Game News Brian Fargo announces Bard's Tale IV at PAX South

[Kem0sabe]

Since there is nothing but crap in all those lockers you dont really need to do those, or all of them.

so you can just skip most of those and enjoy the awesome gameplay, reactivity and C&C

My OCD would murder me in my sleep if I left all them containers unopened

 

[hiver]

I know, hard to resist that old ingrained pavlovian reflex even for me, at least playing first time, but just imagine Fargo watching that through steam and cackling about how his game is so full of reactivity and amazing skill uses.

You know you've gone completely batshit when hiver is the one talking sense into you.

Congratulations on discovery of the fact that the codex is batshit stupid site that devolved into shit slurping long ago, that VD is barely sane, and that sky is blue.

After getting saved by VD just in nick of time before you discovered that TB and Phase based are not the same combat systems in a bit more extremely emotionally engaging manner.

Its not Blaine who needs sense in that kind of herd mentality.

 

[Zeronet]

I find it difficult to believe that anyone who's actually played Fallout/2 could write such a thing with a straight face.

I find it just as difficult to believe that someone who liked Fallout did not enjoy Wasteland 2.

There's a difference between enjoying a average game and comparing it to fallout. From the armor system, to the hobo merchants with a truckload of power armour and energy weapons they pull from their ass, to other immersion breaking elements, like the derelict 'ranger base' in Sante Fe which is a glorified radio shack, the endless legion of chests of crap, to the linear combat slog of a ending, Wasteland 2 continually let me down bit by bit.

I do speak as a person who feels part of the role playing aspect is acquiring cool loot from cool locations, that aren't empty holes full of fuzzy textured green people.


I could probably go on, but there's enough to sour the often great writing and interesting quest zones.

 

[Roguey]

Just the thought of having to go through all those demo, lockpick and safe checks again leaves me nauseated, or maybe it's the meds.

Maybe that's one of the things being rebalanced.

If not, there's always the mod to remove the timer.

 

[GloomFrost]

I find it difficult to believe that anyone who's actually played Fallout/2 could write such a thing with a straight face.

I find it just as difficult to believe that someone who liked Fallout did not enjoy Wasteland 2.

There's a difference between enjoying a average game and comparing it to fallout. From the armor system, to the hobo merchants with a truckload of power armour and energy weapons they pull from their ass, to other immersion breaking elements, like the derelict 'ranger base' in Sante Fe which is a glorified radio shack, the endless legion of chests of crap, to the linear combat slog of a ending, Wasteland 2 continually let me down bit by bit.

I do speak as a person who feels part of the role playing aspect is acquiring cool loot from cool locations, that aren't empty holes full of fuzzy textured green people.


I could probably go on, but there's enough to sour the often great writing and interesting quest zones.

OMG!! Yes Wasteland is not nearly as good as fallout. Not many games are. Everybody understands this but it is still a quality post ap, turn based rpg. Also don't forget that it's budget is 3 million which is nothing, NOTHING compared to other games budgets. Fallout one budget was bigger back in the 90s. And sure as hell it is a lot better then that abomination, piece of shit Bethesda made.

 

[Roguey]

Wasteland 2's total budget was closer to 6 million, as per Fargo's statement that it ended up being double what they earned from Kickstarter.

 

[Zeriel]

I'm sure a number of us would be interested in a review from Blaine now, to contrast with VD's broadly favourable review. It would certainly reflect the split of opinion on WL2 on the Codex where some agreed with VD's favourable opinion but there's a sizable contingent who think it was far too positive.

I think WL2 is poo, but if that means I'm going to be represented by Blaine I'm hereby changing my opinion, 10/10 A+++ would pirate again.

 

[DeepOcean]

About Bard's Tale IV, who is the lead designer? I will wait to see if they are going to fuck up another game or they learned something. Well... it will be a fun train wreck to watch, if Bard's Tale IV ends like Wasteland 2, I will buy it 75% off on steam for a boring weekend playthrough... but I dunno, a miracle can happen and something good can come out of this.

 

[Zeriel]

Part of me hopes against hope that it might be a more up-budget Devil's Whiskey... but comparisons to Hearthstone make that less of a pipe dream and more of a pipe dream blown apart by a pipe bomb.

 

[commie]

Thats because your brain fell out somewhere on the way to this thread. And when some kids found it they thought it was a white billiard ball. So they took it back to a billiard club and now everyone marvel at the perfect smoothness of it.

How clever. Let me ask you something, hiver: Why do you keep coming back to a place where according to your signature "some of the moderators and a lot of the posters" are "pathetic", "stupid" and the "lowest scum"?

Besides, Game of Thrones is a good show too. Now you can rage on...

He's just living up to his 'Dumbfuck!' tag as expected(no real effort there as it's the natural order of things), and also continuing to larp the 'Whiteknight' angle, tilting at those windmills in a delusion that he is 'protecting' the 'values of quality against the current decline' or some such shit.

Personally he was more 'fun' when Blackcat was here...



Also such fucked up edginess here...as if the original games that Fargo is using for inspiration were flawless! Can't be arsed to find the threads but there are ample here on the Codex full of people that pour shit on the original Bard's Tale trilogy, along with a lot of sage nodding of the head from others in agreement; yet when Fargo mentions trying to do something different it's "OMFG HOW DAREZ HE MESS WID DA CLASSIXXXXX?????"

 

[hiver]

Such a laughable amount of blatant from such a small hemorrhoid.

Also such fucked up edginess here...as if the original games that Fargo is using for inspiration were flawless!

I cant hear that squeaking, you will have to try harder.

 

[Lurker King]

Can't wait for the next brilliant game in which I perform a near-endless succession of 6-second skill checks to open thousands of generic treasure boxes filled with random generic lute.

 

[tuluse]

Wasteland 2's total budget was closer to 6 million, as per Fargo's statement that it ended up being double what they earned from Kickstarter.

His exact words were double the original budget, which I think means 2x(ks-physical rewards).

 

[Lurker King]

If the new Bard's Tale end up being bullshit, the Codex staff can just ask VD to make another review to save face. He has 10 points in the market skill and can always come out with irrefutable arguments like “Fargo only promised a modern and revitalized sequel of Bard's Tale and he was successful in this specific objective”.

Nah, just kidding. He should not be involved with reviews of crappy games. This can hurt the publicity of AoD.

 

[Athelas]

Yeah, I found that comment pretty funny, since I pretty much consider Showtime to be the poor man's HBO (setting aside the fact that both are subscription-based channels, thus ruining that analogy) and none of Showtime's shows are what I'd call good.

Not even Homeland?

Especially not Homeland, with its suspension-of-disbelief-shattering terrorist romance that makes the average soap opera look like The Wire by comparison.

 

[Bubbles]

The heart wants what the heart wants.

 

[Zeriel]

Homeland was never spectacular, but it's really gone into the shitter. Supernatural levels of decline.

 

[set]

Wasteland 2's total budget was closer to 6 million, as per Fargo's statement that it ended up being double what they earned from Kickstarter.

And it's not budget why WL2 is a 6/10 game. It's design. $6 million was spent generating content, not design. The design of WL2 is probably $10k. They jotted down some active skills, came up with some attributes, then decided to have turn based cover based combat and that was the total end of it. They never said, "How can we make demolitions, lockpicking, alarm, bruteforce, etc. all interesting and impactful skills?" They made the skills then just chucked them randomly throughout the game. Toaster repair gives you access to some items, but it doesn't enable you to experience anything wildly different. The same can be said about lockpicking and hacking. Who gives a flying fuck if you can loot some stupid shit from some safes? It doesn't actually impact the game. How many times did I actually need lockpicking to reach a special area? How many times did being able to disable an alarm let me progress through the game in a novel way? Zero times for me, but I'm onlt 75% through the game and without the will to even finish it.

 

[DeepOcean]

Wasteland 2's total budget was closer to 6 million, as per Fargo's statement that it ended up being double what they earned from Kickstarter.

And it's not budget why WL2 is a 6/10 game. It's design. $6 million was spent generating content, not design. The design of WL2 is probably $10k. They jotted down some active skills, came up with some attributes, then decided to have turn based cover based combat and that was the total end of it. They never said, "How can we make demolitions, lockpicking, alarm, bruteforce, etc. all interesting and impactful skills?" They made the skills then just chucked them randomly throughout the game. Toaster repair gives you access to some items, but it doesn't enable you to experience anything wildly different. The same can be said about lockpicking and hacking. Who gives a flying fuck if you can loot some stupid shit from some safes? It doesn't actually impact the game. How many times did I actually need lockpicking to reach a special area? How many times did being able to disable an alarm let me progress through the game in a novel way? Zero times for me, but I'm onlt 75% through the game and without the will to even finish it.

Funny... for all this money, sometimes I felt the game was made by some of those Deep Silver shovelware factories.

 

[Country_Gravy]

They better make this cloth map jizz-proof. Still upset about my Wasteland 2 one.

 

[hiver]

One of the funnier things is how some lockers can be opened by brute force too, while others cannot. How some safes can be shot to open with ordinary weapons while other cannot. How demolition skill is not used by you to set explosives or handle bombs or how to blow up that stupid rock in level up mines.

There is a few places where you need the lockpick skill ... but i think you can open most of those with brute force - but then again in other places you cannot, because! Like that small chain fence around Damonta radio tower... that cannot be blown up by a rocket launcher, grenades, or anything else.

 

[karnak]

If BT4 is gonna be similar to Stonekeep (also designed by Brian Fargo if I'm not mistaken) then we're seriously fucked.

 

[Duraframe300]

Yeah, I found that comment pretty funny, since I pretty much consider Showtime to be the poor man's HBO (setting aside the fact that both are subscription-based channels, thus ruining that analogy) and none of Showtime's shows are what I'd call good.

Not even Homeland?

Especially not Homeland, with its suspension-of-disbelief-shattering terrorist romance that makes the average soap opera look like The Wire by comparison.

They finally killed Brody.

After the clusterfuck that was season 2 I wasn't ready to give Homeland a second chance though.

 

[Blaine]

ITT:

I'd had a fight with my ultra-successful, blow-snorting supermodel girlfriend (actually, she's just not an impoverished, socially inept D&D player working at Target, but whatever floats your guys' boat), and was in an incredibly foul mood. We made up at 1 AM today, so I'm all better now, but it seems I've committed myself to writing three reviews, and am honor-bound to carry through.

Fuck.

Unfortunately, I also deleted my entire Codex storage folder (along with some other folders), created a new backup image on the storage HDD, and then deleted my old backups. All those dank memes and .txts are gone, lost in time, like tears in rain. Yes, I was mad. Proof:

But wait! Maybe I fucked up, and data from the 19th is still available? I don't think so, because I started the backup at 1 AM yesterday or somewhere around there.

 

[Infinitron]