I played a lot of the second game. I borrowed it from the library on a whim and it captured my imagination like very few other things did. I remember always checking the CD-ROMS in every visit after that to see if it was available again, and snatching it to every time it was.

It took a lot of inspiration from Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, but the two games had basically the same creative team anyway.

I’ll point out that you can use Dragon Age Keep to plan out key choices in the narratives of the first two games, and even create a world state for import into Inquisition. Helpful if you want to play Inquisition and want a refresher and/or don’t want to replay the earlier games

I think those screenshots look like something closer to Ogre Battle or the recently released Unicorn Overlord rather than any RTS.

The story seems generic at first, but it goes places later.

One feature I really liked about this game was that you can adjust the encounter rate, even down to 0%. No in-game consumables or equipment needed, just an option in the menu. If you want to gain a few levels, you can crank it up. If you just want to revisit an old location because you missed an item, you can turn it off.

I mean, Traveller’s Gate is still good, if a bit unpolished in hindsight. It’s just plain fun, especially if you’re familiar with fantasy and anime tropes, though I recommend keeping a glossary nearby to make the comprehension of the the various terms easier.

The Last Horizon, the series he’s working on now, is also a lot of fun. It mixes sci-fi and fantasy, and all the main characters are already able to bench-press continents (literally or proverbially), so their development comes via different avenues than Cradle, where Lindon’s personal growth was tied directly to his power level. I wasn’t as enamoured with the second Last Horizon book as I was the first, but it was still good, and unless Will Wight starts writing Nazi propaganda or something I’ll continue to read everything he publishes.

I’ve been reading Will Wight’s stuff since the first Traveller’s Gate book. He’s my favourite living author.

Orthos, sacred beast of the Path of the Black Flame

Well, there’s the fact that outrage seems to drive more activity than other types of content. YouTube sees it as a more profitable option to advertise a Very Angry Gamer™ to you, even if you aren’t interested. I guess they assume that you’ll find something to watch anyhow, but if they will profit even more of they can hook you into the outrage machine.

Then there’s my personal hypothesis that in order to enable this, YouTube’s algorithm weights your demographics, subscriptions, and viewing history much more heavily than your manual inputs.

I mean, it should have died years ago the last time they unceremoniously dumped talent over apparently ideological reasons, but they survived.

Granted, this time is different because now they are losing their primary breadwinner. They plodded along before because ZP still brought in people. This wound may actually be fatal.

I seem to remember them being surprised by the success of Bravely Default, not expecting a deliberately old-school RPG to appeal to modern audiences.

The cynical part of me believes this is performative on their part - they know a game like that will be popular, but it won’t be the most popular thing ever and they won’t make all the money. So, they try to push bigger games that are more easily monetized in hopes that people will just forget their own preferences.