StaceyPowers

@kingpotato Run-and-gun for the same reason as you. My aim is shit. I also just have more fun charging around corners with a shotgun. If I'm playing against bots, I like coming up with optimized pathways through maps and then just playing in a repetitious way (I guess it induces a "flow" state).

@Darya Yeah, they made money on them. Consider also that in those days, a lot of games were ... well ... hard. Gaming was more of a niche interest back then, so there were less concern about making games that anyone could feasibly beat. Game devs also were frankly not all that concerned if you played yourself into a situation you couldn't progress out of (you are much less likely these days to make a fatal mistake at the start of the game which stops you from beating it in the end). Add to that the fact that we didn't have YouTube back then. It could be harder--if not impossible, in some cases--to find free guides to help you through difficult sections of challenging games. So the walkthrough manual might be the only solution. They had a kind of "collectibility" status as well for some folks.

Follow up to previous question you were asked. What do you love about the Renaissance?

I'm answering my own question here in case anyone else is searching for the answer at any point in the future. It seems that a couple of DLC were made for Inquisition for PS3, but after that, they were for PS4 only. Thus there is no GOTY edition of DA: Inquisition for PS3. As to the other question, according to someone who works at a local game store in my town, the PS3 Mass Effect Trilogy apparently does contain a large amount of the DLC. Hope this helps someone else at some point!

I’ve seen the news that PS5 will be compatible with PS4. I haven’t actually seen anything that definitively states that it won’t be compatible with older model games. But it seems like there’d be no point in announcing the PS4 thing without announcing all backwards compatibility, so I am guessing this means that we’re out of luck regarding PS3, PS2 and PS1. What do you think?

What are some of the most creative and/or silly weapons you’ve designed in games with crafting components? I have a wooden sword in Skyrim I’ve upgraded so that it functions as a fairly weak but entirely viable weapon. I cast Soul Capture on it so that the toy sword will devour my enemies’ souls. The hollow wooden walloping sound it makes is quite satisfying as they go down. I named it “Stormbringer,” a reference Michael Moorcock fans will know. What about you? What are some silly or fun weapons you’ve made in your favorite games?

What remasters have you played which genuinely impressed you and gave you the biggest bang for your buck? And which did you feel were just a hasty repackaging of the original game at a new game price?

So often, I see people on forums mentioning that so-and-so (one of their followers) died, or that they lost their horse and needed to replace it, etc. in various games. My question is … how and why does this even happen in a lot of games? In Skyrim for example, I cannot see any reason you would ever need to lose a follower. I save so frequently in that game because of its rampant glitches and bugs that I usually only lose a few minutes of progress if a follower dies and I need to reload a prior save. And in RDR, people say they go through horses like crazy, but likewise, I never seem to have to go back very far to get a dead horse back. Is it just that other people forget to save for hours on end? Or is it that they are attempting to raise the stakes/make the game feel more realistic by letting follower deaths be permanent?

What’s the single hardest game you ever played? For that matter, what’s the single hardest game you ever played and beat?

What are some of the worst situations you created for yourself in terms of making it hard to beat a game? I picked literally the worst possible preconditions for a quest in Dragon Age 2 last night, and after an hour of repeating the same fight (and preceding dialogue) over and over again, I’d had enough. I went back to a prior save and put in different preconditions, and got through it with ease. Not a terrible situation since I had that save, but might have been if I didn’t. The worst ever mess I recall getting into was in Return to Zork on DOS back in the day. There was some seemingly minor item which I lost irrevocably through some stupid decision. I thought it didn’t matter, and continued playing. Later I found out I couldn’t beat the game without it. I had to start all over. Thankfully, it seems like devs nowadays make it hard for us to strand ourselves. But what are some times you’ve screwed yourself in a game, whether recent or older?

My regrets likewise concern formats more than anything. I don't regret buying Dragon Age Origins ... but I do regret that when I went back to the game store a week later, I found a copy of the version with all the DLC included for the same price. That would've saved me like $40.

I never thought of it like that before. For me, I always think of it as essentially being about dealing with the Legion. But that's one of the reasons NV is so cool. You can play through the game with wildly different motivations and have very different experiences because of all the complexity. So you can come away with unique interpretations.

This reminds me of the time I first met the mother of that bratty little girl in Whiterun (Braith? something like that?) and found out her mom was totally neglectful. I got so annoyed that I punched her, forgetting that would instantly result in my follower killing her. I didn't feel sorry, but I did find it funny that righteous, upstanding Mjoll murdered a civilian like that =D If even Mjoll thought she needed to die, she truly must've been a terrible mother indeed. Needless to say, the entire town was pissed.

What is a list of your top 10 favorite games in any genres?

In terms of single player games, I’d say it’s probably Fallout New Vegas right now. NV still leaves a lot to be desired for me, but it’s further along than anything else I’ve tried in the areas where I want other games to improve (character depth, organic storytelling, multi-layered, complex factions). My best tabletop RPG experience was a Warhammer game with some friends back in college. It was a great group, and I loved the game universe. I also really was into MUDs when I was younger. The game I played the most was Aetolia, and I would say it was the most memorable RPG I ever played, and probably the most engaging too. But I couldn’t say it was a “favorite” in that the experience wasn’t exactly a “positive” one. Same question right back at you. What are your all-time favorite RPGs?

@TheSteelyardDweller @killamch89 @DylanC I kind of see where you all are coming from on this ... but how were the stakes actually higher in Fallout 3 than they were in NV? I mean, Caesar's Legion wasn't exactly a tiny problem. I suppose one could argue that potential genocide was a bigger deal than mass slavery/murder, but I find it hard to quantify these things. Caesar's Legion really pissed me off.

I'm with you on this one, but I had overinvolved parents who somehow seemed barely cognizant of the fact that I was a solid student who literally never touched drugs or booze growing up :/ Somehow I was still under heavy surveillance and paranoia. Media attention doesn't always mean being in the loop in a meaningful way--there is a lot of misinformation out there. There was some kind of nonsense back in the 80s about Dungeons and Dragons promoting devil worship and suicides, and I grew up with parents who ate that shit up. Seriously ... who wouldn't rather their child be playing a nerdy, creative game of the imagination seated at the kitchen table with some friends than doing drugs in some back lot? Good grief. I have no idea what my parents thought an evening of roleplaying was comprised of (blood sacrifice?), but there was no possibility of setting them straight. I was an avid roleplayer growing up, and you can imagine the stupid trouble this caused for me.

@LadyDay I'd love to see your work if you do. @Darya That is amazing about your brother--especially that he can play that well without modified controls. How does he deal with the regular sticks and buttons? @xXInfectedXx I wondered if there were eye-tracking controls. I'd be very interested in learning more about that.

Can’t get any better at something if you’re not willing to face it. I may have failures, but I try not to let turning a deliberate blind eye to them be one of them.

I'd been avoiding Dragon Age 4 news for the simple reason that I am still in the middle of my initial playthrough on the existing games. But I've been really disheartened to hear that this is going to be some sort of live service nightmare. I'm so not interested in that 😞

Good call about the Big Daddies. They really got a raw deal, and it immediately struck me during my first encounter with one that "wow, this is the only person in this place that hasnt been hostile to me so far." I've heard people say that Rapture failed because Ryan wasn't really loyal to its ideals, and behaved in a hypocritical fashion. But Fontaine seems to me to be a perfect end result of the Objectivist values of the city, and he lived up to it. Even if Ryan hadn't gone to war with him, I think Fontaine's greed and indifference would still have driven him to destroy Rapture. He would still have used it as a testing ground, and he still would have tried to bury the evidence. So I am in agreement with you that the Objectivist values--at least taken to such extremes--were indeed to blame. And in that sense, I do feel the blame spreads to the populace, who bought into those values to their own detriment. I just hope that some of the survivors would learn from their mistakes.

@DylanC Studio Ghibli! That one is definitely going on my list! Of course the deal is only active in Europe :/ But I hope I can snag it at some point in the US. Thank you so much for making me all of these exciting recommendations.

Alas, I have been that person myself more times than I’d like to admit. You are right, in any case.

@kingpotato True. The Dragonborn does a remarkable amount of grave-robbing with no consequences. I always laugh at that one quest where some guy is like "help! These necromancers are disrespecting my family tomb!" So you go in there to clear them out, but he doesn't blink when you take all the loot from his family tomb. @Bravosi Become ethereal never seems to work properly for me in the game, but I think I may not be fully understanding when or how to use it. I swear I still take damage when it's active, but isn't it supposed to stop that? :/

When you play video games that you really love, do you look for ways to bring elements of those games into your real life? For example: -While playing TLOU, every time I was walking from one location to another in real life, I would look around constantly for impromptu weapon ideas and strategies should infected attack (not literally expecting it, of course, but it was fun to see the world in a different way). -Sometimes I will lean toward eating foods in real life that characters in the games I play have been eating. -Playing Bioshock games has given me a renewed interest in Art Deco and Art Nouveau. I’ve also gained a deeper interest in design work and typefaces, and have been educating myself about the fonts used in the games. Most of the fonts I’m using in Windows right now are from the games or feature similar elements. How do you bring elements of your favorite game worlds into the real world?