JonCole

Honestly, I'm just glad they're not doing another Uncharted. Too much talent to keep bottled in one franchise, as much as I love it. When it comes down to it, I doubt they will manage to disappoint me with this next one.

So... Uncharted 1?

Given the huge time gaps between games, it's hard to make any kind of informed guess as to what the next game might tackle. I was about to question Valenwood because from what I understand, it's a fairly unpopulated region with Wood Elves throughout the forests and a couple of disparate, small Imperial outposts. But honestly, who knows what will go on throughout this next era (or even what already happened between when I picked up that lore and now) that might spell differently for that region? On a slightly peripheral note (and perhaps retread, as I haven't read every post in this thread), has anyone checked out the associated novels for the series? I'm mildly interested, but I really haven't heard a thing about them in a critical sense.

Yup, the incentives are pretty great when you consider that cycle. And if you're willing to give up like... 50% of your profits, you can buy pelts (not leather) and petty/lesser filled soulgems whenever you see them to further accelerate all three categories. Also, keep an eye out at Radiant Raiment in Solitude for the "Necklace of Extreme Haggling" which gives 22% lower/higher prices for buying/selling. And yes, I'm packing the Dragonscale (light) armor. Dragonplate is the heavy variety, but both end up being relatively equivalent after factoring in armor perks (both weight and armor wise). Dragonscale requires Dragon Scales to smith, and Dragonplate requires both Scales and Bones. Might be worth holding onto some of that stuff if you ever intend on making the armor.

Yeah, legendary requires Smithing 100. The double enchantments require Enchanting 100. It's not really that hard, if you just hunt occasionally and turn all your pelts into leather bracers (1 leather, 1 leather strips) and iron ingots into iron daggers (1 iron ingot, 1 leather strips). I spent only the like... last 10 levels "grinding" because I was so close, buying pelts wherever I saw them and hunting for a couple hours straight.

So... I'm clearly some kind of economic min-maxer or something.

The Riften house is actually pretty great value for the money. Near the Thieves Guild and plenty of traders, also comes with an alchemy lab and enchanting table. I think it's only like... 6k base with 4k in upgrades.

Yeah, it's always the town steward. Also, those prices scale based on the initial value of the house. The most expensive "decorations" in the Solitude house are 2500 gold (price of the house is 25,000 gold).

Is that the Mace of Molag Bal, or just a Daedric Mace? Also, I find the perk "sell anything to any merchant" very useful for offloading stuff. It makes Solitude pretty great for selling stuff because everyone is concentrated right by the gate. There's Thieves Guild fence in the Winking Skeever (1000g), Radiant Raiment (1000g), Bits and Pieces (700g), Alchemist (700g), Archery weapons salesman (700g), Blacksmith (1000g). Also, don't forget that you can often sell stuff to court wizards, who tend to have cool magical equipment and other stuff like soulgems.

What good is gold when you have expensive items to trade for? I'm essentially at a point where all I use my money for is buying potion ingredients and hiring skill trainers.

Yeah, that's what I meant. The strength of the enchantment and type of enchantment have a drastically higher effect on value than the item being enchanted, soul gem, or number of charges (for weapons). For instance, an iron dagger enchanted with Absorb Health 15 pts will be worth much more than one enchanted with Absorb Health 1 pts with many more charges. Also, an orcish dagger enchanted with the same will only be worth as much more than the iron dagger directly proportional to their original values. I've got a level 45 Redguard that wears light armor and fights with sneak/archery and destruction/one-handed war axe. He's also got 100 in Smithing and Enchanting, which lead me to hunt down the sweet Dragonscale armor set with 2 enchantments per piece:

The actual thinking for this thread was that last year during Black Friday (week), lots of people were posting deals in individual game threads. I figured it might be more helpful to have them compiled here, but then people wanted to keep posting deals even after the week had ended. At that point, I created the General Deals thread to better address that interest. Honestly, I hadn't expected the BF deals thread to be brought back because it is a little confusing without context.

You have to be pretty high in Speech to unlock the perk to invest in stores. The best methods I've found for making a quick buck are alchemy and enchanting. With alchemy, certain potion effects result in much more profit than others - like invisibility or lingering damage magicka. If you manage to make a potion with multiple effects (regardless of how well they work together), the potion sells for exponentially greater. Chain that stuff with potions that boost Alchemy or Barter and you can really get a lot with very little investment (picking up flowers/mushrooms whenever you see them). With enchantment, it's good to know that any item you enchant gains value based on the spell you enchant it with rather than what soul gem or item you start with. For instance, fortify archery is great for helmets, fortify carry weight is good for boots/gauntlets, fortify healing rate is great for armor, and absorb health is good for weapons. Weapons almost always sell for more than armor, so it's good to hang onto any iron/steel daggers you find on corpses. Beyond that, buy petty/lesser soulgems at every opportunity and enchant a bow with soul trap 1 sec. Kill deers, foxes, wolves, rabbits for petty souls. Enchant daggers, which increase their value to 1k+, sell for profit. That ended up being a huge wall of text, but both of those things are really easy to just collect while you're adventuring and worry about later.

Yeah, I pretty much carry 3-4 weapons at any given time to combat this. Kind of a shitty counter, but it does the job.

I wouldn't make a thread like this unless the deal was particularly good, considering any semi-knowledgable gamer could go to CAG, but Steam is running a pretty excellent sale starting today. LucasArts complete pack 50% off, Far Cry 2 (w/ DLC) for $10, Batman: Arkham Asylum for $25, Dragon Age: Origins at 25% off for both versions, Osmos at $2, and a handful more. http://store.steampowered.com/early-holiday

There are a handful of things on sale on Xbox Live, but I grabbed Beyond Good & Evil HD for 240 MSP/$3. Seems like a pretty sweet deal and fit my terribly low wallet of like... 260 MSP or something on XBL.

Much appreciated, Erkki! He's a shitty picture I took as soon as I got the package last night.

I'm not a big fan of SecuROM, but practically it's not a glaring problem. Coupled with the 5 device activation limit (as opposed to much more detestable 1/2/3 limits), I would say that this is an inoffensive enough implementation that you should go for it if you're on a budget.

Yeah, there's a lot of bad shit going on in that city, you don't even know the beginning of it. And they don't even have to deal with the shitty climate of northern holds, bah.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that there's no value in deflecting hype as a writer. I just think it's presumptuous to think that every person that doesn't agree with your opinion has given into such things. I also think it's silly to expect anybody to be completely immune, especially since the preview/review cycle is so attuned to marketing. For example, in order to get attention, a publication must play a game in early forms to report the status of the game to readers. However, these early builds are often designed in such a way to stoke the hype. Ideally, a publication would have a different person review the game than the one who previewed it, but that's clearly in a perfect world (and one where those people might not ever share their experiences, as not to homogenize their viewpoints in any way).

There are no two scenarios because game reviewers are subject to the same cycle of hype that we are. You can't expect them to be removed from the culture, because it's simply not possible to do so without being a hermit. I still think you're completely missing my point. A reviewer can only judge a game through their own lens. Whether that lens is affected by previous experience (or lack thereof) with a franchise/genre, contemporary hype, or simply personal taste, it doesn't matter. It's up to the reader to be discerning about the experiences he or she respects; if your interests and experiences tend to align with a more grassroots/fan-based site like RPS, by all means regard that site much more than something like IGN. That doesn't make the other sites/reviews any less valuable to the community as a whole. I'll say it again, reviewers have absolutely no responsibility to side with "the public". All they can do is offer their opinion and let the public consume that in whatever way they choose. Your expectations for a review with as little personal bias as possible are simply unrealistic. That's not the critical culture we live in. I completely concur with Erkki in saying that your preferences align with "old game journalism" or even "old journalism". This discussion reminds me of one that Armond White had with the guys who operate the /Film blog. White argued that an educated, experienced critic had infinitely more ground to stand on than a simple blogger. What he didn't understand is that people don't give a crap what diploma is hanging from their office wall, rather they care whether or not that person's experience speaks to them or not.

For what it's worth (and I don't know if this is even available to anyone outside the US), The Witcher 2 is actually much cheaper on Amazon ($16) and comes with a promo code for $5 to use on games in January.

I still think it's presumptuous to assume that the reviewers were affected by anything but their own experiences. I think the difference between you and me, TP, is that I go into a review expecting only to read about the time that specific person had with the game. You seem to be going into the review expecting an opinion that's "objective", which is quite ridiculous considering criticism must be at least partially subjective. Whether or not that subjectivity is steeped in personal experience or outside factors, it's the readers job to ascertain whether or not the review is valuable to them. I'm fine with you saying that the reviews failed you in your particular buying decision, but I'm not fine with you saying that they didn't do their job because they couldn't look in a crystal ball to see the popular opinion in the future.

All a game reviewer can do is convey their experience with the game. If you don't value their experience, that's your prerogative.

It's not a reviewers job to represent the opinion of the majority.