So they have rounds of layoffs, staff feel less secure in their role, and they’re surprised that knowledgeable and easily employable experts are leaving for more stable roles?
Bro, just 9 more years of development, come on bro, it’s just 9 more years, we lost developers but I swear we’ll be done soon, it’s only 9 more years, bro.
(This comment is gonna age poorly when it’s nowhere close to releasing in 9 years and I should’ve picked a larger number)
Honestly I don’t think It will take that long. It seems like, based on previously released data and their more recent moves, that they are hemorrhaging a lot of money.
I do not think they have 9 years. They will go out of business long before then. Most likely they will have some kind of product as the “completed 1.0” within the next few years.
To its credit, Star Citizen is neither vaporware nor a scam.
You can buy access to the game for just $45 USD, and the game is playable to you right now. It regularly receives updates, some minor and some major.
Vaporware is something that never gets released to the public. Like the Coleco Chameleon. Obviously, Star Citizen is playable right now by anyone that buys access to it.
A scam is when someone takes your money under fraudulent pretenses. Star Citizen takes your money for access to a space sim game, which is exactly what you get. Its not a scam, just terribly mismanaged with a very slow development pace.
Star Citizen is a piñata though. Both from games “journalism” (lol) and from Redditors, primarily.
Haters going to hate and there is a lot to hate about SC. Dont waste your time arguing with a wall that’s made up its mind without ever even playing the game.
Star Citizen is an insane phenomenon to me. It’s a good game and a massive fraud at the same time, and one fuels the other.
Let’s give credit where credit is due - the game is incredibly immersive. The massive social element, ability to walk and explore things outside your ships and rovers, to customize them, to create all the inventive ways to make money and to prevent hostiles from doing the same is fascinating. It’s…believable, immersive, real. No other game has nailed it just so accurately, and I would invite you to experience it by yourself, but…
But once the player’s attention is caught, they become a milking cow. You want to develop in game? You have to pay up big time, lest you want all your ships and money go away with an update. They don’t go loud about their wipes, and most players face them when they’ve reached a certain point in the game - at which point they either lose all progress, or start to buy their ships for cash. For, like, hundreds or thousands of dollars per ship.
While this may sound bollocks to someone who haven’t played it, but the way it is normalized in the community combined with the element of frustration of losing everything in a universe player now cares about really drives folks to spend massive sums on the game.
Back in the pre-war era, I remember a person from Ukraine (a country with per capita GDP of ~$5000, or 1/16th that of the US) secretly stashing over $1000 to buy a new ship, adding to his ship park of $4000. His family (wife and two kids) haven’t been on a good vacation for years, and this amount of money would allow them to do so several times over in the southern Ukraine, but he bought some virtual ships. No, really. He was a clan leader, so he felt like he had to have all the nicest ships at his disposal, and his only grief was that he couldn’t afford the $8000 and $21000 ship packs.
The way community psychology works in the game is insane, and I believe a study could be made on how exactly was this all pulled off. Catch with a good premise, and make sure to never let the player go. I’mma be clear - what made me leave the game is not the sudden realization of its predatory practices, but simply the fact my computer started lagging heavily in the new areas, and me not having money to upgrade at the moment. I did consider buying a $400 ship just to have a decent hauler after wipes though, despite myself living in a not-so-rich of a country. Looking back at my Star Citizen experience though, I see how crazy it would be.
Squadron 42 is the single-player counterpart to Star Citizen. It’s supposed to release next year. Star Citizen, however, is far too complex to self-host. The server technology they’ve shown off is incredible, but it’s not a “single server” thing.
I’m hoping that many of these departures are simply because the underlying technology is finally mature and those people want to move on to new challenges, but I don’t really believe that’s true. It’s clear that Chris Roberts own shortcomings as a boss are poisoning the company and it’s once-passionate workers.
Wow yeah, I just looked into the Wikipedia entry for this game. It looks like they make a lot more money as an unreleased project than they would ever make as a fully realized game.
Last time a game was in the zeitgeist to this extent was BG3, and we all know how that went. Only thing going against E33 at this point is that the Game Awards are a long time off and recency bias/forgetting about it tends to have an impact.
I sincerely hope it does sweep the awards, not only is the game phenomenal but it would also send a very positive message to the industry.
Who knows though, people love Kojima and if Death Stranding 2 is slightly more approachable than the first it might put up a good fight.
You know, a few weeks back i looked at all the GotY nominations by year, and as long as an RPG was nominated, it won. So Im thinking COE33 has it in the bag, going by the trend, unless a separate banger of an RPG comes out.
Hmm, i guess i did miss ReFantazio from those nominations, youre right. I dont think ive seen anything of that game, so possibly thats why i glossed over it.
Also I refuse to acknowledge the Elden Ring DLC as a nomination. Also the FF remake is a bit of an odd situation as I also refuse to acknowledge that as a new game as well, but it very clearly is.
i just started streaming this game today after avoiding nearly everything about it, and WOW!! so good already! something this good only comes out once every 5 or 10 years, assuming it keeps up at the same quality of everything I’ve seen so far. I’m only 4 hours in but very impressed by basically every category you can look at a game. and the entire premise being a hyper focused allegory for mortality itself that we all face is very clever, even if very bleak. i can’t wait to see where this game goes! if you wanna watch me on the expedition, hit up www.youtube.com/www.twitch.tv/crustyoldhuman
Hey Baldur’s Gate 3 only came out 2 years ago! I know what you mean though. It’s rare when you play something that feels effortless and you want to keep playing it because it’s that good. This game definitely had that! I luckily saw the trailer last fall and fell for it then. I didn’t want to get my hopes up with how things are these days but I gave it a shot and was my first day one release game in over a year I think. Took the day off and I was soo happy I did.
i wasn’t interested in baldurs gate. I’m very picky about fantasy settings, but expedition 33 has such a great premise I was all in from the intro onward
Been slowly going through the game over the last 3 weeks or so and my fucking god, this game is an absolute masterpiece.
I’m a huge fan of turn based RPGs so I’m biased, but everything about this game is just amazing. Music is insanely good (almost at Nier levels of good IMO) the combat is satisfying and challenging at the same time, the voice acting is extremely well done (Andy Serkis does one of the villains) and the graphics and cut scenes are gorgeous, I read that they used mo-cap and had the actors actually playing their scenes together so it feels much more natural as opposed to one person doing their part and then piecing it all together afterwards.
The story is really well done so far, I’m pretty sure I’m somewhere near the end of act 2 (level 40ish across my team) and the writing for the characters is top tier. Funny banter with your team and NPCs at times but lots of emotional moments, it’s been a long time since something tugged on my heartstrings the way this game has been able to so far.
Everytime I play it, I have multiple moments of happiness, some sad moments and some laughs in a couple hour gaming session. I seriously can’t recommend this game enough. Reading my post back makes me sound like a paid bot but I haven’t been this excited about a new game since I found Factorio back in 2020. Before that would’ve been Fallout New Vegas back in 2010.
Masterpiece of a game and I both can’t fucking wait to beat it and see how the story ends, while also dreading that moment at the same time. It’s (hopefully) gonna be like finishing a really good TV or book series and realizing there’s no more story in that universe. Bittersweet knowing you won’t get more of the characters and world you came to love over time. (Just finished Peter F Hamilton’s Commonwealth books, 7 in total and I’m super sad there aren’t any more stories to be told in that fascinating universe. I’m hoping to feel the same way after I beat this game)
Edit: Just to add some of my personal gripes so I’m not solely jerking the game off, some of the optional mini-bosses are annoying af, came across one that has a gimmick of needing to be parried constantly to kill it, and one of its attacks is an 8 hit combo. If you miss even one parry, then you don’t get the counter attack at the end, which means you forfeit all damage for that turn.
Alternatively, you can cheese it by building your characters for speed or using a pictos (permanent buff that slightly alters how each character plays slightly essentially) that guarantees the equipped character gets a turn before the enemy does. If you just try to dodge, then the enemy always gets an extra turn, leaving you no opportunity to deal damage. Basically, you either find a way to guarantee your 3 teammates get to attack first and finish it off, or weaken it enough that you only need a couple of good parries, or you parry it to death from full health. You lose otherwise. The parry timing in this game is quite unforgiving (but satisfying af, ngl). I ended up skipping that mini-boss after 5 tries cause I felt myself getting mad and that just makes me play worse.
Some of the optional platforming sections and minigames for getting extra skins are also insanely frustrating and take a lot of repetition to figure out. You also can’t manually restart a fight, which is really annoying when you’re trying to grind out a boss/miniboss cause sometimes you just lose if you don’t dodge/parry certain attacks from certain strong enemies. Forces you to just sit and wait until your whole team dies rather than being able to restart right away.
Same here, I am in love with that game and I can’t stop listening to the 8h soundtrack or watch YouTube reactions videos of streamers crying in front of it.
Being French probably doesn’t help me from loving it… I finished the story 4 days ago and instantly reloaded my save to explore everything in the end game, unlocking every picto, every skills and Steam achievements.
Those Gestral beach mini games are annoying on purpose as they are a reference to final fantasy mini games. The platform parts are hopefully not very present, and I feel lucky to have killed that chromatic boss you’re talking about on the third try with full parry/counter.
Some few/nice advices, spoiler free but I’ll tag them anyway:
Tap for spoilerGrosse tête (Big head) is another boss with tons of attacks, but easier (psa: kill it with Monoco in your team). Once you can, go see the dragon flying in the sky (the serpenphare, snake + light house) and try to do a “Zelda TOTK” by riding it. Do not go to the final part of the story with a too strong party, around level 60 would be my maximum. And do not equip the picto you get for finishing act 2. Otherwise you’ll be too strong and miss very cool content on some story boss fights. After the story is done you can load the auto save and build a totally broken team to destroy everything. This is also how you can access the NG+ option.
I keep listening to Lumière over and over, it’s such a good song as is the rest of the soundtrack! I was just telling my brother the last night that I like that it’s a French game, its exposed me to a culture I don’t usually get to appreciate.
The French inspiration throughout the game is a nice change from the usual English/Japanese inspired RPGs IMO, I especially like how Esquie refers to Francois as franfran with a French accent! (Although everything about Esquie is awesome tbh).
The French swear words are a nice touch as well, although I have to ask, is tabarnak not a thing in France? If not, what’s the equivalent in France? I only know that word because I’m a Habs fan and a lot of them frequently use that word in reddit game day threads when they’re playing like shit haha.
I’ve heard Quebecois French and France French (wording? sorry) is a fair bit different, but I don’t speak the language so I only have an outsiders level of knowledge at best.
Ha that makes them a bit more palatable but they’re still really annoying just like a lot of those old FF minigames were. Thank god for save states!
Lumière, Alicia, déchirer la toile, une vie à s’aimer… I have so much little green hearts 💚 next to Clair Obcur titles on my Spotify.
I agree that it is very refreshing to see French inspiration, we are not very used to that in video games and they embraced it to the joke level. The baguette outfit were, quote from Guillaume Broche (CEO & Art director, creator of the project): “A joke we had on our internal discord and it went too far”.
Clair Obscur is an art style, the game takes place in the Belle époque (late 1800s early 1900s) and you can see plenty of references to that time, for example the pattern on the robe of the first flower seller in Lumière, just after the red and white tree.
This time period is never explored in games so that is also very cool to see.
Esquie is the best friend indeed, and he has a perfect French as the voice actor for English and French is the same. But all voice actors are amazing, English and French, it’s funny that you can hear the English ones struggling a bit with the French swearing (they tend to say “poutain” instead of “putain”).
And no, no Tabarnak, this is exclusive from Quebec and very much not a thing in France (or any European French speaking country). It doesn’t really have an equivalent as they use it for various emotions. I’d say it’s the Quebec F word, so the French P word (putain).
The game was made by French from France, so no Belgian or Swiss specific French language, only the one from continental France.
It shows after you meet François, in both languages Esquie says:
Ahahah François you got smashed
Ahahah François qu’est-ce que tu as pris cher.
“Prendre cher” is very very French street language and means something like “pay dearly” but always in a bad way. You got hurt doing something stupid? Tu as pris cher.
It started from the city of Lyon I think and like plenty of French slang has Arabic influence, this one being the word “Cheh”.
Cheh is a Moroccan (and probably Algerian) onomatopoeia for “serves you right”, so if I hurt myself being silly, I will hear a little and discreet “cheh” from my Moroccan wife in the other room. One magical onomatopoeia to say “I told you so, that serves you well”.
For French language differences, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Monaco and Switzerland are very close and we can understand each other without strong complications. Same goes with Northern Africa and most of Africa. It’s mostly an accent change and most vocabulary stays the same.
It gets a little bit difficult with the Caribbean French and other far away islands as they often use their own local language mixed with French.
Then you have the final boss, the endgame, Québécois. Oh Canada… You have strong accent + different vocabulary + slang. Dudes from Quebec HAS to make efforts to be understood in France (or Switzerland or whatever) cause we won’t understand them if they don’t 😁
Maybe we could with a little training, but as a famous languages school said in an add: “Time to learn French, because they won’t learn English”
I am considering picking up the game when it’s on sale, and you seem like a good person to ask: Is it better to play the game in french or in english, I’m fluent in both so I don’t have a preference.
It’s a hard one, both are very good and I will do both (first playthrough in French, new game+ in English).
We don’t really know which language is the original one. Plenty would think it is French but the main writer doesn’t speak French and the motion capture for the lip sync was apparently made for English.
But the creator won’t answer on that question, when asked on a French livestream he said “I’ll let you decide which language is the OG one 🤷🏻♂️”
The final version of the script was in french. I can try to find the interview if you want. Basically, the lead writer of the narrative has English as her first language, but the co-writer of the script is french (as is the studio at large). The script went back and forth between English and French multiple times during development, but the final script ended up being in French.
Performance capture was done by the french actors, but speaking English (for motion/facial capture), so technically both languages are dubs, and neither has perfect lip synch.
Both casts are absolutely great. I prefer some voices in English and some in French. However, there are absolutely some parts of the script where it’s obvious it was written in French, with wordplay or double meanings that don’t translate to English.
And from ex-ubisoft devs no less; the undisputed king of mediocrity. It’s a testament to how utterly crushing the weight of shareholder influence and middle management bloat is on the people working there. Creativity cannot flourish within a publicly owned company that only seeks profit and nothing more.
Whenever I hear the Ubisoft narrative I feel nothing but boiling wrath for all the people who chose to not play the two Prince of Persia 2D platformers they made. I am thoroughly bored of their open world fare, but it's astonishing how reliably their most creative, better games are their worst performers.
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