Unpopularopinion posting…. what do you normally like to play? I didnt enjoy BG3 either but I didnt care for the other Baldurs Gate games mostly because of the setting and characters.
It got better once I got plenty of mods. Broken bugs annoyed me like the painters house causing a million rolls or The invisible wall stopping me from crossing the bridge. Maybe I was super unlucky but it ruined the game for me.
I like Deus Ex, in that game things are shown to you without some guy narrating your game telling you what is happening. And Deus Ex was released in the year 2000
I get the BG3 usage of narration due to the DnD setting and DMs narrating the story. Spoon feeding is not acceptable and is insulting to the player. I remember Deus Ex very well along with others like System Shock. The world they put you in can be confusing and unfamiliar at first glance and takes time to get involved in.
As a long time CRPG fan, I was not into it at all. But expressing that you didn’t enjoy it is wrongthink, and the rabid fans will downvote you to oblivion.
I fail to feel any sympathy for higher ups in any company these days especially video games. “You are already working 80 hour weeks please do more so I can make more money”
Yeah, but I have to feel sympathy for the devs here. Definitely need a game Dev Union strike like the writers strike did, I think. Though that’s difficult to pull off.
I definitely prefer the world in which we have unions and better worker rights, but I am starting to be aware of that world’s drawbacks.
Take a look at the great pyramids of Egypt. Take a look at classic anime, filled with intensely detailed high-framerate animation. These are fantastic works that, in some way, are made possible by people that are working far, far longer than a healthy work day for probably mediocre compensation. It’s almost lead to a zeitgeist where many games have not reached the height of the 360/PS3 era due to a mass of brain drain in development - thousands of really talented developers focusing on their life plan rather than passions.
In a utopia, one day we’d have high-paying employers that can truly willingly rally the greatest minds, but I think too many studios and publishers are growth/profit-minded to really get there.
“Worker’s rights suck because only extreme capitalist exploitation can create true art, like the video game I am entitled to play now now noww” - this fool right here
There’s awesome art made under fair working conditions, but I can’t imagine how you’d put together the kind that needs ludicrous hours. The kind that involves hundreds of thousands of hand drawn frames all in the same art style.
When it needs both creativity and intense devotion, it no longer becomes a 9-5 thing, even if you’re your own boss. Some people do that voluntarily but end up with carpal tunnel, sleep issues, etc. That has even been the case with a lot of Japanese creators I’ve seen.
I generally agree with that, and yet we have a lot of it around that people lament being “not perfect” or demand more of faster; so there’s societal pressure to keep it up. It also feels terrible to have appreciated something amazing, but then afterwards learn its creation process essentially involved boiling kittens or something.
If it takes slavery to make a pyramid or an anime that I enjoy then I don’t need either of them. And no one should feel differently but that’s just my opinion.
I got that as well but my point was lack of wonders like pyramid and some media doesn’t even count as a drawback if we can abolish slavery, which still exist in a different form and name. They simply aren’t on the same balance.
I don’t really follow what “on the same balance” means; I guess it’s simply that the benefit far, far outweighs the negative? Or, that the negative should never be mentioned because it implies benefits behind something horrible?
I can marginally understand the latter. It’s a bit like trying to praise a piece of artwork on its own (because it’s a really amazing piece, and it could even inspire other people) while trying to set aside that its artist was a terrible person who deserves no recognition.
Part of the reason I bring it up is, I’d like to hear more vocalizations on whether these things should exist. Under a certain forward-thinking mindset, it could be that neither GTA 6 or Elder Scrolls 6 ever comes out - or they cost $100 and take 10 years, to adequately pay the developers and give them healthy time off. The math is never straightforward, of course, but it’s something of a thought experiment to get people to think about what they care about most.
Former actually, as you said pretty much every good thing had some negatives, it’s all a trade off on one way or another. But if it was between art and slavery, one outweigh the other heavily. And I feel the same for games as well, I don’t mind waiting and paying a higher price if I have to.
Speaking as someone who’s worked inside a couple “AAA” studios, sympathy to a union has definitely increased in the past decade. It’s no coincidence that bonuses and profit sharing (a major part of compensation) have plummeted over that same time. As much as fans hate unambitious and venal design choices in recent games I assure them that devs hate them just as much or even more, since they ruin years of work. We have steadily decreasing feedback into these choices and are expected more and more to stick to our corner pushing pixels and writing code. Morale is probably the lowest I’ve ever experienced and mandatory RTO adds insult to injury.
The various QA Union success stories have lots of support on the dev side. However many people believe it’s impossible somehow, or that they personally would get laid off or have their job outsourced if there is even a hint of organizing. Especially the past 12 months, the bloodbath has workers terrified. Everyone is trying to keep their heads down as much as possible. I unfortunately don’t see this ending well unless funding loosens up and people can start small studios again. There was a wave of this during Covid but those studios are all dying now. It’s seriously depressing. I’m a refugee from the VFX world and I feel like I’m watching the sequel.
Unpopular opinion probably, but creators should be allowed to stop creating more stories inside a particular world. It’s like the issue we had with TV shows just getting the chewing gum treatment. Some worlds should have an end. Though maybe there can be spin-offs in this case, stories unrelated to the current cast in any way.
They haven’t said they intend to stop making D&D games. And every D&D crpg in the last 20-odd years (since Torment, I think) has been set in the Forgotten Realms. So it seems highly likely that future games will be loosely related to BG, just without that specific title.
I would love to see them bring back some of the weird old settings, like Dark Sun, Spelljammer, or even Dragonlance. But I’m not holding my breath.
It’d honestly be hilarious if all the creators just started rebranding their fan projects with Palworld Pals (or any other similar IP). Start shifting the discourse away from Pokemon. I’d love that.
Once my Switch broke and the Steam Deck released, I decided I didn’t want to bother with Nintendo anymore. They’ve been killing their communities for far too long.
I saw a docu i think about smash bros. from nintendo, very cool docu serie btw, and the guys that organized the first tournaments got a letter or something that they where not allowed to organize such tournaments (mind you just fans playing the game in a bigger room nothing more) because, and here it comes, the game should not be played like that! Wtf.
Nintendo has kind of always sucked as far as passionate fans are concerned. Their products are some of the best out there, sure, but they are ruthless.
Playing devil’s advocate, they’re just protecting their IP. Problem is they can’t spend resources or time figuring out who is or is not profiting from their work, so they just stamp out all the bugs in the house that get big enough to be noticed. I guess, I really don’t know.
I was under the impression that they had fully shelved PvE for OW2. They basically lied and released the same game with a few tweaks to the match format. Was there actually any hope for even a pared-down co-op mode?
There was hope initially, but as a huge overwatch fan, when Jeff Kaplan, the former game director of Overwatch, left Blizzard, I could see the bullshit that lay ahead. It took too long for others to realize.
Apparently, he and some ex Blizzard people created a new studio. But itl be a few years before they have any games to unveil. And honestly, that’s fine. I mean he could announce he’s retiring and it’d be fine. He earned it as far as I’m concerned.
I mean, I loved DOS2 as well, but I definitely think BG3 is the better game. There’s a lot of replayability from the combat in DOS, but the story and characters in BG3 are on a whole different level. DOS2 does definitely rank in my top 5 CRPGs though (BG3, BG2, DOS2, DA:O, and probably NWN would be that full list)
I think Pathfinder is as bad of a match for Larian as DnD mechanically speaking. Compare the sheer battlefield joy and chaos of DoS to the austere strictness in BG3. And Pathfinder is in the same vein. Better I think it would be if Larian picks up a setting fitting their humour and shenanigans. Heard good things about Discworld.
Discworld is amazing but not really a great setting for RPGs. The world is just too zany and hodge-podge. Everything I know about fantasy RPG fans tells me that they demand a “serious, rules-based” world.
There was a Discworld point and click adventure game though. The classic roguelike NetHack also has a ton of references to Discworld and a lot of humour and weirdness in general, though that also happens to be one of the things it gets criticized for the most. A Discworld RPG (which is at all faithful to the setting) would basically be NetHack on steroids.
Stormlight Archive would be perfect. Btw, both Mistborn and SA settings are part of the same multiverse, and Mistborn even had a less dark 3-book countinuation placed few hundred years later in largely renewed world during the industrial revolution.
I liked it better than the first one. Imo Mistborn trilogy is second worst Sanderson work after Skyward, and i really like all his books except those two cycles.
I guess people just have different preferences. To me, the chaos of DoS turned rather monotone. You could get rich by betting that every combat encounter would end with half the map on fire. It was a real issue that Larian fixed in bg3 thankfully.
And have you payed pathfinder wrath of the righteous? In my opinion, the combat experience is better than DoS 2 and bg3. I will say that I enjoyed the freedom of movement in DoS 2 though, it made positioning a core part of the combat.
Played a good bit of Kingmaker and while not as refined as WotR I think is very similar. I agree with you that the DoS chaos can be a bit monotone and is too much. But I’d take that over the environmental flatness of other cRPGs.
Environmental flatness isn’t really tied to the game mechanics/rules though. Larian are just using a better engine with a larger budget than their competitors
Discworld might be absolutely genius if done well. And of all the dev studios I believe Larian would be the best pick. Maybe throw in some co-op with Obsidian and I’m sold!
Imho the DnD settings kind of held the game back anyway, the combat in Divinity 2 was a lot more fun since they didnt have to constrain themselves to the super basic DnD item system.
I dunno, I like BG3 a lot more than DOS2. I like actually being able to move and not feel like I wasted my turn doing so, and I feel like I get a lot less “fuck! I didn’t want to go there!” situations eating up all my actions in BG3. Having distinct action / bonus action resources, where the latter can be converted into extra movement, is a good system IMO. Now if only they allowed you to use your action as a bonus action if you wanted…
All Rockstar Games ever have been pushed back by months or years. They have all had monolithic levels of crunch. People not working in the office is definitely not to blame. Particularly if they were hired as offside, which the article claims.
Hasbro is gonna sell to some heartless VC and D&D will be dead as we know it as they try to bleed every last dollar from whoever stays. Sad times ahead. Capitalism strikes again destroying everything we love.
kotaku.com
Aktywne