What game are you playing?

[weaselus]

For starters, they aren't even the same subgenre. ATOM/Fallout are single character RPGs with optional companions with limited usefulness, whereas Wasteland 2 is a party-based RPG with no main character.

If Wasteland 2 is like any Fallout, it's Fallout Tactics.

Eh, there is not a substantial difference between having to adjust combat tactics for your party and giving them actual move and attack orders. The encounters in both games are simple enough that they are almost always about shooting the lowest-hp target.

[weaselus]

The only actual Fallout-likes are the total conversions(e.g., Sonora) and ATOM/Trudograd. Everything else is just post apoc-themed but distinctly not like Fallout.

I realized I had played Fallout Resurrected, not Sonora. I am starting it now. Thanks!

[Tinky Winky]

Finished this German Gothic 2 mod From the Life of a Thief https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 3584467476
and it's quite decent, probably one of the best G2 mod I've played so far other than Archolos, with a good care in details and dense contents. Most Gothic 2 mods I've played have glaring issues, while this one can be actually considered polished. It isn't perfect though, mainly because you are forced to play as a thief, and there's a stupid mob spawning system that can be easily triggered, so you'd face many new mobs on the path you've just cleared before. Still recommended.

[ThulsaDoomer]

What would you expect if you dropped a bunch of Americans (or most other nationalities) into a post-apocalyptic wasteland? Competitive multiplayer shows alarmingly many participants turn evil and traitorous when they know they can't be punished.

So that part is realistic.

I really hope you know the difference between reality and games. If everyone is a dislikable piece of **** then the player will feel apathy at best for the outcome of any situation. Once the player stops caring, you've failed as a developer.

WL3 is much the same in my opinion, there's a few characters who are likable enough and you can sympathise with their causes, but the general dynamic of most characters was wildly unhinged for the sake of it, which clashed with the story pathing of possibly saving them. You didn't want to save them, there wasn't anything to save, the default human response is to kill them and be done with it. If you can't even tempt or override a default human response in people, you shouldn't be writing anything. Often I feel most writers confuse interesting and weird with engaging. We all find a mentally ill man raving on the street amusing or shocking, but we do not care about him, we'd sooner want him hauled off to the nearest aslyum than to ever engage with his history or how he got there.

Funnily enough, the most natural path for WL3 for me was to wipe the slate clean. It utterly failed to make me empathetic to the existing society or people. If that was the sole intention, then it did very well, but I highly doubt that was the intention. Why bother with alternate paths when they feel pointless or undesirable?

[Roguey]

I see very little of Fallout in Wasteland 2 tbh

It comes across as a bit more Fallout than Wasteland in the art direction and presentation. Design-wise, yeah, it's an evolution of Wasteland with more Fallout-y constraints e.g. you can't split your party like you can in Wasteland: The Original Classic, combat is executed more like Fallout's and not in that more-abstracted blobber style where exact positioning isn't a factor.

[weaselus]

What would you expect if you dropped a bunch of Americans (or most other nationalities) into a post-apocalyptic wasteland? Competitive multiplayer shows alarmingly many participants turn evil and traitorous when they know they can't be punished.

So that part is realistic.

I really hope you know the difference between reality and games. If everyone is a dislikable piece of **** then the player will feel apathy at best for the outcome of any situation. Once the player stops caring, you've failed as a developer.

WL3 is much the same in my opinion, there's a few characters who are likable enough and you can sympathise with their causes, but the general dynamic of most characters was wildly unhinged for the sake of it, which clashed with the story pathing of possibly saving them. You didn't want to save them, there wasn't anything to save, the default human response is to kill them and be done with it. If you can't even tempt or override a default human response in people, you shouldn't be writing anything. Often I feel most writers confuse interesting and weird with engaging. We all find a mentally ill man raving on the street amusing or shocking, but we do not care about him, we'd sooner want him hauled off to the nearest aslyum than to ever engage with his history or how he got there.

Funnily enough, the most natural path for WL3 for me was to wipe the slate clean. It utterly failed to make me empathetic to the existing society or people. If that was the sole intention, then it did very well, but I highly doubt that was the intention. Why bother with alternate paths when they feel pointless or undesirable?

Wasteland in particular is hamstrung by its roots: killer tomatoes and nuns with machine guns. This is a low standard of artistic expression and partly in place to justify the murder spree your party is on. But the flipside is that your enemies might end up comically monstrous - isn't that true of all post-apocalyptic media? Mad Max Fury Road is unwatchable due to the evil oozing from every frame. It is the fever dream of a child devourer. In general, action movies in the last thirty years have been turning ever more sadistic, e.g. "Nobody." It used to be that wounds and kills happened off-screen, while now we get to see decapitations and head wounds in real time. The bat murder in "The Walking Dead" happened in plain view.

Back to Wasteland: the premise is silly so the writers could get creative with lines about "blood sausage" and everybody knew it is all pretend. The player indulges in unhinged violence but it doesn't matter: the antagonists are nothing less than monsters. This pedigree persists in the newer games but now players want "more plausible villains" as if the red scorpion militia or diamondback militia were badly written. Or as if gangs have a complex reason to exist in the real world, other than banditry offering easy rewards.

Conservative writers would have created a better cast, but they are not employed in this business. Amy Henning (who is a centrist rather than a conservative) left Naughty Dog more than a decade ago.

Liberal writers - like the guys who penned Wasteland - have an intrinsic inability to create believable personalities because they cannot understand traditionalists. It is a mental handicap. But Wasteland is the pulpiest of settings, so the fantastical is allowed. People who demand further psychological and political veracity out of this setting are wankers.

[Tweed]

I really hope you know the difference between reality and games. If everyone is a dislikable piece of **** then the player will feel apathy at best for the outcome of any situation. Once the player stops caring, you've failed as a developer.

WL3 is much the same in my opinion, there's a few characters who are likable enough and you can sympathise with their causes, but the general dynamic of most characters was wildly unhinged for the sake of it, which clashed with the story pathing of possibly saving them. You didn't want to save them, there wasn't anything to save, the default human response is to kill them and be done with it. If you can't even tempt or override a default human response in people, you shouldn't be writing anything. Often I feel most writers confuse interesting and weird with engaging. We all find a mentally ill man raving on the street amusing or shocking, but we do not care about him, we'd sooner want him hauled off to the nearest aslyum than to ever engage with his history or how he got there.

Funnily enough, the most natural path for WL3 for me was to wipe the slate clean. It utterly failed to make me empathetic to the existing society or people. If that was the sole intention, then it did very well, but I highly doubt that was the intention. Why bother with alternate paths when they feel pointless or undesirable?

Wasteland in particular is hamstrung by its roots: killer tomatoes and nuns with machine guns. This is a low standard of artistic expression and partly in place to justify the murder spree your party is on. But the flipside is that your enemies might end up comically monstrous - isn't that true of all post-apocalyptic media? Mad Max Fury Road is unwatchable due to the evil oozing from every frame. It is the fever dream of a child devourer. In general, action movies in the last thirty years have been turning ever more sadistic, e.g. "Nobody." It used to be that wounds and kills happened off-screen, while now we get to see decapitations and head wounds in real time. The bat murder in "The Walking Dead" happened in plain view.

Back to Wasteland: the premise is silly so the writers could get creative with lines about "blood sausage" and everybody knew it is all pretend. The player indulges in unhinged violence but it doesn't matter: the antagonists are nothing less than monsters. This pedigree persists in the newer games but now players want "more plausible villains" as if the red scorpion militia or diamondback militia were badly written. Or as if gangs have a complex reason to exist in the real world, other than banditry offering easy rewards.

Conservative writers would have created a better cast, but they are not employed in this business. Amy Henning (who is a centrist rather than a conservative) left Naughty Dog more than a decade ago.

Liberal writers - like the guys who penned Wasteland - have an intrinsic inability to create believable personalities because they cannot understand traditionalists. It is a mental handicap. But Wasteland is the pulpiest of settings, so the fantastical is allowed. People who demand further psychological and political veracity out of this setting are wankers.

The writers were sniffing their own farts and thinking it was high writing if they really think the way you do about these characters and their work. Wasteland is nowhere near as wacky as you make it out to be. The guardians were the only group that could be considered particularly strange because they were monk outfits and habits while using high-tech weaponry, but the entire group and the location is a means to an end, to get powerful weapons and armor so you can destroy the killer robots once and for all and that's perfectly fine. Everything you need to know about the guardians is explained in a few paragraphs in a book, lines on a screen, and the enemy portraits you see when fighting them. You're also completely missing the context. The citadel can be visited at any time during the game, but attacking it before getting the right weapons and army always ends in your death. Players will almost inevitably try their luck at various intervals at the game only to get crushed yet again. The messages the game tells you when you approach, change depending on what leg of the game you're on. Wasteland doesn't take itself too seriously, but it's not Fallout 3 or 4 levels of retardation.

No idea where you keep getting these killer tomatoes from. The only tomatoes are the ones the farmers lob at you in AG Center if you're stupid enough to go down the main path. The only enemies are giant rodents and Harry, the bunny master. Yeah, Harry is kinda funny, hee hee, ho ho and then he's dead and little else is said about it. There isn't some grandiose cult dedicated to killer rabbits in the game, there's one amusing enemy and you kill him. This kind of thing was par for the course in 80s game development, bits of light-hearted humor here and there, not entire lore dumps and factions dedicated to it.

Wasteland is The Road Warrior. Wasteland 2 is Beyond Thunderdome.

[rusty_shackleford]

Wasteland was early video game writing, they didn't have to actually try to be 'faithful' to it in specifics.

[Acrux]

Wasteland is where I learned the phrase "You've got your balls to the wall" and I was afraid my parents would see it and make me stop playing.

[weaselus]

No idea where you keep getting these killer tomatoes from.

There is a series of movies from the early nineties called "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes", "Return of the Killer Tomatoes" and so on.

[Tweed]

Wasteland is where I learned the phrase "You've got your balls to the wall" and I was afraid my parents would see it and make me stop playing.

I remember when I discovered it. My mom wasn't very happy.

[Tweed]

No idea where you keep getting these killer tomatoes from.

There is a series of movies from the early nineties called "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes", "Return of the Killer Tomatoes" and so on.

Try 70s.

[logincrash]

Wasteland is where I learned the phrase "You've got your balls to the wall" and I was afraid my parents would see it and make me stop playing.

Wasteland is where I learned the phrase "You've got your balls to the wall" and I was afraid my parents would see it and make me stop playing.

I remember when I discovered it. My mom wasn't very happy.

I first learned the word pimping from GTA San Andreas. I asked my mom what pimping was and she just stared me down and didn't answer.

[weaselus]

No idea where you keep getting these killer tomatoes from.

There is a series of movies from the early nineties called "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes", "Return of the Killer Tomatoes" and so on.

Try 70s.

Sure, the first one came out in 1976.

[Tweed]

There is a series of movies from the early nineties called "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes", "Return of the Killer Tomatoes" and so on.

Try 70s.

Sure, the first one came out in 1976.

1978.

Are you doing this on purpose?

[LemonDemonGirl]

- a satanist (American) Turk

Is he actually a satanist or are you just saying that because he's non christian?

[Decline]

- a satanist (American) Turk

Is he actually a satanist or are you just saying that because he's non christian?

There's a difference?

[Stack of Turtles]

- a satanist (American) Turk

Is he actually a satanist or are you just saying that because he's non christian?

if he's a Turk he's probably a Muslim (so yes)

[Tweed]

Finished Wasteland 2. Should be called Adventures in the Redditocalypse. As previously mentioned, most of the people you meet are irritating to the core. Girlbosses, *******, ****** girlbosses. Lots of casual faggotry that everyone turns a blind eye to in the lawless wastes, including the militant christian faction (which is really based off of some heavily altered gobbledygook that Avellone wrote up in a pre-release novella). Nothing comes together in a meaningful way and it's clear that they wanted to make it obvious as hell what was going on before the not-so-big reveal at the end. I enjoyed how my companions from their varied walks of life all seemed to be of one accord over their dislike of religion, their love of pot, and just about every other reddit-tier talking point you could think of. Also, remember the 80s? Remember the 80s? Like, dude, the 80s!

Then there's the beloved choice and consequence. You know it's going to be great when they spring this on your right out of the gate with the choice between Ag Center and Highpool. In the end I should have let them both burn. When I had a chance to make peace with Red Skorp Milita, I chose to gun them all down instead because they were annoying as **** on top of being stupid. Gave the nuke to the Diamondbacks because they were only slightly annoying compared to the le wacky suicidal monks. Also love how if you decided to take the peacenik option and disable the nuke some random new faction sweeps in and kills them all which is another thing I got sick of. Someone really, really must have been in love with the original endings for Junktown in Fallout 1 because almost every conflict resolution in Wasteland 2 has a dark TWEEST because the waste is a harsh mistress. At least I can say they weren't as predictable as the ones in Pillars of Shiternity. Also enjoyed how the best option for Hollywood and God's Militia is —of course— a middle of the road compromise to let them keep prostitution and DUDE legal while snuffing out le slavery and putting an end to nuke salt. Stronk dominatrix womyn helps Spanish Inquisition leader see the errors of his ways, a match truly made in heaven.

Combat is alright, but pretty simplistic. Stolen almost 1:1 from XCOM because everyone was stealing XCOM's combat system. Shotguns are ******* worthless, energy weapons are mostly worthless. Pistols are kind of alright because of precision shots. Snipers and assault rifles are OP. SMGs aren't great, but aren't terrible. Melee can be alright if your guys can actually reach the enemy before your other members shoot everything.

The game could have been made 50% more tolerable if my fuckers could move faster outside of combat. Getting from A to B is a trudge and there's a fuckton of backtracking.

Anyway, there it is. A le wacky, reddit-induced, nostalgia-baited slog. 15 dollars wasted.

[Roguey]

Wasteland 2 was a lot more reddit in its beta. There were something close to half a dozen arrow in the knee references that they had to take out.

[Algol]

Was playing Crusader Kings II just now, but it's boring and stupid.

[A ManWhoHateTheWoke]

I'm thinking about paying for one of these any idea or recommendation for each of these games The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered & crimson desert & about Divinity: Original Sin 2 I'm thinking to start to play this game I bought it but still never played yet is there mods to take all the *** out from the game. Thank you

[Niggler]

i haven't played games in days because i've been too depressed to even start

[Niggler]

plus i don't even enjoy anything anymore

[DrSneed]

i haven't played games in days because i've been too depressed to even start

dr fauci remix
this should cheer you up

[Niggler]

i really want to do a shadowheart romance playthrough in bg3 with the really shadowheart mod though, and thankfully hq took out the god mode ********

[Algol]

i haven't played games in days because i've been too depressed to even start

plus i don't even enjoy anything anymore

I deal with the same thing, and I have for over two decades now. Definitely challenging at times.

[A ManWhoHateTheWoke]

i really want to do a shadowheart romance playthrough in bg3 with the really shadowheart mod though, and thankfully hq took out the god mode ********

This was my fifth playthrough, and my primary goal was—honestly—to see Orin kill Halsin . I also intended to romance Minthara this time instead of Shadowheart. I played as the Dark Urge for two days with several mods installed, but after the Orin fight, the game started lagging so badly that I eventually gave up and deleted it. I’m not sure if the issue was the UI Improvement mod or the DnD - PHB 2024 - All in One mod, but whenever I tried to disable them, my save wouldn’t load and the game would crash immediately.

[Fitz]

Playing The Evil Within and started a new BG3 run. Enjoying both so far, but not investing that many hours. I'm also trying to play TEW when it's dark outside so that limits the time I can invest in it even more. I'd say I have a soft spot for horror games which I didn't appreciate until recently.

My BG3 run is an elemental monk and I'm thinking of running a party without Shadowheart in it. Or a specified healer for that matter, the short/long rest system pushes me into crafting a party with more dmg output rather than more sustain. Besides it also seems like the game wants you to long rest as much as possible so that you can progress companion dialogues and so on. I'll see how that goes, maybe I will rotate party members based on chapters - which I'm usually not a fan of doing. However, BG3 is so big and some characters seem to fit specific parts of the chapter/map better than others so it might be a good idea to do so.

I haven't finished both games before so no spoilerinos.

[DemoGraph]

I've decided to try Outer Wilds.
Best death in the first hour is jumping into geyser in tutorial crater.
Pronouns are pretty irritating. I've tried switching to Russian (in a hope of evading they/them), but I've already got accustomed to English names.

Switched to Russian after all. Didn't regret it. After 15 mins of accustomization, everything clicks together. And Russian has none of that pronoun business.

I've played for about 3-4 hours, visited all the main planets and got some secrets that I think are probably midgame? Found all the spacemen, including the guy with the fish. Didn't visit hanging city yet. Obviously, didn't farm all the POIs, even ones that could be seen from orbit.
Then the game crashed. And wiped my account together with the save. Restoring the save from the backup didn't help.
**** it, I'll watch the LP some day. Or maybe come back to it in a year or two.

I liked the feel of the game. Very Myst-like. Spaceship planks are cute. Undercity reminded me of the one from the Thief series. I still wonder what exactly made you stuck in a loop - I hope that it's not some handwaving.
I really didn't like that all the planets are superspecial - there're literally no ordinary dustballs there, everything is gimmicky. Also not a fan of 20-minute wipes. I also found that sometimes killing yourself is faster than moving the ordinary way; I think it's bad; dunno, maybe it has some additional meaning in the plot.

The game made me want to play KSP again.

tl;dr I've dropped it. Still, it's a nice adventure game. Recommended.

Finished Outer Wilds. Liked it.

► spoilers inside

Srsly spoilers. This is a final warning - you want to play this game blind.

► Show Spoiler

I liked playing it. Liked destroying the fabric of spacetime.
But I've realized that the game left me with a mixed aftertaste.

I liked the locations. They stand out. They're at least as memorable as the sunken forest from Myst, Morrowind mushrooms, etc.
I disliked the locations, because everything is a special snowflake. There's no ordinary dust ball.
The location I liked the most is the endless river. Because it's the most ordinary looking, but also an obviously alien, one. (And I'm pretty sure it was stolen from Hyperion).

Significant part of content seems to be extraneous.
I didn't actually need all that running around the fossil to intuit how to evade the fishes. I actually reached both the jaw spacer and the ship before I even found the fossil riddle!
The same is true for planetary teleporters. All you have to do to solve them is to realize that the ceilings are similar to the one on white hole station. You might not realize what the hell are you doing, but you can reach the core pretty easily.
OTOH, I've really struggled with "against the current", because I just couldn't believe that the riddle is a play on the words (because medusas were supposed to be electrical and the storms were sometimes electrical, etc.). So I dunno. On the one hand I like that the game could be finished in 15 minutes, if you know what you're doing, on the other - come on, all that skippable content is just that, skippable.
To contrast, the Witness forced you to play through the majority of its riddles, but it mechanically triggered the proper zone accesses. Yes, it's more obtuse. But at least you see that you've flipped that switch and it did... something.
Also, the first location I've travelled was radio tower. I looked at the photos and didn't see the most obvious thing. I thought that the strangest thing was that tiny speck of quantum moon that jumped places.
So maybe it's not extraneous. But it feels so.
(I actually finished the game without realizing that DLC is there at all. I had to google to find that radio station was added in DLC and only then it clicked.)

I liked the aliens. They're pretty detailed.
I disliked the aliens due to them having Oblivion-like plastic-looking everything. Also, nobody is really harsh or violent in the game. Even the owlbears never really try to harm you. And time loop makes it so that protag shouldn't be afraid of anything. So there's no real sense of danger.

I liked the plot for its themes. I liked the details.
Chekhov's sun was very impressive for the first time.
I disliked that the authors stack improbabilities too much. "Everything is a special snowflake." And why the hell all the stars are chekhovs? Is it only to add more drama?

I generally don't like time loops. They're dumb if only because the hero risks nothing in the groundhog day. When I play an ordinary game, and I have to reload, I feel like I failed, even if a little bit. Looping makes the failure meaningless. Dying is meaningless. The only meaningful thing is to drop the game and go play with your kid.
I actually had very disturbing impressions from black hole and ocean giant. Because they're ******* violent and are there to kill you. But then it turned out that black hole is but a slight inconvenience and those goddamn giant tornados don't tear your ship to smithereens, and don't even tear your unprotected *** to smithereens, and its all a groundhog day in the end, so... well... they turned into nuisance.
Black hole is but an inconvenience, kids! Think about it! What the ****, devs.

The only side of the game that I can't criticize is the music.
"Space" resembles everything "Thomas Was Alone" (and it's a good thing).
"Sun Station" is like properly being protected from, but still absentmindenly scraped by, the star almighty.
"End Times" - "Final Voyage" diptych is properly epic.
"The Search", "Campfire Song", "The River" are just nice.

On a kinda unrelated note, I find it pretty interesting that the universe tends to sometimes just shove me the answers to questions I posit.
I've stumbled upon OW completely randomly, on a hunch, after looking at a random video for a minute. And then, at the same day, my buddy told me that he finished it after several years long pause and advises it to me.
Turns out, the existential themes in the game were conducive to the themes I've been thinking about for some time already. The message of the game wasn't the answer I'd give (and wasn't even about the question I asked), but it was pretty thought provoking. Half a year ago it would've been of little value for me (as well as, I suspect, it will be a few months from now on). So the timing, and theming, was completely random, but spot on.
Thanks, Universe. You're a kind one.

nullSector's reaction made me recall something about Outer Wilds.
spoilers inside

► Show Spoiler

If you look at the stars as they're dying, most of them go nova. But some just disappear.
I thought that it shouldn't be possible, because IIRC small stars should first turn into white dwarves that keep on shining basically indefinitely and then fizzle out.
So either I don't know something about modern views on stellar lifecycle, or something fishy is going on. Because many stars that go out are definitely yellow (as opposed to red- or white-hued white dwarves).
I've googled a bit, and I didn't find any explanation of a) why all the stars in the game die and b) they do it in a way that their light reaches the Eye at approximately the same time and c) some stars don't go nova.