It was a decent week, but I'm always glad for the weekend. And I'm playing some awesome stuff!
First up, The Division 2 beta is live right now! I played a little bit last night, but I'll be playing through the entirety a little today and a bunch on Saturday with my oldest son.
And it's interesting having played Anthem the past two weeks and now playing The Division 2 beta. It's hard not to compare them in this circumstance, even if I think that the similarities are superficial.
Without really getting into the idiocy of 'OMG which is better LOL,' I'll say that I really enjoy both.
The gunplay is pretty different in the two, but I really like both. Anthem feels like Mass Effect, which is great, and The Division 2 feels much more real and grounded, which I also appreciate.
The traversal in both is fun, and totally different. Anthem has the flying and floating and zipping around, which is fantastic, while I really like the cover-to-cover movement of The Division 2, too. Totally different, but each feels great in the game's context.
Also, the environments in both look and sound amazing.
Really, they scratch different itches for me, and I'm glad I'll be able to bounce between the two for a while (once they come out.)
Tonight, as usual, I'm streaming The Witcher trilogy at 7PMc on Twitch. We're eyeballs-deep in Velen in The Witcher 3, and having an absolute blast. The in-game action is wild, and the chat is a great place to shoot the shit and relax. Get yourself a six-pack or make yourself a stiff drink and come hang out. It's a great way to kick off the weekend.
If you want to get caught up on The Witcher or any game series that I've streamed, check out my YouTube channel!
Otherwise, I plan to try and tackle more Resident Evil 2 and get some more quality MMO time.
I finally got a pro-tip from my boss at work to get me un-stuck in RE2 (I haven't been able to figure out how to get back to the goddam fucking parking garage), so I'll probably start on that post-stream tonight. I'm loving RE2 so far.
MMO-wise, I'll probably focus on playing through the rest of the Summerset campaign. I hate the Altmer, but this is a great expansion.
So, how about you? What are you playing this weekend?
First, The 1UP Rejects is on hold at the moment. Short version - we started out too big and too aggressive. It'll be back, at some point.
For now, I'm back doing my own thing, starting this Friday!
So, I'm starting small, and I'll be streaming two nights a week, Thursday and Friday.
Thursday, I'll be streaming the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic series from 2000-2300 (central US time). I'm already a few episodes in, and you can watch those below. The intent is that I'll play through KotOR 1 & 2, and if people want, a campaign in SWTOR afterward. The KotOR games are using a fair number of mods to update the visuals.
Friday, I'll be streaming The Witcher series from 2000-2200 (central) and various Elder Scrolls games from 2200 to whenever. I'm a few episodes into this one, too, and the intent is to play through all of The Witcher trilogy. These will also use several visual mods.
Aside from that, I'll pop in when I feel like it with some Final Fantasy or whatever I feel like.
Of note - the KotOR series will be moving from the 1UP Rejects channel to my own channel.
I'll be starting up this Friday, and I'm pretty stoked. I'd been having a blast playing through The Witcher before my spinal surgery, and I loved the game when I played it years ago.
But first, you need to get caught up!
And also, you should get caught up on my KotOR series!
And the Elder Scrolls bit will be fun, as well. I'll be bouncing between various entries in the series, maybe even in the same stream. We'll see.
And the random streams ... I don't stream much of games I've not played through before, but the 'random streams' will be either new games or MMOs. Not sure yet.
I think I'll also post in here sometimes, as well.
For the moment, I'm focused on work, family, and getting this side hustle going again. And let me know if you have stuff you want me to write or stream.
Also, as a reminder, I'm starting all of this back up on Friday (I'm going to the Cardinals home opener on Thursday.)
So, here we are, just less than three weeks from Torment/Horizon day. Game-wise, I've been hitting the unfinished classics pretty hard (Baldur's Gate & Morrowind), as well as a lot of ESO. It's been OK, but man, I am BURNING for something new and shiny.
I realized, this morning, that it's been a year and nine months since the last game about which I was insanely excited released. That was The Witcher 3. There's been some solid games since then, but 2016 was my (and this only my opinion about games that I like) JV squad in terms of releases. I'm fond of Deus Ex, Dishonored, Doom, XCOM, and all those type games, and I've really enjoyed the latest releases for SWTOR, ESO, and Guild Wars 2, but those all feel like snacks. Those are my second tier for games, and it's all I had last year.
Part of what caused this was Dragon Age: Inquisition, Pillars of Eternity, and The Witcher 3 all releasing in a six-month span, from 2014 November to 2015 May. It was wonderful and brutal.
I didn't even notice this 'problem' until I really started to think about my recent 'gaming malaise.' I am licking my chops, ready for something new and awesome.
Fucking Torment: Tides of Numenera. Bring that shit on, man. I'm actually taking the day off for it. It looks wonderful. Everything I've seen about it, and everything I've played of the demo tickle my soul.
Yeah, I know. Me not loving the same games you do can be a problem for some, and the fact that I only really get invested in RPGs triggers weird reactions in random folks, but I don't care. I tried some of the indie darlings, thought they were OK, and moved on. I didn't hate them, I thought they had good aspects, and that was pretty much the extent of my judgement. I didn't hate them, I didn't declare that other people shouldn't go crazy for them, I just thought they were OK. Relax.
And all of that is missing the point, anyway. I played a lotta shit last year, and none of it really ignited me. I had a very good time with Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, as well as Dishonored 2. I enjoyed some time with Doom and XCOM 2. I thought whatever 2D indie darling games they made me play were OK.
But man, no matter what I try, the only games that REALLY grab me are the ones that are huge investments with depth everywhere, from the systems to the lore to the story to the characters, to the world, etc. I love games that I can just throw myself at for months. I actually approach my job much the same way. I tend to chase after the 'huge project' work, rather than the little shit. I like deeply investing in things.
Again, as a side note, the fact that I've never finished an Elder Scrolls game still somewhat baffles me. Those games are ridiculously deep. There's just something about the actual mechanics and design choices that throw me occasionally. Most of this is aimed at Morrowind.
Also, in this drought, I did finally find my way into the Fallout Bethesda/Obsidian games. It took several tries over several years, but I finally pushed through Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, and adored them. Fallout 4 was very good, but didn't quite hit the mark that FNV did. I think part of it is that New Vegas was sooo good, and I played F4 like right after finishing it.
Anyway, I'm curious to see how this 2015/5/19-2017/2/28 stretch matches with other periods of time. It certainly feels like the longest I've ever gone. And like I said, it kinda snuck up on me. I knew last year was a 'B-team year' in terms of my favorite franchises and games, but the fact that you have to go back all the way to May in 2015 surprised me.
I'm not offering to do any actual research on the subject, but it really surprised me.
And then, after that, I've got Mass Effect: Andromeda three weeks later. And in those three weeks, I'm traveling for two of them. It's a good 'problem' to have, but goddam. I'll have Torment, Horizon, and MEA all queued up, and then I got Prey in May, and then the Morrowind expac in June, and then, I think, a long drought into winter. Good times.
What about you? You ever have a stretch like this? It's weird how my favorite games seem to cluster in terms of release. In theory, though, I should have a new BioWare game by 2018/3/31, and I have some Kickstarters that should be landing later this year and early next year (though I got money that says no way Obsidian hits 2018 Q1 with Pillars 2, and that's totally OK.)
Anyway, that's that. What about you? You ever have 'awesome game starvation?'
Also, get caught up on my 'The Road to Andromeda' Mass Effect series on YouTube here or below:
Thanks! I'll be resuming the playthrough tomorrow night!
On Morrowind
I think I'm still enjoying Morrowind. I'm not sure. I love the world, the writing, the lore, the gradually building overall story, but ... that fucking interface and the endless slog from point to point.
Have modern games ruined me? Is that what's going on? Most of what I bitch about it is stuff that attempts to simulate real world, like the endless slog from point to point. Let's go to Sadrith Mora. Ah, gotta head to Tel Branora. Got the thing. Now back to Sadrith Mora. Now let's go to Vos. Ah, this tower is really confusing. Let's spend two hours trying to find our way around it. Fuck it, I'll just look online.
The problem with all of the above is that the player character moves at a somewhat realistic pace, unless you're willing to burn down all your stamina. You don't realize how slow we walk in real life until you play this game, and realize that your snail pace is actually really fast in real life.
Really, my biggest gripe with the game is the tepid pace brought on by the slow player character and distance between fast-travel points and objectives. It just takes too goddam long to get anywhere and do anything. Much of the design is spectacular, but I'm torn on how I should feel about how fucking long everything takes to do.
As I said, I can't decide if I have a legitimate gripe, or if modern design has tainted my ability to enjoy slow games.
I'm still loving it, I think, but goddam ... this is why so many people sunk so many hours into this game. Not because there's so much to do (though there is), but because they were walking slowly to silt striders, boats, and mage teleports over and over ... and over ...
... oh, and I have a confession. I finally broke down, and have been using console commands to fix some parts of the game, namely my inventory. I've been loading up on torches and levitation potions. Nothing else. But I've pledged myself to House Telvanni, which I didn't realize would mean I'd need a fucking truckload of levitation potions. None of the high-up dudes know what stairs or a ground floor is. It's annoying.
I love it, though. I'm roleplaying the hell out of this character, trying to manipulate circumstances so that I lead a Dunmer revolution. I'm getting concerned, though, as I'm trying to prove my loyalty to conflicting groups. We'll see where my bid to take over both the Ashlanders and the Temple leads me.
On ESO
Meanwhile, I'm wrapping up the main campaign in ESO, and that's a lot of fun. It's interesting playing through these two games simultaneously, and enjoying their vast differences, but also common ancestry.
ESO is a great game that wasn't great at launch, but has molded itself into something very much worth buying and playing. I have a lot of fun every time I fire it up, and the story and exploration are a blast. And the combat, once you learn it, might be the best of any MMO.
My perfect Elder Scrolls game, though, would be ESO's vastness + live players, combined with Morrowind's landscape and lore (which I'm getting in June) with Dishonored's movement. I REALLY hope the next Elder Scrolls game brings in Arkane to handle the player character movement. It could happen, since they're both under the Bethesda umbrella.
So, what say you about Morrowind? Looking back, how well do you think it plays for modern audiences? Do you have an older game that you love that you think might be hard to replay today?
Friday posts are just gonna be kinda late. While Friday is usually pretty chill for me, it is also pretty busy, because the dev team at work has a big idea-sharing meeting all morning, and then we all go for a long lunch, and then I wrap up my work for the week, and then I watch a bunch of dev streams, and then I exercise, and then I go to dinner, and then I stream. You see what I'm sayin'? I think maybe I'll toss up a few really small posts each Friday. We'll see.
Obsidian posted some awesome shit last night and today:
As I've said before, I'm super-stoked about Pillars 2. I was absolutely nuts about the first one, and delivered so much of what I want out of a game.
Yesterday, I streamed some of the latest build of Divinity: Original Sin 2, and my god, it's a great experience. I'm purposely not playing it much, like Torment: Tides of Numenera, so that I can be as surprised and fresh as possible when it finally releases. It's hard, man. Both early access builds are GREAT, and I want those games so badly, but ... gonna hold off, especially since I have so much great stuff to play.
I'm pretty nuts about Elder Scrolls at the moment, so we're just continue with that for now. I'm loving Morrowind, and really looking forward to just throwing myself into it some more. I'm also having a blast in ESO, in which I finally hit level 50, and I may try to finish the core campaign this weekend. We'll see.
I'm also going to continue my Road to Andromeda series this weekend. As you may already know, I've been replaying the original Mass Effect trilogy since September, and we're cruising through Mass Effect 3 now. It's so much fun to share my passion for this series with you all, and I hope you tune into my Twitch channel at 2000 (central time) tonight. I love talking Mass Effect with anyone, and the streams are so much more fun when there's lotsa chatter.
Anywho, I'm off to dinner, so I'll see you cats tonight!
Confession time. Actually, I've confessed this before, but it still needs to be reviewed and analyzed, so whatever.
I started gaming in the 80s, and very quickly took to RPGs. There's always been something about living a great novel that has always appealed to me. I love my real life, but I also love the escapism and investing myself in another world that comes with a great RPG. I love the lore, the compelling narrative, the rich characters, the deep systems, all of it. It's really about all I play. I'm at a point now in which, if I venture into another genre, it feels shallow and almost pointless. There have been a few remarkable exceptions, but nearly every non-RPG game feels like something in which I cannot find something to invest myself. 2D platformers feel like me just pressing buttons while getting aggravated. Even a lot of the old classics feel like little more than nostalgic diversions that ring utterly hollow.
THIS DOES NOT MEAN I JUDGE YOU FOR LIKING WHAT YOU LIKE, SO TAKE A GODDAM BREATH.
However, that atrocity is not what I am here to confess.
My early RPGs were things like Ultima and ... Ultima, maybe? And some really primitive shit on Atari of which I can't remember the name.
All that got blown out of the water, though, by the first Final Fantasy. I remember reading about it in a Nintendo Power strategy guide. NP briefly went to a weird format in which every other issue was a strat guide for a game. I wanna say the others were Ninja Gaiden II (one of the great non-RPGs of all time) and some other shit. SMB3, maybe?
Anyway, I read the guide in advance of the game, fell in love with all the numbers and huge land masses, saved up my allowance, and then walked down to the local Wal-Mart and bought it. And fell madly in love. That was potentially the single-most life-changing gaming experience I've ever had. It really altered not only what kind of games I knew I loved, but solidified that I wanted to be a creative person for the rest of my life.
And I pretty much stuck with JRPGs through the 90s (Final Fantasy was released in the US in 1990.)
I did have a time in which I didn't play much. I took a break from gaming to have sex with girls, smoke weed, and get drunk, before I realized I could combine all that with my love of gaming.
Side note - of any man I know, I have the highest ratio of taste in great games to hot chicks I bedded in the 90s. I know that Final Fantasy VI was the best console game of the 90s AND I slept with a model in the 90s. Just sayin'.
As the turn of the century hit, JRPGs tanked. Or I outgrew them. Or both. Or I dunno. It all kinda peaked for me with Final Fantasy IX and Chrono Cross. They're both amazing games, and signal, for me, the end of an era. I've played great JRPGs since then, most notably Final Fantasy XII and Lost Odyssey, but the PS2/Xbox era was where I made a pretty drastic transition.
I can point at two games that caused this major disruption for me. First, Final Fantasy X, despite the great battle system, was a bad game, at least for what I need from a game. The characters, the story, the tone, and the world were all off-putting. The lack of a world map grated on me, but I accepted that Squenix was trying to on-board new fans, and I guess that was a thing or whatever. I actually really enjoyed FFX-2 a LOT more. Gone was the melodrama and incessant whining, replaced with a hilarious and lighthearted tone, which was vastly appreciated.
So, FFX was the first incident. The second was Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I remember reading about it, probably in EGM, and thinking 'oh, it's not turn-based, so I don't give a fuck.' Then, I was over at a buddy's place in St. Louis, pulling bong hits, while he explained to me this amazing 'KoOR' game that his other buddy had, and how there were all these different choices that you could make, and it sounded pretty cool. So, a few nights later, I hooked up with this hot Puerto Rican gal in Chicago, and as we were stumbling down a street, I saw we were going past an EB Games, and decided 'fuck it,' and ducked in with her. I snagged an Xbox and a used copy of KotOR. We went back to my place, and proceeded to get loaded while I set up my Xbox and KotOR. I ended up stopping because I could tell I was gonna miss out on my first Latina if I didn't refocus. We went upstairs, had our fun, and then, afterward, when she was asleep, I snuck back down to start playing.
In my defense, I did have breakfast made for her, since I'd been up all night trying to find Bastila.
And KotOR really tipped the scales. From there, I got into Jade Empire, KotOR II, The Elder Scrolls, and then I shifted over to PC gaming during the PS360 era, and discovered the wonderful Piranha Bytes games, The Witcher, and more. I still buy every Final Fantasy that comes out. I played through X, X-2, XII, XIII, but haven't finished one since. I'm pretty lukewarm on FFXV. Honestly, most of it is that it's only on console (I play almost exclusively on a pretty spiffy laptop that I can take anywhere), and the characters are BLAH.
Looking back, though, it's funny, because I missed out on some of the best PC gaming ever. I wasn't on PC at the time that Baldur's Gate, Torment, Arcanum, NWN, and others were hitting.
And that's more or less my confession. I can't decide if I'm a fraud or not. I'm a nearly-40 PC gamer that has never played through a BioWare game that came out before KotOR. I'm sure some snide neckbeard is sneering at me as he reads this, but just remember. I had a better 90s than you did. I guarantee it.
Looking back over the years, I think my greatest RPG gaming experiences, and this is really another post for another time, are probably Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy VII, KotOR, Dragon Age: Origins, The Witcher, SWTOR, Pillars of Eternity, and probably something amazing that I'm not thinking of at the moment.
What about you? Have you swung both ways, in terms of JRPGs and cRPGs? What do you prefer? What are your favorites?
Videos
Here's some cool shit about video games from today.
Also, I am streaming today at 1630 and 2000 (central time) over on my Twitch channel. Not sure what we're gonna at 1630, maybe some Divinity: Original Sin 2, and then 2000 will be the resumption of The Road to Andromeda: Mass Effect 3. See ya tonight!
Dude, I cannot properly explain how excited I am. I'll be honest, too. What has me excited isn't the trailer above, but what Richard Lambert explained afterward, in the reveal discussion. PCGamer has a nice write-up here.
Here's the basics:
- it arrives 6/6, a week before E3!!!
- it takes place on the island of Vvardenfell, which was the main landmass in the game, Morrowind
- ESO, and this expansion, are 700 years before the game, Morrowind
- this expansion sets up a lot of the events of the game, Morrowind
- most of the notable landmarks from the game, Morrowind, are present in the expansion, Morrowind, though in an earlier state; Vivec City, for example, is still under construction, so some of the cantos aren't there yet
Here is a link to the full presentation, or check it out below. I promise, if you're a fan of the series, it's a great watch.
There was a flurry of Final Fantasy announcements early this morning. You can get the full breakdown here.
Here's what caught my eye the most:
01. FFXIV: Stormblood is still on-target for 6/20. I had no doubt, but they're bringing back my favorite Final Fantasy class ever, the Red Mage, in this expansion. I played the first Final Fantasy back on the NES when it first came out, and I loved the Red Mage in that game. I've been hot and cold on Final Fantasy XIV, but the folks that love it FUCKING LOVE IT, so I keep trying it.
02. Final Fantasy XII HD is hitting PlayStation 4 on 7/11. I adore this game, but I'm not sure I'll ever replay it, especially if it's only on a console. I have a PS4, use it occasionally, but console gaming in my house is very difficult, whereas I can play my PC games anywhere, any time, with any mods, and they look gorgeous. I hope this hits Steam.
03. That Final Fantasy VII remake. By the maker, that's a clusterfuck. Today's announcement was just a reminder that this project exists. I already think Nomura is all flash and no substance, and the gutting of the battle system in this thing just reinforces that to me. Materia + turn-based + strategy made for some amazing battles, whereas this dumbed-down action system completely turns me off. I just don't understand this need to make everything flashy and stupid. Strategy is fun. Thinking is fun. And it's episodic because Nomura can't get projects out the door anymore. At least there's a chance he'll be kicked off this project, too (as happened on FFXV), when it takes too long. I hate this. Final Fantasy VI and VII were amazing games, and don't need to be 'fixed.' Make something new and great. Don't take something old and great and make it new and bad. Give me a true Final Fantasy VII sequel. Make it turn-based, strategic, and deep. Bah.
In happier news, Elder Scrolls Online is getting a major announcement today, at 1300 central time. As I said yesterday, I'm expecting it's going to be Vvardenfell (the island in Morrowind.) I'm a big fan of this game and series, so I'm excited to check it out. You can watch it here or below:
I'm also thrilled with how well the Fig campaign is going for Pillars II. I'm loving the stretch goals, especially the one at $2m, which allows for more advanced user-controlled AI programming. I love that kinda shit, like in the original Dragon Age.
Anyway, I'll be streaming today @ 1630, and it'll probably be some ESO, so we can talk about the recent announcement. Check me out here or below!
So, what do you think of the Final Fantasy announcements? Anything you're excited about? Anything really got your panties in a twist? What about ESO? Do you play? What do you wanna see?
I think I finally clicked with the Elder Scrolls this weekend. I also played a shitload of Mass Effect 3, which you can get caught up on via my Road to Andromeda series below.
For someone that's never finished an Elder Scrolls game, I have an absurd number of hours sunk into Morrowind, according to Steam. Maybe 80 or so.
I think I've written about it here before, but on paper, the Elder Scrolls and I look a match made in heaven. Deep stats, deep lore, freedom of choice, loads of exploration, and on and on.
Yet, we've never quite clicked. I'll start a game in Morrowind, Oblivion, or Skyrim, and I just never quite feel comfortable. I got really deep into Morrowind once, but even then, it was never something in which I felt terribly at-home or like I was really loving it.
I felt that way about (Bethesda) Fallout for a long time. Up until maybe early 2015, at which point, I burned through Fallout 3 + all DLC, Fallout: New Vegas + all DLC (holy shit, I loved that game), and then Fallout 4, once it hit.
In the case of Fallout, I believe I had to dial back my need to have constant and rapid progression through the story. Both Bethesda Fallout and Elder Scrolls are very loose in their story structure, and I was really off-put by that for a long time, despite really enjoying the Wasteland setting in the Fallout games.
I wonder if part of my issue with Elder Scrolls is that I'm just not a big fantasy guy, at least high fantasy, but I dunno. I'm nuts about Dragon Age and The Witcher, both of which are more low fantasy. Hmm.
Part of it, I know, is my need to play things in order (though I did talk myself out of Arena + Daggerfall), and the journal system in Morrowind is utter shit. It's an active inhibition to my enjoyment of the game.
So, yesterday, I finally caved and decided to finally push forward on a new character that I'd been writing in my head for a while, AND I decided I'd use Microsoft OneNote on my iPhone to act as a journal and note-taker for my high-level objectives. This changed everything for me.
I know about the Nerevarine and all that in the game, so I decided my guy would be a Dunmer, raised in the Empire, who was coming to his true home, Vvardenfell, for the first time, with which he would fall madly in love. He'd throw himself head-first into being a Dunmer, joining the Temple, the Morag Tong, and despite not being a magic user, House Telvanni, which he regards as the most truly Dunmer of the great houses. He'd turn on his Imperial masters at just the right moment.
He'd also use the filthy Khajiit to make himself rich, making money hand over first off of their moon sugar and skooma addictions.
I got through Seyda Neen recently, and started rounding out all the quest-gathering in and around Balmora. It sucks that there's no way to join the Camonna Tong, but oh well ... I wasn't going to join the Thieves Guild or Fighers Guild, but changed my mind. It's a good chance to earn XP and some of the quests are fun.
My goal is to ascend to become ruler of Morrowind and to drive the Imperial dogs out of my lands. We'll do that via leveraging groups like the Temple, the Great Houses (though Hlaalu might be a problem), the Ashlanders, the Morag Tong, and the Dunmer themselves.
I'm using OneNote to jot down anything I uncover that will help me in that process, and I'm finding that's been a relief in terms of keeping myself organized.
Last thing about this. Part of what's helped is that I am NOT streaming any part of this. I'm keeping it all for myself, and taking it at my pace, which has been really nice. I'll go 20-25 minutes without really moving the plot forward, just by talking to folks and taking notes on my phone. It's pretty fucking great, honestly.
And a side note - I've enjoyed ESO for a long time, though that's a fairly different beast from the main Elder Scrolls games.
So, any chance any of you have a game or series with which you should've clicked, but haven't yet? Or maybe you had to make an adjustment to your normal approach, and then it clicked? Is there a game or series that you really wish you liked? Tell me about it!
Also, if you wanna watch me stream, I'll be on tomorrow at 1630 central. Not sure what game yet. Maybe ME3. Lemme know if you have any requests. Maybe ESO?
I might've said it before, and if so, it's worth saying again. For a short week, this felt like a looong week.
Now, it's Saturday. I got to sleep in until almost 9AM, I'm showered, I'm relaxing with my sons, I'm listening to Elder Scrolls Off the Record, and I'm typing at you. Good times. I'm thinking about taking the boys out for lunch today. Not sure where. Suggestions are welcome.
I fully plan to engage max chill this weekend. I got my sister-in-law and her boyfriend coming down today, and they're both cool people. I'm buying the UFC thing on PPV tonight for her man, for his birthday, I got a buddy coming over tonight to shoot the breeze, and we haven't seen each other in a while, and I got an itch for some MMO action, so either SWTOR, ESO, FFXIV, or Guild Wars 2 (or some combination thereof) is/are going to get played. Probably SWTOR, at least, since I wanna play the next chapter of Knights of the Fallen Empire, and I wanna continue in the Dark vs Light event.
Your vote here might matter.
All four are amazing games, I don't have nearly enough time for all four, three cost monthly money, I know, but all four are amazing games, and I love MMOs. I love RPGs in general, but I love having a main single-player RPG and an MMO to focus on. I'm fickle about the MMOs, though. I dunno. I'm weird.
I'll probably stream a bit, too. I wanted to stream my first foray into Red Dead Redemption on Xbox, since it's on backwards compatibility now, but I don't think I can stream to YouTube Gaming from Xbox One, which sucks ASS. I don't want to stream to Twitch, but I might anyway. We'll see.
I did have a couple GREAT streams the last couple days, though. PLEASE, if you haven't watched any of my stream recordings yet, check these out. The Doom one starts out slow (I had some dog issues), so jump ahead to six minutes. I guess I could just edit it.
Also, playing Inside was interesting. I do not play platformers, especially 2D, and especially puzzle-heavy. I got a request to go way outside my comfort zone with a game, and this one was suggested, and apparently, the results were hilarious. This was kind of a special video. Give it a look-see.
Anyway, check those out, and please give me some feedback, either here, or in that video's comments. And feel free to poke around my channel, take it all in, and give me some overall feedback. I love doing this stuff, and I wanna do it better.
If you have any requests to see me play something, lemme know. I'm pretty open.
Alright, time to plan for lunch. If I'm gonna stream later, I'll throw something up on my Twitter.
A few weeks ago, at E3, Bethesda announced that a port of Skyrim was coming to the two modern consoles, with some tweaked visuals, and it will have a similar ability to Fallout 4 (on consoles) to import mods. Before that got announced, I'd heard it was coming, and I was curious about the PC version.
One of the things I kinda figured was that the PC version was going to be free to existing Skyrim owners, since there's no way a lot of us would pay for an enhanced version, when we've already been playing heavily-modded, 'enhanced' versions for years. We wouldn't pirate. We'd just ignore it.
Then, as I thought through it more, I realized there was also a pipeline issue in terms of the mods for the console port.
The port is going to have an updated engine, and my understanding is that the new client is 64-bit, whereas the old one is 32-bit. This impacts memory addressing.
The mods for the existing version of Skyrim, as I understand it, can be ported to the updated, 64-bit client, but I'd bet that they'll need to be recompiled, and tested, in the updated SDK before they can function in the updated engine.
Additionally, not all of these are going to just 'work.' At least a few are going to need some tweaks.
Thus, Bethesda is going to need a fair number of PC Skyrim players, especially the big-time Skyrim modders, to have this, so that they can have the latest engine and SDK, and make their awesome mods available to console players.
So, there ya have it.
Existing owners of PC Skyrim and all its DLC get Skyrim Remastered for free because:
1) we already have access to mods that make the game look and run better than the existing vanilla version
2) Bethesda needs us to have the latest engine and SDK so that we can push mods that are compatible with the port that's hitting PS4 and XB1
Making it free to existing PC owners is a concession that we have no incentive to buy something we already have (or an approximation thereof), and they see making it free as an investment in their console audience, who will be dependent on the PC modders, as is the case with Fallout 4 right now.
I've also heard some other questions out there that I think I can answer.
Why can't I make mods on my console?
Your console is not a PC. If you've never used an SDK before, trust me when I say that you absolutely need a mouse and keyboard to use it. Also, I question whether the modern consoles have the hardware specs to handle proper development. I would guess they don't. And storage space, too. Anyway, I understand the impulse, but trust me, even if the Creation Kit were made available on console, it would be a sub-optimal experience.
Why isn't this free for console owners that already own Skyrim and all its DLC on the previous generation?
First, there's the question of proving ownership. If you own it digitally, that's easy. For disc-based, though, no.
Second, and I'll be blunt, but console owners voted against backwards-compatibility this generation, and they voted heavily for re-buying games they already own. On console, Bethesda is following the same trend as many other publishers.
Yeah, I know Microsoft has been working to correct this, while Sony has been going the opposite direction, but the lack of backwards compatibility on consoles that, conversely, is inherent to PC is a larger issue that we're not getting into here. I wasn't thrilled to see Bethesda (Zenimax) contribute to this problem, but they, like every other publisher, are in the game to make money, so I can't fault them.
If you have any other questions about this, or wanna discuss any of this, leave a comment below! I'm always interested in having discussions, getting alternate perspectives, and talking shop!
Now, I'm gonna confess something, but don't tell anyone ...
... I've never finished Skyrim. I'm actually kinda stoked for the 'remaster,' because I plan to actually finally play through it. And probably do some modding.
Oh, yeah, in case you didn't know, the Skyrim port is hitting PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on October 28th this year. Between this and Dishonored 2, I'm going to have one hell of a Bethesda holiday.
Alright, enough of this. Back to gaming!
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