Plus, we get upgraded to the Deluxe Edition at no additional cost.

There’s that batch of us who have been playtesting what we have of Act 1 for almost 3 years...

Yep - it’s essentially like starting a new campaign in D&D. Same setting, some familiar characters make an appearance, but not a direct sequel to the events of the previous titles.

Probably - basically any time the camera pulls in from the above, mostly isometric view (you can angle it to various degrees and turn it) to a moment with a locked camera angle, for either dialog or character actions, etc., are likely counted as cutscenes, rather than the traditional definition we’d normally apply.

Re-reading it, I think the intent of the statement was aimed at Bioware’s original Baldur’s Gate titles, which were more D&D inspired in how they used (I think) 2nd edition to create the rules by which their real-time-with-pause system worked, along with setting it fully in the D&D setting.

The Kingdom management stuff is 100% the Pathfinder games from Owlcat.

Not surprised, sadly.

More the “not anyone named Clive” doesn’t get that level of delving into their character.

She pushes herself to the point of injury several times and even takes her revenge in a rather poignant bit I think.

Blizzard will absolutely try to monetize what they can with this game - cosmetic sets, making having the premium side of the battle pass as attractive as possible...

Yep, and there’s the implicit connection between what you find at the start of the game when you first get separated and the whole thing Zelda was supposed to do in the flashbacks in the first game - namely perform a special ritual to keep that seal going.

Setting up a resource extraction outpost on an otherwise barren planet is surprisingly a step up from some of the other recent space games I’ve played that had barren planets...where you could basically take screenshots and scan things and not much else.

What if instead of a dozen bespoke locations, the open world sci-fi RPG was scattered across hundreds of lifeless rocks filled with the same old stuff.

Leveling has never been this slow before, ever.

The relevant part is that you can’t max every ability or skill tree by the end of the base game in either game, even by the time you’ve reached level cap (even with the expansions for The Witcher 3). And just comparing base games, this was even more the case - you are meant to commit to a particular playstyle, with…

Considering the recent dev talk at GDC by Miles Tost titled “Benefits of Missing Out” and how it’s about designing levels and encounters in such a way where the choice of your build/character should matter when going through, and how that was their goal but they missed the mark with this first game?

Considering every RPG I have ever played has had either no level cap or no relevant level cap (ex: 999) yeah I expected to just be able to continue leveling up.

Yeah, they do.

I’m honestly considering dropping my Ult - I have a Blood+Bone build I like, and one of the components of it is getting Essence back from Blood Orbs via an aspect that gives me essence if I grab a Blood Orb while at full health.

Yeah, the summon buttons (for both Druid and Necro) act as both a “bringing it out” ability and an active cooldown, much like any other ability that is there. For Necros, at least, you should definitely be using Raise Skeleton on a corpse every 5 seconds to get that extra 20% damage from them, and if specced into it…