I think it’s probably more a situation where they are not a good fit for each other anymore. The D&D license has value and Hasbro rightly wants to capitalize on that. Larian is a hot commodity right now and they don’t need to borrow the credibility that comes with a big license like D&D. There’s also a timing issue. BG4 is unnecessary when BG3 will continue to sell for years to come. Larian will put out at least a couple more games before BG4 makes sense.
Larian is in a position where they can make whatever game they want and it will sell like hotcakes. Why the hell would they want to pay enormous royalties again when they can bring the writing in house? Sure, Hasbro could reduce their fee, but they can’t reduce it to the point where it’s worthwhile for both them and Larian.
If I’m running Larian, there’s no way I’m making another D&D game. The lore is great, but the rule set sucks. There are better systems in the tabletop space and there’s no reason to even be limited to that after you’ve already made the decision to not make D&D. Wizards isn’t exactly a paragon of reliability and stability either so there’s risk there. Not to mention, it was Larian who helped pull Hasbro’s asses out of the fire. They were facing massive backlash from their core customers until a kick ass movie and BG3 made everyone forget about it.
In short, Larian is riding high and Hasbro is not. There’s a lot more money for Larian doing something else and probably good money for Hasbro licensing to another developer.
To be honest, Bethesda’s best work is probably behind them. They will sell a few more games based on brand recognition and because we are suckers, but I don’t expect much. I’m old enough to have seen many of my favorite developers go through this. It’s difficult to have overwhelming success and keep knocking it out of the park with every release. Expectations for something better than the last thing are so high, the pressure to do something new, the culture change that comes with huge growth, and they eventually lose that magic that captured us in the first place.
Is the story that bad? I played a few hours and I was into it. Does it get worse later? I set the game aside because it was buggy and didn’t exactly run well. I’m planning to pick it up again after it gets some updates.
In the 6 or so hours I played, it was the inventory and menus that drove me crazy more than anything else. They are so poorly designed and implemented that I wonder if anyone actually played the game during testing. I can’t see myself continuing the game until they are improved.
It will be if they give it some TLC like CD PROJEKT and Hello did with their games. There’s a lot to like about Starfield, but it has problems that have a big impact on gameplay. I don’t want to deal with that inventory system for the hours it will take for me to enjoy the story. In general, the menus kinda suck. They really need to work on the ergonomics.
Streets of Rage looks awesome. I’m also excited about Golden Axe. I spent so many hours playing that on Sega Genesis. I hope the remake turns out good.
Same here. I love Cyberpunk, but I just can’t get into Witcher 3 after attempting it a few times. It’s boring, the combat is shitty and I’m just not interested enough in the lore to deal with it. Not that the combat in Cyberpunk is great either. I guess I’m just more interested in that world.
I don’t know if that’s a fair criticism. I think I first saw something about this thing yesterday. Not much of a marketing push. I had to look it up to see what the heck it is. It seems to have a very specific and narrow use case. I’m sure it’s a nice option for people with that need and works well enough, but it’s not exactly something the masses are clamoring for. There’s similar tech out there and they are sort of niche products. I don’t expect this thing to be selling like hotcakes.
Nice change from all the recent headlines about layoffs at other game companies. I hope this means they are gearing up for a new game. I’m in the endgame of P5R and it’s a special game. I can’t wait to see what they do next.
That’s how our games worked in the 80’s. Most of them used passwords. I remember one that used a tic-tac-toe looking thing where you entered a combination of dots to load your game. I think it may have been Mega Man. Zelda was the first one I remember that actually saved your game. There was a battery in the cartridge.
What if they turned him into a drooling hobo or cyber psycho who fried his brain with a homemade implant? I could be down with that. If not, I’m counting on a mod to remove his ass.
Just fired it up. Runs good at 4k on medium settings with a 5600x and 6600xt. Getting 45-60 fps in the benchmark. The graphics still look great on medium. The control icons are showing Xbox controls instead of keyboard/mouse. Kind of annoying, but I imagine it will get fixed quickly since this wasn’t an issue before the patch. I’m playing via flatpak Steam.