feelthedarkness

in this week's episode, dude's Wheaties get FUCKED.

one thing that i've found helps a tremendous amount is summons, just to run interference. On fights when I'm outnumbered, or they have archers, i use the spider (geomancer) and skeleton (witch) and spawn them as close to the archers as i can. it prevents them from poison gas / exploding my dudes up front.

for the severed arm of sir samuel! (i went with Feel the Darkness! har harr.)

Oh wow, I had no idea, and that makes so much more sense. There were a lot of things I liked about LAN, particularly the last 1/3 of the game, but the fact that there was only 1 route through the conversations was a bummer. Sort of the opposite of the BioWare thing. I don't mind conversation trees, though I maintain that Planescape Torment and Mask of the Betrayer did them best, because it would sometimes give you similar choices but with modifiers. I guess that's just a more robust tree.

also, i'm sure you got a bunch of emails and twitters about it, but for anybody else Divinity is tactical and turn based, action free. It's pretty hard, even on normal difficulty. The devs said Ultima 7 was a major inspiration for them, and I think it carries through quite well.

whoa!

lets see those banners! also, heads up sclpls, i'm calling E.S.T. as a motto.

Have you seen Dark Days, the documentary on the camps set up in abandoned nyc subway tunnels? Camps actually sells it short, because they had built structures with power.

against sensibility, i'm digging this new ICEAGE: they also hold the honor of the band i've seen tune the longest but never actually winding up in tune.

I'm only about 30 minutes into the episode, but I cannot imagine the Thumbs enjoyed Divinity. What Chris was saying about Destiny's imprecision was really interesting, and immediately reminded me of Guild Wars 2, which does very similar things, but I think they solved a lot of the problems. The main thing that addresses Chris's issue is they capped stats basically at launch. It's extremely easy to hit the cap, but new updates add skins for everything, so a characters appearance is a guide to their badassitude as well as history. Characters (and gear) auto-scale to zone level, and there is a constant cycle of events with rewards that are usable at all levels. i.e. a kind of currency, gear dropped is matched to your max level. there are large scale boss fights that yield rare materials you need to make the best weapons.

Oh, I mean more in the sense of posting a public reason they're suspending a KS, besides just a big suspended banner, though I also get what Bjorn is saying.

That seems kind of shitty, right? If you're protecting potential donors, and you feel there is some verifiable financial shenanigans then be up front about that. If you're trying to protect people, and you don't say from what, what's to stop a possible scammer from just moving it to a different place?

Is this just horrible timing? Kickstarter as far as I can tell isn't terribly vigilant about projects, so I don't think this is the result of exhaustive research or anything. It remains suspicious that they say they're using an original engine but keep showing unity assets, though is it possible they're pulling assets into their engine, like I could use any .jpg or .psd as a texture?

We're about to enter a golden age of this stuff (I hope). The Wasteland 2 beta scratches this exact itch, and the writing seems a shade better up front. Then Pillars of Eternity & Tides of Numenera!

I don't get why we need to do this deep dive on the difference between feeling something and documenting something, or trying to establish a scale of first degree and third degree sexism. We can very easily observe the cesspool of gaming culture that results in very real death/rape threats, hostile work and social environments, lower pay, and limited opportunities.

Fucking hell. This is sort of eye opening. Yesterday, I would have said the post-dickwolves focus was a sign of progress, but I guess that is false. Every website needs a heavy handed moderator. "In the wake of VidCon, and as more and more women start speaking up about the harassment they face online, it’s time to start realizing that our narrative of progress is deeply flawed. Things aren’t getting better for women on the Internet; they’re deteriorating and ignoring the problem amounts to being complicit in it," she wrote.

IF ONLY, though skeletonfart.cool is still on the table!

Don't bother checking, somebody already took fart.sexy (not me)

Haha, I love the phrase "heroic act of self sabotage."

Thanks! You have until TOMORROW to be a Bloodline Backer!

Oh man, 2 weeks to go, and I'm totally indecisive on my BLOODLINE! Does anybody dig on any of these sigils?! Spoiled for 5 large-ish pictures.

I had to turn all the AI off, because in practice it was "blow your most important stuff up front on anybody, whatever, just do it"

I would think seeing taxi driver now would at least be amazing as a window into a New York City that hasn't existed for 25 years. I've only seen Tarr's The Man from London. It's a challenge for sure.

You can put me down as a fan of DA2! I think complaints about the sameness of the certain zones to be totally valid, and implied some slipshod work. Like the architecture of every mansion, and ruddy basement in this cobbled together city is identical, even if the decor can change a little? I really liked the concept of years spent in this city, building that as a main character. Again, I wish there was some more simple variance, like the paths of the main outdoor area grew over and changed. I think people who dig on fantasy RPGs prefer the "grand journey" aspect more, so I can see how DA2 came up quite short in that regard. The combat was particularly tight, and strategic, more than the first. On harder difficulties I was excited for every gained level, as I needed every point right up until the end. The changes to the healing made potions more rare, and healing precious, and difficult to use a lot of in a single fight. It was let me use the assorted debuffing skills I usually just ignore.

Not to be too critical, but it wasn't even a particularly powerful "it's." Jake really sticks em.