Game News Two Worlds II - Official Release and Impressions

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Tags: Reality Pump Studios; Two Worlds II

<p>First of all, here's the official release PR (NA release), shamelessly stolen from <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">carebear codex</span> RPGWatch:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>MIDLOTHIAN, Va. and LAS VEGAS /PRNewswire/ - SouthPeak Interactive Corporation (OTC Bulletin Board: SOPK) and TopWare Interactive today announced that the critically acclaimed role playing game Two Worlds II will be in stores and available from digital retailers in North America on January 25th, 2011.</p>
<p>Two Worlds II is set to offer North American gamers a ground-breaking RPG experience after a phenomenal launch in Europe, which has delivered a wealth of 90%+ review scores and sales in excess of one million units during the first three weeks of availability, as recently reported by TopWare.</p>
<p>"Two Worlds II is set to become a benchmark for the RPG genre," said Melanie Mroz, President and CEO of SouthPeak Interactive, "the incredible review scores and blockbuster sales in Europe are testament to the hard work and dedication of the TopWare Team. We're thrilled to bring this deep fantasy experience to North American gamers."</p>
<p>James Seaman, Managing Director of TopWare in North America added "We've been blown away by the reception Two Worlds II has received and it's great that we're able to announce this street date. Fans of the Two Worlds brand have been fantastically loyal supporters and we think they will be thrilled when they experience this next step into the huge and evolving world of Antaloor."</p>
<p>Developed by Reality Pump, Two Worlds II will be in stores and available from digital retailers in North America on January 25th, 2011 for the Xbox 360&reg; video game and entertainment system from Microsoft&reg;, PlayStation&reg;3 computer entertainment system and Windows PC.</p>
<p>For more information on Two Worlds II, visit <a href="http://www.twoworldstwo.com/">http://www.twoworldstwo.com</a>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Secondly, Gaming Nexus <a href="http://www.gamingnexus.com/FullNews/First-Impressions-Two-Worlds-II/Item21270.aspx" target="_blank">provide some first impressions</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Combat, is much the same as in a majority of RPGs, a mix of hack and slash with ranged combat. One of the problems with the game is that the monster AI isn't that strong in working with obstacles in the environment, so you're able to take advantage of this to stay safe and slowly whittle down the power of strong opponents. I've taken out more than one giant scorpion this way. It takes a bit of the fun out of the game to make use of this exploit, but I would have died several more times until I figured out the summoning spells without it.<br /> <br /> The primary and side quests don't seem too repetitive yet, especially considering there are only so many ways you can write "go kill this" or "fetch that" quests. The rewards seem commensurate with the risks, though sometimes it may take finishing a string of quests to get a quality reward.<br /> <br /> I've talked a lot about everything that's good about Two Worlds II, but there are a few things that could have used some polish. First, the autosave takes longer than it should and happens regardless of what you're doing, including combat. It was really frustrating to desperately need a heal only to be interrupted by an autosave that takes at least 10 seconds, and interrupts the flow. Yes, you can turn it off, but I'd prefer it simply not engage until combat is completed. Similarly, calling up the map, or changing some segments of the map while running can cause the game to pause longer than you'd expect. I've also seen a couple of times where coming in or out of a building that objects didn't all appear right away, and show as black boxes.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Spotted at: <a href="http://www.rpgwatch.com/#16620">RPGWatch</a></p>

 

[Monocause]

1. Giant scorpions were so far the only enemy I've encountered that got stuck in the environment. You mostly meet these in caves and the giant scorpions are larger than any other creatures I've met yet (aside from two gargoyles in a certain quest).

2. I'm playing on a sub-par rig (a single core P4 3ghz CPU) and saving doesn't create any stutter at all. I'm guessing that the reviewer must've played the unpatched version.

 

[Sceptic]

OK, I understand that game reviewers are now too stupid to RTFM, but is it too much to ask that they have a quick look through the Settings menu? You can adjust the frequency of autosaves there (you can also probably turn them off entirely, but I didn't bother checking). And the "black boxes" when walking out of buildings - has this guy ever played a UE3 game? because I'm sure he never complained about textures taking almost a second to appear in THAT engine.

With that out of the way... I've already put 2h into the game and I must admit I am so far extremely disappointed.

First, improvements. Combat is less clicketyclick now, as some of the overpowered groms even on the starting island can one-shot kill my poor char, so a bit more thinking is required. Graphics are good, and the game is surprisingly free of stutter - engine's much better optimized this time around. They also seem to have fixed the combat and skill systems to make then less OP and more interesting. Removal of resurrection shrines is also incline (though that could be taken care of by playing 1 on Hard)

And... that's it. For some weird and bizarre reason they seem to have also changed everything that was done right the first time. First, a loooooooooooong fucking INTERMINABLE tutorial, in the best Oblivion style, unskippable as far as I can tell. I thought it was over when I went into the teleport, but noooooooo, it went on and on and on and on... ENOUGH, LET ME PLAY. 2W1 did away with all this bullshit and immediately open up the entire fucking world for you to explore - at your peril should you rush south, of course, but that's how exploration should be done! Here, even after the interminable tutorial, you're still restricted to one island (starting one barely counts). Not cool, Reality Pump.

UI suffers from the worst case of consolitis since Oblivion. 1's barely felt like a multiplatform release - everything was sized appropriately, there were lots of keyboard shortcuts, multiple ways to do the same thing, everything accessible within 2 clicks... it was great. Here icons are huge (and that's with small icons turned on from settings), you can't even view all your skills at once (gotta keep clicking to switch between groups), inventory items are ridiculous, inventory is now split over THREE fucking screens... Paperdoll is gone, replaced by something that looks like Arena's system, except even less functional. Lots of quick shortcuts (such as spacebar to close inventory) have been removed, crafting now requires an excess of right clicking and navigating extraneous menus... in short it's a complete utter mess. Why they felt the need to change what was working perfectly well is beyond me.

Graphics I said are good, but there appears to be no way to turn off either motion blur or DOF. I have both set to zero and switched DOF off in the menu, yet I still get the blur when sprinting and DOF kicks in any time I talk to someone, and it looks HORRIBLE.

Writing has done away with the forsooth pray tell sillyness of the first... bad move, really. The silly tone kinda disguised that the writing and plot beneath it weren't so good, so it was just an entertaining thing to point at and laugh. Soon enough you get into the mood, play along and stop noticing, especially since some of the writing was also purposefully entertaining. Then when the game reveals some surprising depths to the lore you get pleasantly taken by surprise. Now that everything is played straight, the mediocre quality of the writing is more noticeable, made worse by all the MQ railroading (what the HELL is up with that? 2W1 was memorable as one of the VERY FEW MQ's in recent memory that was thoroughly nonlinear), the cringe-inducing attempts at humor, the mediocre voice acting (not to mention bad sound mixing - volume of recordings varies so wildly I keep having to adjust the volume), and to add insult to injury all the interesting subversions hinted at in the lore seem to have completely vanished.

So, what's left? Exploration? There is none so far. Oh sure you can trek around the starting island... except you can't get off the paths. There is NOTHING off the paths, not even space to give you the impression you're leaving the path. And the island is absofuckinlutely tiny. This had better not be a trend for the rest of the game, not when its predecessor had fucking HUGE expanses of land to explore in any direction you wished.

I'll give it some more chance now that the game proper has started (about time!), but in either case this is a really bad way to start your exploration ARPG.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention all the locked stuff. The tutorial made me rage with this (especially since things magically unlock at one point with no hint whatsoever; I only suspect they'd be open now because I knew I had just ended the tutorial). In 2W1 I ran into exactly ONE such instance in the ENTIRE GAME. Here, I've already run into 3 (not counting the tutorial), and that's on the tiny starting island. Not good.

 

[Crooked Bee]

So, what's left? Exploration? There is none so far.

And there will be very little good exploration throughout the game, unfortunately.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention all the locked stuff. The tutorial made me rage with this (especially since things magically unlock at one point with no hint whatsoever; I only suspect they'd be open now because I knew I had just ended the tutorial). In 2W1 I ran into exactly ONE such instance in the ENTIRE GAME. Here, I've already run into 3 (not counting the tutorial), and that's on the tiny starting island. Not good.

I see you're in for A LOT of rage.

 

[Saxon1974]

Exploration was my favorite part of the first game. Since this appears to barely exist in the sequel I think this is a no buy for me

 

[Sceptic]

Well... keep in mind I'm only 2h in. I may be at the point where it all changes. I will certainly keep playing until chap 2 regardless. But if things don't improve on at the very least the exploration front I am going to rage a lot indeed.

Commie likes the sequel and since he's the one who got me to play 2W in the first place I'll trust his judgement and withhold ragequitting until I am absolutely certain of where the game stands.

 

[Rufus_T_Firefly]

2w2 is long as fuck, I've put an ungodly amount of hours into it and I only just got to chapter 2. I did most of the side quests for the Hatmandor island so that's why it took me so long, but still the game is huge.

At ant rate here are my feelings towards it. The magic system is really cool and unique but theres two skills you need to get before you can really start exploring it, sorcery artisan and wisdom I think. But the fact that you need to whip out your staff any time you want to cast a spell is REALLY annoying and makes hybrid classes a pain in the ass. The exploration is ok, kinda gimped in a couple of ways. First of all 90% of the caves you come across can't be entered unless you get the quest for them. Theres allot of cool loot to find, between weapons, armor, spell cards, staffs ect and with the way the magic system works you always need more spell cards. However I hope you like the lock picking game because EVERYTHING is locked in this game. The worst part is that all the locks are level scaled, so once you get to level 20 say hello to EVERY FUCKING LOCK IN THE GAME BEING A MASTER LOCK. Those locks are such a goddamn pain to open, even with maxed out lock-pick. And don't even try to use the open lock spell on them, because there is a bug that makes all the treasure inside disappear if you do. Ive just been bashing them open with an axe and reloading if my weapon breaks, but sometimes for stuff like cabinets the game wont register my lock bashing attempts, so whatever.
Also you cant kill townspeople, and the game won't let you steal from them if their in the vicinity, and you can't open things while sneaking. The pickpocketing mini game is the most retarded thing ever. And the main characters arms are too short for his body, he looks like a tall midget. Overall I liked the first game better, but 2w2 has it's fun moments. If you've already played every other open world rpg, then you should give it a shot, but it's very flawed.

 

[Monocause]

Let this be a mini-review.

Stopped playing the game at the beginning of chapter II. Chapter I is a rather large chunk of the game and so I feel that the game couldn't surprise me with anything else - besides, after abandoning my playthrough I've checked a walkthrough to see if something interesting sprungs up later on: nope, more of the same.

I'll go through aspects of the game that, in my opinion, make ARPGs enjoyable and assess these aspects' quality in TW2:

1. PLOT

Not much design emphasis on this one. Don't expect a vibrant, interesting and amusing world a la Divinity II. After a couple of hours I forgot why does my character want to beat the head honcho. Also, I don't think there's a single NPC in the game that's got an inch of personality. The orcs in the keep are serviceable questgivers, nothing more.

Writing is poor-to-mediocre and you clearly get the message that it dialogue isn't really important. You get some choices during sidequests (and some of them have some small consequences) but C&C matters only if you care about the gameworld or are facing substantial rewards/punishment. Here, none of that applies.

Plot is officially out, no questions about it.

2. Character development and combat

The strong point of many a successful ARPG. After all, you're going to spend most of your time killing things and acquiring loot&XP.

TW2 starts out very promising. There's quite a few combat skills that seem to make melee and archery more enticing; magic system is quite novel. What gave me the largest hots for the game in the beginning was assassination. See, there's this "death strike" skill and a "sneak skill". During the tutorial game tells you "hey, you can sneak up on enemies and stealth-kill them with a single strike!". Seems awesome but is in fact a hallmark of the disappointment barrage that the game shoots in yo' face - you'll soon find out that there are no stealth mechanics in place and even if you sneak up on someone you can't - for some inexplicable reason - stealth-kill them most of the time. It's as if some creatures had a "canintostealthkill=1" flag while most of them doesn't. Oh, and sitting people are officially immune to assassination attempts. When you're threatened again by muslim fundamentalists I suggest sitting next to a bonfire and you're safe as Allah in the high heavens.

The disappointment continues. You'll never need most of the combat skills. The archery ones are sometimes useful but you'll end up clicking ad infinitum anyway. There's little to none tactical skill use in combat involved.

Magic was supposed to be awesome with its morrowind-like spellmaking system. Yes, it's really fun to make a spell that blinds your enemy, stuns them and throws anvils at them - but you won't use spells like these. If you want to be effective as a mage you'll use the most cost-effective damaging bolt you can make and clickfest it.

Once you realise that the skill system isn't as cool as it seemed there isn't much left. Loot you get is scaled to your level and there's not enough diversity between various weapon/armor types to make up for it. Unique items are a joke. Upgrade system is a cool idea but becomes a chore rather quickly and doesn't reward you enough for the pain you have to endure watching the stupid animation ten times for every new piece of equipment you acquire.

I'd rate this aspect of the game plain mediocre. Shame as it could've been really great.

3. Exploration/ game world realisation

Morrowind has proven that an excellent game world can be enough of an incentive to turn a blind eye to glaring design flaws in other departments. TW2 fails.

Setting seems interesting. First you see an area that draws inspiration heavily from the middle east, then it's far asia and chinese/japanese influences. Trouble is there's pretty much no in-game lore and the setting only serves for aesthetic fluff. Exploration yields very little rewards and there's not a single non-quest related memorable place in the game's world that I've seen.

4. Pure atmosphere

Sometimes a game is just cool somehow. You don't know why - it's in the music, the way your PC walks, the masterfully recorded sound effects.

The only thing that stands out in TW2 a bit is your PC's voice which could've been quite badass. Unfortunately, a badass voice is only good for anything if it voices badass dialogue, and there's only a few really badass lines throughout the game for the main character.


Overall, the game's just mediocre. It's worth it to get the game and toy with it for a while just to see some superb ideas the devs had - and then facepalm in shame when noticing how they botched it. If it were not for the fact that I've been observing the VG industry for some time I would've had hopes that perhaps another dev studio would copy Reality Pump's ideas and execute them better, or RP itself makes a decent sequel. Since I feel that the industry is beyond hope right now the only value the game has is for Codexers to nerdrage about its failed potential.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Well... keep in mind I'm only 2h in. I may be at the point where it all changes. I will certainly keep playing until chap 2 regardless. But if things don't improve on at the very least the exploration front I am going to rage a lot indeed.

Gets a little better once you start finding Jump and Water Walking potions. My brother managed to find a hidden "boss" ostrich in a tiny island and got into a dark island full of high level monsters (probably the last boss' castle)

 

[CreamyBlood]

1. Giant scorpions were so far the only enemy I've encountered that got stuck in the environment.

That's interesting, because in something completely unrelated, the only 'bug' I ever encountered in New Vegas was, you guessed it, giant scorpions getting stuck in the environment. I took the positive route and just considered it a bonus as they got annoying after awhile and made for an easy kill.

 

[Tycn]

About 8 hours in, still chapter 1 and can't bring myself to keep playing. Loot system seemed promising but it just boils down to swapping to a superior weapon every few levels. Quests are almost always generic and dialogue is bad enough to be boring but falls short of being memorable. With unopenable locked doors, scaled chests and level requirements for weapons there isn't much reason to go exploring except the lore, which is decidedly boring.

Mediocre is the word. It's playable, but little more.

 

[DalekFlay]

I like the videos I have seen enough to buy the "Royal Edition" now that it is shipping in the US. I am sure I could be disappointed but whatever, I collect PC RPG games, it's not a super huge investment.

Shame to hear depth of field does not actually turn off, I hate that shit. I hope there is an ini solution.

 

[Sceptic]

Shame to hear depth of field does not actually turn off, I hate that shit. I hope there is an ini solution.

It only reappears when you're in dialog, for some weird reason. I'll need to look for an ini solution to it and blur. DOF is usually shitty, but in both 2W it's REALLY painful.

Anyway will play this weekend and post more impressions and an agreement/counterargument to Monocause's review.

 

[Claw]

Magic was supposed to be awesome with its morrowind-like spellmaking system. Yes, it's really fun to make a spell that blinds your enemy, stuns them and throws anvils at them - but you won't use spells like these. If you want to be effective as a mage you'll use the most cost-effective damaging bolt you can make and clickfest it.

That's disappointing. I saw some videos of people toying with spell creation and it looked really interesting, although the anvils struck me as kinda silly.

 

[chiefnewo]

I've played the game for about 6 or 7 hours and I agree with Monocause. Unless the game suddenly jumps in quality later on it's just not that good.

My main gripes are the horse riding and archery. Manually clicking every few seconds to make sure my horse doesn't slow down is irritating and accomplishes nothing that holding down W couldn't do.

Archery is completely useless due to the auto-aim that doesn't compensate for a creature moving. The only time you'll hit a moving target is if it's running straight at you. Even in "sniper mode" which lets you free aim it will still auto target if your cursor gets close enough to a monster, meaning you can't even try to compensate for the target's movement there.

 

[Sceptic]

Some more comments on the game, using Monocause's review as a framework/reference.

You get some choices during sidequests (and some of them have some small consequences) but C&C matters only if you care about the gameworld or are facing substantial rewards/punishment. Here, none of that applies.

Disagree. The C&C is in the form of which later quests open up to you, and that's pretty good for me. The plot itself sucks (well, there's not much of one really), and most of the quests are "kill this guy" or "bring this back", but there are several ones that are much more interesting (the "builders" in the savannah, the two tricksters in Bayan, including one that opens up a later quest), and multiple solutions to quests leading to different follow-up quests depending on what you do is definitely a great touch. All in all I think it's the game's strongest suit. Shame that the MQ itself is completely linear.

assassination

This has caused indescribable rage. The mechanic was SO promising in the tutorial... and then it NEVER works again. Even with perfect sneaks against enemies I just stand there like an idiot while the assassination icon never appears.

The archery ones are sometimes useful

Archery is insanely overpowered, it's completely cheesy. Unfortunately this is due mainly to enemy AI being completely, utterly shit. Enemies follow you in a straight line, so sprint, turn around, shoot, sprint, etc. After a certain distance enemies stop following you and go back to their position, while their HP regens (yeah, not only does your HP regens, but enemies' does as well. New achievement in popamole). Even better, you can find the sweet spot after which enemies stop following and just STAND THERE. While you're pumping them full of arrows. Every single enemy I've met so far does this. Which is a good thing, because combat otherwise suffers from a bad, bad case of HP attrition.

Oh, and there is level-scaling. Oblivion-style. Remember those groms you found too tough at level 2 on starting island? Come back at level 12. Notice their equipment has changed. Notice their health has gone up. They do more damage. They're still exactly as difficult as they were 10 levels ago.

Around this time I was thankful for the archery cheese, as it's the only thing that prevented a ragequit/uninstall.

If you want to be effective as a mage you'll use the most cost-effective damaging bolt you can make and clickfest it.

Shame, because the system itself is great. Yet another wasted opportunity.

Trouble is there's pretty much no in-game lore and the setting only serves for aesthetic fluff. Exploration yields very little rewards and there's not a single non-quest related memorable place in the game's world that I've seen.

This annoys me because it's such a step back from 2W1. That one had a LOT of background lore that turned out to be much more interesting than expected and really helps in fleshing out the world. Exploration was extremely rewarding, with some very powerful enemies tucked away in corners of the world yielding some very powerful items if you can defeat them (enemies in 1 did not scale and neither did their loot). Even the locales that didn't have anything in particular were memorable at least visually or what they suggested lore-wise. Haven't seen any of this in 2W2 so far.

Sometimes a game is just cool somehow. You don't know why - it's in the music, the way your PC walks, the masterfully recorded sound effects.

I'll give it to the game: the music's good. Some of the tracks are REALLY good. Graphic engine is also impressive for what it can do (once you switch off the extraneous settings of course) and still run extra-smooth.

There are other annoyances: the downgrading of the PC from a pretty refreshing mercenary (none of this Biowarian good/evil - just business) to this guy who's suddenly helping half the savannah with no expectation whatsoever for a reward - yet another typical fantasy hero. The minigames need to die a horrible, horrible death, especially horseriding, which just distracts you from looking where you're going. Add the completely out of place obstacles thrown onto the roads (seriously, WTF?). The locked doors/chests I've lost count of, except that one particularly stands in my mind: I got the key, quest compass helpfully directs me to a cave... which is locked and STILL can't be opened EVEN THOUGH I HAVE THE FUCKING KEY AND MY JOURNAL SENDS ME THERE. Yeah, it's probably just a bug, but that's just adding insult to shitty design. And of course there's the chest that you can NEVER, EVER open unless you bought the limited edition. It's almost as bad as the in-game advertisement in DAO.

The only things that are still keeping my playing so far are the quest design (which it must be said is quite good), the music, and some dimming hope that things will get better soon.

I'd mention the shitty UI too, but I'm downloading as we speak the new hotfix that supposedly fixes this. Will try it out and report on improvements or lack thereof. Reporting: there's a new "resizable interface" setting that seems to do absolutely nothing. Hurray.

In positive news, I did find out how to disable motion blur for good:
graph.setfastrunspecialefx 0
Haven't figured out how to disable DOF in dialog though.

Now, if they can just make 2W3 exactly like 1, but with quest C&C, engine optimization and music from 2, it'll be something really good.

 

[Darth Roxor]

which is locked and STILL can't be opened EVEN THOUGH I HAVE THE FUCKING KEY AND MY JOURNAL SENDS ME THERE.

Bug. Had the same thing two times. Did you play the game first and then patch with the latest patch or did you patch from the get-go? 'Cause patched savegames get bugged and you need console help in a couple of quests.

And anyway, bros, why the fuck are you even using the horseriding? It's completely useless thanks to the gazillions of teleports everywhere. If you are using horseriding for something more than just that one quest in the village in the savannah, you are a fucking masochist.

And I guess I have to agree that this game is lacklustre as all shit, but all in all, I found it 'kind of cool'. What bugs me the most is that there are shitloads of completely IDIOTIC design choices, paired with some excellent attention to detail and good design and stuffies, which leaves this game 'p. cool' to me, but I can understand why someone would hate it with burning passion. But, well, I still have to leave the first chapter (~16 hours in game now), and I don't quite feel like it... Oh, it's not that I got bored with it, but it's just that... I don't feel like playing *shrug*[/quote]

 

[Sceptic]

Bug. Had the same thing two times. Did you play the game first and then patch with the latest patch or did you patch from the get-go?

1.1 gold patch from the get go. Am gonna try and see if the hotfix fixes this (it's supposed to fix the situation you described, but says nothing about bugged doors when starting a new game)

And anyway, bros, why the fuck are you even using the horseriding? It's completely useless thanks to the gazillions of teleports everywhere.

Because walking to the teleporters the first time takes a while. But after this yeah I've gone full teleporting everywhere. Can't take the horse through several of the MQ choke points (like the gates near Bayan), so they're pretty useless.

What bugs me the most is that there are shitloads of completely IDIOTIC design choices, paired with some excellent attention to detail and good design

I don't hate the game, but I am annoyed that so many of the good things must be paired with those idiotic design choices, especially since so far ALL the idiocy was something that worked perfectly well in 2W1. THAT is what pisses me off. They fixed what was wrong with 1 and fucked up everything that was right. It's like a total mirror image. It does make me think 3 will be either something great or a complete clusterfuck, depending on which parts of 1 and 2 they mix.

it's just that... I don't feel like playing

I stayed up until 2am on weekdays several times while playing 1 because I was having so much fun with it (even though it's not a great game). With 2 I have to take a break after at most 2h of playing. It's definitely missing that "having too much fun to care about flaws" aspect.

Anyway will go try and see if hotfix fixes the door bug now. If it doesn't... meh. Hotfix fixes shit. HOWEVER... console cheats to the rescue. Again.
ec.setattribute llvl 0
Entering this while the red icon on the door is on-screen (ie the door is "selected") will unlock it. Seems to be enough to complete the quest. Nothing special in there though, the usual levelled loot.
BTW I'm still unclear how level scaling works. I am 100% convinced it's there, but it seems to be closer to DAO's than Oblivion's. No actor replacement, and the enemies seem to scale within a range (or they are individually assigned a range). It's still annoying as fuck.
Locks levelling is also one huuuuuuuuuuuuuge source of rage.

Also, anyone know how to activate the Royal Edition bonus quest on a not removed from inventory copy? If you are unwilling to part with the bonus activation key itself (it supposedly only works on one copy and then never again - irrelevant since non removed from inventory copies have to be blocked by firewall to work anyway), I will settle for the questgiver's creature code ("select" her and type GetCreateString in the console).

 

[Sceptic]

GOD DAMN IT THIS GAME MAKES ME RAGE

Just as I was starting to settle in, get used to some of the annoyances and enjoy myself, it throws in yet ANOTHER fucking nonsense and pointless annoyance, just because.

So I finally put enough points in lockpicking that the timer is a nonissue, so even Master locks I can get without too much difficulty. There are no horses around Harmandor, so that minigame's out. I've also gotten more used to the combat, so even though archery is still horribly OP I can melee once in a while without dying within seconds. I've given up completely on exploration (finding the locked "Southern Gate" sealed the deal; the plethora of locked doors and chests I keep passing by everywhere hasn't helped) so at least that's no longer a frustration. And I was really starting to enjoy the quests; unlike DAO, where all "board" quests amounted to "collect X items / activate Y triggers" even the boards here have some fun stuff with unexpected twists. In fact "unexpected" seems to be the one word that the quest writers had in mind at all times: how can we turn every generic quest into something more interesting?

Then the fucking Buyout quest came along.

The thievery minigame is very stupid. You just sit there patiently waiting for the 3 openings to line up and you press a button. That's it. Except... the game lies. I can't pickpocket one of the guards required to complete Buyout. The openings line up perfectly, and I mean PERFECTLY, but clicking the button does absofuckinglutely NOTHING.

Fuck you, 2W2. Why must you be so contrarian? Why must you balance every good thing with some shitty design decision? Why must every enjoyable moment you offer be followed by an utterly shitty minigame? And to think that those minigames were hyped for "breaking up the gameplay." That's right, according to Reality Pump breaking up the gameplay is now a good thing.

Well fuck you too.

(if anyone did manage to figure out how the thievery minigame REALLY works, as opposed to what the game tells you, I' love to hear it )

 

[Clockwork Knight]

My brother said your shitty pickpocket skill is to blame. Apparently, winning the minigame isn't enough if the skill is too low (that, or it affects the results in some way - like Oblivion's Security influencing the tumblers' behavior). Try to change your angle, until the game accepts you're behind the dude.

 

[Sceptic]

CK, I CAN initiate the game (by changing angle and being behind the dude). But I can't succeed at it, even though according to instructions I should. The only way low skill could be to blame is if the game outright cheats and won't let you succeed even though according to the rules you should when your skill is too low... which TBH I wouldn't put past them. I'll max the skill and try again tonight.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Just mash the left mouse button like mad when the openings start getting close, there's no penalty for it.

 

[Sceptic]

What do you think I've been doing all this time?

Either there's an invisible check that won't let you win the minigame if you're skill's too low, or the visual opening does not match the game's mechanics one, or I've hit yet another bug.

Will rage experiment some more tonight. If nothing works I'll just send this quest to fuck itself (saved just before talking to Bouncer at the mines on a separate save of course) and hope I don't close off the entire Giriza questline.

 

[Sceptic]

Either there's an invisible check that won't let you win the minigame if you're skill's too low, or the visual opening does not match the game's mechanics one

Confirmed that this is indeed the case. Managed to win (without investing any additional points into the skill) by having the hand go straight through the neck of the 1st serpent and the midsection of another one. Completely retarded. I hope this is the last quest where I have to use the skill.

In other news, does anyone know how the armor system works? Does the protection get applied by body section or globally, in an additive way? If by section, how do multiple-section armors (like the bonus Dragon Scale) work? I'm trying to figure out if the Dragon Scale armor is better than the current separate pieces I have gathered so far.

 

[Excommunicator]

Good to have your impressions on this game, Sceptic, Monocause and others.


I was a little curious about it, but now I will stay well clear of this one.