Unified Vidya Games thread

[Cain]

It is, and yes, I'm not sure how well Bethesda will handle that.  ESO did give us some new Khajiti lore which wasn't entirely terrible, and could figure into a game plot quite easily...but I'm not sure how well Bethesda will handle a non-human, non-mer centered game.  Personally I think Valenwood would've been boring, possibly after spending hours grinding my way through those zones in ESO and wanting to die every step of the way, but between the well established lore, the lack of VA issues and the potential for a Thalmor-Empire proxy war, it seemed like an obvious option.  Same for Hammerfell, only even more so.

It's also possible I'm completely wrong.  I shied away from it being Summerset Isle because of the mountains and arid landscape, but a lot can change in a thousand years, and Summerset was hit hard by the Oblivion Crisis.  Equally, it could be the coast of Valenwood...but I think if it were they would focus far more heavily on the forest theme.  I mean, the game's Valenwood, so gotta show the woods themselves, right? Hammerfell...eh, if it was the Craglorn region, maybe, as there are some quite fertile areas around there, it does actually strongly remind me of the region around Dragonstar, but it's landlocked.   Doesn't look at all like High Rock, I very much doubt they'd go back to Morrowind...it could maybe be Black Marsh, as we don't really see the coastal regions of it in ESO, only the northern region of Stormhold, on the Morrowind border. 

Or maybe they're actually going to break with tradition and do something genuinely new with TESVI.  Yokuda, Atmora, Thras...Akavir?  I highly doubt it, but anything's possible.

So yeah, my guesses in order of preference are Elseweyr, Black Marsh and Valenwood.  One thing they did say is that they were waiting for the technology to make certain things possible that they wanted to do with TESVI, which I think had everyone thinking Valenwood (walking tree cities).  But maybe they wanted it for something else.

[Cramulus]

  they finally announced it???

:googles: THEY FINALLY ANNOUNCED IT

[Cain]

Now enjoy hearing nothing for the next 12 months 

[Cain]

Also, lots of people seem to think it is Hammerfell, but maybe Hammerfell/Orsinium/High Rock.  That would be my preference, both for storyline reasons (continuing the Thalmor/Empire conflict...hopefully with the possibility of taking either side) and for lore reasons.  If the main character is or becomes a Sword-singer, that would be a really good replacement for the Dragonborn Thuum system.  Given the turmoil in Hammerfell, it is also possible that the player would be an avatar of HoonDing, in which case...shit's going to get real. 

[Cain]

All that said, Assassins Creed: Odyssey may be pretty exciting too. 

Looks like Ubisoft are going full on Bioware with regards to RPG elements, including multiple branching questlines with differing outcomes, multiple choice dialogue options and even romances.  Stealth gameplay is being improved from Origins, quests can be much more open-ended in how they are dealt with ("this guy owes me money, deal with it"...so either kill him, intimidate him or steal what is owed) and a world system where the player's actions affect the balance of power in Greece between Sparta and Athens, spread across 27 different states.

No doubt they'll find some way to fuck it all up, it is Ubisoft after all, but it looks very interesting.  Plus, you know, Ancient Greece. 

[Faust]

The series peaked for me with black flag because the sailing and piracy part of the game was incredibly well done. In fact it felt like an amazing pirate game with assassins just tacked on.
If they keep some of the sailing for the Mediterranean and evolve the series concept with an RPG structure (like bioware) that will be definitely be something worth checking out.

[Cain]

Apparently you're going to get your own ship, which will be highly customizable, and you'll be able to select from the in-game characters to crew it.

[Faust]

So Assassins own Normandy crew. I hope they have the romance options like Mass Effect... or to a lesser extent saints row 4, which literally just had a button "Romance" that you could use on Keith David.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6p3B4e_8PY

[Junkenstein]

It is, and yes, I'm not sure how well Bethesda will handle that.  ESO did give us some new Khajiti lore which wasn't entirely terrible, and could figure into a game plot quite easily...but I'm not sure how well Bethesda will handle a non-human, non-mer centered game.  Personally I think Valenwood would've been boring, possibly after spending hours grinding my way through those zones in ESO and wanting to die every step of the way, but between the well established lore, the lack of VA issues and the potential for a Thalmor-Empire proxy war, it seemed like an obvious option.  Same for Hammerfell, only even more so.

It's also possible I'm completely wrong.  I shied away from it being Summerset Isle because of the mountains and arid landscape, but a lot can change in a thousand years, and Summerset was hit hard by the Oblivion Crisis.  Equally, it could be the coast of Valenwood...but I think if it were they would focus far more heavily on the forest theme.  I mean, the game's Valenwood, so gotta show the woods themselves, right? Hammerfell...eh, if it was the Craglorn region, maybe, as there are some quite fertile areas around there, it does actually strongly remind me of the region around Dragonstar, but it's landlocked.   Doesn't look at all like High Rock, I very much doubt they'd go back to Morrowind...it could maybe be Black Marsh, as we don't really see the coastal regions of it in ESO, only the northern region of Stormhold, on the Morrowind border. 

Or maybe they're actually going to break with tradition and do something genuinely new with TESVI.  Yokuda, Atmora, Thras...Akavir?  I highly doubt it, but anything's possible.

So yeah, my guesses in order of preference are Elseweyr, Black Marsh and Valenwood.  One thing they did say is that they were waiting for the technology to make certain things possible that they wanted to do with TESVI, which I think had everyone thinking Valenwood (walking tree cities).  But maybe they wanted it for something else.

Akavir would be a fantastic setting but there is no fucking way that they'll risk a AAA budget on it.

Half a euro on Black Marsh, seem to remember something about a domain being registered that implied that, which was how Skyrim was initially confirmed.

[Cain]

I remember hearing in the final days of when Skyrim was still being supported, that "Hammerfell" had been trademarked by Bethesda, and there was some minor speculation that this would be the next DLC after Dragonborn.  Obviously that wasn't the case, but since then, I've always suspected...

Also a more plausible thing they could do with Akavir would be a third Akaviri invasion.  Doesn't matter where, the Akaviri Navy has attacked all over northern Tamriel, and could plausibly land in Black Marsh as well.  Or it could even take place in the remote Padomaic Ocean islands, like Cathnoquey and Esroniet.  You could tie it indirectly back into Skyrim's storyline - that the Akaviri heard about the return of the dragons, and launched a punitive expedition to wipe them out, only turning to conquest/some other motive once they realised the Dragonborn did it all for them already.  And by not having it take place in Akavir itself, you still preserve some of the mystery.

Edit: hell, they could look at the state of Tamriel and decide the best thing to do is take over and restore the Potentates...giving the Thalmor and Empire (and everyone else, Morrowind/Black Marsh/potentially independent Skyrim/Daggerfall Convenant II a reason to put aside their squabbles and face a common threat).

[shamelessPuck]

I've mostly been playing Elite Dangerous recently, which is still not so much a game as a massive sandbox with some really satisfying mechanics.  Just landing and take off still feels deeply awesome, and wing combat is now pretty cool.  I do wish anything I did in game felt like it meant something; I keep getting better stuff, but beyond being able to crash local markets in one good, there's minimal impact players can have on the world.  Maybe it's just my years of EVE leaving me wanting here, but I feel like Elite has so much potential that just isn't being utilized.  It's still fun to fly around in, either solo or with friends.

After reading through this whole thread at work yesterday (it was really slow at work and I almost lost it), I'm now thinking of picking up Skyrim again.  I bought the base game when it came out, tossed on some simple mods, then played until I was too powerful for it to feel interesting anymore, which is where a lot of Bethesda games end up for me.  It sounds like there's been some real work done in the modding community since then, and stuff like Requiem plus the DLC's sounds really cool.  I saw the mod lists you posted earlier Cain, and I think I can work from there.  As for picking up the DLC, is the Special Edition that came out in 2016 the way to go?

[Cain]

Special Edition is definitely better for modding overall, the stability you get from the x64 engine is unbelievable in comparison to the orginal version.

That said, quite a few mods have not made it over.  Some modders have left the scene, and some mods are still too complex to be ported over at the moment (Requiem falls into this category - there are workarounds, but it's not for the faint of heart).  Now that SKSE64, the base requirement for many of the most complex mods, is finally in a beta stage, that may change...but we've also been waiting for the Dragonborn DLC to be officially ported for, like, 5 years now.

But you can still make do with Special Edition.  Something like Morrowloot Ultimate, Immersive NPCs, Beyond Skyrim:Bruma and Enai's suite of mods (Ordinator, Apocalypse, Imperious, Aurora, Sacrosanct and Wildcat) would give you a very different playing experience, while retaining a lot of compatibility.  Plus it doesn't need a whole lot of overhauling on the graphical front, use something like ELFX and a lightweight ENB (like Rudy), maybe something like Book of Silence and the Rustic series and you're good to go.

Also, Requiem has changed a little bit since then.  2.0 launched and bows...are significantly more powerful.  I'm not a fan of the change, it means in theory a low level bow with iron arrows can one-shot someone in full heavy armour, if they get a good roll (RNG dictates whether the arrow is affected by damage mitigation or finds a "weak spot" to penetrate).  I get what they're trying to do, but it applies to the player as well, which makes Dead Is Dead runs utterly terrifying against archers.  It also shifts the power dynamic far more towards archers, undermining Requiem's rock-paper-scissors approach to combat (archers beat mages, mages beat warriors, warriors beat archers).   Fortunately, 1.9.4 is still available, and I'd follow my buddy SaltyShanty's modlist for your own playthrough.  Edit the .ini files as suggested by STEP and you'll have something good to go.

[shamelessPuck]

Good stuff.  I'm downloading Skyrim now and will probably work on getting everything set up tomorrow.  I saw that T3nd0 left the modding scene; do you know if Perkus Maximus works with Special Edition?  It looked cool.

EDIT: I see the Ordinator you recommended does something similar.  And by Aurora did you mean Andromeda?

Also, is anyone else here playing Elite these days?

[Cain]

I know someone tried porting Perkus, but that was before SKSE64 was even in alpha, so I can't imagine it works very well.  Ordinator is better though, barely needs any patches to play nice with other mods (one for Apocalypse, one for Bruma and one for Morrowloot Ultimate, the last of which also has a Bruma patch), and no patcher to run.  I hadn't seen that Aurora had been superceded by Andromeda, so yeah, use that for sure (pro-tip: Star Curse from the Serpent Stone has some amazing synergies with Ordinator, especially for blood mages/those heavily invested in the heavy armour and bound weapons trees).

[shamelessPuck]

I have the Ordinator-Apocalypse patch, but I'm not seeing the Ord-Bruma, Ord-MLU, or MLU-Bruma patches.  Are those ones I need to generate on my own?  Here's my current LOOT order:

  0  0     Skyrim.esm
  1  1     Update.esm
  2  2     Dawnguard.esm
  3  3     HearthFires.esm
  4  4     Dragonborn.esm
  5  5     Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch.esp
  6  6     BSAssets.esm
  7  7     BSHeartland.esm
  8  8     BS_DLC_patch.esp
  9  9     Campfire.esm
10  a     SMIM-SE-Merged-All.esp
11  b     Andromeda - Unique Standing Stones of Skyrim.esp
12  c     EnhancedLightsandFX.esp
13  d     ELFX - Exteriors.esp
14  e     Hothtrooper44_Armor_Ecksstra.esp
15  f     MLU.esp
           Joy of Perspective.esp
16 10     Imperious - Races of Skyrim.esp
17 11     Thief skills rebalance for Ordinator.esp
18 12     SkyUI_SE.esp
19 13     Summermyst - Enchantments of Skyrim.esp
20 14     VioLens SE.esp
21 15     MagicalCollegeofWinterhold.esp
22 16     Better Spell Learning.esp
23 17     RealisticNeedsandDiseases.esp
24 18     Ordinator - Perks of Skyrim.esp
25 19     OpulentThievesGuild.esp
26 1a     Thunderchild - Epic Shout Package.esp
27 1b     ELFX - Weathers.esp
28 1c     Hothtrooper44_ArmorCompilation.esp
29 1d     Sacrosanct - Vampires of Skyrim.esp
30 1e     Inigo.esp
31 1f     Immersive Patrols II.esp
32 20     Frostfall.esp
33 21     MCoW_CampfirePatch.esp
34 22     Apocalypse - Magic of Skyrim.esp
35 23     Better Spell Learning - Apocalypse SE Patch.esp
36 24     Immersive Weapons.esp
37 25     MLU - Immersive Armors.esp
38 26     Apocalypse - Ordinator Compatibility Patch.esp
39 27     Wildcat - Combat of Skyrim.esp
40 28     MLU - Inigo.esp
41 29     Alternate Start - Live Another Life.esp
42 2a     Immersive Citizens - AI Overhaul.esp
43 2b     ELFX - Hardcore.esp
44 2c     MCoW_ELFXHardcore.esp
45 2d     Immersive Citizens - ELFXHardcore patch.esp

EDIT: Found Ord-Bruma patch, not seeing any mention online of the other two (Ord-MLU, MLU-Bruma).  I also picked up Mortal Enemies.  Will try actually launching later today after my work meeting.