I see what you mean and can get down with that. The writing in 2 is in general much tighter then 3. It’s a shame that compared to 3 relatively few people have played it.
Personal opinions aside as an open world RPG by itself Witcher 3 is pretty good, it’s was a breakout success and remains a popular game for good reason. As a follow-up to Witcher 2 though it’s pretty disappointing. Switching over to an open world does the storys pacing and stakes no favors, and it feels like CDPR is limited by following up the book series and trying to utilize its characters. As evidenced by Witcher 2 and the Hearts of Stone expansion for 3, it seems like their writers are much more comfortable writing their own original stories and characters. 3’s main storyline doesn’t introduce anyone nearly as interesting as Letho, Roach, and Iorveth, except for maybe the Baron, who like the others is an original character.
Additionally everything 2 spends time building up for 3 has pretty disappointing payoffs. The Northern Realms politics were a focus for 2, in 3 they are overly simplistic and somewhat nonsensical. Radovid is depicted as a cunning, competent, and ruthless king in 2, but goes blubbering mad off-screen between games. The Wild Hunt is barely a presence in the games storyline despite being it’s namesake and Eredin is a flat and boring antagonist. I understand why Witcher 3 is so popular, but as someone who was a big fan of 2 and was incredibly hyped for it, I found it to be incredibly underwhelming.
God I hate the “Interactive Movie” genre. Uncharted, Last of Us, God of War. Pretty much most of Sony’s exclusives. They’re all the same boring 3rd person mechanics, and uncultured “gamers” will go off about how “amazing” the story is because they haven’t read a book since high school and only watch blockbusters. If you’re not going to do anything interesting with the game mechanics or add any actual interactivity to the story then whats the fucking point of making it a game? They just seem like a refuge for hack screenwriters that couldn’t make it in film and lazy game devs who are out of ideas.
Witcher 2 is the most underrated entry in the series, and has by far the most interesting story to tell. I’m shocked you find 3’s story complicated as its pretty simplistic in comparison. Yeah it has more characters from the books involved, but the game tells you pretty much everything you need to know about all of them. Overall I enjoyed 3, but as a followup to Witcher 2 its pretty disappointing story-wise. Both games have shit combat, so if you’re not invested in the story/world they aren’t worth playing.
League of Legends. I don’t understand the appeal at all. It’s just ugly and not fun. I really tried to get into it too. An old group of friends I played games with all play it. For over a decade it’s been practically the only game they play. They never seemed like they were having actual fun either but they keep coming back. I miss those guys ☹️.
It really just depends on the fandom. Three more I know of are Bulbapedia for Pokemon, The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages for the Elder Scrolls, and Wookiepedia for Star Wars. They are all very comprehensive and functional.
Of all the TES games Oblivion has aged the worst. If you didn’t play it at the time its really hard to be objective about it now. Too much Bloom and ugly potato faces combined with its floaty, clunky combat make it a chore to play today. Game had some great quest writing though and Shivering Isles is a GOAT expansion. It also has an undeniable, if somewhat unintentional, goofy charm to it that I love.
At the time a lot of Morrowind fans hated it for going against established lore and “dumbing down” the series, but it did well critically and was generally well received by the public. It got a lot of people, including myself, into the series. I went back and played Morrowind and loved it so I can see a lot of Oblivion’s weaknesses more clearly, but I still have a soft nostalgic spot for it in my heart.
Publishers still have a lot of power in a games development. They can set deadlines and dictate the direction they want a games development to take. Seeing as this is a recurring problem with games Paradox both develops and publishes, its easy to see who is to blame here.
Yeah the fucks up with all the Paradox apologia in this thread? I also remember Cities: Skylines on release It ran fine and my rig was shitty back then. It was a perfectly functional little city builder. People loved it and it was called the new Sim City! “Just wait two years and put down another $50 on dlc bro. Ur dumb for expecting it to be good now.” Nah this shits unacceptable. If a game needs to be supported for years before its considered good then an honest developer would call it an early access game. Ya know, those games that get years of support, updates, and features for free.
Way to completely misread my post there bud. Its not about the dlc, its about Pdox (who isn’t exactly a small indie publisher anymore) rushing buggy, feature-bare games to release with the intent of abusing their dlc-centric business model. FFS I guess wanting a game that’s complete and works on release is whining.
Between this and Star Trek: Infinite seems like Paradox’s new MO is to set unreasonable deadlines and rush games to release. You should basically consider all their games early access at this point, except they’ll charge you for updates. They’ve learned that a buggy half-baked release wont effect their sales, and they can just patch the game and crank out new features as dlc.
This tracks. There was the whole Hyenas debacle and their flagship series has been struggling. There is no need or desire for yearly Total War releases, they are just a waste of time and money. Warhammer 3 has been bungled from the get-go. There were a few bright spots where it seemed like they could turn it around, but now its seemingly in a downward spiral from which I doubt it will recover. RIP. Easy money blown down the drain by a severely mismanaged company.
Starfield just doesn’t look or play like a game that came out in 2023. Fallout 4 was already behind the curve for it’s time, and Starfield is basically just Fallout 4 in Space 8 years later. Rpgs have evolved in both gameplay and narrative and Bethesda just isn’t keeping up. Don’t know if it’s a skill issue or it’s corporate suits playing it safe and setting unreasonable deadlines, probably a mix of both.
Starfield may be a success financially and find a fan base for now, but it’s going to be forgotten soon by most and definitely won’t be seeing rereleases a decade later.