Well, we’ve seen gameplay of this one already, and it’s got more in common with Dishonored than it does Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. I’ll happily be pleasantly surprised, even if that means they made a really good vampire version of Dishonored, but I also know The Chinese Room’s track record, so it would be really wild if this was somehow the game that Bloodlines fans wanted.
I really need a behind the scenes documentary about the development of Bloodlines 2 in the future. They had literally the game fans of the first wanted: Brian Mitsoda writing and Rik Schaffer composing (which itself was a miracle since he’s previously said he never would).
What the hell happened? Did Brian piss someone off? Was the gameplay completely unplayable? How bad was the script? Did they choose to throw away everything Mitsoda wrote or did he not let them use it?
That’s only possible if the game is a rough diamond. Rik Schaffer might publish his unused OST for modders to do something with, but I doubt Brian Mitsoda’s script is accessible and looking at the changes here compared to the Hardsuit Labs trailers it doesn’t look like they kept much of it in.
I think the Castle joker ( https://balatrogame.fandom.com/wiki/Castle_(Joker) seen in the trailer) resembles Schloss Neuschwanstein ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Adolf_Hitler_-_Schloss_Neuschwanstein.jpg ). Painted by Hitler, the whole discarding cards to gain more power takes a bit of a sinister turn.
Discarded cards can’t be played again until the next round. Essentially destroying them for that round.
Hitler is fairly well known for blaming Jews and working on their genocide.
It is a reach. But I saw the castle painting in The Gentlemen series, and thought it looked familiar.
Unless there is something else about the word castle, or that artwork that is relevant? Considering how on point so much else of the artwork and names are
So it seems we don’t create our own hero? Which, I get that it would limit facial animations and dialogue, but becoming your own hero was such a huge part of Fable.
Anyway, it looks stunning, graphics-wise. I’m looking forward to it for sure.
Thats not how i took it. I think that hero he was referring to was actually the main villain of the series. The way he said “made all the wrong choices” was what clued me in.
I assumed that he was referencing the morality mechanic that’s been a staple of the game from the beginning. Be good, and you’re revered. Be evil, and people will fear you. Also, your looks change to match, IIRC. “Really sticks with you.”
That was pretty clear. The apparent player character was a misdirect. The figure that comes in at the end seems to be the “her” referred to, and potentially the main antagonist of the game. I’m sure, just like in all other iterations, you’ll have a custom built player character of any sex/gender.
Wait, fable has a feature to create our hero? I thought the hero was predetermined. Forgive my ignorance since I only ever played The Lost Chapter. I hope MS will give fable the Halo treatment so I could play the other series too.
In Fable 2 & 3 you could select the gender of your character, but that was it. Their appearance was then shaped by your karma etc. like in the first game.
The trailers have used a female hero as the stand in, which, for some reason, people have taken to mean we don’t get to choose the gender or anything.
Ah, I thought it was like Dragon Age: Origins or even Skyrim. Because yeah, that is the Fable that I remembered. The appearance is affected by our action but we cannot create a hero to our liking.
I’m guessing they made significant changes, but although I didn’t think this game was too bad the first time around, I don’t have too much hope for it. The only successful revival of a game after being taken down temporarily that I can think of is Final Fantasy XIV.
Would be nice if every game publisher was required to contribute a version of their game, that can be played without an external network or license, to the country’s main library. For cultural safe-keeping. I know at least one country does that for books.
I don’t know about second best, but it’s in the top 5 for sure. The other three for me being the Rogue Squadron series, Galactic Battlegrounds and tie between the two Episode I games (Phantom Menace and Racer).
All excellent choices from the ones I know. I particularly love galactic battlegrounds (also you’re the first person I’ve met that’s ever heard of it!) And Episode 1: racer.
You seem to have good taste, so I’ll check out Rogue Squadron and Phantom Menace!
And obviously these are just my opinions, I can’t fault anyone else for what they prefer.
Heh yeah Galactic Battlegrounds is so unfairly underrated IMO. People who knew of it brushed it off saying it’s just a reskinned AoE - but there’s so much more to it. I fell in love with it all over again last year, after I discovered a couple of excellent mods: the first being Expanding Fronts, which brings new civilizations, units, maps, music and QoL improvements. The other being cnc-ddraw - which fixes graphics/compatibility/resolutions and does some excellent upscaling. The game is so much fun with this, been playing local multiplayer with my friends using ZeroTier and we have massive battles against bots, its amazing.
Oh my god, you are a legend. Thank you so much for letting me know about these mods. I didn’t even think to check for them.
Going to have an insane amount of fun with it again!
And yeah. So many people that I recommended it to thought it was just AoE 2 again. But as you say, it actually has a ton more complexity. And the map editor and storylines were pretty awesome too.
From all I’ve seen, this is a very cool game, I’ve just never had the opportunity to play through it for myself other than a demo on the original Xbox.
I think it’s available on Steam. I’ll pick it up and give it a go!
I’m not even a Star Wars fan, but I spent a lot of time with the PS1 Phantom Menace game as a kid. Some of its levels (Naboo and Tatooine especially) felt surprisingly open world for a game of that era.
I love this game so much. The video is very accurate but doesn’t mention that once you overcome the hurdles this game throws at you, you can become so damn powerful that your wand can shoot 50 nukes per second that each erase the entire world you are in which temporarily reduces your framerate to several seconds per frame.
Yet you’ll still die if you step into two pixels of the purple stuff and something shoots at you while you got turned into a flying sheep.
That's not game design. It's the feel of a single mechanic. And honestly, there are so many open world games to play that have driving that feels good.
I mean, the guy had a few decent points. I definitely agree with you as well—my constant replaying of gta V and rdr2 go to show that I love rockstar games. And I’m a different gamer than this guy. I have the same approach to movies, too. I work in film and all my friends are super film snobs and I’m like, “oh shit, I really liked it.” Because the story is my bread and butter. Rdr2 was an incredible story. I’ve replayed the entire campaign three times and each time I still felt the story, felt the characters…it worked for me. However, what this guy said is also true. For “strategy” gamers, yeah, their system is super limited. I mean, for a replay their style is super limited. You have “choices” technically—you can be good or bad, say yes or no to helping people, you can find interesting items off them when you decide to be bad and kill them, or sometimes they’ll reward you with cool items if you decide to help. The open world has some secrets to uncover but…ultimately, there is one track for the story (even if you can be white hat or black hat), and the open world experience, you can only discover what’s set out for you. You can’t “create” an experience that isn’t placed for you to find or that you decide to do differently than their predetermined triggers and paths. Basically what I’m saying is your “choices” in the game only serve to limit your path if you make the decision to, say, not help Mary—that storyline is just gone. You get a few new pieces of dialogue. That’s it. It’s all funneling you to their predetermined path. And that can get boring for some people.
All this said, I fuckin love rdr2. I love just fucking around in the open world when I don’t feel like playing missions, I like trying to survive a Saint Denis shootout by holding up somewhere or refusing to run. Shit, I’m STILL playing rdr2. That doesn’t happen when the game is bad. But I also agree with what he’s saying. Being able to actually alter the game, with your creative input having a consistent logic you can manipulate, would turn this game from an 8.75 to a 10. As it stands, the only time your in-game decisions truly make a difference is when they wipe out a side story line opportunity—or if they happen to be the final decision or two in their predetermined story.
I opened the video thinking, “pfft. Fuck this dude, these are some of my favorite (and in my opinion the best) games of all time.” But after actually watching some of it, he had good points.
I really hate when “your choices matter” just means less game. I get that branching every choice is asking too much but it is a little easier when your scope is refined. Rdr series do what they do well and gta has been fun. If they upgrade their engine and game design, that would be amazing. If they don’t, I’ll settle for them stopping monetizing grinding.
I don't think any of what Jakey covers, which is very much how I felt playing it, has anything to do with choices that would affect the outcome of the story. It was more like I didn't feel like the game would let me think and handle things my way. Every story beat could still play out the same, but the missions should feel like I'm coming up with a way to do them rather than the game failing me for doing something fun that still ought to accomplish it. I'm thinking really hard about whether or not there are any story choices in MGSV, which he uses as an example, and I don't think there are, but that game will let you accomplish your mission by however you see fit in your Lego bucket.
I am guessing they’ll wait until after new consoles are released. Let people buy ps5/xXxboxXxSeriesNexXxt remastered. Then let people buy the pc version. Get 3 copies sold to each of most hardcore gamers.
Wonder how much effort they will put into preventing mods this time. I know they bought 5M so it seem they will want to shut all the unauthorized mod communities down.
I wonder how much that will be true this time around. This is the first console Gen where I have no plans to get a console, so they can’t even entice me to double dip due to lack of a console. And if I haven’t got a console by 2024 I won’t be getting one just for one game. Exclusives don’t have the same draw anymore, since they’ve started getting ported.
One silver lining I see in delayed release is that I have less of an incentive to upgrade my GPU until then, and new GPU might be out that should hopefully handle it maxed out when I do get into it.
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