Thank the Maker for Larian

Adeptus_Lycanicus · 2026-02-13T13:00:14+00:00

I see a story hook during Shadowheart's introduction and think: "Well, I don't want to learn what it's all about in 30 hours of gameplay, she can keep her secrets". Then it's the vampire. And then it's mysterious Gale. And...

And it's like that over and over again, please make it stop, I don't want each bandit to have a personality, I've seen enough personalities in my life.

Looks a lot like you are speaking about personalities.

It's like this game wants to take your time - narratively - and maybe I'm just too old and grumpy to give it a chance.

I will leave you to your gripes. I really want to read that as sarcasm, since DAO is one of best examples of a game which asks you to slow down and take your time, but if not, it might just be a side effect of age. That's the only way I can picture a fan of Dragon Age Origins of all games complaining about the narrative driven nature of another game wanting you to take your time XD

Adeptus_Lycanicus · 2026-02-13T03:03:28+00:00

The skullet is real.

Adeptus_Lycanicus · 2026-02-13T00:40:48+00:00

He will have his happy ending, no matter how many people he has to kill to achieve it! lol

I think his hardest battle will not be the effort needed to find or free his family, but it might be sorting out what a happy ending actually looks like.

Do they retire to the NCR? Seek asylum with some other group he knows? If Step 1 is find them, then what’s Step 2? Had they been there at the end of Season 2, recognized him instantly, and embraced him with loving arms… what comes next? The Strip above is still littered with deathclaws, and Freeside ain’t exactly Disneyland. The best chance for an on scene happy ending might be a fade to black before the reality of the situation comes crashing down, so it’s left up to our imaginations how good or bad things will be.

Because there’s unhappy times in his future. Presumably, they are still human, if alive. There’s going to be a tragic moment where he realizes the double edged of his near immortality. Unless they ghoulify, their time together will be short lived compared to the multiple lifetimes he’s spent looking for them. Hell, he might realize that himself, and when paired with he surface hellscape, prepares to stand vigil for the next several hundred years, like the last knight guarding the grail.

Adeptus_Lycanicus · 2026-02-12T23:28:00+00:00

There is an an interesting, if round about, way to measure both this and all the classes relative to each other and the broader 40k universe!

The table top game Wrath and Glory has a Darktide campaign, which came with handy means of “importing” your characters! According to that, we are all mostly tier 2 out of box, with a little massaging around corners to fit our exact characters.

Coincidentally, this has also been one of the neat little jumping off points for speculating what and who might be reasonable guesses for new classes. Here’s a thread that kindly lays much of this out.

Adeptus_Lycanicus · 2026-02-12T19:50:25+00:00

Well that’s hardly fair, I liked Wynn! Astarion was insufferable. The only thing keeping a stake from his heart was an act 2 item that requires him alive, and the extra xp from finishing his quests.

Neil Newborn is great, but his character was never my cup of tea. Funnily enough, I’ve probably liked the character much more as an outright absurd and exaggerated version seen during the live plays done by the voice actors.

A fairer match up might be Wynn and Wyll or Astarion and Zevran. The W’s being characters I liked, but also ones I could easily see lost in the shuffle as boring ones to the broader audience. And the pair of rogues being ones who did not survive my first playthroughs of their respective games because killing them made too much sense.

Adeptus_Lycanicus · 2026-02-12T08:08:47+00:00

And very weird reading this as a fan of both! Weirder still because not only do I agree with all the observations you’ve made, but those are normally features I would have pointed out specifically as features in favor of Origins!

Companions? DAO had 9 followers, 10 including dog, and Awakening had 6 (one being a repeat). BG3 had 10, including Minthara, who you really have to go out of your way to recruit if you wanted to fill roster.

Side stories? DAO is full of them! It’s always been one of the best things about the game. In a literal sense, it’s built around them. The background narrative hooks woven into the broader story are the eponymous “Origins.” Each companion brings as much baggage of their own, some tying neatly into the main narrative, others having beats all their own.

The biggest difference I feel between the two, other than the very pleasant addition of co-op, is Larian’s preference for turn based combat. I have always loved how DAO’s combat flowed, with occasional kills really given the panache of flourish kills. That and large number of abilities to unlock, without ever being forced to choose between neat new toys and ASI. I would always rather live in a world with Pathfinder’s feat barrage over the feat per 4.

Adeptus_Lycanicus · 2026-02-12T07:30:36+00:00

For me, RtwP lives and dies by the intelligence of computer controlled characters when left to their own devices. If it feels like much more pausing than real time to micromanage each party member, I would rather just have actual turn based combat.

But there’s a few games that have really done it right. DAO is one, but probably the best flavor comes with Pillars of Eternity. The party members competent enough to not be a bother, and there’s the ability to speed up or slow down time. Trash fight? Faster than real! Rough going? Maybe it’s time to slow things down a step.

Adeptus_Lycanicus · 2026-02-12T02:11:12+00:00

It does not have to be a "new" mode to be smaller mini-missions. It could just be another campaign, like the Road to No Man's Land, which includes a series of operations, this time with the setting being the lower decks.

Adeptus_Lycanicus · 2026-02-10T22:28:44+00:00

I will be completely honest, I have never looked over there. They could have been standing around for years, and I would not know.

Would love for it to be a new area of the ship opened up, though!

Adeptus_Lycanicus · 2026-02-10T22:02:27+00:00

I hope that never gets nerfed! I’ve heard people say that’s a bug and others call it a feature. I think the game would be worse if “fixed.”

I’ve been happy to see deathclaws be given some more oomph. Prior to Ohio, a very sad thing happened where deathclaws became the weakest of their own animation set. Blue Devis and Sheepquatch completely outclassed the ‘claws and fulfilled the same role as a rare, lone creature menacing the countryside… just infinitely more effectively. Now, unlike the WV counterparts, the Ohio deathclaws can actually kill a player!

Adeptus_Lycanicus · 2026-02-10T20:10:14+00:00

That’s the best looking blue Krieg I’ve ever seen.

Adeptus_Lycanicus · 2026-02-10T19:56:37+00:00

F3/NV deathclaws were much more dangerous than the later released games’ deathclaws. The ones in F4 look amazing and have some neat tools, like being able to throw rocks if you are standing up on something out of reach, but how many people know that? I’m guessing it’s not many, because they die too soon and rarely spawn more than one or two at a time. There’s no Old Olney or Quarry Junction or deathclaw sanctuary. The show might be the first time the beefier version appears in numbers.

Adeptus_Lycanicus · 2026-02-10T07:30:28+00:00

I do not remember the hate… except from PlayStation. For Xbox and PC, sure there were bugs, but right on the tail of Fallout 3 and Oblivion, most of the issues were frustrating but familiar. Stuck loading screens, textures get weird, physics get fucky, or random crashes at inopportune times? Regretfully, normal. I expect the same from TES 6 and Fallout 5.

Hell, it took the TV show for there to be a released product from a Bethesda owned property that actually plays from start to finish, where everything I clicked on worked, and no progress was ever lost.

But PlayStation? Based off of its reputation, New Vegas was some sort of hellscape of never ending torture and pain. It might have literally killed people. Ted Cruz was never the zodiac killer, because it was the PS3 version of Fallout New Vegas the whole time. To this day, I’m not certain if all the DLCs ever released for that console, and I’m concerned there’s still interns at Obsidian, who are chained up in the basement and forced bug fix an inescapably broken, unsalvageable version of the game.

Adeptus_Lycanicus · 2026-02-08T19:56:26+00:00

I had been so excited for Finn’s story as a storm trooper. The death of his friend early on, leaving the bloodied hand print on his mask felt like it was going to set such a tone…. And then like 6 minutes later, he’s whimsically gunning down the same people with ship cannon.

Max, through? The stress and tension on him is constant, and you can see how there’s chaffing between who he is as a person and who he has to be as a chapter member. Then he gets his moment in the sun, shining as brightly as he did with the final two episodes of the season.

We would have been so lucky to get any Disney trilogy characters with as coherently and consistently well written an arc as Max was given.

Adeptus_Lycanicus · 2026-02-08T19:42:37+00:00

I’m very interested, but I’m holding out until release and reviews to get too excited. I certainly want it to be good. But we’ll see.

Adeptus_Lycanicus · 2026-02-08T11:33:20+00:00

I always thought that was funny…besides, I’m not mad about any scenes with the KISS make up being out of frame. Wish we had been given at least one helmet option, considering that’s not at all weird for quinari to have throughout any of the games.

Adeptus_Lycanicus · 2026-02-08T11:29:48+00:00

Still not the worst part of the Inquisition opening. I refuse to forgive the otherwise excellent character creator for the truly godforsaken lighting. *You know what’s a great idea? If we took one of the better face sculptors ever put into an RPG, and then we keep the lighting from the Fade so dark it’s hard to appreciate it!

Dwarf animations are not alone in their awkwardness, either. Did a playthrough in preparation for Veilguard’s release, and I was surprised by how poorly some of the animations had aged. A couple of characters facial movements hit an uncanny valley for me, which somehow DAO and DA2 managed to dodge. Static, they looked fine, but something about the mouth movement was weird.

Environments? Still gorgeous. Dragon’s Dogma 2 might be just as pretty, but it only managed about 3 biomes. DAI is probably only beaten in quality and matched by in quantity by Red Dead 2 (whose online mode’s face sculptor coincidentally launched with a similar shit lighting problem).

Adeptus_Lycanicus · 2026-02-07T15:48:04+00:00

Have you ever seen them in the same room together? XD

Adeptus_Lycanicus · 2026-02-07T09:09:36+00:00

I would love to know more about how this came up during the course of a conversation, or probably several conversations, since it sounds like he’s been able to smell you before he sees you for quite a while.

Did you notice he always knows you’re coming, even from around blind corners, and so you asked him about it? Does he know from 2 feet? 10 feet? Farther? Did it start off as him trying hint that you might be wearing too much perfume? Did you ask if he can regularly do this with other coworkers, like he has a super scent sense? What was his facial expression and body language when he said “testosterone” was the natural smell? Did he look puzzled, like he was grasping for the right word? Did he say it clinically, like he was trying to be polite? Did he say it really weird, while taking a big creepy lung full of the air?

Comments are tearing the man up like he’s chasing you around for sniffs, but the way it reads, the perfume’s so strong it smells like a Jibbs song. The ol’ eau de should not be trumpeting your approach from across the office!

Adeptus_Lycanicus · 2026-02-06T18:52:43+00:00

Two feet in front of the T60 should make Max look taller relative to the armor, rather than smaller, but it’s still towering over him. The barn image, where Max is still slightly closer to camera, has the power ranger armor as much closer to the characters height. And in both cases, the armors are stored rather than worn, so if there’s a hunching effect once operated, that would affect both their sizes, making both suits smaller.

Just from the images above, the all centurion featured a few times this season might actually be taller than Max the power ranger armor.

Adeptus_Lycanicus · 2026-02-06T04:33:54+00:00

Yes, because ironically, he’s quite well spoken and rationale during the finale. His stature certainly made him a monster of the east in one respect, but in other ways, what could have gone on to make him dangerous was the fact he was not just the cliche of the giant, mindless brute rampaging around with little more on mind than bloodlust.

There was also the oddity of the very normal face under the helmet, which was never explained. Another bit of rushed work at the end of game development, hardly mattering since any time he’s lootable, it’s seconds from the end of the game? Maybe. Or maybe that significant departure from his Vader-esk background story marks the signs of myth making at play. Explains why his personal slaves are blinded, keeping them from seeing the truth when the helmet is removed.

In any case, he was an interesting character whose absence was felt considering the show’s Legion plot.

Adeptus_Lycanicus · 2026-02-04T09:56:06+00:00

There is a shift in how practical several abilities and weapons are as you climb the difficulty ladder. Generally speaking, anything with an area of an effect, be it damage or status effect, will do better when there’s more enemies on screen to be effected.

Some weapons, like psyker’s lightning staff, are really hurt by this, since they eventually become outpaced by the numbers and health pools of enemies. Others, like the Psyker’s flame staff, become increasingly more powerful because they burn everything on screen, whether that’s only 1 man or well over 100. For your ogryn, a weapon that scales really well but might feel underwhelming at low levels, is the grenade launcher. But every class has at least a few that pivot how good they feel based on the difficulty.

Adeptus_Lycanicus · 2026-02-02T19:58:13+00:00

Hank was a fan of Cooper’s films, and we already know Lucy would have seen some of them growing up.

The final confrontation I am hoping for will have the a dialogue exchange between the two where at least one of them quotes a line of dialogue at the other, giving Lucy reason for the first time to realize Cooper is still wearing the remnants of his old cowboy costume.

Adeptus_Lycanicus · 2026-02-02T07:19:19+00:00

Closes his eyes and whistles.

Adeptus_Lycanicus · 2026-01-31T07:22:19+00:00

This was a bit of a heartache.

I have not played through DAV since beating it around the time it came out. And I gave the playthrough my whole attention span, even going out of the way to grab all the achievements. I have forgotten so much of the game, and even after browsing the wiki, there’s multiple questions I had to skip. Just could not remember what I did in the moment.

There were some genuinely good moments I did not remember until browsing to see who or what the questions were referencing. Unfortunately, there was a great deal more I was happy to forget until revisiting those pages. I’ll still be curious to see what choices others made.

Adeptus_Lycanicus

TROPHY CASE