I guess if there'd really be legislation mandating the preservation of 'old' games, all we'll really get is a faster transition to streaming services. No "buying" (licensing) of the game any more, just a couple more subscriptions to libraries of ever-changing content.

Also solves cheating in multiplayer games. Win-win for the industry.

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I first read the article headline "GOG now ask for donations when you buy games" and I am like "Hell no! Raise your prices if you don't make enough money!". But then the article states that it is for the game preservation program, and I think that's a legitimate cause.

Because truth is, as beloved as some of those classics are, getting them to run flawlessly on modern OSes, much less keeping them running in the future, must cost more than they will realistically bring in as revenue.

So I guess I might send some money that way with my next purchase, even though I personally would want to see more modern indie games making their way to GOG. Maybe those would make the money to preserve another game or two?

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This just reminds me how old I am

Yeah, just hearing the iconic music again gave me goose bumps. Guess they'll have at least one certain sale.

The only question that remains: special edition or not? OST on CD certainly sounds appealing (I'm not so old that I'd be into records)!

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One of these days I have to try this or the other one.

While I do not usually backup my saves while I still play the game, I do like to keep them once I either give up on or complete it. Who knows if, in the far future, I might want to continue or revisit some part.

Right now I do all that manually, and usually only before drastic changes to the PC, so something a little more automated would come in handy.

OTOH, I don't view game progress as something essential that needs to be kept safe. Yeah, losing my 100 hours in, say, KC:D2 would suck, and I certainly would not want to redo those, but I guess I have already extracted enough value out of the game to move on without regret.

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I nearly skipped TW3 due to the combat focused trailers. I'm glad I didn't, even though at the time I started playing, it required a patched and self-compiled version of Wine, and even that was barely working at the start. By the time I completed it, it ran as if native in vanilla Wine (+ the then brand new DXVK).

I really liked how close it felt to the books, how sometimes a seemingly small task could set into motion a long series of quests, and indeed, with Dead Man's Party, it features my most favorite quests of all time. And not to forget, the game within the game, Gwent :-).

And yet, it came a bit late in life to make it high on my list of all time favorite RPGs. Nostalgia is hard to beat!

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Looking forward to the first benchmarks. I can't believe it won't be a huge upgrade over my RX6600.

I also have a RX6600, but as long as the games I play run decently, I don't think it makes sense for me to upgrade.

But once I do, I would not look at less than 16GB of VRAM, and possibly more by then. When I buy a card, even in the $300-something price range, I want it to last at least 5 to 6 years.

And at least during the past upgrade cycles, I always quadrupled VRAM, from 512MB on the 9600GT to 2GB on the GTX950 to 8GB on the RX6600. I'd be hard pressed to remember what I had before, though.

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Sable alone justifies getting the bundle :-).
Citizen Sleeper is okay, quite gripping at the start, actually, but I found it's one of those games where success begets more success, and failure begets more failure.
NORCO I've never got to properly work under Wine, though I haven't tried in a while.
A Space for the Unbound is still on my wishlist.

Can't say much about the rest, but Genesis Noir seems to be quite the spectacle.

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I've yet to actually play it, but at least from what I've seen from the trailer and screenshots, I like the higher resolution. Sure, the backgrounds aren't super detailed (in fact, they look like they could be easily scaled down to 640x480, too), but I like the larger character sprites.

And honestly, after playing all these Daedalic adventures in glorious full HD 10 to 15 years ago, I think it's time the rest of the scene catches up. It's not like most of these games are true pixel art anyway.

As for the gameplay, not sure how the trial and error mechanic will work out in practice, but feels more like they took a cue from Sierra instead of Lucasarts. But I guess it fits the time travel theme.

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I hear that Mask of the Betrayer is supposed to be pretty good. I never got around to playing that back in the day, so maybe here's a chance for catching up.

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Knowing the game I'm already anticipating to see Confucian vikings building up a hegemony and christian samurais going on crusade to Korea... :).

Not if I get to doing that first ;-).

In my current campaign, starting as close to my birthplace in southern Germany as possible (the exact location is a City holding, so not playable, unfortunately), I made it a habit to marry Indian women and at some point converted to my mother's faith. I then turned the HRE into an administrative realm and after the second crusade against me, I was fed up and dismantled the papacy. Then, more by chance than by following a clear plan, I inherited a religious legend and upon completion was presented the opportunity to convert all neighboring rulers to my faith, including the Byzantine Emporer. Pilgrimages in this setting are quite the journey, though ;-).

I actually like to try wacky things, like breeding a line of albino witches (and you wouldn't believe how many non-albino children there are, even if both parents have the trait. Either a bug, rampant adultery, or my grasp on genetics isn't as good as I think it is). And it's fun to see how the game reacts to those things and what it throws my way as a result.

Though I assume tough luck if players would rather re-enact history as close as possible :-).

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