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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   1886 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 1, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I’m playing Dragon Age and enjoying it. I don’t really disagree with the criticisms of the game from some reviewers. There is indeed a lot of peak millennial YA woke cringe dialogue…but the same was true of Baldur’s Gate 3 and both God of War reboot games, and many people enjoyed those; this doesn’t seem any worse.

I appreciate that this is an RPG with the filler removed, much needed after both Inquisition and Andromeda were ruined in large part by barren open zones that were unnecessarily created to try to attach the studio to some kind of perceived open world trend.

I quite like the new gameplay. Good RTwP will always be my preferred system, but Inquisition already ruined Dragon Age 2’s sublime and hugely underrated RTwP-action-hybrid combat, and this is definitely better than what we got in 2014.

People complain about facial animations, but they’re much less distracting than in Mass Effect Andromeda or Star Wars Outlaws / AC Valhalla (for non-facial-capture scenes, obviously). You can’t do much better than this without either hand-tuning facial animations like CDPR or capturing them directly like Larian, and it’s clear Bioware didn’t have the budget for that.

Choice and consequence is pretty good so far, better than some recent RPGs. I like the world and level design. The game has a nice, breezy pace. I will keep playing for now. I am more concerned about Obsidian’s Avowed, which looks like it might turn out like the Outer Worlds, which was passable but very dull.

Do you really prefer RTwP over turn-based? I’ll grant that it works well in Faster Than Light (and is preferable to the singularly shitty turn-based implementation in Fallout Tactics, which runs both options), but for the most part, the good games that have it are good in spite of it.

I prefer RTwP over TB, simply because TB is too slow. Trash fights aren't bad by themselves, but with TB they become a slog. The designers that get rid of trash fights are often tempted to create massive fights instead, and I get tired of having only massive fights, even if they are actually low-stakes.

I prefer RTwP over TB, simply because TB is too slow.

I've never been able to play RTWP as quickly as a well-designed turn based game.

I tried Pillars of Eternity, and the disconnect between my (intended) commands and the characters' (attempted) actions drove me up the wall1. I had to constantly monitor my characters to make sure that they didn't interpret "approach that enemy, then attack it" as "try to approach that enemy, notice that the direct path to the enemy has become blocked, circle around the entire battlefield, then attack it if you survived the detour".

If I wanted to change tactics, I had to review each character to see what their current WIP action is (if it's even possible), recall which commands have been carried out vs. queued vs. failed, determine the bearing, speed, and timing of all units if I'm planning on an AoE, then set the new command.

Contrast that to Divinity Original Sin, where if I commanded something, it happened, monitoring events is baked in, changing tactics is literally free (continuing them costs something instead), and actions are almost as fast as I can hit the skill hotkeys and aim them.

(1) confusion and opportunity attacks are perfectly decent ways to break the link between my commands and their actions. Bad UI and AI isn't.

Turn based is always slower in Larian games than RtwP is in Dragon Age/Pillars/etc because even if you have StarCraft level APM, everything mapped to the keyboard, a full rotation for every character memorized and can therefore avoid spending five minutes a round looking at tooltips, you still have to wait an age for the enemy turns. Plus it just looks goofy; all RPG combat is an abstraction but it’s immersion breaking when my side stops attacking for a few minutes and stands there while we get walloped, then the same happens in reverse. It’s necessary in chess (and on the tabletop in general), but not in games.

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