Smalltalk with James Robertson

Thu'umcast will be back sometime later today - episode 32 is recorded, and we'll be posting it soon.

Technorati Tags: skyrim

Is this a great comment (in the group we set up around our Skyrim podcast) or what?

Saw a woman with one of the "college of winterhold" tshirts today. Needless to say, I interogated her on all things Skyrim and we both missed our buses

Technorati Tags: skyrim

A while back, we recorded a podcast on crashing problems related to mods in Skyrim. At the time, it sounded like Michael had run into an edge case that wouldn't impact that many people. Based on what I just ran into, I don't think that's the case anymore. Here's what just happened:

• I installed Dawnguard via Steam
• I had to unsubscribe to a number of mods that changed towns and villages, because I was getting a CTD on any exit of an area
• Things ran fine again, through getting the first Dawnguard quest
• I went into Dimhollow, and suddenly started getting freezes. A lot.
• Then the game started CTD every few minutes
• A look at the logfiles (see this for an explanation on setting that up) showed lots of stack traces, and my save files had suddenly jumped from 13 MB to 50MB

I suspect that most people using the PC game are going to slam headfirst into this, because the intersection of people still playing the game and people using mods is pretty high (especially given how easy it is to install mods with the Steam workshop).

This is utterly game breaking. I now have a level 63 character (with well over 100 hours invested) that is unplayable. Bethesda needs to worry about this, a lot. The game may be slow on the PS3, but it's not completely unplayable.

Technorati Tags: skyrim, mods, ctd

Well, they did warn us: BioWare made the stupid call back in March to "stand by their endings". That's really not the worst part about how things played out. Sure, there's plenty of lore breaking here (the relays were just "heavily damaged" rather than destroyed - someone with a few working neurons finally remembered the marker they put down in "Arrival").

No, the really stupid part is the "F*** You" ending they added. If you are frustrated by the endings, it's fairly natural to turn around at the end, and take a shot at the "star child". In the original ending back in March, all that resulted in was venting. Now, it immediately ends the game with star child saying "So Be It" angrily, and the reapers wipe everything out - you get a fade to black with a beacon left by Liara as a warning to the next cycle.

That's just arrogance - it's the BioWare team telling the fans "Don't like our endings, well, screw off". Fine - I'll screw off. The Mass Effect 3 franchise is now dead. If you want to treat a paying customer (one who bought the games on PC and XBox) this way, then fine - I don't need to ever buy anything associated with the Mass Effect story again. Or anything that Casey Hudson is associated with, either.

Just to be clear - while I object to the 3 main endings, I don't consider those to be arrogant. It's the new thing they just added that's arrogant. To even get there, here's what BioWare expected us to do:

• Have a save sitting just before the Cerberus attack (a couple of hours of gameplay before the ending
• To get all three options, invest in another 5-6 hours of Multiplayer - your readiness rating rots down to 50% if you - like me - haven't picked up the game in a few months
• After replaying a few hours of the main game, and investing all that time in multiplayer, you might be a bit frustrated. You take that out by shooting star child. BioWare decides you are unworthy at this point

No one needs to reward that kind of attitude. That's business killing stupidity.

Technorati Tags: mass effect, arrogance, bioware

As I mentioned earlier, the new "clarification" DLC for ME3 is coming out on Tuesday. The way it's supposed to work is that you have to pick up the action just before you launch the final Cerberus mission (which puts you on the racetrack to the end). That leads to two problems:

• What if you don't have that save handy?
• Even if you do, what are the odds that you've been playing multi-player since then? That's right kids, to get to the new "clarification" with the better ending variants, you have another 5 hours of multiplayer staring at you

EA should ship a patch with this that sets the readiness multiplayer to 100%, so that at least that annoyance gets cleared.

Technorati Tags: me3, stupidity

BioWare is releasing the "epilogue" for ME3 on June 26th:

BioWare is releasing the Extended Cut downloadable content for sci-fi role-playing game Mass Effect 3 on June 26, it said today.

I expect less clarity. Why? They are still holding firm to the "we didn't screw up the ending" theory of operation. Things won't get better until someone takes Casey Hudson into a room and explains to him - presumably using very small words - that he's managed to kill the franchise, and that the team will be executing a full retcon. Until then? The stupid will just keep rolling. Why do I say that?

BioWare also added that this new DLC will not change the ending, but instead expand upon it: "The Extended Cut is an expansion of the original endings to Mass Effect 3. It does not fundamentally change the endings, but rather it expands on the meaning of the original endings, and reveals greater detail on the impact of player decisions."

That's what we call an epic fail.

Technorati Tags: me3, stupidity

Is Nintendo signalling a desire to expand beyond the casual gaming niche they've done so well with? Take a look at the "pro" controller they are showing off for the next gen console:

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The trailer for Dawnguard is out - looks cool!

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it looks like the long wait for Skyrim DLC might be ending (at least for those of us with Xboxes):

After a few weeks of teasing, Bethesda may actually announce the downloadable content for Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim soon. Bethesda's PR man Pete Hines said today that more information could be released as early as next week.

Given my work/travel schedule, the new DLC could easily ship while I'm Dallas, leaving me cursing about the exclusive too...

Technorati Tags: skyrim, dlc

I was giving this more thought while I flew home earlier this evening - the statements from BioWare indicate that they have "plenty" of room for more stories, set before the events of Mass Effect 3:

In the newly released The Final Hours of Mass Effect 3 app, executive producer Casey Hudson says that the events witnessed in Mass Effect 3 is as far as he wishes to go.

While not yet sure what the franchise will tackle next, “whatever we do would likely happen before or during the events of Mass Effect 3, not after,” he says.

Here's why I think that's wrong:

• The First Contact War? Completely meaningless. We know how things end (badly) a few decades later, so we simply don't care. At all.
• The Rachni wars, or the Krogan Rebellions? The lore tells us how those end, definitively. Again, from a story perspective? None of the choices players would make matter, at all

And so on for any other prequel idea. By hosing down the future, they've hosed down the entire setting. This is why I believe they'll end up retconning it - they'll have no other choice. Now, it looks like the bozo brigade (Hudson) is still convinced that "they did the right thing", so they'll end up retconning things later (maybe much later), at a point when they can look maximally stupid.

Why is this inevitable? With all possible stories in that setting dead, it'll finally occur to someone at EA that they have a serious business (i.e., huge loss of possible future sales) problem on their hands. At that point, the powers that be will treat the ME3 ending the same way that script writers treated Highlander 2 - as an unfortunate incident that they'd like us all to forget (so that we'll buy tickets to the next thing in line). In the meantime, they just get to look stupid.

Technorati Tags: mass effect, stupidity