The Post-Game - The Witcher II (spoilers)

So with The Witcher 3 getting ready for release, I though it was a good time to play The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings. I played the first Witcher game a while ago, and played the game all the way through multiple times. I never really had a computer that I felt could play The Witcher 2 with any degree of competence. Yes, I could have floundered through it at 20 fps, but that wasn't how I wanted to experience the game (or any game, really).

So The Witcher 2 sat in my Steam library for two years. I occasionally tried loading it up and playing it, but the game would stick and stagger so badly in the tutorial mission that I just couldn't bear to continue. Well, one (modest) hardware upgrade a few months ago, and I felt ready to tackle it. Now that I've finished it, it is a great game that everyone who loves medieval-style fantasy games and choice-laden narratives should have in their library. Go out and get this one. With sale prices for The Witcher 2 dropping as low as $3, there is very little reason not to purchase it at some point.

What follows was after one playthrough of The Witcher 2, played without importing a save-game from The Witcher.

THIS LIST CONTAINS A FEW SPOILERS.

Gameplay
+ High replayability (always the first thing I look for), thanks to a branching narrative and choice-laden side-quests.
+ Four skill trees, but lots of skills to choose from.
+ Lots of equipment, and the ability to craft and upgrade new new armor and swords
+ Lots of customizations for the equipment.
+ Lots to do and explore.
+ Big maps that, while maybe not "open world" in the same sense as Skyrim, are nevertheless sprawling and provide a good sense of size
+ Choice-centered dialog, some of which is on a timer (only a few seconds to respond). This prevented me from pausing the game and looking up ramifications on the internet.


+ / - Combat may be more realistic, but (as a hack 'n slash fan) I found the combat in the first Witcher game, with three on-the-fly styles to choose from, much more engaging.

- The "click to climb" and "click to jump" mechanics may have been easier for the developers than programming jump and climb abilities, but they break immersion at best and are annoying as heck at worst. For instance: descending the path to Kayran's lair.
- Map size can be an illusion generated by the time it takes to travel. There is no fast-travel (also as in the first game)
- The in-game map has points of interest marked on it, but nothing else
- The inventory system is a cluttered mess. I finally quit trying to monitor it, and just watched the weight meter to make sure the weight of what I was carrying didn't slow me down.
- Bad combat scaling, i.e. combat is too hard in the beginning, and too easy by the end.
- Alchemy and brewing potions is less intuitive than in the first Witcher game, and while potions are helpful (the Cat potion is easily the most creepy), it was extremely frustrating to ready up for a fight, have a cutscene, then find that for some reason the cutscene cancelled ALL the potions I had painstakingly brewed and consumed.
- Some quests provide no indication of how to proceed. So I can wander around the game-map for hours looking for the right NPC to further the quest, or I can just look up a let's play. Completionists will probably discover where to go since they'll explore every nook and cranny of the map, but more casual gamers will be frustrated by some incomplete quests in their journal.
- - Geralt has to meditate to drink potions. Who thought this was a good idea? Again, more realistic, perhaps. Forget about dodging away from a fight, quickly drinking a potion, and diving back in again. Can't do it. If you try, Geralt's animation going into and out of meditation will take so long that he will absorb extra damage in the process. That's if the game allows you to meditate in combat in the first place; sometimes I could, while other times I got a "Meditation Cannot be Performed at this Time" message. Horrible design decision.


Characters
+ Lots of old friends are back. Dandelion narrates the game, and Zoltan Chivay fights along side Geralt in several missions.
+ Geralt himself is a little less restrained, depending on the situation. One possible scenario sends him on a path of righteous slaughter to rescue someone. We have seen numerous times that NPCs are afraid of witchers, even though Geralt is usually torn between two sides. This was a chance to see what happens when a witcher is motivated by cold fury, and the carnage was devastating. Geralt just seems more human in general, with some wry sarcasm appearing occasionally.
+ Some great new characters (to those who have only played the games). Ves, Roche, Saskia, Sila, Letho, Philippa, and my man Iorveth - all well drawn and superbly voiced.

- Triss Merigold returns as well. Now don't get me wrong. Playing as Geralt, Triss was the woman for me in the first game. I never really bought into the whole Shani romance. It was always Triss. Well, in The Witcher 2 they changed her character design, making her less willowy and more compact, though more voluptuous as well. That's fine. Most of The Witcher 2 is spent on the road, not in court advising kings. But Triss' voice actress is flat, wooden, and simply boring, as well as sounding more girlish. The Triss of the first game was someone I would have hesitated to cross. In The Witcher 2, Triss is a damsel in distress for about half of the game, and the voice acting makes her sound young and naive. I was still motivated to save her, but am ultimately disappointed that she has so little to do when she is there.

Narrative
+ There are two different paths to the game, and lots of tangential choices to be made along the way.
+ A simple motivation - finding the kingslayer - gives the story good forward impetus.
+ You can't please everybody. You'll have regrets about many decisions in this one. In true Witcher fashion, though, the alternatives are not always better options.

+ / - Only two romance options (though there are plenty of opportunities for more base gratifications).
+ / - Lots of nudity in this one. Some of it is gratuitous. For instance (SPOILER): Triss is captured, wearing her usual outfit. She gets shrunk into a statue; the statue, when we see it, displays her still wearing her outfit. When the statue is decompressed and she is "reborn," she is reborn naked. Though the next time we see her in the dungeon, she is wearing the same outfit from prior to her capture. So logically, she should have had clothes on when being "reborn."
+ / - Lots of violence, too. Though torture is not shown on screen, the immediately before and the immediately after is shown, and might be disturbing the first time you play through the game.

- Some of the politics and background are insufficiently explained at the beginning - like the full implications of Foltest's war. It is mentioned once (maybe twice), then never mentioned again. This was one of the first times I kept referring back to journal entries for completed missions (ghost-written by Dandelion), because that is where large parts of context lay hidden. I don't doubt that multiple play-throughs will bring additional understanding.
- The story starts with a lurch. Excluding the tutorial level, the beginning is told in a series of flashbacks. It's a burdensome method in this case that slows down the story-telling. I was bored by the end of the Prologue, and itching for the game world to open up. Maybe that was the intention of the developers, but that method can backfire for those players who judge a game based upon first impressions.

Graphics etc.
+ The graphics are fantastic. Water, light shafts, bloom, foliage detail, wood detail. The mud even looks as real as the water - not an easy feat.
+ The music score by Adam Skorupa and Krzysztof Wierzynkiewicz is superb. More folksy in a renaissance way, then it goes all Hans Zimmer when the action heats up.

+ / - Character models are good, but the faces do not have much expression.

- You'll need a half-way decent graphics card to run the game. I'm using an A10 6800k APU (basically an over-clocked Athlon 760k), and CPU usage never went over 60%. All four CPU cores were utilized, though, so the more cores the better. My graphics card, a 2GB Radeon R7 260X, was the bottleneck, running at 100% for the entire time I was playing the game. I averaged around 50 frames-per-second on low-to-medium settings with v-sync turned off.
- Some overlapping sound. Don't advance too quickly while an accompanying NPC is providing exposition via speech; if you get attacked by monsters, the speech will be overwhelmed by the sound of the battle.
- Some crashing. The Witcher 2 locked up and crashed on me five times over 35 hours. This was usually preceded by a memory usage spike (the game would jump from 900MB-1.2GB of system ram to using almost 2 GB), so there is probably a memory leak somewhere. How or what triggers the leak I have no idea.

At First Glance - Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China

I pre-ordered AC Chronicles: China. It has apparently been a part of the AC Unity Season Pass for a while, but hasn't really gotten much attention. Now being released as a stand-alone title on XBox, Playstation and PC, we have the answer to a question nobody but Ubisoft was asking: can a 2.5D platformer function and feel like an Assassin's Creed game?

After playing the opening mission (about 30 minutes of gameplay), the answer is a resounding YES. There is no illusion of an open world so far - the game feels very linear. That may be its advantage, though: Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate tried a larger, choose-your-own-direction style of platforming, and the in-game map was a mess on congested levels. But Chronicles: China has plenty of interactive environment elements and stealth opportunities, married to a great neglected-but-not-forgotten protagonist; add in a unique visual style and setting, and the game feels like a bona-fide Assassin's Creed game.

Definitely playing this one through to the end. I'm hoping for about 4-5 hours of gameplay (more would be better, of course), since AC Chronicles: China is the first game in a three-part series. The protagonist, Shao-Jun, was first encountered in the short film Assassin's Creed: Embers. If you Need MOAR Assassin's Creed, give Embers a watch. Fair warning, though: possible spoilers for Ezio Auditore games (Assassin's Creed II, Brotherhood, and Revelations).

Anyway, back to Shao-Jun and Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China.

Some thoughts:
+ Great job on the game's visual style. The design team eschewed absolute visual realism in favor of  a brush-stroke look inspired by ancient Chinese art. At first glance the decision was a great one. The colors a little muted, with a lot of earth-tones. Hopefully there will be a fair amount of variety as the game progresses.

+ Combat feels smooth, fluid and deadly (though you won't use it often - stealth is encouraged).

+ Shao-Jun does not have much to say (at least in the early levels), but her voice actress (is it still Angela Galuppo? Hard to confirm) really hits the "smooth, mysterious, deadly" notes very well.

+ The game is very light on system resources, making this one an easy purchase for those who want more Assassin's Creed, but don't really have the gaming rigs to run Rogue or Unity.

+ The in-game Codex entries, though brief, continue to provide the dramatic and historical backgrounds that have always enhanced the Assassin's Creed experience.

+ Customizeable difficulty levels. Usually Ubisoft presents one level of difficulty and says "have at it." Bonus points for realizing that not everyone finds their standard easy (or hard).

- Some awkward controls. Specifically, press and hold W to raise a gate, release W, gate starts closing, run (direction key + Shift) towards the lowering gate, somehow hold the direction key + Shift and hit the Ctrl key to slide under the closing gate. I regularly run out of fingers. If you get quick at transitioning from the Sprint combo to the Ctrl key, it becomes pretty effortless, but practice is required. And the keys cannot be rebound, so we're stuck with the default key bindings.

- Graphics are great, but there are jaggies everywhere. Unfortunately, there is no option in the graphics settings to set the Anti-aliasing. The jagged edges were even appearing on the button-prompts in-game. It is easy to fix; I just opened the Catalyst Control Center and created a custom graphics profile for the game. But the game would have looked so much more impressive on the first start if every edge had not had saw-teeth.

At first glance, Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China is a fun, more casual game than the massive open world experiences offered by other Assassin's Creed games. The unique lore, characters, and gameplay inspire me with great anticipation for the next two parts of the series: Chronicles India and Chronicles Russia (finally get to play as Nikolai Orelov!).

It's great to see you again, Shao-Jun. I hope it is not the last time.

Four Threads or Go Home

When Intel's new Pentiums bowed over a year ago, many budget gaming enthusiasts were excited. A cheap, overclockable pair of Haswell cores that fit on 1150-socket motherboards, offering a great upgrade path? It seemed as if Intel had a serious player in the value-CPU segment (previously dominated by AMD).

Fast forward in time, and the new Pentiums - and when I say Pentiums, my point of reference is the Pentium G3258 - are not looking so rosy after all. Their performance is beyond question. Intel has been smacking AMD around in CPU benchmarks for a few years now. The problem with the Pentiums does not come from any performance shortfalls. The problem comes from the number of processing threads the CPU has: two. Two cores, no hyper-threading. Two.

There have been a lot of recommendations on websites all over the internet (such as here, here, here, and many more) that the Pentium is the best bargain CPU on the market for performance-to-cost ratio. Not only does it have better performance per CPU core than many AMD CPUs (even the FX-series), the purchaser would have the option to upgrade the CPU to and i3, i5 or i7 in the future without swapping out the motherboard. One user even recommended the Pentium G3258 over an FX-6300.

Here's the issue.
More and more games are utilizing multiple CPU threads. How does this affect the Pentiums? Because more and more games are requiring multiple CPU threads - like, four. Which immediately hampers the Pentium. Want to play Dragon Age Inquisition on a Pentium G3258? You can't. Need four CPU threads, bro. What about Watch Dogs or Grand Theft Auto V? Still need four threads. Far Cry 4? Four threads.

This discussion is frequently couched in an Intel vs. AMD dichotomy, but that is really beside the point. People build computers to do jobs. If someone is building a budget gaming computer, its job is TO PLAY GAMES. Maybe at a reduced resolution and low graphical settings, but that is still the point of the build. And everyone who built a budget system with a Pentium thinking they would be able to play the latest games are either upgrading sooner than they expected or are stuck playing "old" games (not knocking old games, I love them).

The situation is not as bad as depicted in this article from PCWorld.com: "Far Cry 4 woes with dual-core processors point to a bleak future for budget PC gamers." The author seems to associate budget gaming exclusively with Intel and the Pentium CPUs, which is misguided and narrow-minded to say the least. He even refers to the Far Cry 4 situation as shouting "game over" at budget gamers (first line of section 3, entitled "The Beginning of the End?"). Seriously? No budget gaming without Intel's Pentiums?

What bothers me is that many people are still recommending the Pentium CPUs, despite the fact that more and more games are requiring multiple cores (some flaming in this thread - you have been warned).

Here's the deal:
AMD has currently won the budget gaming war with the Athlon 860k. It is reasonably fast, overclockable, and is PCI-e 3.0 compatible. And most importantly, it has four CPU threads / cores for the same cost as a Pentium G3258 (the prices fluctuate).

Want to build a budget Intel gaming rig for the sake of the upgrade path (performance is roughly comparable with the Athlon 860k)? Get a Core i3, which has hyperthreading and 4 CPU threads. Currently an Intel Core i3 is about $40 than an Athlon 860k. That's a value judgment that the builder / buyer would have to make. Either CPU will let the purchaser play the latest games. As I said earlier, it's not about AMD vs. Intel. It's about building the right computer for the specified job within the specified budget. If the Core i3 fits within that budget, great. If the Athlon 860k is the most a buyer can afford, that's fine too. They're both capable. Paired with the right graphics card, either one can handle The Witcher 2 or Assassin's Creed IV on medium settings @1080p without bottle-necking. Either one can be the solid beating heart of a computer that a budget gamer needs.

But let's stop pretending the Intel Pentiums are a budget gamer's dream, okay? Jeez.

The Post-Game - Dragon Age II (spoilers)

Being relatively late to gaming, I only just now finished my first play-through of Dragon Age II, after passing on it so many times. I have heard so many negative stories about how bad a game it is, and how especially bad it is for a Dragon Age game. It is smaller in size than Dragon Age Origins (MUCH smaller), but is still an engaging game that provides a lot of fun.

This isn't a review; just some likes and dislikes after completing the game.


Gameplay
+ High replayability. Not so much for the narrative choices (though there are plenty of those), but for the desire to explore the different classes. Hawke died in combat one time and I had to survive with just Merrill - and it was incredibly fun.
+ More abilities. Incredibly easy to feel like a bad-ass in combat. There is an implied encouragement to get more abilities, though, instead of maxing out a single skill tree, so cast the upgrade net quite wide.
+ More tactics slots. There are plenty. Battle plans can have great depth.
+ Streamlined loot. Some things will obviously be useful - like armor and weapons - but other things like cracked figurines, gemstones, etc., when looted, go directly to the Junk section of the Inventory. Then when selling to a merchant, simply click, "Sell All Junk." Much easier than hunting through the entire inventory for random bits and pieces.
+ Customizing companion armor is gone. I have to say I am grateful for this. Managing loot and armor upgrades for all companions in Origins was simply a chore and took away from the fun of playing the game. Plenty have disagreed with me on this, but I appreciated the streamlining. My inventory was a LOT less full in this game. Who would want to replace Merrill's post-romance costume anyway? It's one of the most attractive I have ever seen in a game (and while like Merrill, she's actually pretty scary).

- / + Smaller game world. I loved and hated this one. The smaller game world helped prevent tangents and helped keep the story focused. No real places to wander around. On the other hand, the open wandering and variety of locations kept Dragon Age Origins interesting for much longer than I played Dragon Age II.

- Re-use of levels. How many times could the game-designers re-use the same cave level? Did you really think I wouldn't notice it's the same level, even if I'm progressing through it from the opposite direction?
- Some bugs. Not game-killers, but aside from the Act II boss bug (see my other blog post about how to fix it), there were numerous minor glitches, hitches, frame-rate drops that really can't be explained. Disabling Auto-save might help. Transitioning to the credits after the final cut-scene crashed the game, which means I didn't get two achievements. Now I have to go back and re-play the final boss. And even though I romanced Merrill, Isabela got her own special outfit as well as if I had romanced her. And so did Anders, but I never chose any of his romance dialogue.
- Corridor adventure is back, unfortunately, and makes up a larger part of quests than before.
- The character roster is not balanced. For a rogue-class or warrior-class Hawke, three rogues, two warriors, three mages. If playing as a mage Hawke, three rogues, three warriors, and two mages. You'll find yourself depending on one party member for a specific role, like Aveline being the default “tank” for a rogue Hawke. In Dragon Age Origins, there were four options for a warrior: Oghren, Shale, Sten, and Alistair (excluding the Warden). In Dragon II, there are only two. Depending on choices, only one party member is a healer: Anders. And I didn't take Bethany to the Deep Roads, so she was taken away to join the Chantry at the end of Act 1 making Anders the only option. Stock enough health potions and do the tactics correctly and a healer is not necessary for all missions, but this felt like Anders was being forced on me, which I didn't appreciate.


Characters
+ The characters are sharply drawn, if a little narrower in scope.
+ Memorable characters. Isabela has some great dialogue; and if you ever wanted to (fictionally) reform a rogue, her story is perfect. Varric is everyone's favorite dwarf uncle: friendly, loyal, prone to exaggeration. Merrill may be too sweet and naive to be completely convincing, but her story is really good, if not entirely fleshed out. Aveline may seem a little strange at first (one reviewer referred to her as a “she-man”), but I found myself really appreciating her soldiery and her loyalty. She would have been my first romance choice, but alas, it cannot be.

- Annoying characters. Anders is snippy and arrogant. Sebastian is “pure” (and nothing is more annoying than purity). Fenris should be sympathetic, but he wears his burdens a little too obviously on his sleeve. Isabela's constant flirting with everything wears thin after a while.


Narrative
+ The story works well. If you do a number of side-quests, the focus throughout the entire game is the mage / templar conflict, but that conflict does not come out into the open until the third act. Act I = Find a new home. Act II = Is Hawke capable of defending that home? Act III = Can Hawke defend Kirkwall against a new threat, or is he the threat? There is not the forward impetus of Dragon Age Origins, but for a story focused on a single character it invested me in events and kept me playing.
+ Plenty of narrative choices. As in Dragon Age Origins, those choices have profound effects on the journey to the final boss fight, but doesn't change the where or when of the final boss fight.
+ Character cameos from Dragon Age Origins. Loved seeing some old friends again, even briefly. The encounter with Zevran just made me wish he was in the game instead of that kill-joy, Fenris.

- / + Party betrayal. It WILL happen, at some point in the game. You're going to trust somebody who is going to use their position in Hawke's party as a means to their own ends - and the sense of betrayal will feel very real. I was pissed off, anyway.

- Fewer origin stories. You're playing as Hawke, a human, whether you like it or not.
- Fewer romance options. Playing as a male interested in females? Isabela or Merrill, and that's it. Male interested in males? Anders or Fenris. Female interested in females? Isabela or Merrill. Female interested in males? Anders, Fenris, or Sebastian (who is DLC). Wanted to romance Aveline or Varric? Too bad.


Graphics etc.
+ Compared to Dragon Age Origins, the textures are generally at a much higher resolution.
+ Character models have more detail.
+ Water has a nice reflection to it now.
+ Lots of cracks and dust in the city streets - very realistic, even within a now-older game
+ Great soundtrack. Inon Zur did a great job once again.

- The countryside, such as the Wounded Coast, may have nice water, but it feels very empty. And with the narrow corridor play returning from DA Origins, it also feels very empty. Aside from the narrative-related NPCs, very little ambient life.
- Some absolutely awful rock textures.
- Buying the soundtrack from Amazon can only be done in three transactions, as the soundtrack was split into three "albums" of about 12 tracks apiece. That's greedy.
- Too much DLC. This is a common issue with EA games, and unfortunately the pattern holds true here.

Side-quest: Freeze / Crash in Dragon Age II "Faith" Quest

I'm currently working my way through Dragon Age II for the first time (about seven years late, but whatever). I encountered a bug that causes the game to freeze and makes progression impossible. The fix is easy but cumbersome.

This particular bug happens in Act III, with the Companion quest entitled, "Faith." One part requires going to the Viscount's chambers at night. Hawke + party shows up, kills some blood mages, and - the game froze. I was able to unstick the game by hitting the Escape key; while that did not cancel the following dialogue, it did cancel cut-scene following the combat and preceding the dialogue. At the end of the dialogue, however, the screen froze again, for good this time.

The problem is discussed in this forum. Apparently the Exiled Prince dlc has some compatibility issues with Game Patch 1.04.

The fix:
1.  Progress to immediately before the fight with the blood mages. Save and exit Dragon Age II.
2.  Find the folder the Exiled Prince dlc is installed to. In my case, that was F: > Origin Game Library > Dragon Age II > addins > da2_prc_drk.
3.  Within da2_prc_drk there should be a folder called "patch". Cut and paste this folder to some place outside of the game folder. It doesn't matter where you put it - the desktop is fine - but don't delete it because we'll need it again later.
4.  Start Dragon Age II and play through the fight with the blood mages and the subsequent conversation with "Sister Nightingale" (lol at the name. Seriously, it was good to see her). After that conversation is concluded, save and exit Dragon Age II.
5.  Paste the "patch" folder back into the da2_prc_drk folder.
6.  Start Dragon Age II back up and continue playing.

That should do it. Cumbersome, but hopefully not hard to do.

12 Screenshots - Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Trailer Analysis

So the secret is out by now: the new game coming from Square Enix and Eidos Montreal is the new Deus Ex game, entitled Mankind Divided. The new game is a direct sequel to Human Revolution, which leads to some questions about how the ending of the previous game will be handled. I have heard that there will NOT be an option to import saves; if so, then one of the choices at the end of Human Revolution has been made canon... unless all three choices are somehow made valid? Hard to imagine a solution successfully doing that.

The Cinematic Trailer launched today. There is a large emphasis on action - just as in Human Revolution's Cinematic Trailer. With Human Revolution, action / killing was only one way to play the game. Since Deus Ex is a stealth franchise, I ignored most of the action as hype hubris. 

That does not mean there aren't cool things to learn from the trailer. Here are twelve screenshots from the trailer, and their possible implications.

Jensen in a floating Messiah pose... Or is it a play on Da Vinci's Vetruvian Man? This image resurfaces at the end of the trailer. Whether this actually happens in the game or whether it is just some cool metaphoric imagery meant to book-end the trailer (like the Icarus imagery from the Human Revolution trailer) is anyone's guess. I think the latter. 

Things are burning. The suggestion is that the insanity begun at the end of Human Revolution was just the beginning. As is said twice in the trailer, "The golden age [of augmentations, I assume] is over." Does this mean that Mankind Divided won't have the yellow (golden) filter over everything?

This is pure window dressing. It looks awesome, and it would be even better if this were actually an open city to explore. But right now it is just a visual prop. No indication where it is, either.

The fight between augmented and non-augmented people is the primary conflict, as indicated by the voice-over. This bot is scanning the crowd, looking for people who are augmented. 

If an "aug" is found, they are arrested. 

This yellow-hooded augmented man features prominently throughout the trailer. He is seen kissing the fist of the antagonist, slipping across a street, and being slammed to the ground by police (here). Almost certainly an in-game character whose relationship with Jensen will be complicated: are they friends, enemies, or both?

For me the most striking shot from the trailer. The lights behind Jensen are clearly meant to simulate wings - whether of Icarus or an avenging Archangel is not clear. Jensen was already the messiah of augmented people in Human Revolution (if you've played the game, you know what I mean), so it would make sense to continue the theme. 

We see Jensen fighting terrorists in this trailer, but we also see him fighting police (not Belltower operatives, but actual police), though, so his loyalties are sharply divided. Are messiahs allowed to be conflicted?

This is a clear reference to Michelangelo's painting, the Creation of Adam. So...yeah, lots of thoughts on this one. Has Jensen transcended messiah status to god-status? If it is a direct correlation, he is not saving (the function of a messiah), he is creating (the function of a god). And, given that his full name is Adam Jensen...and this is a nod to "the creation of Adam"...is this game going to, in some way, mark his ascension to something greater than what he is? (i.e., the most bad-ass yet moral ass-kicker on earth) So who is Adam saving? Who is he creating? Who is creating him?

This image could be of a new augmentation of some kind of super-armor, but I think it is just a fun way to transition to the game's title card (super armor would be awesome, though). Which reminds me that we see some new augmentations in the trailer. Where is Jensen getting these augmentations from, and who is he working for now? The most probable is David Sarif, but when you consider the collapse of the augmentation market that the devs have hinted at for this game, the fact that Sarif + Darrow + Taggart suffered various forms of disgrace (depending on the ending that is canonized), why would Jensen want to work for any of them? 

How do we know he is working for anyone? Because unless the devs are resorting to Deus Ex: The Fall levels of design (here's a store you can access from anywhere to purchase upgrades!), there will be some kind of corporate or technological backing that provides Jensen with these new abilities. I expect this entity, whether Sarif, Darrow, Taggart (not Taggart, please, that would make zero sense), or someone / something new, to also provide a major means of progression for Jensen's journey in Mankind Divided. 

Why a screenshot of a gun blast? Look closely. That is not simply fire from a muzzle-blast. Those little balls closely resemble the shrapnel rounds from the Typhoon in Human Revolution. Except this was fired from a (large) hand-held gun. More important than whether we see this weapon and ammunition in-game, this could be an indication that Sarif Industries has indeed collapsed, and its research and weapon systems have proliferated on the black market - allowing an augmented terrorist to make and modify them for his own purposes.

Though this game promises to be a continuation of Human Revolution, there is nothing to indicate Megan Reed's status. The one shot of her in the trailer is a flashback. 

While this character is being hyped as a "boss," don't get too excited yet. He fills the same role in this trailer that Barrett and Yelena Fedorova filled in the Human Revolution cinematic trailer. I don't doubt he IS a boss, but Square Enix would never feature the final boss in their first trailer.

So there you have it. I am really looking forward to Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. If Eidos and Square Enix are still on their game (bad pun, sorry!), it promises to be fun to play, and the story promises to be socially relevant. Both of those ingredients go a long way towards making a game great.


Update on 4/9/2015: Jensen does indeed have a new employer, and it is Interpol: http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2015/04/09/meet-the-power-players-of-deus-ex-mankind-divided.aspx

On Cloud Saves and Redundancy

I nearly blogged about this yesterday in a "the sky is falling!" kind of post. A good thing I didn't, since the story has since been updated.

All save files and "careers" of NBA 2K14 are stored in the cloud, not locally. So when 2K took the servers offline, all save games were suddenly lost. Outrage led to 2K bringing the servers back online, saying they decided to extend server life from 18 months to 27 months. Users should be grateful, because 2K's original response was less than comforting: "Sadly this may come as an inconvenience to some of you and if so we truly do understand and can feel for how upsetting this may seem as there always is a special bond that occurs between a player and their MyCareer save but all good things must come to an end and rest assured your MyCareer or MyGM went out while on top!"

I don't play NBA 2K14 (Madden is more my thing). But it made me stop and think for a moment. There are three primary uses for online game servers: to store save games, to run DRM checks, and to create multiplayer lobbies.

Multiplayer Lobbies
With multi-player lobbies, it is no secret that the ability to run the game is dependent on third-party servers. You could be left handing in Left4Dead 2 if Steam's servers get overloaded (which is happening more and more often lately). Battlefield 4 - ditto for EA's servers. Unless someone is running a private server, it is generally accepted that online multiplayer gaming is at the mercy of the stability of the parent corporation's data stacks.

DRM Checks
DRM checks are unfortunately a run-of-the-mill experience these days. A company that sells a product deserves the right to protect the integrity of that product. That doesn't justify Ubisoft's invasive DRM back in the day (remember the Assassin's Creed II DRM debacle?), but if a company demands a license check when I start the game, fine.

The problem that arises is if I don't have internet for whatever reason, or if the game company's severs go down while attempting to play. Mass Effect 3 is a perfect example of this. Every time I log in to the game, a DRM check is run. Not just against my copy of the game, but against all the DLC that is installed with the game. If their servers are down, the game will authenticate (since game authentication is done locally), but the DLC will not. So there is no way I can continue playing the game until the EA servers come back online. Unless I want to start a new game - WITHOUT THE DLC. But when a game's DLC has been monetized like Mass Effect 3's has, who wants to play without it, if you have it? To be fair, this situation has only happened to me twice in three hundred fifty hours of single-player gameplay (EA's servers have been very reliable). And if their servers go down while in the middle of playing the game, everything has been authenticated, so there is no problem (just a little message that pops up saying that connection to EA's servers has been lost).

And what if the servers used to authenticate the game go offline? If you read my post on getting the original Assassin's Creed to run, you'll see that the only way to play that game on PC - even with the DRM-free version from GOG - is to disconnect your PC from the internet so that the game does hang trying to connect to a server that does not exist. A patch from Ubisoft would have been nice...

Save Games
And now, save games. Every single game I have every played has always had local saves that were backed up on line. This is incredibly convenient. Just Cause 2 is the type of game that I glut on, get bored, uninstall, re-install, and glut some more. It is great that the saves are backed up in the Steam cloud, so when I re-install, I can pick right up where I left off. But having the save-file system dependent on an internet connection? Maybe console gamers have better (more constant) connectivity, but as a PC gamer that kind of dependence just boggles my mind. Always have redundancies, whether you work for NASA and are on your way to Mars, or whether you're playing video games paid for with money that save and scraped together for months.

Not having local backups is just insane.

If 2K had patched NBA 2K14 so that all files were now local, then shut down the servers, they would be saving themselves the headache of keeping their servers running, and their userbase would not feel put upon. I understand why so many companies want to use the cloud for as much as possible, I really do. It helps them police piracy. But protection of a product cannot come at the expense of the user-base. That will result the rapid erosion of said user-base, until it no longer exists.

Mass Effect: Fixing Blocky Player Models (AMD Steamroller CPUs)

It's no secret that I love the Mass Effect games. This post is about the first Mass Effect game. Everything plays fine until playing the Noveria Peak 15 mission. After driving to the main facility, you exit the Mako, and proceed towards the doorway. Right before entering the building, though, the realistic character models are replaced with a mass of jet-black blocks.

A bug, obviously. Right?

Not quite. This is a problem that only affects people playing on AMD Steamroller-based CPUs. This will be any FX CPUs and any Trinity, Richland, Kaveri, or Godavari APUs. Something about the way the Steamroller CPU cores read 3D architecture instructions (if you're playing on Phenom or earlier AMD CPUs, this problem will not occur). Generally, if playing on a recent AMD CPu, expect this to happen. Intel and console users should be fine (Mass Effect has not yet been released for XB1 or PS4).

Anyway, on to the solution.

Until the game is patched, there really isn't an outright solution. There is a work-around that makes the segment playable. Here is how to do it.

First, enable the console in Mass Effect.

1. Find your BIOInput.ini configuration file in the  BioWare Mass Effect folder. This is NOT the folder the game is installed to; usually it is in your Documents folder. In my case, it is C: > Users > [Username] > My Documents > BioWare > Mass Effect > Config.

2. Back up BIOInput.ini by copying the file to a safe place. I usually make a folder in the Config folder, call it something like "Original Files", and place the copy in there.

3. Open BIOInput.ini in Notepad.

4. Find the line that says "[Engine.Console]" (the phrase within quotes)

5. Place the cursor at the end of that line, and hit Enter, creating a new line.

6. Enter the text, "ConsoleKey=Tilde"

The text of your file with the newly inserted line should look like something like this (sans the fifteen "History" lines, because I have used this work-around quite a bit):

7. Save and close BIOInput.ini.

The console is now enabled.

Now play the game.

When you get to the Peak 15 mission, the blocky player textures will appear. When they do, bring up the console by hitting the ~ (tilde) key (be sure you're not in combat!). 

The console.

Type the words "viewmode unlit". This removes ALL shading effects. The screen now looks overly bright and the colors look washed out - but the blocky pixelated player models have disappeared. It's not ideal, but it is better than trying to play through the entire section with non-existent character models. Hit the tilde key to close the console, and continue playing.

Before...

And after.

The problem only persists until after you take the tram to Peak 15. Once you arrive and step off the tram, open the console again, type "viewmode lit" and close the console. Sometimes the textures won't re-load. If that is the case, quick-save (F6), and exit to the Main Menu (no need to exit the game). Load the Quick-save you just created, and everything should load with all textures, lighting effects and character models.

I recorded a video of the solution in action. See it here.

This blocky character model problem will happen one more time, on Ilos. Follow the same procedure as for the Peak 15 mission. Unfortunately the problem persists for the entire Ilos mission, only ending when you return to the Citadel. And yes, the textures may not re-load automatically, requiring a quick-save / reload like I just described. 

Why hasn't EA patched the game? Who knows. While I find myself defending EA on a number of issues, there really isn't any excuse for this. Hopefully, if / when they come out with a remastered edition of the trilogy, they will patch it so this problem no longer occurs. For now, though, this is the best solution for AMD Steamroller users.

More Jade Empire - Some Tweaks

So I'm playing through Jade Empire right now. Really enjoying it. It has all the usual BioWare hallmarks - interesting characters, branching choices, unique and fun lore. If purchased on Steam, there are a few tweaks required to get the game to run, as I posted earlier.

I'm almost done with Chapter 3 (of seven), so I am almost half-way. Even though it is an old game, it was not running as well as it might. So I started playing around with the JadeEmpire.ini file in the game's root folder (in my case, this is located in F: > SteamLibrary > SteamApps > common > Jade Empire).


Note: many of the settings for graphics and such in JadeEmpire.ini are in simple binary. Setting an option to "1" means "true", setting an option to "0" means false. Setting an option to more than 1 will result in it being viewed as 1. Obvious exceptions are for instance the sound-level settings, which operate on a scale of 0-100.

First off, getting rid of the silly frames-per-second lock (default is capped at 30). Thanks to this thread at GOG for making things simple. Open JadeEmpire.ini in Notepad and find the setting "ClampFPS". By default, this is set to "1". Set it to "0". The game is no longer locked at 30fps. Now it seems like the game's framte-rate is auto-locked to my screen refresh rate (60hz). That works for me. If you want fps to go higher, I'm not sure how to do that, as there is no obvious setting for Vertical Sync.

Next I started playing with some of the Render settings. FXAA is off by default; turning that on will reduce some jaggies. BloomLighting will help with some light. Here are my final Render settings:
[Render]
ScrW=1920
ScrH=1080
RefreshRate=60
SoftShadows=1
FSAA=1
BloomLighting=1
FrameBufferFx=1
FocusTrails=1
NoLogos=0
NoMovies=0
D3DAdapter=0
Widescreen=1
DispFmt=1
Windowed=0
SkinSW=0
ForceShader1=0
FontScale=50
AllowAtiFSAA=0
PresentImmediate=0
VertexOpt=1

Jade Empire now plays at a silky smooth 60 fps, and it looks pretty good for a game from 2005. I've done some searching for an HD texture mod. While I've found a few small texture packs focused on individual characters, I have found nothing to re-cloak the entire game. A pity. Jade Empire is as good as any other game made by BioWare (including Mass Effect or Dragon Age). Its lore and location (a land based upon Chinese myths) is unique and largely ignored in today's industry (the new 2D Assassin's Creed Chronicles, partly set in China, may alter that slightly). I hope it is not left to rot, but at the moment there is no indication that anything will be done to continue the franchise.