The Video/PC Game Discussion Thread

Yeah, that might be it. Well basically, what I mean by that is I invited Ludd Whitehill to come over for a dinner at Ironrath, to "discuss peace terms"...... Then we planned to poison him with wine! Because of course, poisoning people at dinner is how they do things in Westeros. Plan backfired, somewhat, when he refused to take it, so I can't remember her name but Lady Forrester had to drink first and so both of them ended up dying. Still worth it to kill Ludd, imo. Then I should have been able to kill Gryff as well, but something totally cheap happened to rip me off (automatically, of course: I was smoking him in the parts where I had control) and that's another thing that got me upset that they were just stalling things out for season 2. In fact, I should have been able to kill him back in episode 4, when I was beating the shit out of him, but obviously the game had to take things completely out of my hands back then as well.

In other news, just spotted this: http://www.pcgamer.com/steams-autumn-and-winter-sales-will-ditch-daily-deals-and-flash-sales/

Pretty good news if you ask me. 

As for the writing: I'd say the actual story is fairly generic and unremarkable, as usual, but there's a couple really interesting scenes, and a couple pretty big choices that were interesting. As always, the side quests tend to have better writing than the story, and the notes you find throughout various areas are usually worth reading for fun. For the most part, I found the actual missions within the main quest to be pretty awesome, and much better than in past Bethesda games. 

Started the Bloodborne DLC last night and it's been awesome, but playing on NG+ 2 I still can't even beat the first boss. This gets thrown around a lot and is often exaggerated, but I think fighting that boss on NG+ 2 might be the hardest thing I've ever done, so much so that I may have to give it up and level up one of my NG characters in order to clear the DLC.

It runs very smoothly. I don't actually meet all the requirements for recommended settings, but the game auto detected Ultra as the best settings for me and it runs like a charm. Smoother than Fallout 3 and New Vegas actually. 

Bethesda finally realized that rain shouldn't fall straight through solid structures, a problem I've had with all of their games since Morrowind.

I'm playing on the default normal difficulty setting and combat so far seems challenging but not frustratingly so. I've had a few tough fights but the only time I've been killed so far is when a car exploded right next to me during a gunfight. The gunplay itself is pretty satisfying so far. I like that thrown weapons such as grenades have their own key instead of being equipped in place of your normal weapon. I actually had a mod once for Fallout 3 that did this too. I wonder if Bethesda have learned something from the modding community here?

No crashes at all so far.

I was surprised to see access to power armour so early in the game, but the new way power armour operates balances that out nicely. 

There are a few minor annoyances though:

My weapon has disappeared in my hand several times already. Once my whole character disappeared. 

Sometimes textures do not load properly and look very blurry. This one may be because my drivers were not up to date. Just waiting to see if it happens again.

Certain aspects of the storyline(s) seem rather rushed. I've just done a couple of quests for them and I'm already in charge of the Minutemen, for example. 

I just beat the main quest after about 150 hours playtime. Could have done it a lot quicker I guess but I didn't even go to Nick Valentine's office until hours and hours in, just explored and did side quests. I ended up siding with The Railroad this time around, though I was sort of a double agent for them and the Brotherhood of Steel for a time. My choice ended up being based who I found more likable. Honestly there are likable enough characters in both factions, but I honestly couldn't stand Elder Maxson, which is what swung it. 

I haven't found the game to be a disappointment in the slightest but I do have a few gripes with it:

The 'help defend random settlement' misc objective seems to pop up at completely random times, often where it is completely inconvenient (such as being deep into a main quest mission - I got one while deep in the Glowing Sea looking for Virgil and one during the attack on the Institute). They can also auto fail pretty quick, as happened with the one I got while in the Glowing Sea, if you don't drop everything to prioritize it. Conversely they are also bugged, with an attack at said settlement sometimes never taking place once you arrive.

Minutemen radiant quests became a pain in the arse after a while since they too auto fail if you leave them too long, which I found out the hard way one time. Preston always has more to add to your quest log the second one is turned in also, so you can effectively get stuck in a vicious cycle. You can break this by simply not turning in the mission to Preston and it will eventually complete on its own, but you can't talk to Preston again without getting another repeat mission to do. Fortunately Preston isn't exactly an interesting companion. 

I enjoy settlement building a lot, though find it rather limited and not meeting its full potential. The snap into place feature can be both a big help but also a hindrance. 

While I enjoyed the actual premise of the story, main included, I think Bethesda could learn a lot from games like The Witcher 3 and Mass Effect for dialogues. It felt liken they were halfway there with Fallout 4 with the voiced protagonist, but the dialogues were nowhere near as engaging as they could have been. I wish the protagonist would sometimes respond to companion dialogue more - Piper and Nick (my usual companions of choice) are always commenting on something or other on our travels, yet the protagonist never responds to them. 

I often get the impression that the game is too bright - and there is no gamma setting. Companions often comment on areas being too dark to see in and ask for a light, but they're still bright as hell. This suggests that the game is meant to be a lot darker than it actually is. Hardly anywhere have I actually found the Pipboy light needed. 

I did buy the latest Humble bundle as well. 

Also, if you're experiencing fps issues, which I hear are common with that game, there's a mod you can get which fixes it, called dsfix. Sadly, I've heard the optimization for the Steam version is not so great. Dark Souls II, on the other hand, has excellent Steam optimization: I saw my brother playing it on his PC and it ran like a dream and looked quite nice as well.

Episodes of Life is Strange tend to be around 2.5-3.5 hours, give or take. Ep 3 is slightly shorter, and ep 4 by far the longest. It depends on how much you explore/talk to other characters as well as how long it takes you to solve puzzles. I enjoyed that game a lot, and greatly prefer it over any recent Telltale games.