I make no secret of my fondness for Telltale-style video games. That is, I like episodic story-telling narrative games with branching outcomes depending on the choices you make. Dispatch is a game from AdHoc Studio. It was developed, at least in part, by people who formerly worked at Telltale. It has the features I like about this…
I've procrastinated on completing my playthrough 15 of Baldur's Gate 3. The reason isn't obvious. I'll get into it in a future post. One of my procrastination tools is playing through some of the original BG games: Baldur's Gate (1998), Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (2000), and Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal (2001). I'll refer…
Honestly, I had not intended this to be a four-part essay. When I wrote the first post on Arctic Druid's Angela's specs in Baldur's Gate 3, I thought I was done. The
Let's take our minds off of Armor Class and Spell Save DC with a story. The events and images are a blend of my most successful Balanced-mode test and the Tactician-mode tests, as I describe in my previous post. A story If something illegal happens within sight of a witness (and there were plenty of civilian witnesses…
This post is a follow-up to my previous post on recreating the character of Arctic Druid Angela. If you're like Guard Wulf and are bored by system stuff, skip ahead to my next post, in which I tell a story using pictures. Originally I wrote this essay and the pictorial as a single post. It got a…
Warning If you're tired of my continual references to Arctic Druid Angela, well, too bad. This post is neither a culmination, catharsis, nor an intended ending to her story. On the other hand, if you're curious about what the fuss is about, you're in the right place! Context When I write up playthrough 15 of Baldur's Gate…
Edit a few weeks later: No, the problem is NOT solved. It's just that the "test save" I used started working again. Other saves did not. I decided to leave the post up, with just a change in the title and this note. In a post in which I wrote about problems I had running Baldur's Gate…
Minor spoilers follow. If you've never played Baldur's Gate 3 before, you might want to consider not reading this post until after your first playthrough. This post records some notes I made during a conversation with Real Angela. Roughly half-way through the game, characters have the option to gain advanced powers. Of these powers, by far the…
I don't usually put a warning in my blog posts, but I feel I should for this one. Content warning: Discussion of mental illness. Senua's Saga: Hellblade II (SSH2) is a sequel to Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (HSS). When I wrote my post on my top-rated games, I'd forgotten about HSS. I've just edited that post to mention…
Now for a dose of reality Video games are not Barbie dolls. When you start a playthrough, the game offers you a choice of which character you want to play: an Origin character or a character of your own design. That's the character who's supposed to be the protagonist of the story. The game is not designed…