Coelacanth

The Metro system was okay in the first game (especially since the bad ending is the intended canon ending), but I have to say the awareness of its existence is part of why I never finished Last Light. Making sure to sit through all the dialogues and do all the things to gain karma every time is such a pain in a game without manual saving.

I'll try to get through it again some time though, I've heard Exodus is great.

Do you know when the economist left? Was it with the change of ownership or before?

It's a real shame the economy went to shit, it was always one of the best parts of EVE.

Oh I agree with you there. Combat was more fun in DOS2 (though it got ridiculous at times).

Personally, I think the presentation is what sets BG3 apart. I agree that D:OS2 has a more fun combat system, but that's not really the key to mainstream appeal.

Stuff like zoomed in dialogues with actual motion capture and visible facial expressions really pulls you in in a way zoomed out isometric dialogue presentations never can.

Not saying BGIII is bad, but it would’ve (in my opinion) been better without the DND rubbish.

Maybe a better game, but definitely not as successful. Between the movie coming out the same year and Stranger Things and Critical Role (and their Amazon show) and what have you, D&D was already in the zeitgeist. It was absolutely an important aspect of BG3 hitting that mainstream success, imo.

I guess it's different for most people. When I'm huddling next to a group of S.T.A.L.K.E.Rs under a bridge in the exclusion zone, listening to their guitar playing as I maintain my crappy rifle and watch the animation of my character slowly eating a can of beans to stave off the hunger I feel like I'm doing way more roleplaying than I ever feel from picking option A, B or C in a multiple-choice dialogue tree.

Agreed completely. 5E is just not good, in my opinion.

The rest system is extremely clunky. With a human DM and a time sensitive story you can kind of get some good out of it. Without that, it's just extra loading screens of wonky difficulty/balance.

Even then the balance is completely off, with the 5E developers assuming way too many encounters per rest, meaning Long Rest classes are almost strictly better since their drawback of limited resources so rarely becomes a problem. This is of course even more of a problem in BG3, where you're almost encouraged to take a long rest after every fight, what with all the camp encounters that triggers off taking a long rest. I missed like half of them because I tried to play immersively.

Plus the character options are shallow. Not everything needs to be a crazy Path of Exile level of complexity, but D&D 5e surprisingly few meaningful options.

What, you don't enjoy getting to choose to put a point into your primary attribute every four levels?

...putting microtransactions, paid character edit vouchers, Denuvo, and anti-cheat into a $70 single player only game

This reads like satire wtf

I don't think it's entirely right to compare it to Bethesda RPGs as those are predominantly about wandering around the handcrafted open world and stumbling onto interesting things, be it enemies or side quests or dungeons. CP2077 delivers a weaker experience in that particular regard, that kind of experience wasn't really what they wanted to do. The open world is more kind of there as a backdrop.

However, I also the think the character building is better in CP2077 than a Bethesda game in terms of skills and customization (post 2.0 at least), and most of all the actual mechanics of combat is much more fun. The action combat part plays a bigger role in the overall enjoyment, at least for me.

The game really shines in the stories themselves, the interesting characters and especially the character and facial animations, which are incredibly well done and make dialogue feel really engaging.

This though, is definitely the main thrust of the game, and it is indeed excellent.

I am still holding out hope for a Definitive Edition that restores some of the cut stuff and further cleans up/revamps Act 3.

All the same, the game is just fine and I totally get the studio wanting to move on to new things.

Deus Ex is screaming for a remake. There is so much excellence there, but imagine it with modern high quality graphics and VAs, modernized implementations of the systems already in place... Maybe even actually implementing the UNATCO route that was scrapped due to time?

Immersion features are also important for roleplaying, it's just a different kind of roleplaying really.

Interesting read. Really not sure how to feel about Remedy cooking up a free-to-play game for Tencent, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.