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Samuringa posted:I actually remember one very specific instance where Kreia praised me: In the planet where there are two warring factions(Dantooine), you can play your cards in a way that you stay neutral to both to the very end decision. She was actually proud and commended me for keeping my cool and having everyone under my thumb before acting out. Yeah I did the same. "Excellent, you have manipulated both sides to be reliant on you" wtf, I wasn't being a Machiavellian genius, just an indecisive prick. My favorite kotor moment was HK-47 doing impressions of Carth and Bastilla
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Jun 22, 2018 13:15
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Jeza posted:And yet the characters he writes are still almost always the only competently written ones in a game either way. Tbqh i found Eder a more engaging character because his conflict of trying to be a good Eothasian while having personal issues with the religion felt like a more realistic, competently written dilemma.
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Jun 22, 2018 13:25
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Safeword posted:There's a dialogue exchange in Assassin's Creed Brotherhood which has aged magnificently. "Europe's a disease..." *cocks shotgun* "...and Brexit's the cure."
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Jun 22, 2018 19:59
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Safeword posted:There's a dialogue exchange in Assassin's Creed Brotherhood which has aged magnificently. It’s not quite as topical but I loved a specific mission in AC Revelations for how subtly it plays up Ezio as the smoothest sonofabitch to ever live. Quest: Gather 3 flowers to woo this lady Wander around to three locations, very obviously get one flower at each location, go to end of mission. Cutscene: Ezio woos lady and gives her... five flowers Assassin’s Creed indeed, the man is an absolute ladykiller.
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Jun 22, 2018 20:06
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RagnarokAngel posted:Durance in PoE has a similar sort of nihilistic philosophy that gets grating because he just kinda dumps a whole ton of TEXT on you with EMPHASIS and all the dialogue options just kinda make your PC seem like a dullard so he can ramble some more about how you don't UNDERSTAND. The only good thing about Durance is that after rightfully ignoring Alt-Right Flame Wizard Grandpa for the whole game he'll light himself on fire in a desperate attempt to get his equally lovely goddess to finally pay attention to him. It doesn't work.
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Jun 22, 2018 20:47
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Dewgy posted:It’s not quite as topical but I loved a specific mission in AC Revelations for how subtly it plays up Ezio as the smoothest sonofabitch to ever live. I loved the moment in Revelations when it finally brought Altair's story into sharp focus - you know from 2 that the codexes that you collected were written by Altair as they were his diary, and it explicitly told you. You also know that Da Vinci used them to make the cool new weapons that Ezio uses. However, at least I hadn't put it together until Revelations made it explicit, in the flashback mission where Altair uses his gun That's when I realised the extent of things - Altair used the apple to learn of the future, and invented all the cool poo poo 500 years early. All Da Vinci had to do was assemble them according to Altair's blueprints.
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Jun 22, 2018 21:48
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RagnarokAngel posted:Tbqh i found Eder a more engaging character because his conflict of trying to be a good Eothasian while having personal issues with the religion felt like a more realistic, competently written dilemma. I didn't get far enough to give a fair opinion, but I found the entire cast I encountered pretty dull except Durance and *googles* Kana. Like, nobody was straight up badly written. But the general cast was neither interesting nor engaging for me.
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Jun 22, 2018 22:39
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Jeza posted:And yet the characters he writes are still almost always the only competently written ones in a game either way. I liked all the companions in new vegas and I think he only really had involvement in Ulysses and some of the DLC characters.
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Jun 22, 2018 23:06
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Cultist Simulator: I ended one run by having a follower murder my supervisor at work because he was always making me work overtime while I'm trying to juggle despair and funds. So things improve at work, the new boss likes me more and I basically just end by getting a comfortable senior management position and presumably leaving the cult behind. The game text says something like "this might be considered a victory."
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Jun 22, 2018 23:23
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Lord Lambeth posted:I liked all the companions in new vegas and I think he only really had involvement in Ulysses and some of the DLC characters. Yeah I overplayed that statement, but in general games where he is involved in, I find his noticeably stands out. Several times in games, without prior knowledge, I've noticed something/someone in a game is especially well-written and lo-and-behold when I look it up, Avellone had some part of it. Alpha Protocol, Prey, even recently Into the Breach.
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Jun 22, 2018 23:25
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BioEnchanted posted:I loved the moment in Revelations when it finally brought Altair's story into sharp focus - you know from 2 that the codexes that you collected were written by Altair as they were his diary, and it explicitly told you. You also know that Da Vinci used them to make the cool new weapons that Ezio uses. However, at least I hadn't put it together until Revelations made it explicit, in the flashback mission where Altair uses his gun That's when I realised the extent of things - Altair used the apple to learn of the future, and invented all the cool poo poo 500 years early. All Da Vinci had to do was assemble them according to Altair's blueprints. Revelations gets a lot of deserved flak, but I can't dismiss it because of the fine closure they give to both Altair and Ezio. "Requiescat in pace, Altair."
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Jun 23, 2018 00:17
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Samuringa posted:Revelations gets a lot of deserved flak, but I can't dismiss it because of the fine closure they give to both Altair and Ezio. Also the blood bombs. Yes, the crafting system was stupid, but those were awesome.
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Jun 23, 2018 00:22
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Lord Lambeth posted:I liked all the companions in new vegas and I think he only really had involvement in Ulysses and some of the DLC characters. In the annals of goon lore, Avellone singlehandedly wrote the entirety of New Vegas, Ropekid did all of the coding, and any perceived shortcomings were the fault of the nefarious Bethesda intentionally trying to sabotage those brave men.
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Jun 23, 2018 00:57
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i'm going to ask again because no one's giving me a straight answer what the hell did avellone do to make the zeitgeist turn on him, besides writing an essay on how his bosses tried to take his health insurance away i barely even remember the man's writing but the about-face is giving me whiplash someone other than this moron, please Oxxidation has a new favorite as of 02:15 on Jun 23, 2018 |
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Jun 23, 2018 02:01
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Pillars of Eternity was merely okay instead of mindblowingly amazing. That's my guess, anyway.  The fact that those screeds were rambling, inconsistent, and posted on a forum friendly to nazis does him no favors tho. (Assuming it was actually him, I was never clear if that was confirmed or not.)
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Jun 23, 2018 02:12
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Oxxidation posted:i'm going to ask again because no one's giving me a straight answer Like Tim Schafer and the Megaman guy when they turned to crowdfunding people weren't able to blame everything bad about their games on the evil stupid executives and the scales fell from their eyes. Also when he burned all his bridges and posted a bunch of poo poo about his former co-workers that other people have actively disproved he posted it on a forum that hosts literal unironic nazis, which is a bad look for anyone let alone the "actually the bad guys make some really good points if you think about it" guy.
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Jun 23, 2018 02:13
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Oxxidation posted:someone other than this moron, please If Avellone actually cared about improving working conditions and benefits for the people who worked on games or exposing untoward and exploitative behavior from management he could have been a whistleblower or pursued legal action. But instead he threw a huge public temper tantrum online about not getting the power and respect that a living KickStarter bullet point like him deserves and ruined any chance of him or his coworkers being able to actually expose and affect real change in exchange for a bunch of e-fame and backpatting from grognards online.
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Jun 23, 2018 02:34
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Erotic Wakes posted:Like Tim Schafer and the Megaman guy when they turned to crowdfunding people weren't able to blame everything bad about their games on the evil stupid executives and the scales fell from their eyes. So did the castlevania guy and a lot of others. Two bad projects that most people signed up for because of name recognition alone, rather than any actual guarantee of quality doesn't really say anything about anything.
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Jun 23, 2018 02:35
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Nuebot posted:So did the castlevania guy and a lot of others. Two bad projects that most people signed up for because of name recognition alone, rather than any actual guarantee of quality doesn't really say anything about anything. To be fair, the Castlevania game is slowly, slowly, very slowly making progress and actually released a retro game that by all accounts is fairly decent
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Jun 23, 2018 02:47
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Oxxidation posted:i'm going to ask again because no one's giving me a straight answer I'm not sure exactly what happened when he left Obsidian. As I understand it, he alleged that Obsidian attempted to have him sign a non compete agreement that would have effectively barred him from games industry. But, I'm skeptical of this. I'm a California lawyer that's done a substantial amount of both corporate and employment work, and such a restrictive agreement would be unenforceable under California law. I don't know if there are more corporate friendly jurisdictions where such an agreement would pass muster, but I also doubt a choice of law clause entered into in California, between a California resident and a California corporation would be enforceable. As far as the health care, in most cases health care is part of compensation, and when people stop working for a company they stop getting compensated. This speaks to how hosed up the provision of health services in general is in the United States, but based on that accounting alone I don't know if speaks negatively on Obsidian. With that said, I love how New Reno is designed in Fallout 2, I love Planescape:Torment, I loved his work on the New Vegas DLC's and Mask of the Betrayer, I love KOTOR2, I loved Prey, and I thought Durance was an interesting character (but I also really enjoyed Eder and Sagani and Kana). I look forward to Dying Light 2 because of his attachment project, and I also look forward to the Pathfinder RPG he's working on. Also, although RPGCodex is a cesspool, it's one of the few websites dedicated to hardcore RPG fans. I'd imagine Avellone posts there because of its editorial stance on RPG design rather than its tolerance of alt-righters and Nazis. I haven't read the site in years, so I don't know how predominant the alt-right/nazi sentiment is, but I think Avellone likes to hangout with Nazis is an unfair and dishonest assessment of the situation.
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Jun 23, 2018 03:00
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I like Avellone, but he relies too much on the same tropes and he sticks a Ravel in every game he writes.
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Jun 23, 2018 04:53
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Anarcute is a French indie game that plays like a mashup of Pikmin and State of Emergency that unfortunately was overlooked because they were one of the few indie games to throw their lot in with Xbox One exclusivity, but independent of the core gameplay the soundtrack is a wonderful little thing. It's almost like an inverse Hotline Miami in that the music is a huge part of the game's mood and is very synth heavy but is more about being chill and cute than intense and haunting, it even has a series of Miami stages with one of the best tracks in the game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEYjv-df5KE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hldGhy2Ot60 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwitA_-w-UA
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Jun 23, 2018 04:54
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Talking about OSTs, I forgot to mention that Dragon Quest Builders desert level avoids the cliché Faux Arabian music that is often used in games and its theme is actually pretty chill https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy6Dku1DuBo
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Jun 23, 2018 05:41
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Erotic Wakes posted:Anarcute is a French indie game that plays like a mashup of Pikmin and State of Emergency that unfortunately was overlooked because they were one of the few indie games to throw their lot in with Xbox One exclusivity, but independent of the core gameplay the soundtrack is a wonderful little thing. It's almost like an inverse Hotline Miami in that the music is a huge part of the game's mood and is very synth heavy but is more about being chill and cute than intense and haunting, it even has a series of Miami stages with one of the best tracks in the game. these tracks are pretty dece. looks like the game's on steam for 60% off at the moment for anyone interested.
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Jun 23, 2018 06:18
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I've always been a proud Avelhater.
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Jun 23, 2018 09:11
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He's responsible for my favorite and least favorite video game writing.
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Jun 23, 2018 19:53
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All right cool. Can I get thousand-word essays with everybody's opinion on Anthony Burch now?
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Jun 23, 2018 21:12
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rydiafan posted:All right cool. Can I get thousand-word essays with everybody's opinion on Anthony Burch now? No.
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Jun 23, 2018 21:15
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so that's a decent cross-section of takes, exempting of course the guy who believes writing morally ambiguous characters pre-disposes you to nazism and, even more laughably, believes whistleblowers have any power in corporate america thanks for the replies
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Jun 23, 2018 21:48
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Oxxidation posted:so that's a decent cross-section of takes, exempting of course the guy who believes writing morally ambiguous characters pre-disposes you to nazism and, even more laughably, believes whistleblowers have any power in corporate america
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Jun 23, 2018 21:59
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Erotic Wakes posted:Anarcute is a French indie game that plays like a mashup of Pikmin and State of Emergency that unfortunately was overlooked because they were one of the few indie games to throw their lot in with Xbox One exclusivity, but independent of the core gameplay the soundtrack is a wonderful little thing. It's almost like an inverse Hotline Miami in that the music is a huge part of the game's mood and is very synth heavy but is more about being chill and cute than intense and haunting, it even has a series of Miami stages with one of the best tracks in the game. Good lord, y'all need to check out the trailer for this game. 
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Jun 23, 2018 23:48
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Good lord, y'all need to check out the trailer for this game. God bless whoever thought of the concept "Adorable Just Cause"
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Jun 24, 2018 00:28
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OMG THIS IS SO COOL. In Detroit there’s an Android that greets you when you open the game. I found her creepy as gently caress. Big spoiler she gains sentience at the end of the game and asks to leave, and you can tell her to leave. So I did and she walks away, and there’s this big empty space. then I was kind of like, sad. Later I put the game down for like a week and I open it up and there’s this pop up “CYBERLIFE is offering you a new android for free—a one chance opportunity! Do you want it?” I know I found the robot creepy as gently caress but having the menu screen all empty without it was sad  so I’m glad to have her back  There’s also survey things that appear to update as you play more, or play again, or as time progresses or something. Cause I just got a new one. Interesting to know what other players think. And the more you play the game the more you get more “points” to unlock character stories (no you don’t have to buy them with real $ and you get enough just playing through once) and it’s really interesting what’s up w some of the characters that you had no clue. Also you get to see their 3D models. There’s also a pigeon model! I got that one first. E: and the dog and the polar bear  Honestly this game is really good in many ways and not a stupid gross creepy David Cage game at all and you all should play it. Thin Privilege has a new favorite as of 01:09 on Jun 24, 2018 |
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Jun 24, 2018 00:56
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Everyone always says the David Cage games are good when they first come out and I've hated them all more and more as time goes on.
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Jun 24, 2018 01:39
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Novum posted:Everyone always says the David Cage games are good when they first come out and I've hated them all more and more as time goes on. I dunno this doesn’t have anything bad about it, honestly I think someone else wrote it and/or was over his shoulder 99.9% of the time. Thin Privilege has a new favorite as of 02:57 on Jun 24, 2018 |
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Jun 24, 2018 02:55
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Considering that the option to get a new android was patched in later due to complaints I feel like that kinda undercuts any sort of message the game tried to give.
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Jun 24, 2018 04:43
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Ibblebibble posted:Considering that the option to get a new android was patched in later due to complaints I feel like that kinda undercuts any sort of message the game tried to give. I think it actually is a valid complaint though. While it's a nice thematic thing for your first playthrough, it's not the kind of game you're meant to only play through once. So all you get from subsequent runs is the noticeable lack of her.
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Jun 24, 2018 05:38
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Been playing me some Horizon, and just randomly dove into a frozen river that I thought was totally solid.  The fact that the snow on the surface gets disturbed and stays that way is such a cool little detail. The entire game is full of stuff like this but I wouldn’t have thought anything of it being missing if they didn’t bother.
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Jun 24, 2018 06:35
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I've been playing a bunch of King of Dragon Pass in anticipation of the follow-up game and there are so many little things throughout the game it's ridiculous. If you don't know already, KoDP is a strategy game where you take control of a bronze age clan of pseudo Celtic/ viking types. The strategic layer is actually only half the game though. The other half is composed of elaborate choose your own adventure scenarios placing you in difficult societal situations, and those are the bits that give the game its character. There are two little things I love. It's important to understand the culture of the setting. You're dealing with what are in essence no more than about a thousand highly superstitious, xenophobic, authoritarian rednecks. So often, situations are dire. There's plague in the clan, how do we address that? Bandits are plaguing us, what do we do? The primal forces of chaos are eating our sheep! You're offered a range of responses, and because your economic, religious, diplomatic, and military situations are always shifting, one single metagame response isn't always the right one. For instance if you're military is weak, you might pay tribute to bandits, but you could also just crush them outright. Chaos might be dealt with by appealing to a militant order of warriors that do nothing but get wasted and rip it to shreds, but if you're broke, you could sacrifice to the God they fight for instead, hoping for divine intervention. But sometimes you deal with more domestic situations. Two of your soldiers were drinking together, one insulted the other. Being upstanding barbarians, this means they have to duel, right? Well one of their wives, annoyed at the possibility of wonton bloodshed, brains her man with a branch before he can go get himself killed over a drunken dust up. Again, you are given several options for dealing with this, but one of them is just, "gently caress off with this poo poo we are trying to run a clan here, go figure it out you babies." and that can and does work. The other one concerns combat. Fighting is actually not the point of the game. It's actually about creating the foundations of a more civil society. But fighting will occur. It's pretty uninvolved most of the time. You allocate a certain number of dudes, pick their strategy, and hope for the best. But you also have nobles. They're your advisors during events, they have stats, and some predetermined personalities. And they fight right alongside your redshirts. So sometimes you'll get a brief description of a situation one of them is dealing with mid fight, and you can provide input. Most of the time it's pretty standard stuff like this guy is cut off behind enemy lines, what should he do? And you'll want to pay attention to what the noble is good at. Obviously don't ask a guy who's good at straight up combat to use magic to escape. But one noble I had, instead of bog standard battle situations, would continuously recall weird vague prophetic visions that you'd then have to try to interpret to keep his rear end alive. And it kept happening to him. Every time he went into battle he'd recall another one. And he'd just hulk out and cleave everyone down, because his combat stats were so godly. But those battle events can be absolutely lethal to one of your leaders, so having only these ephemeral images and omens to work with not only puts you right in the head of the character, but also adds a cool wrinkle to what is, in essence, just a throwaway set of text boxes to make combat more engaging. The whole game is like that. It forces you into the mindset of another culture. In fact, if you resist that mindset and try to play it with a modern perspective, you'll often gently caress yourself because the societal expectations are so much different than ours.
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Jun 24, 2018 07:29
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BurningBeard posted:I've been playing a bunch of King of Dragon Pass in anticipation of the follow-up game and there are so many little things throughout the game it's ridiculous. Is this the game where you can sue a ghost to stop it haunting your house?
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Jun 24, 2018 08:27
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