I make things with computers. Preferably artsy things, but I also like to work on random scripts and pipelines. I like D&D & video games, but don’t always have time to play them. I like pet chicken. I watch soccer, especially NWSL & USWNT, as well as some WSL and whatever happens to be on.
But a lot of people are. I didn’t care for BG3, but I tolerated it as a multiplayer game because it’s fun to play with friends. I also played Solasta solo, but most of my hours were co-op, because it’s just a lot more fun.
I guess for me the adventuring ‘party’ experience is a big part of D&D.
A solo experience could still be fun, but, like I said, I’m not getting excited about it.
Just started Avowed (slightly patient, I guess?). I didn’t love it at first, but I’m starting to really like it. It’s much more story heavy than I expected. Combat was really difficult at first, and I lost almost every fight once I got to Paradis. Now that I’m level 6, I win most fight easily. 🤷
The magic casting with a wand and a grimoire feels super cool. They really nailed that.
Playing Oblivion. I don’t remember liking it this much when I first played it way back when. And there’s a lot I don’t remember, so maybe I never got that far into it. I just discovered that the Daedra shrines give you crazy powerful magic items, so now I’m tracking all those down. Although I contacted vampirism during one of the missions, which is starting to suck.
It feels really good.
It’s kind of crazy how well this 20 year old game is designed. Each NPC has a life. Each house is a real house, and not just a closed box for background setting.
The gameplay feels so good that it’s a bit startling when things are buggy, or just not as modern. Like when you have a fetch quest, but you already have the item: there’s no option to say: here it is! You have to literally walk away to trigger something in the quest engine, and then come back to deliver the item.
Also, the way enemies are not at all aware of each other stands out: 2 bandits standing next to each other. I snipe one of them, and the other doesn’t even react. Must have been the wind…
But overall I’m loving it.
Driving to tracks is 100% a chore. It’s made me not enjoy any new racing game in the last 5 years. I really hope this game has an option to skip that and jump right into a race. I don’t look forward to wrangling my family to drive to the same track just to start a race. I’m sure at least one of my kids would drive in the opposite direction because they think it’s funny.
I don’t really see it being a sandbox. I mean, all answers are given, and you select from those choices. That’s the same as other games that have pc vo. I feel like it would have made more sense to have no voice options at all, and to just get rid of the ridiculous quips. That way, you create your own voice in your head. In no universe would the character I created complain about having to put her hands onto everything before opening a door.
Anyway, not a big deal, but like I said, it was a bit jarring.
Yes, the combat is awesome. I just played Origins, and sure, there were a lot of opportunities for my character to be a dick, but I really wonder how many people choose those options. I didn’t. I liked how close you could get to the companions in Veilguard. It felt much more impactful in the end game.
Dragon Age: Origins. Playing on the Deck, and it’s taken a while to get used to the remapped PC controls. The game definitely feels 15 years old. Still, the story and characters are good.
I see some similarities to newer games like BG3, like the idea of the camp, and having a large number of companions to switch between. I actually didn’t like this in BG3. I think the Lighthouse setup in Veilguard, while mechanically similar, felt, and fit into the story, much better.
I just played Dragon Age Veilguard, and I’m now playing Dragon Age Origins, which was released 15 years ago. The difference in graphics and animation are startling. And it has a big effect on my enjoyment of the game. Origins is considered by many to be the best in the series, and I can see that they poured a ton into story options and such. But it doesn’t feel nearly as good as playing Veilguard.
Amazing graphics might not make or break a game, but the minimum level of what’s acceptable is always rising. Couple that with higher resolutions and other hardware advances, and art budgets are going to keep going up.
Well, it crashed on launch, for one. I saw there’s a ‘4GB’ fix, but that doesn’t let me launch from steam, and I wanted to stream to the steam deck, where I do almost all my gaming these days.
I really loved Veilguard, but I’ve definitely seen people who played Origins complain about it. I thought the characters, story, and combat were fantastic though.
Oh, thank you! I’ll have to find the 2nd half. It did seem rather short on its own for a trailer!