Yeah, the OG Steam Deck video before it even released made very clear that the original run was made with self-tapping screws, which meant that disassembly and re-assembly was always going to result in a less firm and tight re-assembly because the holes have already been tapped once.
It was honestly my personal biggest complaint considering it seemed otherwise like they were aiming to support self-repair. Very refreshing to see they changed tack to a costlier option for the sake of their customers. Very true, companies rarely do this out of the goodness of their hearts, and Valve is an unusual company.
I had to stop playing Half Life Alyx when it got to the dark flashlight bit with zombies jumping out at you. Nearly gave me a heart attack. Definitely couldn’t handle it IRL. edit: autocorrect
Yeah I definitely took breaks and actually just never went back after a certain point. Not because it was too intense directly, but one of my breaks, I just never went back.
But it only works as long as the replacement for Gabe Newell has the exact same ethos about the business. Changing hands always risks changing how things function at a company. Unless Newell has been practically grooming a successor for years, it’s very likely that a replacement will want to “shake things up.”
When Newell retires/passes, things will change. Time will tell if it will be for the better or the worse.
Well he’s 61, and the average life expectancy for males in the US is 73ish. He is well-to-do, so he likely has better access to healthcare than most, meaning he will be one of those who lives past 73. I’d suspect we have twenty years at best, but more likely about 10 years if he retires at a “reasonable” age.
Unfortunately gabe is also overweight and hence has the health risks associated with being overweight. So him only living till the average age has a higher possibility.
Not exactly. Of course Gabe could be replaced by some idiot who fucks everything up, but if Valve doesn’t become publicly traded it will continue to be in the best interest of whoever ends up owning it to continue doing things this way. Gabe doesn’t do good things just because. He does it because happy customers means more money in the long run.
Publicly traded companies on the other hand need to extract as much money as quickly as possible and have no regards to what will happen to it a few months later. So even if Gabe dies, all Valve needs is a leader interested in what’s best for itself.
Dear God. Because Nepotism has worked out so well so many times in the past. /s
Just shut down the company now, Gabe.
From an interview with his son:
“If it’s one thing I’d like to see Valve do, it’s push it with more their ideas,” he said. "The people there are the smartest I’ve ever met, the hardest working, the most inspiring. The culture at Valve is a very good one but they’ve kind of found this point where they’re a working machine. And that’s good, but I think they should reach out and do something scary. Do something that they don’t know what the outcome is going to be.
“They make incredibly smart decisions, but sometimes you have to do something stupid. Sometimes you have to have a stupid crazy idea and say ‘fuck it’, go with it. Valve has a mindbogglingly enormous amount of resources at their back, and I hope they find the courage to throw it at something new. I want to see them push the envelope again.”
Yeah this chucklefuck is going to break shit day one, guaranteed.
Eh, it sounds more like he wants then to go back to the roots and developer a groundbreaking game, like Portal, or HL2, again. Which doesn’t sound like a bad thing. To do something groundbreaking it probably helps if you dare to do something that is scary.
They literally already did that with the SteamDeck, it’s absolutely groundbreaking. They created a whole new product category, but it took years of planning and patience and watching the market. It happened with prototypes like the Steam Controller, the Steam Link, and the original vision for Steam Boxes, as well as the nearly decade of work they’ve done on Proton to get Windows games to run well in Linux. It didn’t happen with a “stupid crazy idea” that they said “fuck it, go with it.” It started with a smart idea, well executed, over a long period of time, with many bumps in the road on the way to success.
Steam Boxes were originally announced in 2012, this is the result of a full decade of work.
And one hell of a lot of work, too! Reimplementing the Windows APIs that Wine didn't already have, and then optimizing those implementations enough to be not only sufficient for some of the most performance-sensitive software under the sun but faster than actual Windows, is no small feat.
I wonder how much of Newell’s past at Microsoft helped with that? He helped produce the first three versions of Windows.
While Windows works wildly differently these days and the last one he worked on was Windows 3.0 (maybe 3.1?) and a massive amount of stuff has changed in how Operating Systems work since then.
However, I do wonder if his familiarity with the old systems helped at all.
Yeah, you are correct, and that’s why I think he was talking about games specifically. That’s a grade A assumption from me though (and a bit of hopium?)
So SteamDeck, Valve Index and pushing back against the short-term money maker that was NFTs until half a year or so, among other things, aren’t scary enough projects when you’re “just” a game developer and distributor?
I love their approach to Hardware and Linux but have we collectively forgotten that Valve had a huge part in pushing loot boxes and underage gambling? Far from being the least evil company, but still a net win for consumers and I appreciate that they exist.
Almost definitely. When they did the initial release, it could have easily been a flop, and if it was a flop, it would have been pointless to have gone in planning to repair and sell refurbished units. Now that sales are showing its a hit, they are taking the time to invest in changes for more long-term support.
Self-tapping screws made sense for a product in an entirely new product category without knowledge if it would be successful or not. Torx screws that slide into metal threads makes a lot more sense for what is expected to be a product with long shelf-life.
The only thing is, the refurb market can’t be that great to pay for this change. You might not think it, but changing to better screws and adding the metal threads is crazy more expensive.
Crazy more expensive for raw profits - per unit, it’s basically negligible.
You could say this if s consumer focused effort to achieve market share or sell more games, but I choose to believe this if just what happens
Personally, I think this is just what happens when you have an employee run tech company. They lose out on like 0.05% profits, but more then make up for it through game sales and reputation
I mean realistically, this is probably a few cents a unit. Across hen million units, that’s real money. But quality pays over time. They lose out on quarterly profits, but they don’t worry about that bs - they’re not publicly traded, and they’ll make way more on a 5 year timespan
Fair point, although I’d argue that this is probably a cheap and standard extra step
Molds and turn around time are definitely expensive… But much cheaper if you wait until the next version that probably will have different mount points for the newer internals
I’m not saying this isn’t worth praising, I’m just saying this is exactly what integrity and giving your employees autonomy looks like. You come back for version 2, and you take your lessons learned, you explore the improvements that you thought up during the last version
It’s just basic craftsmanship, but that has unfortunately been smothered in most places these days. You have to be big enough for this to be an R&D effort you can afford to fail, but small enough no one has bought you up to wring you for value
That and they want as many Steam decks to be working as possible. They don’t make their money on Steam Deck’s as much as they make money on people buying games for them.
Nah, definition 1 right there isn’t inherently negative. It’s certainly more involved than otherwise necessary and seems somewhat driven by emotion, so while it skips the negative connotation I think this counts plenty well.
Is it really 10 hours for other people? My game file usually says around 50-60 when I’m done. I think they said 10 hours is if you blitz the main story and do no side content… do people play any rpg that way? If so, I at the very least recommend a full playthrough this time. There is alot of great side content in this, and most other, rpgs.
Mario rpg is really a 20ish hour game for most people. Maybe a little less. I’m not even sure what you would spend your time doing for 3x the time. Even completionist entries on hltb are only 25 hours
It’s a shorter rpg for sure, doesn’t make it bad, my favourite rpgs are shorter.
I mean, I do tend to play around and have fun with video games. I don’t have a checklist and just run to the next thing on the list. I don’t use walkthroughs, so any puzzles or unclear mechanics are gonna stump me for a bit as I work them out. And any time there is combat based levelling, I’ll usually grind out a few extra levels, I’m always way too strong for the part of the game I’m at, but I still find it fun.
It was kind of the normal way to play games back when MarioRPG came out. The internet wasn’t super useful yet. And while walkthroughs and stuff did already exist, it wasn’t considered normal to use them to play a game yourself, just to look up one part if you got too stuck.
Do any of the reviews mention anything about the UI? One of my issues while watching the first released videos and clips of this switch version was how boring and basic the UI was looking. Wondered if that was just a gripe on my end or if it effects some of the people to actutally play it. I understand it’s a small complaint but it can really change how a game is for me.
Yeah. That seems to be a trend in recent years. UX is extremely utilitarian and does not mesh with other game aesthetics. Even when those UX elements are on the screen all the time. It's very jarring to see a colorful game with a distinct palatte of textures being overlayed with grey, modern boxes and white arial text without any background textures to it.
It makes it feel like I'm playing a bad emulator or fan remake.
This (along with DK Country) was one of the games I was jealous of as a Sega Genesis kid growing up (then Nintendo from the N64 onward) and never really had much chance to play later. It’s nice to be able to finally play through it (legally) with a nice shiny modern coat of paint. As someone who never did play through the original, having this version be essentially 1:1 to it is appreciated, but I do also feel like they could have maybe added more for those who do know the original well. At least it’s not a Pokemon BDSP situation where the devs already had a much improved version to borrow from and just directly remade the poorly-received original versions.
I’m sure once us crazy fans get the chance to really dig into it, we’ll find lots of little things they did. The original game had alot of hidden easter eggs, no way did a new team spend that much time on it without adding a few of their own.
And some of the updates and refreshes of side content mechanics might make some of them a bit more accessible to a wider crowd than they were in the original, effectively adding content to the players that weren’t able to succeed originally. There was some pretty tough stuff in the original for people willing to endlessly practice.
I taught my nieces to always go in blind first, and only resort to looking stuff up if you are so stuck that you fear you would otherwise quit the game. We’ll see if they are able to continue with it as they get older and have more sources of videogame advice in their life.
Going in blind always makes games more fun. And helps you build the skills to figure it out yourself, rather than just follow what someone else did. Doing it yourself is way more rewarding, and a useful transferable skill.
Chrono Trigger isn't much longer. Whatever; I'm not going to say this game in particular is worth $60, but 10 hour games are like an oasis in the modern games market.
Lol what. Chrono Trigger A is definitely longer at like 24ish hours for a playthrough, B has what 12 endings? Which adds replay value way past a single playthrough adding a lot more hours to it. C is selling for $10 on iOS, with updated content to extend the play time even more than the original including now a 13th ending.
HowLongToBeat has a median playthrough for Super Mario RPG at 17 hours and 24 hours for Chrono Trigger (rushed comes in at 12 and 16, respectively). Completionist times are coming in at about 25 to Chrono Trigger's 43. That's not 1/5th the length any way you slice it.
I didn’t say 1/5? I just said definitely longer. But I’ll say it doesn’t need to be 5x the price of Chrono trigger. I’m happy it looks nice and is a good remake but it should be like half that price at most.
Also, idk reviews saying 10 hours so idk if it’s easier and shorter with the remake or if they’ve already played it this time is shorter, or they’re exaggerating but 14 to 24 (which almost doubles if you want to play all the endings, and then idk how much the added content adds but it’s more than 0 hours.)
The person above you in this comment chain said 1/5. 24 hours to 17 hours isn't that huge of a difference, and you responded with "lol what" as though I indicated Viewfinder was comparable in length to Baldur's Gate 3.
They made a comment about general SNES RPGS, not Chrono Trigger specifically. Unless they edited it, I don't know if the fediverse has edit warnings for some instances.
Which is fair, most people tend to exaggerate on the internet. But the average does seem to be around double (or more) of SMRPG, and while that's not a metric you seem to care about, it is one that others care about.
Can you at least agree that it's short for it's genre/platform? Even if it's not by the hyperbolic degree one person has thus far stated?
The newest versions of chrono trigger also have additional maps, dialog, items, and side quests that weren’t in the original game. It doesn’t add a ton of play time, but it was nice to have some new things to do in one of my favorite games of all time that I’ve probably played through 15 or 20 times already.
Chrono Trigger is definitely longer than Mario RPG and twice that because of all the multiple endings.
Harvest Moon is 25 hours.
Earthbound is 30-35.
Dragon Quest 5 is 30 hours.
Final Fantasy 5 is 30+.
The list goes on.
The reviews for this game are saying it’s 10 hours.
Replaying large swaths of the game over again in order to get each permutation of how the ending can be different isn't adding as much value as you're letting on. That's not to say that Chrono Trigger did something wrong, but it doesn't turn a 20 hour game into 40 hours of value just because replaying the previous 20 hours can have a different ending. That's exactly the way that it's easy to make games "longer" and why I don't think a ten hour game should be some kind of pejorative, and we're still a long ways off from a 1:5 ratio in game length.
I think you alluded to this earlier, but I think we can agree that $6/hr is an insane amount to pay for a short game that’s just a remake, not a novel experience.
Imagine if Xenogears had a modern remake and sold for that amount. The original was about 50 hours to finish, so if we’re generous and say they streamline the experience down to 40 hours, that would be a $240 game if $6/hr is treated as an acceptable price.
Nintendo knows their fans will pay the nostalgia tax, though.
I think I'd say, in a world where games that used to be 10-15 hours are now 30-60 hours and much worse off for it, that dollars per hour is just not a metric I'm interested in using or setting thresholds for. So no, I don't think $6/hour is an insane amount to pay. I paid that for Resident Evil 2, and it was very good.
Chrono Trigger is at least double the play time If you go after all the endings and get all the secrets and do all the side quests, to say nothing of the opportunity for grinding to level your characters that you just don’t get with SMRPG since you max out at level 32 iirc. You can do everything there is to do in SMRPG in a day. A long-ish day, but a day nonetheless.
To each their own, but if you see an arbitrary grind to max level as offering more value, it's exactly why people like me find more value in games that don't have one, as that's the way that games can be arbitrarily made to be "longer" that I was talking about. I've played Metal Gear Solid so many times that I've easily gotten over 100 hours out of it, but that doesn't make it a 100 hour game. It's just a quality short game.
I’ve never actually made it to max level, I just grind until I can solo Lavos with Crono, which I can usually consistently achieve by around level 70. It’s not an arbitrary grind, I have a specific goal in mind.
But that's no different than me just replaying Metal Gear Solid or setting an arbitrary goal for myself in any other game. That's just you enjoying that game and wanting to replay it in some different way, which is fine. You can replay Super Mario RPG as many times as you like too. The arbitrary grind is more of a modern thing that developers derived from systems like Chrono Trigger's that have been around for decades that they weren't thinking of in Chrono Trigger, but they didn't add tons of content to Chrono Trigger by having a high level cap. You just chose to power level against the same content over and over again.
Right but there is in-game content that gives you an incentive to do so. If you want to get all the endings, you have to solo Lavos with Crono. And in my opinion it’s the best ending of the game, because you get to talk to sprites of the devs and it’s a really cool kinda 4th-wall breaking way to tie everything up at the end. Is it repetive? Sure, but so are 95% of the games that are coming out today.
I’m around the last stretch of Live a Live. I bought this game earlier this year during a sale, and it’s a really good game. Every character’s chapter is like an episode of TV show, with varying theme.
The final stretch, especially the trials can be annoying though, from difficulty spikes to long ass dungeon without a map. The other thing that I dislike is that some animation can be bit slow
The game is pretty good so far, and it does look very pretty at times. It makes me excited to play Octopath 2 and Star Ocean 2 Remake
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