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

[Anonymouswizard]

Also, aren't the temporary party members you get in the tower guards fleeing from it? Or are they arriving from somewhere else? I don't remember the specifics.

Guards from the tower, IIRC the one you always get is even called 'Tower Guard'. However it's implied not to be a significant force, in the strategy meeting Login mentions having 'a few men stationed there'.

It's feasible that if the battle started to turn they were to light the beacon, kill the Wardens, and attempt to regroup with the rest of Logan's forces.

[halfeye]

Guards from the tower, IIRC the one you always get is even called 'Tower Guard'. However it's implied not to be a significant force, in the strategy meeting Login mentions having 'a few men stationed there'.

It's feasible that if the battle started to turn they were to light the beacon, kill the Wardens, and attempt to regroup with the rest of Logan's forces.

If you attempt to enter the tower while wandering around before the Kokari Wilds, you meet that tower guard who tells you "this tower is off limits to you at the moment".

[Cespenar]

Started to play Yakuza: Like a Dragon.

Pretty funny writing and all that, but it plays like they actually wanted to record a tv drama, couldn't find the budget, and decided to go with a video game as a second choice.

[Rynjin]

Started to play Yakuza: Like a Dragon.

Pretty funny writing and all that, but it plays like they actually wanted to record a tv drama, couldn't find the budget, and decided to go with a video game as a second choice.

The Yakuza series works better as games than movies or tv shows; there is an early 2000s adaptation of the first game which is actually decent but loses a lot of the charm that comes with the downtime moments

[Errorname]

It's feasible that if the battle started to turn they were to light the beacon, kill the Wardens, and attempt to regroup with the rest of Logan's forces.

I guess? No evidence of that, despite how easy it would have been for them to backstab you after lighting the beacon

I tend to interpret the Tower as an actually smart move on Cailan's part that did throw a wrench into Loghain's plot. Fits with the undercurrent ot Cailan not being quite as dumb as he seems and Loghain being less in control than he seems

[LibraryOgre]

Loghain planned to pull back and let everyone at Ostagar get killed. He wasn't planning on saving the Tower of Ishal somehow; they were all going to die in his version.

He didn't need to pull back anything more than he was planning to, and we don't know whose troops were in Ishal.

[Mr Blobby]

I'll say that everything you're saying is consistent with Loghain not actively sabotaging the tower defense and the Wardens being sent to the tower as an actual spanner in his plans

Just in the game as presented the tower doesn't seem like it was unguarded, they just weren't expecting the attack and got taken by surprise

If I knew I was going to abandon the field anyway, I wouldn't put a load of my own troops to be abandoned with it. Now, if I'd left it undefended it would be suspicious [like if I'd packed up my tent with my personal possessions etc] so I would leave a 'minimum credible force' to guard the tower, which proved [predictably] too weak to stop the darkspawn.

If you attempt to enter the tower while wandering around before the Kokari Wilds, you meet that tower guard who tells you "this tower is off limits to you at the moment".

And why is it off-limits, pray tell? Is it the 'tunnels in the dungeons' which were found [but he'd not seen anything like that when he was in there]? What the hell is that massive hole in the bottom floor which looks like it might go all the way to the Deep Roads?

[Errorname]

Loghain planned to pull back and let everyone at Ostagar get killed. He wasn't planning on saving the Tower of Ishal somehow; they were all going to die in his version.

My thinking is more that the Darkspawn coming up through the tower caught everyone off guard and wasn't expected. If the Darkspawn had advanced as anticipated the Tower of Ishal would have been the last to fall, leaving the wardens stationed there able to fall back and regroup. That ends up happening anyways but requires Flemeth's intervention.

If I knew I was going to abandon the field anyway, I wouldn't put a load of my own troops to be abandoned with it. Now, if I'd left it undefended it would be suspicious [like if I'd packed up my tent with my personal possessions etc] so I would leave a 'minimum credible force' to guard the tower, which proved [predictably] too weak to stop the darkspawn.

Loghain's command does not entirely consist of his own loyal troops, and given how feudal politics work and the nature of Loghain's plan it was absolutely in his interest to winnow down much of the army under his command because much of it answered to people who could become political rivals going forward.

[LibraryOgre]

I figure that Loghain stationed someone there who wanted to be away from the battle, but who was not part of his plan... the idea that Ishal would be relatively safe would be attractive to a number of people.

OTOH, what would have happened if Loghain had taken an arrow early in the battle? Even if he didn't die, it was pretty clear his second wasn't expecting them to withdraw... what happens when the beacon goes off and Loghain isn't there to order the withdrawal?

[Errorname]

OTOH, what would have happened if Loghain had taken an arrow early in the battle? Even if he didn't die, it was pretty clear his second wasn't expecting them to withdraw... what happens when the beacon goes off and Loghain isn't there to order the withdrawal?

Ser Cauthrien takes the command and follows the plan, I think.

My instinct is it still breaks badly. Cailan probably still dies and the Tower still gets overrun, I don't think the charge would make it in time for the King (he dies quite soon after Loghain pulls out) and the Tower is too far from the front to matter. One the positive side with the manpower provided by Loghain's force and a seasoned commander in Cauthrien they might be able to retreat in good order and keep the army from taking losses as severe, they might be able to keep Duncan and some of his other Wardens alive. Combine that with Loghain not living long enough to call off Cailan's request for Orlesian reinforcements and things might still work out okay.

[Mr Blobby]

...OTOH, what would have happened if Loghain had taken an arrow early in the battle? Even if he didn't die, it was pretty clear his second wasn't expecting them to withdraw... what happens when the beacon goes off and Loghain isn't there to order the withdrawal?

Which is partly why I have the 'Loghain intended the Tower to fall before Calian did' theory. Without the fire-signal, he would not have to get Ser Cauthrien to ignore it and then do some personal doublethink later on to convince herself that either she didn't see it or Loghain 'had worked out it was a Grey Warden trap'. Nor would they need to do their best to squash the rumours coming out of Loghain's personal army about it, such as the 'Tortured Noble' quest.

Instead, Loghain waited for the signal which never came. He then quit the field when it was genuinely obvious that the battle was lost and there was no point throwing good troops after bad. With no survivors from the Wardens, he can freely heap all the blame on them for not 'doing their duty' and filling Calian's head with BS about glory and so on which caused the defeat. He comes out of this 100% clean and with his fans [Ser Cauthrien being the #1] still having absolute faith in him.

[halfeye]

And why is it off-limits, pray tell?

We aren't told.

The army camp is off limits to you in the same way, and you're not told why there either, as are the Kokari Wilds (though you are allowed into the Wilds after Duncan gives you orders to go there). I don't think you can go into either the army camp or the Tower before the big meeting.

[Sapphire Guard]

It would make sense not to let anyone near the beacon tower. Don't see how it could be part of Loghain's plan unless he was in communication with darkspawn, which seems unlikely.

[Sermil]

I've been reading interesting things about Cobalt Core as well, as I'm a huge Slay the Spire-fan but haven't quite found anything else to scratch that particular itch. Maybe one for the birthday list.

Honestly, after playing a bunch of Cobalt Core, I'm getting nostalgic for the depth of Slay the Spire. Maybe I'll dust off Watcher and see if I can get her off my pathetic Ascension of 1. (Watcher was always my worst character by a fair amount)

[WritersBlock]

With the mess that is Dragon's Dogma 2 (Always online despite being single player, Capcom's insane and disturbing anti modding stance), and just Capcom being what it is now, I decided to pick up Astlibra Revision instead. A pretty nice metroidvaniaish action rpg so far. With a skill tree so large it has its own map which made me crack up laughing. (its mostly stat boosts actually) Also seems to been insprired from the side scrolling Ys games. (like Wanderers from Ys) And the music is great as well.

Might check out Eternights as well. And checking Gog and seeing that they managed to bring back Alpha Protocol I am also considering checking that out.

[ArmyOfOptimists]

Capcom's insane and disturbing anti modding stance

Not that insane when you know that they've been relatively hands-off, in a "we don't support it, but do whatever" way, and that led to some boneheads plastering a nude Chun-li on screen during a Street Fighter 6 tournament. They're being draconic, but when a major brand of yours gets that kind of publicity, I can imagine there are a lot of people demanding it never happen again.

[Rynjin]

Not that insane when you know that they've been relatively hands-off, in a "we don't support it, but do whatever" way, and that led to some boneheads plastering a nude Chun-li on screen during a Street Fighter 6 tournament. They're being draconic, but when a major brand of yours gets that kind of publicity, I can imagine there are a lot of people demanding it never happen again.

It's insane to deliberately tank the performance of your games because you failed to vet a tournament broadcast. I've never been entirely clear on how that even HAPPENED unless they run recording footage directly through the caster and/or player's (whoever had the mod installed) personal system, which there is absolutely zero reason to do in a professionally run event.

[WritersBlock]

Them saying "mods are cheats" as a justification for it was what really got me. I mean even if they were if I want to cheat in my SINGLE PLAYER VIDEO GAME, then I should be well within my rights to do so. (Those who use cheats in a pvp game or an mmo are jerks) And capcom dmca'ed a ton of resident evil 4 mods (all to do with Ashley or Ada) I am just wondering if that was before or after the chun-li sf6 debacle.

In an unrelated note, I still need to finish playing Digimon cyber sleuth sometime.

[Zevox]

It's insane to deliberately tank the performance of your games because you failed to vet a tournament broadcast. I've never been entirely clear on how that even HAPPENED unless they run recording footage directly through the caster and/or player's (whoever had the mod installed) personal system, which there is absolutely zero reason to do in a professionally run event.

A little googling finds the answer there: it was the tournament organizer's mod, and they were streaming the tournament from their PC. Looks like it was a weekly tournament run by a small European FGC group, almost certainly an online one (meaning it would need to be streamed by someone spectating each match as they happen), though I can't find confirmation of that detail easily for some reason. So, not really a professionally run event at all - which is fairly common with FGC tournaments to my understanding. Outside of the really big tournaments like Evo, CEO, or Combo Breaker, that's the kind of thing most fighting game tournaments are: community events, run by the fans themselves. And even the big events started that way, aside from the publishers' own yearly tournaments like Capcom Cup.

[Rynjin]

So it was some random schmucks running a small local tournament and Capcom wigged out over it. Yeah, insane covers it pretty well.

[Corlindale]

Honestly, after playing a bunch of Cobalt Core, I'm getting nostalgic for the depth of Slay the Spire. Maybe I'll dust off Watcher and see if I can get her off my pathetic Ascension of 1. (Watcher was always my worst character by a fair amount)

Same here. Took me a while longer to take her through Ascension 20 than the three others. She has some extremely powerful tricks, but she's tricky to play right. But when the stars align it can be so beautiful. Like that one game where I had 4 copies of Omniscience (1 of them bottled). Starting every battle by pulling out any 4 cards from my deck and playing them twice was hilariously overpowered.

In other news, my Gunslinger died an ignoble death in Tales of Maj'Eyal. Made it to the second half of the final area, but ran into a boss mob that summoned evil clones of me with Inner Demons, and messed up my plays trying to get out of it. But I got some nice unlocks through that game still (I'm on a new PC so I'm re-unlocking things since I didn't set up the cloud save properly. Don't really mind much, unlocking things is fun). So I have Annihilator back, one of my absolute favourite classes (Hot take: Way too few fantasy games have classes whose central feature is automated, heat-seeking, shoulder-mounted rocket launchers that can also become jetpacks).

But I'm taking a short break from the steampunk and trying the original campaign again, this time going for a Nightmare victory with the Paradox Mage, another favourite class and my first one to beat Normal difficulty back in the day. Having a good feeling so far, but it's still early days. One of the many good things about the Paradox Mage is that it has a ton of panic buttons when you get into a tight spot: Teleport away, make a time shield that heals you for the damage you would have taken, kick a dangerous enemy out of existence for a few turns, teleport yourself to a timeless demiplane, split the timeline and play through three different futures and then choose which one becomes real, or just good old Time Stop. Or set up a Contingency to do any of the above when you fall below x amount of hp. Did I say how much I love this class?

[Whoracle]

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth - Playing this on and off, currently in Chapter 5. I low-key like it, but it doesn't WOW me. Dunno why exactly.

Octopath Traveler - I recently 100%ed OT2, loved that, and am now on the final boss of OT1. I bounced off OT1 hard back when it was released, but this time I persevered. Final boss sucks, though, and I most definitely won't 100% it.

Otcopath Traveler II - Tried this when I was bored, annd WOW. It literally improved on every single aspect of OT1. This game won't let me go - I am currently looking for ideas for challenge runs or something like that to have an "excuse" to play it again. This is the first game in a LONG time that has gripped me so hard.

[Mr Blobby]

We aren't told.

Yes we are. They found tunnels in the basement levels of the Tower. Though the gate guard says he didn't see anything like that when he was in there.

This is confirmed visually when you're in said tower - one of the rooms on the bottom floor has a massive hole in the floor; the type you could imagine reaching into the Deep Roads.

So it was some random schmucks running a small local tournament and Capcom wigged out over it. Yeah, insane covers it pretty well.

Computer game budgets can now rival what you'd pay for a major TV series or mid-budget film. IP is also ranked to be very valuable. They are ultra-protective of their investments and are worried about some 'series of tubes' politicos/campaigners doing a 'think of the children!' campaign against something which wasn't their fault [for example, raising the age limits on it]. Being seen to 'clamp down' on such things is a loss-minimisation strategy ie mollifying the moral guardians etc.

Overreaction? Perhaps. But not 'insane'.

[Zevox]

So it was some random schmucks running a small local tournament and Capcom wigged out over it. Yeah, insane covers it pretty well.

"Local" is not necessarily the term for an online tournament, and small is relative (I found the listing for it, it had 52 players competing - much smaller than the major tournaments, but still a pretty decent size, especially for a weekly). But close enough.

Imterestingly, that group is still running tournaments today, so Capcom wasn't ticked enough to make them shut down. And I guarantee someone from Capcom had words with them after, even small tournaments need to follow certain guidelines from them, and there's obviously no way this didn't violate some part of those guidelines.

[LibraryOgre]

I beat the story mode of Rebel Galaxy Outlaw by surprise on Wednesday. Still a really fun game, and I'll probably go back and do the randoms for every so often, because I do like the flight simulator aspects.

[ArmyOfOptimists]

So it was some random schmucks running a small local tournament and Capcom wigged out over it. Yeah, insane covers it pretty well.

I'd consider it exceptionally sane to freak out over videos of your game with nudity added broadcast over a professional-looking setting. The average person isn't going to understand the difference between a player- or company-run event. On the lawmaker side, we live in a post-hot coffee world. You definitely do not want your flagship brand associated with smut and dogpiled by legislators looking to score a quick "for the kids" win.

Also, as far as I know, Capcom hasn't actually done anything about mods. They made a few changes to DRM, the modders quickly updated their stuff to work with the new versions, and everything is still business as usual. If anything it seemed exceptionally performative. If a legal team does come after them for it, they can point to their statements and DRM and say "We did as much as we could and those rascally modders outfoxed us."

[Rynjin]

I'd consider it exceptionally sane to freak out over videos of your game with nudity added broadcast over a professional-looking setting. The average person isn't going to understand the difference between a player- or company-run event. On the lawmaker side, we live in a post-hot coffee world. You definitely do not want your flagship brand associated with smut and dogpiled by legislators looking to score a quick "for the kids" win.

Lawmakers have nothing, because it's not a corporate-sponsored event. That battle has been fought and lost by crusty, out of touch dinosaurs before, and will be again. The average person isn't going to hear about it.

It's an overreaction to a non-event.

Also, as far as I know, Capcom hasn't actually done anything about mods. They made a few changes to DRM, the modders quickly updated their stuff to work with the new versions, and everything is still business as usual. If anything it seemed exceptionally performative. If a legal team does come after them for it, they can point to their statements and DRM and say "We did as much as we could and those rascally modders outfoxed us."

They added extra layers of DRM (tanking performance in all of their games) and anti-cheat (to...single player games, ALSO tanking performance). The only people here who lose are the consumers. There is nothing to gain from this.

[ArmyOfOptimists]

Lawmakers have nothing, because it's not a corporate-sponsored event. That battle has been fought and lost by crusty, out of touch dinosaurs before, and will be again. The average person isn't going to hear about it.

It's an overreaction to a non-event.

Hot Coffee disputes this.

To sum up if you don't want to read the full entry, Rockstar left a minigame stubbed out in the code on the GTA San Andreas discs. The minigame featured zero nudity, but some simulated sex acts. A modder found the code and reenabled it, then distributed it around the internet. It caused such a scandal that saw the game rerated as Adults Only, banned from sale in Australia, a class action lawsuit, and a warning from the US FTC. All because a modder put it out there. I'd hardly call that a "battle that has been fought and lost" by lawmakers.

Granted the circumstances are a bit difference here, since Hot Coffee used content on disc, but I cannot blame Capcom for erring on the side of caution as our legal institutions are run by dinosaurs, as you called them, that barely understand video games and certainly don't know anything about computer code.

They added extra layers of DRM (tanking performance in all of their games) and anti-cheat (to...single player games, ALSO tanking performance). The only people here who lose are the consumers. There is nothing to gain from this.

Claims that Capcom has caused performance issues by adding Enigma DRM to Resident Evil Revelations are "nonsense," popular RE modder says.

I looked into this before when it was a huge controversy. Nobody could provide any examples of their performance tanking due to the DRM updates. It was a rumor spread like wildfire that I suspect originated in piracy communities to cloak their anger at Capcom's actions in an air of justifiability.

[Mr Blobby]

Personally, I think the likes of Capcom et al are not worried about 'lawmakers' so much, but are scared as hell of public backlash, esp from the likes of social media. They don't want the WalMarts of the world to get spooked and quit stocking their product.

A load of Maude Flanders-es shreking 'think of the children' on FB and a corp stockist being reminded by the Big Boss 'we're a family company and this looks baaaad' are immune to legal arguments, technical details or simple common sense. There are times you need to be seen to be doing something, even if it's utterly ineffective.

[Rynjin]

Hot Coffee disputes this.

To sum up if you don't want to read the full entry, Rockstar left a minigame stubbed out in the code on the GTA San Andreas discs. The minigame featured zero nudity, but some simulated sex acts. A modder found the code and reenabled it, then distributed it around the internet. It caused such a scandal that saw the game rerated as Adults Only, banned from sale in Australia, a class action lawsuit, and a warning from the US FTC. All because a modder put it out there. I'd hardly call that a "battle that has been fought and lost" by lawmakers.

Granted the circumstances are a bit difference here, since Hot Coffee used content on disc, but I cannot blame Capcom for erring on the side of caution as our legal institutions are run by dinosaurs, as you called them, that barely understand video games and certainly don't know anything about computer code.

The circumstances are literally nothing alike, for the exact reasons you mention. And is also an extremely old case that has since been buried in legal precedent by subsequent cases on modding, and even broader protections that apply to 3rd party content applied to an "interactive computer service" that have been bolstered in recent years. Look up Section 230, which social media platforms and services like Youtube use as well.

The TL;DR is that the company that provides a service is not responsible for what 3rd parties use their platform for.

Claims that Capcom has caused performance issues by adding Enigma DRM to Resident Evil Revelations are "nonsense," popular RE modder says.

I looked into this before when it was a huge controversy. Nobody could provide any examples of their performance tanking due to the DRM updates. It was a rumor spread like wildfire that I suspect originated in piracy communities to cloak their anger at Capcom's actions in an air of justifiability.

It's Denuvo that primarily tanks performance, and that's very well documented. Any time they go back and remove it from a game, the performance of said game increases noticeably.