Mass Effect 2 Quarian and Geth storylines especially when they merge. Two interesting factions you deal with, and based on how you deal with them you get different outcomes at the end (which may have been in #3? I forget). Real (for those involved, not the story overall) outcomes based on your actions. Baldurs Gate 2: The mage tower and fighter keep questlines. Building a persistent base was pretty unique back then. It was then improved upon in NWN2 where
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Regarding reviews/coverage, I can suggest: TotalBiscuit (big SoaSE fan exspecially with mods) Jesse Cox Angry Joe Quill18 Tech Raptor Niche Gamer These all have, or have recently gained a lot of traction amongst a segment of the PC gaming userbase and mostly have a moderate to high investment in the 4x-RPG style games. As you know, many of us don't give a flying fudge about "traditional" press anymore.
Totalbiscuit - Great mechanical analysis and meta industry coverage with a solid ethical stance and no bullshit. Fun commentary while playing. Quill18 - Great gameplay videos and pre release coverage. Often in depth videos likke the recent "mechanics of Pillars of Eternity". SirTwiggy - Great for survival games. Twitch, not sure about Youtube. Jesse Cox - Fun gameplay, variety of games. Dodger / Press Heart to Continue - Fun gameplay, weird ga
Excellent piece Brad. The Jack Thompson example is a great one to bring up as it highlights the disparity between their actions then wrt violence in medium and their actions now wrt sexism in the medium, which coincidentally many of them have links to. The steam curators thing which was implemented recently is very illuminating for how gamers trust certain youtubers or personalties to critique games with Totalbiscuit having 230K followers to Kotakus 28K. A single individual