Topic: What (Non-PS4) game are you playing??

@Tjuz Yeah, honestly, I wasn't finding her to be too difficult, but by the time I had got their I had already lost my death defiance and was on subpar health. I still got her to under half health which was great.

I already think I've played Hades II more than the original as I don't think I put in as many hours into the first game as I should have.

Since Outer Worlds 2 comes out today proper, thought I would share some thoughts formed from getting a head start due to the upgrade thingy you can do via GP.

I thought combat felt very basic, I hear it gets better as you go along but that hasn't been my experience yet. It is weird too, cause Avowed right out the gate combatwise was such a step above for that genre space and I feel like none of that is here.

Also, after listening for weeks about all the complaints about Pokemon ZA having no VA I find it weird more people aren't talking about how your protagonist in this has zero presence. They are not voiced, and all the dialogue and cutscenes (at least so far anyway) have taken place in first person. It does that old Bethesda style thing of zooming into the person you are talking to and giving you a big list of text options to pick. I think this is meant to heighten immersion, but it just makes me feel arms length away from the story.

While that all sounds quite negative I am sure, I do love how much CRPG energy is in this, this is a crunchy number rpg RPG. Building a character, so much player agency and choice choice choice. Maybe on a replay the smoke and mirrors will be obvious, but right now, the illusion of cause and effect is like strikingly tangible and so much fun. I say CRPG too because while there is a degree of scripting and gating, this isn't like a full on cinematic RPG where quests are largely on rails, like things can absolutely go sideways or you can stumble on things by accident and obviously we know it has to be coded to allow those things, but in the moment, it can be kinda fun to blunder your way headfirst down a staircase and somehow still find yourself at the right place when you hit the bottom.

@Kairuuu You made it further than me the first time on the Surface! I died in the area before her without ever making it to her. At some point that boss becomes a cakewalk too, as long as you have the right build with your weapons since up-close weapons with her can be inconvenient if you don't have the right boons to balance that out. The third boss of the Surface gave me a lot more grief to get past them the first time around, so look forward to that!

@Pizzamorg I only bought the standard edition, so yesterday was the first chance I had to play the game. A few hours in, I do share that the combat feels rather basic, but I don't mind that necessarily. I don't come to these types of games for interesting combat mechanics personally, and the freedom they've (so far) given you to approach scenarios in different ways works as a solid counter-balance in my eyes. I'm honestly appreciative that the game has no voiced protagonist here, since I don't think they could have matched this level of interaction with NPCs if they had. I do understand your issue in terms of the conversations really just involving the NPC however. It would be nice if at any point this type of RPG would divert more from the "locking in on a head while they speak"-conversations, and possibly bring more cinematic camera placement to also show off our character. I suppose you'd still only be able to do that in moments when the NPC is speaking however, with the unvoiced protagonist of it all. It feels silly I spent like an hour in character creation and haven't seen her face since! Are you playing third-person?

Like you said, I'm enjoying the more CRPG nature of the dialogue and choices so far. Despite having major FOMO, I also like that it shows you that certain dialogue options could've been unlocked if you'd had chosen different skills or gathered more intel. There's been quite a few times already where I've seen locked choices due to a lack of info, and it does highly intrigue me what I'm missing at those points. The counter-argument of that is that I might read into certain conversations too much though. As an example, I did the quest with the Spire and the double-jump boots yesterday. At the end of the quest once you've gotten up the platform, you can speak to the woman where, for me, there was a locked choice due to missing information. I took that as there possibly being evidence they had killed the other two settlers somewhere that I missed. This resulted in me looking around again, though to no avail. Ended up just finishing the quest like normal, but now I remain wondering if I actually helped out a pair of serial killers, when I otherwise might not have questioned it as much.

Still very early goings for me as I'm just exploring Fairfield at the moment. How far into the game would you say you are and would you say the quality of writing/depth of dialogue options has remained consistent throughout?

@Tjuz I did start off in third person, as I prefer third person to first person wherever possible, but combat doesn't feel like it was designed for third person at all. Melee is okay in third person, but shooting is horrible in third person and both are just better in first. Combine that with all of the ugly armour sets and an almost entirely missing fashion game (at least so far), playing in first person seems to be the way to go. Which is a shame as I spent a lot of time perfecting my characters look before I started playing.

I believe I am about 15 hours in, I have all of the companions (weirdly the first one you can recruit is also the easiest to miss). This was enough time for me to finish the main quest strand in the first major area, and make inroads to the second major area, while dabbling in the secondary mini zone you unlock on the side. I do feel like I have missed out on loads of stuff though, beyond like the main quest branch, almost nothing else is marked for the player and has to be discovered, so like there were entire areas and quest branches in that first zone I just totally missed because the game never pushed me into those areas. Not sure if that is cool or just sucks.

I thought the writing is getting better as I go along, but the choices are getting worse. It kinda feels like Science, Observation, Medicine, Explosives and Engineering are the only Perks which can truly open up new dialogue options, or alternate paths through missions, and the required deepness into those Perks only increases more and more as you go along, so even if you decide midway through and refocus, you aren't likely going to have enough points to ever catch up.

There are already mods out that allow you to respec your character, and while it may somewhat break their design intent, I am kinda tempted to use it, because you don't know what Perks are useless sometimes until it is too late. Like I dumped a lot of points in to Stealth, and Stealth sucks in this game, if you get discovered by one person in a space, everyone immediately becomes aware of you. even people nowhere near whatsoever. It just makes it feel hopeless clearing encounters in the way unless I guess you save scum like crazy, and I just kinda wish I could invest those points into something else now I know.

@Pizzamorg Ah, it sucks to hear that the third-person still comes across as such a second-rate experience. I had heard pre-release that animations and such in third-person were an issue, but that they were apparently improved before the full release. I suppose whatever changes they did make ultimately didn't fix the fact that it'll still turn people off however. It is very funny to think that I also spent over an hour in the character creator only to not have seen my character since, as I've been exclusively in first-person. Now that I think about it... I don't even think mirrors shows reflections in this game?

Your mentioning of the first squadmate being easy to miss has just given me a sudden bout of FOMO... I am still in the early process of exploring Paradise Island though, so I suppose I'll only have to start getting really worried if I don't have any squadmate show up within the next dozen hours or so. I did happen to come across the Spire, which resulted in my getting the double-jump boots very early. One of those times where ignoring the main quest to go explore the unmarked path really worked out for me! It also resulted in fun stuff like already knowing all the information on Ida when I confronted the Protectorate guard at the bridge who asks you for a favor, and being able to give Huell in Fairfield the schematics he requested immediately.

But yeah, in my experience in this short time, there's definitely content around every corner. Not everything necessarily being some major side quest, or even a marked quest at all, but still interactions you can have with the world and its NPCs that are at the very least well done, and at best feel meaningful. It is a shame that you seem to really have to go out of your way to explore all of that, but now that you know it, I guess you can keep that in mind for future areas or even return to Paradise Island if you're up for seeing more of what it has to offer. My rule of thumb so far has been to simply explore every marked building on the map and make sure I've followed every road, so that at least the most likely places for anything to be are covered.

It sucks to hear that the choices are getting worse over time, however. It sucks even more to hear that it sounds like all the perks that open up new paths later in the game are... none of the ones I've picked, haha. I'll be stuck with Hacking, Speech and Lockpick it sounds like. Admittedly though, I should've seen coming that a skill like Lockpick would not be particularly helpful in conversations... Thanks for the tip in making sure to focus on whatever you've started with basically, though. I do tend to go a bit "jack-of-all-trades" in RPGs, so I'll make sure to rein that tendency in a bit with this one. It sucks that Stealth didn't work out for you. I've heard many people are disappointed in the system sadly. Even though they give you the opportunity to respec at the end of the prologue still, I can imagine that the prologue didn't give you a good enough taste of how stealthing would feel once in the wider world. I'd say it's fair play to install a mod for that in those cases!

Having seen the great Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden pictures in the screenshots thread, I remembered I still have a PC key lying around from when I got a double one after already buying it. If anyone on here uses Steam on PC and would like the game, just let me know! I'd be happy to share it with whoever.

I booted up Tekken 3 yesterday, and think I'm gonna use it as my in-between game for the holidays. I never had it as a kid (although I did have a Tekken demo which I loved, I couldn't tell you which specific entry it was from, while a couple of my friends had the full games) but I have enough nostalgia for the era that I recognise most of the characters. I was also pleasantly surprised to find that it included a difficulty setting and a side-scrolling brawler mode, so I reckon I got the right one!