but they do have all the money in the world, no external pressure, no publisher to shit on them, it’s just their developers and artists and a vision.
I think that’s part of the issue. Supposedly they do have multiple games in development and a large percentage of their employees are working on them. But they are content to let the creative and technical processes play out, without announcing too-ambitious release dates which inevitably get pushed back and still have a buggy game released. And sometimes they even cut their losses if a long term project just isn’t working out.
Games should just get rid of character creators. Just play the damn game with whoever the main character is and learn to empathise with someone other than yourself.
See, I don’t really care that the player is referred to as “They/Them” in Deltarune, because it’s established that you are playing as Kris and those are their pronouns.
(and in Undertale, the monsters simply had no idea what Frisk’s gender was due to an unfamiliarity with humans so it’s kept intentionally vague… with they/them simply being the most gender neutral thing to call them and the fanbase having their own headcanons on what Frisk actually is. Personally my head canon is Frisk is male and Chara is female, which seemed to be the most common interpretation in the fanbase back then… my headcanon for Kris is that they’re intersex with they/them pronouns as I see them as being representative of both Frisk and Chara, but however you see the situation is just as valid unless the creator comes out and says “No it’s this specific way, everything else is wrong!” and to my knowledge Toby Fox has not done that)
Sidenote: First non-binary person I ever met used ey/eir pronouns, this was so long ago that ey called eirself “Genderless” instead of Non-Binary as the latter wasn’t a word. Ey was femme presenting, but very much not female. Sadly we’ve drifted apart and wherever ey is I wish eir well.
I always wished ey/eir had caught on instead of “singular they”, because personally I thought “ey” sounded cooler and was more straightforward than “singular they”. But hey I’m not non-binary myself so it’s not really any of my business.
On a similar note, I used to see shi/hir pronouns more often than I do now as well, though that was more for intersex individuals than non-binary. I still see some usage of shi/hir, though the people I see with those pronouns tend to self-identify as “hermaphrodite”, a phrase that is considered highly insulting by most. I guess what I’m saying here is that there are all kinds and it’s probably best not to make assumptions or assume gender to be a one-size fits all phenomenon.
I would like to thank you for taking your time to write this response. For some reason, I was feeling blue. Seeing the lenght of your comment made me feel heard and really happy. Thank you for sharing this with me, may you have a wonderful day/night!
I’m actually all for this as well, unless the game is some open-ended roleplaying experience just give me a character to play as and design the game around who this person is (I think the original Dead Rising did a good job of this with Frank West, the remake… well unless previews are from an earlier build than what we’re getting in September not so much)
And I mean a REAL open-ended roleplaying experience, not something like Fallout 4 that was blatantly designed for me to play as Nate, a lawful good heterosexual cisgender male military vet with predefined goals… with gay romance options and the ability to play as his wife Nora existing solely to give the illusion of choice… An Illusion I still appreciate because when I play I always wind up being Nora with Curie as my wifey.
(I feel like FO4 would be far less divisive if it was a spinoff about Nate’s journey rather than a sequel to a series that is known for player agency, and even then the Brotherhood of Steel suddenly being a bunch of Nazis is still stupid as hell)
Then we’d be going back to having the vast majority of games having a cis male protagonist. No thanks. I don’t mind playing as them from time to time, but I want a choice, especially if the main character is one of those blank slate types.
I’m not advocating for that either and I don’t necessarily they think they would these days. Ubisoft is steadfastly ignoring the dumbasses around the black male / Asian female leads for AC, no matter how loud they whine.
Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn made me realize I vibe so well playing as a woman. If I had had the choice I probably would have picked the masculine option since that’s my gender. I’m glad that game forced my hand, now when I have a choice I give it a real thought.
Games could have multiple protagonists with different bodies, genders, personalities, etc… something like Overwatch did have that, you could even play as a hamster or a robot!
Super Metroid because it’s amazing, and Castlevania Symphony of the Night for the same reason. I may be biased because those are two of my favorites ever but I swear they legit hold up.
As someone who didn’t play them back in the day, I feel like SotN holds up but Super Metroid doesn’t. Just as another opinion. I couldn’t really get into metroid fusion either. To me it feels like the moment-to-moment action gameplay is too clunky in the early metroid games I’ve played, even if the exploration element is neat. I did enjoy playing SotN for the first time a couple of years ago though. It’s been a while since I played either, so they’re not totally fresh in my memory - I guess it’s possible that I’m just more forgiving of clunky melee combat than clunky shooting.
Tangentially related, always amuses me how “metroidvania” has become the genre name, when originally it was just a way that reviewers poked fun at the big change between SotN and earlier castlevanias. They were like “this isn’t what I expect from a castlevania, it’s a great game but maybe they should have named it metroidvania”, and the name stuck. Another odd fact about that terminology is that according to interviews, the SotN designer never played metroid - they were inspired by the non-linear exploration with different routes opened up by items/upgrades in Zelda games (although obviously adding that to castlevania’s platformer gameplay makes it more closely resemble metroid). So it should probably be considered a zeldavania.
Ummm do not know who would disagree with you about Super Metriod but that is my go to game when I am sick of the stupid shit that is being pushed out today.
Just bought Forza Horizons 4 on Steam, which meant none of my 100+ hours of progress on the Windows Store version carried over. Apparently in those many hours I forgot how absolutely grueling the beginning of the game is.
I’m two hours in, and after basically everything I do, down to even opening the menu, I get the controls yanked away from me, and a plucky zoomer talks at me for 30 seconds about shit I absolutely don’t need explained. One of those was literally, not even joking, to explain to me how to buy items, and that adding multiple items to my cart would equal a higher total price.
It’s like they expect their players to have absolutely no agency or intuition. All I want is to boot a game up, customize a car, and chuck it around. At most I’d be fine with a quick blurb saying “here are the different types of events, here’s your home base. Now go explore.”
If you thought Forza Horizon 4 was bad, don’t even bother with NFS Unbound.
The gameplay is literally:
Be subjected to the worst soundtrack imaginable, with so much cursing even I, who is an auto mechanic in real life, was looking for a way to turn it off
Click “Play” in a safehouse, and click an item on the map
Suffer as your character makes the most cringe inducing, horrible attempts at dialogue readoffs imagineable (seriously, I hate literally every character in the game, cept the old black mechanic guy, he’s alright)
Get trapped in your car the entire drive to whatever you clicked on with the other characters in your car so they can virtue signal and talk about how evil tech corps and evil politicians are ruining the city (which is hilarious because all these characters are illegal street racers that regularly cause millions of damage in the city and multiple fatalities each race)
Then when you finally get to actually race, the physics feel like they were designed for touchscreen controls, same feeling of every NFS game since NFS 2015
All of this in the first hour.
The game is really not enjoyable. Whoever is at EA that keeps approving that physics model and forcing their virtue signalling into the game, stop it. Please. Its tone deaf, and nobody cares because it is a racing game. Racing has nothing to do with all that garbage.
The customization options aren’t even good. The only good thing about the game is the graphics and the fidelity of the sound effects. Thats it.
Yeah I only got into NFS since the 2015 entry. I have some nostalgia for that game even though it was pretty bad, but every game since has just been painful in every way except for car customization.
That’s why I love Forza Horizons. It’s got everything I want in a racing game, it just doesn’t subscribe to the idea of “show don’t tell”.
I’m actually enjoying Unbound rn, but I like rap and Latin music with explicit language. I do agree the story dialogue is trash though. Rydell is definitely the most tolerable character. I thought the Lake being named Lake Virgil was a nice memorial to Virgil Abloh.
Trombone Champ is the world’s first trombone-based rhythm music game. Unlike most music games, you can freely play any note at any time. You’re not just following along with the music, you’re actually playing the music!
We’re writing in Markdown here, so 4+ spaces at the beginning of a line triggers code formatting. It breaks line wrapping, so many readers are forced into a lot of horizontal scrolling back and forth if they want to read your text. It sometimes also breaks color schemes, burning dark-mode readers’ eyes with blocks of bright white.
Back to your request…
Your description reminds me of bits of Cyberpunk 2077 and Overwatch, but I don’t think it’s either of those. It doesn’t exactly match any games I can think of right now. Good luck. :)
They do, though. Like, all the time. Many Indy companies start this way, and a lot of AA to even AAA studios started after high profile people were let go or otherwise left a bigger company to start their own.
There were a bunch of game company closures in Australia in the 2000s and now there are a bunch of Australian indie devs, as an example. The cycle takes a long time though.
Back when it came out, it was so much better than everything else up to this point.
This, coupled with many games that started fanchises and/or were highly stylish and creative, and had new Equipment (GuitarHero, SingStar, EyeToy) make it the GOAT.
I’ve expressed this many many times to him over the years. I’ve said something like “I want to play games to have fun. If the game isn’t fun for me, then I will not play it anymore”.
I believe that he understands this. However, he just wanted so much to understand Elden Ring and beat it.
Personally, Elden Ring is NOT fun to play and that’s why I don’t play it.
I’m just astounded that my 8-10 year old son persevered so much to beat it.
Elden Ring and Dark Souls games are not fun to play per se, but it’s very rewarding due to the difficulty and skill required. That sense of accomplishment is why a lot of people play, even if it’s not explicitly fun to keep dying and restarting. Not everyone’s cup of tea for sure but many good lessons and skills to be learned playing it
I’m in my 30s. I’m gradually getting calmer. But seriously, if a game doesn’t induce the urge to throw objects around the room from time to time, it probably won’t make my list of favourites.
I always found the Dreamcast to be notable for being the first console to have polished 3D graphics. I don’t consider it part of the fifth generation because I believe those consoles went a generation too early for 3D gaming, at least to the degree their game developers did. The difference between your typical PSX game running at 15 FPS with claustrophobic draw distances and SoulCalibur (or any halfway-decent PC offering of the time) was night and day. You’ll hear cynical, lazy narratives about piracy, but that kind of thing was always on the margins in the 90’s. It was the rapidly-moving market that would be the problem for Sega in the end, as PS2 and Xbox represented yet another big step forward for nascent 3D technology.
The thing is, despite running up against the best-selling console ever made, the opportunity was still there for the Dreamcast. Sega bungled their Japan release but had a far better than expected showing in North America, led by a strong launch lineup and an untapped market filled by the 2K sports games. The Dreamcast is a great case study in the necessity of agile marketing; immediately pivoting towards a stronger Western footing after the successful 1999 launch would have put Sega in the position to capitalize on future success. The PS2 had supply issues and a thin library in its early years. Sega also had the foresight to put modems on their consoles, and Phantasy Star Online would go on to be one of the best selling games on the system. The US had better Internet infrastructure and adoption than Japan, and the lack of online service was the one weakness the PS2 had. Sega being positioned to compete with Xbox Live would have dramatically altered the market landscape. Instead, Sega only had one major online title in the end, but even that would come too late. When Shenmue flopped (due to major budget overruns), that was that. The Dreamcast library had peaked, and higher-ups at Sega were already moving to pull the plug.
Dreamcast also had fairly poor 3rd party support aside from Namco as I recall. I agree they could have made hay in the West, but that was an uphill battle without EA and I think Activision really bringing anything to the table.
In hindsight they should have done a twin stick controller too. I liked their controller, but the Xbox controller was that that should have been.
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