PC game recommendations

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What good pc games are out there? I have a mid level pc so nothing too powerful. I found Divinity Original Sin, Lichdom Battle Mage, and Black Guard.
What games are out there?

 

That's a pretty open-ended question. Some specifics of what you enjoy would be helpful - for example, do you like games that use a mouse and/or keyboard? Maybe ones that need a monitor or where sound is preferred? We need details!

 

Lol, I like RPGs mostly, something with a good story. keyboard and mouse. If it has a playstation port I'd probably take the playstation version but don't let that stop you from sugesting a game you like.

 

Witcher 1 and 2. Dragon age origins. Fallout New Vegas. Skyrim, Oblivion.

 

What Merlanni said. Minus Oblivion. And definitely get New Vegas and Skyrim on the PC because you'll want to play with mods.

Legend of Grimrock is a fun game, great gameplay and atmosphere.

Are you looking for recent games? Because I could also recommend Deus Ex, Deus Ex Human Revolution, Beyond Good and Evil, Jade Empire and probably some other games, depending on how much you like certain gameplay and how much you prefer RPGs over good story (because, let's face it, not every RPG has a good story - the above mentioned Skyrim and Oblivion are good examples of that).

 

Depends on how you define "good story." I'd agree that Skyrim's main quest doesn't qualify as a "good story," but there are so many stories you can complete through side quests that you can essentially create your own story in the way you link them together (though, of course, you can just randomly do quests without making it into a story). That's actually one of the things I love about Skrym. Certain quest chains -- in particular, I'm thinking of some of the city-based quests like the one in Windhelm or Markarth, and the Thieves' Guild questline -- have excellent stories within them as well. Again, too, as I said, you can create stories around what you're doing. For example, there's an assassin quest where you're supposed to kill a certain person (really?). And what I'm planning for my next play through is to use that quest to enter a completely different questline that will bring me closer to my mark, so that I actually will seem to be an ally when I'm really planning to kill him the whole time. (In my previous playthrough, I chose to start that second questline before I learned about the task to kill that individual).

But again, it's true that there isn't really a good overarching story in Skyrim, so it's not like Dragon Age: Origins, which does have a huge overarching story. That said, one of the things I dislike about Origins is how the main quest, at least at the end of the game, becomes EXTREMELY linear and you end up not having a lot of choice. On the other hand, Dragon Age's companions are much more interesting than Skyrim's. I tend to like Skyrim more (while I was playing Dragon Age, I kept wanting to be playing Skyrim instead) but I think it's because I'm a writer, so I use my imagination to mentally create the stories that aren't there. In fact, when the main story becomes too dominant, along with heavy cut scenes and voice acting (as it does with Dragon Age II), I feel more like I'm watching a movie than playing a game; if I wanted to watch a movie, I'd power up Netflix. But that's MY preference, not necessarily the Vhadin's.

So, you have to decide what KIND of good story you like: a story YOU create entirely, a story you PARTICIPATE in creating, actively making choices that change the story, or a story you mostly WATCH/EXPERIENCE passively, while actively doing the things that cause that story to progress (usually combat and other linear or side quests with ON/OFF ending (i.e. if you die, you have to redo the quest, so it really only has one outcome)).

To be honest, I didn't get far enough into Dragon Age II to know whether it becomes more participatory later on, although having the voice acting "scenes" take more time than the actual playing of the game frustrated me and DOES involve simply watching, since you only get to choose the flavor of the dialogue.

Skyrim - you create the story. Dragon Age: Origins is the second type: you participate in creating the story, but there are some choices that are made for you, particularly in regard to the end of the main quest and secondary central quest. I haven't played the others mentioned yet.

Oh, and I'm playing on a VERY low-end computer and I can play all three games just fine; I have some difficulties if I add too many appearance mods in Skyrim. I don't recommend DAII myself, but I know some people really like it.

Sorry for the long post; I'm terrible at being concise.

 

Ok, I've already played most of those I'll check out Fallout. Has anyone played the new Divinity game?

 

For me, I prefer at least some story. The TES games have this awful tendency to side track me. I've never finished Oblivion, for instance. I may have finished one or two of the guild questlines, but definitely never the main story line.

Morrowind I have played extensively for at least 5 times, playing through the expansions, finishing the guild questlines, becoming head of a house, and exploring until I could walk almost blindly to anywhere on the map from anywhere on the map. I finished the main story line only once, though.

The storyline of DA:O may become linear by the end, in the TES games all quests are linear. There were only a handful of quests in Morrowind that could be done in multiple ways. Sure, you can decide when you want to do what, but once you start on a quest, it's linear until the end. And most likely a fetch quest.

Of course giving multiple dialog options but recieving the exact same answer anyway as it is in most Bioware games is another way of hiding the lack of choice in most things that the TES games don't even bother to hide.


@Vhadin, I haven't played any of the games you mention, so I can't comment on them. Can you give some more examples of games that you liked and why you liked them? That may give us some more ideas of what to suggest.

 

You're right. I never thought of it like that. I create so much story in my head that it didn't occur to me that the quests ARE linear -- mainly you can either choose to do them or not, but once you start, there's really only one outcome. On the other hand, because there are so many side quests AND since most of them are fairly short, you do have more choice on what type of character you want to be and what type of story you want to create. Because the Dragon Age main quest is so long and so all-consuming (no matter where you are, part of what you're thinking about is the main quest or secondary main quest) that the lack of choice there feels much more restrictive than the linear outcomes in the shorter Skyrim quests. And I can definitely see an argument for allowing more end-of-quest choices in Skyrim. That would definitely make the game much richer.

Spoiler

For example, in the Companions questline, it seems like you should be able to CHOOSE whether to undergo the ritual or not to become a werewolf without losing out on the entire rest of the progression within the Companions.

But it's all preference. I like the fact that I can ignore the main quest and still feel like I'm involved in a complex story, that I can just go and do what I want. To me, it doesn't feel like it's lacking story because I'm now the one making up the story, so story is there, but it's my story instead of the developers' (incidentally, I've never finished the main quest, but this doesn't bother me. I believe you when you say it's very linear, but again, it doesn't take up all my time in the game, so the fact that it's linear isn't as bothersome.) On the other hand, I can see how you feel about the main storyline in Dragon Age compared to Skyrim, and prefer having more of an overarching narrative. And it's true that leading up to the end of the main quest, there are a lot of choices you make and they do have impact, which is one of the things I love about Dragon Age.

Spoiler

Personally, I think it would have been cool if the Archdemon weren't just a rampaging beast but a logical and perhaps even charismatic strategist, with whom you could ally with and have another equally powerful boss, perhaps a boosted Flemeth, as your new enemy. I know you can experience "the darkspawn side" through the Darkspawn Chronicles DLC, but the darkspawn are so mindless it's just horribly boring. I also think that it's great you can recruit Loghain, but I think that the option to ally with him earlier, especially for a pragmatic character, could add some depth and interest to the game.

I guess what I'm saying is that lack of stong CENTRAL or MAIN story is not the same thing as a lack of A story.

Edit:
Vhadin: Alas, I haven't played any other RPGs, so I cannot assist more.

 

I can see what you mean, but to me it just feels kind of hollow to imagine a story behind what my protagonist is doing and his motivations, but that the game world doesn't react to it in any way. In DA:O you can at least respond in different ways in dialog, giving some expression of your character in the game world - although it matters little enough as the responses tend to converge after one or two different lines.

In Morrowind or Oblivion (or Skyrim, I suppose), there's little to no reaction to anything you do. There's no expression of your character's imagined character.

It's great that you have such imagination that you can fill in the story for both your own character and the reaction of the world around her/him. But I can't, there's no feedback, no reaction, nothing that could be perceived as a reward. I could just murder an entire town in Oblivion, down to the last man, and nobody would care. Nothing to boost the ego of my sociapathic, narcissistic megalomaniac.

In Fallout I could just take the waterchip from the Ghouls, but then the Ghoul town would dry out. There would be consequences to my actions. These are what I consider rewards for choosing my character to be some kind of personality.

Don't get me wrong, I do like the sandboxy free play that Morrowind offers, but the story is not one of the things that draws me to this game.

 

Yeah, that does irritate me, too. One of the things I loved the first couple of times I played Dragon Age was when I would fail to do something by a certain time and then the world changed and I couldn't do it later. I've seen a lot of complaints about those two things, but they were actually some of my favorite parts because it showed that reactivity. They're not consistent, though: there's another time when you're warned you need to act FAST, but if you take your time, there's actually no consequence (and it gives a moral out to a complex dilemma). But yeah, in Skyrim, it doesn't really change, and I wish it would.

But I think my BIGGEST problem with Skyrim is the companions/followers (not the Companions). I know there's a mod that can give them more interesting things to say when traveling, but when you talk to them directly, they all have exactly the same options and replies. You can't ask them about their past or learn who they are as people. It's like they're really all the same person with different flavors -- more like customizable robots than real people. That irritates me a lot.

It seems like I should like Dragon Age more, but for whatever reason, when I'm playing Skyrim, I don't think "Gosh, I wish I was playing Dragon Age," but when I play Dragon Age, I do sometimes think, "Gosh, I wish I was playing Skyrim." (Other than when interacting with followers -- then in Skyrim I ALWAYS wish they were more like the followers in Dragon Age). The only thing I can figure is that it's because I'm a writer and I DO end up feeling like I'm creating a new story every time I play Skyrim, despite the lack of reactivity. Well, and I also like aimlessly wandering through the landscape on horseback (with appropriate mods, of course).

 

I tried initiating a conversation with an NPC like that once. The response I got was along the lines of “look, pal, what d’you expect? I’m basically a bunch of zeroes and ones put into some semblance of order by some guy in California. I am exactly like a customizable robot rather than a real person. So get off my back, OK?”

It was kind of upsetting and insulting at the same time.

 

Still, the ones and zeros in DA:O manage to act a lot more convincingly like human beings, or antropomorphic similes of it, anyway.

It sounds more like the ones and zeros in Skyrim are like mannequins for you to try out your fancy new, modded armor/clothes on and to see what it looks like. I'd say they were just mules, but as anyone who's ever been in contact with mules can tell you, mules definitely have personality.