It’s exclusivity from one place instead of to another, which is pretty wild. Not the first time they’ve done it either, because they had that deal with Ubisoft.
I know it’s been said a thousand times, but the books really are immensely better than the show. And they have a proper ending! The last 3 unadapted books are arguably the best part of the series, and Alex is there since there was no dipshit actor to get himself fired.
the problem is there is supposed to be 3 more seasons/books to wrap up all the hanging thread, including what happened to the gate builders and the Martian rebels.
I read somewhere that the armor distributes blaster bolt shock through it so all the Stormtroopers get knocked unconscious. They don’t die, otherwise they may as well not wear it at all as they fall over after one blaster bolt.
But as with everything in Star Wars lore, that’s probably a desperate retcon.
Knowing Rockstar put off development of this game for as long as they did just so they could milk GTAO for every last penny makes me hesitant at best.
I have never been let down by a GTA campaign, but they know where the money is, I’m hesitant to believe they will give this one the attention it deserves after seeing the profits from GTAO. Or maybe I’m just pessimistic
I just wonder if they can actually figure out a way to make GTA online actually fun. Because It really isn’t a good game mode.
All of the online modes that are actually fun are all modded servers. The mental servers are awful you spawn in and get blown up instantly, how’s that fun?
GTAOnline has suffered from feature pile-on. I think there’s an official software development term for it, but I can’t remember it. It’s fun, aside from the astronomical grind and push for shark cards (but there are ways around that wink wink) Even considering that, getting into it as a new player is wild.
That’s probably the wrong term. Scope creep is when you’re working on a project and you keep adding new requirements to the design before you finish the existing ones. Your scope creeps further and further into the future. GTAO is a project that is available, and increasing scope hasn’t seemed to delay new content.
That said, I don’t know what the “correct” term would be either.
I usually think of scope creep as adding more and more work items, like this: you’re building a bridge between two buildings. During design, you find out one of the buildings has terrible foundations that should really just be replaced. Scope creep would be deciding to replace the building foundations as part of the bridge project.
It’s possible I’m not using the term correctly either though. Maybe what I’ve described instead is design creep, or something.
GTA5’s campaign was fairly good, but it sucks they abandoned the planned additions and shoved the assets into GTAO only. I do not care to play GTAO, but I would have liked more things to do in single player. Knowing that this is likely going to have single player solely as a pipeline into GTAO though, yeah I’m sceptical too.
I think GTAO (and RDR2-O) is pretty much unplayable with all the obvious cheaters in each session. Rockstar doesnt even care if someone runs around with a K:D of > 1000:1, ruining the game for everyone else …
Yep. I hate to say this, but they should maybe but MTX into the singleplayer game. I really don’t like the idea of it, but if it’s between that and nothing, I guess it’s better than nothing. One time purchase DLC is clearly not appealing enough to them. That said, I could totally see it ruining singleplayer so maybe that’s not the best idea…
My expectation is that it will be very good, but will have no single player DLC whatsoever in lieu of GTAO2 or whatever they call it. And no, I’ve never forgiven them for doing that with V. At least this time I won’t be expecting it.
What if it doesn’t need DLC? When the concept of DLC first came out, everyone complained that devs were just releasing unfinished games and that you were obligated to buy DLC to enjoy a full experience. Now people only buy games because they’re expecting DLC?
Because Rockstar did some good DLC for GTA IV and Red Dead Redemption. I agree that DLC isn’t a good thing if it’s carved out of the base game, but Rockstar had a good track record of making good DLC for already feature-complete games.
I explicitly said that I have never been let down by a GTA campaign. What I was saying was that RDR2 is a different series that plays by different rules. For that reason I don’t feel like it’s necessarily fair to use RDR2 as an example of how they will treat GTA with the respect the series deserves.
It’s 10 fucking years. GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas were all less than a couple years apart. They need to reuse that strategy of working in parallel and reusing the game engine for a few sequels before moving to the next generation.
I’m confident they would’ve released more games if GTA Online wasn’t such a money printer for them. For those of us that liked the single player though and didn’t touch online, it’s been a while!
The earlier GTA games where quicker to develop because the computers did not have the CPU power or RAM to support large cities, many different NPC models, detailed cars, objects or enviroments. This means levels, assests and the engines where much quicker to develop.
if you double width+height of your map, you have to fill 4x the area with meaningfull content, belivable cities, scripted events, nature, streets, shops, maybe NPS who have a daily routine to walk from one place to another.
Plus, you have to create a large amount of different(!) buildings to place around your map, because you dont want to recognize the same house, shop, park or Parking lot multiple times in the same street. On top of that is car physics, traffic simulation, cop chase behavior and now apparently NPCs interact with each other.
None of this has been done before, and getting this right and bugfree is not trivial - see cyberpunk.
Not even, it’s a tech demo and has nothing to do with the game outside the assets used. That village will most likely not exist in the final product. I still think it looks fantastic and can’t wait to see more. I would hope this means they are close to releasing something later this year and maybe even get a release date.
I’m worried it might be a disappointment. The first one was catching lightning in a bottle. Below Zer0 has put some doubts over their ability to do it again.
I dunno, there are plenty of valid criticisms of both games, but they were both great games. I played through both of them more than once and loved them. They were janky, glitchy, and the second game added a lot of new ideas, seemly at the cost of map size and polish.
I’m buying the day it’s available, I know it’ll have an issue or two but I’ll still love it.
I think the reason why the first one was such a great experience for me is that I got it much later after a lot of the issues with the bugs and gameplay were fixed and the story line was completed. I’m glad I did so. I might do the same with that one and wait a year before getting it, if reviews are decent.
Some configuration file tweaks and an m.2 drive had the first one run great for me. Just had a few areas with clipping issues but no real problems. Some QOL mods definitely made it an awesome game, so yeah; it definitely took some work to polish up, but the mystery and story and exploration is something that I think they could pull off again, and the technical side of things…well, they’ll surely have a bit bigger employee count and can hire some talent.
I get lost in my own city, so I got a mod that leaves a map stay revealed anywhere you’ve swam to.
Then just a mod that allowed you to build an automatic organizer for all the stuff you mine and gather so I don’t have copper or something stored in like 3 different lockers.
Then lastly, a mod that let’s you build something advanced so long as you have enough base materials in your lockers to make it. This is the best one because it really gets rid of a pointless time waster. I don’t have to spend 10 minutes creating all the different parts, so I can make the different parts, so I can combine the different parts, so I can eventually build my super cool thing or whatever. If I have everything that would allow me to eventually put together the super cool thing, I can skip doing all the pointless parts and just create it straight away.
That’s all I used if I recall. The map one can effect gameplay and some mystery, but im directionally challenged. The others are just QOL and just do what the game should have already been doing.
I think Below Zero was made by a (mostly) different team, which could explain at least some of the differences. I wonder who will be working on this new one.
One thing that is very noticeable is that the sound/music design. The original designer isn’t working at Unknown Worlds anymore after making some very regrettable comments on social media and I’m not expecting him to come back. As a result Below Zer0’s sound design was OK but pales in comparison to the amazing atmosphere that was set in the original game. Unless they manage to find a very talented sound designer it might miss the mark again.
Yeah, that was a pity. I agree that guy did great sound design for the first game, but great art doesn’t make up for the harmful societal views he supported. I don’t think I would want to work with him, either.
Below zero was still an excellent game. I don’t think it was as good as the original, mostly due to the stupid snow Fox and must of the on land sections, but it doesn’t deserve anywhere near the level of hate it gets. The story was way better and more interesting than the first, and the world design was a great attempt at a different form of world building. I hope they expand on both and we can get an experience that propels the format further. No other game let’s me engage and chill out to anywhere near the same level.
Agreed, I loved Below Zero. It was very much a small step forward from Subnautica, and I think people were expecting a bigger step forward. But it was always a glorified DLC for the original. Knowing that, it’s extremely enjoyable. I’ve played it through twice and I do love it in it’s own right.
This teaser has me hopefully that Subnautica 2 will be a true sequel. More polished, a bigger improvement on the original. Maybe I’m naive, but I’m gonna choose to be hopeful.
It was super disappointing in many regards, sure. But only compared to the extremely lofty heights of Subnautica. Years later, Below Zero is still easily the second-most-atmospheric survival game I’ve played. It’s huge problem - that the on-land sections don’t work in how they were shown before release and were clearly intended because access to heat is way too readily available and easy to trivialize - cuts deep into it since it takes a huge chunk of atmosphere out (and the on-land part looks pretty bad, it was clearly relying on the terror of having to warm up again quickly). But, even with that, the water parts close the wound up. Deep Arctic is even worse thalassophobia than the crater edge in the first game!
Sure, it’s disappointing and meh compared to the first game, but that’s just a too high bar to clear. I’d advise to not expect this game to clear it, either. Like you said, Subnautica 1 was kinda lightning-in-a-bottle. Compared to a 100/100, even a 98/100 would feel disappointing. 💡
If I was asked to compile the 10 prettiest screenshots from the two games, at least 7 of them are coming from BZ. The deep twisty bridges, the giant anemone cave, the crystal caverns, the…what’s the thing you go up inside of? Subnautica really hits you with the beauty early on in the safe shallows, and otherwise goes for “cool” rather than “pretty.”
I like both soundtracks. My absolute favorite track comes from Subnautica, which often uses music to establish tension. BZ has an overall nicer soundtrack that has a lot of movements that feel “wondrous,” like our character feels amazed at the environment more than anything.
Subnautica’s story works perfectly. It’s a castaway scenario, and Riley Robinson’s goal, from start to finish, never stops being “survive and escape.” What working toward that goal entails takes a winding and scenic path, but at no point does your overall motivation stray far from “Survive and escape.”
BZ’s story belongs in the square hole. Most of the problem is they had written one story, built a lot of the game’s assets including several setpieces around the map with that story in mind, and then they threw it away and had to come up with something else. You play as an idiot named Robin Ayou, whose goal of finding out what happened to her sister is a minor sidequest because Robin becomes a sidekick to the real main character, Al-An.
Subnautica could sometimes have issues with draw distance and pop-in. BZ solves this problem by making everything murkier so no matter what you can’t see more than a few feet forward.
Subnautica features shallow reefs, flat plains, sloping dunes, abyssal depths, narrow canyons, giant forests, huge caverns, narrow passageways, floating islands, lots of varied terrain that present different challenges and opportunities. BZ is made almost entirely of self-similar confusing twisty turny corridors. The caves below the kelp forests, the twisty bridges, the anemone cave, the icebergs, everywhere on land, there’s nowhere that isn’t a twisty turny self similar corridor.
The Snowfox feels broken. That whole segment of the game, I’m amazed they shipped it.
Big movie industry seems to be one of the most rigid forms of media. Every time I notice the same cinematic/presentational tricks used again and again to invoke the same feelings/emotions in viewer. This is visible in movies themselves but in teasers/trailers it’s done in some kind of heavyweight refined form. Minecraft deserves better than those overused formulas.
That’s because these people learn the same cookie-cutter techniques at film school and start writing scripts in large groups right after getting their arts degree. Identity has been beaten out of them.
Ah, I misunderstood and see what you're referring to now. It looks like the way YouTube auto-truncates URLs caused the link to get mashed into the next line of text on the preview Lemmy fetched. As others mention, that's more of a Lemmy bug than anything.
The blade is a great weapon in Dishonored. I wouldn’t be surprised if the blade in Blade were done correctly, as the developers had clearly studied the blade before.
I would not be so sure this is the Dishonored team. The studio may have the same name, but the investigative news reports about Redfall’s development suggests that most of the studio’s senior talent left during that game’s development.
Developers who chose to spend their career making immersive sims are unlikely to stick around at a studio that decided to randomly start making a multiplayer shooter.
Redfall was made by Arkane Austin, a different Arkane development team. Dishonored and Death Loop were made by Arkane Lyon, the same team doing Blade.
Now, you may be right that some of the devs behind Dishonored and Death Loop aren’t there anymore, but it would be for other reasons and nothing to do with Redfall. So in that light, I’m still hopeful Blade will live up to the hype.
TLDR: Dev is The Chinese Room, developer of Dear Esther and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. They still won’t say what happened with Hardsuit Labs, the OG dev, and the mechanics and system will be totally different.
Instead of a thin-blood (new, weak vampire), you’re an Elder (old, scary vampire) fresh from torpor (long VampNap).
Neither of those had any NPCs, did they? I'm not familiar with Dear Esther but from looking it up it says you just explore environments, and I remember Everybody's Gone to the Rapture having like, vague humanoid models but I don't recall them being animated, could be wrong.
Some of the best games have come from developers stepping out of their comfort zone.
Alien Isolation and Space Marine were made by RTS developers. Last of Us was made by the Crash Bandicoot developers. Insomniac made Spyro, then FPS series Resistance, then the Spiderman games.
Expecting a developer to only make one type of game forever is probably why they inevitably turn to shit and close.
Fair enough, we won’t know until it drops! I just really really hope it’s going to be a worthy successor to VTM, and a studio that doesn’t have experience in one of the key parts I’m expecting doesn’t fill my doomer heart with hope.
It’s also worth noting that the original Chinese Room was composed of eight employees, who ended up laid off around 2017. One of the two original directors quit this year, but the team is reportedly composed of over 100 people now.
People experienced with the company constantly complain that whenever they talk to someone in it, it’s like they never truly understand the conversation and are just replying with formulaic phrases.
I have nothing but Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs to judge them on and based on that, they are very good at writing mysteries and cryptic stuff but they seem to be lighter on the gameplay side. From that, the writing will be good but hopefully it will have any gameplay.
Depends on how long the torpor lasted. If it was for a couple of centuries, a lot of has changed in 200 years. The player is going to have to find out the new political players, guns, vehicles, new clans, etc.
If the player was in torpor for a couple of decades, yeah the world exploration will be dull.
No no see you just woke up from Torpor, so yeah you’re an elder, but also you’re super weak, and nobody knows who you are so you won’t get any respect until you’ve done some basic bitch errands. But EVENTUALLY, you’ll be powerful and respected.
Yeah this “Elder fresh from torpor” angle just completely killed my excitement, shit sounds so… bland now. So typical.
I played the shit out of Blacklight: Retribution back in the day, and saw the whole transition from zombie studios to buildblock to hardsuit labs. The devs were really active on various forums, and all seemed like great people.
I've been waiting so long for them to release something new, but this sort of game was a complete departure from anything they worked on (as the main dev) in the past. I'm not shocked that it didn't worked out.
To be fair, an indie like Coffee Stain went from an absolute dumbass meme game like Goat Simulator to something crazy complex like Satisfactory.
You can't really judge what a young studio is capable of.
As for you not being a thinblood in this game, you're named as being a thorped elder waking up, so there could be RPG mechanics of you growing as you get stronger from waking up.
And they don't say which elder you are, so you could wake up as any type of elder, even a Nosferatu.
Having a deluxe edition of a remaster feels bad, though I don’t completely begrudge them. It was still a lot of work, time, and effort to do this.
I kinda love releases like this with no build up. I know that this was leaked but I mean compared to six years of announcement to release, I much prefer this kind of shadow drop.
A deluxe edition does seem a little lame for a remaster. But at the same time the deluxe edition is still cheaper than Starfield and I’d much rather play this.
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