Octopus Overlords

I know that @Rumpy mentioned this in the Gaming Randomness thread a few months back, but since my bet is on it being the best game to come out in quite a while, I think it ought to have its own thread.

It's an RPG which starts with a bit of a cliche -- a world-weary, alchoholic detective on a murder case. But beyond that premise, the game looks to be headed in totally fresh and interesting directions.

You have a sidekick, but the real members of your party are your inner voices, aspects of your personality. So at any given moment, one inner aspect might be perceiving a lead in the case, while another screams out for another drink, while a third insists on uttering a crude comment to a woman passing by. There are 24 of these inner voices, each named and each with a surreal visual representation.
https://zaumstudio.com/#features

Much like real life, these inner impulses compete with each other, making some choices easier and some more difficult -- even impossible.

When you level up, you choose which of these aspects of your personality to strengthen. Most contain both advantages and disadvantages.

Furthermore, over time, your decisions coalesce into formal "Thoughts." (I think I would have used the word "Ideas.") There are about 50 of them, with a limit on how many a character can hold at a time. Each of these also contains both advantages and disadvantages.
https://zaumstudio.com/devblog/

The game is open world and massive and all original -- no cookie cutter repetition. Visually, in my opinion, this game (at least the little bits I have seen) puts all computer gaming to shame, but then I may have unusual tastes -- this looks more like a painting than a movie wannabe.

Some people might not like it because it contains so much text. Massive amounts of text. Discussions of the game keep turning to Planescape Torment, but more so.

Some might not like it because it does not fit neatly into any existing box. I am always surprised at the extent to which fellow gamers start with a label like 4X or JRPG or whatever, and then evaluate the game by how completely said game ticks the required boxes for that genre. For such people, a game like this is going to be an affront.

And although there is some violence in the game, fighting is not front and center, it not the primary method of gaining experience, and it does not play out the way it does in pretty much all RPGs; you can forget about roaming around piling up XP by killing off roaming mobs and bosses.

However, to my eye, this game looks awesome beyond awesome. So much promise. More than any game I can remember, you really get to roleplay. You can try to be a hero or an ass or anything in between, and the limiting factors are mainly your own frailties and the general apathy of the world towards your endeavors. You can do your job or become a homeless addict or wander the massive city... which is kind of a 70s alternate universe which is still suffering from past political violence.

This is the game that I am anticipating most this fall., and I can't believe that it's finally coming out soon!

Yeah, I've been keeping my eye on this one for quite awhile. I think it shows quite a parallel between Planescape Torment, at least in terms of the dialogue based system, and shows quite a bit of promise in terms of how to approach things. I think the detective angle is quite refreshing in the RPG genre.

It looks great. Hopefully it can run on my old Surface Pro or Macbook.

And the answer is no. Maybe on the Macbook but it really doesn't meet the minimum specs.

Has anybody seen a price posted for this?

Z-Corn wrote: ↑Sun Oct 06, 2019 8:27 am Has anybody seen a price posted for this?

Pesos, Rubles, or Knuts?

Z-Corn wrote: ↑Sun Oct 06, 2019 8:27 am Has anybody seen a price posted for this?

Not posted on their site or on Steam, but someone at Something Awful said it was going to $40 US.

I don't want to watch the whole thing, because I'm sure that something this length would be heavy on spoilers, but I did watch the first 20 minutes, and Kimchica really gets into the initial scene. Gives a good idea of what this game will be about.

$45.49 Canadian. If you buy it from GoG.com, they'll roll in a free copy of UnderRail (a C$16.99 value!). Offer stands until Oct22.

Both games look great so this is very tempting ...

Anyone else try this? I got it yesterday on Steam after seeing a bunch of enthusiastic reviews.What I read really intrigued me and Planescape Torment is a dear game to me and the reviews mentioned that game alot. Anyway. no real impressions yet, bought it, downloaded it and went to bed. Will get to more tonight probably.

Not really a new guy here as I have been around since Gone Gold and never posted a whole lot but did go into some fruitful spurts.
I have lurked around here and, hey, this game did get me making one post anyway.

Added to my wishlist after watching some of the posted stream. I'll get it when there is a discount. It looks very interesting, but I am a bit deep in backlog at the moment.

RM2 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 16, 2019 7:21 pm Anyone else try this? I got it yesterday on Steam after seeing a bunch of enthusiastic reviews.

I couldn't help but bite, even though I had been planning on jumping into Outer Worlds next week. I just couldn't resist all the positive buzz I'm hearing, and I love trying out games that stand out as doing something unique. I'll be diving in later tonight.

I also broke down after seeing so many positive comments. I have a backlog and was initially planning on leaving it for a sale but I love the idea of a big RPG that can run on my aging Surface Pro. Disco Elysium needs to be on minimum graphics setting to work smoothly but due to the nature of the artwork it is more than acceptable.

I'm only about 15 minutes into the game (a couple of restarts due to fiddling with the graphics plus a while looking at the character creation screen sucked away my gaming time) but it seems to work. I thought the amnesiac coming back into conciseness was a little overdone with purple prose but when I came to and started stumbling around the room it was fine.

I might have found a small bug. There is an early quest. On one attempt I solved it as a "secret" quest. My journal got updated, I saw an announcement about a secret quest, and my inventory changed. After fiddling with the settings and starting over I noticed a new thing in the room and learned about the quest (thus turning it into a normal not a secret quest) but when I solved it nothing changed in my inventory or journal.

It feels weird to buy a game at launch but it is a refreshing take on things.

I haven't even moved to day 2 yet but I have some observations.

I love the voices and the skills.

I love the French influence. Combined with the physical setting it gives a New Orleans vibe.

I'm sure it will open up a little but the story feels very linear right now. Especially since I can see a sort of optimal path through the first day's actions. Not that I followed this path but on a second run through the game I expect I can do much less running back and forth.

It's not quite as open as I had hoped. More like a well written VN with skill checks and choices that matter.

OK. I bought the game and started off with the default "intellect" character. No idea what was going on but had a blast. Died a lot.

Did again.

Yup. Again.

After a few plays of that character, I created my own and paid close(r/actual) attention to the main and sub stats and defined them based on how I wanted my character to be. In other words, I created my character for this RPG.

What fooled me at the start was this didn't feel like an RPG. But it is in the best sense. Your stats do matter and you need to match those stats to how you want to play the game. i.e don't put points into AGI and sneak if you're going to rush into battle

I'm also saving heckalot as I figure out this new ruleset.

Has GotY potential, imo. Looking forward to seeing if the early shine holds up throughout.

Onwards ... but first let me talk more to that mug.

Madmarcus wrote: ↑Tue Oct 22, 2019 12:32 am I'm sure it will open up a little but the story feels very linear right now. Especially since I can see a sort of optimal path through the first day's actions. Not that I followed this path but on a second run through the game I expect I can do much less running back and forth.

It's not quite as open as I had hoped. More like a well written VN with skill checks and choices that matter.

That's a bummer. Maybe it opens up eventually? I'm waiting until the price gets lower a bit before I get it. But I could imagine the first bit being linear to introduce the concept before opening things up. The first bit of Planescape Torment was fairly linear until you escaped the morgue.

I jumped in on this madness as well. I don't mind the dying, but boy is it easy to die early on from causes that aren't quite apparent.

Loving it so far though.

One thing I didn't clue in on until later was that, if you have charges to increase your health or morale, you have to click on the health or morale button to consume the "potion".

I did a lot of "fade to black" early on when I didn't have to.

Ha

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... e=emb_logo

This has been on my wishlist since it came out, but with my backlog (of games I WANT to play, not required to, to clarify for some of youse! ), I just waited for a sale, which came last week with those Epic coupons. I paid around $8 I think.

And boy, just playing for about an hour, I am as blown away as I thought I would be.

As someone mentioned upthread, the graphics are just unbelievably good, to the point that they are indeed art. And very artSY, as well, if you know what I mean. Looks like a freaking impressionist painting (that's a compliment in my book). Just gorgeous.

I have already laughed out loud in the 1st 30m. I assume this could go a lot of ways depending on how you play, and what kind of character you roll, but there is a certain telephone convo early on (from a squad car, to your precinct) that is freaking hilarious. I kept going against what my better judgement voices kept suggesting, and it just got worse (and funnier) and worse. My God, the writing may even be on par with the beautiful graphics.

Can't wait to see what's next. My only gripe is that NONE of the mechanics are explained (yet, at least). When it comes to skills and character creation and upgrades, I could use a little more "mouse-over" info or something. I hate to have to go look shit up on the internet when it comes to just basics and mechanics. IMO the devs should do that work for me.

Anyway, lovin' it so far, and it's certainly met my high expectations.

You're reminding me how much I enjoyed this game. One of my favorite moments, and I don't think this qualifies as a spoiler since it's one of the very first things that happens in the game, is making a skill check to look at yourself in the mirror.

I thought part of the fun was the uncertainty of exactly what all the skills do. That and the constant, competing voices in your head.

paulbaxter wrote: ↑Fri Dec 31, 2021 12:09 pm I thought part of the fun was the uncertainty of exactly what all the skills do. That and the constant, competing voices in your head.

No, I get that, and appreciate it when it's done properly in a game. I just don't like having to remember what "Inland Empire" does or even means without having to go look it up. Either make the names less esoteric, or just give me the dang mouse over info that was already presented for this skill earlier. There are some other similar things like that where maybe the info was given at one point (maybe profile creation?), or even not at all, but then they assume you just memorized all the text you were presented with during that process.

Also, I started over (rolled a very similar character to my first one, heavy on intellect and psych, but physically horrible (because yeah, this guy is DEFINITELY that, right?), but met my end absurdly early in the game (before I even left my room...TWICE!!!) Death by reaching up? Come on man...that's hard core and a little crazy even for when games WERE that unforgiving in the 90's. Hell, that's almost text adventure level bs. To see that mechanic in a modern game, as polished as this one is a BIT offputting.

Now that I think about it, are they PUNISHING me severely for making my character so physcially weak?!

I'm late to the party on this one and like others, I'm a tad overwhelmed with the info dumps from the Measurehead and the rich lady on the boat. I take it I'm mostly supposed to power through it, let it wash through me, and it'll make sense at some point? Already died once due to a morale fail, but had an autosave that didn't make me redo much.

I also chose one of the default characters that has the Intellect focus, so there's probably more dump than the other builds due to Encyclopedia.

I wanted to like this game so, so badly. Even bought it on two separate systems (PC and PS4) in the hopes that it would click. It seems like it would have been right up my alley: incredibly strong narrative, unique world, interesting characters, beautiful artwork, etc.

"Overwhelming" is a good word to use to describe it. I never really felt like I knew what I should be doing. I had several instances where I apparently picked the "wrong" choice, died, and had to replay long conversations or events. And while the world was initially interesting, I kinda hated everyone in it. Every character was an irredeemable asshole and I found myself not caring one bit about what happened to them. I get that that was the whole point, but it didn't exactly make for an engaging experience, imo. I also wasn't crazy about the whole abilities=personality traits either...felt way to vague and unfocused.

I got about 8 hours in on two separate occasions before finally giving up.

I've wanted to play it and I've even bought it, but my PC isn't powerful enough or doesn't have enough memory to run it properly. I've shelved it until I can properly enjoy it.

Rumpy wrote: ↑Wed Jul 13, 2022 2:47 pm I've wanted to play it and I've even bought it, but my PC isn't powerful enough or doesn't have enough memory to run it properly. I've shelved it until I can properly enjoy it.

What kind of GPU/CPU/RAM are you working with? Because according to this developer announcement, you certainly ought to be able to get it running on the gaming-equivalent of a potato:

store.steampowered.com wrote:Working Class Update!
We've been working hard on optimizing Disco Elysium so that it runs on as many hardworking machines as possible. No matter how old or low-tech they may be!

If you found that your computer struggled to run Disco Elysium before then this update will hopefully remedy that. Many more people can play for the first time, or have a much better and smoother experience than before. This one's for all our bratan keeping it real by booting up games on their ancient potato machines.

With this latest update, Disco Elysium's minimum specs have been dropped down to Mariana Trench levels. That goes for both the Windows PC and Mac versions.

New PC minimum:
Windows 7 and DirectX 11 compatible video card (integrated or dedicated with min 512MB memory). 2GB RAM, Intel Core 2 Duo, 20GB hard disk space.

New Mac minimum:

• MacBook Pro: from mid 2009
• MacBook Air: from mid 2012
• iMac: from late 2009
• Mac Pro: from late 2008
• Mac mini: from 2009

* An OpenGL capable system
* The higher fan speeds are normal effect, fans run faster when 20% or more of CPU capacity is used.
* These are the oldest tested machines, we cannot guarantee all different specs run but we tried to push specs as low as possible without sacrificing gaming experience.

We're determined to take it further too. We're going to try to keep optimizing so low that we break through the crust on the other side of the planet. Show us your scrapheap calculators and rusty adding machines and we'll give it a go. Disco Elysium for all!

So, if you had problems running it previously, it may behoove you to try again with the optimizations that were since developed for lower-spec systems.

Anonymous Bosch wrote: ↑Wed Jul 13, 2022 4:07 pm

Rumpy wrote: ↑Wed Jul 13, 2022 2:47 pm I've wanted to play it and I've even bought it, but my PC isn't powerful enough or doesn't have enough memory to run it properly. I've shelved it until I can properly enjoy it.

What kind of GPU/CPU/RAM are you working with? Because according to this developer announcement, you certainly ought to be able to get it running on the gaming-equivalent of a potato:

My specs are in my signature. When I tried it out a few months back, I had it dialed to its lowest settings, and it still struggled. More or less, it'd be able to play smoothly, but scene transitions would more often than not cause it to crash, which became a gamble, especially since it took long enough to load. The crashes eventually became too much to enjoy it. To be fair, that's not so much an issue with the game, so much as it is an issue with Unity, as I've found Unity to gobble up resources. A game my Brother got me for Christmas for instance became unplayable for me even at the lowest settings (which ironically is called the potato setting) and it's made in Unity, and it while it generally was playable, when it came to doing certain things, the game would just crash out when bottoming out on resources, such as flying high up. It really didn't like that.

But given you say they've made an attempt at making it more playable on lower end systems, I might give it another look sooner.

Rumpy wrote: ↑Wed Jul 13, 2022 5:53 pm

Anonymous Bosch wrote: ↑Wed Jul 13, 2022 4:07 pm

Rumpy wrote: ↑Wed Jul 13, 2022 2:47 pm I've wanted to play it and I've even bought it, but my PC isn't powerful enough or doesn't have enough memory to run it properly. I've shelved it until I can properly enjoy it.

What kind of GPU/CPU/RAM are you working with? Because according to this developer announcement, you certainly ought to be able to get it running on the gaming-equivalent of a potato:

My specs are in my signature. When I tried it out a few months back, I had it dialed to its lowest settings, and it still struggled. More or less, it'd be able to play smoothly, but scene transitions would more often than not cause it to crash, which became a gamble, especially since it took long enough to load. The crashes eventually became too much to enjoy it. To be fair, that's not so much an issue with the game, so much as it is an issue with Unity, as I've found Unity to gobble up resources. A game my Brother got me for Christmas for instance became unplayable for me even at the lowest settings (which ironically is called the potato setting) and it's made in Unity, and it while it generally was playable, when it came to doing certain things, the game would just crash out when bottoming out on resources, such as flying high up. It really didn't like that.

But given you say they've made an attempt at making it more playable on lower end systems, I might give it another look sooner.

Gotcha. I typically keep signatures disabled, which is why I missed it.

I suspect the game will probably never run well on lower-spec hardware, even with the optimizations the devs have made in that regard. So if possible, you'd likely achieve better performance and stability if you can install and run it from an SSD. Failing that, you ought to be able to upgrade to 16GB+ of RAM fairly inexpensively if you're motivated to do so.

Rumpy wrote: ↑Wed Jul 13, 2022 5:53 pm

Anonymous Bosch wrote: ↑Wed Jul 13, 2022 4:07 pm

Rumpy wrote: ↑Wed Jul 13, 2022 2:47 pm I've wanted to play it and I've even bought it, but my PC isn't powerful enough or doesn't have enough memory to run it properly. I've shelved it until I can properly enjoy it.

What kind of GPU/CPU/RAM are you working with? Because according to this developer announcement, you certainly ought to be able to get it running on the gaming-equivalent of a potato:

My specs are in my signature. When I tried it out a few months back, I had it dialed to its lowest settings, and it still struggled. More or less, it'd be able to play smoothly, but scene transitions would more often than not cause it to crash, which became a gamble, especially since it took long enough to load. The crashes eventually became too much to enjoy it. To be fair, that's not so much an issue with the game, so much as it is an issue with Unity, as I've found Unity to gobble up resources. A game my Brother got me for Christmas for instance became unplayable for me even at the lowest settings (which ironically is called the potato setting) and it's made in Unity, and it while it generally was playable, when it came to doing certain things, the game would just crash out when bottoming out on resources, such as flying high up. It really didn't like that.

But given you say they've made an attempt at making it more playable on lower end systems, I might give it another look sooner.

Must be that 8GB of RAM. My GTX 760 is a lower video card than yours and I don't notice any problems at all (even before that performance patch). I also have an i5 (but 16GB of RAM)

Yeah, I've been meaning to upgrade, but as you know, the pandemic really did a number on things. And I can't simply slap in more ram as I'm currently maxed out at 8GB with the board that I have, which means a new board and cpu as well. I'm well-aware that I need more and better stats in general, but it's getting to it that's been the problem, and the prices. It's been frustrating in that regard, and I feel like I've been missing out on some games.

Oh and no doubt about that 8GB of Ram. That's been giving me serious bottleneck issues. Games will bug out as they try to pull more ram than I have and I've seen some bizzare things happen. It's like games will hit the 8GB ceiling and will slam the door on me. Possibly when I do get more, I'll get 32GB rather than stop at 16GB as that will futureproof it just a bit more given how long I am between upgrades.

For what it's worth, it runs flawlessly on Steam Deck.

Btw, I bought this this past December during the Holiday sale, which means the working class update was already done long ago (2020 vs 2021), and I still had some huge issues with the performance of the game. Again, it's largely due to Unity. I think it's the way Unity manages memory, as I have several games that use Unity and I all have issues with them. Unity is not a lightweight engine.

Picked this up during the Winter sale and I'm just finally getting into it now and I'm completely enthralled. From the opening to the first 30 minutes or so as things are unfolding and you're learning not only the character and the game world but the RPG system - it's really innovative, smart writing.

Anyway, I know it's been out a few years now and everyone has likely moved on, but so far this feels highly unique and entertaining. That said I can also see where it might drive some people nuts as you're learning about the RPG system as time progresses in the game (I just learned how to use my volumetric shit compressor, for example) but so far it's been quite entertaining!