Iprovidelittlepianos
Vault Senior Citizen
I remember playing New Vegas on the 360 when it came out and not really running into many bugs other than some crashes around the Strip.
What are some of your unpopular opinions?
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Vault Senior Citizen
Norzan
Half-way Through My Half-life
The giant difference is that New Vegas had how much development time, 18 months? Meanwhile how many years Cyberpunk 2077 had? Most likely several given how the last DLC for Witcher 3 came out in 2016 (and they had already showed Cyberpunk stuff before Witcher 3 even came out).
Plus Cyberpunk got delayed a bunch of times and still came out like shit. Obsidian got given next to no time and a garbage version of Gamebryo.
Plus Cyberpunk got delayed a bunch of times and still came out like shit. Obsidian got given next to no time and a garbage version of Gamebryo.
PaxVenire
Water Chip? Been There, Done That
Fallout Tactics is underrated in a lot of ways, and a very fun game, but set a bad precedent for the reuse of iconography in regions stuff shouldn't be in. The BoS having an airship is stupid, them chasing the mutants across the country is stupid, the justification of them being exiled from Lost Hills but allowed to keep some of the most advanced tech the BoS have (Power Armor, weapons/ammunition, a fucking working airship) is stupid. Just a lot of stupidity all around.
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Mr Fish
Slippy sloppy, The
Now that I'm a fair way through BG3 I gotta say that I don't really find it that much more impressive than DOS2 was. It's certainly better than any other contemporary AAA game when it comes to RPG mechanics and choices but it doesn't really benefit from being a AAA game itself. All we got was bloatware really. A cRPG with fancy cinematic dialogue. 150GB please.
I gotta say that when it comes to how the combat handles and flows I remember DOS2 being way better structured. Now it's been a while since I played DOS2 so my memory is a bit foggy on this but from what I remember your abilities kinda reset with each encounter so you have your full arsenal with you but in BG3 with the long rest and the short rest and the cantrips and the per encounter and bla bla bla it just turns into a confusing mess where I almost feel obligated to return to camp for a long rest constantly, and having to deal with that hassle is just irritating.
And again, as with every single game that tries this: It's a cute idea that you want every character in the game to be a character, to have a name, to have dialogue and be talkable to and not give generic popup dialogue over their heads but the end result is that I have no idea who the fuck I'm supposed to talk to that matters and actually gives me a quest or a service or say anything worth a damn lore-wise. How does it REALLY benefit the game's narrative flow that generic NPC #17 is now called Yor-Gak and you talk to them and they get cinematic view with a full voice actor who says a line or two to which you get zero dialogue options to react to (yknow, roleplay?)? And this is every NPC. Every single fucking one of them.
I've started just filtering NPC's and basically only talk to recurring characters that I know of, or characters that are signpost placed in a way that they look like they might be important, or outright characters that have a big ol quest marker stapled to their ass. Everyone else? Redundant waste of time. The game is bloated with content enough as it is.
The problem that I have with this kind of design is that it is confusing the player as to who you should even talk to when the end result is... Well it's just generic dialogue innit? It's clicking on a wastelander in Fallout and getting some generic pop up dialogue over their head. You can't respond to it. You're not having a conversation. It's not leading anywhere. They're not a part of any quest or interactive element. It's just pop up dialogue. Except every generic line from a wastelander now has a Master talking head and voice actor. And it gives a false impression that the character matters, but then after 1 or 2 lines delivered the cinematic dialogue cuts out and you go "oh, you're useless" and that's what? 90% of the NPC's? have fun sifting through that. It throws the pacing of the narrative structure of the game off as well, maybe others are better at compartmentalizing these things but it all just starts to clutter up in my brain.
How much of that 150GB was wasted on animations, audio files for dialogue lines and high texture faces where you can see the pores on a peasant? Is that really an improvement to you? If so then it doesn't sound like you want to play a cRPG it sounds you want to watch Netflix.
People tout how big the game is but as is the case with any big game there comes a point when things are just too damn big.
And that's this game. I looked it up first because I was curious as to how I would go about dividing the game up into parts so I'd know how much progress I'd made through the game after the first open region just didn't fucking end and kept going and the game is divided up into 3 Acts. By the time I was "done with act 1" (meaning completed enough of the main story to progress on comfortably) there were two underground regions that I just flat out didn't even explore because when I moved the camera to see how much there was to them my eyes bulged with shock at how fucking massive they were and... I just didn't wanna do it.
Look, I get bored. I can enjoy doing THIIIING(tm) for a while, but then it's time to move on. when THIIIING(tm) instead turns into THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIxIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING(tm) then I get bored at the x mark. If you absolutely LOVE the exploration and the combat system and the whats nots then I guess more dungeon delving for you! But this isn't any different to me than a Bethesda dungeon at this point. It just never ends does it?
I've started looking at games through a different lens in the past year or so; Pacing and structure. A boomer shooter could have 1 room with 1 enemy and the level is done. Is that fast paced? Yep, very, too fast paced. A boomer shooter can also have 100 rooms with 50-200 enemies in each. Also not good pacing. A game, any game, needs a bit of "faffing about" to draw out the game. An excuse to let the player just engage with the interactive elements. That's what they're here for after all. But there comes a point where the drip-feed of fun gets watered down. When you just stop caring. At the start of the game you're broke! Any money is good money! But then you get money, and now the game tries to lure you on with more money but... There's nothing to buy anymore. Nothing of note at least. So what's the point? Collect money for the sake of collecting money?
Structure is hard to explain but it depends on how well something is put together. Everyone knows of buying some tool that they thought would be easy to use but the tool has some design quirk to it that makes it kind of a chore to deal with. Well that's part of structure. Or when a narrative is supposed to flow from A to B to C it instead flows as A but then also A1 and K12 and 982 and 11 and /ks=}// to B to A again to B to 62 to A2 to B2 to C. If this was a movie then we'd go from the detective being shot at by some hidden assailant who got away to suddenly dealing with the problem of the hole in the shoe and the goldfish problem to going to nana for some tea only to suddenly go "HOLY SHIT WHO SHOT AT ME!?" Like...What? And that's the problem with a lot of video games but RPG's can be especially bad at this.
The flow of... Everything, is just off by there being too much of it. A sandwich with so much crap on it and so many clashing flavors that your tastebuds can't really make sense of anything.
I just... I'm tired of picking up loot. Most of it isn't worth a damn and is just micro-rewards. Here, pick this thing up that is worth 12 gold so you can afford potions at the trader later. Ugh. I'm tired of talking to NPC's and figuring out who is who. I'm tired of the limiting combat that feels like if I indulge in anything then I'll have to deal with the rest mechanic AGAIN for the UMPTEENTH time. I'm tired of exploring another nook only to see the map extend onwards for half a mile.
The game is massive! Yeah, it sure is. When I eat pancakes I like to have jam on them. I don't pour out the entire content of a jar of jam onto the pancakes however because it would be too much jam. This game is too much jam. And it comes at the expense of the game's structure and pacing. In act 2 I was talked to by a certain fellow of demonic persuasion who told me "yo, dude, I know I'm fucking with you a lot but this is serious, you should not go inside of here... Seriously do not do it... I'm putting on my serious face, you can't do this, even I am scared of what's inside of here and if you do decide to ignore my warning and go in anyway, KILL IT, be swift, act quickly and KILL IT"
And I'm like, "...Aight" and so I go inside. And after fuddling around a bit I come across someone that appears to be quite uh... Quite the fellow. And I kill him. But there is no big fan fare. Demonic dude didn't pop up to high five me or anything. And the dude that I just killed said he was here for an important artifact (story important) so I decide to look around some more. And it's another fucking mega dungeon. It just doesn't end. And the further I explore the further away the demon dude at the start of the dungeon telling me about the big scary I stray. And at a certain point I even have to ask myself "wait, why am I here?" and I have to retrace my steps to consider why I'm even bothering with this place to begin with.
Did I kill big scary or was that just some other dude? No idea. Where is the artifact and am I actually progressing towards it? No idea. Is the past 3 rooms I scoured redundancy? How would I know?
And that's BG3.
Man this post went on for a while huh, my coffee got cold.
Anyway. It's a better RPG than most RPG's are because, well, Larian makes actual proper RPG's. But this fanfare of how amazing it is is completely overblown. It's an unstructured, horribly paced bloat of game. It's so big and fat that it can't move properly. And DOS2's combat is better.
If I have a choice between what RPG to play BG3 isn't going to be at the top of the list.
But hey, bear sex.
I gotta say that when it comes to how the combat handles and flows I remember DOS2 being way better structured. Now it's been a while since I played DOS2 so my memory is a bit foggy on this but from what I remember your abilities kinda reset with each encounter so you have your full arsenal with you but in BG3 with the long rest and the short rest and the cantrips and the per encounter and bla bla bla it just turns into a confusing mess where I almost feel obligated to return to camp for a long rest constantly, and having to deal with that hassle is just irritating.
And again, as with every single game that tries this: It's a cute idea that you want every character in the game to be a character, to have a name, to have dialogue and be talkable to and not give generic popup dialogue over their heads but the end result is that I have no idea who the fuck I'm supposed to talk to that matters and actually gives me a quest or a service or say anything worth a damn lore-wise. How does it REALLY benefit the game's narrative flow that generic NPC #17 is now called Yor-Gak and you talk to them and they get cinematic view with a full voice actor who says a line or two to which you get zero dialogue options to react to (yknow, roleplay?)? And this is every NPC. Every single fucking one of them.
I've started just filtering NPC's and basically only talk to recurring characters that I know of, or characters that are signpost placed in a way that they look like they might be important, or outright characters that have a big ol quest marker stapled to their ass. Everyone else? Redundant waste of time. The game is bloated with content enough as it is.
The problem that I have with this kind of design is that it is confusing the player as to who you should even talk to when the end result is... Well it's just generic dialogue innit? It's clicking on a wastelander in Fallout and getting some generic pop up dialogue over their head. You can't respond to it. You're not having a conversation. It's not leading anywhere. They're not a part of any quest or interactive element. It's just pop up dialogue. Except every generic line from a wastelander now has a Master talking head and voice actor. And it gives a false impression that the character matters, but then after 1 or 2 lines delivered the cinematic dialogue cuts out and you go "oh, you're useless" and that's what? 90% of the NPC's? have fun sifting through that. It throws the pacing of the narrative structure of the game off as well, maybe others are better at compartmentalizing these things but it all just starts to clutter up in my brain.
How much of that 150GB was wasted on animations, audio files for dialogue lines and high texture faces where you can see the pores on a peasant? Is that really an improvement to you? If so then it doesn't sound like you want to play a cRPG it sounds you want to watch Netflix.
People tout how big the game is but as is the case with any big game there comes a point when things are just too damn big.
And that's this game. I looked it up first because I was curious as to how I would go about dividing the game up into parts so I'd know how much progress I'd made through the game after the first open region just didn't fucking end and kept going and the game is divided up into 3 Acts. By the time I was "done with act 1" (meaning completed enough of the main story to progress on comfortably) there were two underground regions that I just flat out didn't even explore because when I moved the camera to see how much there was to them my eyes bulged with shock at how fucking massive they were and... I just didn't wanna do it.
Look, I get bored. I can enjoy doing THIIIING(tm) for a while, but then it's time to move on. when THIIIING(tm) instead turns into THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIxIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING(tm) then I get bored at the x mark. If you absolutely LOVE the exploration and the combat system and the whats nots then I guess more dungeon delving for you! But this isn't any different to me than a Bethesda dungeon at this point. It just never ends does it?
I've started looking at games through a different lens in the past year or so; Pacing and structure. A boomer shooter could have 1 room with 1 enemy and the level is done. Is that fast paced? Yep, very, too fast paced. A boomer shooter can also have 100 rooms with 50-200 enemies in each. Also not good pacing. A game, any game, needs a bit of "faffing about" to draw out the game. An excuse to let the player just engage with the interactive elements. That's what they're here for after all. But there comes a point where the drip-feed of fun gets watered down. When you just stop caring. At the start of the game you're broke! Any money is good money! But then you get money, and now the game tries to lure you on with more money but... There's nothing to buy anymore. Nothing of note at least. So what's the point? Collect money for the sake of collecting money?
Structure is hard to explain but it depends on how well something is put together. Everyone knows of buying some tool that they thought would be easy to use but the tool has some design quirk to it that makes it kind of a chore to deal with. Well that's part of structure. Or when a narrative is supposed to flow from A to B to C it instead flows as A but then also A1 and K12 and 982 and 11 and /ks=}// to B to A again to B to 62 to A2 to B2 to C. If this was a movie then we'd go from the detective being shot at by some hidden assailant who got away to suddenly dealing with the problem of the hole in the shoe and the goldfish problem to going to nana for some tea only to suddenly go "HOLY SHIT WHO SHOT AT ME!?" Like...What? And that's the problem with a lot of video games but RPG's can be especially bad at this.
The flow of... Everything, is just off by there being too much of it. A sandwich with so much crap on it and so many clashing flavors that your tastebuds can't really make sense of anything.
I just... I'm tired of picking up loot. Most of it isn't worth a damn and is just micro-rewards. Here, pick this thing up that is worth 12 gold so you can afford potions at the trader later. Ugh. I'm tired of talking to NPC's and figuring out who is who. I'm tired of the limiting combat that feels like if I indulge in anything then I'll have to deal with the rest mechanic AGAIN for the UMPTEENTH time. I'm tired of exploring another nook only to see the map extend onwards for half a mile.
The game is massive! Yeah, it sure is. When I eat pancakes I like to have jam on them. I don't pour out the entire content of a jar of jam onto the pancakes however because it would be too much jam. This game is too much jam. And it comes at the expense of the game's structure and pacing. In act 2 I was talked to by a certain fellow of demonic persuasion who told me "yo, dude, I know I'm fucking with you a lot but this is serious, you should not go inside of here... Seriously do not do it... I'm putting on my serious face, you can't do this, even I am scared of what's inside of here and if you do decide to ignore my warning and go in anyway, KILL IT, be swift, act quickly and KILL IT"
And I'm like, "...Aight" and so I go inside. And after fuddling around a bit I come across someone that appears to be quite uh... Quite the fellow. And I kill him. But there is no big fan fare. Demonic dude didn't pop up to high five me or anything. And the dude that I just killed said he was here for an important artifact (story important) so I decide to look around some more. And it's another fucking mega dungeon. It just doesn't end. And the further I explore the further away the demon dude at the start of the dungeon telling me about the big scary I stray. And at a certain point I even have to ask myself "wait, why am I here?" and I have to retrace my steps to consider why I'm even bothering with this place to begin with.
Did I kill big scary or was that just some other dude? No idea. Where is the artifact and am I actually progressing towards it? No idea. Is the past 3 rooms I scoured redundancy? How would I know?
And that's BG3.
Man this post went on for a while huh, my coffee got cold.
Anyway. It's a better RPG than most RPG's are because, well, Larian makes actual proper RPG's. But this fanfare of how amazing it is is completely overblown. It's an unstructured, horribly paced bloat of game. It's so big and fat that it can't move properly. And DOS2's combat is better.
If I have a choice between what RPG to play BG3 isn't going to be at the top of the list.
But hey, bear sex.
Sn1p3r187
Carolinian Shaolin Monk
Yep. The problem with Cyberpunk is literally CDPR overhyped the game to high hell and when it came to it was a disaster. But i give some credit where due. They had a lot of investors behind them and the funds to fix the game. I dont think Obsidian had such pleasures. Which is all the more upsetting
Tenebris
It Wandered In From the Wastes
more than 7 years to my knowledge, probably they had small team working on it until the witcher 3 release
Sn1p3r187
Carolinian Shaolin Monk
Yep. Which is crazy, they only really started working on the game in 2016. So they teased for 3 years, and got accused of sitting on their asses for 4 years and changing things greatly in 2018 when Keanu Reeves got on board and then they crunched themselves to meet deadline in 2020. Having good investors and funding was probably a good chunk of the reason they were able to run it on a great engine and had a map as huge as it was. But god that release was a disaster. It isn't even just FNV for Obsidian, it was the same with KOTOR 2 and Neverwinter Nights 2. I'm starting to think Obsidian is cursed to work with rushed sequels where the main publisher is going crunch them hard and hang them to to dry at this point.
Norzan
Half-way Through My Half-life
That's all you need to impress the masses. The standards are so low that a RPG with actually mostly basic stuff that veterans expect from a RPG gets lauded by the normies because they are used to Bethesda grade slop of over-simplified RPGs.
Actual finished New Vegas is one of my dream games that will never come to life.
Mr Fish
Slippy sloppy, The
I can't really blame them to be honest. If you grew up and all you've known is low quality garbage then if a AAA game suddenly shows you how good a normal cRPG could be it'd blow your mind. Like, you're not born with an innate knowledge or what is good and what isn't. If all you're shown is dogshit then that's your barometer of quality.
But yeah, this is basically a normie game. It's not that spectacular as it is made out to be. It's just what we'd expect out a quality cRPG.
And I mean that is still good. It is what we want. It has reactivity to your race, skills, abilities, actions, personality etc. But... Basically it is only "OMYGOSH" to the normies. Any regular cRPG fan will see it as just another cRPG.
In my case, it's kind of a bloatware cRPG, but still a good cRPG.
I'd prefer to play Arcanum or DOS 1/2, but whatever.
Sn1p3r187
Carolinian Shaolin Monk
Same here man. Just makes me sad thinking about it some days. What could've been. Only way to amend it in 2025 is Bethesda giving them tools to remake it. But having a bigger team and more time to finish, oh and a bigger wallet. If they let me tack it I'd definitely make the map a shitton bigger, make charisma a more useful stat, more interactive areas in game, more companion depth and tactics, better AI, the whole 9 yards