What Are You Playing: 9 Years since the Last Dragon Age

[Rynjin]

I love those games. I've played through Portal 1 five times, and it's a linear puzzle game, which should be the least replayable genre of all. But it's just so satisfying to use the portal mechanics.

Y'all should really play Portal: Revolution. It's a fangame published on Steam, and it's completely free. Very fun too.

[Zevox]

Whew, well, finally finished up Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth today, and oh boy, where to start.

Overall impression: it's an excellent game. The combat in Remake was already, in my opinion, the best action-RPG combat system in any game I've played, wonderfully blending the elements of both gameplay styles into an exciting, fun to play package, and Rebirth just took that and made it better. Most characters (Red XIII being the exception) do not suffer from the problem Remake had with flying enemies anymore, and while they took a while for me to even remember they were there since they're a whole new mechanic, the new synergy skills/abilities definitely add a lot of fun new options to the game (sometimes quite powerful ones - Cloud's projectile counter stands out there, for instance). A lot of the new special abilities characters got that weren't in Remake were great, too. I very much approve of them adding "Install" type moves to most characters (Prime Mode on Cloud, Bonus Round on Barret, Unfettered Fury on Tifa, Doppleganger on Yuffie), and Aerith's Radiant Ward in particular I should call out as pretty much single-handedly making her exponentially more fun to play than she was in Remake, as it changes her basic attack to something much faster and more impactful, and gives her an actual dodge worth a damn, at least while she stays within the ward's radius. The invincibility while casting spells part is almost an afterthought compared to that, despite sounding like the selling point when you first read the ability. Red XIII is an interesting new addition; he wound up being probably my second least-played character, but that's mostly because he has a more defensive play style that doesn't necessarily mesh with how I want to play; mechanically though, he's well handled aside from being the one character in the cast who still doesn't seem to have an answer to flying enemies that doesn't involve spending ATB. Cait Sith... well, frankly I played so little with him that I may not be the best judge of whether he was well handled mechanically. He's weird, which is appropriate for the character, but between that and me not liking the character to begin with I just did not want to bother using him.

Story-wise, without getting into spoilers, the main story is quite well told and dialogue is well-written. They definitely make you like these characters. And despite the "Unknown Journey" part of the tagline and the big deal the ending of Remake made about ending fate's hold on it, it doesn't actually change that much from the original story, and what it does change doesn't affect any major plot points. It puts in some effort to improve on flaws in the original - i.e. more properly integrating Yuffie and Vincent into the plot, or making Yuffie and Cait Sith joining the party make more sense - and most of what I'd personally point to as flaws in it are a part of the original themselves (i.e. Cait Sith). There are some other changes for pacing reasons, and some that add interesting new elements to the story that just don't affect the plot on a grand scale (in this game at least), but I kind of went into it expecting bigger divergences, honestly, as the ending of Remake seemed to set up at least a couple.

Spoiler: Getting into spoilers.

Show

In particular, Zack has still done basically jack squat. He helps with the final fight, kind of, but ends up back in his own timeline, with nothing having changed with him and having impacted the main timeline not at all since Cloud could probably have just handled that part of the fight anyway. With him being displayed just as prominently on the cover art of the game as Cloud, plus the opening of the game revealing he has his own moveset that's completely distinct from Cloud's, I was expecting to be jumping into his timeline to actually do things that would later impact the main timeline somehow, but nope. He takes care of Aerith and Cloud's comatose bodies, talks to Elmyra, Marlene, and Biggs, and gets dragged into the final fight at the end, and that's it.

The theories I alluded to in prior posts about what they'd do with Zack's timeline were as follows: having seen that the second and third Zack scenes seemed to treat Aerith in his timeline as comatose rather than dead, and seemed to establish some connection between the main timeline characters and their alternate timeline selves (Cloud saw through the eyes of his alternate self and heard Zack's voice when going to sleep at the Golden Saucer), I thought a likely scenario was that when Aerith died at the end of Rebirth, she'd awaken in the alternate timeline, with her memories of the main timeline intact. Then she, Zack, and probably Biggs since he was alive in that timeline would need to do someting in the third game which would ultimately help the main timeline team defeat Sephiroth. Particularly because they established that Aerith's Holy Materia had been drained by the Whispers in the main timeline, but was still intact in Zack's alternate timeline.

I was sort of on the right track, except the actual ending went way more over the top and balls-to-the-wall bonkers than I was expecting. Aerith and Cloud do somehow wake up in Zack's timeline after the events at the Temple of the Ancients (no idea how that worked, it is not explained at all, aside from being implied to be Aerith's doing), had a little date there in which it was obvious that Aerith knew she's going to die soon (I guess that memory of the future was the only one the Whispers left her after Remake) and was just getting a last bit of fun time in with Cloud before the end, and Aerith handed him the Holy Materia, which he then somehow gave back to her in the main timeline in exchange for the empty one in a just as ill-explained sequence. Then the real ending hits and Sephiroth basically explains that the Whispers' defeat at the end of the first game created a lot of alternate timelines, most of which die off quickly, but all of which were converging in a "Reunion" (because of course) during the ending. And that leads to the ending being wild.

To be fair to them, they do use this to great effect with Aerith's death scene. You actually initially see Cloud manage to stop Sephiroth's attack and save Aerith's life - only for the converging timelines to steal that from him, replacing his success with a timeline where Aerith was struck down, and shows her going instantly from kneeling in prayer to a pool blood on the ground. For anyone who was hoping she would be saved because they established things could change in this version, that has to have been gut-wrenching, and it was a way to potentially recapture the kind of impact the death originally had despite everyone knowing it's supposed to happen: straight-up show her being saved, give people a moment to process that, then snatch it away in a horrible instant. Kudos to them on that moment.

That said, they definitely made that ending more confusing than it needed to be. Having Aerith call the alternate timeline a dream, and the story title pop-up refer to you as being "in a dream" during it made me wonder if Zack's timeline wasn't an alternate timeline at all, up until Sephiroth's little explanation of multiple worlds arising from the defiance of fate. Showing Zack face multiple additional sequences like his original death sequence before that explanation from Sephiroth was also needlessly confusing. And oh boy, showing Aerith waking up after Cloud holds her dead body and says "wake up, Aerith" was a mistake for sure. The scenes thereafter get across that either Cloud's able to speak with her spirit at most, or he's hallucinating still being able to talk to her (he does that a lot for other things, after all), since everyone else continues to act as if she's dead and clearly doesn't see her where Cloud does, and even Cloud understands she can't stay with them anymore and is only "seeing them off." But oh boy introducing it that way made me worry for a minute that they really were undoing her death. Fortunately not though.

Anyway, getting back to Zack, yeah, doesn't seem like they had much for him to do in this one. The ending implies he could end up helping the main timeline again in the next game, but I sure hope he has more to do there, because if he just pops in for the Sephiroth boss fight again, it'll make bothering with this alternate timeline stuff seem pretty pointless in the end. Great use with Aerith's death aside, it definitely complicates things to a degree that needs some real payoff to justify.

The other notable changes compared to the original mostly revolved around the Weapons and Tifa. With the weapons, they show up earlier than before, with aquatic ones being shown in both the Corel and Gongaga reactors, and you learn that they're already actively fighting Sephiroth in the Lifestream. Which is kind of nice, they're kind of an afterthought in the original FF7, being introduced late in the game but only one actually being a fight during the plot, and they don't really do anything to protect the planet from Sephiroth and Meteor despite that being their supposed purpose. So a bit like with Yuffie and Vincent, they're working that plot element more properly into the story.

With Tifa they do something interesting: Sephiroth is actively trying to sow doubts in Cloud's mind about who Tifa is, encouraging him to believe he saw her die in Nibelheim five years ago, and disbelieve Tifa's claim of survival even after she shows him her scar from back then. He almost gets Cloud to kill her in the Gongaga reactor, in fact. Now at first I wasn't clear on why they were doing that - what was so important to Sephiroth about Tifa? But it came to me during the Gongaga scenes. Besides just that Sephiroth likes messing with Cloud (which he clearly does), Remake strongly implied he has knowledge of the future. Which means he knows about Tifa being the one who can put Cloud's mind back together after the events at the Northern Crater. If he drives a wedge between them - or better, gets Tifa killed - then Cloud will not be able to recover from that, and the one person who Sephiroth knows can beat him will no longer be an issue. I expect some more might come of this in the next game, but even in this one it helped give more characterization to Tifa and better establish and develop her and Cloud's relationship.

The other change worth noting is a pacing one: Cid shows up earlier, flying the party from Gongaga to Cosmo Canyon in the Tiny Bronco, and later to Nibelheim, and acting as a fast travel method during that period. The Tiny Bronco goes down and enters boat-mode on the way back to the Golden Saucer, so they basically cut out the trip to Rocket Town, which is probably a good call. The game's long enough as-is, and I don't see what the trip to Rocket Town would add to this one; they'll probably work it into the third game somehow instead, I'd wager. I will say it was slightly frustrating seeing Cid and Vincent basically join the party as far as the story was concerned but not be playable in this game, but honestly the party already feels quite large even without them. Only having three characters active at a time, one of whom is always Cloud outside of the combat simulator and arenas, kind of makes it hard to use everyone as-is, even if you're ignoring one completely like I did. While I look forward to seeing what they play like in the third game, I do wonder if they'll do anything about that; I know the three-character party was in the original, but maybe we could up it to four despite that? You really only needed to bother with three in the original game after all, since everyone's stats were more determined by materia than anything else, while in the Remakes everyone's quite unique and you want to vary the party. Eh probably wishful thinking I suppose.

My biggest criticism with the game is the one I've previously given: the open world stuff. In particular, Chadley's map-filler events. When the game started I was only really bothered with scanning Life Springs, but by the second half of the game, all of it besides the Protorelic events (which were all unique because that's basically a whole set of interconnected side-quests) bugged me and I did not want them around anymore, but the rewards for them were too great to ignore. You get to power up your summon materia, make a bunch of new materia you can't get any other way, gain party xp that's crucial to opening up new options in the folios, find new recipes for the transmuter, some of which are absolutely necessary for side-quests, learn enemy skills for that materia, and get bonus, pre-leveled materia from fights that open in Chadley's combat simulator. They give you a lot of incentive to do those things, and I kind of hate that, because they're repetitive filler to justify the oversized maps. Compared to Remake, I feel less enthused about replaying Rebirth as a result - I really do wish the game had been more like Remake in this sense, more linear and focused. Obviously it had to be more open than Remake since it doesn't all occur in one city, a world map of some sort was needed, but it didn't need to be this.

But the fact that I enjoyed the game as much as I did despite that is very much a mark of its quality. If this isn't the second-best game I play this year (after Persona 3 Reload, of course), I'll be astounded. And I'll still probably replay the game on hard difficulty shortly now that that's opened up, since I really enjoyed replaying Remake on hard and the difficulty works the same in this one; though it does sound like I'll be able to keep my progress on side-content when doing that, so that helps tremendously.

[Witty Username]

Having dipped my toes into Starfield, it ain't bad. $70 good, hell nah, but it ain't bad. If you have gamepass or something take a gander at it, it feels like a midpoint between Fallout and Mass effect, or a more serious Outer Worlds (more serious than Outer Worlds isn't hard). Get the Dream Home and live your fantasy of ever owning property in your lifetime.

[SerTabris]

In which case Dwarf Noble is far more involved than the Human Noble, who was implicitly kept out of politics.

Personally I prefer to be the outsider who doesn't know the rules and leaves chaos in their wake. My favourite Origins are probably City Elf, Dwarf Commoner, Magi (an outsider, but accustomed to Circle politics), and finally Dalish (it only intersects the story once). Human Noble I can't bring myself to complete the opening section of when playing it.

Honestly if it wasn't for the creepily long arms on the female dwarf models I'd be doing a DC run. As it is I'll probably restart as a City Elf or Mage.

That's how I tend to feel; for one, I tend to feel more heroic opposing aristocracy, rule inherited by blood relation, and other such things than supporting a better form of it against a worse one. (One of the reasons my first game ended with Anora ruling alone is that one of the biggest arguments you get for Alistair is the whole bloodline thing, which does less than nothing for me.)

I tend to delay Stealth over the weapon Talents, just because I always hate it when the game forces you out of it.

It also has the best introduction to Duncan, where you can make slowly stronger threats of force to get him to leave (implicitly only restrained because other elves get first).

I have my own headcanons as to the personalities of the different Wardens: Human Noble is a glory hound, Magi is sheltered and innocent, Dwarf Noble is tired of putting on the good boy act, Dwarf Commoner is done with this ****, and the elves think humans can **** back off to their castles.

Although even elves fall for the charms of a French lesbian bard.

I found stealth movement too slow and I usually just got impatient with it before doing much of anything useful in stealth, honestly. But I can definitely go for that last one; for my CE Warden, she was always resistant to the whole idea of having to marry a man at all, and was quite happy to meet Leliana.

Hey! She's Bi!

... not that I have any proof. I don't think I've played a male character long enough to meet her. But I'm pretty sure she's bi!

Apparently, according to a Gaider interview I saw recently, this was a later alteration. Leliana was originally intended to be a lesbian, and Zevran was originally intended to be gay.

It's a shame that they didn't have the budget to make Jowan a party member, he's obviously written with the intent of letting you recruit him.

That would have given a nice, much more sensible way to get the Blood Mage specialization, too.

[warty goblin]

Having dipped my toes into Starfield, it ain't bad. $70 good, hell nah, but it ain't bad. If you have gamepass or something take a gander at it, it feels like a midpoint between Fallout and Mass effect, or a more serious Outer Worlds (more serious than Outer Worlds isn't hard). Get the Dream Home and live your fantasy of ever owning property in your lifetime.

I wouldn't say I found Starfield bad precisely, so much as another version of a game I got bored of 15 years ago. I really enjoyed Oblivion, played a ton of it, had a great time. Starfield feels exactly like a higher resolution Oblivion in space with guns. And I mean that in the worst way possible.

See, a lot of game series anymore have been running at least that long (I'm considering Bethesda Game as a series, which is perhaps indicative of the issue). But they actually reinvent and innovate and change and grow. I can launch any of nearly 30 years of Tomb Raider games at the tap of a button, and yeah the old ones feel old, but Tomb Raider 2012 is not using the same systems and toolset as turn of the century Tomb Raider. And then there's Starfield, using systems that feel like they haven't advanced or even just had basic improvements done on them in 15 years. Which is really crippling in a system driven genre like The Bethesda Game, because they definitely can't stand on narrative strength. The parts all work, they just feel like garbage, which I can forgive with Oblivion because they were doing some innovative and technically challenging stuff for the hardware but I ain't playing Starfield on the OG XBOX. I feel like they could manage a movement system that doesn't feel like navigating a drunk refrigerator on bad casters, and an inventory system that isn't a crime against UX at this point, you know?

[Errorname]

Having dipped my toes into Starfield, it ain't bad. $70 good, hell nah, but it ain't bad. If you have gamepass or something take a gander at it, it feels like a midpoint between Fallout and Mass effect, or a more serious Outer Worlds (more serious than Outer Worlds isn't hard).

Honestly I kind of wanted it to be more like the Outer Worlds. I have a mountain of criticisms of that game but it managed to hold my attention through to the end, where I burned out of Starfield fast.

That's how I tend to feel; for one, I tend to feel more heroic opposing aristocracy, rule inherited by blood relation, and other such things than supporting a better form of it against a worse one. (One of the reasons my first game ended with Anora ruling alone is that one of the biggest arguments you get for Alistair is the whole bloodline thing, which does less than nothing for me.)

I would agree that standing up against aristocrats and systems of nobility generally does feel a lot more heroic. I find characters who play the game of feudal politics very compelling, but they're generally not good or admirable people.

[SerTabris]

I would agree that standing up against aristocrats and systems of nobility generally does feel a lot more heroic. I find characters who play the game of feudal politics very compelling, but they're generally not good or admirable people.

That makes sense. I can certainly find them interesting as part of the cast, but too much of it as a lead and I hit the "wait, why do I care what these people do?" problem.

[Lord Raziere]

Honestly I kind of wanted it to be more like the Outer Worlds. I have a mountain of criticisms of that game but it managed to hold my attention through to the end, where I burned out of Starfield fast.

Outer Worlds at least works on my PC and I actually like it besides because of its charm.

Starfield just shows me loading screens interspersed with slide show gameplay sometimes. I wish I could play it enough to get burnt out on it, because its just completely unplayable to me.

[halfeye]

Outer Worlds at least works on my PC and I actually like it besides because of its charm.

Starfield just shows me loading screens interspersed with slide show gameplay sometimes. I wish I could play it enough to get burnt out on it, because its just completely unplayable to me.

I'm guessing, but that sounds like a GPU problem unless you're trying to run it on a ras pi. Not that I've bought or tried to play it.

[warty goblin]

Starfield absolutely requires a SSD to be playable. As soon as you leave the opening mine, it turns into a glitchy, weird slideshow on a HDD.

Once you put it on a SSD, then you meet the real final boss, the loading screens, which, alas, no hardware can solve because they're baked into that stegasaurus of a game engine. The last time I saw so many loading screens was Neverwinter Nights 2.

[LibraryOgre]

Apparently, according to a Gaider interview I saw recently, this was a later alteration. Leliana was originally intended to be a lesbian, and Zevran was originally intended to be gay.

See, if you told me that she was canonically lesbian, I'd believe it. But as flaming as he is, I would always be willing to peg (lol) Zevran as being at least a bit bi... might prefer guys, but not object to getting his carrot wet where he could.

[SerTabris]

Outer Worlds at least works on my PC and I actually like it besides because of its charm.

Starfield just shows me loading screens interspersed with slide show gameplay sometimes. I wish I could play it enough to get burnt out on it, because its just completely unplayable to me.

I mainly go for RPGs based on story interactions and characters, and while The Outer Worlds wasn't outstanding, it was pretty good with some particular bright points (Parvati), I thought. I haven't really heard much of anything about Starfield's story or NPCs, and I've never been all that big on non-story-directed exploration. Though, I suppose I don't really know if it's bad there, or if it's just not what the people who play it are interested in.

I was highly amused checking some stats for people writing fics on AO3, though. Of recent RPG releases, we have Baldur's Gate* at 22689, and Starfield at 288.

*It doesn't actually separate out BG3, so this is for all of the Baldur's Gate games. But I remember the numbers before BG3's release, and it's pretty safe to assume that the vast majority of that number is BG3.

[Anonymouswizard]

I'm guessing, but that sounds like a GPU problem unless you're trying to run it on a ras pi. Not that I've bought or tried to play it.

I don't know, some of us still have games on HDDs.

See, if you told me that she was canonically lesbian, I'd believe it. But as flaming as he is, I would always be willing to peg (lol) Zevran as being at least a bit bi... might prefer guys, but not object to getting his carrot wet where he could.

Zevran, Leliana, and Anders are clearly a 4-5 on the Kinsey Scale. Most bisexual characters in the series seem to be framed as preferring their own gender. Honestly I'd fully believe that Leliana was bisexual but homoromantic.

Alastair I'd peg as a bi man who never realized it was an option.

[LibraryOgre]

Alastair I'd peg as a bi man who never realized it was an option.

If only he hadn't been raised by dogs.

[SerTabris]

Zevran, Leliana, and Anders are clearly a 4-5 on the Kinsey Scale. Most bisexual characters in the series seem to be framed as preferring their own gender. Honestly I'd fully believe that Leliana was bisexual but homoromantic.

Alastair I'd peg as a bi man who never realized it was an option.

When they talk about it, generally yeah. Isabela's another great example. Characters like Merrill mostly just don't bring it up much, but while sometimes that's a disadvantage of the 'everyone is bi' approach I think for her it fits pretty well. (Fenris may also be in this category, I wouldn't know.)

And, it's sort of a shame for Alistair, and Morrigan, I think. I could definitely believe that for Alistair, and I feel like in general for different romance options the most plot-relevant ones are the ones it's most helpful to make bi unless there's a strong narrative reason why not. My first run, I was surprised that Morrigan only dated men, given how many bad things she had to say about men all the time. Though, Morrigan has some strange ideas in general; product of being raised by some hermit witch in the woods, I suppose.

[Errorname]

My first run, I was surprised that Morrigan only dated men, given how many bad things she had to say about men all the time. Though, Morrigan has some strange ideas in general; product of being raised by some hermit witch in the woods, I suppose.

Given Morrigan's ultimate goal, I do think it makes sense for her to only be interested in men. It's actually one of the instances where the gender lock feels like it has a purpose, Morrigan's interest is transactional and if you can't participate in her ritual she's not interested.

[SerTabris]

Given Morrigan's ultimate goal, I do think it makes sense for her to only be interested in men. It's actually one of the instances where the gender lock feels like it has a purpose, Morrigan's interest is transactional and if you can't participate in her ritual she's not interested.

That part's true, though it's late enough that I remained somewhat confused about it until I was near the end of the game. Still, enough dialogue makes it feel like the opposite of what she actually wants that it seems like there might at least be some interesting conversations that could come up for a Warden who pushed a little.

[warty goblin]

I continue to cleave slowly through Knight's Tale. Lancelot's recruitment mission was really, really savage. Sidhe everywhere, in really strong groups. This was the first mission I've really had to try multiple times, and a couple fights required very precise play and turn sequencing to power through, and even then I had to skip the side objectives, which had even harder groups. The Sidhe are really tough enemies, they move very fast, they hit extremely hard, and they have tons of really annoying abilities, like going invulnerable, or freezing everybody next to them when they die (causes a real problem in a melee focused game!) or how damn many stun attacks they have. The progression of enemies in this has been really good, the undead dudes have an annoying habit of getting back up three turns after you kill them, but are otherwise dumb and slow and don't do anything terribly overpowered, the Picts are faster, hit harder, and focus damage better, and the Sidhe are Picts on PCP who also cast ice storms.

On the upside, I think I've pretty much got my final set of knights at this point. I'll get Morgana le Fey as soon as I pick up a couple more Old Faith points, and I suspect there's one or two more in story missions, but that should be it. I think I'm also getting reasonably close to the end of Chapter 3, but I can't run the next story mission just yet, my A team is all off getting patched back together. And then I should level them up a bit more too.

[Anonymouswizard]

If only he hadn't been raised by dogs.

Hey now, Mabari are smart enough to like some good old universal loving!

When they talk about it, generally yeah. Isabela's another great example. Characters like Merrill mostly just don't bring it up much, but while sometimes that's a disadvantage of the 'everyone is bi' approach I think for her it fits pretty well. (Fenris may also be in this category, I wouldn't know.)

Honestly I now want to see a queer fantasy CRPG.

And, it's sort of a shame for Alistair, and Morrigan, I think. I could definitely believe that for Alistair, and I feel like in general for different romance options the most plot-relevant ones are the ones it's most helpful to make bi unless there's a strong narrative reason why not. My first run, I was surprised that Morrigan only dated men, given how many bad things she had to say about men all the time. Though, Morrigan has some strange ideas in general; product of being raised by some hermit witch in the woods, I suppose.

IIRC Morrigan was originally intended as bi and had ways to get pregnant without Alastair.

[Errorname]

IIRC Morrigan was originally intended as bi and had ways to get pregnant without Alastair.

Yeah, I'd heard that. It's less work than doing two very different romance paths would be, although I don't think I like it. I'll say that Dragon Age is one of the only game series I've played where I've approved of some of the choices for locking romances. Not all of them, mind, but something like Solas's romance being built around shared cultural history is really good and does not work without your Inquisitor sharing that. While I generally find locked romances frustrating, I do think it's something that good character writing can justify. Morrigan's kind of right on the line there, I'm kind of not sure how I feel about her romance.

[Zevox]

FF7 Rebirth: Started on hard mode, already about done with the Grasslands. Thanks in no small part to the fact that even telling the game to reset my progress on side-quests does not reset my progress on Chadley's Filler, to which I say hallelujah! Resetting the side-quests is fun, they're mostly good (chicken-catching in Gongaga aside); resetting Chadley stuff would've been painful. Unfortunately it does mean that the Protorelic questline doesn't reset, since it's technically part of Chadley's stuff, which is a shame since most of those are legitimately fun - but worth it on the whole.

Unfortunately, there is a bit of a problem: the entire difficulty setting is balanced on the assumption you're at the game's max level, 70. I ended the game's normal run at 50. On the upside, the early parts of the game haven't been so rough due to that that I've been unable to progress, and I've been gaining levels rapidly due to everything being so much higher level than me (already at 60); on the downside, there's two fights that I'm struggling with because things just do too much damage even now, and one of them is the boss I need to beat to move on to the next area. So I fear I'm going to need to grind to get past that.

Dragon Ball FighterZ: Been sitting on this since the first couple of days after the PS5 version/rollback released, went back to try it further now that I've beaten Rebirth. Unfortunately, those issues I was having day 1 (disconnecting from the lobbies while matchmaking and needing to restart the game to get back into one) are still around though. I was entirely unable to get matches yesterday, and it's been spotty today. And in googling to see if Bandai Namco have said anything about addressing these issues (they haven't as far as I can tell), I came across this. Which, if true, would explain a lot, not just about the current issues, but basically how they've been handling the game since around the end of its third season of DLC several years ago. And sadly it might mean that something I'd taken as a given, that we'd surely see a sequel to the game, might not happen.

DNF Duel: Just had a new character drop, the Monk, and while I'm not that interested in him, it's an excuse to jump into the game again to try the previous new DLC character I was interested in, Battle Mage, who just came out at a bad time (basically the same time Granblue Rising came out). She's fun, but wow, even the new DLC coming out is not bringing many people into play this game anymore sadly. I got a few matches in with one person, but then the lobby we were in was dissolved by the guy who set it up, booting everyone. I set up my own hoping some of those who had been in the room would come, but no dice, and when I backed out to see if someone else had set one up, they hadn't. Guess everyone was just done... between this and DBFZ's issues, I might be going back to Granblue sooner than I expected.

[SerTabris]

Honestly I now want to see a queer fantasy CRPG.

In what sense? I'd generally agree, but I'm curious what sort of thing you're thinking of here.

IIRC Morrigan was originally intended as bi and had ways to get pregnant without Alastair.

I hadn't heard the first part, but had heard the second. Though now that I think about it, the second being true but the first not would seem pretty off.

Yeah, I'd heard that. It's less work than doing two very different romance paths would be, although I don't think I like it. I'll say that Dragon Age is one of the only game series I've played where I've approved of some of the choices for locking romances. Not all of them, mind, but something like Solas's romance being built around shared cultural history is really good and does not work without your Inquisitor sharing that. While I generally find locked romances frustrating, I do think it's something that good character writing can justify. Morrigan's kind of right on the line there, I'm kind of not sure how I feel about her romance.

I'd generally agree with that; I tend to think something like "if you're restricting your romance options, you need to do something narratively to make that worthwhile". Which most examples I've seen of it outside the Dragon Age series I don't think really manage.

[Lurkmoar]

I finally gave New Vegas a shot on my Steam Deck after playing Fallout 3. Kinda wish I spent that time on New Vegas though.

More depth, more detail and thought put into just about everything. Really enjoying it. I only slightly prefer the music selection in FO3 though.

[Mr Blobby]

...In which case Dwarf Noble is far more involved than the Human Noble, who was implicitly kept out of politics.

Because the Dwarven throne is elective by the noble oligarchy [ie the Assembly] and 'head of House' [ie the person who gets the Assembly seat] has no firm order of succession. The DN is 'more involved' mainly because it's realistically possible that they could snag the throne - their elder sibling [Trian] is merely a more credible candidate to be the 'Aeducan pick' after their father's death because they are older [and have had more time to find allies etc]. This is complicated by the fact that we never learn whether the trio all have the same mother - it is possible that the DN's maternal relatives might give them an edge that the other two don't have [esp if the DN is female, as they set stock in 'same sex parent' position etc].

The Human Noble doesn't have this 'realistic possibility' to snag the Teyrnir of Highever; their older sibling Fergus is heir apparent and he has a heir too. But this doesn't mean they are 'being kept out of politics', more that they don't have an obvious path and don't really get much chance in the prologue to voice their views on that. And they are already being involved; both Rendon Howe and the HN's mother raises the prospects of a marriage with another noble scion which would have had dynastic/alliance elements to it.

...I find the dynamics of feudal politics pretty interesting and I do enjoy when an RPG lets you play those games as an insider.

Except Origin kinda fluffs it with a 'Human Noble'; the moment the HN finds out Cailan's dead Loghain's plan becomes clear; to usurp the throne. King Cailan is dead due to Loghain's 'strategy', along with a large % of Ferelden nobility. Howe wipes out the only other Teyrn [and claimants], save Fergus, who is presumed dead from a scouting mission which would have been planned by Loghain. The only other possible candidate [Arl Eamonn] was poisoned by Jowan at Howe's instigation, leaving a scared and decimated Landsmeet with no 'organising force' to oppose Loghain's claim. Alistair's reveal offers another possible; that Loghain had planned for him [and the HN] to die at the Tower of Ishal [it was his forces guarding it], leaving the field completely clear for his crown.

Given Morrigan's ultimate goal, I do think it makes sense for her to only be interested in men. It's actually one of the instances where the gender lock feels like it has a purpose, Morrigan's interest is transactional and if you can't participate in her ritual she's not interested.

Even putting that aside, Morrigan's lock makes sense. She likes power, and Flemeth taught her how to read/use men, as well as 'how to lie' and 'how to work magic'. Of all the romance options, she is the only one which leaves you doubting whether she genuinely loved the Warden, even right at the end [and maxed out]. It's possible attraction had zero to do with it; just she had no idea how to read/use another woman in that way.

[Errorname]

The Human Noble doesn't have this 'realistic possibility' to snag the Teyrnir of Highever; their older sibling Fergus is heir apparent and he has a heir too. But this doesn't mean they are 'being kept out of politics', more that they don't have an obvious path and don't really get much chance in the prologue to voice their views on that. And they are already being involved; both Rendon Howe and the HN's mother raises the prospects of a marriage with another noble scion which would have had dynastic/alliance elements to it.

The Human Noble is pretty clearly conforming to the expectations of a second child. They're trusted with the responsibility of managing Highever while their relatives are away at war, and yeah there's definitely the prospect of them getting married off to another family soon, both of which are part of dynastic politics. It just doesn't feel as political because while all the Dwarf Noble's peers and family are backbiting pricks where the Couslands are all basically saints. That makes sense given where the antagonists of their stories are (DN is betrayed by their family while HN seeks to avenge theirs) but the former is obviously more interesting.

Except Origin kinda fluffs it with a 'Human Noble'; the moment the HN finds out Cailan's dead Loghain's plan becomes clear; to usurp the throne.

I think it's hit by how the dynastic politics of Ferelden are pretty disconnected from the politics of the Mages, Dalish and Dwarves. It's the most prominent and important of those political situations, but there's still a lot of game (and a lot of PC origins) that are not directly connected to the dynastic games of the Banns and Arls.

So it's definitely simplified. I think it's okay, Loghain is more complex than your usual wicked uncle, but you could absolutely do better if you wanted to make dynastic politics a focus of your RPG.

that Loghain had planned for him [and the HN] to die at the Tower of Ishal [it was his forces guarding it], leaving the field completely clear for his crown.

I don't think Loghain planned for Alistair to be at the Tower of Ishal, I think he wanted him to die with Cailan and Duncan. I don't want to say Cailan sending Maric's other heir to the Tower singlehandedly threw a spanner into Loghain's plan, Alistair still very much would have died without Flemeth's intervention, but it was a good play and the thing that would have ruined it (the darkspawn attacking the tower) probably wasn't known to Loghain either.

[NeoVid]

I'd like to mention what I'm playing *with* right now, since my old 360 controller was finally giving out after 10+ years and needed a replacement. After some frustrating searching as I tried to find anyone who still makes wired controllers, I ran across something unexpected. Since I'd last looked, there was a development of something called Hall Effect controllers, which never get stick drift. I got one, and it's a damn good controller so far, though I figure it'll be a few years before I can tell if it's really resistant to developing drift. In a handy bonus I didn't notice until I used it, they've finally figured out a useful place to put a couple of extra buttons on a controller, right where your middle fingers usually rest with a standard grip. Sadly, I haven't yet encountered a game that realizes these buttons exist, or lets me reconfigure the controls enough to use them. Ah well.

As for games I'm playing, I'm doing my usual of finally trying major games ten years after they released, and just got Horizon Zero Dawn. I was a bit surprised by the lack of polish about a lot of aspects of the game, but the concept and setting is as good as I always heard. Still in the early part of the storyline, since I'm doing my usual thing in sandbox games and getting caught up in every single side thing I encounter. I had a fair amount of the truth about the setting spoiled for me back in the day, but I've forgotten enough of it by now that there are still plenty of surprises.

[Errorname]

Onto the Brecilian Forest, and it's really striking me how out of place the Werewolves and Sylvans feel. These are not elements that later games built on, you could probably count the callbacks on one hand. Like I get why these were not a priority to bring back, they're very stock fantasy and the implementation is not terribly useful, it's made very clear that the baseline for both is aggressive monster and it makes them largely redundant with the Demons and Abominations that have stronger connections to the plots the writers care about, but the end result is that this questline is built around a bunch of elements that the franchise largely discarded afterwards.

[Cygnia]

Finished a couple adorable cat-oriented games: "Cat & Onion" and "Meow Moments" and picked up Oxenfree II and Widower's Sky with the recent Steam sale. Meanwhile, "The Sexy Brutale" is still remaining unplayed after the tutorial...

[Form]

I've just finished Lies of P. It took a few hours before I got into it (pretty normal for me), but it's a decent souls-like. I used the bone-cutting saw blade + exploding pickaxe handle because it came recommended. It's got a powerful swing and the pickaxe handle gives it some extra reach and it's juuuust fast enough to get in a decent swing before getting clobbered yourself. There are probably a lot more combination I could have tried, but I didn't want to spend too much time experimenting instead of just getting on with the game. Still, points for novelty. Can't say I used the legion arms much or very well, though, except that one boss fight I suppose.

I half regret calling in a specter to help me with the King of Puppets (the specter made that fight way easier), but that guy was really kicking my ass. Well, at least I did kill the other bosses by myself.

Spoiler: Final Boss

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The writing falls apart a bit here. Simon Manus was ranting about the next stage of human evolution and about creating a world without lies and about becoming a god and there are some bits of lore indicating he could read people's minds, but they didn't really build up towards any of that. It feels like they just took a couple of visionary villain tropes and mushed them together without much thought. I'm just going to interpret that as Simon eating Ergo and that really messing up his mind.

I might give it a second, partial playthrough. I've tried the Frozen Feast weapon a little, but it feels verrrry slow. I'm going to try the coil stick instead and see how a faster weapon feels.

[Anonymouswizard]

Onto the Brecilian Forest, and it's really striking me how out of place the Werewolves and Sylvans feel. These are not elements that later games built on, you could probably count the callbacks on one hand. Like I get why these were not a priority to bring back, they're very stock fantasy and the implementation is not terribly useful, it's made very clear that the baseline for both is aggressive monster and it makes them largely redundant with the Demons and Abominations that have stronger connections to the plots the writers care about, but the end result is that this questline is built around a bunch of elements that the franchise largely discarded afterwards.

I've paused just after Ostagar, but yes. Honestly I suspect that's because the writers of DAO wanted to focus on the city elves and thus the human/dalish relationship focused on in other games in underdeveloped.

Went back to my Dalish rogue run, mostly because a) city elves have pretty good reasons not toput Anora on the throne, which I want to do, and b) I want to see if there's any special dialogue options when in the Alienage in the endgame. Which means redoing the end of Ostagar, but I'm fine with that.

Trying to spend as much time as possible in the OG Dalish Armour, because while Origins having sex-based light armour was bad enought the Dalish set is in a weird place where the bikini armour isn't more fanservicey, it just does it differently from the other sets.