As I see it, the difference is that we now have capable game engines freely available. Indie studios can, for the most part, offer the same quality of gameplay. AAA studios can only really differentiate themselves by how much content they shove into a game.
In particular, this also somewhat limits creativity of AAA games. In order to shove tons of content into there, the player character has to be a human, the gameplay has to involve an open world, there has to be a quest system etc…
I noped out of Destiny during 1, but it isn’t dissimilar from most live games.
Some people want that endless content drip. They are the ones who tend to bounce between live games and so forth.
But for a lot of us? It is about the journey, not the destination. We played Elite Dangerous because we like flying and scooping and not because we want to buy every single ship. We play Warframe because we enjoy the movement and gameplay and not because we need to make our MR even higher. And so forth.
And for them? Hopefully there is new content at some point if only for Bungie’s sake. But even if there isn’t? They are still playing a game they enjoy.
Because back in the before time? I probably logged 30 hours on CTF-Face alone back in UT. I played and beat Freespace 2 at least a dozen times. Hell, I have basically an annual replay of DOOM 1 and 2 that I have been doing for longer than most of you have been alive. Sometimes you want something new to experience. And sometimes you just want to have fun playing a game you like.
You can’t even play without spending hours scrolling Reddit and Twitter to figure out WTF is even going on. Eventually I was spending more time reading about the game than playing it and that’s when I quit. Since then Reddit and Twitter have become an absolute dumpster fire so I was even more glad I quit when I did.
You may be interested in Aska. It asks the question “what if valheim was also a colony sim?”. It’s a bit less chill then Stardew/Portia, but it is a classless, moneyless community building game.
I think they’re falling into the same trap Bioware fell into, whereby they have a couple of critically acclaimed franchises under their belt and are universally praised and all is well, but then obviously that can’t last forever so as soon as the wheels start to wobble a bit, they start over-thinking, over-developing and over-managing their games because the next one needs to be a massive hit, but then what inevitably happens is they end up sabotaging development as they keep throwing out ideas and polishing all the rough edges off. So you actually end up with something that feels under-developed and bland because it’s all designed by committees and middle-managers, and built by underpaid devs on a crunch who just want to be done with it.
Also Microsoft bought them in the meantime, which can’t be helpful.
Little Nightmares 1 & 2 get my vote. Also, Alan Wake 2 is a lot of fun and not exactly a horror game since it doesn’t take itself seriously, but it has a fantastic spooky vibe.
Horror comedies are definitely a thing, but tbh I’d still consider Alan Wake 2 an outright horror even with the lighter stuff! Very spooky elements, with great writing and story crafting. Bonus points if you play Remedy’s other games for the Easter eggs
A new shooter that Sony launched a couple weeks ago and have subsequently cancelled and is offering refunds. So basically an astronomical waste of money.
Sony released a more realistic looking big budget Overwatch clone. It was fine, but nobody cared, because nobody wants a $40 live service Overwatch clone where all the characters have similar silhouettes. They spent 8 years making an okay game for nobody. If they’d done something different with the same basic characters and gunplay it could have maybe been good. They didn’t though, so estimates suggested they sold about 25,000 copies worldwide before pulling it from their store and refunding everyone.
Ontop of all of that, it was also just clearly a corporate cash grab where the people who made it either didn’t feel strongly about it or they didn’t get to put their soul into it as much as they wanted.
It’s not just bland, it’s a cold and calculating kind of bland. Like being served nutrient paste, but it’s not even flavourless instead they added artificial banana flavour so now it’s both depressing and makes you feel sick.
I’d say the bigger problem is just that the Bethesda RPG model is completely outdated. It feels like something you’d play a decade ago, but what used to be it’s contemporaries have absolutely eclipsed it by this point. If I wanted to play just a fun easy fantasy romp, I’d go for Dragon’s Dogma 2. If I wanted an actual RPG with bones that could offer me a challenge, I’d play Elden Ring. If I’m just looking for a well-written story, I’d go play something by CD Project Red.
Bethesda’s games aren’t well written, aren’t that interesting to play, and basically cannot offer any real challenge. The only real saving grace for Skyrim has been the modding community, which has been able to continually breathe life into what would otherwise be very tired game design.
adjustable tension springs and locking mechanism for varied stick cap types (Xbox Elite series 2 does most of this but uses magnetic caps which would interfere with the TMR sticks so ball bearing connections or other option would be preferable)
Adaptive haptic triggers (PS5) which can be toggled to hair trigger mode via switches (Xbox Elite series 2)
multi-touchpad on face (PS5)
analog face buttons (DualShock 2 controller had this but only a few games utilized this… the best example was the PS2 era Metal Gear Solid games)
customizable “per-button” color assignment / micro OLED or e-ink screens so button graphics can be swapped (PBTails new controller does the per button RGB color assignment)
USB-C / 4 wired connectivity + charging
baseplate contact-charging (PS5 controller has these so you can set them on charging docks)
hot swappable battery pack + AA battery holder pack or ability to not have a battery on at all when connected via USB-C (Xbox 360 controller had this)
swappable non-magnetic Zinc-alloy faceplates (PBTails new controller has these)
removable back triggers with dedicated button assignments (like the Steam Deck’s L4/5 and R4/5 buttons; not just cloned face buttons like Sony and XBox do)
integrated microphone with hardware toggle (PS5)
proper “separate keys” d-pad… not the mushy type
touch-sensitive surfaces for every button and stick (Meta / Oculus Quest controllers do this)
per-finger-joint touch sensitive grips for each finger segment (Valve’s VR controllers did this)
the ability to separate the halves of the controller so that each hand could hold one half independently and have them track similar to most standard VR controllers (think combining the switch controllers and Quest controllers)
NFC communication (Amiibo-stuff for example)
If any single controller did even half of this, they’d easily be the GOAT.
Your character doesn’t speak per say, so you usually are limited to gestures for interacting with other players.
The stone refers to a series of items thatve been around since dark souls 1 where you drop a magic stone and a voice comes out saying the line. In dark souls 1 and some others it was a rock you dropped and it broke open making sound, so the “stone” term stuck.
In elden ring it’s called a “prattling pate: ‘voice line here’”. Your character blows into it like a flute kinda and the line is spoken.
Basically the guy showed up, said “damn ur fashion is on point” then left :)
In the game, there are stones that you can find, and when you use them, they say something. There’s no voice chat in the games, so these can be used to communicate
Aside from Microsoft selling it as one, there’s a reason the 360’s contoller design is basically the de facto basis for most PC controllers. It’s the most comfortable one I’ve used for 3D games by far. Everything you need is easy to access. Nintendo lifted essentially the same design for their Wii U and Switch Pro controllers.
The d-pad on the 360 controller was garbage. It was the only thing holding it back.
I think they’ve found a great place with the One/Series controllers.
I also really appreciate that with the jump to the Series X/S they didn’t change controllers. They had one that worked that people liked, so they kept it. And it works via Xbox’s proprietary wireless protocol, USB, or Bluetooth, so it works on pretty much anything but a Playstation or Nintendo.
I couldn’t care less about the D-pad. All that matters is how it feels in my hand and access to the primary controls like joysticks, triggers, and face buttons.
where does AAA even come from. Is it like michelin stars and the american automobile association started it. If not why don't I hear about the AA or just A or B or C or D games. They should do like the recording industry and have categories based on amount sold and I would limit sales for full retail price. Once they set the price as what they think of it then they only get credit for those who pay full freight. Just to limit deeply discounting to pump the numbers and maybe to encourage a reasonable starting price.
My understanding is AAA is literally just a buzzword in the vein of AAAA. It doesn’t relate to budget, team size, publisher/no publisher, kind of same as indie at this point.
It maybe made a little more sense when it was a publisher descriptor? EA, Activision, Ubisoft were publishing games at a different scale than Midway, Acclaim, THQ, etc. But still, as far as I understand is more of a marketing term as opposed to designating anything specific.
It comes from the publishers in the 90s. They needed an easy way to tell stores/distributors how popular they thought each of their games would be, to help them decide how many of a certain title the distributor should order. The games expected to be GotY contenders would be marked AAA, AA for otherwise decent games, A for more niche games and B for “this is a starshot, we’re hoping it will sell enough to justify production costs”. That then lead to more and more games being marked as AAA due to budgets getting increased, and the whole system became a bit redundant.
he games expected to be GotY contenders would be marked AAA, AA for otherwise decent games, A for more niche games and B for “this is a starshot, we’re hoping it will sell enough to justify production costs”.
Is there any evidence of this being the case? Personally, I don’t remember anything other than “AAA” back in the day, with other variations coming about much later as budgets grew and people wanted more specific delineations.
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