The timing on these comments reads to me like: “I sure am sad EA made us dilute Dragon Age into a third-person action game and chase trends, now that BG3 proved CRPGs can still sell”.
Though TBF, the genre went on life support for a reason. It will be interesting to see if we get more CRPG mainstream hits going forward.
I’m loving BG3, but DA is honestly not that far off the mark. It’s missing crunchy, turn-based combat, and the sprawling story, but they probably have the tech and writing chops to pull that off, too.
I believe 2008 Bioware had the chops for it, Post-Anthem Bioware gives me such doubt. I think EA has made it impossible for them to make a game like that again.
Why did the genre go on life support? I have been missing a couch co-op game since the days of PS2, my wife and I used to love playing together. Speaking of old RPGs, anyone know if there are any plans to reboot Champions of Norath? That used to be our favorite game.
I also get confused by all these RPG prefixes, probably too old. In my day I would walk into the gamestop or Babbages and just say “got any new good RPG games” then they would point me to one of the Final Fantasy games, and then I would say “actually I mean, do you have any new hack and slash RPG games?” Then they would say “no, but you can pre-order Call of Duty” and then I would rifle through the bargain bin, and then leave. Good times.
Which means I have essentially been asking for Baldurs Gate 3 for 18 years now (Champions 2 was released in 2005, a year after BG2).
The golden age isometric RPGs (BG1 & 2, NN, Fallout, etc) were dubbed Computer RPGs, because the idea of translating a pen & paper roleplaying game to the computer was novel. But as the 2000’s marched forward and 3D graphics became an expectation - and video game budgets ballooned - simulation and writing took a backseat to visual spectacle, action gameplay, and set-pieces. Niche CRPGs became too expensive to be worth the risk, leading to KOTOR, Fallout 3, Mass Effect, etc; which would have more mass appeal.
As Larian has been showing, the ability to pack all that story and character moments, and present it with a cinematic look and feel is becoming increasingly possible (with years of hard work). Larian and Obisidian have been whetting everyone’s appetites for the CRPG format, and now BG3 seems to be reaping the rewards.
My partner and I had finally gotten around to watching EdgeRunners and had heard that the game had improved quite a bit. Anyway so I have the thing install over dinner and sit down to play for a couple of hours before bed. I start a new game since you can’t just jump in after being away for months right. I load up a new character start doing the intro and instantly am reminded of why I disliked the game. The intro is incredibly rushed and all of your choices don’t matter. I bugged out in the middle of conversations at least 2 different times where I was unable to move my character and no dialogue was presented. The combat is boring and uninspired. My character would consistently load in T posing to areas. Characters would suddenly stop moving their mouths during conversations. And for a game meant to be open world the game was really really insitent that I play their dumb linear story that is absolutely fucking full of these damn trains-that-look-like-car-rides.
Idk guys I think it’s the same game with the same core design flaws. Sure it’s probably gotten a face lift but it sure as hell doesn’t play any different than it did a year ago
He’s said that way before 2020, also. Publicly. It seems that has not changed. Most in that kind of position would come to the same conclusions of buying up the competition and making money off their products. It’s cheaper, it’s easier, you already get the infrastructure and customer base, etc. What capitalist wouldn’t try to go that route?
Honestly might not be such a bad idea. Unity is built on .Net, which Microsoft also owns. The teams could work together to get Unity modernized and cleaned up, and I bet developers would trust Microsoft more than Unity (Consider that Microsoft also owns VS Code, Github, npm and more that tons of devs frequently use)
played the OG version on release. there is a “point of no return” message for the end of the game. If you complete game or save after that point and reopen that save you’re locked into that ending based on what you did prior to crossing the point of no return.
so the playable sections all come before this — so if you missed something after completing you can reload your “Meet [Person] At Embers Bar” save (the point of no return) — go do it with your endgame character and then optionally revisit the final section if you like.
from what I gather on loading up an old save after this patch you’ll have to re spec your character and may have missed minor things, but can start all the new content from your …Embers save.
From a new player perspective you can choose to do the DLC or the vanilla game at any order or at any point- gated by your character level and progression, similar to how Fallout DLC works.
(tbf It never really bothered me, cyberpunk is one of my favourite games ever. The story, the voice acting the goofy and scary side missions. For me the jesus pose and the teleporting cops where forgivable.)
I’ve tried to keep my spoilers to a minimum, but from what I’ve read, MAXTAC has their own siren. At 5* wanted level, when you hear their siren, a little bit of poo will come out.
Police are apparently relentless too - at all wanted levels. Oh, and straying into a gang’s territory with police on your tail can lead to interesting results lol.
I seriously can’t wait! I love netrunning, now I can be the netrunning demon everyone fears!
I’m referring to the spoilers for the changes incoming in update 2.0.
Not everyone likes to read what’s changed and want to experience it first hand. MAXTAC was not in the base game and is a huge part of the consequences of your actions on the street.
On steam will the update automatically install? I am finally like 90% done with the main sorry line and I would rather finish it as is before starting over to do all the side quests.
Afaik it is impossible to not update the game automatically if you have internet. But it could be that it will be possible to downgrade the game to an earlier version although that depends on the dev making this function available.
On Steam rollbacks are possible with the ‘betas’ feature, but few developers use them. Total War: Warhammer 3 allows rollbacks after bigger updates because those typically break older saves. The option to roll back is hidden in the properties option.
Seems like you’d have to jump through hoops to avoid updating and continuing to play it while connected to Steam normally. #1 you should go into the Properties of the game and set it to not automatically update. But that won’t fix your issue, as it will trigger the update when you attempt to launch it. Also set it to not allow updates while playing the game, just in case.
Some games you can go into the steam directory and launch the .exe yourself, and that might work. There’s also Steam Offline Mode, but you may want to set it up today before the update drops and test how it works (I’ve never used it). Maybe you’ll have luck disconnecting from the internet before launching the game after the update is available. If you’re not able to completely disconnect your machine for whatever reason, you can get a program like NetLimiter and block the steam applications from accessing the internet temporarily.
If you find the appmanifest file for the game (it’s in the steamapps folder where your games are installed) and set it to read-only, Steam can’t update the game. I think it’s based on the appid so the file should be called appmanifest_1091500.acf. You can open it up like a textfile where it’ll have the name of the game inside if you wanted to make sure.
The article does a good job of summarizing everything they changed and improvements, but I feel like pcgamer's headline is sort of leaving off a "... after reducing scope". For instance, the multiplayer mode that had been announced before launch. I also think I read they planned on multiple DLCs but they reduced that down to just this one? Regardless all my friends seem to enjoy the game so I'm sure it's a fun game to play
It’s interesting that this comes out during the FTC vs Microsoft case.
As much as Google shot itself in the foot, as usual, this also shows the anti-competitive landscape in gaming. One of the biggest issues Google had was convincing AAA studios to develop games for their “console”. Meanwhile, Microsoft is solving that by buying studios like Zenimax, Mojang, and soon Actiblizz. If you own the studio, they’re guaranteed to develop for your console, and they may choose not to develop for any competitor’s consoles.
But it has always been that way, with first party titles and exclusives , even purchasing studios like Rare or Psygnosis, its not like a brand new situation that developed right after Google announced Stadia.
If Google had done even any research, I would have started by looking at the PS1 launch and how Sony broke into a market then dominated by Nintendo and Sega with their exclusives, they would have secured a multi year pipeline of AAA titles before launch.
This is a mess Google could have completely avoided with some basic research and discussion with the remaining independent studios. Instead they launched and assumed that they could fix this shit later, rather than making an informed decision on if they actually had a real chance.
its not like a brand new situation that developed right after Google announced Stadia
No, but it’s telling that one of the world’s richest companies ran into this problem. It’s pretty typical of Google to be arrogant and not understand the market they were trying to break into. Also typical of them to give up when it turned out to be a hard problem to solve. But, still, they chose to give up rather than make what (for them) would have been a reasonably small investment to buy a few AAA studios.
It seems to me that to have been successful in this attempt they would have either had to become a major console manufacturer with their own exclusives (maybe not a market they wanted to be in) or to be the junior partner working with another console manufacturer, where they controlled the server side and the other company controlled the client-facing and studio-facing side. But, Google rarely does partnerships like that. You’re right that it really seems like they didn’t go into it with their eyes open. They seemed to just arrogantly assume that their technological superiority would be enough to disrupt consoles without having to do what everybody else did.
But this is a situation of their own making, anybody even remotely cognizant of how Sony and Microsoft entered the market, even Steam has lessons to share, would have been aware that they needed that pipeline of AAAs, and exactly how expensive AAA titles are to make. Its usually public record how much one of the manufacturers paid to buy studios as well, the order of magnitude of cash needed to properly enter the market are hardly secret.
Either they thought they could bully their way into getting them or they thought they didn’t need them, which is even worse, way way worse. They could have spent the money the others are in this space but didn’t, this is the main reason this fell on its arse. They can moan all they like about the price of admission but they could have afforded to pay it if they wanted or lobbied to change it before hand rather than wasting a few billions on this.
It will be very interesting at the level Apple pitch their new gaming service if the rumors are true. Do they go after the mobile lite eco system that Netflix is cobbling together or do they go all in?
I’m really excited to play with all these changes. I have just shy of 200 hours for 2 playthroughs, and virtually every change they’ve made here seems like it’ll improve things a lot.
pcgamer.com
Aktywne