Right, CK2 story-time again, once more with the AGoT mod, albeit playing as Robb Stark in A Clash of Kings period.

Straight from the start, I had Robb marry Roslin Frey, who proved to be able to conceive just when he looked at her since barely two months into the marriage she announced she was pregnant with his child. She gave him Jon and Eddard, the latter being born a scant month after Robb managed to get himself killed.

Oh right, I didn't elaborate on what happened before that. See, when you start up playing ACoK, Balon also immediately starts his invasion of the North, so I had to temporarily ignore the Riverlands getting raped to hell and back, nothing new for them really at this point, in order to repel his invasion. What happened was even better, since Balon Grejoy himself was leading his army and Robb killed him in combat when they found each other. I had also beaten other Ironborn armies, thus I was able to enforce my demands, which in the end were making Theon, the new Ironborn leader, and his merry bunch into my vassals.

When I did go back south, it turned out the situation wasn't that bad at all, maybe 3 or 4 provinces were being plundered, and even that was with protracted sieges going on. As a precaution, I had Jaime executed, before I went into battle. It really didn't take that long to beat Joffrey's armies before I had him begging for peace and agreeing to my demands, which were basically the North gaining its independence and Sansa coming back. Right after Sansa came back, Arya emerged from Harrenhal and everything seemed to be smooth sailing from here on.

Then a peasant revolt happened. Some lowborn, Scrounge McPotato, killed Robb in personal combat. I honestly couldn't believe this shit. I had him survive two wars, but he got done in by a potato peeler. Apparently even the game thinks Robb surviving the clash of kings is an aberration that ought to be corrected.

I really thought about quitting so soon into the game, but then it started getting interesting. Sansa started plotting against Jon, Robb's heir, who was at the time in Regent mode because he was 5 years old at the time. It just started out as those plots to disprove his legitimacy, hell I checked anyway with 'charinfo 1' in the console to see if her suspicions were baseless and they were, but then the lemoncake-obsessed bitch then started trying to kill Jon, so I had her imprisoned, tried and executed shortly after. Arya was a good aunt on the other hand, whom I had married in a matrilineal way to a Karstark, with whom she proceeded to have six little kids that went on to become one of the more notable Jon loyalists in years to come.

In the background, there was some interesting stuff going on, like Roose Bolton killing Ramsey shortly after he married Barbrey Dustin, who proceeded to give him seven children, 3 boys and 4 girls, of which I had killed 2 sons and 3 girls. Never fancied having too much Boltons around, most certainly not when I'm playing as a Stark. I made certain I arranged a matrilineal marriage for his only son later on, thus insuring the Bolton line would die out.

Let's see, what happened next.... oh, right! I completely forgot in game that I had betrothed Robb's heir to Joffrey's only daughter from his very brief marriage to Margaery Tyrell, and I have no clue why it was accepted since she was the only child from that marriage, and thus the heir to the Iron Throne. Tyta Lannister. I really should have known better.

When Joffrey so conveniently decided to drop dead under suspicious circumstances, I arranged a marriage between Brandon Stark and Margaery, in order to placate Jon's uncle who seemed to be heading down the same path Sansa was, but with the marriage and High Lordship of Dreadfort that I gave to him, he seemed to be placated sufficiently for the time being. Rickon was a good fellow and married Osha, that wildling who took care of him when he was still a small child, and never made any problems for me.

As the years passed by, until Jon grew up enough to marry and no longer have a regent, nothing of interest happened and I was starting to get bored. But when Jon married, things started getting interesting, because Queen Tyta asked for my help in several uprisings against her: an uprising of R'hllor from Dragonstone, a war for independence from Dorne and Mace Tyrell's rebellion over some petty slight. All three were put down, Margaery was installed as Lady Paramount, with her husband, Brandon Stark, now being Lord Paramount of the Reach.

Then Jon started having children with Tyta. He had eight of them in grand total, 2 of which were converted to Drowned God religion, 1 was a Moonsinger, 1 was a Warlock, 3 were R'hllor's faithful and only the heir followed the Old Gods.

Then Tyta got pregnant again. Except it wasn't Jon's. Fast forward some 15-16 years, all filled with me killing Tyta's bastard children, kidnapping her lovers and castrating them, and marrying each and every one of my trueborn children to various great houses of Westeros.

My first son and heir, Edwyle, I married off to the Velaryon's only daughter, while two of my daughters, Lyanna and Rowena, married his sons in matrilineal marriages.

My second son, Roose, married a Lannister, Tyrion's only child, thus insuring a Stark would be Lord Paramount of the Westerlands eventually. I had to kill off the Lannister whore's lovers and bastard children first though, before I got rid of her too.

My third son married Shireen Baratheon, who hadn't been in charge of the Stormlands for quite some time now since her father had been killed in personal combat, but I eventually plotted, killed and started wars over regaining the Stormlands for her and her childrens', all Starks of course, claim.

My fourth son married Dyna Tyrell, only child of Garlan Tyrell, and she eventually inherited the Lady Paramount title, along with my son, after I dealt with Jon's upstart uncle, Brandon, and his scheming wife by castrating him, blinding her and killing off all six of their children. Hey, don't look at me like that, Brandon Stark was 80% on the threat list in Intrigue, he regularly tried plotting against my various allies up in the North and enough was enough.

One daughter married a Prince of Dorne and the last one married a Manderly.

The one funny thing about this whole mess is Edmure Tully contacting me near-instantly after each of my sons' births, to arrange a marriage for his daughter who would be their senior by several years for the first one and two decades for the last boy. Naturally, I refused.

Eventually I got around to killing Tyta, because really I never planned on letting her live all that long enough, my son would make for a better King anyway, and I think it was her being captured by bandits on the road or something like that. Thus my son sat on the Iron Throne. For about 10 years before I decided enough was enough and I waged war against my son, deposing him as King and installing myself in his place.

Jon remarried, this time to Myrcella Lannister, who turned out to be the most faithful wife apparently, the nicest Lannister of the whole bunch really, and she gave me four children before dying in childbirth with our last, whom I named for her.

Edmure apparently got sick and tired of my rejections and tried proclaiming the Riverlands his own kingdom, for which I squashed him like a little bug, making sure to capture and kill every single character with the name of Tully, thus insuring a better suited ruler for the lands. That being one of my many sons.

Oh and I can't remember how it even happened but I apparently legalized First Night and happened to sire a number of bastards with other people's wives. Whoops?

From here on, there wasn't that much fun stuff going on, occasionally one of the Essos republics asked me to help them put an embargo on Pentos and Myr, so I quit the game here and then, because it really couldn't get more interesting.

For the next round, I'll probably roll as Jon Snow during AFFC, since that's when he gets offered the North from Stannis and Val as his wife. Should be fun, I think.

 

So, I just installed DawnGate. Another MOBA.
Its not bad. While EA touts the stuff as new concept...its really not. Its simply a 2 lane MOBA.
Is anyone on DLP playing this?

 

On a bit of a kick for it at the moment, along with six or so other people. My I.D. is the same there, of course.

 

Nice. My ID is Wilde_Trooper. I'll add you.

 

So, Gamespot are doing a week long feature of No Man's Sky.

Watch it, it's amazing and answers a lot of questions.

 

Divinity : Original Sin is bretty gud. I'm 60 hours in and still haven't finished the main campaign yet.

 

It reminds me a lot of NWN when I see people playing, which is fine, but I never found them fun to play. They never felt good.

Is that an accurate comparison in game styles?

 

I've heard it's a lot like Baldur's Gate.

I really, really want to play it, but 40 dollars is too high for me. Absolutely going to grab it the moment it's on sale somewhere, though.

 

Bioware just put out a survey basically asking what we want from Mass Effect 4 and I was wondering what people actually do want from it.

For me its the story, I think they have an opportunity to steer away from the soldier type character. With the ending where all the Mass Relays are destroyed we could play as a Salarian scientist sent out with a team of his choosing to go out and try and fix the major relays.

This way we can visit different planets and alien cultures where we'll have to convince them to help and come back to the fold to those who have gotten used to being alone and don't want to be part of the whole galactic civilizations again. Reclaim vital planets or resources, hunt for other alternatives to travel.

Hopefully the main character should be an alien or we should have the choice to choose an alien as our character.

 

I wouldn't even look at it if the PC isn't human. That's me, though. The guy weirded out by people romancing lizard/bird/predator looking humanoids.

 

Really? Why?

 

It is nothing like NWN. I would know, I've played NWN and NWN2. Both are unabashedly mediocre games with slightly-less-than-mediocre expansions to make up for their drab main campaign.

Divinity Original Sin is basically this: You fight enemies (usually) exceptionally strong, you need to defeat them by taking advantage of crowd control or exploiting their weaknesses. The game's strength is your ability to control the environment, you can freeze the ground, run electric current through it, ignite/explode stuff, or put poison gas in the air. Poison gas explodes, synergizing with fire. Rain prevents explosions and strengthens shock/freeze, fire creates smoke which can be made charged with electrcity... And then you have thieves which can stun/charm/trip and deal high damage from behind (making them terrible front-line fighters), Rangers which are like hybrid mages/rogues, and Warriors, which deal exceptional physical damage late game and have lots of nice AoE damage output.

It has tight pacing and tight mechanics, it doesn't feel sloppy and this is coming from someone who bought it on a whim and totally expected it to be bad. I didn't like Larian's previous titles - they played like a duller Oblivion, to me.

The loot system is pretty good, if 98% fully randomized loot. Crafting is kind of interesting, if half-baked (towards the endgame it becomes less significant, only useful for empowering random shit you find). The story isn't off-putting... I rather like how it leads you on and upsets your expectations, though there aren't any strong characters that linger for very long.

Overall, a very solid campaign. It's also pretty long. Comparing it with Wasteland 2, Shadowrun Returns, or even something a little more seasoned like NWN2... There's really no comparison, DOS is damn-well put together. Not without its flaws, but where NWN2 is a snooze fest from the moment the game starts, DOS picks up a lot of momentum. Boss battles can drag on, but the game is otherwise full of fun strategic combat.

There are also a lot of funny things you can pull off with the engine, especially with barrels and telekinesis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2yNAZvKQBQ

As for it being like Baldur's Gate... I'd say that's a misrepresentation. It is very long. It's well-paced. But it doesn't have a strong supporting cast, the game is pretty open -- but it's not super open, if you try to explore areas where monsters are +2 levels above you unless you plan each battle perfectly you will get your shit smacked even in normal. Overall though, it's the best RPG we've seen in a long time. Play it on hard and you'll get a challenge even if you're competent.

 

Why I wouldn't even look at it?

Because the Mass Effect aliens all look weird as fuck to me, and I wouldn't be able to play an RPG for fifty or so hours looking weird.

 

Huh, its superficial but I get why you'd say that. Although its missing out on just getting a fresher perspective on a story, I don't know, I think having something like that is important.

Too bad that a lot of people probably think the same as you though.

 

I'm the kind of guy that spends the most of his time while playing an RPG in the character creation screen, lol

 

So I've played a bit of the Destiny Beta, gotta say it has me looking forward to the game. I know it's nothing new, and it plays a lot like borderlands, only difference is that I actually like Destiny. One of my favorite small touches is the fact that when you're in a party and you go on a mission the loading screen has each player's ship flying together.

 

I feel like the game is a lot more similar to Diablo, in terms of format, except the maps aren't connected or randomised.

I'll tentatively call it a Shooter RPG.

I'll be sinking a lot of hours into it. I'd still prefer it if it was on PC though.

 

I just beat Abyss Odyssey on my second sitting, with two hours clocked according to Steam.

Thankfully there's still a lot of content left to mess around with. If I understand correctly there might be special second run content too? I don't know. Either way, that game is really fun once you get three cancels and start to figure out how to play it.

 

I tried out Strategic Command: WW1, because it's one of the few strategy games set in World War 1.

I chose a scenario that was centered on the Western Front from 1914-18. I wanted to show, how to win that fight!

So I started in 1914 without throwing all my troops immediately into the meat grinder, because I knew I couldn't win in the first big push. Instead I advanced more cautiously and tried to mostly attack where the enemy would lose more than I would. Over the course of that first offensive I really battered the enemy line, although I didn't manage to break through yet. Winter came and I had to stop the attacks, but I was sure, the Entente wouldn't survive another push like that.

So 1915 starts, all my units are ready and I've now got some decent artillery stationed in important places. But instead of easily brushing the enemy aside, they've now really dug in deep in the trenches and it's getting hard to find places where I can attack without losing whole corps in the process.
Still I make progress, especially where I have artillery, although it's going much slower than I had anticipated. After a couple of months, small gaps seem to occasionally form in the enemy line. Especially the French seem close to collapse. Every time I try to exploit such a gap, the bulge gets smashed, but surely it won't take long now. I've almost got them. Just a little bit more and... it's winter again. I have to stop pushing.

My men are exhausted and I have to wait for my artillery shell stockpiles to build up again.
Still, I'm very confident now. I almost had them last year and I'm improving my whole infantry over the winter. Upgrading them to make them much more effective. Next year should be a total cakewalk.

Spring of 1916 rolls around and I'm ready again! I go on the offensive to finish this thing finally. But they're dug in even deeper! Which means I have to use even more artillery to make my charges effective. Additionally to that, they're now using a whole lot of defensive artillery, which completely takes the wind out of my sails. I can still create holes in their line, but my units are too exhausted to really exploit them. By the time my units are ready again, those gaps are once again closed. Worse, over the year they start rotating in more and more upgraded infantry of their own, which negates my quality advantage.
Never-mind all that, the enemy morale and combat readiness plummets steadily over the course of the offensive. It's not going to take much longer before they just completely fall apart. I don't think it will be this year, so I'm spending a lot of resources on research and getting my new tanks ready for next year.
Even without them I was able to push the front forward a little bit at some points. The enemy is completely exhausted and almost done when winter rolls around once more. I would have kept going, but they still have a couple of relatively fresh units coming in. I don't want to over-commit now.

It's now 1917 and all my front-line units are at full strength. The artillery has been upgraded and I've got tanks to use as shock troops to use against the entrenched enemy. This has to be enough!
Once again it isn't. I still can't break the enemy.
______________________________________________

It's at this point, where I took a moment and looked at the whole situation.
This is how the generals back then must have felt! "We almost got them, so the next offensive is sure to succeed!"
I was so deep into the game, I hadn't noticed what was going on. The game was actually really effective at teaching me something about the war. This realization took my breath away for a moment. The whole time I was sure I was close to victory and then that situation dragged on for 3+ years!

It may sound kind of lame, but I hope I was able to convey some of that experience through my write-up of the campaign.

(Obviously that "We're very close, we've almost won it, just one more push!"-mentality wasn't the only reason the war dragged on for so long. There was also a lot of sunk-cost fallacy going on. Still, it was great seeing that kind of situation, that mentality, from the inside.)

 

I hear tell DA been delayed until November.

This actually makes me happy, weirdly. More time for Destiny, Shadow of Mordor, Evolve and Alien Isolation...

I'm sure I'm forgetting something...