The Gaming Den

I didn't expect to see Cassandra's snatch in DA:I. I just would like to add that.

What? Is...is that a thing that happens in that game?

I was playing a dwarf templar and did the romance with Cassandra because I actually kind of liked her when I got to know her a bit better. I wanted to show her that all her problems could be solved by my stubby dorf penis. BTW: the carpet matches the drapes, in both color and length.

Archmage Joda wrote:What? Is...is that a thing that happens in that game?

Yeah, Bioware keeps going back and forth whether they want bathing suits or flesh bits on screen in their games, because something something artistic vision or whatever.

But sorta (snatch is... exaggerating a bit):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p8Dsqt ... -&index=70

Go to about 21:40, but expect some post production masking. If bioware animated fleshy bits is your thing, expected to be disappointed.

I love how disappointed and outraged he is that there isn't even some bump and grind.

That said, I did a simple google Image search of "Dragon Age Inquisitor Cassandra" just to see who that character is, and most of the first page was fan-made 3d-rendered porn. This isn't a suggestion to tjeck it out or a statement of shock and surprise, just something I felt worth noting.

I don't think most people think about the romance in these games too deeply. I know I didn't. In the first ME all I did was be nice to Liara and pointedly dismissive of Ashley because I thought the alien female was cute and Ashley's racism was personally distasteful and I still somehow got an event where I needed to choose between the two of them. As far as I can tell in ME the romance boiled down to me not being an asshat, making an effort to get all the c talky content between every mission, and then confirming I want to do them. It ended up being a bit funny in ME 2 because I simply didn't find Jack attractive only to find that rejecting her offer at sex deepened her feelings toward me. I don't remember anything in the third game leading to a romance just basically Liara asking if she can continue to be my love interest y/n please select answer.

I'm pretty sure romances are just part of the power fantasy. I found Wrex's potential death at my hands for arguably good and personal reasons to be far more interesting.

Voss wrote:

Archmage Joda wrote:What? Is...is that a thing that happens in that game?

Yeah, Bioware keeps going back and forth whether they want bathing suits or flesh bits on screen in their games, because something something artistic vision or whatever.

But sorta (snatch is... exaggerating a bit):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p8Dsqt ... -&index=70

Go to about 21:40, but expect some post production masking. If bioware animated fleshy bits is your thing, expected to be disappointed.

That doesn't look like the scene when I went through it, there was a pretty full-frontal shot when I went through it. Did they change it?

All I ever hear about ME and DA is the romance, nobody talks about say combat

OgreBattle wrote:All I ever hear about ME and DA is the romance, nobody talks about say combat

ME is your standard really boring third person not cover shooter for the first game, but with a squad, and RPGing. 2 and 3 are boring cover shooters with minor RPG elements and a rock paper scissors system based on what color the enemies life bar is.

Dragon Age 1 was and RPG game where the only RPGing was picking the best spells, and if you weren't a Wizard, was boring as shit, but if you were was moderately entertaining.

OgreBattle wrote:All I ever hear about ME and DA is the romance, nobody talks about say combat

DA: click on things, press number keys. Sometimes move independently of clicking on enemies.

ME: cover, aim and shoot things, sometimes press number keys. ignore that cover thing for #1.

Combat really isn't anything to write home about in any of them, and gets weird in a lot of cases. Being a wizard in DA 2 and 3 means twirling a staff as if you're in a marching band and sometimes sparks or fire shoot out at weird angles as homing missiles.

So what I'm getting out of this conversation is, continue to treat mass effect like it's dead to me (the shitty endgame of 3 still pisses me off), and probably don't bother actually finishing DA1 or playing 2 or inquisition, just stick to what i've been playing lately (FFXIV, SF5, Dark Souls 3, and whatever else tickles my fancy like Vampire Bloodlines).

Well, you could play VtM Bloodlines, but only if you want an even shittier shooter with even fewer RPG elements.

That's not fair - I used melee all the way when I completed Bloodlines. [/aristocrat_voice]
I only played like 10 hours of ME2, from what I remember Bloodlines differs from it in that it has scenes where all your combat abilities are available and you aren't necessarily expected to fight, notably most of the commuting between points on your to-do list and/or acquiring blood.
Does have an issue where you really need to git gud at the actual combat to be able to complete the game. This is less of an issue than White Wolf would probably want to advertise.

EDIT: I keep forgetting that Colon P results in a disgusted face on this forum.

Tangent: Was there anything to keep guns good in Bloodlines? It's been ages since I played the damn thing but I remember switching my Ventrue to melee partway through because I was already stupidly tanky anyway and because tzimisce critters took a shit ton of ammo to kill.

Metroid: Samus Returns is the Metroid Fusion remake we all wanted and waited for.

Archmage Joda wrote:So what I'm getting out of this conversation is, continue to treat mass effect like it's dead to me (the shitty endgame of 3 still pisses me off), and probably don't bother actually finishing DA1 or playing 2 or inquisition, just stick to what i've been playing lately (FFXIV, SF5, Dark Souls 3, and whatever else tickles my fancy like Vampire Bloodlines).

You could also play Divinity 2. I've been enjoying it in between playing a bunch of cheapo rogue likes/lites/whatever.

MGuy wrote:

Archmage Joda wrote:So what I'm getting out of this conversation is, continue to treat mass effect like it's dead to me (the shitty endgame of 3 still pisses me off), and probably don't bother actually finishing DA1 or playing 2 or inquisition, just stick to what i've been playing lately (FFXIV, SF5, Dark Souls 3, and whatever else tickles my fancy like Vampire Bloodlines).

You could also play Divinity 2. I've been enjoying it in between playing a bunch of cheapo rogue likes/lites/whatever.

I do have Divinity Original Sin 2. I just don't know how i wanna build my character beyond that I want to do magic.

I am probably a good deal of the way through it and save for certain ambushes and maybe a boss monster or three the game isn't all that hard. I restarted it two times after giving a good deal of the characters you find and the different classes a try and I have to say that from what I can tell the only thing I could suggest is whether you go magic or physical damage it's best to go all in on one. I couldn't conceive a reason to split between both with how armor and resistance work in the game and how they block status effects. Also a healer is always good. Other than that... I really got nothing. My OC is a summoner and I have a team of mages of various types. The game from there isn't really difficult imo.

Voss wrote:ME: cover, aim and shoot things, sometimes press number keys. ignore that cover thing for #1.

Or you ignore that playstyle, play a vanguard and punt everything across the room. Works only in ME2 and ME3, though.

Omegonthesane wrote:That's not fair - I used melee all the way when I completed Bloodlines. [/aristocrat_voice]
I only played like 10 hours of ME2, from what I remember Bloodlines differs from it in that it has scenes where all your combat abilities are available and you aren't necessarily expected to fight, notably most of the commuting between points on your to-do list and/or acquiring blood.
Does have an issue where you really need to git gud at the actual combat to be able to complete the game. This is less of an issue than White Wolf would probably want to advertise.

EDIT: I keep forgetting that Colon P results in a disgusted face on this forum.

The one thing that stood out to me in Bloodlines is that they tried to be true to the tabletop rules, and not in a good way.

I remember picking up a a pistol at the begining of the game, and being accousted by thugs. I shot a thug in the head multiple times while he was hitting me with a baseball bat and was beaten to death long before my enemy, who was a normal human, fell.

Whipstitch wrote:Tangent: Was there anything to keep guns good in Bloodlines? It's been ages since I played the damn thing but I remember switching my Ventrue to melee partway through because I was already stupidly tanky anyway and because tzimisce critters took a shit ton of ammo to kill.

Celerity. Holy fuck, celerity. Also Auspex, which directly boosts Firearms and lets you see through walls. The best end-game setup is a Toreador with a Steyr AUG, due to the Steyr's extremely high rate of fire. The only problem is that you also need good Melee skills to replenish your blood pool in combat if you're constantly using Celerity, or else an absurd supply of blood packs.



But a Steyr-equipped range-specced Toredor can kill most bosses in a couple of seconds, and is killing multiple end-game vampires per second. It puts out an absurdly huge amount of damage per second.

Guns have a wierd curve in Bloodlines, they start out useless, become moderately useful, become useless again, and then become god-tier.

Melee has a much flatter curve, remaining useful throughout the game.

Yeah, that sounds pretty plausible. If I remember correctly my ventrue playthrough roughly went tire iron->some bullshit I forget about->Deagle & named rifle->agg damage katana. Honestly, I wasn't entirely sure if guns truly fell off or if I just got tired of messing around with them after burning through all my ammo in that tedious sewer level. I wasn't really in danger of dying at any point since presence plus fortitude lets you tank things with your face and barely notice.

Bastard Bonds (an already cheap game that should be on sale at Steam right now) is great value for its price.

For a game where one of the the main selling points seemed to be "Big Bara Orc Daddies", it shows a surprisingly creative and extensive character creation, lots of NPCs with varied back-stories (most of them also being burly men/orcs in several states of undress, which is a plus for some people) and some outstanding pixel art (including pixelated cocks, for some reason). Combat is turn based on a square grid, with a novel "risk" mechanic where characters can take reckless actions (extra actions per round, but with an increasing chance of a fumble that penalizes the character defenses).

The two main problems I have with this game right now is that the pathfinding is atrocious and ends getting on your nerves and that AI seem to always pick the closest PC to attack, which lead to an obvious and boring strategy of a party made of a tank and a firing line mowing down any opposition. Possibly the fights should get harder later.

MGuy wrote:I am probably a good deal of the way through it and save for certain ambushes and maybe a boss monster or three the game isn't all that hard. I restarted it two times after giving a good deal of the characters you find and the different classes a try and I have to say that from what I can tell the only thing I could suggest is whether you go magic or physical damage it's best to go all in on one. I couldn't conceive a reason to split between both with how armor and resistance work in the game and how they block status effects. Also a healer is always good. Other than that... I really got nothing. My OC is a summoner and I have a team of mages of various types. The game from there isn't really difficult imo.

I can second this. I'm only partway through, but doing just one type of damage is the way to go. The only argument for splitting damage between physical and magic is that most mages and archers have shitty physical armor so you can CC them faster with physical damage, whereas most warriors have shitty magic armor so you can CC them faster with magic, but nobody will have whatever type of armor you pick after a couple characters go so who gives a shit?

The combat is just CC murder trains, and on the hard difficulty the enemies do it too so if you do something stupid you lose the fight (or if an enemy has a completely unexpected move, like teleporting crocodiles). It's easy not to do anything stupid though. The combat system has a lot of potential, but everything comes down to focus fire, CC, and kiting. I don't think there are any defensive abilities that save you from chain CC, so big powerful enemies have been going down like chumps for me so far.


Oh, kiting in this game is broken as shit. There are several moves that let you teleport enemies (with only one very specific way to resist that needs to be cast beforehand) or teleport yourself way further away from an enemy than they could ever move, so melee characters without absurd movement or teleportation of their own are shit. Given that you also get bonus damage for getting high ground, a ranged party with a bunch of teleportation skills and long-range CC is really fucking strong.

Stealing is also completely fucking borked. Pickpocket everyone, it's easy.

Video game pick pocketing can fuck right off as far as I'm concerned. It's always felt to me like busywork for save scummers and the ocd set.

Whipstitch wrote:Video game pick pocketing can fuck right off as far as I'm concerned. It's always felt to me like busywork for save scummers and the ocd set.

It can fuck off, but it's not busywork or for save scummers (at least not in Divinity). In the game we're talking about it's incredibly quick and easy to do. Have someone in your party chat up a vendor, walk behind them, stealth, then steal their shit (the value of the shit you steal is limited by your thievery skill in an effort to make it not broken).