#posted by lairofsentinel

[rpgchoices]

Sometimes I really want to read a short summary of what to expect from a game… and thankfully people can also submit their summaries of games they played and help me (and others) find games that cater to their interests!

submitted by @lairofsentinel

(click here for other videogames)

what to expect from THERE IS NO GAME: Wrong dimension

A very comical, hilarious adventure of point&click

Fully voiced. The main chars were voiced by the creator of this game. 

Very original riddles and puzzles that require thinking “out of the box” to the point that you need to “break” the interface of the game and use these elements against the narrator. 

It also has a very friendly system of hints that prevents you from being stuck in the game since in the beginning you will not be accustomed to the bizarre level of thinking to solve them.

It gives you a tour to different “kind” of games, making parodies of the mystery point&click games, zelda-like games, and free2play games. 

Linear story with a lot of comedy. You will laugh.

Short game, around 5 hours of gameplay

If you are looking for a refreshing new game that makes you laugh, with tons of originality, this is a game for you.

 ——- Plot? ——-

You  start the game with the title “There is no game”. The narrator keeps telling you to close this .exe and go to play something else, because “there is no game”. You must insist, breaking the interface of this presentation to force the narrator to show you the game. The relationship between the narrator and the player grows along the game, as the narrator begins to trust in the player and discloses bits of his past. At some point, the player and the narrator find a “bug”, the big evil of this game, and they are forced to jump into different “dimensions'' which are nothing less than games parodies: you enter in a typical sherlock-holmes-point&click game, then in a Zelda-like one, and then in a free2play. The story develops in this chaotic way while you, as a player, keep interacting with the narrator. 

——- Gameplay? ——- 

Basically it’s a point&click gameplay with a very small inventory.  If you are interested, there is a prototype of this game, for free [here]. Keep in mind this prototype is very, very unpolished, and the real game is a lot much better. However, you can experience the gameplay and its humour in this “sample”. 

——- Characters? ——- 

You [the user], the narrator who grows on you, and The Glitch who is the bug. Eventually there will appear another one. 

 ——- LGBT? ——-

None

——- Sadness level? ——- 

None. The only level of sadness is very funny for its overacting nature. 

——- Happy ending? Deaths? ——-

The ending is very happy and fine. 

[galedekarios]

a while ago, as i was playing gale's origin, i was talking about his "i cast my first spell whilst still a babe." line with my friends @lairofsentinel, @shibepetter and @voliialpha, bouncing ideas off of each other. i also made this post about it.

when halsin asks you to share a story about you, origin gale has the possibility to answer as follows:

Gale: I cast my first spell whilst still a babe. My mother took an awful fright when I conjured up a score of rabbits in the pantry. Halsin: Ha! Talented from the very beginning, then? Almost surprised you didn't cast magic in the womb.

now we have this new bit of information from one elminster's possible epilogue letters, revealing that gale cast fireball, a third level spell, at eight years old:

Elminster: You could have been no more than eight summers’ old, clutching your mother’s apron, eyebrows singed off by the fireball you’d unleashed into your neighbour’s rose bush. You were crying because the flowers were so beautiful, and you did mean to destroy them. How kind, how eager, how brilliant you were. And yet so naive. 

adding to this gale's background reveal dialogue, where he says that he could not only "control the weave, but compose it, much like a musician or a poet", i'm more and more inclined to think that gale is a sorcerer with a wizard's education.

he would be a very rare type of sorcerer. sorcerers usually have different sources from where they draw their powers from. for gale's case, it seems to be from the weave itself.

this is just a theory of course, but i do enjoy playing around with the idea. of him chosing to study, to not simply be content with his natural gifts and talents, but improving his craft to the best of his considerable abilities.

[aboxofcereales]

Currently trying to collect all the information about our companies’ life before the events of Baldur’s Gate 3. Mainly, about their family and age. Any suggestions/editing will be very much welcome.

Huge thanks to everyone who aiding the cause in comments and reblogs.

Last update - 10 April 2024.

Wyll Ravengard: is about 24, has left the city when he was 17, in origin introduction states that he’s been exiled for 7 years. According to Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms, he's in fact 24 & Neutral Good. Apparently his dad, Grand Duke Ulder Ravengard, raised him by himself, Wyll’s mother, Francesca, passed away in childbirth, when Wyll was born, as stated by Ulder’s longsword description, Wyll mentions her during a romance scene in Act 3, also calls himself “a single son to a single father”. According to Murder in Baldur's Gate: Ravenguard has never married and has no interest in domestic matters, moreover the said sword description calls Wyll's mother Ulder's love, not wife, which makes me think that Wyll was born out of wedlock. Supposed to have 3 uncles. I’ve seen a note about Wyll diving to see a mermaid as kid, written by his dad, in the high security vault. Florrick seen him grow up, had a crush on Stelmane as a kid, also during his childhood enjoined fishing with his dad, but sucked at it. Also, Ravengard's Scourger states that "Duke Ravengard's father was the sort of man who works with his hands, and communicates in grunts. In his heart his son vowed to do better. But when Wyll was born, Ravengard felt a strange gravity that drew him away from his son.", that strange gravity might be Francesca's death in childbirth(?). Generally, I strongly advise to take him around the city in act 3, as he tells plenty stories of his boyhood.

Gale Dekarios: still not sure if there any information about how old he might be, but I estimated around mid-to-late 30s, though it doesn’t really sit well with him meeting Mystra as a kid (btw there’s an absolutely wonderful post on this topic by @lairofsentinel, check it out), still I’d like Gale to be on the older side, alternatively, he may be around 28-30 due Mystra's return year. Personal headcanon - he's 37. According to Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms, he's 35 & True Neutral. He casted his first spell as a babe - a score of rabbits in the panty. Apparently lives separately from his parents in his tower, at least as kid had them both (mentioned when he first tells about his friend-tressym, Tara), thou in his origin (at least as much as heard and played myself but @vitanithepure confirmed it) only his mother gets mentions, the state of the other parent is unknown. Has a very tender relationship with her, but didn’t inform her about the orbe for her own safety, her name may be Morena (godsblessdataminers), Mrs Dekarios really wants him to find someone to settle down with. Also, Tara hates his beard.

Shadowheart (Jenevelle Hallowleaf): is about 50, comments that Viconia documented about 40 years worth of her life at the hands of Shar, in the same note she writes that Shadowheart was able to keep her heart true to her child self, and was hard learning Shar lessons. As I understood when she was kidnapped, she was about 10-13, kidnapping was directly by the Shar command.According to Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms, she' 48 & Lawful Neutral. Personal headcanon - she's 51. After her abduction made friends with tiefling named Nocturne (they might have be more than friends?), had a pet mouse for sometime called Nibbles. There’s a grafiti somewhere behind Jaheira house which she has drawn. Shares a questionable taste of romance literature with Wyll and his father. Her parents’ fate, Emmeline and Arnell Hallowleaf: is up to you decisions. Her mother mentions that they wanted Jen to have siblings.

Karlach Cliffgate: early 30s I think, the way she speaks about Gortash makes me thinks she was practically a teenager when she started working for him and spend 10 year serving Zariel. Personal headcanon - she's 29. According to Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms, she's 30 & Chaotic Good. Her parents, Pluck and Caerlack, she moved them from Outer City to a nicer place. Her mom died due to fewer when she was a teen, dad a couple years later due to road accident. Both died before she met Gortash. Her mom seems to be behind her love for Minsc, Jaheira etc. You can meet her friend near Baldur’s statue.

Lae’zel of K’liir: seems to be barely 20. Githianky reach adulthood in their late teen, and as Lae’zel was yet to present a mindlflaer’s head, I think she’s the youngest in the party. According to Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms, she's exactly 22 & Lawful Evil. Personal headcanon - she's in fact 20. She hates owls due to their necks, Karlach agrees.

Astarion Ancunin: according to translation of his grave he only lived for 40 years before becoming spawn, spend 200 year as such. Safe guess - there's definitely smt wrong with his grave stone or/and translation as it messes the current year - from 220 to 250. According to Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms, he's 263, which doesnt seem right, & Neutral Evil. According the artbook he was a corrupted magistrate, which seem to be true atleast to pre-release version.

Halsin is 350, his family is from the High Forest, thou they are all gone. Spend 3 years captured by drow, loves honey and curving ducks. Jahiera is about 150-160, as she was a child in 1347. Has atleat five foster children: half-elf Rion, half-orc druid Jord, three humans - Jhessem, Fig, and Tate. Minsc was a statue from 1409 to 1480s.

[bigbraincel]

wip meme

Rules: Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it! and then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

i was tagged by @just-another-wasteland-merc thank u bb. lord i have so many WIPs. ill try to keep this brief lol

My WIPs

- Song of the Bard/the Songbird and the Crow [dragon age origins leliana/zevran multichapter longfic. undecided on the title]

- idfk [dragon age origins leliana/zevran smut LOL]

- Chasing Shadows [fallout 4 slow burn multichapter longfic. main pairing oc/deacon]

- spicey (bg3 smut oc/gale)

- You’re Here Tonight (more bg3 smut oc/wyll)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

tagging @miainaction94 @lairofsentinel @sunflowerwizard @fanthings @dudethatsgay not obligatory obviously <3

[darkest-fluid]

@lairofsentinel tagged me! I will tag @dragonswithjetpacks and anyone else who wants to show off their OC. 😊

Name: Lyr

Alias: ---

Gender: Male

Age: 25

Species: Half-elf. Human father, elf mother. His mother is half wood elf and half sea elf.

Zodiac: Scorpio Sun / Cancer Moon / Taurus Rising

Abilities/Talents: Lyr is an excellent swimmer, and good at climbing/jumping/parkour-ing his way around urban landscapes. He was a rigger and a lookout in his last post, so he’s great with ropes/knots and has very keen perception. He also has a lot of empathy/insight. He can be quiet and stealthy when need be, and has very nimble fingers for pick-pocketing and lock-picking. He draws as a hobby, and while he isn’t good enough to make a living off of it, he’s pretty good for an amateur. He can carry a tune, and is a very good dancer.

Alignment: lawful / neutral / chaotic / good / neutral / evil / true

Religion: Lyr is not especially religious, but he pays respects to Deep Sashelas and Valkur.

Sins: envy / greed / gluttony / lust / pride / sloth / wrath

Virtues: charity / chastity / diligence / humility / justice / kindness / patience

Languages:  Common, Elvish, a bit of Halfling and Thieves’ Cant

Family: Lyr’s father was once a locally famous warrior, but his reputation has since fallen significantly due to gambling, alcoholism and generally poor behavior. He lives in Baldur’s Gate. Lyr supports him financially (and has done so for a long time.) Lyr’s mother abandoned the family when Lyr was a young child. He has not seen or heard from her since.

Friends: Lyr’s best friend growing up was a street orphan named Maya. She disappeared when Lyr was 13. Since then he’s been somewhat reluctant to really get close to any of his friends, though he’s had a number of acquaintances and even some who he would grow close to for a time before pulling away. He’s an easy person to be intimate with early on, but over time he tends to grow more remote.

Sexual Orientation: heterosexual / bisexual / pansexual / homosexual / demisexual / asexual / unsure / other

Relationship status: single / dating / married / widowed / open relationship / divorced / not ready for dating / it’s complicated

Libido: sex god / very high / high / average / low / very low / non-existent

Build: twig / bony / slender / average / athletic / curvy / chubby / obese

Hair: white / blonde / brunette / red / black / other

Eyes: brown / blue-gray / green / black / other

Skin: pale / fair (but tanned) / olive / light brown / brown / very brown

Height: 6′0″

Weight: around 160 lbs

Scars: He has 3 notable scars. One on the back of his right hand, one over his left hip and one across his right shoulder blade (all injuries from an edged weapon.)

Facial Features: Similar to this, but with pointed ears and slightly longer hair.

Tattoos: None YET.

Dogs or Cats?

Birds or Nugs?  

Snakes or Spiders?

Coffee or Tea?

Ice Cream or Cake?

Fruits or Vegetables?

Sandwich or Soup?

Magic or Melee?

Sword or Bow?

Summer or Winter?

Spring or Autumn?

The Past or The Future?

[dark-rose89]

Author Meme

Tagged by @lairofsentinel

Author Name: DarkRose89

Fandoms You Write For: I’ve written most for Dreamfall Chapters, but I also wrote for Vampyr, Harry Potter, Thief and VTMB

Where You Post: By now only on AO3, before that I used to post on FF.net and on a German fanfic site

Most Popular One-Shot: Back Pain (Dreamfall Chapters)

Most Popular Multi-Chapter Story: On AO3 it’s Moving Forward (another Dreamfall Chapters fic), on FF.net it’s this super old Remus/Sirius fic Wasting Time

Favorite Story You Wrote: I don’t really have one among the published ones, cause I tend to dislike my fics shortly after I posted them. So I’m gonna say the very unfinished Vampyr fic that might never actually get posted, but that I still like and want to finish...

Story You Were Nervous to Post: In a way all of them? Though mostly the first time I wrote an E rated one.

How Do You Choose Your Titles: With lots of internal crying. I hate coming up with titles, so generally the titles are just one or two random words that sort of fit the fic but don’t really say anything about it.

Do You Outline: No. Sure, I generally have an idea of what I want the fic to be and where I want to go with it, but when I’m writing I just write everything down the way it pops into my head.

Complete: Everything I posted. I really suck at finishing anything, so I only post stuff that is already finished. I once made the mistake with that Wasting Time fic of posting the chapters before I had finished the fic, and then it took me two years to write the last chapter.

In-Progress: The Vampyr fic I mentioned above. It might never get finished, cause I haven’t worked on it for months, and I’m not even really in the fandom anymore, but I never put so much effort in a fic before, so I haven’t completely given up on it, cause I really do want it finished one day.

Coming Soon: Nothing.

Do You Accept Prompts: No. Like, I said, I suck at finishing fics, so if I took prompts there’s a huge chance I’d never finish it, while the other person is waiting for their fic, so I just don’t take any in the first place.

Upcoming Story You Are Most Excited to Write: Nothing either, I don’t have any ideas for something new at the moment.

Tagging: @chibistarr (No one else, cause I can’t think of anyone else I know who still regularly writes fanfic)

[movealecsgay]

lairofsentinel replied to your post “Guys, what do you think would happen, in the Shadowhunters universe,...”

I dont think so, vampirism and lycanthropy are demon-diseases. Once you got one of them, your immune system is affected only by angelic stuff or silver or things related with angelic rituals. Among demon-blood creatures, there are no effects. So I will think that, at least, they will experience poison or no effect at all. They can't turn one another. So, downloaders can't change factions. But this wasn't addressed in books nor show so far I know. This's my opinion only.

I hadn’t even thought of whether they turned or not, assumed they wouldn’t. So they could get sick/weakened from the venom (werewolf healing powers maybe clearing it from their system to avoid death maybe?). 

I just thought of something, since yin fen is made from vampire venom, can werewolves get high from it/the venom? 

[rpgchoices]

For some reasons I could not tag you so I hope you see the reply!

I think your comment makes sense. I have plenty of queer series on this blog (I keep track of all lgbtq+ characters in videogames that do not focus on romance, and will post soon an excel file that I will keep updated), and I do post lgbtq characters and always mention (both me and lairofsentinel) if there is queer content in a game (in the "what to expect").

The 30 days was kinda to talk about my favourite queer games and stuff I enjoyed and I thought people could find interesting, but it takes time (as you noticed I missed a couple of days so I had to post multiple posts in a days), especially for older games I played years ago. Sadly, people on the internet have the power to ruin an experience. I don't have that much free time, and that person does not know me, but basically all I do with my free time and my hobbies is share information. I love that. I make lists (not only for games, but other fandoms), make subtitles of stuff, share stuff that I know cannot be find easily on discord and streaming etc. So it kinda stings that someone would still assume I cowardly decided to hide information.

[galedekarios]

— our very souls do echo

rosewaterhag ✦ she/ her ✦ edit and gif maker ✦ sometimes artist & writer

tags: bg3 gifs ✦ bg3 edits ✦ bg3 meta ✦ art ✦ oc page ✦ ask me

links: twitter ✦ pinterest ✦ ao3

ocs:

🌑 altonaufein of house hlarahel: tag ✦ drow ✦ chaotic good ✦ cleric of eilistraee ✦ ♥︎ karl & gale

☀️ karl eifers, formerly clemens whitewave calanthar: tag ✦ human ✦ neutral good ✦ cleric of ilmater/oath of devotion paladin ✦ ♥︎ altonaufein & gale

🛡️ ieriyn sundown: tag ✦ half-drow ✦ lawful good ✦ cleric of kelemvor ✦ no romance

✨ othorion shadowwater: tag ✦ sun elf ✦ true neutral ✦ bladesinger/artificer ✦ ♥︎ chardry kalenhad (@lairofsentinel)

🌿 cariad oakdale: tag ✦ wood half-elf ✦ chaotic good ✦ ranger/oath of the ancients paladin - ♥︎ narvi goldenbrace (oc)

🎻 nyctelius: tag ✦ mephistopheles tiefling ✦ neutral good ✦ college of lore bard/wizard ✦ zevlor (ended), no romance

ships:

celestial bodies ✦ karl/gale/altonaufein

a soul that steels my own ✦ gale/altonaufein

you give me hope ✦ karl/gale

battered and wrecked i come to you first ✦ karl/altonaufein

the one i love is dark ✦ othorion/chardry

meta:

master list

modlist:

link to mod list post

[acatinabox]

I was tagged by @lairofsentinel, thank you!

I won’t tag anyone but feel free to do it if you love these things. I sure do!

Fic Writer Interview

Name: Schrodinger (Aurora)

Fandoms: Baldur's Gate 3, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Pillars of Eternity (although I don’t write for all of them).

Where you post: AO3 and previews here.

Most Popular One-shot: a decently smutty one on Rayes Vidal and Ryder finding a secluded space to bang.

Most Popular Multichap: So far it’s my unfinished Mass Effect Andromeda one but the BG3 one is catching up.

Favourite story you’ve written so far: an original novel I wrote this years. For fanfic it would be Ambrosia.

Fic you were nervous to post: I am very nervous about my original fic being misinterpreted or misunderstood because it has a romance that is quite non conventional. Ambrosia deals with cannibalism so it was maybe a bit worrying at the time. It did not draw a ton of shit so it’s all good.

How do you choose your titles: for fics I choose titles of songs or quotes of stuff I love. For original work I like to think that my titles are always a WIP.

Do you outline: I consider myself a plantser. I outline all the chapters of a novel and then for each chapter I outline three plot points that happen. Some of the less outlined chapters I use for experimentation and they do lead to interesting shenanigans. For fanfic, I use it as a place of experimentation and fun so I mostly discovery write it. I have a few themes that hold the piece together and I do plan a bit of the chapter before writing it, but I am much more prone to changes. The fact that fanfic generally follows another plot which is generally coherent really helps.

Complete: The MEA fic is incomplete because in the middle of it I decided it was original enough I wanted to write a book about it. It’s in the drawer. I never abandon stories. Not completely.

In progress: The BG3 one, Against the stars. Check it out, it’s going places.

Prompts?: If you have interesting bits of Forgotten Realms lore that you’d like me to explore, I have a thing planned for those.

Upcoming work you’re most excited about: I’m working on a more experimental piece with Gale from BG3 and my OC, Rayne. It’s pretty exciting because I’ve never done something like that with a narrative frame.

[thuumwrestler]

lairofsentinel replied to your post “Technomancer fics might be a very real possibility after I finish the...”

we need more fic of those two

I gotchu fam

[rpgchoices]

Sometimes I really want to read a short summary of what to expect from a game… and thankfully people can also submit their summaries of games they played and help me (and others) find games that cater to their interests!

submitted by @lairofsentinel

(click here for other videogames)

what to expect from LAKE

A very slow-paced “adventure” game [calling it adventure is very generous]. It feels more like a vacation from any action-adventure game you have played, since the “adventure” narrated here can be more accurately described as “slices of the main character’s life”.

You play Meredith, delivering mail and packages in a remote town by the lake, meeting characters that may need your help in mundane, daily stuff: hairdresser, bureaucracy paperwork, watching a movie with a teenager whose parents forbid her to do so, etc. You can choose to spend time with them in your free time or remain alone at home, reading or watching TV.

The depth of these characters you spend time with in order to get to know better is not really big. The whole game stays at a very superficial and relaxing level. 

Sometimes it can be very boring to ride the mail truck through the streets. However, the game has some mechanics to allow you teleportation and auto-pilot, so you only enjoy the scenery, which is very relaxing: it’s a town surrounded by forests and a beautiful big lake. 

You can romance two chars: a “manly” lumberjack who is a loner called Robert, or a total movie nerd who owns the local video shop in town: Angie. The romance here is super simple and shallow, as all in this game is.

Animations are not really good. The conversations with the characters tend to be done in a very static way. 

Very short game with only 6 hours of game, more or less. 

 ——- Plot? ——-

You play as Meredith Weiss, a 30 y/o computer programmer, who really needs a break from her job. To do so, she returns to her birthplace: a small town by a big, beautiful lake. Here, she spends her 15 days of vacation working at the post office of the town, delivering packages and mail locally. In the process she meets people from her childhood and can decide to reconnect with them or not. She also meets new faces that potentially can end up in romance. Despite all this relaxing time, every day your boss calls you on the phone, forcing you to work in your free time while sounding good-intended and friendly.

——- Gameplay? ——- 

You move Meredith along the town, and make her ride a mail truck. You have to stop in front of houses and give them their packages or leave their mail in their  mailboxes. There is no way for you to make a mistake: the game doesn’t allow you to put mails in mailboxes that are not exactly the correct one. 

You can pick options in the dialogues when having a conversation with other characters. Their impact is not too big: you can reconnect with old friends, or let the relationship stay as cold as time made it. 

There are two chars in this town that you can romance: Robert and Angie. 

——- Characters? ——- 

Meredith Weiss, plus all the many secondary chars that belong to this town. 

 ——- LGBT? ——-

Since playing as Meredith is default, there is a very deliberated option to allow Meredith to pursue a lesbian relationship with the owner of the local video shop: Angie Eastman. However, the game doesn’t behave in the same way if you pursue her romance as if you pursue the heterosexual romance. The town is completely blind to their lesbian relationship, while, on the other hand, the whole town keeps pushing Robert against Meredith even when you play having zero intentions to romance the lumberjack man. In fact, it ends up being very annoying that just because Meredith helped Robert in a bureaucratic issue, the town calls them now lovebirds, while if you kiss Angie, the town says nothing, and keeps having those annoying comments towards Robert as if the relationship with Angie was not there. It’s true that both relationships are in a very early stage, and one can justify that the town doesn’t get the hint what’s going on between Angie and Meredith. However, as I said before, they have no problem in calling Meredith and Robert “lovebirds” whether they are in a relationship or not.

Another detail in this game is how the lesbian kiss was obviously obscured in its scene, while the heterosexual kiss is completely open and shown without any kind of cover or discretion. 

——- Sadness level? ——- 

None. It’s a very relaxing and chilling game. 

——- Happy ending? Deaths? ——-

This game has multiple endings that depend only on your final decision at the end of the game: what are you going to do after these two weeks. 

The options are: 1) to stay in town as a mail delivery, 2) to return to the city and overwork for years since your boss is unable to let you have free time, or 3) to  live on the road, inside a VR that a hippie couple gave you.

[rpgchoices]

Sometimes I really want to read a short summary of what to expect from a game… and thankfully people can also submit their summaries of games they played and help me (and others) find games that cater to their interests!

submitted by @lairofsentinel

(click here for other videogames)

what to expect from ELEX 2

Sand-box “ARPG” set in a world with magic and post-apocalyptic components. It continues the story of Elex 1.

Despite being called a RPG, I see nothing of role play in terms of how you affect the development of the story, which factions you want to help or wipe-out, what NPCs you want to kill or befriend, etc. At the end of the day, the game forces you to make decisions you don’t want to, and stick with companions you don’t want to recruit, and deal with resolutions you never had a choice to pick. 

There is no customisation of the main char. You play as Jax, an ex Alb commander, main char of Elex 1.

The game is aesthetically astounding; graphically speaking, it looks alike Skyrim, with a complete redesign of the places we visited in Elex 1. 

You have companions that you can talk to in the main fort where you are going to establish your HQ or during exploration while walking around [banter]. You can only have one companion at a time. They have personal loyalty quests that, at the end of the game, doesn’t matter. Even if you completely ignored the forced companions, they will join the final battle and remain loyal to you. 

You can romance only female companions: Caja, Nasty, and Nyra.

You can meet again some of the companions of Elex 1 such as Falk, the droid C.R.O.N.Y. U4, Caja, and Nasty. However some of the old companions like Duras or Ray are not present in the game, as if the game is assuming they were killed in your previous game.

Characters and NPCs are stiff from an animated point of view. they stare at you like ghouls most of the time, but one can forgive that. However, what breaks immersion most of the time is their conversations, which can be suddenly interrupted by local events or simply your companion triggers their loyal personal quest while you are talking to a Chief of a faction. This is laughable at best. The conversation, when it is not broken in this way, sometimes has a lack of cohesion: you can be asking for the location of your son, and in the same conversation, when nobody informs you where he is, you suddenly claim to know where he is.  This happens with NPCs too: they claim not to know something, and then, later in the same conversation, they end up knowing what they claimed not to know, lol. Conversation feels very disconnected at times: it seems to be a lot of isolated chunks of text and voice acting that were smashed together.

The world and the map are beautifully enormous, but there is a considerable lack of teleportation devices spread all over it. Since the game is filled with annoying, endless errant-boy quests and “talk to X and bring me back his answer” kind of quests, this makes you waste a lot of minutes running between two NPCs to complete a silly task. Things get a bit better when you can improve your jet-system and you can have nice speed boosts, but still a lot of wasted time in repetitive runs. 

The 90% of quests in this game are boring kill-different-types-of-monsters which are re-spawned over and over and over. 

For some reason, a lot of NPCs provoke you. Many npcs are trying to make you fight them. You also find a lot of repeated situations where wankers are pestering women to sleep with them, while they are telling them to stop bothering them, and you see these situations over and over in all factions. 

All female companions end up “in love” with the main char, and give him a lot of cringing compliments. When you pick one of them to properly romance, the other two have resentment/jealousy talks to some degree.

There are some situations in which npcs or the main character describe women as "twisted as computers" or "no creature is more mysterious than a woman" and similar kinds of ancient crap. A lot of weird stuff proper of a game of the 80’s, not one of 2020.

NPC models are very limited. You feel you are talking to the same random npc in all places, with just a change in the colour of their hair.  Random NPCs can have the same design as your companions’. This breaks the interest you can have with different npcs. The same guy appears everywhere and it’s your companion as well, lol.

Unlike Elex 1, there are no multiple endings [as you notice later in game, there is little change in the world made by your own choices]. The only change is the kind of final battle you have, but the ending is just the same for everyone. 

Despite having a sophisticated system of factions, joining one or another doesn’t matter in the end.  

You know all of them are at war with one another but you never see them fighting.

The game starts with a context that it's probably not the one you played in Elex 1, meaning, this game assumes a canon ending for elex 1, and they don't care about your choices previously. It does not only assume you romanced Caja in Elex 1, but also had some romantic involvement with Nasty. Since Duras and Ray don’t appear in this game I suppose the game also assumes that you killed them in Elex 1? It’s unbelievable how little it cares about your previous game.

Elex 2 is incredibly slow paced considering the constant repetitive things it offers. The first 20 hours are painful. The main plot seems to never advance, and a lot of quests associated with the factions are so mundane and trivial that it makes no sense for someone who is fighting an alien invasion to deal with them. And like I said before, you feel that you have no control about what factions to help more, or even if you want to betray a faction due to its chaotic nature.  It was so slow and frustrating that at some point I started to speed-run and care little about this game.

You are building up a force that tries to combine the power of all the factions in this world, which ironically, it only kills a dozen of enemies in the final battle. Meanwhile you killed hundreds of them along the infinite, repetitive quests, all by yourself. Lol. This is such a failure to me. Building up a powerful force to repel aliens has no effect in the end. There are more plot-related nonsense situations but they all fall into the spoiler category, especially related to Jax’s son.

The game can be finished in around 30 or 40 hours; but completing all the repetitive side quests and senseless tasks can increase your time to +100 hours. But I feel it’s just a trap; quests are incredibly boring, in addition with really few teleport devices that make you run a lot, wasting more minutes of your gameplay. 

Loot is everywhere, pretty much like games such as Fallout, although I felt it was not rewarding to explore: you find the same loot everywhere. 

For an ARPG, the combat feels very, very bland. 

Elex 1 is not a mind-blowing game, but it did a lot of things better than this one. 

 ——- Plot? ——-

You play as Jax, who has been living in a hut for the last 10 years after the end of Elex 1. Jax went to live isolated, for a decade, despite having a son, simply because he could not deal with humanity ignoring his warning about in-coming alien dangers (?). Anyways, in the beginning of the game, he is attacked by these alien creatures and is bitten by one of them, getting infected with something that strips him from his powers [this is how the game explains why he returned to lvl 1 after the whole gameplay of Elex 1]. Now he needs to gather all the factions of this world to face this alien invasion that can’t be ignored any longer.

——- Gameplay? ——- 

A typical arpg gameplay: you level up by killing targets and making quests, and increase your skills and talents with the extra points you earn in each level. In the beginning, you can pick to use melee weapons or ranged ones. By the middle of the game, you can join a faction that uses magic, so then you can learn to cast spells of fire [Bersekers] or ice [Albs], depending on the faction you picked. 

——- Characters? ——- 

The main char, Jax, and your companions and quest givers. 

 ——- LGBT? ——-

None so far I played. But it seems natural not to find any considering how hetero-male-gaze focused the whole game is. 

——- Sadness level? ——- 

None. 

——- Happy ending? Deaths? ——-

This “rpg” has only one ending. It’s “happy” and pretends to be hopeful and a bit of a cliffhanger to an Elex 3. 

[Spoiler]

Despite Jax’s son dies at the end due to Jax own command/choices [that you have no way to change in order to obtain another outcome] there is no real impact in the sadness of the narrative. The kid dies and his parents are just ��meh”. Jax shows a cinematic with “sad eyebrows” and that’s all. It’s so bland that inspires laughter more than sadness. 

[rpgchoices]

Sometimes I really want to read a short summary of what to expect from a game… and thankfully people can also submit their summaries of games they played and help me (and others) find games that cater to their interests!

submitted by @lairofsentinel

(click here for other videogames)

what to expect from ENCASED 

Kind of post-apocalyptic Sci-fi isometric RPG. The post-apocalyptic aspect is not related to the “end of the world” but to the end of living conditions inside a strange alien Dome. It seems like the world and life outside the dome are fine, but the tragedy and danger are always present inside the dome [from where no living creatures can leave]

The RPG component is via dialogue; your skills, perks, and background will allow you to activate certain unique options in dialogues. You also pick your skills and perks by spending points in them. 

Your actions and mostly your relationship with the many factions inside the Dome can determine new endings to pick by the end of the game. In this sense, your “actions change the story of the game” and therefore, makes it feel like a RPG. 

The best thing this game has is its story. It’s about sci-fi, in which humans interact with alien technology, and experience things that you are never sure if it’s something related to alien-science, alien reality, or just human madness. 

It’s a heavy-texted game, similar to Pillars of Eternity in that aspect.

You can customise your character in a moderate way. It matters little since there are no cut-scenes to see any zoom-in of their face.  

You also have several pre-made characters with developed backgrounds.

The most important aspect of your character during the customisation is the Wing to where they belong. It constantly affects how your character is seen and treated inside the Dome.

There are five wings in the game that can be easily described as: Silver Wing: mostly administrative and bureaucrats that maintain the administration inside the dome. White Wing: scientists of all fields that lead and work in the relics and mysteries inside the Dome. Blue Wing: technicians and handymen that maintain all the electronic infrastructure inside the Dome. Black Wing: security, which works like cops. And Orange Wing: the physical workers inside the dome but all of them were ex-prisoners who were given a second chance if they accepted to enter the Dome. The second chance, though, it’s something pretty close to slavery. They ended up as janitors, physical labourers, miners, etc. They perform all the physical work inside the Dome, and are under custody/abuse of the Black Wing. The tension between the Blacks and the Oranges is amazing in this game, I have to say. Oranges are the “oppressed” people inside the Dome, but the game shows that they are not saints, and most of them are a danger if they are left free, so the game presents nice grey zones to thinks about. The game shows very interesting social interactions between these five Wings, and especially between the Black and the Orange ones. 

Combat is done by using gun weapons, grenades, melee weapons and /or psionic powers.

Not fully voiced: Only in parts of the main quest chain some chars and the narrator are voiced.

Excessive realistic mechanisms that makes the game tedious: limited objects of constant use such as lock-picking keys, healing meds, ammo, etc. You need to care about your char as if they were a pet, otherwise, conditions begin to affect your stats such as thirst, hunger, radiation. There is manual reload of weapons, manual unsheathe of weapons, etc that annoys the NPCs. For example, when you talk to characters that notice your unsheathed weapon, the same exact dialogue about “please, put that gun aside” appears. Over and over and over. 

You have to constantly care about your character’s needs too: they have to eat constantly, keep hydrated, and sleep regularly. Eating doesn’t restore health. For health you have a lot of different elements with different effects to use depending on the kind of wound you have: bandages if you are bleeding, medical kits if you are just low in health, radiation cleaners if you have too much radiation, etc. It makes the game more tedious with so many irrelevant details in its mechanics. 

It has this annoying mechanic of finding crafting materials, ammo and a lot of minor items in 5 million boxes, lockers, desks, crates, stones, etc. You spend 60% of your playing time opening boxes to see what loot is inside. Boring.

Combat and looting are extremely repetitive and boring. This game needs, at least, an auto-loot feature but sadly, it doesn’t have it.

Quest log is a bit messy: sometimes you don't know which quests are related to what part of the map. Sometimes the description is too vague to guess where to go. There are no markers on the map. And when you read multi-tasked quests, it’s very easy to get lost which items of the list you already have. It’s complicated to keep track of the accomplishment percentage of a multi-tasked quest. 

You have companions that work mostly like followers. Depending on your actions and their moral, you can have a good or bad reputation with them. They have personal quests associated with them, but they are so vague that you are not sure where to finish it or even when you did it. 

These companions don’t provide much talk. Each of them has just one small paragraph to say about their past every 25% of reputation you earned. They are very shallow. They have opinions on all the factions of the game and political position.

There is no romances. You have some options to take the services of prostitutes or have some flings with NPCs. 

You can explore the map inside the dome. The centre of the Dome has a wild maelstrom. Getting close to it in an early game can kill you. Exploring the map is rewarded with many small, hidden places: they can be related to minor side quests. Most of the time you find objects that, apparently, you need to give to some random NPC that you probably will not find because there are too many inconsequential NPCs everywhere. 

Every NPC has unique dialogue or personalised text. Again, it seems a lot of wasted extra detail.

It makes no sense that you have quests about following people who stole stuff or are accused of thievery when you open and break and loot every container you see along the game without any consequence. The excess of looting is terrible. Only a few safes or locked doors are coloured in red, indicating that you are forbidden to open them, but in general you can ransack a room with the owner of that room looking at you without even a reaction. 

Same as looting and lockpicking all containers, you can hack almost all computers in front of their owners without any penalty. Which is extremely unbelievable and inconsistent with the excess of detail in NPCs and mechanics you have here, or even with the kind of quests you are given. 

It has a low level of body horror and gore. There is nothing visually explicit or detailed, but you have some events along your travels in the map that may describe situations that can fit these genres.

Like so many games of this type, it has no teleportation system, which is a terrible choice since it’s a pain to see the car cross the map so slowly. And you walk this map a lot, all the time.

Excess of “random encounters” which are always the same over and over. Tedious.

A lot of  fetching quests, which require more fetching quests to be completed. For example, a NPC needs 3 items, and each of them are in different factions. When you go to retrieve them, each faction asks you to make another quest for them and fetch _another_ item, before giving you the one you want. It’s boring as fuck. 

Due to this excess of multi fetching quests combined with a poor quest log and the lack of quest markers in the map, it’s pretty usual to reach a place without fulfilling the requirements of said quest, simply because you can’t track it anywhere, unless you do it personally, writing them down in a piece of paper [sorry, we are in 2022, why I should be doing this? Quest logs should give you this information in a nice list]. This is very frustrating, because you go to a place thinking you have everything needed to continue the quest line, but it ends up you didn’t because you forgot an item which, sure, it’s written in its quest log after 2 pages of reading instead of a nice summary-list. This turns the game into an eternal coming-and-going between far-away places where we don’t have teleports, which makes everything even more tedious. 

Sense of direction is complicated. The game doesn't have a minimap, and the general map you see with M-key never rotates. So it’s easy to lose your sense of direction with unfamiliar places. 

You can earn everyone’s reputation, even from those who hate you, just by bribing them. Give them money or items or junk…. You will get max reputation even with those you never sided with or you never did a single quest for them. Another incoherent detail considering the excess of realistic and tedious stuff explained previously.

 ——- Plot? ——-

You are one of the chosen ones by the company CRONUS to enter the Dome. Because of the lack of personnel, you are sent to a unique, dangerous excavation the same day you arrived. Clearly, what could go wrong?

——- Gameplay? ——- 

Exactly like any isometric RPG game. And a lot of boring looting.

——- Characters? ——- 

There are many. All those related to the main quest chain are pretty well done, the rest of the characters are shallow. Your companions/followers are also shallow: there is only one aspect of them that you can see and talk.

 ——- LGBT? ——-

One of your companions is a trans man. I don’t know if there are more chars that belong to the lgbt in those thousands of irrelevant Npcs filling the game.

——- Sadness level? ——- 

Low level.

——- Happy ending? Deaths? ——-

You can choose your own ending depending on the factions you worked with.

[rpgchoices]

Sometimes I really want to read a short summary of what to expect from a game… and thankfully people can also submit their summaries of games they played and help me (and others) find games that cater to their interests!

submitted by @lairofsentinel

(click here for other videogames)

what to expect from THE TALOS PRINCIPLE [and Road to Gehenna]

Story-driven puzzle game. It has exploration elements as well, with many eastern eggs of pop culture.

The difficulty curve of the game is quite slow and progressive, however, there are some timing puzzles that can be very frustrating.

If you want to play this game only for its narrative story but the frustration that these puzzles cause is too much, the game has a console that allows fly-cheats. I highly recommend cheating in this game rather than abandoning it. The story is too precious to leave it incomplete, it's worthy to explore it in detail. The difficulty of the puzzles can be ridiculous sometimes. However, be warned:  once you activate the cheats, a marker will appear on your screen informing the presence of cheats, and it won’t disappear even when you disable them. 

This game is highly philosophical. It has a great research work on philosophy and ancient history such as Greek, Roman, and Egyptian civilisations. It also has a broad content on religion, neurosciences, psychology, and sociology. The interdisciplinary information it manages amazed me. The metaphorical analogy of the whole game with Christianity is immense too, and so well written. All these details can be appreciated only when you are deep into the game, when small information from neuroscience resounds with bits of hypothetical religious passages that the game uses in other instances.

It has a lot of content to read. Part of the narrative happens as you read the many files from the broken archive in the computer of this universe.

This game has a DLC called Road to Gehenna. The plot of this DLC is a parallel story to the main game, which gives more hope and more humanity to the game than the main game implies originally. In Road to Gehenna, you can interact  with a community of discarded programs: all those original program children that were deleted in the main game were “put in prison”. It gives an explanation why you can't see other people doing puzzles while you solve them during the main game.

You can play this game in Win7

Its camera can be set as first person or third person [on left/right shoulder or just behind]. Something to highlight: this game has a special section in its settings to avoid motion sickness. Very thoughtful detail.

Graphically speaking, it's beautiful, and not as demanding as I thought it would be.

It's a long game, the main game can be beaten in around 20 hours if you only focus on the main objectives. The DLC Road to Gehenna is around 10 hrs [only main objectives as well]. These 30 hours total can be duplicated if you think about collecting all the secrets and bonus levels plus the normal difficulties you will find with some particularly hard puzzles.

The main game as well as the DLC have four different endings.

Highly recommended, even if you cheat. Forget the puzzles if you don’t like them, cheat and play it as if it were a book of sci-fi, where AIs, instead of causing the extinction of humanity, saved it in their own inorganic way. 

  ——- Plot? ——-

You awake as a robot in a place filled with ruins. A voice from the sky tells you that He [Elohim/god]  has created you and has given you the gardens for you to explore. However, there is only one place you should not access: the tower. He only informs you that inside the tower you will find death, while in exploring the gardens, you will find eternal life. On the other hand, you have access to a terminal where an AI keeps tempting you to explore the places that Elohim tells you not to. As you can see, the beginning of the plot feels like a modern sci-fi version of Adan’s tale, with the voice in the sky as God, and the terminal as the serpent in the original Garden.  As you solve puzzles and have access to new places and different levels of this garden, you try to find the truth of this whole biblical situation.

——- Gameplay? ——- 

Typical game of environmental puzzles, where you manipulate devices that block electromagnetic barriers, or that jam killing devices installed in these gardens. You can also manipulate cubes and switches to solve the puzzle. There is a lot of running around, and a lot of thinking outside the box. As you progress, and the difficulty increases, there is also a redundancy of tools  that instead of helping you, confuse you more in how to solve the puzzle. 

——- Characters? ——- 

Many. You are the main one, of course, leading the narrative. But there are dozens of  users that came before you that left small messages along the way. You have The Shepherd and Samsara as two characters with constant presence. There is also Elohim, who is the voice in the sky [acting as God], and then there is also Alexandra Drennen, the project lead of this world you are living, who appears in “time capsules”: audio archives inside the world, in which she narrates and wonders about life, the project, humanity, etc.. There are even more chars in the DLC, since you interact with all those users that were apparently deleted from the main game: Admin, Dog, Lilith, Borg, 401, The_Blacksmith, Galatea, and so, so many more. 

 ——- LGBT? ——-

Not much, since this world is where AIs live and have no personal idea  or preference over sex and gender. And exactly for this reason there is a constant presence of 3 genders: man, woman and “something else”. The presence of a non-gender is constant in all the archive information. 

——- Sadness level? ——- 

Pretty high. Immense if existential philosophy hits you hard. You will cry at some point, as it tends to happen with all philosophical stuff with existential content. This game hits deeply the fragility of humanity.

——- Happy ending? Deaths? ——-

This is immensely hard to say. For me it was a good ending, even though it’s sad. You can pick different endings.

Humanity was extinguished [so yeah, massive death], but all the culture that was preserved in this project still lives in this AI that now walks on Earth. An AI that remembers humanity, which was the main objective of this project: to preserve what humanity created and developed:  from scientific knowledge, art, literature, to mundane blogs on the internet, or general garbage born from pop culture. It’s a win when everything else died.  You can also pick staying in this simulation forever, or being one of the Guardians of it. Or you can pick destroying everything.  Similar endings can be obtained for the DLC.

[rpgchoices]

Sometimes I really want to read a short summary of what to expect from a game… and thankfully people can also submit their summaries of games they played and help me (and others) find games that cater to their interests!

submitted by @lairofsentinel

(click here for other videogames)

what to expect from LONE WOLF (HD remastered) (by lairofsentinel)

Visual Novel based on choices. It has simple puzzles.

Artistic design is a pleasure despite being an old game. 

Joe Dever wrote an enormous collection of books based on Dungeons & Dragons called “Lone Wolf”. This game is based on one of those.

It’s an interesting story, but it doesn’t stand out from the standard ones found in DnD. It’s quite linear

It has no plot twists

Combat system may end up being boring.

It has a "leveling" system that you can’t pick in which stats you want to spend your points. At the end of every chapter, all your decisions will be recounted and will cause Lone Wolf's statistics or other abilities to increase by the game itself.

You meet wolves who join your fights and you can call them any time during the encounters <3.

It’s a short game (around 10 hrs). 

——- Plot? ——-

You, The Lone Wolf, find yourself in a town that was destroyed. You meet some survivors after a long exploration of the place and go to an unknown temple in order to look for the answer of this tragedy, finding new secrets. 

——- Gameplay? ——- 

Basically is a visual novel which allows you to pick an option in the resolution of situations. Depending on  the skills you chose during your Lone Wolf char creation, some of them may or may not be available. There are also parts in which you must fight, and the gameplay changes radically, becoming more a “clicking” combat style. There are also parts in which you need to open locks with pick locking tools and solve simple cube-puzzles.

——- Happy ending? Deaths? ——-

Cliche heroic happy ending.