I can understand why fantasy settings are pretty stale, not just in games but in a variety of other media as well. Fantasy can be complex, and using old, familiar tropes (elves are haughty and love nature, dwarves are stubborn and love gold, humans are the world’s jack-of-all-trades) lowers the barrier to entry, which is really important when you want something to be easily marketable to as large an audience as possible. People know what to expect from familiar fantasy tropes, which means they can focus on plot and gameplay rather than going “so what’s that character supposed to be?”
But it’s boring. I love it when a fantasy setting isn’t afraid to trust the intelligence and curiosity of its audience and do something weird.
Anime if anything seems to be doing worse at this. Nearly every fantasy or fantasy adjacent anime goes for a knock-off D&D MMO style and it feels so tired. They don't want their audience to need to make the smallest effort to understand the world and the role of the characters in it.
That’s so disappointing. I haven’t really kept up with anime in recent years, but what I loved about the anime I watched when I was much, much younger was how different it was compared to the western media I was familiar with.
I think the difference is that a lot more English speakers watch anime as it’s airing in Japan now. Anime used to have to be at least somewhat interesting for someone in the west to even be aware of it, but now we get to see all the shit they’re putting out that never would have made it over here before.
Dr. Stone, Attack on Titan, Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen – you don’t have to look very hard to find anime that doesn’t look anything like western fantasy
In a real ‘what if’ moment for Taito he even “made a prototype for a new games console, but that was not approved by the sales team as they were purely focused on arcade games.”
The Taito sales team, as it was back then, hovers in the background of Nishikado’s recollections like a ghost: it clearly exerted great influence on what the company would allow the creatives to make.
Marketing people are bunch of idiots. They stop real creativity and replace it with copies of what succeed somewhere else.
1983 was a uniquely American event. Japan and Europe were unaffected, and as no Japanese consoles had any success in the US at the time they wouldn’t have aimed for an American release anyway, while Europe only bought computers.
I’ve spent about $125 on this game, and I would definitely get pissed if I bought in for all the promises they made.
However, I bought just to have a really pretty “Fly around in space while exploring my spaceship and listening to music” experience. It’s a vibe game. If they took out all the combat and lofty goals and just focused on making a really dope spaceship sim (with all the ship management, repairs, etc that they’ve promised) I would probably lose my life to it.
Right there with you. Spent about 45$ on an Aurora, got a free Mustang, and did a CCU into a nomad. I’m not upset with the money I spent on the game. Gotten way more out of it just vibing in universe, flying over each new planet at they add it.
I doubt it’ll ever launch though. Those who have invested thousands of dollars into it are bound to be salty when the towel is thrown in.
I have a really old account from man years ago (probably payed $50ish for it). I want the same experience - just mostly vibing around in a ship.
Sometime during covid I had time on my hands so I installed it, logged back in. Tried to get into my ship and a glitched basically got me stuck in the door of the ship. Also couldn’t die. Just stuck there . Restarted the game and tried again. Got stuck in the same spot.
Closed the game and uninstalled. I’ll check back in a few more years lol.
I got the game for free in 2015 as part of a choose-your-own-bundle promo for the AMD R9 270X. Haven't paid a cent for it and I still sorta feel ripped off.
See all these free mods!? They’re just for you to use however you want to!! Pretty awesome right. Just enjoy this .5mbs download. Oh you want faster download speeds? Well… Sir. That will be $12 a month. Evil laugh
!newcommunities is a great place to discover new communities. As for big ones that already exist I’m sure there’s probably a list of big communities out there somewhere, otherwise browsing by All > Top 6 Hours or All > Hot will give you a good mix of everything. Then you can add communities you like from there
Edit: also lots of communities will shout out other communities in their sidebars. Check those too
This shouldn’t surprise anyone. When you look through the classics, they’re not “typical”. Hell, one of the most iconic games involves a plumber fighting a punk-rock turtle to save a princess, with a variety of mushrooms both helping and hindering.
With its nuanced characters, wonderfully layered world, and incredible depth of interactions, it was natural to feel the game had set a new bar for the whole genre—but it was pointed out that declaring it the new standard was unreasonable and unsustainable given how few other developers could possibly rise to meet it.
You could make a game a third of the size of BG3, and it would still be excellent value for BG3’s asking price. And no, you shouldn’t attempt to make a competitor with BG3 on your first try. Nor should you try to make a competitor to Elden Ring on your first try; FromSoft had been making those games for the better part of 15 years, building and iterating on what came before. I do think more RPG developers should strive to follow the systems-driven approach that Larian has and be cognizant of what it is that we all like about BG3, but it can be sustainable if you don’t try to hit a home run on the first pitch.
FromSoft had been making those games for the better part of 15 years, building and iterating on what came before.
Longer, if we really want to get pedantic. King’s Field, the game and series that is now the spiritual predecessor to the Souls genre, is from 1994, so we could probably say they have been refining their own flavor of action RPG for over 30 years now.
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