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Yeah there's a bit of 'uncanny valley' going on I think, plus the fact that ragdoll physics always feels more like a clever tech demo than an immersive experience to me.

Compare that with the sheer love that the 2D artists put into the 'gibs' in both Fallout and Doom. The brutal death animations for characters like Gizmo and the Overseer in Fallout 1, and the joy that artist Adrian Carmack put into every flying chunk of flesh in Doom. Such as taking scans of their own scabs and blood to use in game

In fact, come to think of it, that is the unifying feature of both Fallout 1/2 and Doom - the emphasis on the 'gibs' and gore. Maybe this is a reason why the combination works?

That was one of John Romeros core design principles wasn't it? In in doubt, add more gibs!

It is based on GZDoom, which is an open source project, so I'm guessing they can do as they please if they have the skillset and time.

There are already various RPG elements visible in the HUD - hit percentages, combat/world log, item interactions etc

I'd forgotten that the Necropolis level is the first time you encounter a Cathedral member as well. Fallout 1 is still the only game that genuinely convinced me to join a cult

And wow, those death animations look brutal, they really nail the visceral feeling of Fallout 1 and 2.

Especially the SMG and Plasma Gun, absolutely nasty. Sprite-based 'gibs' and gore. Way better than the 'AAA' ragdoll nonsense in Fallout 3 and even Fallout 4.

I would pay truly unreasonable amounts of money to play the Cathedral level from Fallout 1 done in that style.

Unity. Pray. Follow.

Nothing suspicious here, nope, move along

ok, this is looking even better

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0Wv6kkloCU

Who knew that Fallout 1 and the Doom engine would work so well together?

https://www.thegamer.com/fallout-bakersfield-remake-original-1997-game-gzdoom-engine-boomer-shooter/

Necropolis from Fallout 1 as a 'Boomer Shooter'

End of this month is a tricksy period for me too, family obligations etc

Yeah, the FO2 ending just seemed to culminate in a fairly boilerplate 'hahaha ultraviolence' type end-boss, despite all the variety leading up to it.

Whereas the FO1 bosses were just so damned... INTERESTING. Horrifying in appearance and nature, but charming, articulate, and just downright weird.

And I absolutely LOVED the pacing of the Cathedral, especially in a gaming era with far fewer spoilers. The descent into the Cathedral really did feel like some kind of descent into Hell or Madness.

Yes, I thought that FO2 was an objectively 'better' game due to mechanics, variety of quests/decisions etc.

But I preferred FO1s much tighter narrative, and the villains in FO1 gave it a much nastier 'horror/mystery' vibe which definitely fit my tastes better.

https://www.ft.com/content/29fd9b5c-2f35-41bf-9d4c-994db4e12998

"A new global gender divide is emerging" - the political/ideological gap between young men and young women has been widening for the last 30 years, and widened rapidly in the last 10 years.

Why this has happened, and what the implications are, are pretty profound questions for democracy.

Hey everyone!

My name's Cosmic Void and I make adventure games with pixel-art graphics, mostly point and clicks, but also some text parsers.

My upcoming game is Twilight Oracle, a comedy point and click adventure.

Some of my favorite adventure games include Space Quest II, Sam & Max Hit the Road, The 7th Guest, Sanitarium, Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, and Little Misfortune, just to name a few.

Yep, I also loved adventure games of that era.

Space Quest 3 was my favourite from that series, and I played the hell out of Leisure Suit Larry. Also loved the Police/Kings Quest series, and all the other late 80's-early 90's smorgasbord of adventure games, from Rex Nebular to Maniac Mansion/Day of the Tentacle to BioForge etc.

I think the pinnacle for me was Grim Fandango. Damn, that was a game.

Yeah, the shove of BG3 is largely unuseful except to throw someone off somewhere, for which it's borderline OP (because "disengage" or misty step are better ways to get a non-close-combat character out of melee range, which is another major reason for shoving, and because shoves don't cause knockdown).

But yes, I'm sure there are ways to do this, though making them streamlined is always a challenge - one can either end up with too many mechanics for the average player to remember, especially because D&D's spell system is already middling-weight, or you end up with all these things being specific actions for a certain class, such that you end up with a "grapple fighter" who can do makikomis as a bunch of special actions and nobody else can. BG3 feels like it has rather few positioning and control focused options compared to most things in its genre: often the front-line fighters have more options to control a larger area of space than seems to be the case in that game.

Yeah, one problem with grapple mechanics (and 'control' mechanics in general) is that it can be quite irritating to 'lose control' of ones characters.

One of the more annoying fights I encountered in BG3 was an enemy with the 'garrotte' ability (prevents the user and target from moving, silences target and applies damage per turn). However, the major irritant in this case was the critters also had the ability to teleport, taking their target with them... so the fight basically involved chasing teleporting enemies all over the map who were strangling my silenced and immobile casters.

*** and yes, of course they teleported to the most annoying, difficult to follow locations possible - roofs, platforms, round corners etc... and of course the casters capable of casting fly/teleport etc were being silenced and strangled

Its modified 5e DnD. Excludes the specific 'grapple' rules of 5e.

But again, I don't think it would take much tweaking to make an effective 'grappler-lite' skillset with what is available in BG3 (shove/disarm/knock prone etc), such as
- the ability to knock prone/shove/disarm as combined actions
- extra choices around how to follow up such a move, such as
-- simulating a joint-lock by applying joint damage effects
-- simulating a 'makikomi' by knocking yourself prone after the throw and doing extra damage to the enemy
-- far more control of enemy positioning (being shoved off cliffs is already very effective/irritating)
- the ability to 'reverse/counter' shove/trip/disarm attempts with a successful saving throw
- changes to prone mechanics to make being prone far more punishing in heavy armor
- reduced fall damage (grapplers spend a lot of time learning how to fall)

Lots more possibilities I'm sure.

Of course the other point that's usually overlooked about plate armour is that it is a weapon in itself to some extent, if an unarmoured combatant attempted to grapple with a heavily armoured opponent they'd most likely be pummelled to death by gauntlets, kneecops or the elbow thingies. Hell, just imagine getting squarely headbutted in the face by someone wearing a heavy steel helmet.

I could never get my head around the Agincourt melee situation, where lightly armored English men-at-arms and longbowmen were able to defeat heavily armored French knights.

Surely, I thought, even though the French couldn't move, their armor still worked and they could still swing their weapons?

Then I saw this video. Nothing to do with historical battles, its a video from a protest in Germany taking place in a muddy field.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9l3bLAx4Ng

Those riot police are wearing equipment that is probably significantly lighter than medieval plate, and yet hundreds of them are rendered completely ineffective by the weight of their gear.

That protestor in the monk robe is simply dancing around them with impunity knocking them off their feet for fun.

Another thing is the definition of 'grappling'. It doesn't have to mean WWE-style suplexes or rolling around in the mud. A simple trip, shove or leg-sweep to knock over an opponent in heavy armor is very effective, and indeed these kind of techniques feature very heavily in a 'battlefield' derived grappling martial art like jiu-jitsu.

After upending an opponent, a skilled grappler has a choice to continue into a wrestle, or simply leave the opponent on the floor and move on or strike for a weak point in their armor, which would definitely be the choice against an armored opponent.

I recently played BG3, and many of these mechanics already exist - shoves, trip/knock prone, disarms, throw, falling damage, joint damage effects (eg one character got a dislocated shoulder) etc. These can already simulate an awful lot of a 'grappler' skillset, even without the full-on 'grab/wrestle' side of things.

Would the bit about grappling hold true on a battlefield? I'd have assumed that in a combat with multiple opponents, the penalty of exposing yourself to strikes from your opponents' surrounding men would be sufficiently great that most of the time people wouldn't be that keen to initiate grapples and would rather stabbing and shield bashing if they had to be shorter than spear distance, because those things (at least I'd have assumed) keep you in a better upright posture for when the next opponent comes in at you.

I thought you'd know the answer to that, given your background in Judo

Judo is essentially a sport/sparring form of Jiu-Jitsu, which originated as a battlefield martial art for disarmed/unarmed combatants specifically to use against armed and armored opponents.

The throws and joint-locks definitely DO work against armored opponents, and things like foot/leg sweeps are arguably MORE effective against opponents unbalanced by heavy armor. In thick mud etc, a heavily armored opponent can be in serious trouble once they lose their footing (think Agincourt).

It's definitely dangerous to use if outnumbered, for the obvious reason that while you are rolling around in the mud with one opponent, another is free to do something very unpleasant to you.

So yes, grappling is a plan B rather than a plan A on the medieval battlefield, but its a useful plan B to have nonetheless if you find yourself disarmed or with a weapon ineffective against an opponents armor.

*** the mere thought of being hit with something like a hiza-garuma or tsuri-komi-ashi while weighed down with 20+kg of extra metal makes my knee and ankle ligaments hurt just thinking about it!!

At no point anywhere did I suggest that everyone must do their own research on all topics and discard all other sources of verification. I really don't understand such a binary and extreme way of looking at things.

Writing this reply cost 2 or 3 hours of concentration.

I'm not sure how to reply to that. Writing my replies have taken me no more than 5 minutes apiece. Its no wonder we seem have such a dramatically different perspective on these things.