What Are You Playing 6: DLCs of Kevin Bacon

[Form]

Played it yesterday -- looks pretty good actually. Like 2 parts Disco Elysium, 1 part Cultist Simulator, 3 parts water, pour in a scifi glass -- that sort of thing.

Spoiler: General playthrough and endgame

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At first my Sleeper was focused on just escaping. I wanted to make a beeline for getting rid of the tracker with Feng's help, but at some point Feng disappeared and I wasn't able to find him again for a while. So I just searched around, desperately trying to find anyone to help me. Then Ethan showed up. And then Maywick. It felt like my Sleeper got incredibly lucky with both Ethan and Maywick dead at the end, but it's a shame it came at the cost of his innocence. I don't think my Sleeper had ever taken a life before.

When I did finally get rid of the tracker and got opportunities to leave the Eye... I didn't. By then, I'd built too many connections with the people there. Talking to Emphis, building up the Bantayan, working with Riko... With the bounty hunters and the tracker gone the Eye finally felt safe. At first my Sleeper just wanted to escape, but in the end built a home for himself. Funny that.

I don't remember the HotU expansion in Neverwinter Nights being that bad with ACs, and you went through literal hell at one point in that module. :V

Spoiler: Final boss

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HotU fortunately also gives you the option of dealing with Mephistopheles without actually fighting him. If you know his True Name. I'm glad I did, because I think one time I did try fighting him and it did not go well. I really wasn't very good at optimizing my builds in that game.

Man, Johnny Silverhand really is one of the most hateable characters I've ever met in a video game. In the beginning, he was a bit annoying, but the more you learn about his backstory, the worse he gets.

I already knew about the guy from the RPG, too, where he was mostly just a bit annoyingly edgy and "cool as written by a teenager in the 80s". And killed a million people with a nuke, of course. But I never thought he was just such a giant ****.

Spoiler: Silverhand and V

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I don't think I've gotten that far yet, so now I'm curious what Silverhand was really like. I'm going to let his psyche consume V's nonetheless, though, if only because I'm hoping it'll really let me screw the megacorps. Or at least one megacorp. I would really like an opportunity to bring down that Arasaka tower again even if it takes another tac-nuke to do it.

...

Ok, now I really want the game to give me a tac-nuke near the end to do exactly that.

[Mechalich]

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous.

Arrrrggh. Get out of here with these 40+ ACs. How did you even get there? What is the point of having melee warriors if I can't hit anything because the AC is that obscene, even on a fairly regular setting?

Kingmaker had the ultra-high AC problem too, with numerous enemies having ACs beefed up significantly above their Bestiary stats.

[warty goblin]

Finished the latest World of Warships dockyard (think Battle Pass, but with a cool animation of building the ship you're unlocking), so I now have the utterly fictitious Brazilian battleship Atlantico.

This ship is, to put it mildly, rather odd. So far as I'm aware, this is the most tissue paper of paper ships, in that it wasn't actually ever even really designed. However there's parts of her design that make a sort of sense. See, back in 1907 the Brazilians ordered the Minas Geraes from British yards, which, with the then-unprecedented firepower of 12(!) 12 inch guns, was arguably the single most powerful warship afloat. Now actually making Minas Geraes a dockyard ship would be a real scummy move, since dockyard ships are usually only available while that dockyard is running, and she's an important historical ship. Also this would be the first South American battleship, so there isn't really a unique playstyle figured out for them yet. An utterly fictitious ship with some sort of Minas Geraes type flavor, but higher tier, is a logical choice.

So while Minas Geraes was a ridiculous dreadnought, Atlantico is a ridiculous superdreadnought, i.e. in our hypothetical timeline Brazil continued to order single monstrously powerful ships. Take the AB Q XY turret layout of HMS Iron Duke et al, and upscale from the good old 13.5 inch gun to 15 inches, for a respectable broadside of 10 15 inch guns. This has some precedent, a design with this armament was considered for the Queen Elizabeths. Knock the speed up to about 25 knots while we're at it. Now however our hypothetical historical naval architect must have snorted approximately all the opium, had a flashback to about 1905, and decided he was designing the world's most over the top pre-dreadnought. See, Atlantico has a secondary battery of 16(!!!) 9.2 inch guns, in 8 twin turrets, 4 per broadside. This ship literally has an entire heavy cruiser* stapled to each side. Then it's got a bevy of dual purpose 5 inch guns in single mounts because why not.

What you get is sort of this hyper-pre-dreadnought at Tier 8, home of Bismarck and Richelieu and North Carolina for comparison. She's very slow by these standards, but pretty well armored, and 10 15 inch guns with decent accuracy is no joke. And dear me, those 9.2 inch secondaries are murderous. They don't fire all that fast, but they hit like a truck, and have enough HE per shell to just shred things like AA mounts and torpedo tubes. So you kind of just amble around the map, smacking anything stupid enough to get close to you. I just murdered a submarine I didn't even see pop up because the secondaries insta-smooshed it. I'll have to check, but I'm pretty sure there's cruisers in Atlantico's match-making spread the secondaries can citadel, which is certainly going to be something to see.

I think I really like this ship. It's dumb, but in a fun way.

*I think these are basically the 9.2 inch guns on the T9 and 10 British heavy cruisers, with a buffed rate of fire to make up for their much worse range.

[IthilanorStPete]

Finished the latest World of Warships dockyard (think Battle Pass, but with a cool animation of building the ship you're unlocking), so I now have the utterly fictitious Brazilian battleship Atlantico.

This ship is, to put it mildly, rather odd. So far as I'm aware, this is the most tissue paper of paper ships, in that it wasn't actually ever even really designed. However there's parts of her design that make a sort of sense. See, back in 1907 the Brazilians ordered the Minas Geraes from British yards, which, with the then-unprecedented firepower of 12(!) 12 inch guns, was arguably the single most powerful warship afloat. Now actually making Minas Geraes a dockyard ship would be a real scummy move, since dockyard ships are usually only available while that dockyard is running, and she's an important historical ship. Also this would be the first South American battleship, so there isn't really a unique playstyle figured out for them yet. An utterly fictitious ship with some sort of Minas Geraes type flavor, but higher tier, is a logical choice.

So while Minas Geraes was a ridiculous dreadnought, Atlantico is a ridiculous superdreadnought, i.e. in our hypothetical timeline Brazil continued to order single monstrously powerful ships. Take the AB Q XY turret layout of HMS Iron Duke et al, and upscale from the good old 13.5 inch gun to 15 inches, for a respectable broadside of 10 15 inch guns. This has some precedent, a design with this armament was considered for the Queen Elizabeths. Knock the speed up to about 25 knots while we're at it. Now however our hypothetical historical naval architect must have snorted approximately all the opium, had a flashback to about 1905, and decided he was designing the world's most over the top pre-dreadnought. See, Atlantico has a secondary battery of 16(!!!) 9.2 inch guns, in 8 twin turrets, 4 per broadside. This ship literally has an entire heavy cruiser* stapled to each side. Then it's got a bevy of dual purpose 5 inch guns in single mounts because why not.

What you get is sort of this hyper-pre-dreadnought at Tier 8, home of Bismarck and Richelieu and North Carolina for comparison. She's very slow by these standards, but pretty well armored, and 10 15 inch guns with decent accuracy is no joke. And dear me, those 9.2 inch secondaries are murderous. They don't fire all that fast, but they hit like a truck, and have enough HE per shell to just shred things like AA mounts and torpedo tubes. So you kind of just amble around the map, smacking anything stupid enough to get close to you. I just murdered a submarine I didn't even see pop up because the secondaries insta-smooshed it. I'll have to check, but I'm pretty sure there's cruisers in Atlantico's match-making spread the secondaries can citadel, which is certainly going to be something to see.

I think I really like this ship. It's dumb, but in a fun way.

*I think these are basically the 9.2 inch guns on the T9 and 10 British heavy cruisers, with a buffed rate of fire to make up for their much worse range.

Did...did the World of Warships designers not get that part of the definition of dreadnoughts is the all-big-gun armament? That is a ridiculous secondary armament.

[factotum]

Did...did the World of Warships designers not get that part of the definition of dreadnoughts is the all-big-gun armament? That is a ridiculous secondary armament.

Defeats the main purpose of the all-big-gun setup, as well, which is to make aiming and firing your big guns easier because you don't get confused between shell splashes from the secondary and primary armament.

[IthilanorStPete]

Defeats the main purpose of the all-big-gun setup, as well, which is to make aiming and firing your big guns easier because you don't get confused between shell splashes from the secondary and primary armament.

Exactly! There's a reason dreadnoughts and post-dreadnought battleships were designed that way!

[Eldan]

[

Spoiler: Silverhand and V

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I don't think I've gotten that far yet, so now I'm curious what Silverhand was really like. I'm going to let his psyche consume V's nonetheless, though, if only because I'm hoping it'll really let me screw the megacorps. Or at least one megacorp. I would really like an opportunity to bring down that Arasaka tower again even if it takes another tac-nuke to do it.

...

Ok, now I really want the game to give me a tac-nuke near the end to do exactly that.

Oh, being anti-corpo is fine and dandy, of course, and I wouldnt' be opposed to blowing up a few more Arasaka assets. But he's also an absolute ******* to everyone around him, he killed almost a million innocents to take out Arasaka tower (in the RPG books, they refer to the Night City Holocaust) and if you look at the situation in 2077, really not much seems to have changed, so it wasn't even effective.

[GloatingSwine]

Defeats the main purpose of the all-big-gun setup, as well, which is to make aiming and firing your big guns easier because you don't get confused between shell splashes from the secondary and primary armament.

This is World of Warships where battleships are the counter to submarines and AA guns do nothing. If you can't take a joke, you shouldn't be playing warships.

Oh, being anti-corpo is fine and dandy, of course, and I wouldnt' be opposed to blowing up a few more Arasaka assets. But he's also an absolute ******* to everyone around him, he killed almost a million innocents to take out Arasaka tower (in the RPG books, they refer to the Night City Holocaust) and if you look at the situation in 2077, really not much seems to have changed, so it wasn't even effective.

Yeah, Johnny is, on top of being an egotistical prick of the first order, a completely ineffectual revolutionary.

The presentation of the Corps in CP2077 is weird as well. Like the plot and a lot of side missions frames them to be bad by the transitive property of someone you like wants you to attack them, but they very rarely seem to be actively doing anything much at all. They're not causing people day-to-day problems in the way the gangs around them are, and whilst they're not solving those problems either they aren't hindering NCPD in doing so, at least not as far as the game presents.

Their conflicts are internal power struggles, they don't even cause much in the way of careless collateral damage. On a list of most evil videogame corporations I don't think Arasaka would even make the top twenty. Even if you stuck to fictional ones and didn't include Activision, EA, or Ubisoft.

Like President Shinra wiped out 15% of a city just to kill like five people. Yorinobu ain't got ****.

[Eldan]

I've come across a few streetfights involving Millitech. But yeah, they kind of failed at portraying the corpos.

As for the NCPD, I just did some side missions that imply the corps very much did sabotage them. Got politicians to slash the budget snd replace them with private security for wealthy districts, basically.

[Rynjin]

The problem of the corpos is more a broad scope thing. Isn't Night City its own independent city state because the corps instigated a civil war and then carved out a sovereign territory?

[Eldan]

Yes. Founded by Night International (a finance company), Arasaka, Petrochem and the West Coast Mafia.

It's legal status is actually complicated. The US has been falling apart since the 90s, when Texas effectively declared independence and a lot of the western states followed. Night City was officially part of the Northern California Free State, until quite recent, but effectively a city state. And whether the Free States are in the US or not is also debateable.

[Cespenar]

I would have much preferred if Cyberpunk stuck more to the corpos and their shenanigans, rather than "balancing" it (in their mind, I think), to 1/3 corpos, 1/3 streets, 1/3 the frickin' desert(?).

I think it rather helps a bit if you start with the corpo background. It's a small nudge, but in the right direction.

Spoiler: General playthrough and endgame

Show

At first my Sleeper was focused on just escaping. I wanted to make a beeline for getting rid of the tracker with Feng's help, but at some point Feng disappeared and I wasn't able to find him again for a while. So I just searched around, desperately trying to find anyone to help me. Then Ethan showed up. And then Maywick. It felt like my Sleeper got incredibly lucky with both Ethan and Maywick dead at the end, but it's a shame it came at the cost of his innocence. I don't think my Sleeper had ever taken a life before.

Spoiler: Citizen Sleeper

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Feng took so too long that the Ethan thing just sort of solved itself, weirdly. Well, not completely, but I'm still in the midgame.

Still, I like Feng's arc. The other characters are a bit too easy to help/like, but with Feng, it's more complicated -- is he taking his grudge too far, are you just helping him to get rid of the tracker, etc.

Other than that, quite a good game, honestly.

[Eldan]

Well, the Nomads have always been a part of the setting. And it helps get a bit of variation into the landscape, a few missions in open terrain are fun, too.

[Cespenar]

Eh, we get the open lands in every other game. Just stick to what's unique and powerful about the genre -- the corpo shenanigans. The Shadowrun games had the right of it, IMO.

I mean, CP is still a good game, but anyway.

[Spore]

The problem of the corpos is more a broad scope thing. Isn't Night City its own independent city state because the corps instigated a civil war and then carved out a sovereign territory?

Never played Cyberpunk but isn't one of the main points of the genre that corporations essentially own and control civil life? Sure, there is technically a government with police force and all, but it is corporate controlled. Granted I do know next to nothing of the game.

[Rynjin]

Never played Cyberpunk but isn't one of the main points of the genre that corporations essentially own and control civil life? Sure, there is technically a government with police force and all, but it is corporate controlled. Granted I do know next to nothing of the game.

I mean this is also the case but that goes without saying.

[Eldan]

Never played Cyberpunk but isn't one of the main points of the genre that corporations essentially own and control civil life? Sure, there is technically a government with police force and all, but it is corporate controlled. Granted I do know next to nothing of the game.

Yes, though the situation is a bit more fractured in Cyberpunk than other examples of the genre. Night City is corpo controlled, they are a bit more subtle in other nations. Plus there's the entire nomad situation, i.e. large parts of the American population live outside anyone's control. They aren't registered anywhere and just travel around overland.

[Eldan]

Welp. So. I need a break from Cyberpunk. Things just happened. Christian things.

[Rynjin]

I enjoyed that sidequest, if it's the one I'm thinking of. Just the right level of "ow the edge" to fit the game's tone.

You want to talk about the commoditization of human life...well, there it is.

[Eldan]

Mhm.

I'd talk about which gospel quotes they used and which they didn't and why that's interesting, but it would be hard against the board rules. Eli, eli, lama sabachthani.

[Whoracle]

If it's the mission I'm thinking of then that's the one mission I didn't finish. I just noped the hell out after the first conversation with the sister. My reasons why are not forum safe, but the writing in that mission was top notch. Overall CP77 was the first game in quite a while where a lot if the writing really got to me and resonated with me. Especially the "easy" ending...

[Zevox]

So I wrapped up The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD today. And yeah, damn, it's good. The story's good (especially for a Zelda game), the character work is solid, most of the game's areas are fun, it has some of my favorite bosses in the series, and I love how the core combat makes how you strike your foes matter in so many instances. Hell, I love what it did with shields - adding the parry mechanic and making shields take damage if you just block an attack like you would in any other Zelda game really incentivizes learning to use them well, rather than just treating them as a "hold this up when you're not attacking and you can't take damage" option like they usually are. I also appreciate the attempt to make the three different types matter, with the wooden one being burned up by fire attacks, the metal one being ineffective against electric attacks, and the sacred shield being significantly less durable than the others; but in practice once you get the sacred shield, unless you're awful at parrying, you just use that and it's fine, especially once you upgrade it, since it self-heals over time anyway.

The entire Lanayru region in particular is a stand-out, with the Timeshift stone gimmick creating some very cool, fun areas and puzzles. The Sand Ship dungeon is a strong contender for my favorite of the franchise. Pretty much all of the boss fights from the mid-game on are great - The Imprisoned being a bit eh, if you count that, though I don't think of it as a boss fight in the traditional sense personally, more of a special plot event. The Girahim fights are particular highlights, especially the second one. Demise makes for one of the best final bosses in the series too, I think - by Zelda standards he's actually pretty tough, and the fight feels appropriately epic.

Not to say it doesn't have things I wouldn't change about it. The Silent Realms are pretty uninteresting "Trials," especially since they all work exactly the same. The Water Dragon's little musical swimming collect-a-thon is a fairly lame to handle collecting his part of the Song of the Hero, too. And of course, the entire stamina mechanic can go - it was largely pointless anyway, since they usually provided you with plenty of stamina fruit if there was any need for it. And the first couple of dungeons are pretty unremarkable, so the game doesn't have the strongest start. But these are overshadowed by the game's strong points, quite a bit, in my opinion.

At the end of the day... yeah, Skyward Sword is probably my favorite Zelda game, even over Ocarina of Time. I need to go through it on Hero Mode sometime - I know I started to after the first time I beat it, but something took my attention away from it after just the first dungeon, and I never got back to it. Don't think I'll do so right away this time, since I just did two Zelda games in a row, but I need to make a point to revisit it later this year sometime, I think, before I forget again.

Outside of Zelda.... well, since the Hearthstone thread has finally died, and I'm sure there won't be enough discussion of it to sustain a thread anymore, I'll mention that I have been playing Battlegrounds there this week, since the Naga tribe was added. And oh boy, is that a mixed bag at best. On the one hand, they actually managed to add a ninth tribe to the game that doesn't play like the rest; kudos to them there. On the other, oh gods, are the Nagas overpowered right now. They out-scale any other tribe with ease once they get the right pieces in place, and have easy access to divine shields. And since Amalgadon and the 1/1 poisonous minion were removed from the game, access to the game's traditional comeback mechanic of divine shields + poison is much harder now, as basically only Murlocs and the new Mantid Queen (who is typeless and a tier 6 minion) even get poison anymore. Since the Naga patch dropped, the only non-Naga build I've seen in top 3 of any game I've played has been when someone got a high-roll Murloc build going, and even then I've never seen that actually take 1st. Combined with the Buddies system from earlier this year, it's making me fear that the Battlegrounds devs are taking the same approach to balance that the main Hearthstone designers seemed to be when last I payed any attention to that - namely, "just let new stuff come out overpowered because people will want to play it anyway and we'll just nerf it later." Which is a pretty bad way to handle things, IMO.

At the same time, they also removed the Buddies system, which is another mixed bag. As much as I disliked some of the effects it had and won't miss the general power creep it brought (though again, Nagas...), it did help make a bunch of previously-garbage heroes a lot more playable; all of whom have gone back to the garbage bin now. At least they finally undid the cost increase they slapped on tier 5 when they added that system though, and thank heavens for that.

[Cespenar]

I'm trying out Rogue Legacy 2, and man, the game is fun and all that, but this trend of stretching out every 15-hour game up to 100+ hours with pure number inflation has started to eat at me a little.

[Cygnia]

Does anyone have any mystery/puzzle/escape games in the style of The Room they'd recommend? Something that's also not an angst bomb (like What Remains of Edith Finch) or would cause motion sickness (Like The Talos Principle). Hubby's looking for a new game to try...

[Anteros]

I'm trying out Rogue Legacy 2, and man, the game is fun and all that, but this trend of stretching out every 15-hour game up to 100+ hours with pure number inflation has started to eat at me a little.

I finished it in about 10 hours or so. You don't actually have to max out all the stuff. Also, cooks are OP.

[NRSASD]

Does anyone have any mystery/puzzle/escape games in the style of The Room they'd recommend? Something that's also not an angst bomb (like What Remains of Edith Finch) or would cause motion sickness (Like The Talos Principle). Hubby's looking for a new game to try...

Try We Were Here. It’s free, on Steam, and cooperative. You and your partner are trapped in a castle, but separated. Your room contains clues to solve puzzles in their room and likewise. Very fun little game

Speaking of which, I’m currently playing the fourth game of that series, We Were Here Forever. So far so good!

[Anonymouswizard]

I'm trying out Rogue Legacy 2, and man, the game is fun and all that, but this trend of stretching out every 15-hour game up to 100+ hours with pure number inflation has started to eat at me a little.

While I've not played RL2 (or beaten the first game), I really do have to agree. There just seems to be a tendency to pad games in general these days, and honestly I don't have the time for it any more.


Still on Greedfall, and honestly one thing I've noticed is that while I'm picking fewer dialogue choices than in DAI, I'm not sure that the Inquisitor really had more personality customisation than de Sadet does (Hawke did have a lot more though, even if there were only three options). But overall it's hit that sense of exploration and adventure, and once I hit enough levels to get ranks into Science, Charisma, and Intuition quests became significantly more fun than grinding. I'm onto Aphra's last quest and I think I have one more for Siorra (I hope I haven't busted her romance as much as I did Vasco's), so yeah the bulk of this game really isn't really the main questline, it's going around making everybody like you. Which I suppose is your actual job.

There's just this recurring trend of crafting ammunition, thinking 'I'm sure 150 will be enough for now', and running out after a handful of fights. Maybe it's because I'm still using pistols despite having unlocked rifles, but I haven't found a rifle which gives me several shots before reloading yet, compared to the five my lovely revolver has.

[Cespenar]

I finished it in about 10 hours or so. You don't actually have to max out all the stuff. Also, cooks are OP.

I don't know, you're probably pretty good at it. By no metric does that look like neither the average nor the intended time.

Chefs do rock, but I end up giving each class some attention to spice things up.

Does anyone have any mystery/puzzle/escape games in the style of The Room they'd recommend? Something that's also not an angst bomb (like What Remains of Edith Finch) or would cause motion sickness (Like The Talos Principle). Hubby's looking for a new game to try...

House of Da Vinci was a Room-like, as far as I remember.

[Cygnia]

House of Da Vinci was a Room-like, as far as I remember.

Hubby already did House of Da Vinci...he wasn't happy with it.

[Anteros]

I don't know, you're probably pretty good at it. By no metric does that look like neither the average nor the intended time.

Chefs do rock, but I end up giving each class some attention to spice things up.

I don't feel like I'm very good at it. Some item combinations just trivialize most of the game. Like the wings and the spoon.