Baldur’s Gate 3 has a lot of really hard hitting decisions, and I’m in awe at how they’re able to make the story work with just how many choices there are.
Ehhhh, it has a lot of decisions, yes. But in the end: do any of them matter at all? I feel like 99% of my decisions never made any kind of difference whatsoever at the end.
I did a whole bunch of stuff with Shadowheart and she wasn’t even in my ending at all. Totally missing. I did even more crazy stuff with Karlach, and in the end I was given zero dialog or options or chances to do anything with her, the game forced her to say “I’m getting too hot” and fall down and explode and die. I did by far the most stuff with my primary character Astarion, and in the end I got zero options to do anything with the woman he loved and he ran away to hide in a cave.
So… Yes there are lots of options to make decisions one way or another. But none of them matter at all whatsoever in the end. So, don’t be too in awe, because the way they make the story work is just totally ignoring anything you ever did.
You made choices and got the results of those choices. The alternative results are different.
!There are multiple endings where Karlach survives in different ways. Shadowheart’s story has at least three possible outcomes, maybe more that I haven’t seen. This goes on and on for each origin character. Even NPCs you encounter in Act 3 are shaped by your choices earlier in the game.!<
Frankly, based on your description, it sounds like you made a bunch of lame decisions. There’s neat endings and then the middling one you got.
I did not enjoy the combat in the D:OS Larian games because I was so used to real-time with pause combat from the old Infinity Engine games. Will grab BG3 when it goes on sale in a year or so.
Oh one game I forgot to include is Ghost Trick. It’s so lesser known I forgot about it.
This game is amazing. It’s by the creators of Phoenix Wright and it was originally made for the DS back in 2010. It was a commercial failure because Capcom didn’t advertise it at all and since it’s released it’s been pretty obscure. It was only ported to PC this year.
I think this is a game you should go in blind. I highly recommend this game.
funnily enough I first found out about this game and started playing it literally days before the announcement of the remaster. I’ll stick with the DS version when I continue it cause I prefer the stylus for this kind of game but I’m very glad others will get to enjoy this game regardless of their ownership of a DS.
Epic Games paid big money to make some games platform exclusive.
Their launcher is, just like Origin and Ubisoft’s one, features wise vastly inferior to Steam.
Smaller indie level multiplayer games do not have crossplatform play with Steam, or other issues like DNF duel breaking player room ping indicators.
None of these explain the amount of frequency of anemosity towards Epic for their store. It seems some are in a parasocial relationship with their Steam launcher. A bit like console fanboy wars. And for some reason they prefer a monopoly without alternatives than one with alternatives. Perhaps some see the installation of another program as an intrusion to to their private comfort. Not rationally like Microsoft’s ill willed spying telemetry, but emotionally led. I encountered a few people who just don’t want to install new programs and perhaps see Epic a threat to their habits.
But I dislike them for dropping Unreal Tournament.
Buying out a game after it was already set to sell on other platforms, and after people had already preordered it from those platforms, because your store lacked such basic functions as a check out cart so no one wanted to use it put them on the curb for me permenantly.
In a capitalist system, companies get worse in quality as they think they can get away with it to improve profit. Starting your store off at such a low point for your customers tells me that they are going to drop much lower once they think they have the stable playerbase to get away with it.
So I am completely disinterested in building a library of games on a platform I see as destined to become worse than the starting line of in the gutter.
Your points are very valid and it was a terrible thing for Epic to do, but they backpedaled on that and have never done the removing a product from Steam afterwards ever again.
No, they have never done it so far. Because it cost them a large amount of public opinion when they had almost nothing else to lean on. It was a decision that they survived only because their other products like unreal and fortnite funded it.
Once they think they have enough dedicated users, who are unwilling to leave their libraries, and they believe they have earned a steam equivalent customer reputation? They will do it again.
Microtransactions aside, if you’re trying to protect your kids from creeps online you’re gonna have to ban every platform that supports interactions with strangers. This includes several other games you’ve mentioned in the comments including Minecraft.
Personally, instead of banning it I just play it with my kids on a regular basis. There’s plenty of actually decent games on Roblox and it enables game ideas that otherwise wouldn’t see the light of day. My favourite is the Ikea survival game.
My opinion: Follow the Apex Legends one. Don’t tell the public literally anything. Build up zero hype, and then release it out of nowhere and let the game speak for itself. No hype = no overinflated expectations or impatient gamers. Obviously not every studio should do this, but I wish more would. I enjoy being pleasantly surprised, rather than wait for a game for years, only for it to be overpromised and DOA.
I see what you’re saying, but it’s unviable for much of the industry, and Apex seems to be a rare case where it found success despite the competition of overwatch, counter strike etc and despite being unknown (unlike valorant, which had significant brand recognition behind it).
But it’s unviable. Large studios need to market their games early to recover development costs through pre purchases and get people excited enough to buy day 1 (and to convince investors that there is enough excitement behind the title).
Small studios already do this - they don’t have brand recognition and therefore no money or need to market their games extensively (except on free platforms like Lemmy, Reddit etc), and hope their game somehow gets picked up by twitch and does well (e.g. Among Us). For many, many indie titles, their games die in obscurity, or get just enough attention to cover costs.
In general, what you’re asking for is the following: Don’t tell the public anything. Build a game that’s good enough but has an unknown IP (so that people who are hunting for registered URLs or LinkedIn hires don’t spot anything that could hint at a game), and then release it suddenly, but be absolutely confident that it is genuinely fun, it’s watertight (free from major bugs) and chef’s kiss optimised so incredibly well, that it gets nothing but glowing reviews on day 1 and word of mouth alone, through Twitch and YouTube is enough to propel it into the mainstream and make it an instant hit.
Or be Starfield lmao. If Bethesda is unable to do to Starfield what No Man’s Sky and Cyberpunk did, then there’s absolutely no confidence that Elder Scrolls 6 will be a good game.
I think you can learn a lot from apex even if it’s not the obvious choice. For Counterstrike 2 the trailer was dropped, aggressively marketed and a beta was put in people’s hands basically at the same time solidifying the game is good. Then it disappeared until launch. It very clearly worked because there were no complaints about the game. No question how good it is because the streamers played it. Then it’s just a waiting game. BG3 not quite the same but putting the game into people’s hands meant that people knew it was solid, before launch. Access creates buzz, especially if a game is enjoyable. It’s the through line between all the success stories. Let people play good game, then other people want to play the good game.
I’m cautiously optimistic for Light No Fire. The main thing I learned from the NMS initial launch experience (am a day 1 player) is not to allow myself to get too hyped for games (this knowledge was cemented by the launch of CP2077 haha). And, you’d hope that Sean / HG learned also not to overpromise in terms of feature set… would hope they learned a hell of a lot from the long cycle of updating NMS.
Nobody owns ideas, and therefore they cannot be plagiarised. Thus, two companies having similar ideas about how to solve similar problems can never be plagiarism. Do you have proof that actual code has been copied? Or are you just assuming that the use of a similar idea means one must have directly plagiarised the other?
I pirated more in the past than I do now. Big difference is that I can now afford it to pay for games.
Currently I’m more a retro games pirate. Older games are pretty much harmless to pirate.
You pirate with the intention to buy. IMO you’re one of the best possible pirates. A lot of people might never purchase a game unless it’s really necessary for online play or something.
I love supporting good games and awesome studios. What I don’t like it getting screwed because screenshots and trailers look cool and they game turn out to be shit and still cost me $50.
You've got to use reviews and video content. Get really acquainted with a few reviewers and what games they really like, what they don't, and their general mindset. Even if a reviewer doesn't like a game, if you understand their taste and preferences you can even tell when you might like it. Cross reference with general public opinion, or perhaps the development history of the studio and if you've played and enjoyed their previous games.
But basing anything off ONLY screenshots and trailers is a horrible trap and piracy isn't the exclusive way to find that out.
It depends how often you want to buy new games. I regularly consume gaming media for fun, so often I only need to watch a review or two to get a solid idea of if it's worth a purchase, so maybe 10-20 minutes, and often times you can just listen to the review in the background of doing other stuff. And I only need to do that maybe once or twice a month at the absolute most, I'm not super rich or anything.
This is all implying I already have good trusted review sources. I'd recommend ACG Gaming if you don't know any yet, he's a smart writer and goes very in depth in his reviews. He buys all of the games he reviews for integrity purposes.
Of course, if you're being absolutely honest that you always buy a game you like after pirating to try it, I think that's just fine, I have no qualms about using piracy as a tool that way, this is just how I do it.
Retro games are also widely unavailable, and often times when they are available, it's only on a subscription service for a machine that I don't want to play them on. Imagine instead if these companies steered into what their customers actually want. That would sure be nice.
Phobia-friendly settings/modes. There are so many games that I can’t play or have to find a mod for because the fantasy genre is obsessed with giant spiders. The only way I could ever play Skyrim was with the Arachnophobia mod that replaced all spiders with bears. I haven’t played Grounded, but I know it has an arachnophobia setting that can simplify/cartoonify the spiders or replaces them with floating orbs. I’d love to see these types of settings in more games, and ideally similar settings available for other common phobias/triggers besides spiders and blood.
I’ve noticed that at some point since it came out, Horizon: Forbidden West actually added a thalassophobia relief option into the settings! It brightens everything underwater and allows for infinite breath underwater regardless of if you’ve unlocked it in the story or not
One fun thing about the mod is that it doesn’t disable crawling on the walls/ceiling or descending from a web, so sometimes you’ll wander into a cave and a massive bear will just roar at you as it slowly floats down from the ceiling before it can charge at you properly. All the cobweb/spiders’ eggs items were replaced with “Cave Bear Honeycomb,” too.
One of my all-time favorite games, Barony, just added an option that replaces spiders with isopods. I’m not an arachnophobe, but I thought it was funny and thoughtful that they did that.
This starts to devolve as an idea kinda fast because someone out there has a phobia for every single thing. I do agree though on spiders specifically. I do not have arachnophobia but its so common and giant spiders are kinda overplayed in fantasy anyways, that I dont think theyd be missed.
Definitely it doesn’t need to exist for every phobia or in every game, but for phobias that really are only present audio-visually (blood splatters, certain noises, monster models, etc) and not narratively (quest-lines and dialogue), I think it is simple enough to have a model-swap setting or similar. I don’t mind the ludo-narrative dissonance of an NPC telling me to go fix their spider infestation in their cellar and then finding a den of cob-web surrounded werebadgers or whatever. Games like Don’t Starve already let the player fully customize the spawn rates of difference monsters, while other games let the player disable their character drowning or burning, for example.
Satisfactory swaps the giant spiders with cat heads and even with my slight arachnophobia, I still prefer the spiders. The cat head floating towards you are somehow even creepier.
With such an attitude, I am looking forward to your next post where you whine about being fired after working so hard for these years and being so professional boo hoo why am I being fiired. Please, union, save my job. Well, that’s because one of your corporation’s projects in another country that you have zero effect on earned a negative amount of money because of your fantasy and due to refund bombing. Instead of at least covering production costs, such losses would bury company after company all around the world until all of the game development switches to hyper-casual games. All because of toxicity you just made up. Think twice. Look further down your nose. That’s even not mentioning your professional mind deformation. You are not average. You should understand this. You see what others don’t and this doesn’t help you feel positive about products. You should be okay to feel bad about every single product, including your own. In every interview, I ask QAs questions like your fantasy to find out whether the person is able to perceive different work aspects from a business perspective, not only a product perspective. This is very important to discover in an interview to filter the red flag attitude like this post of yours. Sorry for the moral speech. It’s just my day-to-day work pain. I wish you the best, OP.
Most bugs aren’t unconditionally experienced by all comers or they would have been fixed. It’s entirely possible there are 17 horrible game breaking experience ruining bugs every single one triggered by a very specific combination of factors in a given work and out of millions of players one person to hit 5 and hate their life and many hit zero.
If you had bothered to read you would note they mention concrete defects that effected their playing not nits they were picking based on depth of experience.
Given extremely misery return policies if your game’s profitability is actually materially harmed let alone destroyed by returns you might have released a broken piece of shit and need to blame yourself rather than customers who believed in you enough to at least initially put their money where their mouth is.
You see what others don’t and this doesn’t help you feel positive about products.
Its a fucking game. If it doesn’t make you forget about it being a “product” and divert your attention from the reality for a few hours its developers have wholly and completely failed.
your professional mind deformation
Did this sound like how humans talk when you said it?
I ask QAs questions like your fantasy to find out whether the person is able to perceive different work aspects from a business perspective
You try to hire people who are literal soulless robots who think about the money that can be made from convincing people to pay you to shovel shit into their brain instead of having fun.
. This is very important to discover in an interview to filter the red flag attitude
Holy shit you might actually eventually hire someone who gives a fuck
I wish you the best, OP.
I just said you were a piece of shit nobody should hire but I totally “wish you the best”. If its a person you ought to avoid hiring its a person who walks into a legit conversation, shits all over it, insults people, and talks like a fucking robot.
Can you possibly keep your negativity to yourself if you have nothing useful to contribute next time?
Most bugs aren’t unconditionally experienced by all comers or they would have been fixed.
This is not always true. I can assure you, that the game can be published with even critical bugs, and the development team has zero effect on this decision because whether to publish a game and when to publish the game - it’s the publishing department to decide, not the development. Because the development department always cares about quality, and always wants more time to polish more. If the development department made the final decision, the games would be published years later than they are and their budgets would skyrocket. This is why it is important to take the business side of game development into account.
If you had bothered to read you would note they mention concrete defects that effected their playing not nits they were picking based on depth of experience.
One can experience a major defect while keeping positivity for the game, but as soon as you start noticing hundreds of even small defects, your positivity breaks. This is the price you pay for being a professional QA.
Given extremely misery return policies if your game’s profitability is actually materially harmed let alone destroyed by returns you might have released a broken piece of shit and need to blame yourself rather than customers who believed in you enough to at least initially put their money where their mouth is.
You are right. As a consumer, you are totally right. And I agree with this when this is about something tangible and monofunctional like pliers, cutting a tree, cleaning debris, or other products and services not affected by subjectivity. When it comes to subjective products and services there’s always more to account for. Something specific to blame for faults. For you it’s a “game” that is bad, for me, you are talking about the team behind the game, and the team is not one unit. Those are people. People fuck up.
Its a fucking game. If it doesn’t make you forget about it being a “product” and divert your attention from the reality for a few hours its developers have wholly and completely failed.
This is a very powerful thought right there. This is what’s great about games. Now tell me, is the attention of those 96% of people who enjoy this game despite noticing bugs being diverted from reality for a few hours? Did the developers actually fail on this one? Or is it just the Head of the Publishing Department at Larian who said “Enough. We are publishing this NOW!”, and a few individuals with a negative attitude toward a great product?
Did this sound like how humans talk when you said it?
If you click on my profile, you will notice that I’m from Kyiv, Ukraine. I’m not a native English speaker, I have almost zero speaking practice. In Ukrainian, this is called “professional deformation”, or “profdeformation” for short. I tried translating this phrase into English. Sorry, I failed.
You try to hire people who are literal soulless robots who think about the money that can be made from convincing people to pay you to shovel shit into their brain instead of having fun.
Sorry, but you didn’t get my idea. You see, the game development teams are very sensitive to the products they make. When publishing comes and says that we are publishing the game now, the development team gets hugely frustrated, as they know not 100% of the bugs are fixed. But each person who is able to perceive this from a business side can understand that this publishing demand can be based on budgeting and made to save the jobs of these developers even with anticipated losses due to negative reviews. By putting this understanding into the heads of my subordinates I save them from frustration and develop their understanding of how business works. This is how I do this, I’m not saying this is the right way.
Can you possibly keep your negativity to yourself if you have nothing useful to contribute next time?
I’m sorry my reply frustrated you. I didn’t want anyone to be insulted. This is just how I express my feelings. I’m a little rough as a person.
Thanks for the information regarding translation that makes it far more clear. I wouldn’t phrase that as “mind deformation” because that sounds like mental illness.
I’d probably love the tedium of being a QA tester. I’d be happy to switch careers and take your job if it probably didn’t imply a pretty hefty pay cut.
It used to exist, but not so much anymore. I miss heavily community based FPS multiplayer games. With custom servers and so on. I played Counter-Strike: Source last night, what a breath of fresh air!
Same, I played some Day Of Defeat: Source also a while back. I got onto a server, people were talking about random things and seemed to know each other, there was a sense of community, it felt like a local bar.
It’s 3am and I’m chilling and talking with strangers while surfing on CS:S. God, I miss this.
I miss that in newer games. It’s all matchmaking, all competitive and in many ways, modern games like this feels “no fun allowed”.
Pretty much. It’s always competitive. Always on the grind. You can’t just play for fun, no. You have to be at your best every time, because now, there is this skill-based matchmaking algorithm watching your every move in game and so on.
I feel like I’m starting to get old when I say this, but every time I go back to play one of those old games, I get reinforced in this idea… so many games feel like jobs nowadays. It’s just like the real world, it’s all so competitive. No fun allowed. You can’t ever be goofing around, you have your rank to worry about… every shooter now keeps on getting updated, the meta keeps on changing, and you have to keep up with it constantly otherwise you’ll get left behind.
I can’t put it into words exactly, so excuse me if what I’m going to say sounds odd… But I feel like most of the modern entertainment available to me is really stressful and I can’t explain it. To be honest, it’s the first time I’m voicing this feeling, but I find it really distressing…
I think that I fully understand how you feel. It’s pretty much why I stopped playing online games. I want to be able to not think about being good or absolutly winning every single game. Most of the time, I would rather prefer trying out “dumb” stuff in the game or simply having random conversations while having fun.
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