You know, it’s funny, I’m about halfway through DMC4, and I’m loving it even more than 3 thus far, but even through cultural osmosis, I know a turn is coming. Other than that, I was surprised to find how much I agree with you, having not played 5 yet, but maybe I’m not as fond of the first game as you are; nothing seems to flow in that game compared to later entries, and I’d argue it often has more in common with Dark Souls. I went down this road playing this series because Hi-Fi Rush knocked my socks off, and I’m still expecting that game to have the most in common with DMC5. So far, I’d still say Hi-Fi Rush beats them all, but it got to learn from them, after all.
Invincible Vs shot to the top of my list as I learned more about it, as it combines some of my favorite fighting game mechanics and design philosophies. Clockwork Revolution looked better and larger in scope than I thought it would be. The Outer Worlds 2 continues to look great, and this showcase didn’t change my mind. Super Meat Boy 3D was a big surprise, and it looks like the right way to move that game into 3D.
I can’t say I follow you. I would call it satire rather than “totally random”, but if you didn’t care for the writing, you didn’t care for the writing.
I wouldn’t categorize it that way at all. It extrapolated nationality to one’s employer and religion to the law. It was unsubtle in its views of classism and such, in a way that I appreciated, but it wasn’t just doing zany things “just because”, unless you’ve got a good example that’s slipping my mind.
Is this where we bring up the old Mega Man X Sequelitis video again? Chances are the best tutorial is the one you don’t even realize is a tutorial. There was also a trend that I first noticed around the time of Gears of War where the tutorial would not only be built into the story so that you wouldn’t feel like it was chore, but they’d also give you the opportunity to just skip it.
It’s quite nice, actually. Not all work on a game is equally worthwhile. Lots of my favorite franchises have devolved into games that grew larger to their own detriment. It doesn’t often happen that one of these types of games scales back down. And it’s not like there are zero big games that I like; Elden Ring and Baldur’s Gate 3 are both 100+ hour games that are some of my favorites of all time! But unlike a lot of big games, they actually felt like there was something interesting to see for that full runtime, whereas a lot of big games actively harm their pacing by filling it with uninteresting bloat.
But even that is a mess of causality for blame. EA wants to save money and mandates a nightmare of an engine for development; managers get incentives from EA to build a type of game that their studio doesn’t usually make; etc.
A good portion of that comes from how the teams are treated by EA and how many resources they’re granted though. I’m not about to assign a percentage to the blame, but of course the DA folks will be resentful of the ME folks if EA listens to one of them and gives them the time and money they ask for at the expense of the other. “Knowing how to negotiate” can often just come down to how much one game sold versus another, which isn’t really something the developers are responsible for.
Looking through each series’ Wikipedia articles, it looks like Mass Effect sold about 50% more than Dragon Age 1 and 2. And that tracks with my experience. I know far more people who’ve played Mass Effect than Dragon Age, and I’ve never played Dragon Age myself.
Matt Piscatella pointed out on Bluesky that a launch like this is only a function of how much inventory they made available. The Xbox One had the third most successful US launch of a console.
Nah, I loved The Outer Worlds. It gave me exactly what I wanted from the setting, it made me laugh, and it wasn’t bogged down in bloat by trying to be any bigger than it ought to have been.