I still don’t understand the sentiment that turn-based doesn’t sell. We just got Clair Obscur breaking expectations.
Part of it is, you have to make the combat interesting visually, tactically, and sometimes even tactilely. Some games get that right: Persona 5, Like a Dragon, etc.
I would also go on a limb and say that 99.9% of strategy in turn taking games is terribly designed. Buff attack, use strongest attack. The one that I really wanted to see more of is a system like Cosmic Star Heroine’s.
Hey, just wanted to say I appreciate your posts. They give me the vibes of cracking open an old EGM. It’s nice to have a nice curated newsletter that doesn’t read like the SEO garbage that’s all over the web.
Exactly what I am going for, since I wasn’t alive for the old blogs and newsletters and old gaming sites. I’m tired of sites begging for Patreon members, and using ads, and its all such a drain.
Thanks for saying so, it makes me so happy seeing anyone read these damn things!
I read all of these too and I love them so much!!! I don’t have to close 2 separate video players playing ads, one taking up the top half of the screen and the other taking up almost the entire bottom left or right…which pop back up after like 2 minutes.
There’s also no agenda or weird outrage- just pure gaming news and neat little oddities that I enjoy reading about.
You should definitely look into starting a website as well as a career in journalism because you are amazing at creating this here little ‘zine and I’d love to see it flourish into a career if it’s something you enjoy doing :)
Personally I would like to see the whole remaster/remake trend end as soon as possible. Let’s stop selling the same games multiple times, with considerably increased price tag every time.
While some remakes are decent and make sense (e.g. Resident Evil remakes, though even they aren’t perfect), most are just plain money grabs. Remade into a third-person action adventure with RPG elements, if they weren’t already. With generic Unreal graphics, poor optimization, worse or no modding support.
Old games are great, easy to run, and can be bough for pennies. What exactly makes a remake so appealing? Better graphics? No offence to anyone, but I feel like people who care so much about graphics don’t even play games.
I think I’ll continue to ignore the new rereleases, with very rare exceptions, and keep having a blast with the originals. If game companies can’t be bothered to put in the effort and make some new, interesting titles, then I guess they’ll be making zero money from me.
I don’t know how it has become so fucking easy for large corporate content creators to push the narrative that coming up with ideas for new stories or new games is actually difficult.
There are so many games that have yet to even be thought of.
There are so many storylines that have never touched pen to paper that we could experience, And I know that it is a little risky to offer something to people that they have not personally experienced before, but holy shit, why do we have to remake everything 650,000 fucking times?
Okay, how about a game where you are a voodoo priest, and you move a doll through a board full of traps and whatnot, and then the person who you have possessed with your voodoo doll then follows the path that you navigated with the voodoo doll.
Spice it up by having extra events happen while the person is moving through the real life version of the board that you then have to use your voodoo powers to compensate for while you now no longer have any more control over the person who you’ve taken over.
I guess that’s more of like a puzzle thing, so sure, for an RPG, How about an Isekai game where you plop down into a magical world and you’ve got all the pop-up screens and everything like you would see an anime and manga, but there is no Demon King, there is no great evil to defeat. It’s just you exploring the world and having fun with your kind of cheat OP powers while meeting people and learning about the history of this world you’ve been plopped into.
You can have actual events happen by like being involved in small-scale battles between kingdoms and uncovering lost relics and dungeons that have never been explored even by the locals and building a party of people to establish your own kingdom in a neglected land.
The latter would give you an opportunity to go like City Builder Sim-style for a bit of the game.
Or if you think that’s stupid, How about a role-playing game where you and a bunch of your other magician, wizard, witch, whatever friends, have built the first fantasy spaceship, and now you’re flying through the celestial realms, visiting all of the other planets in the solar system, and encountering new people, and helping them to solve their problems that have nothing to do with your planet but rather with the goal of establishing diplomatic relationships with other nearby planets.
This shit is easy. Coming up with an idea for a game, a new one that sounds fun and interesting to play that covers a different storyline and gives opportunities for dozens of different authors and creators to put a piece of themselves into it and come up with interesting fun things to do, that shit is fucking easy, and I don’t know why they’re not fucking doing it.
That said, I think SQEX is one of the better large publishers out there about giving ideas some leeway. Hell, they let Yoko Taro make really fucking weird shit for far longer than was reasonable until it finally paid off with NieR: Automata.
I don’t think anyone’s claiming it’s difficult, it’s just more of a risk. If you’re the investor calling the shots with your big bag of money do you choose a new idea which might be great but people might not like, or to rehash an existing idea that already has fans who will buy more of the same? The decision is entirely financial.
Nah. I'd rather they make something with the size, scale, mechanics (referring for combat and such but not same abilities, etc.), and storytelling of FFVI. Optionally some fancier graphics and preferably no grinding anywhere.
If Square decides to do another FF remake, they’ll either skip over 8 and do 9 instead, or they’ll go back and do 6. That’s what I think. But if they did 8, they better overhaul that stupid Draw system.
Only if they DON'T drop the classic turn-based combat. I actually hate the idea of a 'remake' that changes genre entirely.
1-6 recently got the Pixel Remasters, and before that 3 and 4 had the DS remakes. I'd like to see proper remakes of 5 and 6 myself, but that's unlikely to happen since the Pixel Remasters exist.
7, personally I'd play a faithful remake, but it'd be silly to make one since they already have the non-faithful 'remake'.
8 is the one game that could benefit the most from a non-faithful remake. It's a game that's worth remaking because the original was such a mess. But I feel like a bit of a hypocrite for saying that right after complaining about FF7. What I'd do is still keep it turn-based, but completely overhaul Draw and level scaling.
9 would be the most likely candidate as a fan-favorite that could be kept faithful and still hold up well. And rumors have been swirling around for a while that one may be coming.
10 and 12 already have the HD Remasters, and those are excellent. So no need.
11 is the most in need of some way to preserve it for future generations, but I don't know how that would even work. Could it perhaps be adapted in some way like they did with Dragon Quest 10 Offline?
13 onward, too new to need remakes. (And also I have no interest in the direction the series has gone since then anyway)
You leave 8 alone! It’s not turn based (in a strict sense) and Draw/Junction is the foundation of the entire game, mechanical and narrative. The scaling is a little weird because there’s two main experience bars and only one of them makes enemies tougher and it’s not explained, but so be it. All I want is the Japan exclusive Chocobo World and updated graphics without changing the visual style and maybe a soundtrack that doesn’t sound so MIDI.
UE 5 sucks major dick though. Like oblivion is a cool AI generated remake and gold use of that engine. But it’s far from optimized. My frames go from 120-45 in a matter of 2 seconds in the same area.
So…dev stumbles, fans harass, and the project is dead.
Goodbye Winlator…for now?
Ugh, another amazing one-person project killed by harassment. The internet makes it so trivial to bombard someone with hate-mail, and I doubt many of us have been through the “media training” necessary to deal with it. I only have the tiniest of projects going and if the people I thought I was making a nice thing for suddenly turned on me then I think I’d be saying “fuck it then” too.
Since you love underwater settings, you probably know already, but Subnautica 2’s Early Access was announced not long ago. I’ll wait until it’s complete, but given their track record, I feel it’s a game many people will be comfortable buying in EA to give feedback.
Couldn’t agree more with your take on Early Access bullshittery. I too refuse to pay for anything that is “released” and described as much. It is just another thing after micro transactions that have further ruined gaming and despite a personal boycott of these practice’s still gets ever more common :(
bin.pol.social
Aktywne