pill me on the third disgaea game i found it difficult to continue playing after the shop could no longer be upgraded
Dragon Age and Witcher are very different games in many respects, while being quite similar in others. For something more in the vein of Dragon Age, you might want to check out Pillars of Eternity I & II as well as Torment: Tides of Numenera, if you haven't already. While they're isometric rather than third person and less action-oriented, you get character customisation, NPC parties, and all that tasty stuff. These games are very much focused on story and roleplaying, which I personally enjoy. Yeah, there's nothing in The Wither 3 that claims this is the case.
Nowhere does the game act like the red baron was justified. The game literally has you make him carry the zombified fetus of the miscarriage. If that isn't punishment, I don't know what that is.
The Witcher is full of vile, irredeemable characters who get more sympathy in the story and are more likely to get happy endings than innocent people. Which is exactly what I meant by Witcher reeking of grimdark. All of the characters act like their genre, rather than actual people. Terrible people get everything and not a single other character cares while good people get stepped on for no reason, all in the name of "dark fantasy". If you think "good writing" is when some person you try to help gets screwed over in some random way the story never foreshadows just because you helped them or when the plot constantly pulls "moral choices" out of complete nowhere where both options have nothing good about them, then sure, Witcher has plenty of that. If you want a setting and characters that don't revolve around the most immature ideas of "mature" fiction, then there's plenty of other fish in the sea.
There's not a single irredeemable character you're ever forced to give sympathy to, and the narrative itself stays quite neutral most of the time. The Bloody Baron has already come up; if what you learn disgusts you, you can lay into him in dialogue every chance you get. Whether that plot line ends well (for anyone) depends entirely on your choices. The Witcher isn't grimdark; that's the province of Warhammer and the like. Its world may be a bad place, but there are ways you can make it better. That's impossible in grimdark settings, which are fundamentally nihilistic. I'm curious if you could list some examples of instances that line up with that last paragraph (spoiler tagged for Bayview's benefit, of course), because I can't recall any. A lot of the time, the foreshadowing is subtle. Dialogue choices not needed to advance the conversation, clues you examine, one line from a side character, notes you find lying around. Easy to miss, but it's there.
There's a 1/2 chance the baron hangs himself. Radavid gets murdered. Whoreson Junior you have a choice with but most players will probably kill him. That's the worst three characters I can think of in that game off the top of my head, and most of them end the game with them missing theirs.
The irony for me is that it was easier for me to take a darker reading of the witcher in that it wasn't grimdark 24/7. There were legitimate moments of comedy and brevity that added a very human sense to the world that's often somewhat divorced from Warhammer, unless you read the small scale books in either of the warhammer settings. The chaos gods, while dark, are still very much cartoonish compared to the characters in the Witcher 3.
There's far, far more awful characters in Witcher 3. Both in morality and in writing, but these days "shallow but edgy" is the new "well-written".
Spoiler: Hidden to prevent spoilers Radavid: Orders the genocide of all magic users. Whoresone Junior: Literally kills and rapes people for fun. Red Baron: Domestic Abuser Please tell me who are worse.
I'd add Spoiler Eredin, considering the Aen Elle's ultimate goals. He's easy to forget about, since his actions and long term goals aren't given much attention in the game, but he might just be the worst of all.
Very much true, and I agree the writing doesn't convey his goals all that well and instead Spoiler: Spoiler once again relies on the fact he's leading dudes with helmets that look like skulls to convey that they're the bad guys.
Playing the Witcher 3 is worth it just to experience Ard Skellig for the first time. I wouldn't play it a second time, but the first time through was an emotional roller coaster. Is anyone waiting on Resident Evil 2 to release!? Part of me is angry that they went with OTS instead of fixed camera, but I'm still eager to try it out. I played the demo and I already miss the main hall music, and the station itself seems very restricted. You're led in the right direction the whole way, and whole segments are blocked off by makeshift barricades. I hope some of them get removed in the actual game, and it was just for the demo.
Finished the main story of Red Dead Redemption 2, though I'm still working through the epilogue. It packed just as many powerful, emotional gut punches as the first one. I'd say it's earned a place in my top five games of all time, though I'm not sure where exactly it's settled.
Reporting back - I just finished Witcher 2. I didn't find it especially grim (I was braced for some of the player-character's friends to die, and that didn't happen) but I was really--offput, I guess?--by how clearly I was NOT the audience for that game. All the little asides putting women down, all the scantily dressed (or fully naked) women, the truly surreal scene that comes out of nowhere just so Geralt can scold a woman for not being more of a leader and share his "wisdom" about women's leadership capacity, etc... It really left me with a "this is not for you, what are you even doing here?" feeling. I've already bought the 3rd game (it came as a 3-game package) so I guess I'll probably give it a try. But... yikes. A really strange experience.
I have the 3 game package waiting on my Steam account as well. Sounds like the game is a combination of video game tropes and Slavic ”visuals.” The way women are viewed by men AND women is a bit different and can throw North-Americans off. (Kinda how Japanese video games can also be a little shocking to Westerners sometimes).
Puzzle games do it for me. For some reason they relax me, but there is one... Omg. Level 16 was a mother... It's online. Can I send a link or is it prohibited?
Thanks to a new gaming rig, I can finally play Fallout New Vegas in all its glory. Gonna download the New California mod and give that a go. I've been avoiding watching anything about it up until now.
