We pass the ps5 controller so we each get an npc during combat and do splitscreen for the world.
Is local coop different from online coop? I’m playing through the game with a friend right now, and we both have our own small party, and control two characters in a fight. Or maybe I just misunderstood what you meant.
I dropped Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire for the time being. It’s good, but I just don’t feel it right now. The ship travel does suck though.
Then more coop Baldur’s Gate 3. We are now in Act 3, about to go into the city.
BG3 is part of the reason I stopped playing Pillars 2, since I got a lot more into it than I thought. That’s why I started another solo run, trying to make it through Honor Mode. So far, I died twice in Act 1. First time was the three Intellect Devourers shortly after the tutorial. Second time was to the Gnolls that siege the two dudes in a cave. That one, I could have survived, but did some dumb misplays and paid the price. The current run is going pretty good, although I had some really close moments. The Spectator fight almost took out my party, same with the Robots in the Underdark Tower. If I die again, I’ll probably change to a custom difficulty, where I can save, just to learn the game and fights more, before I try again. I severely overestimated my game knowledge.
I also beat Windblown a few more times, and moved up to the final difficulty, but barely did any attempts since then.
While this is classic Valve non-communication, apparently the devs were hacking or reverse-engineering some closed source stuff, that Valve might not have agreed with.
https://x.com/csco_dev/status/1533103185543548929
Just so we are clear on how the mod works on our side, there is no leaked code involved. We’re using a build from 2020 that has security exploits and a hacked dedicated server to be able to even play online while working on it internally.
The mod cannot be released in this state
This is all just some third-party information, I have no idea about this and don’t really care about Counter-Strike.
They need to bring a lot more value than the 5070, otherwise only Linux users and fanboys will buy these. A $50 discount is not enough, and I don’t know if these rumored $70 will do it.
So what did you mean?
I am of the opinion that DLSS and FSR is an admission of failure by GPU engineers that they are not capable,–so far,-- to design a GPU that does 4K 160fps with psycho raytracing on, zero upscaling, zero frame generation.
How is it an admission of faliure? They probably can design a GPU for that, but do you want to pay hundreds of thousands, because the chip uses a full silicon wafer?
Do you think NVIDIA or AMD should have sat on that technology for decades, until it’s good enough for 4k 144fps? Then you would probably say, it’s not good enough, because it can’t do 8k 144fps. Also, why 4k as your arbitrary limit? Most people are still on 1080p. So why not just say it’s good enough, when the hardware can do 1080p 60fps.
I suspect that the 5090 will be the first card to do 1440p with psycho raytracing at 144 fps without DLSS enabled.
Definitely not, since it can’t even do 30fps in 4k, with all the bells and whistles and no DLSS. 1440p ist probably not even gonna be 60fps.
There’s something about Reflex 2 that is bothering me or concerning me, but I have no clue what it is.
What? I’m pretty sure the technology they’re using, Frame Warping, has been around for years, and it’s used in VR, so you can just look that up and see what it does.
Games are very lazily optimized for anything other than NVIDIA these days
NVIDIA bad and all that, but I wish that was true. If the game runs like shit, it runs like shit everywhere. What are these mythical games, that are optimized for NVIDIA in 2025?
I unlocked the final difficulty in Windblown. However, I’m gonna play the previous one a bit more, to get some more reps, since the stat increase for enemies seems just insane.
Then I played more Pillars of Eternity: Deadfire. While the game is good, it took me a while to get into it. I don’t like getting around with the ship, it’s just super tedious. When you don’t enable enemy scaling, the world is also full of enemies, that are far too strong for you (I did beat some fights, the game said are probably too difficult). Now, after 25h I’m level 10, can do more stuff, and it’s getting more interesting.
Finally, my friend and I continued our Baldur’s Gate 3 coop run, and we just made it to Act 3. Because this is a Dark Urge run, and we are pretty much killing everything, there was a bunch of stuff we couldn’t do in Act 2, so it felt a bit short (except for our month break or something), although we did spend a lot of time in combat.
Eh, I don’t really care about that stuff, it’s all subjective. If they liked it that much, who am I to judge
I haven’t paid attention to a lot of lists, but Veilguard might be the outlier here. The game seems to be really divisive. Yesterday I was in a thread on how for someone Veilguard was the last straw, and they’re giving up on Bioware completely, and here the game is the fifth best of the year.
Sometimes a tree is just a tree, man.
Maybe Bioware just wasn’t happy with the game, it happens all the time. Bioware also cancelled two games in 2013, looks like they were just doing a lot. So, possibly they were just stretched too thin with all those different projects. The founders also left Bioware shortly after Mass Effect 3. Who knows if they were the driving force behind the game, and after they left it didn’t really go anywhere.
There are tons of different explanations, but of course it’s all EAs fault. From what I’ve read, working for EA is actually really great, and people seem to love it. That doesn’t really gel with the soul-sucking image you try to paint. In the early 2000s they were actually garbage, with the whole EA spouse thing, but they have apparently massively improved since then.
Also, while this isn’t really evidence for anything, we’ve had actual stories that some publishers forced some type of game on a developer, like Redfall or possibly Fallout 76. Personally, I just think stories like these can’t stay hidden forever and will eventually make it out into the open, like the Anthem flying stuff.
Finished Disco Elysium. I think I made pretty much the same choices as my first time years ago. I’m still not a huge fan of the ending, but now that knew what to expect, it wasn’t as jarring. When I do another playthrough in a couple of years, I might have to be a stealing racist or something, but I like Lieutenant Kim too much and probably won’t go through with that.
Then more Windblown. I beat the game on the first three difficulties (of five) now and unlocked almost everything for now. I’ll definitely try to get through everything, it doesn’t seem too hard.
Finally, I started Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. I’m still very early on, but I hope I’m finished by the time FF7 Rebirth is out. This game has proper turn-based combat, not just RTwP like the first game, which I like a lot more, even if it’s much slower.
You are pretty much just rambling, so I don’t really know what you want to say sometimes.
I never said EA was good, I only ever doubted how EA supposedly just kills their game studios. From all the evidence I’ve seen, they are pretty hands-off with studios like Bioware or DICE, so a lot falls on the devs themselves, if the games are subpar.
You mentioned Anthem, like if that was the game Bioware wanted. No it wasn’t, because apparently the most fun part of the game, the flying, was a suggestion from an EA exec.
Then for Mass Effect Andromeda, EA offered to delay the game again, before it’s release, but Bioware didn’t want to. Why? Must have been EAs big stick. That game also doesn’t have MTX
How is EA chasing money with Mirrors Edge, if they make a sequel, when it took years to barely make money? I’d say that’s the exact opposite. The game also has no MTX.
The point of the video I linked is that the people from Bioware actually say EA doesn’t dictate what kind of games they have to make. Bioware makes what they want. Even if this video is already 10 years old or if the people don’t work there anymore, why would this change? The only reason I could see this change, if the games just continue to underperform constantly, like what’s happening with Bungie at the moment.
Why do you think EA was the reason for cancelling Shadow Realms, pretty far into development? Do you know something others don’t? Don’t just say it’s obvious, because it’s EA.
You also mention how EA destroys or all the passion or creativity from their dev studios, but how are they doing that? You never explain that part, although you make it seem very obvious.
I think the reason why a bunch of these studios that were bought either go under or release sub-par games is much more simple, and it’s not directly EAs fault. After they are bought, management leaves, because they just got tons of money, or they might have a contract, which says they must stay for a few years, but after that they’ll leave anyway. Now there’s nobody left who made the original games, so the studio declines. It’s not like EA can do something against this, unless they make the devs sign some kind of slave contract, where they can never leave the game studio.
Weirdly the temps were good, with like 20c headroom. Steve speculated it might be the VRM. It’s a weird custom mainboard with laptop RAM, but normal, socketable desktop CPU.
Errors in spec sheet and instruction guide, tools-less design, that needs tools, tempered glass panel, that isn’t glass, proprietary hardware, slow laptop RAM, CPU that runs 1.3GHz below spec, loud/annoying sound, bloatware.
Good packaging though.
the absolute shitshow every Battlefield has been since they were purchased by EA
That would mean basically no good games for almost 20 years, which I can’t believe. Even Bad Company 2, BF3 and 4, apparently beloved games in the franchise, are terrible?
Look, I barely play EA games, I just think that they aren’t the sole or even major reason a bunch of their dev teams have turned to shit.
I guess if a game is bad, it’s EA’s fault, but if it’s good, it’s all because of the dev.
What about Mass Effect 1 and 2, EA had already bought Bioware at that point. What about other Battlefield games? People always rave about Bad Company 2 or maybe 3 and 4, but how come EA only chose to interfere after 20 years?
when you have spent years playing games with a distinct style you can very easily see this shift once EA acquires a studio
Like I said, what does EA do exactly in these cases? People from Bioware themselves said that EA doesn’t interfere with them, and they’re making their own choices:
https://youtu.be/K9Z-nCv7XsI?t=2885
execs didn’t think much about it one way or the other, until it became a huge hit and then they started getting involved with the seque
I highly doubt that, since Catalyst came out eight years after the first one. If EA was just chasing the money, why wait so long.
True and real