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Oh nice, didn't know there was a gothic 3 narrative let's play going on. I'm part of that terrible German crowd that replays Gothic 1 and 2 every year or so and still enjoy it just as much years later. I always thought Gothic 3 was a neat game, but a bad Gothic, on account of doing the exact opposite of what made the two first Gothic great. A huge open world but that seems empty, compared to the smaller but handcrafter and somewhat evolving areas. Characters that just finish the stories that were talked about at length for two games in a single quest and then never to be seen again, and so on and so forth. But I remember having fun playing it, just to get new powers and massacre half the population and go evil. If memory serves, the game was also plagued by infighting between the studio and the pulbisher or something like that. Some plot threads in particular remind me of something the original crew would have written as it's completely in tone wit hthe series and I suspect it was to be a much bigger plot point. But it's kinda rushed and made irrelevant by the story being a lot less important in this game than the previous. Anyway, glad to be here!
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Aug 26, 2023 08:07
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Update 20: Great White North Last update we learned that Silden was the worst city in Myrtana, but also, outside of Vengard, the last city in Myrtana for us to visit. If the local rebel camp is just as lame, it's time to visit Nordmar for a ski holiday.     The local shaman told us that the rebels were vaguely "to the north," so let's go vaguely "to the north" into the woods on the border.     What, is it a crime? To enjoy a nice walk in the woods? Only if you're an orc. We own these woods! We're everywhere! The rebellion will win! Whatever, weirdo.      So, the woods north of Silden contain a bunch of weird stone cairns(like the stone circles these will never be explained in any way, they just exist everywhere) and a bunch of rebels hanging around. However!       For all that the rebels have three or four campsites here, they only have three characters to talk to, including the very first guy.     Freman here is one of them. He's here for you to bring escaped slaves to for money.        And the other is Anog, the leader who wants you to help conquer Silden. There's no merchant, no thief trader, no smith, no mage. So... let's get the gently caress to Nordmar.         Where the gently caress is the pass to Nordmar?Maybe we should wait till dawn to look for it.     So, yeah, I genuinely couldn't find it north of the rebel camp despite their insisting it was what they were blocking off, so I go looking for it farther to the west in the morning.       West of the river I find what I at first mistake for a bunch of naked people living in the woods right next to a bunch of angry wolves, lizards and giant bugs.   But it turns out they're just nameless escaped slaves that managed to run into the only patch of woods with no rebels in it.     This is a dead end, but there IS a nice look at a ruined castle, here, and also!  The only crocodiles I've found in the game so far! Logically placed in a river that's freezing cold glacier melt from Nordmar, at the far north end of temperate Myrtana, rather than, say, in the south of Myrtana near Varant or in Varant itself. After this, I go wandering for about fifteen minutes real time before I finally find the loving western pass to Nordmar.    Nothing indicates where it is, there's no trail of stone pillars or a faint path in the undergrowth to follow here. I could see some players maybe never finding it. Let me know when you're done making excuses so we can mosey on to Nordmar, I wanna go somewhere cold, I'm sweating to death in this woollen prison.      The pass rises steadily upwards, there are no enemies there, unlike the pass between Varant and Myrtana, which I think contributes to it feeling like a moodier cross-over. As you start to crest the pass, you see the first snow-capped mountains, which at first I mistook for a cloud bank until I saw there were poorly-detailed trees up there.      Once you reach the actual crossing, though, it's very sudden. From one step to the next, the ground is no longer green, but white.   Maybe the snow is afraid of heights and doesn't want to cross over that cliff.   There are also orcs here! Of course, there are orcs everywhere, but these orcs are notable for all being hostile. No matter how good your relations are with orcs in Myrtana or Varant, the orcs in Nordmar and close to Vengard are permanently hostile. I don't think there's even any dialogue explaining it(there's an aside from someone in Faring about how the orcs near Vengard are so angry and bloodthirsty that they'll fight anyone, but nothing about the ones in Nordmar) and it feels like a bit of an odd choice, especially since it means that Nordmar is the one section of the map without a factional choice(no Hashishin vs Nomads, no Orcs vs Rebels, etc.).       Thankfully, if you want to roleplay a bit, you can just run past them.  I believe the rebels north of Silden want you to kill these particular orcs, but otherwise there's no real reason to. Technically they contain money and XP, but I literally don't think I can find any non-frivolous sinks for the amount of gold I already have and later this update I will get the most overpowered upgrade in the entire game that will trivialize most of the remainder, mechanically.   Oh, huh, there are people up here. I almost forgot that. Ugh, I bet they have quests and exposition for me. Can't we just ignore them?Shush and eat your exposition, it'll make you grow up strong.      We're hunting, duh. Hunting what? Orcs, goblins, the occasional deer, idiots in bathrobes who ask stupid questions. Point taken, moving on.   Eh, go north, big tower, can't miss it. That's the best you can do? Someone's gotta have a more precise idea. Well, you could always ask Hansson. Is he around here? I don't see anyone else with a name. Oh, he's up north, next to the big tower. I hate this place already.   Knowing the directions in this game, I don't even start heading north, I just start moving east to the Wolf Clan settlement. Someone has to have better directions than "go north." I bet that's what they tell all the tourists when they ask something, no matter what they ask.      There are some new animals around. I always thought bison were more about arid and temperate climes, but what do I know. Also from here we can see what's presumably the Wolf Clan up on a peak. A lot of things in Nordmar are on peaks.    And where you get peaks, you also get valleys. It's a dice roll whether some sort of miserable chasm gets in the way of where you want to go next. What else could make my navigation annoying?   Ah, yes, the goblins could learn to cast spells.   And remember how to use swords. Odd that the Black Goblins in Khorinis also knew how to wear clothes, but baby steps. They're not a major challenge at this point, but I guess its nice that the game remembered its own lore.     Thanks to getting the Acrobatics upgrade negating most fall damage back in like... the second? Third? Update of the game, navigating Nordmar is a lot easier. This would otherwise have been a pretty likely instant death fall.  A bunch of orcs are being mauled by ice wolves in the bushes. I just walk past.       Are you seeing this? Are you serious?What, these two rare female NPC's? Look closer....they really decided that female warriors in the ICY FROZEN NORTH needed boob windows? For gently caress's sake.     Do you threaten everyone who comes this way or just me?  You know, I'd probably have done the same. Respect.     The Wolf Clan settlement gave me kind of a Fable vibe for some reason. I'm not sure why. Did the first Fable game have a similar town?  No. You guys need a better hobby. Maybe pet those giant wolves hanging out in your camp.    It's amusing to me how grumpy the golems look. I wish there was just ONE of them that had a happy smile instead.  Perceptive. Thank God, all everyone here ever talks about is wolves, meat, golems and hunting. Tell me you care about something else. I like to hit things until they stop moving and then go through their pockets. Badass. Want to punch each other until we get tired of it?  Hey, I wasn't even planning to freeze you into an ice cube and then shatter you. Anyway, lets start swinging!    So Hogar turns out to be the smartest opponent I've ever fought in Gothic 3... because he stands right next to a golem that I don't want to accidentally aggro with an errant swing, because then it's going to punch me through a wall and probably also break a bunch of scripting when it pisses off the entire Wolf Clan.    It doesn't SAVE him, but it does drag out his embarrassing defeat a bit. I also start noticing something odd by this point, while my melee attacks were consistently knocking down enemies in Faring and Silden, here they don't. I wonder if its a matter of how much damage I do with each attack and these guys are better armored?   Hogar takes getting his rear end beat in pretty good humour. Must be a pretty boring place when getting your rear end kicked by some random passers-by is an exciting change.       Look, I've been murdering from dawn till dusk for weeks now. Give me a break. Goddamn lazy kids these days. Back in my day we didn't even stop to sleep until we were bloody up to our elbows, even when all we had was each other! Uh huh, so what do you want me to do?     Of course, everything in his larder is ham, and the quest entry in the journal also refers to hams. Once the ham is delivered, we also get a funny diatribe from Rune about how only meat is a real food.     I'm inserting it here so I can skip out looping back after delivering the ham.        This isn't an interesting conversation but it feels like there was something misunderstood by the translation team here. This entire little starting exchange doesn't seem like it makes a lot of sense.      Not until you either give me a quest or bore me, old man. Do your worst. Vague mystic babble? You can do better.     Bored yet? I mean, if you want to die, I've got this sword right here- Wait, wait, I've got more babble for you!  Uh.    Wow, if this was 2001, it would be so easy to score a bunch of easy points by joking about you being a furry. But seriously maybe try reading a book or something, go deliver some hams, talk to your neighbours, whatever. You managed to bore me into not wanting to euthanize you, though.           Well, I don't really care about your problems. But do you need anything killed? You know, since I'm in the area and all. How about the orcs occupying the bridge to the south? Last I saw they were getting mauled by wolves, but I could go clean up, sure. Oh no, not those orcs on that bridge to the south. I mean the orcs on the bridge a bit to the south and much farther to the east. I'm glad someone rewrote the dialogue so you actually told me that rather than it being an incredible annoyance to find the actual quest location or wondering if it was bugged. Ha ha, how silly. Clearly no one would have a game with no quest markers AND occasionally vague/outright wrong directions! Ha ha! I hate my life. Oh and also... Oh he made some cool murder snowmen for us and then went north. You should ask Hanson about it. And Hanson is...? Well, you know, also somewhere north-ish. This is probably divine punishment for all the murdering and stealing and the temple desecrating.      So, yeah, I thought the orcs here were the orcs I was meant to kill, but it turned out I was wrong. Because the game's directions suck rear end.     I also stop by and give the bear ham to these guys. I love that one of the hand-over lines is just "HERE! HAM!" It also mandates that I go hand over the ham to each of them individually, which was also done in Gothic 2 with the monastery acolytes and the sausages, but there you actually had a chance to give some of them more sausages or cheat some of the others, that sort of thing. There was a reason for it!        I then make a left turn through the woods and head for the REAL bridge.         It's actually a pretty nasty fight and very liable to get you killed since getting clowned on by superior numbers is about the most dangerous thing in the game. So, I decide not to charge in head-on like a moron.          If you loop around the right side, you can find this narrow ledge hidden through a bunch of bushes and other underbrush that lets you more effectively channel the orcs piece-meal into murder.      I summon a demon for double distracting power, even though he mostly runs in and gets his rear end beat while I run away.        This is like ten minutes later after slowly wearing them down and it's the third demon I've summoned. Clearing this bridge is pretty pointless, too, since all this does is open up a path to Faring where we've already been. If I want to head farther up north, say, to the Hammer Clan, I'd want to return to the Wolf Clan stronghold...      Once again this would be a lot nastier if I didn't have Acrobatics.     This actually does a bit of damage, but Acrobatics outright makes me immune to death from fall damage, and I just need to eat more steaks to be immortal. Now, I also mentioned having become invincible, indestructible and all-powerful at some point during this update. I did that off-screen after clearing out that bridge, where I teleported back to Saturas in the desert to learn Mana Regeneration, which gives me passive mana regen.     Now, in most games that would mean a mana point a second, maybe. It'd save on mana potions by letting me recharge during travelling between encounters, but here...    In Gothic 3 it's INSANELY FAST mana regen. Even blasting away at full speed, I recover one and a half Ice Arrow's worth of mana for every two casts. This means it would take a real army for me to not lock them down. I'm not sure if it's a flat mana regen rate or if it's percentage-based, but the only thing preventing me from going full mage at this point is largely that I already have Ice Arrow which is the best spell in the game.        Infinite power, my favourite kind of power.      Nothing can defeat me now!     Cower before me, brief mortals!    None would dare to trail in my wake, you may call me Zygardo the Undestructible until I think of a better, cooler wizard name with more X's and Z's in it.    As a mighty wizard, I'm too wise to enter this spooky cave that has a lot of people's attention.      Good thing for everyone living here that I'm a merciful mage. I will not reap their souls this day.  From outside... of your comprehension of reality, mortal.          I look for no one, my mighty magical knowledge informs me of where everyone is. Except for Hanson, and Xardas. But I know they're somewhere to the north!         I bet I could slay more orcs than you, I could slay more orcs than ANYONE. I used to feel that way, until I met my match. I was offered a challenge that I thought I could handle... but it was too much for me. You do seem pretty tough, not as tough as me, but what did you in?  Really, you could your rear end beat by a bottle of booze? How bad could it be? Oh, a tough guy. A tough mage. My bowels are enchanted. Whatever. Bring me the ingredients and I'll make you a shot. Here's the list. ...boozeberries... minecrawler mandibles? Well, sure, I've drunk my share of those- CHUNKS OF ORE? I have a feeling like I'm about to get my recommended daily allowance of lead and mercury. Bottoms up. Predictably for a drink consisting of 80% fermented plants, 10% fermented animal parts and 10% fermented magical ore, it completely smashes you on your rear end. No harm done or other effects, it just fucks you up.        I'll defeat a legion of orcs as long as no one makes me ever touch loving Tunnelrumbler again. I can feel it slowly dissolving my liver. Ugolf got another one, huh? How about a deal: You ban Tunnelrumbler so I can rest easy it doesn't exist any longer and I'll kill all the orcs you need killing.  Let me just have a sit down and I'll get that sorted. Oh my organs, what's this poo poo doing to my everything?        I'm not sure sitting this close to a fire after drinking Tunnelrumbler is wise, but if I'm going to die, I'm taking everyone with me.Next time! We kill a bunch of orcs in a cave full of ore(why did King Rhobar need Khorinis and not just get his ore from Nordmar?) and try to find Xardas so we can finish this loving plot.
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Sep 6, 2023 17:53
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PurpleXVI posted:
Just don't burp.
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Sep 6, 2023 19:02
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Nordmar. Land of sabertooth cats who gang up on you and murder you several times over making you wonder what all that level up was for. I liked Varant, the small villages and people getting stoned out of their minds. Nordmar was a slog every time I had to go somewhere though. And all for an unfulfilling finish. Man, so many wasted opportunities in this game. Still, we got gothinc 1 and 2, so there's that.
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Sep 15, 2023 20:27
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Mindopali posted:Nordmar. At least once you have Ice Arrow, Mana Regen and decent mana banks, you can ignore 90% of all enemies in the game. Even the few you can't freeze, like trolls, you can blast to death with a single mana bar.
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Sep 15, 2023 20:37
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I like the verticality of Nordmar, it's a nice change of pace from the largely flat Myrtana/Varant. But yeah it's also easy to get murdered there.
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Sep 15, 2023 22:27
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Private Speech posted:I like the verticality of Nordmar, it's a nice change of pace from the largely flat Myrtana/Varant. The verticality also means you never loving know where to go.
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Sep 16, 2023 07:31
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Rubberduke posted:The verticality also means you never loving know where to go. The "roads" also largely being vague suggestions stamped into the white-on-white ground doesn't help either. It's also easy enough to go down, but if you've made your way to the bottom of a chasm, getting back up can be a major waste of time and navigation if you don't have a teleporter stone for a nearby settlement to skip that tedious part.
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Sep 16, 2023 08:05
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It just usually meant clearing everything and hoping I was killing in the right direction for me.
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Sep 16, 2023 08:07
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The sudden biome shift reminded me of Breath of the Wild.
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Sep 16, 2023 19:58
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Update 21: Somewhere To The North I don't think there's really any need to, but I really wanted to poke my head into the Hammer Clan's Mystery Cave since it looked different from all the other goddamn caves so far. What, I thought, could go wrong? How many orcs could be in there? Five? In the future please keep your stupid ideas to yourself without involving me in them.     Orcs get the usual special greeting as I descend into the semi-darkness.   There are a few different kinds of orc in there. Scouts get blasted by one Ice Arrow. Warriors and Shamans need one Ice Arrow and then a single arrow or swording. Elite Warriors need two Ice Arrows and a single arrow or swording. There are also infrequent Leaders that I didn't notice the weakness or strength of. Elite Warriors are notably annoying because once someone is frozen, they cannot be damaged by Ice Arrow until they thaw, and any damage makes them thaw instantly, so they require a bit of switching back and forth to murder effectively.      In the darkness, the walls look different, they look kind of... ...hypnotic. The veins in the walls seem to pulse and crawl, making the whole thing feel somewhat sinister. It reminds me a bit of the old Doom Fireblu.gif and makes me wonder if the supposedly necessary ore was originally going to be revealed as actually evil, demonic, threatening somehow.       The path descends into red-tinged darkness. That platform on the right I never saw a path to, but the walls' texture easily hides side passages.     Also cut out is the about fifty times orcs either spawned behind me, clipped through walls behind me, or looped around the entire mountain range to get at me from behind, forcing me to fall back and fight my way back in, worried I was fighting infinite spawns. About the tenth time this happened, a few Nordmarian warriors suddenly showed up, apparently the only ones interested in helping me retake their mine.    Including this one champ who charged in and then promptly sat down at a campfire(who lights a campfire inside a boiling hot magma cave?), lit up a cigarette and used a dead orc shaman for a chair while his buddies ran past to die on the front lines being meat shields for me.       It also looks like a good few orcs saved me the trouble of killing them by toppling over edges and into the magma on their own. Thanks, fellas.       The centerpiece of the cave is this cool forge that would look really rad in someone's Dwarf Fortress game, but I can't do anything with it yet, apparently. There are a few story interactibles that do this, just prompt a "Hmmm, no." And when you try to interact with them, they gently caress up your camera and jam it into the back of the hero's head until you mess with another interactible and it gets reset to a proper distance.      There's still more cave, though, starting to reveal where all those extra orcs came from.         There's apparently a back entrance and...     ...as I run out the far end, into a now-empty orcish camp, bombastic, sinister music plays. I feel like it would've been more effective if there had been orcs around, and also this is the LEAST sinister orcish camp so far. It's about the first time we've seen an orc camp without slaves or hanging human corpses used as casual decoration.     Holy poo poo how long is this cave? How many orcs did I just kill?       God... those had to be the last of them. How many was that?I didn't keep count, let's go back and check!       One, two, three... fuckloads. I'm pretty sure I killed more orcs than were in all of Myrtana.I didn't keep an exact count but I had over a hundred orcish weapons in my inventory after looting all of them. A few of those were from outside, from the orcs at the bridge near the Wolf Clan, but it was still about a hundred loving orcs. I feel a lot like I just cleared something that was meant to be an epic end-of-game encounter fighting my way to the magma forge to do things.       That was pretty cathartic, at least. Months, months of getting shoved around and called a Morra and only occasionally getting to push some orc's face in, and I finally got to unleash all of that. Feel better now? No, because I'm still in Nordmar. Where the gently caress is Xardas?        It's going to have like fifty gold in it, isn't it? We invested most of the clan's wealth in cryptocurrencies, you're doing us a favour by taking away the last of our filthy, fiat currency.Okay so it has a thousand gold, but considering at this stage I'm closing in on TWO HUNDRED thousand, that's still chump change.       I guess my only clue is still north, and this is north, sooooooooo...      Man I'm so cool.      Maybe if I make enough noise out here, Xardas will come see what's going on.       ...nothing. Man, maybe Xardas has found another cool nameless hero and he's telling him how to save the world right now.      I really can't imagine what a loving slog Nordmar would be without learning Acrobatics. Respecting gravity, like a fool! Comical.      Having almost reached the northern edge of the map, I turn west. I'm 99% sure that Xardas is in the northeast, but it has really annoying broken terrain and I hope that I get to avoid it. The reason I think he's to the northeast, is that the northeast of Nordmar is mostly empty on the map, while the northwest has the two settlements of Fire Clan and Monastery.      Huh, a fancy cave... maybe this will be more interesting than the last fancy cave.     It is, at least, different, containing skeletons instead of orcs.         It has this big cool-looking but purposeless clear ice wall at the back. In another, better game, it would be part of some metroidvania thing where I'd need to find the thing that would let me thaw it to get into the rest of the cave or get some spare loot or maybe I could thaw it with fireballs but skeletons would try to interrupt me and prevent me thawing it, etc. But here it's just set dressing.   These big mobs of bony boys inspire me to experiment with Fire Rain some more, though. It should be great for big mobs, right?   It... kind of... sometimes... works? Okay so Rain of Fire and Thunderstorm in Gothic 2 were big fancy effects that essentially launched three or four waves of heavy damage in their AoE while they lasted. Fire Rain in Gothic 3 is... unpredictable. Sometimes it does minor damage to enemies, sometimes it does no damage to no enemies, sometimes it does massive damage to enemies. My thinking is that this time it doesn't just do invisible waves of damage while fire effects are active, and instead the fire rain effects are real projectiles, and sometimes enemies just do not get hit by them. It also suffers from a long charge time, so it really only works against squads of non-ranged enemies that detect you at distance and where your timing is perfect to hit them with the first wave of effects so they take maximum damage.       Just outside the cave I found an Ancestor Stone which the hero intuits I can jam into this thing.   Which lights a fancy little fire and gives me a surprisingly nice strength boost. I won't say no to that.     The world's a better place when messing up ancient tombs gets you cool rewards. We should just replace school with defiling the ancient tombs that teach you maths, writing and social studies.   Looks like someone's building bridges up on the cliffside, must be the local fashion.       If you see the bridge from below you can guess to make a turn-off here, but the path mysteriously doesn't actually seem to have an indicated turn-off.      Does anyone ever say foe? ...no, I've been waiting for it for years. And what would you do if someone did say foe? I'd challenge them to a duel, and then when they beat my rear end, I'd say congratulations and let them in anyway. You're the worst guard.          So if I could beat up Innos, you'd worship me?  No one can beat up Innos! He's the strongest! Innos is so strong he could even beat up your dad. Settle down, I worship Innos, too. You know, sometimes, when he grants me superpowers for doing so.  Now that I've got infinite mana, I pick up a couple more Innos spells. In particular I grab self-healing and Destroy Evil(which turns out to suck poo poo).    This is worse than Beliar worshippers, at least they just want my money and try to kill me.    Lee? What the gently caress are you doing here?  Trust me, I'm not excited about being here either.   If someone tries to arrest me I just quickload, it's a lot easier. Yeah well we can't all be protagonists. If you happen to stumble across a couple of magical teleport stones right into the king's court, you should give me one, I'll take the other, then we teleport in there together and gut him like a fish. If I find a second one, I might take you up on that. I think everyone just wants this adventure over with, though.      How'd you guess? Mostly the way you drew a moustache on the Innos statue after you got your new spells, dick. Yeah, yeah. Got any quests, crises or information about where ancient dickhead sorcerers are hiding from me? Oh, just a little thing called...    Ah, well, bad news, I think I already accidentally raided one of those tombs and got the super special powers there which were like a minor power boost for me, not something that's going to save the world. ...so much for our champions, I guess. You want to handle the rest, too? Mmmmhm, I do like a good tomb, but I feel like I've killed enough skeletons to last me a lifetime already... Ah, you know how this goes, one of them is probably going to have recoloured white minecrawlers in it to spice things up. Ugh. I'm going to go annoy your neighbours to put this off. Hopefully your stupid tombs aren't plot mandatory.Only one of them is, thankfully.         Anyway, the neighbours to the Fire Clan are just a short walk to the south past a bit of wildlife.      The path is patrolled by a few sabertooths and ice wolves, northing worth phoning home about.        Unlike the other settlements, you can't really see this one from the ground, so unless you checked the map or just like, followed the obvious path, you could plausibly miss it.     I don't really need you losers to teach me magic this time, which is an improvement, so I'm mostly just here in case you've got some magic artifacts lying around.    This is something you sometimes see in games. Early on, everything is named and unique, and then towards the end of the game you get more "generic" NPC's like, you know, every goddamn orc in Nordmar, or this inspiringly-named Alchemist guy.         Everyone here's going to do this, huh? I didn't even know you HAD a library. Got any books on, uhhhhh... cool magic artifacts that will grant me infinite power? Well, we've got this ancient book called The Chronicles of Dominion, it might have something you'd be interested in.  I'm sure it can't be all that catastrophic. Mind if I go crack it open? Go wild. It's at the bottom of the library, I'll be able to book it if its too bad.   I'm pretty sure I haven't defrauded you before, so is this another goddamn prophetic dream? Another goddamn weird title? ...maybe. Can we skip that if I promise not to burn down this monastery or end the world unless it seems really funny? Alright, alright. To be honest that's a relief, I hadn't written my proper prophetic speech yet so I was just going to ramble a bit. If Innos asks, I'll say you did it real well. Now I'm going to go rob your library.  Is this the way to the library? No, that's in the opposite direction, but now you're here, let me tell you my sad backstory. gently caress. So for inscrutable reasons, I'm a Fire Mage who used to be specialized in transformation magic, despite it being the realm of weird scrolls in the last game and druids in this game, and not actually a Fire Mage specialty at any point prior. But with the collapse of the rune magic I'm now rendered even more useless than previously. You mean these dumb rocks? Or the transformation potions my inventory is drowning in? Yes, definitely, but I'm going to ignore that you already have multiple transformation rocks and recipes for transformation potions, and insist that you get me the stone from that druid with a fursona in the Wolf Clan settlement. For which you'll give me a completely irrelevant reward at this stage of the game? Actually it's going to be a book that gives you +20 Ancient Knowledge. You know that's the first sidequest that's tempted me in a while.It's undocumented anywhere in-game, but each point of Ancient Knowledge adds more damage to spells(only one spell's description says it scales that way), in a formula which is, according to wise German gamers, (Base Spell Damage)*(Ancient Knowledge/100). So at 100 Ancient you're doing base damage, then at 200 double damage, at 300 triple damage, etc. so +20 Ancient Knowledge would be an improvement of about another 8% damage from my current 250 Ancient Knowledge.     Welcome to the underwhelming library of the Fire Mages, more overwrought than the last underwhelming library.       Like with the last one, almost every book in there is just for decoration. It's kind of a shame, because just a few short books, in the Morrowind style where each is just a handful of pages' snippet or a synopsis, could add a bunch of background and detail to the setting without needing to have a voiced actor telling you about it or making a location for environmental storytelling.       It reminds me a lot of the library from Silver which is similar to Gothic 3 in the sense that it's a janky, clunky mess that no one should ever play. Except I would argue its absolutely even worse than Gothic 3.     You'd figure the Fire Mages would be in here doing research to save the world and themselves when the forces of darkness are in danger of finally conquering the world or something.         The bottom floor has a +5 Ancient Knowledge and +5 Alchemy book. I'll note that at 60 Alchemy, we have access to all potioncrafting and there are no scaling bonuses from Alchemy like there are from the combat stats.      Oh hey, that must be the ring to complete my divine armor set. I feel pretty tempted to get that, but... hell, I guess it's in one of those goddamn tombs. Guess I'm stuck fighting all those skeletons, then, if I'm saving the world(or possibly destroying it) I demand ultimate power. ...I feel watched.  So first, you'll see the demon. I blast it with Destroy Evil, which takes off about as much damage as Ice Arrow would, while costing a ton more mana and not freezing it. It says it works against "minions of Beliar," but that only means skeletons and demons. Orcs apparently don't count.    And then the loving skeletons show up and attempt to stunlock you.        Fighting them physically is hopeless since when they're packed that close together, ONE of them blocking will still make your attacks bonk off even if the rest aren't blocking, and you can't cast spells because of the wind-up. You'd need to start off with a Fire Rain right off the bat pretty much, before the skeletons even come in, and while the demon is unable to get to you through the doorway.     I sure hope the fire mages didn't need any of these books to save the world.         I'm never visiting a library again. gently caress books.    Time to bail before anyone asks what all the rattling and growling from the library is about.    Well... I guess I've got another five tombs to raid and then a Xardas to find.Next: Tombs get raided, hopefully a dark wizard gets found.
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Sep 16, 2023 23:16
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What did you actually get from that big, special sealed book? On a completely different subject, getting to a point where one has too much money to even spend is so endemic to RPGs, even really old, difficult ones, that not ever getting to such a point is almost shocking. Some of the Spiderweb software games are like that. Personally, I rather enjoy getting to a point of post-scarcity. Helps reinforce the power curve, especially when all the best gear is of course found, not bought.
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Sep 17, 2023 03:41
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JustJeff88 posted:What did you actually get from that big, special sealed book? It told me that the fifth and final piece of the Adanos Gear Set(tm) was somewhere in the north, related to the Fire Clan, almost certainly in one of their tombs I was already going to rob because I'm a dickhead, and then it got me jumped by a demon and like a dozen skeletons in a super-confined dead end. I feel like, it being an Innos Book, I should've been jumped by a fire elemental or similar burny creature instead of a bunch of Beliar's Buddies.
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Sep 17, 2023 09:21
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Wandering aimlessly around vast empty snowy mountains, occasionally stumbling on caves and genociding tons of enemies until your pockets are stuffed with trash with no real idea why you're doing it, sometimes finding something clearly related to a quest you haven't found yet, then getting handed your billionth tomb-robbing fetch quest... Skyrim took a lot of inspiration from this game, huh?
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Sep 17, 2023 10:23
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I like Gothic but the Skyrim dungeons are definitely more interesting. Though yeah there are some similarities between Nordmar and Skyrim in terms of atmosphere. e: Finding the Xardas tower is super annoying since it's one of the few places not on any ingame map, best hint I can give is there are ice golems wondering outside. Also I think you're on the wrong side of Nordmar, but I honestly can't remember. The ingame directions aren't very helpful either. Private Speech fucked around with this message at 11:04 on Sep 17, 2023 |
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Sep 17, 2023 11:00
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PurpleXVI posted:
This is one of these moments where the game actually makes sense, surprisingly enough, but I'm fairly certain it was unintended and due to the convoluted ans questionable way the story is told, players will probably never realize why.
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Sep 17, 2023 12:58
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Private Speech posted:I like Gothic but the Skyrim dungeons are definitely more interesting. Though yeah there are some similarities between Nordmar and Skyrim in terms of atmosphere. Oh, yeah, no, I'm 99% sure it's to the northeast, I'm just intentionally loving around a bit since I need that last Adanos artifact for the ending I'm 99% sure everyone will vote for anyway.
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Sep 17, 2023 19:44
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Update 22: Incoherent Screaming Sounds This time, we're going to loving find Xardas. I'm going to search EVERYWHERE if I have to. I'm getting frostbite and blisters just thinking about it.     So, what you're missing is close to three hours of me being lost in loving Nordmar. Here's my first encounter with a hostile Ice Golem along the way. Like in Gothic 2, they shoot ice arrows at you at range, but unlike in Gothic 2, it appears that they either can't freeze you, thus making them a lot less dangerous OR I'm somehow immune to freezing.      Because of the verticality of Nordmar there are a lot of places I have no idea how you're meant to get to except jumping off a cliff edge somewhere.        Orcs and wildlife alike get blasted in my search for Xardas and, if I can find them, Akascha.     This stone circle has what is, as far as I can tell, the only named orc in Nordmar, and his named demon. Neither of them seem to be connected to any quests except in the broadest sense, so it's odd.     They were apparently sacrificing a Nordmarian carrying one of those rocks used for stat bonuses in the skeleton tombs.    Elsewhere I run into this guy who lost his tomb rock and wants me to charge a big orc camp with just him for backup to recover it.        Not the most tactically sound decision ever, but extremely cathartic.    Due to the reduced NPC damage, I don't think he lands a single kill, but I sure do!  And then because I attacked a bit too far out, I apparently broke his script and he just stands around yelling about the dead shaman without acknowledging that he's actually dead.      I kill so many goddamn orcs, and clear out two whole skeleton tombs, putting the total up to three, before finally finding the right one, making four out of six in total. The dullness is indescribable.         This one sucks, too, but it has Akascha, whom I need to re-kill for reasons. Or rather, for one reason.      Akascha has the last Adanos equippable item and... there's no cool set bonus or ceremony when I get it, but +50 Mana is pretty great. I like blasting, and this lets me blast more.    So after two hours, I finally crack and look up the location of Hanson, the one guy who knows where Xardas is, and I want you to know, dear readers, that the game is a loving lying fraud. At the Wolf Clan, everyone insists that Hanson is "to the northeast." But you know what? gently caress you! He's not! He's almost straight EAST.       I ignore everything trying to kill me and just bail for Hanson's shack. This needs to end.      What the hell was that, fireballs? Tell the goblins to knock that off, I stick to ice. Anyway...  So that's just going to be background lore and not a hint that I can find a mangled body somewhere, right? What do you think this is? Gothic 2? Ultima 7? Of course lore and gameplay have no connection.      So, this dog is going to show us the way to Xardas.      I couldn't even start to describe how this route works, even with a map       Thankfully, as usual, Graypelt ignores everything that doesn't land a hit on me or himself, so as long as I manage to dodge everything, we're golden.       He had better be up here or I'm turning you into a fur hat and a pair of earmuffs, dog.        Couldn't he have put his secret fortress on a SMALL mountain? Or maybe a nice plain? Maybe on the coastline? He could use some sun.   And gently caress off with the guardians already! No one wants to visit you except for me!       Especially not when you put ominous bullshit like that on your front porch! This might be Xardas' tallest tower yet... sort of.     Well, this is kind of cozy, at least, more cozy than the last one.Also these are the only stairs, like 90% of the tower is just wasted space. Xardas just really likes showing off, I guess.      I will end you, old man.  I've got a hand full of magic, a coat full of divinity and a head full of mad, so you best start yakking.  Please, no one's going to buy that everything has been your plan all along. You think I like this script? Shut up and play along.   So that's why you hid away in the most annoying to find and inaccessible part of the coastal continent? I take my procrastinating seriously. I can tell you're not in a mood to listen so I'm going to summarize. All the Doodads of Adanos, which I figured you'd seek out because they have great stat bonuses, are necessary for Beliar or Innos to win, which means that for the next 1000 years we'd be suffering under either a bright jackass or a dark jackass. At least under Innos I might have sweeping extrajudicial powers again. I expected to have to task you with finding the five pieces of divine equipment, but since you already have it, we can move on to the next part. I need you to chuck all that poo poo into the Ore Smelter that you coincidentally liberated a few days ago- BUT MY STAT BOOSTS It's the only way either of us is going to be free of this, I remind you. You chuck them into the ore smelter, then you come back here and I tell you the next part. You're being awful coy but it's going to be an Adanos ending, isn't it? ... Look when the two other options are Innos or Beliar, the third one can only be Adanos. I may be greedy, murderous and easily distracted, but I'm not stupid. Son of a bitch, THAT'S where you hid it. Do you have any idea how much time I had to waste learning magic again? In this case the purpose of all that power is to act as kindling so we can incinerate the Adanos artifacts. Couldn't you have, I don't know, collected all that power after I got here? In the process sparing the people of Myrtana being orcish slaves? Probably, but that would've cut into my important time spent sitting up here watching a skeleton sweep the floor and throwing stuff off the cliffside. Don't tempt me, old man. Just as a fair warning, even without those artifacts, I can still strangle you. I'll try not to give you a reason to. Good, then we're on the same page. Now to wait for the voices in my head to make the decision for me. Adanos preserve us.   Well, I'm faced with three options, I guess. Option one, I can go see what Beliar wants these things for. Then we probably get some sort of Mad Max wasteland with wizards and skeletons, where I get to smoke weed and wear a metal mask while I tell people to bring me slaves. Option two, I can see if Innos holds a grudge over me making a mockery of his priesthood last time. It's probably going to lead to an incredibly boring, clean world with the occasional genocide where weed is illegal, but I can wear a shirt, we'll probably still have running water and odds are I can leverage my technical Fire Mage seniority to order everyone around. Option three, I see where Xardas' solution leads. What do I know about Adanos again... mostly his followers tolerate me. They kill slavers. They teach me really cool spells. Probably legal weed. And Adanos will grudgingly drown everyone if they're about to do something incredibly stupid that might end the world. However, low odds of genocides or me having to do any kind of work, and I do look good in blue. However, there's also option four... which is that you end my suffering by uninstalling this game and just writing fanfiction for the ending so we can imagine the real ending was better than it was and don't have to be disappointed.VOTE Option A: Beliar Ending Option B: Innos Ending Option C: Adanos Ending Option D: the joke ending that we're not doing.
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Sep 22, 2023 13:37
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A Skelton mad Max weed paradise sounds good
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Sep 22, 2023 13:56
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Option Three because really, if you're not going to do what Xardas asked, then you just wasted multiple updates hunting him down and hauling rear end up multiple mountains for absolutely no reason. also we haven't spent all this time picking the middle of the road option to go ahead and pick a polarity now.
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Sep 22, 2023 14:57
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Option C. May as well humor the game on this one, you came all that way.
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Sep 22, 2023 15:02
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C, mate
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Sep 22, 2023 15:11
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BraveLittleToaster posted:Option C. May as well humor the game on this one, you came all that way. This C for Champion
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Sep 22, 2023 16:11
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Oh, also, one thing I forgot to mention. When following the wolf to Xardas? It's not one of those follow missions where your walk is slower than him and your run is faster, no, both your walk and run are faster than him.
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Sep 22, 2023 16:14
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Option C
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Sep 22, 2023 16:59
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Yeah, C. Mind you, Xardas turning out to be an Adanos supporter after all this time spent (presumably, given his magic) in Beliar's service feels like a really lazy way to give you the third ending.
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Sep 22, 2023 17:35
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All of the above, in order
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Sep 22, 2023 19:37
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Option C
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Sep 22, 2023 23:26
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Gonna vote C.anilEhilated posted:Yeah, C. Mind you, Xardas turning out to be an Adanos supporter after all this time spent (presumably, given his magic) in Beliar's service feels like a really lazy way to give you the third ending. I'm not sure, he always looks out for his main guy, who is his own self, and I figure at his age he realizes that what is good in life is hot water, good dentistry and soft lavatory paper, preferably with no genocide and some good books.
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Sep 22, 2023 23:58
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PurpleXVI posted:Oh, also, one thing I forgot to mention. When following the wolf to Xardas? It's not one of those follow missions where your walk is slower than him and your run is faster, no, both your walk and run are faster than him. Look, dogs get distracted easily.
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Sep 23, 2023 11:05
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Other trivia while I give people a last chance to chime in with votes(though it seems pretty cinched so far): For some reason every single Black Goblin has like a 3 in 4 chance of carrying a Silver Goblet. Silver Goblets are just vendor trash, but it makes me wonder if someone on the German team thought Goblets and Goblins were related because of the similarity in the words. They could've been carrying anything else, but it's almost always goblets on goblins.
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Sep 23, 2023 14:35
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PurpleXVI posted:Other trivia while I give people a last chance to chime in with votes(though it seems pretty cinched so far): For some reason every single Black Goblin has like a 3 in 4 chance of carrying a Silver Goblet. Silver Goblets are just vendor trash, but it makes me wonder if someone on the German team thought Goblets and Goblins were related because of the similarity in the words. They could've been carrying anything else, but it's almost always goblets on goblins. No, cause "Kelch" and Goblin aren't similar
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Sep 23, 2023 15:01
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Yeah, that doesn't sound like a kobold/cobalt case.
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Sep 23, 2023 20:09
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I have recorded the final update and wow. I had a general idea of what would happen, but I'm amazed at seeing the execution of it.
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Sep 26, 2023 18:43
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PurpleXVI posted:I have recorded the final update and wow. I didn't realise that we were so close to the end.
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Sep 26, 2023 20:37
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JustJeff88 posted:I didn't realise that we were so close to the end. The structure of Gothic 3 is... weird. You're likely to "finish" Myrtana before you go to Nordmar or Varant, largely a dice-toss which you'd pick(and Varant seems to be better scaled to being the second place to visit, hell, I even managed to deal with it being the place I went before I'd even visited a second town in Myrtana), so I'd wager most first time players would actually do most of the game world's quests and events before ever meeting Xardas, possibly even picking a definite side in the game's two factional conflicts(Nomad/Hashishin and Orc/Rebel). Depending on which ending you pick and how it combines with your choices, you're then very likely to have the game 99% finished when you visit Xardas. Triggering any of the endings also requires getting the divine artifacts, but I figure most players will seek those out by default, because "divine artifacts" imply things with high stats. Beliar Ending: Murder all faction leaders(orc commanders, Zuben, King Rhobar, Xardas). If you picked this one, you probably sided with the orcs and hashishin, which means that Zuben and the Orc Commanders are the only kills you need. And at the last stage of the game, those are trivial if you can just walk into their towns before letting the violence happen(I'll show WHY this is supremely easy in the next update). Innos Ending: Murder all the orc leaders(i.e. hand Myrtana over to the rebels) and kill Zuben. If you picked this one, you probably sided with the rebels and nomads, which means there's a very good chance this is already done by the time you get this far. So it's more or less just a matter of talking to King Rhobar and you're done. Adanos Ending: ...we'll get there in the next update, but suffice to say I would also assume most players would have a VERY quick time of this one, if they were inclined to side with Adanos. Which all contributes to the weird, aimless feeling of the game because for most of the game you don't have a "main quest" except "do whatever, maybe find Xardas at some point" and then when you finally DO find him you realize you finished most of the actual main quest already. Contrast with Gothic 2, where each chapter starts with giving you a goal and from the start of the game you know that you're lined up to prevent Beliar from murdering everyone with dragons, plus you've got a relatively constant cast of characters that you bump into, report back to, etc. unlike in Gothic 3 where it feels like all the old companions don't really give a poo poo about you and bringing them along for any adventuring is incredibly annoying due to the tedious follower mechanics and the fact that they won't teleport with you if you use teleport stones... and even then the revamped NPC vs NPC combat rules means they're mostly useful as distractions, not as actual combatants.
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Sep 26, 2023 22:07
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Do you have another LP in mind, or are you taking a break? Not trying to push you; you've earned a respite. I thought that you might want to take a holiday and focus on BG3 and others. I bought BG3 and Diablo VI in August and have spent a total of three hours on both. I have four different jobs right now and, when I do have free time, I'd rather snuggle my cats.
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Sep 27, 2023 02:39
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JustJeff88 posted:Do you have another LP in mind, or are you taking a break? Not trying to push you; you've earned a respite. I thought that you might want to take a holiday and focus on BG3 and others. I bought BG3 and Diablo VI in August and have spent a total of three hours on both. I have four different jobs right now and, when I do have free time, I'd rather snuggle my cats. I do not think Baldur's Gate 3 would make for a good LP, because its a combination of things that require video(conversations, voice-acting, dramatic explosions) and things that are a bit too slow to be interesting watching but might be easily conveyed by annotated screenshots. So it would either require a weird hybrid or a really well-edited video, and I don't feel like either. Instead I was going to show off Crystal Project, which I feel is a supremely underrated one-man RPG project. Plus it has a dearth of dialogue which I feel will be a relief.
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Sep 27, 2023 02:44
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PurpleXVI posted:I do not think Baldur's Gate 3 would make for a good LP, because its a combination of things that require video(conversations, voice-acting, dramatic explosions) and things that are a bit too slow to be interesting watching but might be easily conveyed by annotated screenshots. So it would either require a weird hybrid or a really well-edited video, and I don't feel like either. I knew that you didn't want to LP BG3, I meant take a holiday just to play it. Crystal Project is a good idea. It seems low on bullshit.
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Sep 27, 2023 03:13
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JustJeff88 posted:I didn't realise that we were so close to the end. I'm gonna second that, I had no idea you even bit into the main plot at all.
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Sep 27, 2023 08:55
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