Honestly, ToyBox has to be required at this point.

There is no way I could do multiple runs without it, particularly the ability to boost world travel speed by X.

There's also fun features that make playthroughs a true delight. Multiplying feats per level, allowing crazy RP build by removing some restrictions and the all important unlock all mythic paths and get to lvl 20/10 to basically get the character builder i wish i could just have on my phone...

 

Metroid Dread is awesome.

It's kicking my ass, but the way checkpoints work around EMMI zones take the chore out of running back to the area after a death. I'm terrible at metroidvania style games, and as a result don't like them very much, but I'm having a blast with this.

It's also a gorgeous game, which helps. Best looking 2d side scroller since Hollow Knight.

 

Dunno where else to post this, but Joseph Anderson's long awaited Witcher 3 video is finally coming December/ Jan


It's over 8 hours long lol

 

It's been a few years. But I had almost forgotten how magnificent Dragon Age Origins is. Goddamn what an experience

 

I need to do a run myself. Maybe as something other than Human Noble for a change.

 

I'm doing an elvish mage who is in lust with Morrigan atm. I'm an asshole in game for my first re-run in a long time. Stop the blight. No matter the cost. My next one will be a Dalish rogue. I remember fuck all of that origin

 

I did that once. I had a lot of fun with it. Particularly siding with the werewolves.

 

Great game. The expansion was great as well. Makes me wonder how the fuck they went from that to Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition.

 

I played DA2 once. I barely remember it.

I won't lie however. I have hundreds and hundreds of hours in Inquisition and loved it.

It's going to be interesting to see of Golems of Amgarrak is as boring and tedious as I remember. I do remember that the items are godtier though. The blood magic belt, the OP mace, and the necklace.

 

Unless you're going Arcane Warrior, that will probably be tough sledding as a mage. Too many golems throwing rocks, never mind the Harvester at the end.

 

Of everything in the game, I DO remember how fuck-all-overpowered-broken Blood Mage/Arcane Warrior is. You can be damn fuckin' skippy I'll be doing that on this nightmare run.

It fits lore-wise too. Resorting to blood magic after seeing the power Jowan employed, even being barely an initiate in the bloody arts, on his escape from Kinloch Hold, knowing that might be the answer to the darkspawn. The host at Ostagar was betrayed, sure, but the horde outnumbered Cailan's army 3-to-1. Then there's the archdemon to consider - Urthemiel wasn't even at Ostagar.

Then discovering arcane warriory in the Brecillian forest, embracing your heritage. Let's go

 

By being forced to make DA2 in about a year. The development hell they must've been in is insane. The resulting game is actually pretty good considering the circumstances.

And Inquisition isn't a bad game. Just a different one then Origins that had it's own fair share of troubles. Instead of trying to emulate infinity engine games of the past it draws more heavily from modern rpgs and mmos. Unlike Origins, it prioritizes consoles instead of PC. So the general experience will feel a lot different. EA also forced them to use Fostbite which lead to it's on set of issues.

And, one can't forget, they got high on their own supply of "Bioware Magic".

 

You would have a point, if not for the huge amount of MMO fetch quests and real-time War Table bullshit. "Awesome-button combat" was the least of that games problems.

 

I will stan Inquisition until the day I die. Game is glorious. I ignored every fetch quest that was not necessary to unlock better quests/combat (which was most of them), and while the War Table was definitely shitty, there is an easy bypass that they never bothered patching.

On that note, I'm super excited for DA 4 (assuming I can ever get a PS5 because it's supposed to be 9th gen exclusive).

 

Err, maybe pump them hype brakes. That game is in dev hell, they just lost another of their senior devs (head of art or something?), and the way he left smells very MeToo to me.

Decades at BioWare, and not even a thank you with his 'leaving.'

Even if we see something at the VGAs, I'm just not confident bioware isn't about to be disappeared...

And honestly, how hard are you actually trying to get a PS5? I have half a dozen friends and family that were each able to get one (ages ago), and this is in Australia. I doubt we're high on the priority list for stock allocations.

 

Eh, Inquisition was padded out much more than it should have been. For example, I was finished with the main story and at max level/gear/etc with no real way to better my character before I'd ever set foot in either of the final two zones. They could have been removed entirely and I wouldn't have even noticed, other than being done with the game ~6 hours sooner, and that says terrible things about the overall level design.

And that's without how it bent over backwards trying to justify the aggressively unnecessary and game-worsening mission table so that EA had an excuse to drive "mobile engagement".

Even with that though, Inquisition was still an excellent game. There's a fantastic RPG in there, with good writing, solid-to-excellent combat and encounter design, and decent progression/leveling systems. The character roster wasn't nearly as good as Origins, but it beat the shit out of DA2 and was solidly average for a Bioware game, which is/was still miles better than the average for the industry. If they'd dialed back the "single-player MMO" design for the zones in favor of something a bit more traditional and left out that god-awful table, Inquisition would be one of the greatest RPGs ever made. As it is, it's merely excellent.

DA4 though is totally doomed. After everything that game's development has gone through, there's a precisely 0% chance anything good will come of it. We're looking at Mass Effect: Andromeda-tier at best, which is pretty shit (and I say that as a massive Andromeda stan), and more likely Cyberpunk or No Man's Sky level failure. Folks should really try to keep the hype under control.

 

No thanks. I will continue to be hyped because it's Dragon Age.

I'm not so dedicated that I'm going to go physically wait in line for one, and I'm certainly not going to pay a scalper. But I'm following PS5 stock alerts on twitter. I do all the Best Buy / Amazon drops when I see them (they are gone in under 2 minutes every time) as well as PS direct random placement queues (they have 2 hour waits and then they're sold out when you finally get in), and I'm also registered for the new PS Direct pool where Sony directly selects you via your PSN and sends you an email to reserve a console (no offer as of yet).

So yeah. Going pretty hard for about 6 months now. Being in Australia probably helped your friends and family get them to be honest. There is less stock available yes, but the 10x smaller population means far fewer purchasing bots snapping up all the stock.

I don't think you can really understand how aggressive the US purchase bots are for these consoles unless you've been trying to buy one in a major metro area here.

 

I FINALLY GOT A PS5.

Fucking hell what a monumental hassle that was. I noticed that Walmart has been getting almost weekly drops this last month for their paid members, so I bit the bullet and subscribed.

15 extra bucks for a month of Walmart+ (I need to remember to cancel it), but I got into the queue literally the split second it went live and my wait was only 20 minutes as opposed to hours.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

 

My friend pre-ordered an Xbox Series X back when they first released. He didn't really care enough to go shopping around and cut down on wait time, and last I heard they were still projecting about a year and a half before he would finally get it, which would place the delivery date well over 2 years after the initial release date.

 

To everyone still trying for a console in the US, it's a recent thing, probably ongoing since mid October-ish, but almost all the major retailers are now giving relatively frequent priority/exclusive access to new restocks to people in their paid rewards programs (Walmart+, BestBuy's TotalTech, Prime membership, GameStop's PowerUp pro membership---- God we really are living in that Post Covid South Park special).

Follow @PS5StockAlerts on the Twatter. The tweet notifications for restocks that pop up right when the queues go live are absolutely worthless. The websites will all crash and the queue times will be ridiculous. But there will occasionally be a warning tweet telling you a console drop is going to go live in ____ minutes for ____ members. Those are the one's you want to try for.