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A little Payday 3 Beta

Going very hard on BG3 myself.

Keeping the number of companions low so I can really go in depth with the ones I have. One joined me unexpectedly, which became interesting enough to keep them around.

Still going through 'early access' areas at ~20 hours in, with a Cleric 1 (Knowledge)/ Enchanter wizard. Its a brief hiccup in progression, but the extra skills (and expertise) and armor proficiencies are worth it. I'm in it for the secrets and lore- I'll let persuasion attempts pass, but I'll do everything I can to find things out. Accidentally left Tiamat clicked when I was browsing through gods for the cleric level, then decided, no, selfishness and greed (for knowledge) was entirely in keeping for this character.

I'm going slow on purpose to check as much as possible, and probably overusing certain... abilities.

My favorite thing so far is Speak with Dead. The animation is just top notch, and there is a lot of information and perspectives that slip by without it. .

Started playing a bit of BG3 myself. Playing my first DnD character, a Dwarf Paladin named Wulfbreth. Not really got far, just to the fight at the druid settlement. Looking forward to getting into the game itself and getting out of this start bit. Played it too much during Early Access so this is a bit of drudgery.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Finally Beat XCom Chimera Squad. I'll give them credit for trying something new but somehow it ends up being less than the sum of its parts. Doesn't have that additive quality where I want to play another game right away. Only replay value is to perhaps try out some of the other characters.

The game feels as if they wanted to play around with a bunch of mechanics, and see which ones worked.

Baldur's Gate 3 (again). They really went to almost ridiculous lengths to do the 'little stuff' that a lot of companies don't have time for.

Example: I'm down in the underdark, and I have the animated corpse of a hook horror as a servant (basically imagine a scything talons tyranid warrior with only one pair of arms, a long neck, and no head crest). It has a lot of idle animations, but in exploring, i came across a rope ladder.

This fairly random monster has appropriate climbing animations for ladders! Up and down (amusingly, it goes down head first).

Starting to venture past Early Access stuff I'm familiar with, and closing in on level 6. Worried that I'm going to close off available paths without exploring everything, however. (And there are choices that definitely lock you out of paths or companions)

 nels1031 wrote:

Messed around with the character/class creation

Just saw a video about character customization in BG3 that made me say, "Huh!?" Maybe someone who has the game can confirm?

Long and short of it, four preset body types, preset faces for each body type (seven or eight, depending on the body type). Customization of physical features (i.e. not things like freckles or hair styles/colors) is non-existent. Which means that you can't make your character taller/shorter or broader/thinner than what's in the preset body types. And eight choices for what your character's genitals looks like (three innies, and five outies).

Um... What?

Is this for real? Because if it is, it sounds like someone's got their priorities out of whack. I know that I tend to care a lot more about how tall or broad my character is than I do about the specific shape (aside from whether it's a hole or a staff) of what's under my character's pants.

Again, can someone who has the game confirm?

Yes...?

There aren't height or muscle sliders. Its not really the kind of game where subtle changes to overall body shape are going to show. Its mostly 3/4 isometric gameplay, after all (or zoomed out tactical). If you fight enough with the camera you can get a group shot of your party, but zooming past that really isn't an option most of the time.

Body sizes (normal and buff) are limited to humans, elves, half-elves and tieflings. Shorty races, dragonborn and githyanki don't have a size option. (Which is interesting. They went pretty far in making the githyanki alien, up to including their reproduction (egg-laying) and weird socialization- hidden training camps in the world so they can reach maturity, because no one ages in the Astral Plane)

There are a lot of facial feature options because you'll see those a lot in dialogue cutscenes, and there are unapologetically a lot of those.

----
The nudity options are... not a big deal, though some people are very loud and excited about them in way or another. Its mostly a novelty.
The lead animator talked about how they put a lot of work into the bodies (especially the dragonborn), and all clothing and armor is a mesh overlay and they just decided... not to have it default to a mesh.

I also suspect it got approved because Larian is a European studio and they know that while the game is piled high with corpses and murder, and yet somehow what people are really going to freak out about is a bit of optional nudity.

You can literally select your genitals but as far as I can tell there are ZERO face sliders. You're stuck with one of a handful of presets.
For an isometric game it is a fething resource hog. I played through Act 1 on EA and have zero interest in finishing the game.

I think it'll get a lot of attention (obviously) and end up being a cult hit. It is a very, very deep game, but it's a strategy game, not an action one. I think the bevy of options in dialogue and combat is beyond anything I've ever seen, but it's just not for me. The character creator is also lacking IMO. It also doesn't seem optimized at all.

Voss wrote:
Yes...?

The fact that they put more effort into giving you penis appearance options than body appearance options makes me wonder what the hell they were thinking, and where their priorities were. You spend pretty much the entire game staring at your body - clothed or unclothed. I assume you don't spend much time looking at your penis (assuming you have one; there are also multiple - though not as many - options for those who want a vulva instead). I'm guessing that the game's secondary title isn't "Debbie Does Baldur's Gate".

My befuddlement at the developer's choice isn't "freak out over a penis". I've played games like Conan: Exiles that had the option, and I barely found it worth noting. Cyberpunk 2077 allows it, and I didn't say anything about it there. either. But both of those games offer extensive physical body customization. So giving yourself a bigger schlong is just another option from the many already available. And before you start talking about "isometric gameplay" and "cameras zoomed out", remember that both of the games I mentioned are largely played in first person, which means that you don't even see your character most of the time. But body customization was still considered a good feature to have for both of those games. For that matter, most games these days let you pick your character's eye color (my FFXIV character has a ring around her iris that's a different color than her iris; it's a cool effect), even though it's not as if anyone can actually see that outside of a zoomed-in screenshot. So giving you customization options for stuff that you barely see is pretty standard these days. Further, the argument about "barely see" doesn't really hold water in this instance. After all, Larian has put the priority on giving you more customization options for something that's even more difficult to see in 3/4 isometric gameplay (even if you're running around without any clothes on).


It's also worth noting that while you have the ability to pick a face, that isn't really customizable, either. It's one of several pre-set options, only. If someone's going to claim that it's "only for portraits", then I think I would prefer to stick with the method used by the original BG games, where you had the option to either use one of the provided still portraits, or load one of your own.


Rationalize the genital focus all you want, and blame criticism on "people freaking out over sex!!1!", since that's no doubt what the defenders will choose to claim. But the simple fact is that there is no good argument for giving the player more penis customization options than general body customization options. If having choices for your penis is important, then so is having choices for the rest of your body. You would rightly mock them if the customization focus were on toes instead of genitals.

Eumerin wrote:
...Rationalize the genital focus all you want, and blame criticism on "people freaking out over sex!!1!", since that's no doubt what the defenders will choose to claim. But the simple fact is that there is no good argument for giving the player more penis customization options than general body customization options. If having choices for your penis is important, then so is having choices for the rest of your body. You would rightly mock them if the customization focus were on toes instead of genitals...

I mean, I'm not an animator so don't quote me on this, but I *suspect* it's more work setting up a wider range of body types/body sliders that you're going to see frequently and have to interact with animations/equipment than it is to add extra genitals that don't spend much of the game on display.

(Also, for the curious all boinking I've seen thus far is a relatively short opener and then fades to black, despite the genital customization options it's less intrusive/embarrassing than, e.g., DAO's long cutscenes of characters writhing around wearing goofy beige underwear they're clearly not wearing under their actual clothes, Morrigan.)

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Eumerin wrote:
...Rationalize the genital focus all you want, and blame criticism on "people freaking out over sex!!1!", since that's no doubt what the defenders will choose to claim. But the simple fact is that there is no good argument for giving the player more penis customization options than general body customization options. If having choices for your penis is important, then so is having choices for the rest of your body. You would rightly mock them if the customization focus were on toes instead of genitals...

I mean, I'm not an animator so don't quote me on this, but I *suspect* it's more work setting up a wider range of body types/body sliders that you're going to see frequently and have to interact with animations/equipment than it is to add extra genitals that don't spend much of the game on display.

(Also, for the curious all boinking I've seen thus far is a relatively short opener and then fades to black, despite the genital customization options it's less intrusive/embarrassing than, e.g., DAO's long cutscenes of characters writhing around wearing goofy beige underwear they're clearly not wearing under their actual clothes, Morrigan.)

So far as body types go it depends on how they bind armor/clothes to the player model. If they're doing it manually it does take effort, but I don't think that's necessary.

Skyrim has mods that let you customize your body extensively and batch build your modded clothes to that build. It doesn't require specific modification as long as the weights are established.

Eumerin wrote:
]It's also worth noting that while you have the ability to pick a face, that isn't really customizable, either. It's one of several pre-set options, only. If someone's going to claim that it's "only for portraits", then I think I would prefer to stick with the method used by the original BG games, where you had the option to either use one of the provided still portraits, or load one of your own.

No idea where the portrait thing is coming from at all (they change portrait styles for the final game but that has squat to do with customization) or who claimed it, but faces are very customizable. Yes, there are 'only' 6-8 or so for each race, but there are loads of changes you can make to facial markings hair, eyes, tatoos, piercings, make-up and etc, including age and freckle sliders.

Rationalize the genital focus all you want, and blame criticism on "people freaking out over sex!!1!", since that's no doubt what the defenders will choose to claim. But the simple fact is that there is no good argument for giving the player more penis customization options than general body customization options. If having choices for your penis is important, then so is having choices for the rest of your body. You would rightly mock them if the customization focus were on toes instead of genitals.

Ok, this is a bit too passive-aggressive. The genitals haven't been a focus and it doesn't need 'rationalization.' Its a handful of not-particularly-high-res bits that are basically stuck on the crotch, with several variations just being hairy and no hair. The body sliders you're demanding would be a LOT more work.



Of course, the other potential reason for it is their EA fanbase turned out to be unreasonably horny, and really made sure they knew. So Larian simply leaned into that.

I've gotten back on Runescape in a big way, as they just dropped a new combat skill for the game (Necromancy). The first new combat style since the game's release over 20 years ago, in fact.

Body sliders aren't hard. Even SF6 has body sliders and some games have been doing them for ages. There's even a mod tool for WH2/3 that includes body sliders.

Maybe there's an engine issue, but I think it's more likely that they just didn't value them and wanted to put their focus elsewhere. I do think it's weird that an RPG with so many options in dialogue and combat has poor character customization.

Eumerin wrote:

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Finally Beat XCom Chimera Squad. I'll give them credit for trying something new but somehow it ends up being less than the sum of its parts. Doesn't have that additive quality where I want to play another game right away. Only replay value is to perhaps try out some of the other characters.

The game feels as if they wanted to play around with a bunch of mechanics, and see which ones worked.

Yes. Ironically by making the characters more in depth and less disposal it actually decreases the tension. You just know you're not going to lose any of them. With normal XCom you know you can lose anybody at anytime. Their personalities aren't as obviously developed as Chimera Squad but I think I actually got more attached to my randomly generated guys. Having your people permanently die is part of the XCom experience.

 ZergSmasher wrote:
I've gotten back on Runescape in a big way, as they just dropped a new combat skill for the game (Necromancy). The first new combat style since the game's release over 20 years ago, in fact.

Cool! I’m chilling with old school RuneScape. It’s quite a bit of fun to play at wo… in transit. :-)

Remnant: from the ashes. Given that the second one is out I decided to finally play through the first one. Really like it! I feel like a spacefaring cowboy. Though I wish the choice of secondary weapons was less limited. I’m at my second world and I only have 3 variants of rapid fire weapons as secondary. I want a big revolver or something to really feel like a space cowboy.

@KamikazeCanuck


Honestly i only went halfway through Chimera Squad and was so uninterested by it i left and played Gears Tactics when the games first came out. Something about chimera squad feels like a worse experience than xcom 2. The alternating turns, grenades don't blow up right away or remove cover and the inability to blow up levels of terrain, the characters are mostly pretty bad and they somehow made the not-ADVENT teammates uncool unlike skirmishers in War of the Chosen, the mission is divided into parts, etc.
The only things i enjoyed in that game were mostly the relic items you could buy on the Black/Gray Market and the different entry points and breaches in each mission seeming like a cool feature if only implemented right and being a more fluid part of the game rather than starting each sub-section this way.

Also in the completion of the Muton sub-section of the campaign they made Xcom sound as bad as the Aliens. They can eff right off with that noise. Xcom 2 on hardest difficulty on Ironman is a game fairly hard fought and while i'll admit they aren't saints they are nowhere near as bad as the Aliens. The fact Humanity was even thinking of developing a Mixed Species city 4 years after the basic genocide and near mass genocide of Humanity after 20 years under Alien and Advent boot-heel is telling about Xcom's and Humanity's patience and near-Naivete with the Aliens that fought under the Elders. I'm not saying we should have wiped out all the Aliens but Mixed Species Mega City after 4 years should cause at least some wariness and human/advent/alien bigotry which is sad but realistic and is to be expected.

I also didn't like some game breaking issue with Chimera Squad where i had evaced some of my squad while the rest were bleeding out but all the objectives were completed and i magically won the mission no problem without anybody dying even though in xcom 2 they would have died.

-------------

Also i've been playing Terra Invicta again. It's one of the Slowest of Burns making Hearts of Iron's 1936 campaign of build-up to War period seem sorta faster by comparison. Just a warning that when i say this is slow it's Really Slow. The first year of the game or so you get every councilor of a limit of 4-6 (you start with 2) and you set them up on missions every week. After the first year you send them on new missions every half a month (15-16 days) so about 26 or so turns per year for every year after the first for 10-12 years building up everything till you have enough ships for a good space battle. Not to mention you really want to be able to make buildings that provide more research or other resources on top of space resources. Like Hearts of Iron 4 there's a million tool tips in the game and the amount of Research options is so absurd and un-specific that even vets of 4X will find this a bit much.

It's fun but you have to wait like 10-12 years of in-game time (getting good countries taken over, getting space income and space pop cap before heading into space to get good mining spots to make space structures fast and then finally making ships) before you finally have a decent amount of ships to play with to fight the aliens and believe me you're gonna need a lot and you're gonna want to wait until your engines and weapons are pretty good so you don't lose too badly or spend too much Water resource and believe me you're gonna need a lot of Water (probably to deal with how salty the game makes you too). It can be fun but also very frustrating.

On that note nuclear weapon use, orbital bombardment, forming country unions like the EU and turning them into mega nations, using armies to conquer territories (usually only the usa can project army power with navies whereas most have to start out with border wars) and all of that can be super fun. The nuclear option is usually the last one since it really hurts GDP of nations and messes up the world badly which causes population decreases and probably discontent.

I really want to stress Terra Invicta can be fun but extremely Slow is the best way to put that game.

Just finished Styx: Master of Shadows. It was a game I got from PS plus a while back and I never got around to playing it. I had finished Yakuza 6 and wanted a bit of a palette cleanser before jumping into Like a Dragon, so it was a neat little stealth game, one of the few times where the greenskin is the protag and not the endless tide of mooks you kill, so it was surprisingly fun despite the relative simplicity of the game, even though I usually don't play stealth games. They did a decent amount of world building as well.

I'm going strong into Like a Dragon right now and I'm definitely taking some time getting used to the turn based combat versus the traditional button mash combat of the previous Yakuza games. Story is decent so far, though it definitely has that reboot feel with how Ichiban has a pretty similar backstory to Kiryu as far as prison origins go.

trexmeyer wrote:
Body sliders aren't hard. Even SF6 has body sliders and some games have been doing them for ages. There's even a mod tool for WH2/3 that includes body sliders.

Maybe there's an engine issue, but I think it's more likely that they just didn't value them and wanted to put their focus elsewhere. I do think it's weird that an RPG with so many options in dialogue and combat has poor character customization.

Yes, I would like more faces and a boob slider.

Oh, and more player voices. Its sounds really weird for my grotesque half orc assassin speaking like a proper Englishman.

Aside from those trivial complaints, I have nothing bad to say. BG3 is probably the best RPG I've played in 20 years.

GrosseSax wrote:

trexmeyer wrote:
Body sliders aren't hard. Even SF6 has body sliders and some games have been doing them for ages. There's even a mod tool for WH2/3 that includes body sliders.

Maybe there's an engine issue, but I think it's more likely that they just didn't value them and wanted to put their focus elsewhere. I do think it's weird that an RPG with so many options in dialogue and combat has poor character customization.

Yes, I would like more faces and a boob slider.

Oh, and more player voices. Its sounds really weird for my grotesque half orc assassin speaking like a proper Englishman.

Aside from those trivial complaints, I have nothing bad to say. BG3 is probably the best RPG I've played in 20 years.

What do you mean! Can't greenskins be sophisticated?

GrosseSax wrote:


Yes, I would like more faces and a boob slider.

Why yes, I will quote this massively out of context

The sophisticated orc will forever remind me of that encounter in Arcanum, where you meet an orc who plays the dumb brute act, but is actually a highly educated lad, not to mention very opinionated when it comes to his tea.

Been playing a bit of the remastered Quake 2, really enjoying it, have never played it back in the day because our PC's could never run it, but this one has aged really well, wonky jump control aside.

 BrookM wrote:
Arcanum,

Wildly underrated game. Had a ton of flaws toward the end of it, but I have a lot of fond memories with it.

Sometimes get the urge to replay it, but I think the rose colored glasses would come off quick.

Wheeeee, my Kickstarter Xbox version of Everspace 2 just landed. Sure is shooty and Looty! very pretty game, but it has weird lag spikes quite a lot. I’m sure they will get ironed out.

 nels1031 wrote:

 BrookM wrote:
Arcanum,

Wildly underrated game. Had a ton of flaws toward the end of it, but I have a lot of fond memories with it.

Sometimes get the urge to replay it, but I think the rose colored glasses would come off quick.

I've tried picking it up a few times, but it never clicked for me like Fallout did. I've instead watched a few review-playthroughs over the years to get an idea of what the game is all about and I can see why it's such an underrated gem.

Has anyone played the "Expanse: A Telltale Series". Based around the TV show Expanse adaptation Camina Drummer character(don't think she was in the books or is a composite of multiple characters from the book). First episode dropped a few weeks ago, with more to follow.

Wondering if its decent from folks who've had hands on.

Played the first season of their Walking Dead series and loved it/hated it because of the story choices and writing.

Book of hours released this weekend. I really really like this one. Lovecraftian librarian simulator. Very similar to cultist simulator, made by the same team. It’s a weird game, just like it’s supposed to be. It seems to be more difficult to lose then previous titles. You mostly identify books, interact with a local quaint little city, study esoteric novels and explore a vast mansion of books and oddities. If you like the previous titles, such as cultist simulator or sunless sea, then this will be right up your alley.

 nels1031 wrote:
Has anyone played the "Expanse: A Telltale Series". Based around the TV show Expanse adaptation Camina Drummer character(don't think she was in the books or is a composite of multiple characters from the book). First episode dropped a few weeks ago, with more to follow.

Wondering if its decent from folks who've had hands on.

Played the first season of their Walking Dead series and loved it/hated it because of the story choices and writing.

I'm going to get it for sure. Big fan of The Expanse and that character but I'm going to wait until it's complete. It's hard to remember what's going on with some telltale games when it's 2-4 months in between episodes.

Also, there's Star Trek game out in this style but its not from Telltale which will hopefully be good.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
@KamikazeCanuck

Spoiler:

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:

Eumerin wrote:

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Finally Beat XCom Chimera Squad. I'll give them credit for trying something new but somehow it ends up being less than the sum of its parts. Doesn't have that additive quality where I want to play another game right away. Only replay value is to perhaps try out some of the other characters.

The game feels as if they wanted to play around with a bunch of mechanics, and see which ones worked.

Yes. Ironically by making the characters more in depth and less disposal it actually decreases the tension. You just know you're not going to lose any of them. With normal XCom you know you can lose anybody at anytime. Their personalities aren't as obviously developed as Chimera Squad but I think I actually got more attached to my randomly generated guys. Having your people permanently die is part of the XCom experience.

Honestly i only went halfway through Chimera Squad and was so uninterested by it i left and played Gears Tactics when the games first came out. Something about chimera squad feels like a worse experience than xcom 2. The alternating turns, grenades don't blow up right away or remove cover and the inability to blow up levels of terrain, the characters are mostly pretty bad and they somehow made the not-ADVENT teammates uncool unlike skirmishers in War of the Chosen, the mission is divided into parts, etc.
The only things i enjoyed in that game were mostly the relic items you could buy on the Black/Gray Market and the different entry points and breaches in each mission seeming like a cool feature if only implemented right and being a more fluid part of the game rather than starting each sub-section this way.

Also in the completion of the Muton sub-section of the campaign they made Xcom sound as bad as the Aliens. They can eff right off with that noise. Xcom 2 on hardest difficulty on Ironman is a game fairly hard fought and while i'll admit they aren't saints they are nowhere near as bad as the Aliens. The fact Humanity was even thinking of developing a Mixed Species city 4 years after the basic genocide and near mass genocide of Humanity after 20 years under Alien and Advent boot-heel is telling about Xcom's and Humanity's patience and near-Naivete with the Aliens that fought under the Elders. I'm not saying we should have wiped out all the Aliens but Mixed Species Mega City after 4 years should cause at least some wariness and human/advent/alien bigotry which is sad but realistic and is to be expected.

I also didn't like some game breaking issue with Chimera Squad where i had evaced some of my squad while the rest were bleeding out but all the objectives were completed and i magically won the mission no problem without anybody dying even though in xcom 2 they would have died.

-------------

I've seen you make that complaint before but I've no objection to the concept of the Chimera Squad itself. You have to remember flamingkillamajig, these people only fought the war once. Not hundreds of thousands of times like yourself. So they have more room for forgiveness. Most of the aliens are also victims of The Etherals themselves though various combinations of mind control, genetic manipulation, conscription and anything else you can think off. Also, City 31 itself was built on the premise of being a mixed species city. So the vast majority of people living there self selected to live there based on that premise. On the flip side there is clearly a criminal/terrorist element that's targeting it because of those very ideas of integration.

There are some exceptions though. The Chryssalid's are closer to being a bioweapon than a intelligent lifeform in my opinion and they should just be fully exterminated. I think even in C31 they are seen that way and they're closer to being some sort of contraband weapon than refugees.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:

I'm going to get it for sure. Big fan of The Expanse and that character but I'm going to wait until it's complete. It's hard to remember what's going on with some telltale games when it's 2-4 months in between episodes.

Doing the same.

Baldur's Gate 3. I've reached Baldur's Gate in my newest playthrough. In a much better spot as far as gear, spells, skill selection, and party relationships. This is my second time getting this far and I had flubbed some major game/plot points as I progressed the first time. Really excited to jump into the city proper with much clearer objectives this go around.

@KamikazeCanuck: I mean i get it. I really do. The aliens were victims themselves and probably thought the humans chances were so laughable they mostly didn't help them (or firaxis wanted to make it more humanity's fight or something). They even talked about aliens turning on their former masters during the final fight in the ethereal hq in xcom 2.

I'm just saying it takes time to go from Advent and the aliens are genociding us and Central and some others fighting a guerilla war for like 20 years into let's be bestest buddies with the aliens or living with them. It just all takes time and likely more than 4 years. Maybe at least 20 if we have a big alien civil rights movement. Humanity has been through a lot in that game though. People tend to have issues when what's normal switches so quickly. I imagine Central and some of the original Xcom members must be hit the hardest overall.

I do recall someone saying Viper strip clubs were made canon in Chimera Squad which to me is funny so i want to believe it.

On another note i'm a bit sad you missed the part where i talked about Terra Invicta which is admittedly a different alien invasion which i've been playing as well as TWW2 as double skaven co-op buddies (ikit=me and a friend=queek).

I've also been hoping for Falling Frontier (i think that's the name) to come out. I heard it's like The Expanse in game form. You pick a portion of Humanity and fight off other parts using ships, fighting battles and you have to actually transport your resources to your factories to get them building crap.

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