It’s published by Epic (Control was published by 505). Unless Epic significantly compromises on their insistence of pushing the Epic store, it wont happen.
Bit of awkward phrasing, but the commentator was not talking about Steam exclusivity - rather having it available on Steam (in addition to wherever else it was available).
Clearer wording may be “if only it had been on Steam”.
I think going by overall mainstream appeal and zeitgeist it’s correct. Everybody was talking about BG3 that year, even people who are usually not fans of the genre. So in that sense I agree that 2023 was the year of BG3.
On the games’ merit alone as standalone pieces of art abstracted from context I think Alan Wake 2 puts up a good fight.
Yeah, last year was not a weak year. There was a new highly-regarded Zelda game as well, which is easy to forget when Baldur’s Gate 3 won every award so unanimously.
Remedy games have been “underperforming” despite rave reviews for a while. Yet they’ve been chugging along doing what they think is neat, instead of caving into the current money-making models.
And in this case, the Epic partnership definitely hurt the game. And they know it did. Before AW2, it was microsoft putting the breaks of Quantum Break despite it being great.
Control was the first time since Max Payne I felt they truly achieved the success that their level of quality deserves (and even then it was a timed epic exclusive).
Now Remedy has set themselves up to finally self-publish the follow-up to Control. I can’t wait.
Remedy has fans, but something always seems to get in the way.
We know one of their WIP titles is a PvE multiplayer game set in their connected universe. Aside from that, nothing more is known, except for your generic corporate “we’re excited about our future projects with Remedy” statements from 505.
I’d be very suprised if Remedy turns around and makes it overtly exploitative.
Whether it’s any more exploitative than any other game, it’s still got all of the same baggage. It’s always online and will one day be unplayable, and it’s relying on continual revenue to support it rather than just selling it for an up front price and letting it rock, which both encourage exploitative monetization anyway.
Ok. Unfortunately it sounds like you’re asking me to stop liking a studio that I like, based on speculation about how a future title of theirs might work. That’s not an actionable argument.
Nothing about a multiplayer title requires it be made in a way that will break whenever the official servers go down. You are assuming this one will work that way, and I’ll grant you it likely will.
But the change we both want isn’t going to come from voting with our wallets, but even harder.
I’m not asking you to stop liking a studio you like, but I am asking you to take them off of the pedestal you put them on. If you care about the SKG campaign, that new shooter of theirs is at odds with it.
That pedestal being, that they keep making games that are just plain good, despite at the same time being involved with shit industry practices by working with Microsoft and Epic?
I think that particular pedestal is pretty fucking deserved. And one that looks their faults in the eyes.
They keep making good stuff, while marred by the bullshit that allows them to fund the studio.
Why do you think I’m specifically excited for them to finally do something fully self-published, so they can make something I can enjoy with no fucking strings attached?
I’d be good if it was a game set in the universe where you’re a bender but not one of the main cast. For example if you’re in the fire nation you’re in the military and may have run ins with them. Same with the other tribes. You could do unique situations for each element and not be tied to the main characters
Perhaps they should just move to an earlier point of time in the universe so a lot more possibilities could open up. They could even make it an MMO kind of game with the different factions, the setting would lend itself quite well for it.
There is an Avatar TTRPG and it faces similar problems to making a new game based on the series, and handles it similarly to what you’re suggesting.
The TTRPG divides the setting into Eras, Kyoshi era with the nations still being established, Roku era with established nations, The Hundred Years War era taking place during the war but before Ang wakes, The Aang era, after the show and its sequel comics, and the Kora era taking place after TLoK and its comic trilogy. Notably, none take place during the events of the main series. This means that the can create new stories that better fit the medium and don’t break cannon, and at the same time, you can still interact with significant characters and tie your story into the cannon such as making a quest resulting from the reprocusions of, or a prerequisite for events in the main canon.
Edit: clearly none of us read the article:
It’ll put players in the role of an “all-new, never-before-seen Avatar” and take place thousands of years in the past.
So basically all things that should’ve been there on release. Really glad I only played the demo and haven’t wasted money on this game yet. Although it sounds like it might finally be at a point worth playing.
The haptic feedback and trigger intensity is huge, those were major turn offs during the demo.
I’m just glad accessibility options are slowly becoming more common in games - hopefully CDPR will take it to heart and include them on launch for their next release.
As someone who is very colorblind, the colorblind color filter options for games have to be the most useless accessibility option of all time. I’ve never heard of anyone actually using them, and it just seems like an option companies keep throwing in without actually ever consulting anyone who is colorblind.
Doesn’t help that these ones seem to be limited to HUD.
I’m not colorblind but I’ve been wondering what kind of options could be useful for players like you. Some kind of fully customizable color filter? Ability to add a colored silhouette/overlay for important gameplay objects with access to a full RGB selection?
I’m aware about stuff like making elements recognizable without colors (by using shapes or textures to make elements more distinct) but is there something else you’d like to see in games?
Honestly I didn’t look very closely at the screenshots and assumed it was a color filter like most games these days, but just changing the HUD is actually probably perfect, so kudos to CDPR. I haven’t played enough Cyberpunk to know if color comes up in any other gameplay elements or anything, but other than the HUD, something being color coded in some way is usually the only time it’s an issue, and having something like a shape tied to whatever you’re labeling like you described is good enough.
I think just the standard “item glow” or whatever you want to call it is good enough for highlighting objects, there might be someone out there who might struggle with the color you pick against some backgrounds, but even having 3 distinct colors would cover anyone I would think.
The problem with the filter some games have implemented is it’s fixing the few elements that could be difficult for colorblind players by trying to fix their colorblindness instead of just fixing those few things. You and I might look at an object and see a different hue but it’s still what both of us are used to seeing and trying to shift the entire color palette is going to make everything look way off, even if now I can tell the friendly and enemy healthbars apart easier.
if you like it great good for you, I don’t though. I don’t want to play games on a frakentablet with accessories, not local games, not streamed games. I just want a thing that is put together by itself, is totally solid and doesn’t need me to attach/detach things from it as it changes its use
if i had an android tablet that played switch games if i just have this controller attachment that lets me use some third party controls I wouldn’t enjoy it, I would enjoy a nintendo switch by itself.
Absolutely loved playing the OG Crystal Chronicles with three friends and was very, very excited when a remake got announced. I mean, it’s so easy now that everyone is playing on their own Switch, right? Imagine fucking up the concept and spirit of the game so hard with the remake.
These guys fucking get it. Buiilding the hypercube is absolutely Chad behaviour.
And what still blows my mind is that the game supports cross save, but shared campaign progression is where we draw the line?
God forbid a game about sharing an adventure with your friends in a traveling caravan actually allows you to share an adventure and be a part of the caravan.
I wanted to like the game so badly because it looked like so much fun.
But my brother and I spent 29 minutes getting a treasure just to be steamrolled by a group of three more experienced players that killed us and took our shit.
I get that it’s the point of piracy, but it’s not much fun to spend 20 minutes accomplishing nothing. There’s a reason piracy is illegal in real life.
Maybe this new mode will let me enjoy the world they’ve built a bit more
20 minutes? You are lucky! Me and my friends wasted entire afternoons of gametime because of insanely aggressive and skilled pvp crews. That’s the reason i quit the game, i just cannot handle to waste many hours every time a pvp crew targets me.
If you’re a PvP pirate you’re never really risking anything. You’re probably carrying a few hundred cannonballs (5k gold?), some wood and some food. If you are sunk, you get your ship back fully repaired for free and lose only the cannonballs, wood and food. If you sink someone carrying treasure, you get their entire haul and just have to get to any port to sell it.
If you’re a PvE pirate returning from a quest, you don’t really get your quest rewards until you get back to port with your treasure. If you lose to a PvP pirate all that time questing was for nothing. If you fight a PvP focused pirate and win, all you win is some cannonballs, while you have the potential to lose all your treasure, the result of hours of game time.
Having said that, if you’re a PvP focused pirate, you’re going to be bored a lot. The game world is very empty so you’re going to spend a lot of time sailing around, hoping to find someone to grief. If you fly a reaper flag people can see you on the map and steer clear of you. If you’re a PvE focused pirate, it’s easy to find something to do, so you can have a great time sailing around, having adventures… until you run into a PvP player.
The game should really be changed so that PvP focused players have an easier time finding other players to fight. Meanwhile, people doing PvE content should have something significant to gain if they ever beat a PvP player. If they choose to turn and run, there should be safe harbours where they can unload in peace.
So you mean companies move the majority of their employees to other projects once the majority of the work is finished with the current project they are working on? Wow.
That’s wild, let’s write a whole article about it. I’m definitely not complaining, but I thought the Witcher 3 was supposed to be the last Witcher game?
Same here. I refuse to do it. Even for a game I’ve been really eagerly anticipating. I’ll wait a few months for even a small sale now. Usually a good amount of bugs have been patched out by then anyway.
A while back Nexus did something that pissed off a lot of creators and they moved to other mod repositories, even deleting their shit off Nexus. In my experience, the good sexy stuff is more commonly found on other sites. Especially furry related ones.
God damn was that the dumbest drama in the history of internet drama. The Nexus was trying to do something VERY good for end users, and mildly inconvenient for some mod authors with control issues. Thankfully, very little of value was lost.
(Yes, I’m still a bit salty about being forced to the VASTLY inferior Thunderstore for 1% of my modding needs.)
The Nexus added “collections” - essentially mod lists directly from them - and to prevent said lists from breaking all the time, as different mods are updated at different rates, they made it so older versions of a mod couldn’t be just removed by the mod author so that a collection that uses that version could still get it.
Their argument (from my recollection) mostly revolved around their lack of control, they were upset that they could no longer delete all their content off nexusmods.
The sad reality is the reason it was brought forward was due to how frequently mod authors would throw hissy fits and delete their mods.
Wabbajack (precursor to collections and I’d wager still superior for Beth games) mod lists frequently ran into this issue. In many cases it equated to many many hours of work to fix, assuming it wasn’t an essential mod.
Thunderstore is actually excellent for its ease of use, making a mod list to share with a friend is as easy as export profile code.
Where it absolutely fails is any kind of conflict resolution, vortex has it but mod organizer imo is way easier to use (and consistently works) in that regard.
Not to argue on the drama, it was stupid and I fully side with nexus on their reasoning.
The Thunderstore’s biggest failing, in my opinion, is the lack of forums/comments. 9 times out of 10, the solution to a random modding issue can be found in some old comment. This is also why I HATE the recent shift to every modder having a personal Discord. Essentially unsearchable chaos.
Often I really do while playing games. Sometimes I love a good intricate or full of social commentary games, other times I just want to move my mouse and watch things die when I press a button. Though it has to look pretty at the very least if it’s the latter type.
As someone who’s never played any Yakuza game, what even is this series? Are you not playing as a Japanese gangster or something? Why are you now an actual pirate?
Yes the mainline games are you playing a gang member (im not sure about the new protag though}. I think this is the second time piece spinoff that tells a different story, they just reuse the previous cast as new characters. Like a Dragon: Isshin is the first game like this
It is has a serious narrative about crime, politics, family issues, corruption and honor. And in the next scene you’re spending thousands of dollars (yens?) on a custom toy car to win a slot car championship or building your own go kart and race against other gangster.
Let’s just say that this is not too out of the ordinary.
Oh to be someone outside, looking in at this series… It must look absolutely insane lol. As someone who’s been playing these games for years now, this feels right at home for this series to me.
The Yakuza games alternate wildly between being extremely serious dramas about underworld crime, and extremely light hearted and wacky side quests. Some people might find the change in tone breaks immersion, but I find the two extremes increase the impact of each other. When a game is serious all the time I get numb to it, there needs to be a variety of lighthearted content for me to really feel the impact of when things get heavy.
In basically every Yakuza/Like a Dragon game, you play as a former Yakuza who continues to interact with both yakuzas and civillians. Generally speaking, the core story is VERY melodramatic but the sub stories (short side quests) are zany and incredibly horny (one of the most famous ones involved Kiryu teaching a sex worker how to be a dominatrix… at a children’s playground) with generally a really zany side story (longer side quest) where you might own a cabaret club or play pokemon with homeless people or whatever.
That said, Ichiban and Majima (the player character of this installment) tend to have MUCH zanier adventures. Because Kiryu is sort of kind of above it whereas Ichiban is a mentally ill guy who grew up with video games and Majima is half “I act crazy to protect those I love” and half “I am batshit fucking insane”.
So what I expect from this? Incredibly zany opening as an amnesiac Goro Majima comes to terms with waking up in Hawaii (the R in RGG stands for “Reuse excessively”). And he’ll become a pirate to fight all the evil pirates (past games had Kiryu lead an army to fight against NJPW wrestlers who had armies of their own) but also likely rob some fools what need robbing because…
Kiryu semi-officially does not kill (it is ambiguous and unclear how much is a meme based on a mistranslation). Majima leaves huge piles of corpses in his wake.
And then, around chapter 6 or so, we’ll find out why Majima is in Hawaii. Shooting my shot (and obviously spoiler tagging it) but I expect
spoilerSaejima to be dead since I didn’t notice him in the trailer and the baby tiger is both a reference to Saejima (his tattoo is a tiger) and is the kind of pet/companion Majima can “inherit” going forward. And I expect RGG to want to reuse the Memoirs system to give Majima the same spotlight Kiryu got and losing his best friend for 40 or 50 years at this point will do that. Also… Saejima still has a LOT of baggage from one really shitty cutscene in 4, And at this point I can only think of two things that would break Majima and RGG knows we would fly out to Shinagawa and burn their studio to the ground if they dare hurt Makoto again.
At its core, the Yakuza games are incredibly heartfelt Japanese Crime Dramas with Soap Opera plots weaved in. Sometimes you are a criminal and sometimes you are someone caught up in it all. You usually have a very personal stake in the overall story whether it is protecting your kids or figuring out what really happened to your baseball career. But always, you are someone who cares about those that society ignores (homeless people, sex workers, trans folk, former yakuza, etc) who is inevitably willing to stand up against the forces of light and darkness to protect them. Because the yakuza/LAD games are not about being a modern day yakuza. They are about the ideal of the yakuza of olde.
For those unaware, most criminal organizations rise to power because of a lack of protection from the government. Many predominantly African American or Latino gangs very much “began” to protect their communities from racism and bigotry. And Warrior was a show that depicted this with Chinese triads in turn of the century San Francisco. They were far from altruistic organizations but they fulfilled a role the cops actively refused to (often fighting against the cops themselves). And, over the decades, efforts are made to villify them which results in nobody “good” joining which, in turn, results in only the worst of the worst joining.
In Japan, this very much happened with the yakuza. Getting into their feudal counterparts is complex but the LAD games touch on this with Hiroshima in 6. Following the war, the Japanese government was in shambles and a lot of people were left to fend for themselves. Crime families stepped in to act as small mini governments and protect and provide for Their people (for a totally modest fee…). But, over the decades, the Japanese government did a spectacular job of villifying the yakuza to the point that only the most evil fuckers join (many of Takashi Miike’s movies touch on this. And he even did a LAD short film back in the day)
Which is where the games come in. Kiryu, Ichiban, and Yagami and their crews are very much what a yakuza SHOULD be. They are people who have forsaken their role in polite society because they want to protect those who can’t protect themselves. They are far from perfect but that is how you get those sharp contrasts of partying it up and fighting off hordes of drunk salarymen for fun to realizing a group of sex workers have been abducted and are being trafficked to who knows where all in the name of “progress”.
And its how you get those cliche anime bullshit moments of the evil crime lord you have been feuding with the first half of the game suddenly becomes one of your strongest allies when it is revealed that a government organization is brutalizing people. Because he also feels the same way and agrees that putting a stop to this Evil is far more important than who has control of a street.
It’s one of those series that has expanded so far, with favoritism towards its characters, that they even decided to drop the name “Yakuza” in favor of the Japanese title, since so much of it has little to do with being a Yakuza anymore. Honestly, I can’t remember any game in which you’ve done actual Yakuza-like actions such as shaking down businesses, running loan shark scams, or executing hits. When you do end up making money, it’s through perfectly legitimate businesses whose biggest problem is “thugs keep attacking us!”
I’ve been calling it the Soap Opera of gaming since first playing Lost Judgment.
The games are about various yakuza/ex-yakuza just living their best lives basically. The main plot differs from game to game, but most of them are what I would call an “every game.” It’s got a little bit of everything; the majority of them are absolutely batshit insane side missions and mini games while the main game is a brawler/dialogue heavy RPG.
If you like video games and anime, this is a series for you because it’s basically both at once and every game is both self-contained and enjoyable on its own, but also references past games a lot and has impeccable continuity.
This one with pirates I have a feeling is going to be a lot like Infinite Wealth with Kasuuga being either one of if not the main character. He has a super wild imagination; every time you get into combat in Infinite Wealth, everyone changes to some fantastical creature or hero. Like you get into a fight with some drunk business men and suddenly they’re fire breathing zombies. It’s great.
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