RPG Tourist

Saturn viewed from orbit of Saturn's moon Tethys Disclaimer: I grew up during Nasa's peak in popular imagination and culture and sandbox RPGs are my preferred video game genre. Before Starfield's release I spent several months playing Fallout 4 and No Man's Sky. This contributes to my point of view on Starfield. Few games allow the player to interact with world objects to the degree that Bethesda's games do. There's a reason for this. Much of the game's available resources has to be dedicated to storing, tracking and animating objects. Not to mention physics calculations or the multitude of scripts running concurrently to manage the game world behind the scenes. It makes my head throb just to think of it. I'm not a professional software developer but I have dabbled in database management, animation and simple game and app programming so I understand something of what's involved. Bethesda also allows custom characters and a number of NPC companions wh

 Anyone who has followed my Twitter account might tell you that I can develop some weird obsessions in video games. No game has given me more to obsess over than Starfield. Collecting potatoes is just one of these things. The photo below was taken while exploring Huygens III in the Huygens system. At the top of the stairs and an elevator lies an Abandoned Freestar Collective Garrison. Now I may have visited one of these facilities before but if so, it was long ago and I have forgotten. It wasn't marked on the planetary map as a point of interest so I assume it was deposited there when I landed. Shortly after dispatching the usual Spacer scum I discovered this slate belonging to Freestar Pvt. Brown.  Touch or click to expand. To summarize Pvt. Brown was a recent arrival who was very bored, questioned the mission and felt excluded by his colleagues. However he knows how to distill liquor and believed that might be his ticket to acceptance. He mentions using potatoes in his final para

 Added What I Learned from Elden Ring playlist. That I did not get "gud" seems to be the only thing that I learned.

Apologies for a long gap in posts. Several time intensive projects fizzled out late last year. The household also acquired a PS5 a few weeks before Christmas and that has been quite disruptive. The console was bundled with Gotham Knights and Elden Ring. Concluding Elden Ring's main story took me 275 exhausting yet thrilling hours. For now I'm just trying to order my thoughts about the game. 

 A while back I took myself to task for not engaging enough with Dragon Age Origins' tactical systems. I did a playthrough of Final Fantasy XII The Zodiac Age followed by a replay of Dragon Age Origins for comparison both on PC and I might have been a little hard on myself. Both games offer roughly similiar systems but Dragon Age introduces presets for roles and behaviours. This allows the player to rely on defaults and merely tweak the templates as needed or wished. Modified presets worked well for me most of the time. Some enemies required a custom setup but the default profiles seem to support players on lower difficulties effectively. I didn't seem to need to pay attention to cooldowns as much as I did with Dragon Age II. FFXII has no difficulty settings on the other hand. The tactics system is fairly bare boned when introduced. The player purchases gambits (conditions and actions) as required. Party roles are developed through the complex licensing system and behaviours ar

Sometime back in 2019 I started a Witcher 3 new game plus and managed to finish it just recently. Witcher 3 is tagged as an RPG and one of the greatest RPGs made at that. Sadly I didn't get it. I viewed it as an excellent action adventure featuring great story telling and immersive quests. Witcher 3 is one of the games that set me on this "what is an RPG anyway?" quest. This new game plus save is an attempt at a role play. I picked a combat style, ability branches and a character type for Geralt and tried to adhere to it. He wound up a hybrid combat/alchemy build of the cat school. This version of Geralt always bargained for cash and never turned down an opportunity for a game of Gwent, a drink or a tryst. He was often rude and impatient. He frequently took the easy way out unless an ally was involved. I read an article recently describing some narrative choices that Geralt just wouldn't make. I struggled myself with some of those choices and came to the same conclusi

 A decade later and I'm still annoyed about the armour cap. Not that it exists but that no where is it mentioned in the official documentation. It's common knowledge now and I suppose I should get over it but it's helpful to know when constructing a character. I just completed a fourth playthrough and the third attempt at a specific roleplay. I have always been intrigued enough with the vanilla versions of the game that I have only installed one mod. I suppose the temptation to create some warrior/blacksmith/enchanter whatever class that is will always be there. Especially since Bethesda eventually removed the level cap and made every perk attainable. Depending on armour choices it's even necessary to put some perks in the smithing tree if you want to improve it. There are some useful perks in the armour tree but boosting the rating beyond the cap is pointless if you are also crafting.  There are some other details that are good to know but that's the big one for me

 The anniversary edition adds a number of Creation Club player homes designed to enhance role play. Because survival mode removes most forms of fast travel some of these homes are unfortunately less than convenient. This is a subjective list of homes I found useful. It assumes players have all Creation Club content installed but I include non CC options as well.  Shadowfoot Sanctum This Creation Club home is my personal favourite but my character for this run is a dual dagger wielding thief/assassin. Located in the Ratway in Riften, it offers full amenities including a smelter which the Riften blacksmith lacks and easy access in and out. The hired carriage is close by. Riften is a fishing town which means lots of food and salt pile for the scrounging. It's fully furnished at 7500 gold which makes it cheaper than upgrading Riften city home Honeyside. Players can make use of a free bed and a cooking pot at the boarding house while saving gold for the purchase. On the downside, Riften

 December was a very slow month for me and January is looking even slower. Nine days in to 2022 and I'm just getting around to this. It's a short list because I only played four games actually released last year. First up The Signal State for PC, a modular synthesizer logic puzzle game. I got halfway through and then became stuck on a puzzle so basic that no one had posted a solution to it. I'm hoping to return once I have completely forgotten anything about the game and just magically solve the puzzle. Then it was Lost in Random for PS4, a game I wrote off as being very clever.  Lost in Random (review) I had no intention of getting Far Cry 6 but gave in after seeing so many Twitter folks having fun with it. Of course they all posted their trophies/achievements and moved on while I was still saying "Hey Chorizo. Let's see what's on the top of THIS mountain."  Far Cry 6 - Fun and Terrible All at the Same Time Last but by no means least there is Guardians of