Personally, I’m not a fan of this trend that’s been semi-standard since at least Halo: Reach. The whole silent protagonist thing really takes me out of the game; I would much rather hear any voice for my character.
Contrast this with, say, Cyberpunk 2077 where the main character talks quite a bit. This makes me feel way more like a real person in the game world.
I don’t really want to hear my character talk in an RPG where I am making the character and supposedly have my own background, look and sound in mind and am the one selecting what that character says. Unless if they have tons of different voices, like old Bioware RPGs did, I would prefer to just read it myself and give whatever voice I want. It immerses me in the game much more, where I feel like the character I am playing because I am given opportunity to say the dialogue choices my self.
I think it all depends on what sort of game you have, specifically if it is story driven or immersion/exploration driven.
Halo Reach is story driven and would have absolutely benefitted from a voice. Mass Effect was primarily story driven and the voiced protag worked great.
Fallout 4 is the opposite and a silent protag would have been better as silent, like in Fallout 3 or Elder Scrolls games.
I admit, not having a PS5 I haven’t played FFXVI yet, but sometimes these things are world building around a more personal story which is what I understand the game to be from other people talking about it, just because something features in a world, doesn’t mean it needs to be further explored if that’s not the story that’s been written. Just because thats am element that interests Kotaku writers more due to there nationality and politics, doesn’t mean it was the story the writers set out to tell.
Thing is, and I haven’t played it either, but I know this from conversations I’ve seen about it, your character is a slave. Or, rather, is from the caste of people that is enslaved because they have magic. That means it’s something that can’t just be background, because it quite literally influences how everyone in the world interacts with Clive.
There was a really good Jimquisition on how being a “bearer” is treated in the world, and how SE just kind of overdid it with a lack of subtlety (jump to about the 4 minute mark to start, because there’s a lot of faff at the beginning before the video starts talking about the game). https://youtu.be/sgjqXTvHaLk?si=9EQqqsA4x2HEOmqc
Yeah, I did see Steph Stirling’s video and I do get the arguments, but personally I don’t agree that just because it’s an element in the world building and the backstory of the main character it has to be a driving element of the plot.
Look at it like X-Men, being feared and hunted by humanity is sort of X-Men lore, but it isn’t the driving force of every story. Sometimes they’re just off having adventures in space or whatever.
See, this is why I wish this game wasn’t currently PS5 exclusive and had come out on PC like they originally planned. I can’t say what story it seems like they wanted to tell just because unless I want to watch someone else play it, I can’t know. I couldn’t even read much of the article because I didn’t want to get too far into spoiler territory. It’s very frustrating because this seems like an interesting discussion to be had.
Then maybe we who haven’t played the game shouldn’t be having opinions on some aspects of it, because context matters and we lack context on the whole plot.
I didn’t say you had a strong opinion either. In any case, having any sort of slavery present in a “medieval-esque” game doesn’t sound too weird to me. From the promotional material it seems like the game is about fights between countries and some eikons/primals/titans and the characters channel the fight of those primals though them?
The whole concept of primals is linked to slavery by the very simple notion that once the character is touched by their mana, it becomes a slave to them. This is how it has worked in all the FF games I have played.
IDK, complaining about the game having aspects of slavery but not addressing them seems a weak complaint to me when probably the game was never about the thing, the thing just being a setting. And I’m not against the thing being just a minor setting, not every game must either make t their focus or make it not exist.
Again, I have not played through it so I’m not gonna say if their implementation is correct or not. All I’m gonna say is that Americans really focus so god damn much in the slavery topic, it’s like unless it’s properly addressed it’s some kind of taboo in media.
You sat there and said I shouldn’t have an opinion because I haven’t played, when you haven’t played either but get to have a strong opinion on it plus eye roll at Americans. My only opinion is, “eh, seems like they whiffed it instead of going into what they introduced,” and that’s based on a review I saw by a Brit. 🤨
While I personally have no opinions on FFXVI, I find that such a consumeristic stance, that the only valid way to form an opinion is by (buying and) playing/watching/using it themselves. Because if so, how can anyone be meaningfully opposed to a product or a piece of media? Seems a little strange if even people who are critical of something are supposed to buy it.
Sure they may have no firsthand impressions, but they might make their minds from a variety of reviews, critiques and discussions around it.
Your character is not a slave. (Spoilers limited to promotional materials) Player character is the oldest son of the ruler of one of the major countries in the game world, so a prince. Ability to wield (very specific) magic is quickly explained that some of the nobles of that family can do. He somewhat is a slave at some point, but this is a very brief story moment (tbf at the very beginning, you meet your character as a slave before he goes into childhood memory where he is a prince). When relevant, NPCs do interact with character as with slave, but its rarely relevant. So it is very much a background theme, even if a major one.
That’s why the phrasing was “from the caste of people” in the clarification. It was just a cultural difference: his home treated him as honorable and other cultures don’t.
When he is briefly enslaved, it wasn’t because they mistook him for being the kind of person you get to do that to, it’s because he was that kind of person and simply hadn’t been treated that way before.
his home treated him as honorable and other cultures don’t
Not the point of the story, when NPCs get to know who the character is theirs opinion changes
it wasn’t because they mistook him for being the kind of person you get to do that to
That is actually almost what happened. If he was not a mage, that story point would change little.
The “mages are slaves” thing is more akin to FF6’s “there is no magic in this world”, like it is a somewhat big deal that Terra is mage, but game doesn’t spend much time there since it is not a point.
If anyone wants a complete GZDoom game (or 2 or 3 depending on how your counting) right now to try, Hedon is really great. Also, made by a solo dev(music and VA work was outsourced), so absolute flex on AAA game companies.
If you can get a clue as to what’s going on, message the dev on steam. It’s one guy, so they probably don’t know about the issue. For a for a little while, if you had Heretic loaded in GZDoom, it would load that instead of the Hedon.
Just looked it up on Steam, and it’s part of a bundle with another GZDoom game called Supplice which looked pretty cool, so I got that. I also bought a game called Incision which looks pretty wild too.
They’re all boomer shooters and I’m excited to play them.
This game is great. Feels kinda like Half Life with the fast paced combat of Doom. The exploration is just as good as the gun play and some of the solutions to secrets feel so clever
FYI: Cross-platform cloud save sync is currently not working. Developers are working on a solution. Workaround is to enforce Proton.
Edit: The workaround I’ve read somewhere is wrong. Currently the only workaround is to either manually copy the save data or to set up a 3rd party sync solution (which for Steam Deck means to enter desktop mode).
The PS5 doesn’t even have a browser because they’re scared of exploits
Why not just have some hardened Firefox with auto updates instead of licensing a browser from a company specialized in exploitable browsers for consoles? Nobody uses netfront, why Sony and Nintendo are so obsessed with it?
I only bought a ps4 well after the 5 dropped, and only because my pal had got a new xbox and wasn’t playing with his ps4 anymore. Long story short I got the ps4, 3 controllers, and 5 hardcopy games for £50 and a joint. Until I can get a ps5 for that…I ain’t upgrading
They can. The issue is it’d eventually split the community. Mods that no longer have support will be lost, and the ones that do will either decide it isn’t worth updating each time or have to put up two versions. It also creates needless new work for people, especially the F4SE devs.
Aside from some still holding to LE. There are the 1.5.97 SE users and the 1.6+ AE users. And there have been at least one or two more updates in the 1.6 line that also caused more issues and require their own dedicated builds of various mods.
It’s not that they can’t, it’s that people are getting blindsided by updates to a game which supposedly hasn’t received updates for over half a decade, and downgrading on Steam is a surprisingly huge PITA. The Midnight Ride recommends patching, fwiw.
No, fortunately enough. A FO5 written by Obsidian could be released as a bug-free superset of FO4, but includes the whole USA and the moddinglinked people would still be trying to mod FO4.
Because the game is old and hasn’t been worked on in years. They’re no reason to even think about turning off updates for it unless you happen to know the random years later update is coming.
But I learned the hard way awhile ago with Xcom 2. They “update” that all the time, but don’t do anything to the game, is just the shitty launcher they keep updating every month.
In my particular case, I just didn’t know it was enabled (my modding guide mentioned a way to stop it, but I guess I did it incorrectly). The game hadn’t received updates in half a decade, and I don’t really use Steam for anything else. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one in that boat.
Most tutorials I can find involve enabling the steam cli, then using steamdb to look up the “depots” of previous versions and downloading the old update in chunks, then unpacking and copying the old game files to your install location. Not exactly convenient.
I used the 360 as my main console back in the day because it was getting all the good games and multiplats usually ran better on it. I got a PS3 in late 2009 when the price dropped and it started getting worthwhile exclusives. When Microsoft tried to pull that always online crap with the One, they lost me forever. Since all of their games are on PC day one, there’s even less reason for me to get one.
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