StaceyPowers

When fights are designed so you need a specific system of tactics to win, do you usually manage to figure them out yourself, or do you have to look them up?

Can you usually tell what your difficulty settings are without looking? I lost patience with a fight in Dragon Age: Veilguard the other night, and checked my difficulty settings, expecting to find they were on standard/normal. I found I’d been playing on “hard” all along. That really surprised me, as I have to play most DA games on casual to get through them. I reduced to “standard” and beat the fight.

What are some of the most reassuring games you’ve ever played? My top pick is Outer Wilds, for its story, which I never want to give away, so won’t say anything about it. I also find TLOU games reassuring, just the whole idea that even in a world like that, building a meaningful life with rewarding relationships is still possible.

What are some relatively obscure games that played a significant role shaping the mainstream video game industry? My example would be old school text-based MUDs from Iron Realms Entertainment. So far as I know, those were some of the first games that pioneered the detested freemium/pay-to-win model.

What are some games that made large changes to their endings post-release? Fallout 3 comes to mind, with the addition of the Broken Steel DLC. So does Mass Effect: 3, which patched the ending to fix some things.

I feel this is complicated, because there are two issues at hand: norms and ethics, and they overlap, but not entirely. I feel that a society that is inclusive is an ethical one, and thus games should always promote inclusivity, or at least avoid exclusion. The thing is, exclusion usually is the direct result of a social norm, and that current of exclusion running through society is always going to be there. So I would say it is best to adapt in ways that reflect basic ethical behavior, rather than necessarily adapting to modern sensibilities. Today's sensibilities may still largely reflect inclusion, but the way things are going, tomorrow's may very well reflect hate. I hope that if that is the case, developers will do what they can to resist.

No idea. I think my earliest gaming memories involved Tetris, but I don't know how old I was. Probably like 5.

I think it depends on if you're an NPC or the protagonist. If you're an NPC, you're basically screwed, lol. But if you're the protagonist/player character, radiation heals your broken limbs and stuff. Not bad at all.

Haha, yeah. As someone who finished the original Oblivion not that long ago, I can say the upgrade to the graphics is dramatic to say the least.

I'm not sure it counts, because by the time I bought it, I had high hopes that I'd love it, but Outer Wilds. The reason I'm mentioning it is because I usually shy away from puzzles in games, and the whole time loop concept sounded fatiguing and frustrating to me the first time I heard of Outer Wilds. But it wasn't at all, and I did end up loving the game.

That sounds so interesting! I will look it up.

Has anyone played this yet? I'm really curious about it.

Honestly, I think every game I've played through to completion falls into this category. I don't get bored that easily. I usually try to rotate through the games I am actively playing every week. But sometimes I get so into a game that I forget to do that, and play for a month before rotating to the next.

Frustrating for me. But this is because I am not honestly a very good gamer, lol. If a game has permadeath, that just means I will never be able to finish it. The closest I've come to getting through a game relatively unscathed is BioShock Infinite, where I think on my most recent playthrough I only died a handful of times.

For me, the answer is always Zork.