Hendrix

"But the real sign of Haemimont's commitment is that one seemingly small decision to upend the conventions that XCOM laid down. It would have been easy to make another XCOM-alike. They're pretty popular, after all. But it wouldn't have been Jagged Alliance." This made me very happy.

Hell, I really need to win that lottery soon, so I can buy all the stuff I wha... NEED! 😂 Thanks for the info, it sure looks like a nice camera!

From my perspective. Not a problem. For the first time in 2 decades we have an established developer for this "cursed" IP. I much rather see them get the time and money to get things right and make something really good or even great. I am tierd of seeing games getting copy/pasted togheter just to save development time and money, just to get a quick cash grab.

@GODSPEED, first things first, Awesome pictures! What camera do you use? I've been thinking about getting a camera to get better pictures than my 4 year old phone is capable of! YES! Where I live the moose hunting season begins from 1 September and lasts until 31 jan (with a break between 26 of Sep until 9 of October for the Moose mating season). The group I hunt with always start on a Saturday so we begin on the 3 Sep this year. Red Deer season has already started (16 Aug) however you are not allowed to hunt Bucks or use dogs until after the red deer mating season (8th of October). What I look forward to the most is what we call "top bird hunting", hunting for black grouse and capercaillie when the birds seeks nourishment in the tree tops. Picture from last season when me and one of my best friends were out hunting. Didn't get any birds but it sure was quality time! Absolutely! Nothing else fives me as much energy as spending time in the wild. Awesome! Me and the wife made a week long trip too an area called Ljung-dalen (Heather valley). One of the days we made a short hike to a lake and spend the day fishing. Really relaxing, and the view of Helags mountains (1797 meters above sea level) were fantastic. It was a bit windy so the picture does not show how clear the water was.

Remember trying it several years ago and getting my ass kicked. 😂

Watching the trailer again, I reacted to another thing. At 1:04 there is a scen of Buns firing a burst at a Marauder. She clearly has 10 AP and spends 9 of to engage the Marauder. The very second the mouse clicks to fire (you can easily see this occurring at 1:07 going at 0.25 speed), her AP suddenly increases to 13 which she then uses for the other attack. The only other time the number close to the portrait is displayed in a similar way is at 1:39 when Fauda throws a grenade. At the beginning she has 7 AP and after the throw 5. Neither can I see her being rewarded with more AP's for the enemy blown into bits by her grenade. Maybe this is just for the trailer to show some combat but I became worried that it is the "rewarding" sort of playstyle. That making kills rewards you with AP's to make more kills. Definitely not something I would like or enjoy!

If this game goes woke, I'm out!

(I rewatched the trailer without severe sleep deprevation.) Yupp, this did bother me! I was hoping to see something more in the line of Silent Storm when it came to "bullet physics". Might be some things are not yet implemented correctly or at all? After all it seams like THQ are not allowing Haemimont to talk to us yet, neither release dev diaries so maybe we are watching a early alpha/proof of concept build? As you stated @GODSPEED, the interface and ui looks ready to port into a mobile game, and this worries me too. I don't judge Haemimont for this, because I am sure they are strictly following the guidelines of THQ.

Yes. Bad choice of wording on my part. Maybe we haven't seen a finished UI yet with everything implemented?

My bad, I rechecked and the magazine says Distance Relations.

I could not agree more! This would probably make or break the game for me personally. The first trailer gave me some xcom-vibes. But this new one reminds me more of Wasteland 3. Overall I think it looks good but still in a rough early alpha kind of state.

If that is the case, it would would completely ruin the game for me. The voices are such a large part of the merc's personalities. In the new trailer there's a sceen were Buns picks up some loot and it changes over to the inventory screen. Here we can see Buns carried equipment, I noticed there were no slots for NV goggels, sunglases, ear pro's or (since the game seams to takes place in 2001) mini-disc players. Also in the inventory screen the Mercs have different sizes/number of slots for their backpacks, but I did not notice any backpack slot on Buns? Finally in the very same inventory screen there's some magazines that I wonder if they are some kind of skill books? In Buns backpack there is something that looks like a health magazine and in Tex's there's a survival guide. Edit: Oh, and thanks for the analysis @Kordanor

@GODSPEED Yupp, exactly the same arguments are used over here aswell. They continuously fail to see that criminals do not care about leagal guns and what laws apply. There's a continuous stream of black market AK's and pistols coming in from the Balkans (border security is almost non existing whit in the EU). Although this year, so far, the anti gun discussions has been very quiet. Probably because it is an election year and the anti gun politicians knows that there's a large part of the voters who hunts and/or practise competition shooting. Also the recent removal of a specific permit requirement for a suppressors was a very popular change. So as long as you have a gun that the suppressors will fit, you can freely purchase a suppressor whitout a problem, much the same as ammunition. I find it to be a reasonable level since you can not buy one whitout showing the store atleast a gun permit. Besides the criminals don't want suppressors because they want their guns to sound scary. Also most suppressors are very expensive (300 USD or more) compared to "oil filters" bought from Chinese online stores.

@GODSPEED Hey man! The news site I use wrote about the new gun laws being implemented in Canada. Any comments? According to them they implemented the new laws because of the incriese in shootings among criminal gangs. Although as far as I understood the new laws will only effect leagal gun owners? Sounds alot like the discussion ocer here aswell sadly. ☹

Any infringment of freedom of speech in any form of media fucking disgusts me! I am convinced that if the Western World governments starts applying these restrictions (that to some degree already are taking place) were in for future more grim than what Orwell wrote in his book 1984. I really hope so too, I see no problem at all whit stereotypical humour, because sane people understands that it is humor. And isn't that the best "commercial" for other cultures? Exactly, myself going back to HoMM, JA2 and BG is partly because I do not have to learn a new system from scratch. In JA2 1.13 I even speed things up so that I spend less time micromanage stuff and more time playing the game. At heart I enjoy micromanagement, but I just don't have the time. I am slowly comming around on Pathfinder: Kingmaker however, and starting to break through that initial layer of complexity. Have you tried Cities: Skyline? I relly like it but I often find myself get stuck with the traffic-jam problems. Must confess that I haven't thought about it at all. Will check it out, thanks for the tip. 🍻 To clarify the situation. My wife has started to show some interest in video games aswell. However the games I play on my PC are just to complex for her to just pick up. She has not played any video games earlier exept a little bit of racing games so it is not really viable to sit her down and start to explain stats, buffs, range, accuracy or whatever in a game. I do not belive she is really interested in games as complex as crpgs either, togheter with all the reading often acquired. So therefore I am looking for something more in the line were you can just pick it up and play whitout much fuzz. Or I might just buy a VR headset and get this: 😁

First things first! What I am about to write is my view of the overall state of todays development of games. As whit everything there are ofcourse exceptions and my views are only my views of the matter. As you wrote @GODSPEED. The industry has change so dramatically since the 90's. What was then considered to be large/professional studio, would hardly today be viewed as a indie studio. How many of these 90's developer's were just a group of friends/acquaintances who got togheter in an apartment and someone had an idea of a game and they just did it because they thought it was cool? Today everything is cautiously considered and calculated before any idea even leaves the table and the trend of "AAA" titels to include/appease as many gamers as possible tends to make games stale and whitout character/soul. Hard topics are avoided so that no one will get offended etc. But I find that to be an issiue since games then feels unrealistic because everyone just gets along all the time. Sure sometimes you want that easy kind of outcome for a game and it is hard to say what games should or should not have the player make real hard choices. But I find myself asking: When was the last time I saw a game to really be something new? I have lost count on how many times I have watched gameplay for a new game and after a few minutes considered that: OK this is just a "copy" of that game in a new dress. This does not have to be a bad thing ofcourse and I find it unavoidable since the gaming market/audience is so vastly large today. Example. I guess you saw the gameplay reveal of Starfield? My thoughts were: OK it's Skyrim/Fallout in Space but I never expected anything else either. I'll probably pick it up when every dlc is realeased and there's a 50% discount. Then they say: "We got over a thousand planets." And I get horrible flashbacks from the Mass Effect games where you had to around every planet to find resourses. Fair enough, I might be wrong about this being an issiue in the actual game. On a complete side nonte: What the hell happend to the advancement for the AI in games?! 😂 I must admit that as a gamer I have change aswell. Simply I lack the stamina today to invest myself in a game in the same way I did 15 years ago. I find myself thinking: "Alright I have done everything for today. I can game for an hour/hour and a half and then go to bed." Then when I sit down at my computer and start everything up I am hit by an complete energy drain and instead of enjoying a game it becomes just another thing I have to invest energy into. This has caused me to start looking into other sort of games. Stuff I just can pick up and play for 30-60 min and be done. Right now I am actually thinking about getting a Nintendo Switch and get Nintendo Sports. Part of this is just me getting older, but a larger part is simply the effort I have to put into my job. I am not complaining because I like my job, there is just my limit to how much I can focus on during a day. And for different reasons the last few years my job has been very demanding. There's a ton more to write in the matter. I simply lack the time right now. Hope it is somewere comprehensible since I am writing this on my phone and moved the text around abit. Cheers! 🍻

So, Owlcat (the developers of Pathfinder: Kingmaker & Wrath of the Righteous are developing a Warhammer 40k CRPG. I am not deeply familiar with all the lore of W40k but I think this could be a interesting game.

Yepp, so I started a new topic for us "old timers" to rant away in. Feel free to add to it. 😂

@GODSPEEDAgain to stop us from derailing a topic completely I figured we could have a place to complain in peace. 😂 I figured I could start this topic first before writing my "initial" post, since the topic is so vast and for some reason the wife thinks I have more important things to focus on. 🤔 To any and all, feel free to rant away, I'll be sure to "complain" myself in the near future.

Late reply, RL is a cruel master. The first things that comes to my mind is actually the music in Fallout 2. IMHO the music instantly gives you a feel for whatever new area you visit and what to (to a degree atleast) expect from it. I have found the writing of the game to be awesome aswell, it is just amazing how much character they were able to give the npcs with nothing but words (and yeah in a few cases the talking heads aswell). In a way I belive this "simple" way of presenting npcs to the player actually puts Fallout 2 in an advantage over Fallout 4. Because there is just so much more you have to do and get right with a 3D model to give it the same "life" as a well writen, no sound, isometric npc. Why? Because the players imagination (if they have one) fills out the gaps. Through the years I have come to view the old Fallout and Baldur's Gate games as interactive books rather than games. For me there is also the constantly gritty feeling that Fallout conveys to the player, that the world is a dreadful place and it is not likley to get any better. Thats something I never feelt in the Bethesda games.

@Scylla As usual I must agree with GODSPEED and say: Great Review! Every few years I tend to reinstall Fallout 2 and it's depth of atmosphere always slightly surprise me.

Yeah, that could also be a nice touch. Having a in-game-online-newspaper reporting the events in the game. The "in-game-media" could also be used to direct players to interesting places and stuff in the game world.

Regarding @LoboNocturno idea of ambient sounds. A bit of a random thought hit me. Would it be cool (or not) to have radio stations / tv stations reporting on what is going on in the country during the conflict? Maybe from different angels depending on who supports the specific station?

@Carl? As in Carl "Reaper" Sheppards? Shouldn't you want some sleek high powered sniper rifle suitable for some rooftop sniping? 😂 Jokes aside, good points about having handguns, smgs and shotguns as valid options even during the later stages of the game. The stage of the game I enjoy the most is were pistols, smgs and shotguns are the "main" weapons.

🍻 Reminding people of their backlog is my greatest enjoyment. 😁 Hell I really have to have a long talk with both my boss and wife about the lack of spare time, to finally get through all these unfinished games and to replay a few aswell.