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Playing Skyrim on PS4 after a few months of The Witcher 3 made me realize just how gak Bethesda writing is.

Well. besides the crappy writing and general poor design, the main character having actual spoken lines is awful. My issue is that no matter what line you pick you're always so nice. I had that bloody smile animation they pull all the time. You can't RP a complete git; even the snark lines are just so cheerful. That's besides the game pushing you to either complete a quest with the happy ending, or the alternative be "or youknow, you could just kill everyone" - with no options in between.

The general criticism for Bethesda's newer releases is that they're aiming for far too broad an appeal. Fallout 4's yet another "open world shooter" - which is what every game these days wants to be. The issue is, their games were always along that theme, but at least had some depth, now they're as generic as every other game on the market (not to say their previous titles were all that amazing either. Morrowind at the time was reviewed along the same lines, and Daggerfall's mostly procedural generated locations and quests).

But yes, in summary - The Witcher series, done by a smaller developer who know they don't need to aim for such mass market appeal, is miles better than what Bethesda were releasing at the same time. Bethesda's games lean far too heavy on the "games designed by committee" vibe. Its not the engine (well, sort of, it is a bit bunk) or the settings though, as decent devs like Obsidian can make games which're miles better. Unfortunately I've not heard anything about a third party making their own game based on the Fallout 4 engine (perhaps because Bethesda arbitrarily consider New Vegas a failure because it was 1% off a pre-determined metacritic score).

SWTOR. Constantly amazed over how amazing this class campaign (sith warrior) is.

I won't spoil anything but this did not turn out the way I expected.

Just finished playing Steins Gate for the first time on my Vita. I wanted to go in blind the first time, and of course I get arguably one of the harshest (and ambiguous) endings between all of them. DANGIT. Every time. I got the bad ending on Persona 4 Golden by accident the same way. I'm just glad that I made a lot of saves throughout the game so I can try out the rest now without having to start all over.





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 feeder wrote:
Playing Skyrim on PS4 after a few months of The Witcher 3 made me realize just how gak Bethesda writing is.

I feel the exact same way. The Witcher 3 is definitely a lot more consistent to the character you're playing and you're able to slight nuances in his decision that don't completely change who Geralt is at the end of the day. You definitely feel the impact of your actions a lot more I find in the Witcher rather than Fallout 4 or Skyrim, at least in terms of how they show it later on in the story.

I sincerely hope we get to see some form of New Vegas for Fallout 4, Obsidian did such a good time before, it'd be a shame if they didn't have another crack at it. Though I guess Bethesda might be embarrassed at being blown out of the water again.

Picked up a 3tb drive for the Xbox one so reloaded world of tanks. Switched back to the us tree and now just grinding for the m36 Jackson.

Dumping everything and going back to play some Elder Scrolls Online. A teaser came out for the Vvardenfell expansion, which has me fairly hyped.

Playing through the raid mode of Resident Evil: Revelations 2 for the time being.

Loads of world of warships. Just got to tier V.

I picked up Titanfall 2 and been playing that a lot.. and I was pretty pissed how 2 days later it was suddenly on sale on the xbox live store :( I think my favorite mech is the Tone.

I finished Shadow of Mordor, to 100% complete, which I think might be the first time I've ever done a 100%. I actually really enjoyed it - It plays a little loose with Canon at times, but mostly in a forgivable way, and not enough to aggravate my inner Tolkien-purist! I thoroughly enjoyed the challenges, and how you really can use almost any method to kill targets. The gameplay was fun, challenging in places, and the characters were quite engaging. A little short perhaps, and I'm not sure on replay value - I think I'll play around with Rune-hunting rather than start over, and I reckon it'll take a while longer to get tired of lethal shadow strikes, and ledge kills!

Getting back in to Stardew Valley lately, it's a really damn good game, with a variety of gameplay available in it. Got it for 15 bucks and have had several times more hours having fun in it than I have with games thatcost me 60. And the guy's still releasing free updates!

Not jumping back into Stardew Valley until they add in that long promised coop mode.

Playing Dragon Age: Orgins and chuckling at just how awkward Alistair can be sometimes

Grimskul wrote:

 feeder wrote:
Playing Skyrim on PS4 after a few months of The Witcher 3 made me realize just how gak Bethesda writing is.

I feel the exact same way. The Witcher 3 is definitely a lot more consistent to the character you're playing and you're able to slight nuances in his decision that don't completely change who Geralt is at the end of the day. You definitely feel the impact of your actions a lot more I find in the Witcher rather than Fallout 4 or Skyrim, at least in terms of how they show it later on in the story.

I sincerely hope we get to see some form of New Vegas for Fallout 4, Obsidian did such a good time before, it'd be a shame if they didn't have another crack at it. Though I guess Bethesda might be embarrassed at being blown out of the water again.

I agree. While I enjoyed FO3 and 4, the story and world building in NV was obviously superior. Too bad they rushed it out and were unable to develop Caesar's territory and faction into anything more than a caricature of the most evil guys ever.

War Kitten wrote:Playing Dragon Age: Orgins and chucking at just how awkward Alistair can be sometimes

Oh man, he gets left behind at the camp ASAP. Like, FFS Alistair, can you even hear yourself speak?

 War Kitten wrote:
Playing Dragon Age: Orgins and chuckling at just how awkward Alistair can be sometimes

Well we all know at least one Alistair dont we

I liked keeping Alistair around just so he could say incredibly awkward yet somehow endearing things.

Just started Besiege. The way the game handles some stuff is wierd, like stacked wheels, rotation speed of basically every object, and weight for the purposes of flying machines, but the campaign is providing lots of interesting challenges and there are a lot of fun things to do in free play. I've seen so much crazy stuff that people have built that I can sometimes get discouraged, but then I see how far I've gone from when I first tried the game and feel better.

Played a bit of Space Station 13 yesterday, was nice to get back in to it. /tg/station is still the hive of scum and villainy it always is, in all the best ways for a game like SS13-- just enough moderation to make the game play well, but enough free reign for the players that it becomes chaotic and unpredictable quite easily.

I had an idea.
I've got the five Elder Scrolls games, and Skyrim is modded to have a beefed up final battle with Alduin. It's also got a mod called Familiar Faces, which lets you save characters and (hopefully) allows them to meet in-game and potentially act as followers.
So, if I could complete the other Elder Scrolls games before Skyrim is finished (though maybe not 100%-ing them), then by using Skyrim's console command and Familiar Faces, I can find a way to bring the characters I've played in the various games into Skyrim, which would serve as a sort of finale. If I can figure out a method to do so without crashing the game, maybe I can toss these previous characters into the final battle with Alduin too.
It's a silly idea, but I'm a sucker for large finales.

Just started playing some Conan Exiles. The developers definitely saw some of the shortcomings of Ark and fixed them. Combat is really good with dual wielding and multiple attack types. Crafting is much easier to understand, building structures is much easier than in Ark. Game performance is really good for being brand new to early access, i bumped the graphics from high to ultra and could not notice an fps loss.

 Deathklaat wrote:
Just started playing some Conan Exiles. The developers definitely saw some of the shortcomings of Ark and fixed them. Combat is really good with dual wielding and multiple attack types. Crafting is much easier to understand, building structures is much easier than in Ark. Game performance is really good for being brand new to early access, i bumped the graphics from high to ultra and could not notice an fps loss.

That's good to hear. I took a look at the reviews on Steam just after release, and noticed a lot of complaints. Looks like they were probably more noise than substance.

Most of the problems with the game so far since launch have been server latency and connectivity problems. Playing along in single player i have had less performance issues than i did with Ark and i picked up Conan closer to it's Early Access launch that i did Ark.

Finished Final Fantasy XV the other day. The finished sections are probably some of the single greatest things to come out of the franchise, but a lot of the game is definitely still in draft form. Overall, I think the high points of the game (gameplay, world and character interactions) are high enough to put rank it in the top half of the core games in the series, even though the low points (story presentation) are some of the worst in the franchise.

 SkavenLord wrote:
I had an idea.
I've got the five Elder Scrolls games, and Skyrim is modded to have a beefed up final battle with Alduin. It's also got a mod called Familiar Faces, which lets you save characters and (hopefully) allows them to meet in-game and potentially act as followers.
So, if I could complete the other Elder Scrolls games before Skyrim is finished (though maybe not 100%-ing them), then by using Skyrim's console command and Familiar Faces, I can find a way to bring the characters I've played in the various games into Skyrim, which would serve as a sort of finale. If I can figure out a method to do so without crashing the game, maybe I can toss these previous characters into the final battle with Alduin too.
It's a silly idea, but I'm a sucker for large finales.

That sounds incredible. I'd say you'd have difficulty playing all the other Elder Scrolls before ES:VI, but then again, that's not gonna be out for, like, another Decade.

Have you played any of the others? Arena and Daggerfall are both available for free from Bethesda themselves, and Morrowind's relatively cheap from wherever. No idea about Oblivion's current price, that's one where I still have the original.

Word of warning, though- this is about a 30 year old series, one of the FIRST major Western RPGs, which means it created a lot of the mechanics you see today, through trial and error. Arena is best played with both hands on the keyboard (coming from an age before the mouse) and you'll probably have to bump the tic rate up in DOSBox. Read/watch some tutorials on it- it's confusing and difficult to figure out otherwise, since it originally came with a manual.

Daggerfall- well, I haven't played that one, but be aware that the surface area of explorable terrain is about 3x the size of Great Britain- Fast Travel is required, and as it is procedurally generated, you can't count on walkthroughs for everything. It's also very, very confusing. The good news is, it has Timey Wimey shenanigans in it, meaning it would make perfect sense for your character from that to show up in the Future.

Morrowind is amazing. I seriously think it's the best of the Elder Scrolls series, at least in terms of writing and atmosphere- get some of the mods for it to update the combat, textures and environments, and you'll think it was a modern AAA title. This game also gives a good reason for your character to show up, since . I've got a Let's Play going, if you wanted to give it a watch. I try to explain the more esoteric mechanics as I can, so who knows- it might help you out a little. Big thing to remember- Enchanted items regenerate charge on their own- Magicka does not.

You've probably played Oblivion, so I won't mention that- though I do think it's not nearly as good as Morrowind, though that's mostly just my opinion, and an unpopular one at that.

And of course you know Skyrim.

My favorite Morrowind moment?

Seeing that Wizard fall out of the sky

Ahh, Tarhiel. And the Scrolls of Icarian Flight.

There's a couple sweet little easter eggs in the game, that they managed to fit into the lore really, really well- like the pipes that say "Wormgod" throughout the dwemer ruins, or the memorial on the door of Arnkthang.

Started playing Subnautica. I bought it shortly after it came out on Steam, but have been waiting for it to get closer to completion before "diving" into it.

Having lots of fun, but it's also rather tense at times. I always get tensed up a bit in underwater locations in games, because there's always something about to jump out at you it seems, and I don't handle jump scares well.

So when reached the first really deep area (where you can't see the bottom from the surface), I was all nervous while diving and panicked when I saw my first reefback and swam like hell away.

I downloaded Conan Exiles last night. I'm still trying to figure out what's going on. I was expecting a real persistent world MMO like WOW where you have quests and a storyline and stuff, but there's like no storyline at all. You're just some naked guy/girl and you run around chopping down trees and building little houses? Doesn't really seem to be any sense of adventure like I was expecting.

And then, you run your own server? You can play on someone elses, but if they decide to not play tomorrow, you start off from scratch all over again on someone else's server, and then rinse & repeat?

Just not getting it yet I guess.

 Necros wrote:
I downloaded Conan Exiles last night. I'm still trying to figure out what's going on. I was expecting a real persistent world MMO like WOW where you have quests and a storyline and stuff, but there's like no storyline at all. You're just some naked guy/girl and you run around chopping down trees and building little houses? Doesn't really seem to be any sense of adventure like I was expecting.

And then, you run your own server? You can play on someone elses, but if they decide to not play tomorrow, you start off from scratch all over again on someone else's server, and then rinse & repeat?

Just not getting it yet I guess.

Pretty much. It's a survival and crafting game. There have been a number of them lately - Minecraft and Ark are both examples. There are lore elements scattered around the world. But there's no plot.


If you want a Conan mmorpg, Age of Conan is still the only option.

 Wyrmalla wrote:
Fallout 4, man is the writing and quest design in that game subpar. Quests, and the dialogue, amount to "go do the thing", with hardly any side paths and exposition. It kind of hit me seeing someone play Oblivion (which was hardly the best in the series for it) just how poor Bethesda's recent titles have been in that regard. That and recollections of New Vegas, plus having played the Witcher series at the same time as the more recent Elder Scrolls (and thinking that Bethesda just weren't even trying in comparison).

Oh at last! Someone who says it. In so far I've only seen blokes willing to kneel at Bethesda. Seriously, outside NV, the only remotely good title we've had was oblivion (and even then it was already marking downhill).