I can travel with a game controller/hub in my suitcase and the steam deck in my backpack. In the air, I can bang out an hour or two of something fun. FF7R has been pretty great on here.
But - once I get to the hotel, I hook it up to the television and it is now a console. Gamepad in hand, playing some Spider-Man or Witcher or Elden Ring or whatever. It's more than enough muscle for the games I want to play, and since Steam - the saves all sync up nicely for when I am home on my gaming rig.
I'm curious, what's the exact hardware? I've been wanting a Deck to do this, but didn't want to pack a full size controller.
You know for as much as the multi-player is touted as a major component of From games, wherever people talk about them it feels like it rarely comes up. Difficulty, world building, enemy design, lore, etc always pop, but I feel like I never hear tales of invaders/messages. At best it's a story of jolly cooperation, which is important, but infrequent.
This is merely my observation as someone who only ever had multi-player for the original demon souls since it didn't require a psn subscription at the time. So n of 1 and all.
The multiplayer features are things that serve to highlight the other stuff but don't necessarily draw attention to themselves. The messages specifically point a lot of people to aspects of level design that many might not notice such as hidden areas or items. They also contribute to a certain feel the designers were after that players often aren't aware of: The devs wanted to evoke the days of being kids and sharing tips/rumors about a video game everyone was playing before the advent of looking up stuff online outside of the game. That's not a small thing even outside of the hints of nostalgia. As people talking about video games on a forum, it's easy to overlook the vast amount of video game players that won't look outside of a game for information and expect the game itself to be a self-contained experience without needing to do homework. Any end-game MMO player can tell you that there are a lot of those people around and the Souls series message system is one of the more well designed attempts to handle that issue in a mostly single player experience that didn't really need to address it.
Until Elden Ring, I didn't play the games online, and I don't feel like I was missing something, but then I suppose you also can't miss something you've never had. The only reason I play Elden Ring online is that any participation in invasions is up to me to opt into, and I consider NPC summons and spirit ashes as perfectly viable alternatives to playing with another person present. The messages, I've had fun leaving them for other folks, and found them variably useful in my playthrough, but again I didn't need them for the other games.
Though this is of course because I constantly have a wiki/guide open for most games I play, so . . .
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
Invasions do happen, but they are pretty rare. The only place it actually bothered me was the area behind the cathedral in DS3, which is the unofficial PvP area of that game, and I arrived at that area inside the level range people PvP at (DS only matches you if you have roughly the same souls spent and best weapon enchant, and the community agrees to say level120 builds as the 'standard').
So every time I died, I'd get a PvP fight. After 4 in a row, it wore out its welcome.
Otherwise you see maybe 3 invasions per playthrough.
I'm off two minds about it. The DS1 online infrastructure is different from the others, this was already known because it has almost no anti-cheat implementations. The game is a decade old. And it is still mostly playable, though a I absolutely do enjoy both the helpful hints and the lame jokes.
I'd stomach it better if this announcement was paired with a month of -50% on DS Remake.
Let my man run faster through the swamp and chapter 3. Or make the map smaller so I don't spend all that time fetching and backtracking through a very narratively interesting area
I liked the first Witcher a lot, with all its issues. A full on remake could be pretty goddamn fantastic
+1
Zavianuniversal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered Userregular
I've been playing a lot of the fallout Old World Blues mod for Hearts of Iron IV as New Reno and having a lot of fun. I started out as gangsters competing with New Vegas for tourism dollars (you can do marketing campaigns, steal tourists from New Vegas, etc.) and pursued a policy of inviting Supermutants and Ghouls
Unfortunately some people didn't like this and detonated a bomb which wiped out all the gangsters and left a very upset Supermutant to pick up the pieces...
luckily he's a nice Supermutant dedicated to Unity and Equality
alls well that ends well!
Having consumed zero Witcher anything, I'm a little shocked at the praise for the first game.
Many, many people have told me for years now that if I want to get into it, I should watch the show, or read the books, or play Witcher III, but under no circumstances should I ever bother or waste my time playing Witcher or Witcher 2.
And mind you, I always planned on getting into it someday, but limited free time and all that. I'm just surprised there are so many here singing the first game's praises, I thought it was universally reviled.
Different strokes? I played the Witcher games, never watched the show because I thought it looked cheap and not particularly interesting, and I read two of the short story books. I would totally recommend Witcher 1 as long as you have patience for janky, older games.
e: Witcher 2 does some cool stuff with story as well, where the branching literally locks you out of geography. I can't think of another game that did that
Different strokes? I played the Witcher games, never watched the show because I thought it looked cheap and not particularly interesting, and I read two of the short story books. I would totally recommend Witcher 1 as long as you have patience for janky, older games.
e: Witcher 2 does some cool stuff with story as well, where the branching literally locks you out of geography. I can't think of another game that did that
Having consumed zero Witcher anything, I'm a little shocked at the praise for the first game.
Many, many people have told me for years now that if I want to get into it, I should watch the show, or read the books, or play Witcher III, but under no circumstances should I ever bother or waste my time playing Witcher or Witcher 2.
And mind you, I always planned on getting into it someday, but limited free time and all that. I'm just surprised there are so many here singing the first game's praises, I thought it was universally reviled.
Witcher 1 is a weird game, but if you can see past it's non-standard game systems it's a good weird game.
A big problem with Witcher 1 is that it largely flew under the gaming radar when it released, so a lot of people didn't give the game a chance until after they had played 2 or 3, and 1 is a very different kind of game from a gameplay perspective. I think a lot of people who loved the action rpg aspects of 2 and 3 went back to try to give 1 a chance and bounced off of it hard because of it.
Having consumed zero Witcher anything, I'm a little shocked at the praise for the first game.
Many, many people have told me for years now that if I want to get into it, I should watch the show, or read the books, or play Witcher III, but under no circumstances should I ever bother or waste my time playing Witcher or Witcher 2.
And mind you, I always planned on getting into it someday, but limited free time and all that. I'm just surprised there are so many here singing the first game's praises, I thought it was universally reviled.
Who are these many people and what other paths have they led you astray?
Many, many people have told me for years now that if I want to get into it, I should watch the show, or read the books, or play Witcher III, but under no circumstances should I ever bother or waste my time playing Witcher or Witcher 2.
Who are these many people and what other paths have they led you astray?
Like maybe the first WITCHER, which isn't bad, but definitely is euro-jank, sure as you can really just leap into WITCHA 2 with no background (I played a few hours of the first, found it too linear and kept off playing the second until I was informed that they solved a lot of the issues I had with the first). But even the second one? Like this one is THEE game that set this company on it's current path and has now inspired so many other action RPG's that have come after it ("Strong gameplay, strong story, strong graphics. . .this is how you become ARPG-STRONG!").
. . .wild honestly. Like W3 is "better" than W2 in the same way TLOU2 is better than TLOU1, but they are in their whole other league together, relative to W1.
. . .wild honestly. Like W3 is "better" than W2 in the same way TLOU2 is better than TLOU1, but they are in their whole other league together, relative to W1.
Yes, beer league, when compared to W1's pro league.
+3
KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
I wouldn't go back and play the original Witcher again at this point, it was dated when I did play it, but it was fine enough to encourage me to play 2 and a good chunk of 3. Honestly, 3 put me off not because of the scope but because it commonly felt just too damn depressing for me. It's very certainly an "in small doses" game for me, and I just had other things I wanted to do at the time.
But a remaster of 1 is an interesting thing nonetheless. The story was fairly strong (for the time it was made), and though the swamp was endless and less than a ton of fun, it wasn't as bad as I expected and honestly I had a fine time with the original.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
Having consumed zero Witcher anything, I'm a little shocked at the praise for the first game.
Many, many people have told me for years now that if I want to get into it, I should watch the show, or read the books, or play Witcher III, but under no circumstances should I ever bother or waste my time playing Witcher or Witcher 2.
And mind you, I always planned on getting into it someday, but limited free time and all that. I'm just surprised there are so many here singing the first game's praises, I thought it was universally reviled.
Witcher 1 is a weird game, but if you can see past it's non-standard game systems it's a good weird game.
A big problem with Witcher 1 is that it largely flew under the gaming radar when it released, so a lot of people didn't give the game a chance until after they had played 2 or 3, and 1 is a very different kind of game from a gameplay perspective. I think a lot of people who loved the action rpg aspects of 2 and 3 went back to try to give 1 a chance and bounced off of it hard because of it.
I only was aware of the game because Gamespot did some preview articles on it and with no knowledge of the source material, the only thing that caught my attention was that it used Bioware's Aurora engine. Being a KOTOR and NWN fan, that was enough to file it away for memory later and I picked it up on release when I saw positive reviews.
I think another big problem with The Witcher 1 is that the combat system is heavily rhythm and timing based. That's something a lot of people can struggle with and I imagine many RPG players didn't expect to encounter a need for them. There are ways to bypass the melee combat system with heavy investment in Signs (especially Igni) and alchemy, but players tend to gravitate towards swordsman builds in the series when they see a buff dude with two swords. I enjoyed the combat system once I figured out how to switch between enemies without losing a combo and seeing Geralt casually decapitate weaker enemies with the Group combat style was amusing. Looting after a big fight against humans involved walking through a lot of dismembered parts I didn't even remember severing. It was not a fluid system though. As rough as The Witcher 2's combat system can feel today, it was much smoother flowing than previous RPGs including its predecessor.
Another flaw of the first Witcher was that back then they forced Geralt to be a semi-self insert by turning his amnesia into characterization (or lack of it.) The saving grace was that he still cherished his possee of characters from the book.
I think Witcher is like Mass Effect where you can argue the first entry was the most raw and interesting, and the later entries had all the edges smoothed down. Though in this case, Witcher 3 is beloved in a way Mass Effect 3 wasn't.
I remember getting the first Witcher as soon as it was released in Europe and it was a glorious mess.
Janky saving system, mistranslated English script to the point where a lot of dialogue was nonsensical and some quests had to be completed by trial and error, and some would get completed accidentally. In spite of that, the game was so different in its atmosphere and setting to everything I had played before that I spent a lot of time figuring out how to import original Polish voiceovers with fan translated subtitles just so I could get the full story as it was intended.
The Enhanced Edition that was released a year(?) after the original fixed all that and even though everyone who bought the original got the update as a free patch, I bought another copy of the game just to support what was, at the time, small eastern European studio and I just loved the game that much.
+2
cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
I tried going back to Witcher 1 but couldn't do it, which is funny since it was what really got me into Witcher universe.
2 I have nothing but praise for (edit: well, it started balls hard but became easier as you leveled up and exploited the systems) and also has glorious music. Music that can only be heard on a particular playthrough at that.
I think Witcher is like Mass Effect where you can argue the first entry was the most raw and interesting, and the later entries had all the edges smoothed down. Though in this case, Witcher 3 is beloved in a way Mass Effect 3 wasn't.
ME1 is also the best ME ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
el_vicio on
+3
MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited October 2022
You typoed 1 instead of 2 there but very understandable very close on the keyboard.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Posts
...and @Pixelated Pixie was not going to let that stand.
Thanks so much for Cult of the Lamb! I'd just pulled this from my wishlist and re-added it, weirdly enough!
Steam | XBL
I'm curious, what's the exact hardware? I've been wanting a Deck to do this, but didn't want to pack a full size controller.
So what I'm hearing from this is "gift pixie"
Thank you very much, Stormy, for Deathloop!
Thanks @Spoit for more Monster Prom fun!
Yeah, but in a spooky voice.
"giiiift pixxxiiieeee oooOOOooOoooo"
Steam: betsuni7
Until Elden Ring, I didn't play the games online, and I don't feel like I was missing something, but then I suppose you also can't miss something you've never had. The only reason I play Elden Ring online is that any participation in invasions is up to me to opt into, and I consider NPC summons and spirit ashes as perfectly viable alternatives to playing with another person present. The messages, I've had fun leaving them for other folks, and found them variably useful in my playthrough, but again I didn't need them for the other games.
Though this is of course because I constantly have a wiki/guide open for most games I play, so . . .
So every time I died, I'd get a PvP fight. After 4 in a row, it wore out its welcome.
Otherwise you see maybe 3 invasions per playthrough.
I'm off two minds about it. The DS1 online infrastructure is different from the others, this was already known because it has almost no anti-cheat implementations. The game is a decade old. And it is still mostly playable, though a I absolutely do enjoy both the helpful hints and the lame jokes.
I'd stomach it better if this announcement was paired with a month of -50% on DS Remake.
Currently playing Witcher 3, so it's doubly interesting for me.
You mean perfect. The one they actually need to remake is 2.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
W3 on the other hand feels great.
Unfortunately some people didn't like this and detonated a bomb which wiped out all the gangsters and left a very upset Supermutant to pick up the pieces...
luckily he's a nice Supermutant dedicated to Unity and Equality
alls well that ends well!
Many, many people have told me for years now that if I want to get into it, I should watch the show, or read the books, or play Witcher III, but under no circumstances should I ever bother or waste my time playing Witcher or Witcher 2.
And mind you, I always planned on getting into it someday, but limited free time and all that. I'm just surprised there are so many here singing the first game's praises, I thought it was universally reviled.
e: Witcher 2 does some cool stuff with story as well, where the branching literally locks you out of geography. I can't think of another game that did that
Front Mission 3.
Witcher 1 is a weird game, but if you can see past it's non-standard game systems it's a good weird game.
A big problem with Witcher 1 is that it largely flew under the gaming radar when it released, so a lot of people didn't give the game a chance until after they had played 2 or 3, and 1 is a very different kind of game from a gameplay perspective. I think a lot of people who loved the action rpg aspects of 2 and 3 went back to try to give 1 a chance and bounced off of it hard because of it.
Who are these many people and what other paths have they led you astray?
Like maybe the first WITCHER, which isn't bad, but definitely is euro-jank, sure as you can really just leap into WITCHA 2 with no background (I played a few hours of the first, found it too linear and kept off playing the second until I was informed that they solved a lot of the issues I had with the first). But even the second one? Like this one is THEE game that set this company on it's current path and has now inspired so many other action RPG's that have come after it ("Strong gameplay, strong story, strong graphics. . .this is how you become ARPG-STRONG!").
. . .wild honestly. Like W3 is "better" than W2 in the same way TLOU2 is better than TLOU1, but they are in their whole other league together, relative to W1.
Yes, beer league, when compared to W1's pro league.
But a remaster of 1 is an interesting thing nonetheless. The story was fairly strong (for the time it was made), and though the swamp was endless and less than a ton of fun, it wasn't as bad as I expected and honestly I had a fine time with the original.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
I only was aware of the game because Gamespot did some preview articles on it and with no knowledge of the source material, the only thing that caught my attention was that it used Bioware's Aurora engine. Being a KOTOR and NWN fan, that was enough to file it away for memory later and I picked it up on release when I saw positive reviews.
I think another big problem with The Witcher 1 is that the combat system is heavily rhythm and timing based. That's something a lot of people can struggle with and I imagine many RPG players didn't expect to encounter a need for them. There are ways to bypass the melee combat system with heavy investment in Signs (especially Igni) and alchemy, but players tend to gravitate towards swordsman builds in the series when they see a buff dude with two swords. I enjoyed the combat system once I figured out how to switch between enemies without losing a combo and seeing Geralt casually decapitate weaker enemies with the Group combat style was amusing. Looting after a big fight against humans involved walking through a lot of dismembered parts I didn't even remember severing. It was not a fluid system though. As rough as The Witcher 2's combat system can feel today, it was much smoother flowing than previous RPGs including its predecessor.
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Janky saving system, mistranslated English script to the point where a lot of dialogue was nonsensical and some quests had to be completed by trial and error, and some would get completed accidentally. In spite of that, the game was so different in its atmosphere and setting to everything I had played before that I spent a lot of time figuring out how to import original Polish voiceovers with fan translated subtitles just so I could get the full story as it was intended.
The Enhanced Edition that was released a year(?) after the original fixed all that and even though everyone who bought the original got the update as a free patch, I bought another copy of the game just to support what was, at the time, small eastern European studio and I just loved the game that much.
It had one of my favorite dialogue exchanges in the series, when you step in to protect someone about to be executed for being a witch:
"You've got balls, Witcher."
"You're apt to lose yours soon."
And my god, the OST.
2 I have nothing but praise for (edit: well, it started balls hard but became easier as you leveled up and exploited the systems) and also has glorious music. Music that can only be heard on a particular playthrough at that.
Steam, Warframe: Megajoule
ME1 is also the best ME ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I would but you are occupying the cell!
(Legit 2 is my favourite in the trilogy and I think the other 2 are basically steaming piles of doo doo.)