I’ve been doing an honor mode run in Baldur’s Gate 3. So far so good but have been close to the end a few times. The Linux native version is amazing and runs much better than the windows version under proton ever did.
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Just bought a new laptop. Although I am incredibly busy, it still means I have the bandwidth for heavier computing. From 14 and 10 year old entry laptops with 4 and 8 GB RAM, ThinkPad P14s Gen 6 (AMD) with 64 GB RAM here I go. It may be nothing to you all, but it is quite the leap for me. Thanks to a last minute Black Friday find. (The laptop that I had been following actually increased in price since summer.)
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oh dang, those are nice, I am sure you’re excited.
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I was gifted this last year, and having played both Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2, I thought it would quickly become one of my favourite ever games, especially after the praise it got. But I ended up abandoning it after about 15 hours and I’ve never gone back to it.
I’m not really sure why it didn’t fully grab me. I think it was just the combat and overall gameplay not quite jiving with me. I love the writing, character building, world, etc. but I just wasn’t finding the combat very fun. I’m not a diehard D&D guy, and although I like some turn-based games, I think my patience is more limited with them.
I’ll probably try again soon and maybe try a different class to see if the combat is any more fun. There’s also the option of just playing it on Story mode to experience that side of things, although I’ve never done that before and not sure I’d enjoy essentially watching a video game.
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Sounds awesome, wish you so much fun with your new gadget 
Most of act1 has very iffy and not very enjoyable combat due to all the hit misses you will do, but once you get to level 4 and 5 it starts changing dramatically since you get a lot more options, but it is indeed not for everybody.
A friend and photographer, Claude Schildknecht, passed away last week in his beloved Swiss mountains. No more walks, trips, chats. I’m deeply saddened.
Photographing subjects ranging from the mountains to Iceland, the Milky Way to dancers and Northern lights to the costumed performers of the Venice Carnival, Claude was a very active photographer and a kind soul.
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I’m not sure what level I had reached, but it was where I could choose a specialization. I just found myself a bit paralyzed with each fight, not knowing what to do. I know this is a (lack of) skill issue as much as anything, but it was an unfamiliar feeling for me because I usually knew how to approach fights in D:OS 1 and 2.
I should also note that I played D:OS 2 twice but didn’t finish either time. If I have one complaint about Larian, it’s that they still could improve the pacing of their games. Maybe it’s more to do with me than the game, but I start to run out of steam well before the end of the game. Things start to get quite repetitive in their worlds, although I realize that there is a lot of room for freedom and creative gameplay.
The last game that I loved right through to the end was Cyberpunk. CD Projekt Red games in general have always kept me engaged.
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I played BG3 about as far as you did, and then left it at that. I’m just not interested in reading all the various spells and items and skills and figuring out the worthwhile combinations.
However, I did love the story and characters. These I continued vicariously in the podcasts “Mages and Murderdads” (free), and “Real Lich Hours” (payed). Both of these are hosted by huge D&D nerds, who enrich their recounting of their play with a lot of backstory and lore. Highly recommended.
Indeed, Mages and Murderdads also has fantastic seasons on Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2. It sounds daft to listen to a podcast about the happenings in a video game. But a good story is a good story, especially when delivered by a good storyteller.
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Thank you for sharing @kofa.
I had a friend who was not close, but when he passed, I realized he was closer than I had thought. Not a photographer, but a decent human being with a unique lens of the world around him. His only gift to me was a Funko Pop of Sergeant Johnson, given shortly before his passing. He said it was for all the days I spent taking care of my terminally, complexly ill father for 16 years, for soldiering on despite the challenges and naysayers. In retrospect, he understood my suffering because it mirrored his journey through depression, which may have caused his premature death. He was much younger than me.
Death comes to all of us. Those ahead of us will be greatly missed.
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The estimated date of delivery is the last week of December. Is a month’s time typical of direct from manufacturer laptop purchases (not made to order)? Online, someone says that it is just their financial system providing an arbitrary date.
I got a fairly similar response from Dell a few weeks ago.
Now we are into Christmas season where some parts of the distributions systems are a bit overloaded.
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So the laptop was updated to arrive yesterday with the condition that it would be signed or else it would be returned to the manufacturer. Yesterday became today. Now it is late evening and past the revised delivery window. Stop stressing me out UPS.
Another interesting thing is the number of facilities the logistics has gone through: at least NINE different cities across China, Japan, the US and Canada. I am still waiting…
Now, I understand the potency of those UPS spam call. Imagine a frustrated client anxiously waiting for their product and a spammer comes to the rescue. I literally received two calls within yesterday’s delivery window.
Note: Word custome(r) is not allowed in the post.
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In the EU their is a courier called GLS, and I absolutely love them. On the day of delivery, you get a link to a page which is dynamically updated with your delivery window. Say at 8:00, you see 12:17–15:03. Then as the time approaches, the window narrows, eg at 13:06 it would be something like 13:08–13:10. Their drivers only call if they are early or late.
I once shipped a bike with UPS from one EU country to another. It appeared as stuck at a German facility for 7 days. Then UPS wrote me that they could not find it, and it will be officially considered lost after some more days (I don’t remember how many). While I was on the phone with the shipping broker to file a preliminary insurance claim, the doorbell rang and the bike arrived.
What happened is that the label fell off, but since I wrote the address on the box with a permanent marker, they were able to make a new label and continue shipping, without connecting it to the old one in any way whatsoever. I was too happy to write an angry email to their custőmer service.
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For what it’s worth, with many characters I have just one or two spells/attacks I use basically 90% of the time, a few that are used sometimes (e.g. healing) and another 10-20 which I completely ignore as they don’t seem too useful. E.g. my warlock is mostly eldritch-blasting his way through everything :D.
It’s been a while since I played D:OS 2 but from what I remember, the fight system was indeed a bit more interesting there (also with surfaces being more relevant, etc).
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I gave Lenovo and UPS polite calls. No progress; nothing they can do - not even allow me to pick up at an UPS depot.
It is unreasonable that I have to be at the delivery location everyday from morning til evening until it has been delivered; I have commitments for which I cannot blame Lenovo. Be there to sign: or else, it will be returned to Lenovo and I will be without laptop, a good Black Friday deal and back to using my ancient entry low-powered systems.
I rarely shop online for this very reason. Returns are flaky too; burned several times where the recipient claimed that they did not receive the return and I ended up being on the hook.
PS. It has arrived! The escalation worked. Package quite dirty.
PPS. Too tired to open the box today.
Curiosity: There are 4 sharpie Rs on the box. Like a countdown for returning the product: RRRR. Does that mean that if they do not place it on the delivery truck by day 5, even if they do not attempt any deliveries, it will be returned? What do you think the Rs mean?
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Speaking of D:OS2, I just watched the announcement trailer for Larian’s new Divinity game. Wow, not what I expected, and a definite shift in tone. I was left somewhat speechless.
Be warned, it’s not for the faint of heart:
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Wow, those “for adults only”-warnings are really to be taken serious.
Indeed, I’m curious to see what kind of game it’s going to be.
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They must have some nice sales data for BG3, hence this decision. It’s a good thing IMO, CRPGs are mostly played by adults and in my opinion BG3 missed a bit on some extra edge even if they approached some important topics and the game was rated ‘Mature’. I dunno how to describe it, it felt a bit soft even with all going on.
Recent Larian games have always been a funny mix of mature and cartoonish. The overall feeling of Divinity Original Sin games was whimsy, quirky humour and high fantasy tropes, but there are still some very grisly and mature themes. They are never really frightening though because of the graphics style, which has a cartoonish quality to it.
But this trailer was something else.
However, it has also been pointed out that it’s not the first time that Larian have released a cinematic trailer very different to the game, and this may be the case again. It will be intriguing to see if it’s much different from the previous Original Sin games.
I’d be happy to see them move to 3rd person rather than isometric, but ultimately I’ll just trust them to do what they want, and I’m sure it will be good. Although saying “bigger than BG3” does not exactly sell it to me, personally. I don’t have enough time or patience for the scope of their games.
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