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Shadowrun Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut

Grunker

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Wow. That was some cheap bullshit unless I misunderstood it. Someone clarify:

So the AI acts like a typical LOLEVIL AI when you meet it. It makes only the weakest of typical villain attempts to hide its douchebaggery. It even does the ALL CAPS maniacal schtick. No attempt at any reasonable plea or anything, even though it has ample time and chance to explain the ENTIRE situation to you. So of course you waste it. Then suddenly OH SHIT IT WAS A SAINT ALL ALONG and then it explains the entire situation, which, if it had done so previously, you would have helped it instantly, no questions asked. How fucking convenient :retarded:

Compared to the rest of the writing that is some weak-ass sauce.

Unless I got it wrong of course :)
 
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Gord

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Uhm, the AI is bad at (meta)human psychology?

:troll:

Did they change anything about it in the DC? In the original game I found the encounter with the AI ok, although you are right that one might be more inclined to help it if it had explained a bit more. OTOH, they probably wanted to make it difficult to trust the AI on purpose (esp. given the creed AIs seem to have in the Shadowrun Universe).
 

Grunker

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The question simply is: why doesn't the AI explain everything that it explains upon its death when you first encounter it? There is literally no reason for it not to.
 

V_K

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Well, she's still under Vauclair's control when you first meet her, maybe there are some routines in place that prevent her from revealing everything?
Or maybe she's just mad, like all AIs.
She's far from being a saint, however - if you free her and later refuse to give her the dragon, she becomes very pissed off.
 

Gord

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Hm, it's been a few months since the playthrough where I shut the AI down, so I'm not 100% sure - but I don't remembe APEX telling me much that would have influenced my decision afterwards. I had decided that the AI could not be trusted - APEX might be telling lies all the time.
Of course it's possible that they changed it a bit in the DC.

Also, what V_K said, I guess.
 

Zetor

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My take: the AI is constantly lying to you and just tried to play on your sympathy in the end as a last resort. You can see its 'benevolence' for yourself if you decide to free it and don't agree with its demands at the end of the last mission.

Alternately, you can see it as a multi-personality entity (having absorbed some of the deckers' personalities), so it may be a perfectly reasonable "person" one moment only to become an evil asshole when it starts feeling threatened.

e: I'm not sure what effect Vauclair's control has over it, but that's another possible explanation (though I prefer mine, ofc) why it doesn't just exposition-dump you right away. TLDR: AI thought patterns are just as alien as bug spirits, so I never considered APEX a credible conversation partner at any point.
 
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Grunker

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^ Neither of the replies answer why the AI doesn't just reveal everything when you meet it. It's clearly the best bet to make the player follow.

Anyway. I finished this. I give the gameplay a grade of "good for what it is" and the story a resounding :thumbsup:. There were some moments of doubt when Vauclair explained his reasoning, and I none of the final options left me feeling I had just cured cancer or saved the world, which is a good thing.

Nice romp. Hoping for more.
 

Mrowak

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Project: Eternity
Finished this myself yesterday. I am looking forward to more. I greately enjoyed the main quest, and how the lodge questline was interwoven in your pursuits.

BTW, is it just me or are Deckers favoured in this game skill-check-wise? I swear they had the most options.

The trollololo ending did not surprise me enough, though - somehow I figured out what the real deal was after watching the first DVD.

I freed the dragon at the end which suprised me, considering the game painted her and other Dragons as great threat. Still, they really made a convincing job at presenting Feuerschwinge's part of the story. My Shaman could not say no.

After DMS, I was not really convinced that mixing cyberpunk and magic may be any good. Glad I was proved wrong.
 

Aldebaran

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The AI is evil, not a saint in anyway. If you don't give it the dragon it immediately reverts back to old habits, and even promises to devour you one day. Furthermore, once you free it, the threads on the BBS makes it clear that it is devouring deckers behind the scenes and posting as them to keep up appearances.

That said, I don't know why it still pretends to be Monica if you destroy it. If you save it, as I recall, APEX all but reveals that it was using the Monica personality to gain sympathy and changes its avatar to a much less human form. Either APEX is a spiteful psychopath that wants you to feel guilty and get back at Vauclair, or the game devs wanted both options to feel bad.
 
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Jools

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Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Insert Title Here Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2
As I progress...

The RPG-system in the game is rather weak, and not very interesting. Or it has been implemented like that.

Combat is ok, I guess? Been playing on medium difficulty, haven't really encountered much of a challenge so far (apart for them two hounds in the hospital). AI is simplistic, and by that I mean "weak" and often quite dumb. The actual combat mechanics seem solid and surely possess quite some potential.

The story is good enough, at least so far. I quite like how they managed to sort of mimic Gibson's narration through dialogue windows, scene transitions, and other devices. The writing is good, slangs and quantity and narration and all.

I totally love the graphics, which seems like it's 3d, textured and rendered so as to look pre-rendered or "painted" 2d. A lot of textures actually show brush strokes, which is a nice touch. It's also vaguely "cartoonish", a la Torchlight, for example. The areas are awesome, and leave the player wishing there was more of this bleak and yet colourful world to explore.

The OST is fucking awesome. I downloaded it separately just to listen to it in my car, or while chilling. I'll totally play it while reading Gibson.

Thus, so far so good. Can't wait to finish DMS campaign and start with DF one.

I <3 this game.
 
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One point - while it's quite possible (if not probable) that the AI continues to kill deckers even if it promises to stop (like the APEX ending suggests, though it is strange that the deckers investigating the incident disappear without a trace instead of being found smoking - maybe the AI starts hiring people to clean up?), the conversation on the board doesn't prove this because the decker in question was already dead before you made the deal with APEX. Alice specifically names him as one of APEX victims before that.

Anyway, I went with the APEX ending both times I played this game, mostly because

the reason you are in this mess in the first place is because Lofwyr was manipulating Green Winters into finding Vauclaire. And giving the dragon over to APEX is the one thing that smug bastard doesn't expect to happen, no matter how much he protests he isn't actually surprised. That is why a year later he gets his ass kicked when he tries attacking the F-state. APEX really is serious about protecting the place and has the ability to do so. She is definitely inhuman and quite possibly amoral, but she is not lying about that. And when the other side is lead by an immortal powerful monster, you may just need a powerful monster on your side to survive.
 
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Morkar Left

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Jools
Wow, if you're already loving DMS you will be in for a surprise with DF.

And play on hardest difficulty. It's basically the new normal. The other difficulties are basically cheatmode.
 

Grunker

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The AI is evil, not a saint in anyway. If you don't give it the dragon it immediately reverts back to old habits, and even promises to devour you one day. Furthermore, once you free it, the threads on the BBS makes it clear that it is devouring deckers behind the scenes and posting as them to keep up appearances.

That said, I don't know why it still pretends to be Monica if you destroy it. If you save it, as I recall, APEX all but reveals that it was using the Monica personality to gain sympathy and changes its avatar to a much less human form. Either APEX is a spiteful psychopath that wants you to feel guilty and get back at Vauclair, or the game devs wanted both options to feel bad.

If you kill it, it reveals informtion that would have made you more likely to let it live. That makes no sense.

Sent from my HTC Desire HD A9191 using Tapatalk 2
 
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Aldebaran

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Yeah, like I mentioned, the developers may have just wanted you to feel like you made the wrong choice regardless of your selection. Which would be a miserable decision on their part, considering that the two outcomes seem to contradict one another.

Not that I can remember what information "Monica" gives you if you kill it, I just recall people complaining about these two outcomes beforehand.
 

Duellist_D

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Finished it and enjoyed quite a lot.

Both Versions of the Endfight could have used a Little bit more Power in the difficulty department though.
With 6 AP and the Minigun, the Ork wasn't really a challenge.

Some tweaks like in the APEX-Fight would have been nice.

If i'm going to do a second run one day, i'll probably pick a Samurai/Decker Hybrid.
Glory/Eiger/Dietrich should make a bit of a more powerfull Party then any with Blitz in it.
Which is a shame, he could have been really great if his drone wasn't such an incredible Piece of junk in the later missions.
 

Grunker

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Yeah, the final fight war ridicoulously easy in an already easy game. And i even gimped myself in the fight by mistakingly bringing a wrong party member.
 

Gord

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Glory/Eiger/Dietrich should make a bit of a more powerfull Party then any with Blitz in it.
Which is a shame, he could have been really great if his drone wasn't such an incredible Piece of junk in the later missions.

Agreed, it's a pity his drone doesn't seem to improve much, or at all.
He doesn't happen to have free weapon slots, does he? Because in that case one could lend him some better drone...

I'm still playing my melee-adept. On hard the DC offers a substantial increase in difficulty compared to before.
However I'm also not really happy with the char. Adepts still seem a bit on the sucky side and with the difficulty increase in the DC, my Adept gets hit a lot and hard. The -AP damage from his sword is nice, but otherwise he lacks punch. The better Adept powers are relatively expensive, too, so between having to put points into chi casting and the combat skills, I'm quite starved for AP.
 

Shadowfang

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I guess it depends a lot on how you build your adept. I am playing on very hard and the melee adept build was my easiest playthrough, although with a rough start.

The chi-focus attack grants you with a 100% crit rate that is to good to ignore since you just need 3 lvls in chi chasting. I took 4 just for the stride and that was it.
Since chi-focus and onslaught give you all the crit% you need, you don't have to waste points in melee weapons and use them in Str and Close Combat instead, for a higher hit raiting.
Cyberware and the new bioware make a hell of a difference aswell, and since i only equipped the adepts powers for the passive benefits, the increased cooldowns from my low essence didnt slow me down.

If you decide to really invest in chi-casting your quickness/dodge is going to be neglected making you the AI favorite target.
I am going to try an adept with highest chi-casting i can manage and bump body instead of quickness/dodge. Might take wired reflexes aswell.

Grunker how far did you went on the chi-casting path?
 

Grunker

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Grunker how far did you went on the chi-casting path?

Not as far as I could have, due to me making a mistake. That is the short answer.

Longer answer: I went for Mystic Armor (8 willpower, 8 chi casting). My desire was to go for Pain Resistance, but because I had convinced myself you could undo the procedure, I took my essence down to 3 via Cyberware and thus could only equip 4 spells. I couldn't do without Stride, Magic Resistance, Martial Resistance and Mystic Armor, so I put my last points into Close Combat. I turned out doing so was wise, because unbeknownst to me, you had to have 8 Close Combat to equip end game weapons.

My final build was 7 Body, 8 Strength, 8 Close Combat, 5 Melee, 2 Quickness, 2 Dodge, 8 Willpower, 8 Chi Casting. I would have happily traded away the points spent on Quickness and Dodge and the 7th Body to get Pain Resistance.

Tanking with Armor works perfectly fine, and Pain Resistance is basically armor that never disappears.

I did expend most of Glory's health kits as well as my own, but you find so many it is not an issue.

I played on very hard. In short: chi casters have many disadvantages compared to other classes, but no one can deal as much damage in such a short time. A hasted Chi Caster can one-shot almost all non-bosses they attack with that Triple Strike they get + a Slash.
 

dryan

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Goddamn it guys, all this talk is making me want to abandon my rigger and start an adept.
 

GarfunkeL

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I found Adepts to be annoying to be play. I tried one with DMS. Shammy, mage, street sammy, decker, rigger - all are more fun IMHO than adept.

But perhaps DC changed things around.
 

Gord

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Well, you guys gave me some ideas at least. I've decided to forgo one spellslot for now and install some of the new Bioware (the +1Doge/Throwing/Movement Heart implant) and then spend some Karma on quickness/dodge, after that strength and only then I will go back to Chi-casting.
 

Zetor

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Is an unarmed adept (killing hands) with thrown weapons useful at all -- and if so, which of the chi abilities are good for that build?
 

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