I have a powerful computer for my work with a 3090, i9 etc. I still prefer gaming on the Xbox, it’s in the living room, it doesn’t bother me with driver issues, CPU overheating, and other random bugs I get on the big machine, and it’s in the living room where I’m also spending the time with my family rather than stuck in my cave upstairs.
Funny thing about AMD is the MI300X is supposedly not selling well, largely because they priced gouge everything as bad as Nvidia, even where they aren’t competitive. Other than the Framework desktop, they are desperate to stay as uncompetitive in the GPU space as they possibly can, and not because the hardware is bad.
Wasn’t the Intel B580 a good launch, though? It seems to have gotten rave reviews, and it’s in stock, yet has exited the hype cycle.
I looked for months for a b580 for my wifes pc. Couldn’t get one in stock for MSRP during that time. Finally caved and grabbed a 6900xt for $400 used. The intel cards are awesome, if you can get one. I do hope intel keeps up the mid range offerings at sane prices
Well the B580 is a budget / low-power GPU. All the discussions going around are for flagship and high-end GPUs. Intel isn’t in that space yet, but we can hope they have a B7xx lined up which makes some waves.
I’m having a good time on a laptop with no fancy graphics card and have no desire to buy one.
I also do not look for super high graphical fidelity, play mostly indies instead of AAA, and am like 5 years behind the industry, mostly buying old gems on sale, so my tastes probably enable this strategy as much as anything else.
I’ll be honest, I have never paid attention to GPUs and I don’t understand what your comment is trying to say or (this feels selfish to say) how it applies to me and my comment. Is this intended to mostly be a reply to me, or something to help others reading the thread?
Depending on what happens with GPUs for datacenters, external GPUs might be so rare that nobody does it anymore.
My impression right now is that for nVidia gamer cards are an afterthought now. Millions of gamers can’t compete with every company in Silicon Valley building entire datacenters stacked with as many “GPUs” as they can find.
AMD isn’t the main choice for datacenter CPUs or GPUs. Maybe for them, gamers will be a focus, and there are some real advantages with APUs. For example, you’re not stuck with one particular amount of GPU RAM and a different amount of CPU RAM. Because you’re not multitasking as much when gaming, you need less CPU RAM, so you can dedicate more RAM to games and less to other apps. So, you can have the best of both worlds: tons of system RAM when you’re browsing websites and have a thousand tabs open, then start a game and you have gobs of RAM dedicated to the game.
It’s probably also more efficient to have one enormous cooler for a combined GPU and CPU vs. a GPU with one set of heatsinks and fans and a separate CPU heatsink and fan.
External GPUs are also a pain in the ass to manage. They’re getting bigger and heavier, and they take up more and more space in your case. Not to mention the problems their power draw is causing.
If I could get equivalent system performance with an APU vs. a combined CPU and GPU, I’d probably go for it, even with the upgradeability concerns. OTOH, soldered-in RAM is not appealing because I’ve upgraded my RAM more often than other components on my PCs, and having to buy a whole new motherboard to get a RAM upgrade is not appealing.
Thank you for explaining! I am not sure why people are reacting badly to my statement, is knowledge of GPUs something every gamer is expected to have and I am violating the social contract by being clueless?
Well at one point to be a computer gamer you basically needed to put together your own desktop PC.
Integrated GPUs basically were only capable of displaying a desktop, not doing anything a game would need, and desktop CPUs didn’t integrate graphics at all, generally.
So computer-building knowledge was a given. If you were a PC gamer, you had a custom computer for the purpose.
As a result, even as integrated GPUs became better and more capable, the general crowd of gamers didn’t trust them, because it was common knowledge they sucked.
It’s a lot like how older people go “They didn’t teach you CURSIVE?” in schools nowadays. Being a gamer and being a PC builder are fully seperatable, now, but they learned PC building when they weren’t and therefore think you should have that, too.
It’s fine, don’t sweat it. You’re not missing out on anything, really, anyway. Especially given the current GPU situation, it’s never been a worse time to be a PC builder or enthusiast.
Oh boy. Thanks for the context, by the way! I did not know that about the history of PC gaming.
I did learn cursive, but I have been playing games on laptops since I was little too and was never told I had to learn PC building. And to be completely honest, although knowledge is good, I am very uninterested in doing that especially since I have an object that serves my needs.
I have the perspective to realize that I have been on the “other side” of the WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU’RE SATISFIED, LEARN MORE AND CHANGE TO BE LIKE US side, although I’m exaggerating because I don’t actually push others to take on my decisions. I don’t spam the uninterested to come to Linux, but I do want people who get their needs adequately served by Windows to jump to Linux anyways because I want to see Windows 11, with even more forced telemetry and shoved-in AI and things just made worse, fail. Even though that would actually be more work for satisfied Windows users.
But I would not downvote a happy Windows user for not wanting to switch, and that kind of behavior is frowned upon, is it just more acceptable to be outwardly disapproving to those who do not know about GPUs and are satisfied with what they have with zero desire to upgrade? I don’t have Sufficient Gamer Cred and am being shown the “not a Real Gamer” door? I think my comment was civil and polite so I really don’t understand the disapproval. If it is just “not a Real Gamer” I’ll let it roll off my back, though I did think the Gaming community on Lemmy was better than that… I would understand the reaction if I rolled up to c/GPUs with “I don’t care about this :)” and got downvoted. Is Gaming secretly kind of also c/GPUs and I just did not know that?
Okay I literally just realized it is probably because I hopped on a thread about GPUs and do not know about the topic being posted about. Whoops. Sorry.
You know, I was thinking about upgrading my graphics card this year along with the rest of my PC but I think I can squeeze a couple more years out of my 3060 TI at this rate.
But BioWare games used to be the top tier gaming company standard for excellence. Bethesda used to release amazingly ambitious titles that were unmatched (albeit buggy!).
There’s a lot of love for Skyrim, but I feel like there was already deterioration in the side quest writing, even strictly looking at Oblivion/FO3, not Morrowind.
As for BioWare, even ME3 was starting to show some cracks, even if you set the ending aside. And I loved Mass Effect to death. Heck, I’m even a bigger Andromeda fan than most.
…Point being I think we clung to BioWare/Bethesda a little too hard even when the signs of deoxygenation were there.
Completely agree. BioWare started it’s downward trend when it thought it could cash in on MMORPG billions by creating Star Wars: The Old Republic. Don’t get me wrong, Bioware made awesome games until ~2010. They were bought out by EA in 2007, and that is where we can clearly see that passion was lost. Good games still came out, but they weren’t great.
I will always hold a special spot in my heart for the Elder Scrolls. I’ve played since Daggerfall in the late 90s. I got into Fallout later, but went back and played the originals (except for tactics). A lot of people hate on Skyrim as being janky, but I was there for the original release. Did it have issues? Of course, and it still does. But this was 11 / 11 / 2011 we are talking about. Skyrim was doing things that no one in gaming was doing well, and they told a good story to boot.
The issue that I have with most studios is that they step away from the ideas of furthering or completing a story just because they can’t think of a new gimmic or mechanic to make it hugely profitable. They need those profits to justify the staggering wages paid to the CEO’s. Not to the writers, programmers, or artists.
So Bethesda lost a lot of love when they (like BioWare) attempted to cash in on MMORPGs with Fallout 76.
Funny thing is SWTOR has some great art, heartfelt voice acting and quests, great soundtrack and such, but at the end of the day it’s buried in a grindy.
On the other hand, I tried Fallout 76 (after it was patched up) drunk with friends, and it was boring as heck. The quests were so dull, gameplay so arbitrarily janky and grindy. Drunk! With friends! Do you know how low a bar that is :/
People understandably love to hate Oblivion and Fallout 3, but I feel the side quest writing had heart, like groups of devs got to go wild within their own little dungeons. Their exploitable mechanics were kinda endearing.
…And I didn’t get that from Starfield? I really tried to overlook the nostalgia factor, but all the writing felt… corporate. Gameplay, animation, Bethesda jank without any of the fun. I abandoned it early and tried to see what I was missing on YouTube, but still don’t “get” what people see in that game.
If you want a big walking sandbox in that vein, I feel like No Man’s Sky would scratch the itch far better, no?
Meanwhile, BG3 and KC2 completely floored me. So did Cyberpunk 2077, though I only experienced it patched up and modded. Heck, even ME Andromeda felt more compelling to me.
I got Cyberpunk in December and KCD2 in February. At this point I’m convinced I’ve spoiled the entire RPG genre for myself for the next decade. I can’t imagine playing 2 great games back to back like that again.
Oblivion is my favorite Elder Scrolls. I actually played it again recently and thought it held up pretty well. I’m a sucker for wandering lush bucolic landscapes though.
I just kept an eye on Micro Center’s refurbished cards for a few weeks and was able to snag a 3090Ti late last year with a 3-yr warranty for the same price I paid for a 980Ti in 2015.
I think that might be my plan too, but I’m still waiting a paycheck or two before I even monitor the situation. My 2070 is fine and ultimately I just want to pass it down to a spare PC for kids to mess around on as my oldest hits 3. I know my the time I hit 5 I was playing shit like Dune 2, admittedly with hacked save files my dad setup.
The freedom that Morrowind gives you has never been matched by other Bethesda titles. I think the only path that’s blocked to the player is joining the Sixth House, but at least you can kill Vivec before confronting Dagoth Ur
I can’t speak for Daggerfall’s freedom as I haven’t really delved into it, but I know it has 6 different endings depending on which faction you ally with.
None of what you listed is “new”. Also, Morrowind wasn’t actually “strange” in the slightest. Plenty of fantasy RPGs had elements of sci-fi and weird bug shit (see: Wizardry and even Might and Magic) and the “you can screw up the main quest” was similarly common at the time. Planescape I’ll give you.
Which is also true here. BG3 is not “strange”, It is literally the third Baldurs Gate game and continues most of the same themes and concepts. Yeah, it is a whole lot more gay but even that is not out of the ordinary for CRPGs at this point and had been pushed by companies like Larian, Obsidian, and Owlcat. Hell, the Mass Effects and Dragon Ages deserve a LOT of props for how horny and gay they were and normalizing the idea of picking the right dialogue options for a sexy card cutscene (also see CD Projekt Red).
And KCD2 is one of the most bog standard power fantasy games out there.
Like most articles of this variety, this is just a fancy way of saying “people should make good games”
yes that’s exactly the point. two of these are from the 90s, one is from like 2001. old enough to have good credit and cheap car insurance. im making fun of the title.
morrowind isn’t really that weird
no, but it blew a lot of people’s minds so i put it on the list.
continues lots of the same themes
citation needed. not that I dislike it, it just feels like the name is tacked on to an otherwise lovely CRPG.
Yeah, it is a whole lot more gay but even that is not out of the ordinary for CRPGs at this point and had been pushed by companies like Larian, Obsidian, and Owlcat. Hell, the Mass Effects and Dragon Ages deserve a LOT of props for how horny and gay they were and normalizing the idea of picking the right dialogue options for a sexy card cutscene (also see CD Projekt Red).
Haven’t played BG3 yet, but I’m interested to read this because I’ve noticed a lot of discussion seems to be about romancing characters, and I don’t remember that being a prominent feature in the first two. That said, I was a kid, so maybe that just went over my head at the time. Or is that something that Larian brought in from their other games?
There were no sex cards, but if memory serves you could “romance” Jaheira (while effectively standing on the still warm corpse of her husband), Aerie (I remember that being kind of fucked but it has been 20 years), Viconia, and one of the boring dudes.
The “romances” weren’t particularly well written but… they honestly aren’t much better these days. We mostly just, as a culture, have moved on from needing everything to be a storybook romance and understanding that sometimes you just need a bang. Which makes “romance” in games a hell of a lot easier.
But also, since BG2 (well, NWN), Bioware have basically made their entire thing “romance options” and so forth. Similar to how Obsidian and Owlcat decided the real culture war was Turn Based versus Real Time With Pause. And Larian realized that we could do all the environmental nonsense that was originally only an option for tabletop games with GMs who didn’t know why you were asking when it last rained.
Worth it. Absolutely, it’s got both great game play and story and more so then any other rpg of its type it feels like your character and the choices you make are actually pretty major. It let’s you be more evil then in almost any other game if you are into that.
They are literally sequels. 2 and 3. That removes any chance of them being unexpected now doesn’t it you dunce.
Ambitious, sure; if your definition of ambitious is delivering a complete game at release.
Weird? If you think these games are weird I’ll absolutely punish your eyeballs with just some stuff on steam that will leave these two games looking absolutely mainstream.
So… Where are all the realistic medieval sandbox RPGs? You know, of the kind set in an actual historical period?
Or… Or… How often has capturing the freedom and complexity of D&D in a videogame been attempted so accurately?
For something to even approach becoming a cliché there’d have to be a lot of that particular something done in exactly that particular way. So please do give a nice long list of games exactly like Kingdom Come Deliverence and Baldur’s Gate 3, because clearly everyone must’ve missed them.
A very fair point, but alas… for better or worse, the bar has indeed been raised, and last month only proved that. February 2025 saw the release of a new RPG from one of the most beloved studios in the genre, Obsidian Entertainment. Avowed is modest by design, but nonetheless it’s polished, accessible, and visually impressive, with a rich story from some of the best writers in the business—and the backing of Microsoft, one of the most influential and well-resourced videogame publishers of all time.
Avowed is fantastic IMO. It’s been handcrafted and feels like a living place as opposed to Starfield which was expansive, siloed and impersonal. As a massive Skyrim and Mass Effect fan it is easily my fave game since BG3, probably even more than it in fact.
I loved PoE1, didn’t care much about PoE2, and will probably care less about Avowed. There’s something magical about a map full of tiles that aren’t revealed immediately compared to a world map that you can immediately tell how much has been explored.
Same thing for BG3. I love Larian (been a Kickstarter backer since the original D:OS days, been playing almost every one of their games on release day since Dragon Commander) and BG3’s a great RPG, but it doesn’t feel like a good BG game. BG2 gave an immediate sense of “I have no idea where to go so I can do whatever I want”. BG3 is always nudging you to uncover the map and clear all the quests.
Morrowind: An oral history on Polygon is a wonderful read.
All the little stories Kirkbride tells are great. My favourite is him designing progressively weird shit to dupe Howard with. He’d be like “Hey Todd, can we put this in the game?” and after he knowingly got knocked back he’d present him something more palatable.
Yeah, I’ve heard of writers on shows like the Animaniacs doing it, insisting heavily on a more outrageous joke having to go in knowing it’ll get knocked back as a Trojan horse to slip the real jokes they want in.
Even Skyrim—certainly a weird, ambitious, and janky RPG in its own right—refined and streamlined the formula set by Morrowind and Oblivion, rather than expanding on their eccentricities, and that trend only continued in the studio’s following games.
I find it bizarre that people think Starfield isn’t “weird and ambitious”. Starfield is absolutely weird and ambitious, that’s why people didn’t like it, it tried to do something new and that something new turned out to not be fun.
I disagree, if anything I think Starfield was Bethesda not going far enough.
They created a new setting and added a couple of new mechanics, but they cradled it in the same tired formula that they have been doing for decades.
I had hoped that since it was a new IP, this would be the moment they would take a chance and try something new. Try a new approach to quest design and world building, don’t just make the game bigger but make the experience in it more varied with more interesting interactions. Instead it felt like new coat of paint on an old house and when they got called out on it, they became defensive.
I broke my heart when they said the lesson they learned was to stick to the same formula and when they tried to do it with Shattered Space, people hated it even more.
I hate to say it but it seems like Bethesda already peaked.
The article totally misses the big intervening step between Skyrim/old Bioware and the failure of Starfield/Dragon Age: CDProjectRED.
While those studios largely just made “more of the same”, CDPR made Witcher 3 and then Cyberpunk 2077. Both games are way better narrative experiences and pushed RPG forward. Starfield looks very dated in comparison to both, and Dragon Age failed to capture to magic. Baldur’s Gate 3 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 are successes because they also bring strong narratives and emotional connections to the stories.
Starfield would have been huge if it had been released soon after Skyrim. But now it just looks old fashioned, and I think the “wide as an ocean, as deep as a puddle” analogy is good for Starfield. Meanwhile Witcher 3 - which is 10 years old! - has quests and storylines with choices and emotional impact. BG3 and KC:D2 are heirs to Witcher 3.
People like to write off CP2077, which is such a shame.
…And maybe this makes me a black sheep, but I bounced off Witcher 2/3? I dunno, I just didn’t like the combat and lore, and ended up watching some of the interesting quests on YouTube.
pcgamer.com
Aktywne