rivingtondown

Funny you say that, Daggerfall is fondly remembered but only in spite of it's procedurally generated overworld. Daggerfall's openworld is extraordinarily barren, remarkably so. You literally will get lost if you walk more than 5 minutes from a town, and not in a fun way but because every direction you look is literally the exact same three tree and rock sprites and you lose sense of direction. Daggerfall's overworld is so bare and empty and large it actively encourages you to engage in the fast travel system with fleshed out gameplay mechanics like camping supplies and vehicles.

I see what you're getting at, I could see how someone might assume an seamless outer space based on that. As soon as you realize how much of a technical undertaking that is though, it's easy to assume they wouldn't go that route and not have blown that horn 2+ years ago as a huge feature. Something like that combined with a BGS RPG would be massive and I can't imagine a world where a company like BGS or Microsoft would be wanting to keep that a secret until release.

That surprises me... each BGS game is extraordinary iteritive over the previous one ever since Morriwind. They're like 20 years into iteritive design and arguably each iteration, while doing some interesting new things also takes a step or two back. Very obvious looking back over their history. They're really a one-note-studio.

To all of a sudden expect Starfield would manage to be that revolutionary (to their formula) seems shortsighted. Even the concept of having a fully-realized BGS RPG with a near infinitely open space exploration system seems like an impossible feat. On a technical level, sure, but the space between planets would be empty and desolate... and even expecting an interesting procedurally generated continent is a big ask today, let alone a planet, let alone a solar system, let alone a quarter of a galaxy.

Same here,

Unfortunately most of the folks in gaming media that I follow don't write or produce proper "reviews" anymore. Reading a review from IGN or Gamespot... I don't know anything about the reviewer so I take it with a grain of salt. Like with Starfield, I give the same weight to IGN giving it a 7 as I do with some no-name whatever tiny website I never heard of giving it a 9.5

Just have to read through the reviews. If someone docks the game for not letting you fly manually between solar systems like you do in Elite Dangerous then I just have to write-off the negativity because... of-course fucking not, did anyone expect that? With something like, the repeated knocks against the barren nature of the procedural generation leading to repetitive tedious travel - I take that more seriously, because it was something I was hoping they would have addressed when moving that direction. Something like the story sucking or the NPCs having cringey dialogue is completely subjective and means nothing without knowing the reviewer's tilt.

I have both.

I've had my switch for many years at this point, while my SteamDeck is barely 1 year old. I probably wouldn't buy a switch today if I didn't already have one but since I already have one I still use it very occasionally for exclusives I'm excited for (well, actually used it a ton for TotK recently). I don't have my Switch hacked and would just rather not go through the hassle of finding clean roms to download. The only Switch game I played on my Deck was Diablo III (because the PC version has no controller support or controller-friendly UI) but with Diablo IV now it's unnecessary.

All that being said, there's very few Switch exclusives I'm interested in for $60 anymore, even on the horizon, Zelda was probably the last one unless Mario Odyssey 2 is released before the end of the system's lifetime. And Zelda TotK was honestly the first game I bought for Switch in probably the last 2+ years... my wife played a few things on it but I had switched to PC exclusively (+Steamdeck) and PS5

There's not a game I prefer on the Switch over the Deck but I do think both systems have their merits. I've played through Zelda TotK on Switch recently and play my Deck more often (lately a lot of BG3)

The Deck is honking huge, while the switch is small. I much prefer the size of the Deck to the Switch but there's a an easy argument to be made there for portability.

The Switch is just more dock-friendly. Any serious Switch owner (who would care about docking) owns a Pro Controller. Docking to and undocking from a TV just works perfectly 100% of the time. You can buy a dock for the Steam Deck and you could Bluetooth a controller but it's definitely more finicky - specifically with some games especially.

Multi-person household. I have a wife and a kid. I'm very fortunate and my wife has her own Deck but we do share a Switch and a PS5. There were dozens of times I would have played Zelda or FF16 but my wife was using the console so I settled with my Deck. I could easily see the opposite happening if we didn't each own our own Steamdeck

I had pre-ordered prior to release and got it last July. The 256gb model but I've upgraded to a 1TB since then. I've had issues in the past with Heroic and debated simply running the game through Windows or installing GOG through Lutris but luckily Heroic worked.

Have you considered trying to just install GOG through Lutris? I run Diablo IV like that (via Battle.net of course) and it's simple enough.

I've been playing BG3 and perhaps I'm misunderstanding but you only have one action and one bonus action per turn and you only have so many spell slots per caster. Unless you have a leveled spell as an action and a separate leveled spell as a bonus action and enough spell slots for both you'd be hard pressed to cast more than a single spell per turn per character

I don't have an exact answer for you but I can 100% confirm it works through Heroic.

Switch to desktop, install heroic launcher, install BG3 with default options to internal SSD, launch with Proton Experimental, it will say you need .net so accept the dialogue and download the exe, use Heroic to install the .net exe to the game's prefix, go to the configuration again and add --skip-launcher (two hyphens at the beginning) to the launch commands.

That's it, I did that and ran the game from desktop and then used heroic to add it to Steam. Now I launch the game straight through Game Mode. I also added Heroic as a non-steam game so I can launch it occasionally for patches.

Skipping the launcher is important, as is installing the correct .net exe. I've read that some folks had the game claim to be installed but then realized it never actually completed successfully because they ran out of disk space during the final step. It's a very large install. I also read a one-off comment that power tools can break it, if you have that installed through decky loader.

To be honest, I've never been able to get over the hump in ONI. I play for hours, have a blast but eventually things start falling apart and I'm not usually able to recover. That being said, I know there's been some updates since last I played so I may go back to it soon.

Back in 2011 or so I got really into Minecraft mods. I think it was literally just Buildcraft and Industrialcraft. It involved many steps, putting folders inside the Minecraft JAR file, deleting meta INF files, etc. I stuck with it for a few years during which the scene exploded. I actually paid to host a website for my friend's only server that just included links to the specifics mod versions and step by step instructions how to install them. It was around the same time FTB modpacks came out that I fell off, I played one or two SP worlds with FTB Infinity Evolved and had a lot of fun but Factorio and eventually Satisfactory scratched that same itch.

They're called management sims, or in the case of Factorio a factory builder.

Rimworld is a colony management sim... check out Dwarf Fortress or Oxygen Not Included for similar games

Rollercoaster Tycoon is a theme park management sim, the obvious suggestions are Planet Coaster and Planet Zoo but also check out City Skylines.

Factorio is a factory builder, I would recommend Satisfactory or Dyson Sphere Program, there's a few handfuls of those types of games. If you want to get a little wild look into Minecraft (Java edition) w/ mods - most easily something like the FTB Infinity Evolved or one of the new Direwolf packs, it's arguably where the factory building craze started.

Maybe not my favorite game but one of the very few games I truly felt required pen and paper were some of the old Might & Magic games - most notably I think of the first 3 games.

Those were first person dungeon crawling RPGs. They didn't have, what later became termed "automaps", but what is now just a in-game map. So if you wanted to look at a map you had to either buy real life books they sold called Cluebooks which had maps printed in them or you had to pull out the graphing paper and get to drawing.

It wasn't just a limitation of the time, the games back then honestly treated it like a feature. I think it was in M&M3 that you could eventually cast the spell "Wizard Eye" and the entire point of the spell was to present to you a minimap of the surrounding area. NPCs and quests didn't put icons on your map (there was no map), you were given directions and had to figure out how to get there.