djsoren19

djsoren19, 5 miesięcy temu

100% believable and 100% pointless. So much of that money is basically being wasted on their digital art team making technically distinct assets for each game. They all have to be exceptionally high quality, because Call of Duty is a AAA franchise, but do any players actually care if their sniper rifle looks slightly different if the numbers and mechanics are identical?

Feel like all of CoD’s successful competitors have figured out that FPS players don’t really give a shit and will happily play the same client on the same maps with minimal updates year after year, but Acti-Blizz is addicted to reinventing the wheel each time even though they’re reusing the good maps.

djsoren19, 5 miesięcy temu

At least in recent memory, it was Dragon’s Dogma 2 teaching me that I could pick up and carry downed party members by having one of my party members pick up another one and bring them over to me. There’s so much that’s possible in DD2 that just isn’t in a typical videogame, that throughout the entire experience I was mostly learning niche interactions from my other party members instead of my own experimentation. It was a really cool experience, and felt way more impactful then a text prompt just lecturing me about all the mechanics the game has.

djsoren19, 6 miesięcy temu

idk, but I saw some of the insane shit they were posting when Black Myth: Wukong didn’t win Game of the Year at the Game Awards. It wouldn’t surprise me if that anger is spilling over to other targets.

djsoren19, 6 miesięcy temu

On the one hand, I can kinda get it. It must really suck to lose to a self-servicing corpo ad-a-palooza, even one as well crafted as Astrobot. It’s like losing a collectible contest to FunkoPops, just clear feelsbad.

On the other, fuck this guy for dragging nationalistic pride into a dumbass award ceremony. The Geoff-fest is always a stupid corporate cockgag that celebrates publisher money more than developers, taking it personally and trying to pretend like all of China was snubbed only serves to makes BMW look worse.

djsoren19, 6 miesięcy temu

It never had any credibility, no awards show does. It’s always a way for the richest and most powerful of an industry to jerk themselves off.

djsoren19, 6 miesięcy temu

They’ve given Cyberpunk 4 years of support for free since the initial launch, including a full overhaul of the game. I get the state of the launch was dogshit, and you can bet your ass I’m not pre-ordering, but still holding onto this grudge is just petty. How much more sorry do you need them to be?

djsoren19, 6 miesięcy temu

I think you’re both asking for the same thing. IIRC my lore correctly, Witcher clans were founded after the Conjunction to deal with the sudden influx of monsters. A game about the first Witcher could be set mere months after the event.

djsoren19, 6 miesięcy temu

Every game feels a bit broad. Even if just for the sake of development, I’m okay with story-focused games having pre-built characters. Especially if we’re not actually meant to like or agree with the character we’re playing as, such as Martin Walker in Spec-Ops: The Line.

djsoren19, 6 miesięcy temu

Is it really that hard to imagine she eventually undertook the Trial? Yeah Kaer Morhen lost the ability to administer the Trial, but there’s like 10 different Witcher “schools.” Maybe we’ll see Ciri working with the School of the Crane or w/e.

djsoren19, 6 miesięcy temu

Well good news, because you don’t need to pay a dime to get updated to version 2.2 and receive all the free updates. Phantom Liberty is a cool story, but has zero impact on gameplay.

djsoren19, 6 miesięcy temu

This is just wrong, School of the Cat managed to successfully get to a point where 1/10 women survived. School of Crane is the later iteration of the School of Cat, which is why I mentioned them specifically. It’s reasonable to assume they kept iterating on the original formula for the trial, so maybe they’ve gotten to a survival rate of 3/10 for women as well by the time of the game?

As for why, it’s because Ciri wants to be a proper Witcher like Geralt. She was raised in Kaer Morhen, one of the ending of Witcher 3 is Geralt handing her a Witcher sword. You really can’t think why she would take the Trial, even knowing the risk?

djsoren19, 6 miesięcy temu

I guess it depends on what you call fanfiction? It’s from Opowieści ze świata Wiedźmin, which is a collection of short stories written by authors other than Andrzej Sapkowski in the Witcher universe. The authors have other published works, so I’d argue it’s a bit more official than pure fanfiction, but I can’t confirm how canon it’s considered. Certainly something CD Projekt Red could rip-off for their non-canon story set like 20 years later though.

Also Ciri has been well established to be a headstrong idiot, so I’m not sure why you’re trying to examine her decision through rational logic. I’d bet she’d accept the Trial even with a 0% survival rate if she felt it made her a “proper Witcher.”

djsoren19, 6 miesięcy temu

Sure, but they’ve only ever had correlational evidence to suggest video games cause violence. Their own correlational evidence does not support their conclusions, and that should be called out and ridiculed.

djsoren19, 6 miesięcy temu

Can’t really pirate a game on PC if it’s never released on PC.

djsoren19, 6 miesięcy temu

Is it how there still isn’t a good enough PS4 emulator on PC to play Bloodborne at 60 fps?

djsoren19, 6 miesięcy temu

There’s a massive difference between a Switch and a Playstation. We’re nowhere near emulation of a PS5, and knowing Sony they would have FromSoftware make a launch title for the PS6.

djsoren19, 6 miesięcy temu

Just glad to know it’s still kicking around. Ape managed to kickstart an entire generation of cozy games, while remaining the best among them. As long as its still cooking, I’m sure it’ll be great when it comes out.

djsoren19, 6 miesięcy temu

oh man, I’m really tempted to recreate my Lawful Good Hexblade Warlock. I guess the opportunities to roleplay an insane fallen paladin aren’t as prevalent though.

djsoren19, 7 miesięcy temu

I think Dragon’s Dogma 2 is great for newcomers to the series, but I can understand if a fan of the original was disappointed that it’s basically just the first game again.

djsoren19, 7 miesięcy temu

Kinda wild they’ve now done this for nearly every game in their portfolio though. We have multiple flavors of World of Warcraft Classic, Hearthstone had a Classic mode for about a year, D2R is basically Diablo Classic, now there’s gonna be Overwatch Classic. I guess we just need a Heroes of the Storm Classic and a remake of Brood War to complete the set.

djsoren19, 7 miesięcy temu

You don’t even need to go sailing, you can just stop at not buying their games. Ubisoft has not put out any game I’d really consider a must-play in over a decade. The last interesting Ubisoft open-world game was Black Flag in 2013. Even if you’re an absolute glutton for open-world designed by committee slop, Sony basically ate Ubisoft’s lunch with Ghosts of Tsushima, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Spiderman. Pirate those instead.

djsoren19, 7 miesięcy temu

It hasn’t been a serious franchise since Wacraft 2 Tides of Darkness, it’s always had a goofy art-style alongside lots of silly gags and pop culture references.

djsoren19, 8 miesięcy temu

You don’t have to pay people to generate good reviews. You can also just only choose to give review keys to friendly media outlets you’ve already built a relationship and know will treat you uncritically.

djsoren19, 8 miesięcy temu

Counterpoint:

P I N G

djsoren19, 8 miesięcy temu

Maybe the most fucking disgusting part of all of this is that it doesn’t even lead to more money. The shitty western companies are all fucking floundering right now because they have no institutional knowledge, there’s no way to become a veteran game dev at a company that churns through their workforce every 12 months, and suddenly you have out of touch execs at Ubisoft and EA wondering why people don’t play their games. All the innovation that comes from pouring your soul into a project for the long-term comes from indie developers now, and it’s left AAA games feeling as soulless to play as they are to make.

Meanwhile in the east you have companies like FromSoftware and Capcom who are just laughing all the way to the bank, because their competition is all run by idiots.

djsoren19, 8 miesięcy temu

The issue with something like destructible terrain is that if your one and only goal is graphical fidelity, the only thing the AAA companies care about, then it actually becomes a massive resource hog. You’ll need to have artists render each photorealistic way that a piece of a scene could turn to debris. It’s the kinda thing that sounds simple, but could take a team of artists months or even years to accomplish.

If you look at an incredible game like Teardown which really delivers on full destructibility, you can see that they’re using voxels and the game looks a little blocky. It’s the kinda thing you can easily ignore with good art direction though, which Teardown has. The problem is that you need talented directors to conceptualize that, and most of the talent in the Western games industry is being wasted by corps that want to treat developers like single-use plastics and trash them once the current project is out.

djsoren19, 8 miesięcy temu

Oh don’t get me wrong, the execs in the east aren’t immune to doing batshit insane things. Capcom is on some wild shit with their microtransactions. Konami really feels like they’re just taking a shovel to Kojima’s legacy and pulling out whatever they can. Nintendo is trying to find out if they can legally punch developers in the face.

But they aren’t putting out multi-million dollar flops. They’re not decimating their workforce to increase CEO compensation packages. They’re not getting swallowed up by the handful of fish who are too big for the pond. They’re just being kinda weird, which is a fine change of pace.

djsoren19, 8 miesięcy temu

Neither of which will matter.

Bethesda’s game design is just too old. Playing Starfield felt like playing an RPG from a decade ago. Bethesda just got complacent from back when they were one of the only companies that could seriously do an open-world RPG, now we have CD Projekt-Red and FromSoftware with wildly different, significantly more innovative gameplay experiences. Hell, even other AAA devs like Capcom have been able to outperform in the open world space, Dragon’s Dogma 2 was a ton of fun.

djsoren19, 8 miesięcy temu

Cyberpunk is very much not a shit game, it’s a pretty good RPG with a great variety of character builds and fantastic writing. The devs did an absurd amount of work in order to make the gameplay significantly more fun. I’d also make the argument that Witcher 2 is a really good game, and is what popularized the series enough for Witcher 3 to be such a colossally known hit. The two companies make very different RPGs to one another, for sure, but you’re just being a contrarian if you think the pedigree of the two companies is vastly different.

djsoren19, 9 miesięcy temu

There is no more phone. There is no more world. There is only Balatro now.

djsoren19, 9 miesięcy temu

Not too surprising, I imagine removing the PSN login was real close to just cracking the game entirely. Honestly not sure why people would buy the game and then use a third party tool to bypass the PSN requirement as opposed to just pirating the game to begin with.

djsoren19, 9 miesięcy temu

It’s a shame that I’m a quivering pussy, because I think the combat against the replicants in FEAR fucking rules. The shooting feels awesome, slow-mo karate is awesome, the game feels awesome to play.

…and then the game goes quiet after the shooting stops, and it delivers some of the spookiest atmosphere I’ve experienced even after two decades of age. A single light fixture moves suddenly, showing the shadow of something just behind me, and I jump out of my skin and have to take a break from playing.

djsoren19, 9 miesięcy temu

I’m interested in knowing what your issues with it are. As someone who never played the first, I found it a pretty incredible and innovative RPG. Probably the biggest disappointment is just that I wish there were more monsters to fight, which I understand was a criticism of the first game until it’s Dark Arisen expansion.

djsoren19, 9 miesięcy temu

I mean, that’s just every Capcom release now. It has nothing to do with their confidence or anything, they just add pointless microtransactions because some suit at the company thinks it’s a good idea. It’s the same shit with Devil May Cry 5, all the recent Resident Evil games, literally everything they published. If that’s honestly the only thing keeping you from playing Dragon’s Dogma 2, you’re making a mistake.

djsoren19, 9 miesięcy temu

This is a real valid issue. I’ve heard they finally put out a performance fix, but have not personally tried it out myself to confirm. It’s definitely the kinda game where you’ll need cutting edge tech to make it look beautiful, and it can look incredible, but that doesn’t excuse the abysmal performance on lower end hardware.

djsoren19, 9 miesięcy temu

It’s not really much of an argument, it’s just stating facts. I’m not for the microtransactions, I think it’s confusing that they would add such a thing at all, but they’ve consistently been doing it for all of their published games for nearly half a decade now. I’ve just chalked it up to a cultural difference since Capcom is an Eastern publisher, and on the sliding scale of scummy microtransactions it’s pretty close to the bottom.

djsoren19, 9 miesięcy temu

Their implementation of it just feels like they don’t actually want you to buy the microtransactions. In Dragon’s Dogma 2 for example, one of the most useful things you could buy is a Port Crystal, since it lets you setup a location to fast travel to and they’re reasonably rare to find. However, you can only buy one maximum, and you don’t really need them at all in the early game. By the time you would need one, you’ll have collected like 3-4, and getting an extra one would be honestly pointless. You would think that they’d change gameplay in some fashion to encourage you to spend money, but after finishing the game I had tons of all the stuff they were trying to sell.

djsoren19, 9 miesięcy temu

I’d say the bigger problem is just that the Bethesda RPG model is completely outdated. It feels like something you’d play a decade ago, but what used to be it’s contemporaries have absolutely eclipsed it by this point. If I wanted to play just a fun easy fantasy romp, I’d go for Dragon’s Dogma 2. If I wanted an actual RPG with bones that could offer me a challenge, I’d play Elden Ring. If I’m just looking for a well-written story, I’d go play something by CD Project Red.

Bethesda’s games aren’t well written, aren’t that interesting to play, and basically cannot offer any real challenge. The only real saving grace for Skyrim has been the modding community, which has been able to continually breathe life into what would otherwise be very tired game design.

djsoren19, 9 miesięcy temu

I think the record still goes to Amazon’s Crucible, which was cancelled before release after a closed-beta that nobody played.

djsoren19, 10 miesięcy temu

How do you remaster something that was intentionally broken/buggy?

djsoren19, 10 miesięcy temu

Maybe the real Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 was the friends we bit along the way.

djsoren19, 10 miesięcy temu

Not even just survival horror, RE4 was a landmark title just as a third-person action shooter. It had a huge influence on the generation of third person shooters that came after it.

djsoren19, 10 miesięcy temu

Dark Souls is literally just Legend of Zelda for adults, which had a stamina system at about the same time Kings Field did. It’s honestly hilarious to me that it became known as the father of the genre, but the immediate copycats were also aiming for a similar tone to FromSoftware so I guess it’s fair.

djsoren19, 10 miesięcy temu

I think the fault lies with Ubisoft and Assassin’s Creed. They really championed the idea of a bloated open world stuffed with systems that don’t really interact with each other, and now AAA gaming just keeps trying to stuff more mechanics in the pile.

djsoren19, 10 miesięcy temu

Kinda wild to see nobody mention System Shock, the game that invented audio logs. It may seem quaint in retrospect, but at the time all shooters were in the vein of Doom, and story in a shooter was considered “like story in porn.” System Shock was not only the first to communicate the plot and next steps to the player through found audio logs, but it also filled the player in on side stories and provided characterization to the survivors on Citadel station.

The game recently got a remaster, and despite very few gameplay changes, still holds up really well in 2024. You can really see the bones of later games in it, such as story focused shooters like Bioshock or F.E.A.R. and I’d really recommend it to anyone interested in playing a great retro game.

djsoren19, 10 miesięcy temu

I think it had like a year long beta where people were playing before full release. I know I was personally playing in 2013.

djsoren19, 10 miesięcy temu

gonna be real, WC1 was not a huge title at the time. I think a lot of people look back, rightly, at WC3 being one of the greatest RTS of all time and then think the whole series was lauded at release, but Warcraft: Orcs and Humans was just okay.

djsoren19, 10 miesięcy temu

I promise you, Everquest was plenty popular at the time, and it didn’t invent those things either.