What are you playing?

[HardcoreRetro]

Unless you feel like only people of a certain skin colour can make games about a certain cultures, which seems racist in itself and probably leads to widening the racial divide instead of bridging that gap.

hey look my eyes just rolled all the way back into my head

Here's a quote from the article by the mexican immigrant that worked on Guacamelee.

"Nowadays, many creators think that they can’t tell stories with characters that are not their exact ethnic background. This is ridiculous. In our search for equality, we’ve created fear. When someone says, “I can’t write a Mexican protagonist because I’m not Mexican,” I know they are afraid of offending someone, but what I also hear is they can’t connect to Mexicans as people. Fear should not be driving our creative decisions. I know increased awareness of cultural appropriation has made it a risk to write characters that aren’t our own cultures, but I think it’s way riskier to avoid even trying.

Personally, I’d rather be appropriated than invisible, but avoiding both doesn’t have to be that hard. If you choose to include more Latin American characters in your work, don’t work in a vacuum: talk to Latin Americans. Do your research. Society is demanding us as storytellers to rise to the occasion. I wish creators could start to see this as a problem to solve and not as one to be avoided."

But I guess just rolling your eyes and asking for segregation is better.

[Chooky]

ah yes, right wingers really just want more diversity. of course.

the issue isn't fear, it's authenticity. if you don't know the culture you're going to fall back on tropes and stereotypes and create something inauthentic at best or harmful at worst. like if, say, a bunch of Japanese devs tried to put Christianity in their world and it came off looking silly to us because the missed a lot of nuances. or if a bunch of white Canadians and one Mexican dude made a game about Mexico where the biggest sidequest was "please help me build my taco."

but sure, this is about segregation and not overreaching. all a part of the plot to keep the white man down, ofc.

[Don Rumata]

ah yes, right wingers really just want more diversity. of course.

the issue isn't fear, it's authenticity. if you don't know the culture you're going to fall back on tropes and stereotypes and create something inauthentic at best or harmful at worst. like if, say, a bunch of Japanese devs tried to put Christianity in their world and it came off looking silly to us because the missed a lot of nuances. or if a bunch of white Canadians and one Mexican dude made a game about Mexico where the biggest sidequest was "please help me build my taco."

but sure, this is about segregation and not overreaching. all a part of the plot to keep the white man down, ofc.

Not the best example, since this is 60% of JRPGs and even stuff like Silent Hill (which btw, is part of why Silent Hill made by westerners doesn't work) is founded on the distorted interpretation of a foreign culture.

When you get jokes in the mix, it can certainly get cheap and offensive, but in general, this is just a dumb argument.

As a side note, i don't know what getting a guy from the culture as a "consultant" means in practice, since a "culture" is such an abstract and broad concept.

[Great Rumbler]

Once you go down the road of "You can only use your own culture or what you've personally experienced in your art" you might as well just throw the creative arts in the dumpster, because they're dead. I agree that if you're going to create something that is very specifically about a different culture other than your own you need to exercise care, but anyone should be able to use anything they want and not feel constrained to never venture outside their "lane."

The issue of representation/diversity among creatives themselves is a separate issue entirely, however.

[Chooky]

Once you go down the road of "You can only use your own culture or what you've personally experienced in your art" you might as well just throw the creative arts in the dumpster, because they're dead. I agree that if you're going to create something that is very specifically about a different culture other than your own you need to exercise care,

well yeah, people aren't saying to never write about culture that isn't your own, the issue is what you said in your second sentence. if you're gonna make the focus of your story a culture that you don't know firsthand, then you better make sure you do it right or expect criticism. also in a collaborative project like most videogames, it's appropriate to ask why they'd hire a writer to write about something they don't know about when the project would require detailed knowledge of the topic.

[Spieler1]

Critique of "cultural appropriation" has turned nationalistic and anti-globalist at this point. "Only Chinese people are allowed to make Chinese food" - is pretty much every rightwinger's ideology, except if you come from the idiot's US identity politics.

[Chooky]

"we want to be able to tell our own stories"

"wow so now we're not allow to tell your stories? wow what is this apartheid 2.0" 

[Nintex]

If you're making a WW2 shooter you better get some insight from a retired member of the Waffen SS.
Don't want your game to be riddled with tropes and stereotypes. 

[Don Rumata]

"we want to be able to tell our own stories"

"wow so now we're not allow to tell your stories? wow what is this apartheid 2.0" 

What "stories" are we even talking about?

[Chooky]

narratives in various forms of media??

[Don Rumata]

narratives in various forms of media??

If we agree that anyone can write about, or use elements of, cultures other than their own. And we agree the more sensitive the subject, the more care is to be applied.
What even is the point of contention?

I'm not sure who you were mimicking with those quotes, is all.

[Rufus]

Kingdom Come: Deliverance
Yeah, I don't know that this is for me. Just seems like a chore to play. Gonna give it a couple more hours, since I spent so much time downloading this, but I'm not too excited to go back.

[Freyj]

Finished Act 10 and the first few quests for Zana in the Atlas of Path of Exile for the first time and I’m going to retire this Necro until 3.9 hits on the 13th.

Not sure why I waited until now to give it a go but it’s essentially all I needed out of a followup to Diablo 2. It’s also maybe the most complicated game I’ve spent much time with. Most builds are fairly easy to play and center around a handful of synergies and a single “6L” RMB skill, but the number of systems and currencies and subsystems and subcurrencies are just a lot to absorb. It’s unapologetic in its complexities and I suppose that’s not a bad thing overall. If this were a Blizzard game PoE2 would completely rip out the passive skill tree in favor of a single binary / ternary choice every 10 levels, condense modifiers on Rares and Uniques to a max of 1-2 and reduce skill gems to a pool of maybe 10 choices per class.

[bluemax]

Started Indivisible and... I dunno if I can play this game.  It really isn't a JRPG at all. It's a very basic Metroidvania with a combat system for fighting game players. I mean I shouldn't be surprised or anything, I just thought maybe it would have more traditional JRPG progression to balance out my crappy dexterity, but I'm getting destroyed by basic fights because I have crap timing. At least save points are frequent and you don't lose much by dying.

[Svejk]

Kingdom Come: Deliverance
Yeah, I don't know that this is for me. Just seems like a chore to play. Gonna give it a couple more hours, since I spent so much time downloading this, but I'm not too excited to go back.

I've been on the fence about getting this game.. It seems like it would benefit more being in VR... Maybe next gen?

[Rufus]

Kingdom Come: Deliverance
Yeah, I don't know that this is for me. Just seems like a chore to play. Gonna give it a couple more hours, since I spent so much time downloading this, but I'm not too excited to go back.

I've been on the fence about getting this game.. It seems like it would benefit more being in VR... Maybe next gen?

That would actually make sense. It's all about realism and immersion as is, VR would only improve it. The camera is already attached to your head (and your body fully modeled and animated), but as usual with these 'realistic' cameras, it's not stabalized; something I've come to despise as it feels like your're permanently drunk or have vertigo.
The combat would benefit from motion controls as well, because it basically works like Skyward Sword already, only more complicated and fuzzier.

[Spieler1]

picked up Tembo The Badass Elephant during a sale because someone wrote about it here. Seems like it's bog standard platforming, whose entire reason for existing is that elephants are cute.

[tiesto]

Friends came over and we had a Ninja Turtles themed game day...

We played TMNT 1-3 NES, the first 2 GB games, and Turtles in Time...

I managed to beat Turtles in Time with my friend (on normal mode with the lives counter jacked up), and Back from the Sewers (on easy). Got to the end stage of Fall of the Foot Clan then the game crashed. Also was unfortunately having sync and crash issues for the 3 NES games which was putting a damper on them. Not sure if it was because the games were dirty (probably not since I regularly q-tip/rubbing alcohol clean them) or because my RGB NES has issues.

As far as GB games go, I prefer Fall of the Foot Clan to Back from the Sewers. The sequel seems to have many more cheap hits owing to your lack of dexterity. It's also kinda weird how stiff and upright the Turtles stand in the game.

[nachobro]

Rufus was right. ReCore wanted me to grind out a bunch of shit and it's not interesting enough for all that so

So instead I'm going back to grinding in Division 2

[Don Rumata]

Rufus was right. ReCore wanted me to grind out a bunch of shit and it's not interesting enough for all that so

So instead I'm going back to grinding in Division 2

I also reinstalled Div2, sunno if i'll grind, but i heard they implemented some fixes to the loot, nd i want to see.

[demi]

Division 2 is all but dead at this point. What's there to grind for? But as long as you're having fun I suppose

Borderlands 3 DLC is coming soon, Destiny 2 new season this week. Division 2 has.... permadeath mode? Ok? Lmao

[nachobro]

i never actually finished the story so i'll do that and the raid or w/e is after. also it's kinda cool to go back to games i played earlier this year with the new pc setup and see what they look like on max at 120 fps

also when i logged in div2 made a big deal about them adding "classified missions" whatever those are

[demi]

Classified Missions are for suckers who bought the Year 1 Pass afaik. Otherwise they're inaccessible to you. You could play the added "story missions" but they're basic and don't really amount to much or give any relevant loot.

[chronovore]

Wanted to try that free Monster Energy racing game that comes with PS+ while Titanfall was loading - a biking game, why not? The video looks okay    30 seconds to a minute wasted on logos, another 30 seconds to get to the starting menu. Then another minute of loading. Then a stuttering mess of a game and getting it de-installed 

Thanks for the heads-up. I am always a fan of giving stuff a try, but that sounds like anti-fun.

[Freyj]

Bouncing around a few games before the end of the year:

Pathologic 2: this is a pretty dense experience that probably deserves more focus than I’m going to have time for right now, playing this is kind of an anxiety inducing nightmare and I’m pretty sure that’s the intended effect so

SaGa Scarlet Grace: seems to be a gateway drug into the amazing world of Kawazu games, but the extremely small budget and early linearity is pushing me off a bit, it skirts awful close to mobage outside of combat

Remnant: From The Ashes: hits the Souls feels well enough, but seems like another case of a game balanced for solo play as an afterthought, had to reroll the campaign from Hard to Normal after a few hours because the trash mob swarms were just a little too irritating at 200% damage, still liking it and will probably stick with it more than the above games

[Freyj]

I think you probably know this but rerolling the game world on an existing character always puts the game in a "NG+" mode meaning the game world is rerolled at your current character level +1. If you reroll again the same happens etc.

It is actually worth *not* upgrading your weapons/ armor as long as you can because the enemies scale to your equipment level (not trait level).

Pay attention to the OFFENSIVE/ DEFENSIVE stats in the lower left of stats screen - this shows the difficulty of the "world" vs your current equipment; it can be easier, same level, or harder; of course it is not easier the whole time - when you reach a new "world area" it is upscaled anyway ("world areas" have minimum level).

If you need any more tips just ask I can help with some answers.

So was rerolling a bad idea? I wasn’t too leveled up yet as far as traits went because I didn’t know what to spend them on yet.

[Freyj]

Hm, wouldn’t that only matter for Earth as I haven’t entered any other zone yet on the original Hard playthrough anyhow?

That said I’ve been upgrading shit as soon as I could so maybe it wouldn’t hurt to restart and avoid doing that anyhow. At least there’s a skip tutorial option.

edit: after a lot of digging around the remnant subreddit it seems like the ideal upgrading is to the level of the world boss of that zone after seeding the zone with the minimum level: so for Earth seeding it at level 1 and then not upgrading any weapons or armor such that your average gear score level exceeds 5 which is the minimum level of the world boss of Earth, then seeing the next area at 5 before repeating the process

There should be an RPG developers Bible with a chapter called “level scaling” that just contains the words “don’t do it”. Every time this crops up in an RPG it’s a mess to figure out that leads to weird restrictions to follow the “intended route” of the game. It creates solutions that are worse than the problem it was trying to solve to begin with.

I play Morrowind every few years but can’t bring myself to replay Oblivion because of the horrid level scaling there. And it bleeds over into the mods that try to “fix” it and fuck the experience in other ways. Just don’t do it, it’s a mess.

[demi]

What a confusing gameplay system. I guess that's a pass from me

[Freyj]

I’m sure if you just pick Normal and play the game none of this matters but not having a basic understanding of how this shit works in an RPG drives me crazy.

[FatalT]

What system are you all playing Remnant on? I have it on PS4 but no one I know owns it and I'd love to co-op through it with someone.

[Freyj]

Playing on Steam.

Caught back up to my first save in about half the time and rolled a different boss (Shroud / Gorefist) so it worked out anyhow.

[Freyj]

Had a good session of Remnant tonight but rolled Riphide / Leto’s Lab and man fuck that boss. Whoever designed that didn’t give a fuck about solo players.

[nachobro]

Classified Missions are for suckers who bought the Year 1 Pass afaik. Otherwise they're inaccessible to you. You could play the added "story missions" but they're basic and don't really amount to much or give any relevant loot.

so i have these missions and i got 4 lootbox keys for the dumb holiday event...but i didn't buy the year one pass. i guess whatever key i got for this game from cdkeys was one that included the pass? seems like a score, but also upon looking at what you get for the year 1 pass, it's not impressive.

no idea how they convinced people to pay $40 for this thing. at least it's only $15 now

[Freyj]

I’ll get to Ashen soon but I still have Code Vein to get through for 2019 Souls-likes first.

I’ve bought way way too many games lately 

[Great Rumbler]

Code Vein's not too long, fortunately, only a little over 20 hours.

[Tuckers Law]

Started up the Ys series and am currently midway through Ys 2.  The music in these games 

[tiesto]

Started up the Ys series and am currently midway through Ys 2.  The music in these games 

Which versions are you playing?

[Tuckers Law]

On Steam, I think they were part of some chronicles+ pack or similar.  After doing a little research I settled on the older remake visuals with the newest music arrangement for sound.  I wasn’t really jiving with the “newer” art style they offer for character portraits, and like how the older remake style reminds me of how Sega CD rpgs looked.

I’ve been debating modding Ys 2 to use the TG-16 soundtrack since that seems to be a popular choice, but I don’t have that music and some of the tutorials on it seem to suggest sketchy 3rd party software.

[Freyj]

Add Xanadu Next to the list around Ys 3 / Oath in Felghana as well. It’s a slightly different take on the formula that I wish they’d done more with instead of making waifu Persona clones as with Tokyo Xanadu.

[Tuckers Law]

Thanks, will do.

[Bebpo]

Initially Shovel Knight King of Cards campaign seems fun but I haven't messed with the card stuff yet. SK series has never really clicked with me despite huge acclaim. Always was fine but just felt like a 2nd rate Megaman game for me and the levels felt too long with checkpoints too far apart.

King's mechanics are really fun and clicking with me more than the other 3. I like bouncing around on things and the levels are shorter which is nice. I hear the card stuff mucks it up a bit though. Will see when I get further into it.

[Freyj]

I liked Shovel Knight / Plague Knight enough (haven't played the others), but I don't think I wanted a modern interpretation of the difficulty of old Mega Man games like others did. Like you said a little shorter levels and more checkpointing would've improved my thoughts on it.

[bluemax]

The levels are identical in length to old MM levels. They just did a big set of interviews and BTS stuff with some website where they go into all their level design process and how they researched the length and rhythm of old MM games. I think the check pointing is generally better than MM.

I beat Shovel Knight's campaign but I'm not sure I finished any of the others, mostly due to getting sidetracked I think. Kind of wish I owned the game on something other than PC because I hate playing games on the PC at this point in my life. Still, I'll check out the new stuff soon.

I also interviewed with YCG for a job once (and applied there a few other times)... so I'm probably kinda biased.

[Freyj]

Rolled The Ent for the first World Boss of Remnant. 1 Death compared to like 25 for the 2 Lizs encounter immediately before. Wish some of the dungeon encounters were better tuned to solo play. Bosses are fine, but as soon as there are 5-10 things attacking you at once you’re moderately fucked.

[The Sceneman]

picked up Tembo The Badass Elephant during a sale because someone wrote about it here. Seems like it's bog standard platforming, whose entire reason for existing is that elephants are cute.

couldve been me lol. Game isnt special but I enjoyed it enough

[Rufus]

Anno 1800
The free trial is a week long, which is extremely generous, but I was done after only 2 hours.
I had just reached the stage where the 'new world' unlocked, but I knew I wasn't going to play it again to explore it or even satisfy the needs of the tier 3 citizens. They've made nice quality of life changes since 1402 (the last one I had played extensively, I skipped 2070), and industrialization is a great theme, but I'm well and truly over it. Gorgeous as ever, lush with detail and everything is just mismatched enough that it's fun to make everything fit right, etc.
Nothing wrong with the game (that I could tell), I'm just over it.

[Mr. Nobody]

Finally playing Persona 2: Eternal Punishment.

It's kind of wild how this was released in the states without Innocent Sin given the many callbacks to it. Anyway, it's pretty much more of the same as far as gameplay so I'm kind of glad I didn't start this immediately after Innocent Sin or else I'd be completely burned out by now. That being said...I'm reminded of just how archaic the older games were in comparison to 3/4/and especially 5. The Tarot/Contact system can kick rocks. Variable rumors with random results? Fusion spell rumors that are much more trouble than their worth by the time you get all of the information you need? Special contacts you'd have 0 idea about unless you were playing with a guide? 

But I have to say, it's rather refreshing playing as a group of working adults in a JRPG.

[Bebpo]

Picked up Control on the epic store since it was finally on sale (just 20% off, but I'll take what I can get). Started playing it and man I miss Remedy's environmental destruction and debris. They do it so good. Loving the fast & fluid controls too.

Started in DX12 with max raytracing but couldn't tell the difference? Lighting looked ok, image was kinda soft even with film grain off. Gonna boot it in DX11 w/o raytracing next to compare but didn't see anything special with it on compared to other games.

[Bebpo]

Was digging Control until I got to the first real boss fight and spent 20 mins retrying the same 3-4 min fight a half dozen times and realized the game doesn't have any difficulty settings, so people who are bad at shooters and bad at aiming are just fucked :|
I feel like unless you're From Soft, not having difficulty settings in 2019 takes a certain amount of hubris that's lame af. I don't play FPS and am bad at TPS because I suck at aiming quickly and accurately.

Time to try to go find a goddamn trainer that doesn't have malware and shit just to get past this fight where the dude is flying around throwing shit at me and I can barely aim at him while dudes on my sides keep spawning and shooting at me.

[Rufus]

Picked up Control on the epic store since it was finally on sale (just 20% off, but I'll take what I can get). Started playing it and man I miss Remedy's environmental destruction and debris. They do it so good. Loving the fast & fluid controls too.

Started in DX12 with max raytracing but couldn't tell the difference? Lighting looked ok, image was kinda soft even with film grain off. Gonna boot it in DX11 w/o raytracing next to compare but didn't see anything special with it on compared to other games.

Reflections is where it's most apparent. Everything else is faked well enough with existing techniques.

Prey is as addictive as I expected it to be. I'm scouring every room, as usual. Love to hate Mimics.
There's really strong auto-tracking on the wrench when you swing at them. No wonder.

[Bebpo]

Yeah, went back and forth and dx11 definitely looks more flat compared to ray-tracing. Some spots look really nice and yeah looking at reflections is impressive.

But also like you said Devs these days are so good at faking lighting that for the most part it's not a big noticeable leap in visuals. Heck, for a lot of it the more realistic natural look with ray tracing actually looks less striking than the faked dramatic lighting.

[Coax]

The Messenger. Liking it so far apart from jumping/landings which can feel a bit hit or miss (I found that migrating to a DS4 rather than a KB helped in general though).

Left it following this room but I've give it a few more tries next time. The death mechanic is very forgiving in comparison to similar games.

[Stro]

I gotta get back to Fist of the North Star

[Bebpo]

Liking Control a good deal. Pretty cool game. I like that you get Japanese action game style movement options like air dash and stuff. Some of the areas definitely look real nice with ray-tracing.

Even at 1440p ray-tracing pretty much kills framerate. Only hitting about 45-60fps (which is ok with gsync) with medium ray-tracing and no 2x AA. With high ray-tracing it's pretty much a 30fps game @ 1440p. At 1080p can do 60fps with ray-tracing even on high but because the game is really soft it looks pretty blurry at 1080p so trying to render at 1440p at least. Medium quality ray-tracing is good enough. But yeah, even 2080ti still ain't enough for 60fps full ray-tracing at 1440p these days.

*edit* turned on the fps counter. With ray-tracing on medium, get about 60-70 fps, with ray-tracing on high get between 35-50 fps with average around 45fps. All the other options, including MSAA don't seem to do more than 1-3fps difference so pretty much just ray-tracing and resolution are the fps determination.

[Mr Gilhaney]

I cant disagree with the frame rate drop being a pretty huge deal atm, and probably not worth it for most. But raytracing itself is a game changer for the look of games imo, even if the hardware isnt fully there yet. It's all the little things in the reflections and lightning that makes a big difference in the end, and makes everything look so much more natural and believable. My first education involved 3d graphics, so I am probably more sensitive to this stuff than most as well, but in the end, I don't understand how people who sees a game like Control running with ray tracing on and then off right next to them, won't spot the big bump in quality. It's something I never even thought would be possible in games in my life time, judging by how many fucking days if not weeks rendering something with ray tracing on could take.

In other words, cant wait to get that 3080 TI 

[Rufus]

The best and worst thing that you can say about ray-tracing is that it is the future.

[Don Rumata]

The best and worst thing that you can say about ray-tracing is that it is the future.

With the new consoles using it (apparently that Godfall game had it, and the Hellblade one, too, FWIW) i think it's more of a certainty that it is already here to stay.
I'd take it over native 4K personally (1440p is good enough for me) but it'll be interesting to see what corners they can cut to have it run on consoles, especially if various SKUs are confirmed.

[Rufus]

Alright, the very near future.

I was in love with the aphorism, OK.

I'd take it over native 4K personally (1440p is good enough for me) but it'll be interesting to see what corners they can cut to have it run on consoles, especially if various SKUs are confirmed.

30fps and reconstructive scaling of course.

[Mr Gilhaney]

VR with ray tracing is the true future 

[Nintex]

VR with ray tracing is the true future 

"The Geforce BRX 9000 will simply download your brain into the cloud and for the first time resync it with your body after you've been downloaded"

"We're very sorry for those early adopters of the RTX 9080Ti Super BRAINFORCE who are forever downloaded in a virtual space not compatible with the BRX 9000 CLOUD BRAIN SYNC SERVICE or CBSS."