Well, it’s valve, so honestly the odds of it being genre-defining in an already established genre? Pretty high, actually. Seriously, when is the last time valve put out a shit game?
It’s been many years, maybe even decades, since I liked a straight up turn-based single player RPG. I seriously can’t think of one that has sucked me in since FFX. I even tried Divinity Original Sin 2 after so much hype and good reviews from my friends. But I just didn’t like it.
However, Baldur’s Gate 3 sucked me in. According to steam, approaching 100 hours of playtime (although I’m sure there is a good chunk of time where I just walked away with the PC with it “paused.”)
I’m not saying you’ll like the game, I have no idea. But to already be convinced that you won’t like it based on pretty much the nothing we’ve got it terribly presumptuous.
I’m not ordering pizza from a restaurant if I’ve eaten 12 pizzas before and never liked any of them.
I was very intentional with my language, and pointed out that we know pretty much nothing about the game, so claiming you know you won’t like it is h reasonable. This is nothing like having a pizza, not liking it, and then not getting that same pizza again. This is like not liking the pizza at one store, it’s much closer to saying you don’t like the pizza in one store, so you know you won’t like it in another. Still imperfect because it would be closer saying you’ve never had a pizza you like, so you won’t like the pizza in a new store, which is more reasonable because you have a lot of information about that pizza.
To be faaaaiiiiir… D:OS (both of them) make the age-old mistake of having really slow, uninteresting, prologuish RPG starts. It takes a solid 5h of powergaming or 10h+ of normal play to get past that hump. That’s the point where the story picks up and you have enough tools to start really taking advantage of the games sandbox.
With BG3 they really seemed to have learned their lessons.
This seems reasonably different than the headline implies. It’s a hero shooter, in that there are classes based on heroes (like Team Fortress 2 as well). The gameplay is more moba it sounds like. I think I’ve only played one other moba shooter, and it failed quickly, so that’s different already.
It’s not a copy of OW, and even if it were it could still innovate. Half Life might be a “Doom Clone”, but it did stuff no one had done before. There’s plenty of innovation potential without inventing a new genre. Even if you do create a new genre, it’s probably still just evolution of existing things. No one ever has an original idea. It’s always inspired by their environment.
I hate beets. HATE them. I will eat durian, thousand-year eggs, stinky tofu, and a million other things that most people won’t touch… but beets? Fuck beets. Their sweet-yet-earthy funk is like a dead animal that has just started to decompose. I don’t care if they are cooked, pickled, or stewed in borscht… hate them and won’t touch them. They ruin everything they touch.
This is like that. They are cooking with lots of beet-like ingredients. Some people will love that. But as for me…I hate it… I hate just everything about it… and I hate it because I’ve experienced all those ingredients before. Over and over and over again. What they are making is for a very particular crowd, and I am not part of said crowd.
This seems reasonably different than the headline implies. It’s a hero shooter, in that there are classes based on heroes (like Team Fortress 2 as well). The gameplay is more moba it sounds like. I think I’ve only played one other moba shooter, and it failed quickly, so that’s different already.
It’s not a copy of OW, and even if it were it could still innovate. Half Life might be a “Doom Clone”, but it did stuff no one had done before. There’s plenty of innovation potential without inventing a new genre. Even if you do create a new genre, it’s probably still just evolution of existing things. No one ever has an original idea. It’s always inspired by their environment.
All fair points, and given the way Valve operates (like a free collective) this would only happen if there were some really passionate people leading and working on it.
That said, it’s still a mix of things I just really do not have any interest in. Competitive online game, esports focused, MOBA-like, PvP, hero shooter… that’s a whole lot of hard no-thanks from me.
I’d love some new light-narrative single player and/or co-op stuff from them, though.
Valve releasing a competitive game doesn’t prevent you from doing this. I for one am excited by the potential of this game. Then again, I’ve been playing Dota for 10 years so maybe I’m just a masochist.
Nah. TF2 is a shooter with 9 classes. People can double up on “soldier” for instance. A hero shooter has for one, a lot more classes / heroes (which comes from MOBAs), for two activated abilities on each hero which change the games significantly, and usually disables doubling up in competetive modes. You wouldn’t call Enemy Territory a hero shooter for instance.
Overwatch disabled doubling up well after launch, and only because they couldn’t or wouldn’t balance the game such that a 4 tank no DPS comp didn’t utterly cheese the game.
I think you can get there in TF2 when considering subclasses via weapons loadouts. Demoknight for instance is a completely different play style than normal pipe/sticky demoman.
I stand by my assessment that overwatch is essentially team fortress 2 with a limit of one player per class and fewer game modes.
I don’t know the name of the trope, but it’s like when a cover gets more popular than the original. Except the person doing the cover (blizzard) is a huge scumbag.
I mean, okay, people can claim that every fps is just Doom with extra steps, doesn’t make the distinction irrellevant though. Mobas are their own thing, they aren’t called RTS anymore. Same with hero shooters. Tf2 isn’t a hero shooter.
If you set the server config to limit one player per class, and set the max team size to like 8, you basically have a hero shooter. That’s not an unusual config- some servers were just like that for years.
What’s missing ? “Each class has two powers” is an extremely specific metric I don’t think is a requirement for hero shooters, and even if it was you have the unique grenades on top of the more obvious “he can build a sentry, he can turn invisible”.
You could maybe argue there aren’t enough classes, but I don’t buy that. As long as you have enough for everyone on the team to play something different, you’re good. The characters in TF2 certainly have personality.
I knew someone who got really upset when I compared overwatch to TF2, but I think it was because they were emotionally invested in overwatch and felt bad when I was like “it’s kind of like this much older game I like more”. Saying the thing they love is kind of a knockoff made them feel bad.
Anyway. To your point. I wouldn’t call tf2 a hero shooter first. It’s not the best representation of the genre, probably. But to my point, I still stand by overwatch added very little on top of TF2. Most of Blizzard’s changes were changes in minor detail. It’s basically "more classes, fewer game modes, you can’t run your own server, and we’re going to try to sell you micro transactions "
I had a lot of good times and even more bad times with DotA over the years, until I finally freed myself from it years ago.
IceFrog being behind this backed by Valve bodes well, and I think the premise of an FPS/MOBA hybrid has promise, despite the market being insanely oversaturated already.
I’m not really interested in competitive games these days, but I hope it’ll be good to watch at least. Following The International was fun even after I quit DotA.
Was gonna say. How is the hero shooter market over-saturated? There’s like 3 games that people actually know about, and like 2 of those are good/decent.
I could be mistaken, as I don’t really play competitive games anymore. I thought between Overwatch, Valorant, Apex, The Finals and what have you there was lots of stiff competition.
I'd like a HL3, but not yet another competitive pvp game. So not sure if that would be the right approach if they can't even hit the same target audience.
Valve hasn’t released nothing but tech demos since Artifact, and that was a huge miss. And excluding Artifact, Valve hasn’t released nothing but tech demos in over a decade. So you could say Valve hasn’t hit the mark in over 10 years.
Alyx came out 4 years ago, and is recognized as one of the best VR titles of all time. It's a full 15 hour game, so not a tech demo. I'd say that's a hit.
Super Hot and Beat Saber don’t cause motion sickness. If you have no idea about how the different kinds of VR movement affect nausea and haven’t developed any VR legs, then that’s absolutely on you. Especially given that Alyx remains accessible to people prone to motion sickness by giving you the option for teleport locomotion and snap turning instead. I know my limits and while I can use smooth locomotion, I still use snap turning. Don’t blame the game if you don’t know your limits and it’s essentially your first VR game in which you don’t stay in a single spot.
They don’t often shoot either. I would agree when they do shoot they tend to hit though. At minimum, it’ll be interesting to see what the studio with such a large stream of revenue finally decides to release. Even if it’s horrible, it’ll be a moment to remember.
I really like what I see , and icefrog has been working on it for a long time. If he’s involved then I’m interested, the man created the moba genre and IMO the best moba on the market.
Ugh, as if we don’t have enough of this kind of game already. SMITE 2 and Marvel Rivals are coming soon. Valve for fucks sake, look at how well Half Life: Alyx did. I seriously hope they’re working on a future Half Life game or some new story driven style game at the very least. I’m calling it now, Deadlock is going to be another Artifact.
SMITE isn’t a shooter, though. Overwatch 2 killed Overwatch and left an empty space. I don’t see a problem if two games (or more) try to fill it. I hope they are fun.
That said, it shouldn’t be Valve’s only focus if fans are expecting different games from them.
Because many of us remember before that, when Valve revolutionized the single player first person genre again and again with the Portal and mainline Half-Life games.
Any other dev would have capitalized on the massive interest in a sequel or at least sold off the property so someone else could have continued those franchises.
Whatever it ends up being, I’m not interested. Never cared for competitive gaming. Sad that Valve has decided to use part of their enormous talent pool for, well, this while almost any genre would’ve been better.
Also, this is already a highly saturated niche. I don’t doubt Valve’s technical prowess and knowhow to develop a game that can surpass all the other ones in quality, but a gilded turd is still a turd under that gold leaf, even if it’s technically the best turd in the world.
That’s unfortunate that it’s not a genre you personally are interested in, but it is a popular genre and Valve is a business. Just because it’s not to your tastes doesn’t mean it’s a waste of their talent.
Oh absolutely. I’m not conceited enough to imagine Valve is developing games for me or that I’m entitled to anything. Just venting my personal disappointment with their choice. I still consider them the cream of the crop in game and hardware development.
I’m just curious why Valve looked at the oversaturated hero shooter market (seriously, we’ve had failures 8 years ago now) and said “Oh yeah, let’s devote our resources there”
edit: Like, I seriously can’t understand it. Not even Blizzard is coming out unscathed from Overwatch 2.
Not really my responsibility to make an argument for you. Of all the reasons Overwatch 2 might not have performed well, it being a Hero Shooter doesn’t have any strong evidence and you didn’t provide anything showing that was the reason.
One could argue Overwatch 2 being a Hero Shooter is why it didn’t perform worse than it already has, given its problems.
Blizzard is bad at balancing the game - could be true of any game, doesn’t have to be a shooter
Blizzard cancels promised mode - Blizzard being bad at design and following through on promises.
See 1.
Forcing a game to become the sequel, not making meaningful changes other than monetization
See 1
Blizzard made a bad game
None of these are a result of Overwatch 2 being a shooter, and all of them are a result of Blizzard being shit at making quality games, caring about players, and following through on promises. So thank you, you have done a fantastic job demonstrating that Overwatch 2 being a shooter is not the reason it didn’t perform well.
Competitive online games have been Valve‘s focus for well over a decade so it‘s in line with their portfolio. If anything, Alyx was an outlier they only did because they have a headset to sell it with. I think they know what they‘re doing. Sucks for you to not be their target audience though because they are pretty good at making games.
Hang on, that is a single player game? I now auto-discard AAA games up front because most of them are online multiplayer affairs with fancy in-game items to purchase and silly anti-cheat gimmicks that give Linux users a hard time.
Yep. You can play alone, couch co-op with controllers, or with friends online if that’s what you’re into. I’ve logged a couple of hundred hours alone and another hundred or so couch co-op.
I played through the whole game with my gf and didn’t see nor read anything that would indicate that.
Regardless of if you play, solo or with up to 4 people there are 4 characters in your party. Your main character can be one of the predefined ones or not. You will probably have/want a mix of both.
First play through will take more than 100h and you will still have plenty to see for subsequent playtroughs. It’s literally impossible to see all of it first time regardless of how you play.
Just get it, it’s not just a GOTY, it’s one of the best games in a long while.
No. My girlfriend and I are 140 hours in and still not finished, and I’m amazed at how smooth the coop works with the story. You can each be different places doing different things, or you can travel together, you can each have your own relationships with npcs. A lot of conversations with npcs will repeat depending on who’s talking, but important story ones won’t. As long as you mostly stick together and make choices together, you’ll have every option a single player game does.
Have you played A Plague Tale (innocence, then requiem)? It’s one of the best story driven games I’ve ever played. It’s entirely linear, so plot urgency doesn’t feel artificial like it does in open world games.
Same. Something I can play, save anywhere to deal with life, and pick back up when time allows. I was one of those weirdos who really enjoyed Doom 3 when it came out (with the ducttape mod; that was one mechanic I didn't like) and grew up on old Commodore, Amiga, and PC single-player games and NES/SNES/Genisis RPGs. I want that again.
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