isn’t something I’d normally mark as a flaw with Dishonored, I mean, it’s not perfect, but it’s certainly on-par with/better than most stealth games in terms of fluidity.

Setting-wise, I found it overall far more “real” feeling than most fantasy games, but it’s certainly more exotic than stuff like DE:HR or even Thief. I think I know what you mean though, they kind of load you down with a lot of weird things to take on board pretty early on, a lot of lore to absorb and ideas to process, and I don’t think the setting really “clicked” for me until at least a couple of actual missions in (i.e. past the initial stuff). Oddly the worst stealth game for this for me was the original DE, where eventually the conspiracy stuff just broke my ability to suspend disbelief. I think MGS and AC actually have even sillier stuff going on, but something about the way DE presented it just had me rolling my eyes repeatedly.

[Sarfrin]

I have been playing “Oh sh!t. Disk read error doesn’t sound good.” Luckily, after a cable waggle and some time to cool down it seems to be back, so I’ll be playing Horizon Zero Dawn. Enjoying it so far. My initial upgrade choices of an attention attracting whistle, silent takedown and slow down time when aiming the bow seem to work quite well together.

[Similar]

Lack of fluidity isn’t something I’d normally mark as a flaw with Dishonored, I mean, it’s not perfect, but it’s certainly on-par with/better than most stealth games in terms of fluidity.

It probably didn’t help that I hadn’t adjusted FOV and head bob yet, but I feel passive stuff, like the vision power should be usable when you have both weapons in your hands. There’s an awkwardness in having to switch to the power and back to weapon so often (I don’t mind it with the blink and the heart thingy, really; it makes more sense that you need a hand for those).
A bit like the problem with the first Bioshock where you also had to switch between weapons and … the magic thingies (at least after you had tried Bioshock 2’s much smoother solution).

Setting-wise, I found it overall far more “real” feeling than most fantasy games, but it’s certainly more exotic than stuff like DE:HR or even Thief. I think I know what you mean though, they kind of load you down with a lot of weird things to take on board pretty early on, a lot of lore to absorb and ideas to process, and I don’t think the setting really “clicked” for me until at least a couple of actual missions in (i.e. past the initial stuff).

yeah. I just did the second mission and it does help, but there’s still a bit much to handle. Especially the magic stuff seems a bit detached so far (and the Outsider looks like a cruel school boy, which seems wrong. The school boy part, at least. The jury is still out on the cruel part).
Another problem is that I think a lot of the voice acting doesn’t fit the characters. Many of them sound too young for how they look, for one thing…

Aside from that, there’s stuff like one of the secondary objectives in the second mission where you have to save a guy (the less obvious one of the ones you have to save). I saved him, but I have no idea how because I don’t think I did anything that had to do with that part. So that also added to the feeling of weirdness.

Oddly the worst stealth game for this for me was the original DE, where eventually the conspiracy stuff just broke my ability to suspend disbelief. I think MGS and AC actually have even sillier stuff going on, but something about the way DE presented it just had me rolling my eyes repeatedly.

ah, funny. That didn’t bother me. I suspect I just set my brain to expect game writing (especially back then), so I just glossed over the iffy bits.

[Skalpadda]

Despite loving all of the Dishonoured games I have to say expectations shouldn’t be set too high for the story. I adored the physical settings, the level design and gameplay, and some of the background lore feeds into that in cool ways, but the plot and characters never clicked with me. Not terrible, just never particularly exciting.

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I’ve been playing no games at all the last couple of weeks. Instead I’ve spent my spare time picking up my casual French studies again (after lapsing for a couple of years…), which I’m approaching kind of like a game so maybe that counts. I’m trying to find as many different avenues of exposure as possible but the newest way to gamify it I’ve come up with is to read comic albums and instead of just translating words and expressions I don’t recognise and moving on (as I used to do) I’ve made flash cards out of them in the Anki app. The app then automatically makes a rotation where the flash cards will appear more or less often depending on how difficult you rate them to remember whenever they appear.

It’s actually pretty engaging and more fun than just cramming words and grammar through text books or learning apps (though I’m still doing some of that). And I’m getting to read a lot of good BDs, some of which I read (in Swedish) as a child and have huge nostalgia for, and some I’ve only just discovered.

[BillButNotBen]

I have been playing “Oh sh!t. Disk read error doesn’t sound good.” Luckily, after a cable waggle and some time to cool down it seems to be back,

I hope you’re also playing “Make sure I have backups”.

[Naramsin]

So after six weeks of play I’ve finished Cyberpunk 2077. What an extraordinary amazing game. What an extraordinary, released at least half a year too early, buggy, glitchy but still amazing game.

I’ll defnietly write more in CP 2077 because I have a lot of thoughts. I was predisposed to like it but I’m loving it. I prefer sci-fi, near future, even post apocalytic future a la Fallout over fanatsy settings but cRPG are not going there very often. I prefer cars over horses and I alwayes liked cities in RPGs. So for me this game that is so in love with its setting, that prefers style over substance and wears it on its sleeve, I don’t think i can even find another cRPG to compare it to.

[ToomuchFluffy]

I’m slowly returning to The Void after about a week of absence and I was almost immediately thrown into another boss fight against another one of the Brothers. I have a few more glyphs (spells) at this point, so maybe I can figure out a good approach for the fight and I think I should have enough color, but to be honest the boss fights are my least favorite part of the game so far. Difficulty in this case doesn’t contribute to my enjoyment of the game all that much. With Pathologic and Darkwood these games really felt better for putting me under pressure and being deadly. It seemed appropriate. Perhaps because the settings for these games were more realistic whereas The Void is pretty abstract and the means of survival is color. It’s simply not as relatable. I was surprised to realize that another game about which I felt similarly ocassionally was Soma. In both cases I really enjoy the environments and narration, but the monsters in Soma - especially in the more constricted environments - and the monsters and bosses in The Void, I really don’t need. The Brothers are cool, but actually fighting them does absolutely not interest me. Still, maybe I can make it past him today.

Mostly I have been playing some Starcraft II again and I have also returned to Dawn of Magic. As far as the latter is concerned I have actually made a bit of headway in continuing my attempt to play through the second difficulty. The health-bloat on the monsters is pretty extreme, but after making an effort to get a few more levels for my main spell I seem to have pushed beyond a damage threshold and suddenly things are going a little easier again. I’m even gaining a good amount of additional experience from the blood sword* again. This works particularly well with large groups of monsters, but in my case I’m also using a damage-over-time-spell, which allows me to often move on to more and more monsters in other parts of the map. It’s still a bit slow, but much better than before.

*It’s a mechanic where a sword to the left of the screen appears and fills up red as the player kills monsters at a fast pace. Depending on how far it is filled, more experience is awarded.

[Sarfrin]

I hope you’re also playing “Make sure I have backups”.

New drive double the size on the way. Most of it is backed up online but it’s a pain to download it all again.

[zagibu]

You shouldn’t use the vision powers in Dishonored, it takes away a lot of the sneaking suspense and becomes way too easy. Just use q and e to peek around corners and the game is immediately 200% better.