Justin258

I've seen this misconception happen a few times. I was talking to someone at work and it took me a little while to convince him that they aren't Diablo-like at all. I suppose at first glance they might look that way, but after two seconds of actually playing their combat anyone should quickly realize these games are not action-y.

Still, it seems like there's been at least some discussion over this change to a true turn-based system over the original game's hybrid stuff. Larian's turn-based battles can take a very long time to get through, and on average seem to take longer than any other RPG I've ever seen. Meanwhile, BG1 and 2's combat encounters don't really take long at all. I prefer the actual turn-based stuff and these long fights don't bother me, but there's a lot to be said for Baldur's Gate's quicker fights.

Anyway, I've played some of this game and I, personally, think it's great. I've already had a lot of fun with it, I think the writing is great, I think it looks amazing, and I'm really hoping they implement a proper third person camera. They're ninety percent of the way to a Dragon Age Origins-esque "flip between isometric and third person" thing. All of that said... if you get it now, get it just to sample the game for a little while, see what they're doing with this franchise, and then wait for some more content to be added, or for 1.0. I'm probably going to mess around with it some more, but I really can't wait to see what the finished product looks like.

I actually thought this game was canceled and never released, for some reason. This is a game I would never have given a second thought without a good write-up somewhere, though honestly it sounds like its jankiness is too much for me.

For those unaware, alignments have been "dead" since Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition's release and exist as an ancillary legacy feature. Additionally, Wizards has only recently addressed the racially-coded origins of the mechanics after managing to dodge accountability for over ten years.

So I settled on a drow while flipping through races (cleric, named Viconia, I'm unoriginal and didn't give a fuck at the time). I'm of two minds about the whole history of that race. The idea of someone who was born into a society of backstabbing bastards and managed to claw their way out of it is inherently interesting, which I imagine is why Drizz't is such a popular character in Forgotten Realms, but then you go and make that entire society a single race and... uh... yeah, you then get a case of your good guy literally being "one of the good ones". None of this writing has any malice behind it, I don't believe, but it's a good example of why you should give some real thought to what your writings can implicate.

Anyway, back around to the character I made, I've already had a few characters say something like "gee, I wouldn't expect a drow to be so genuinely helpful, thanks!" and I don't think Larian has the writing chops to toe that line well enough to actually pull something off that isn't at least a little bit icky.

Nobody really knows what happened behind the scenes, but what we do know is that Mass Effect 3 had ridiculous expectations and was rushed in development. This is also the era where EA pushed Bioware to pump out another Dragon Age game in like a year and a half and shoehorned co-op and microtransactions into Dead Space 3, a game that was also rushed out the door. Frankly, that any of these games have redeeming qualities and were completely playable out of the gate seems something of a miracle and is a testament to the talented developers at these studios, and for many was damning of EA's business practices.

Let's Player Kikoskia did a series on Ultima IX, which he either recently finished or is almost finished with. I watched a surprising amount of it while doing various things and yeah, that definitely looks like the kind of game that does horrible, unspeakable things to a franchise.

According to Wikipedia, it was originally going to be a Vita game but the Vita version got canned.

It's weird how the Western, English-speaking world are A-OK with glorified, ridiculous, unrealistic violence but if you imply something vaguely sexual with a cartoon teenager, they get all squeamish and would rather leave the room.

Anyway, I think the art style in the side-scrolling visual novel-y part of the game looked great but then the naked teenagers piloting mechs made me raise an eyebrow and want to go watch the Hades Quick Look.

Good God, I haven't heard any new All That Remains stuff. They sure have gone from "actually pretty good metalcore" in The Fall of Ideals to the most generic, indistinguishable whatever metal they possibly could have. What the hell happened?

This was tons of fun to play, looking forward to playing more!

Next week would be too late, though.

In the review? No, not really.

When I look at a review, I'm trying to get a sense of what the end product is like. If I go buy this game off the shelf, what am I getting? What can I expect out of it? Does it have performance problems? Is it well-paced? Does it control well? Is its story any good? Stuff like that. I don't need a social justice article masquerading as a review, I need a review. Mention it if you must, but a review isn't the place to write about people working hundred hour weeks to get out a product. It's a place to tell your readers if an end product is worth your time and money.

But I'm not saying that we shouldn't write about it. That's crazy. We should write about it, a lot, and constantly. Ideally, every time a big AAA game comes out we'd have a few journalists on a few prominent sites gathering some information about its creation, reporting on how the artists and programmers and designers and so on were treated and how troubled its development might have been. And put those articles on your front page for people to actually see them. If you put it in the middle of your review, I'm honestly likely to skim it and not think about it too much, but if there's a focused article about the issue, I'll probably read the whole thing.