I hear what you’re saying, but gamers in this thread (and every thread), are demanding that it come out on Steam, not on GOG, which makes them a huge part of the problem.
Lock in exists partially because gamers have lionized Valve for throwing them trinkets and refuse to use anything else, while Valve has designed their platform around a mandatory launcher and done what they can to lock players into it.
Another great game ruined by gamers’ insistence on dick riding Gabe Newell and always giving Valve a 30% cut, no matter what.
Will anyone self reflect on whether they’re being a dumbass and hurting the entire gaming industry by insisting on only using Steam cause that’s all they’ve ever used?
No. They’ll yell at Epic and Remedy for not wanting to give 30% of their revenue to Valve.
Yes I do, both are designed to get the user to where they want to be in the game faster than loading the game from scratch and navigating through menus to get there.
They do different approaches in design, but both are attempting to tackle the same UX issue.
That’s what I mean though, both are trying to accomplish basically the same thing, but Sony’s implementation is kind of half baked in that it requires developer support and doesn’t actually resume the game, just gets you close to where you were.
It functions differently, but both are trying to accomplish the same thing from a user perspective, to get them back into the specific part of the game they were just in.
The differences in how they approached that problem is what I mean by Microsoft running around Sony software wise.
Despite other problems, it really feels like Microsoft runs around Sony in circles when it comes to their software prowess. Quick Resume doesn’t work flawlessly with every game, but when it does work it’s pretty incredible to jump straight back to the exact same state in another game as if you’d never closed it.
I played all the side quests and by like the halfway point, I took off all my armour and just beat every single enemy to death with my bare hands. I would definitely recommend a higher difficulty if you’ve played any rpgish games before.
I would generally agree with you about the main macro plot beats in Dishonored 1 and leading into 2, but I would still argue that the writing is quite good overall.
In Dishonoured 1, you still have Daud’s storyline which I found a bit more interesting on a macro level (both in the main game and both expansions), but then I would also argue that the Dishonored series has great micro writing which is a large part of the world building and the fun of exploration.
They both know how to write good little interesting world building hooks and stories, and how to pace them out and not overload you with junk documents and writing.
The Outer Wilds, Bioshock, Subnautica, Remedy Games (Alan Wake, Quantum Break, Control, etc.), Obsidian (New Vegas, Outer Worlds, Grounded, etc.), are all masters of rewarding you with more story and world building.
Conversely studios like Bethesda (Starfield, Skyrim, etc.), and Ubisoft (all their RPGs), are pretty bad about trying to make the world seem realistic at the expense of having a ton of just hastily written uninteresting documents around that bore you as much reading real world documents at random would.
And while I would put games like Cyperbunk and the Witcher and even Deathloop, somewhere in-between, I would put all the Dishonoreds and Prey right up there at the top with the best.
In that vein, if anyone likes well written, story driven, stealth / action / immersive sim games, the Dishonored series & Prey (same devs, different universe) are incredibly worth going back for.
Made by former Bioshock / System shock developers, and they’re just some of my all time favourite games, and I only played them because of all the time I suddenly had with the COVID lockdown, but they hold up incredibly well. Dishonored 1 (2012) honestly feels and looks better than Dishonored 2 (2016) because of the Xbox’s auto HDR and auto FPS boost, but both are super fun and gorgeous games.
I think Skyrim’s was better because there was less central control. I know that stuff like the whole Werewolf quest was just made by a passionate designer and dev who made it after hours, but that during Starfield development a lot more got run up the chain and there was less individual freedom.
I suspect that stems from the massive procedural generativeness but am not sure.
Starfield’s biggest flaw was in trying to make a grand space game given that Bethesda’s strength is sandboxy, exploration focused, RPGs.
I am of the mind that exploration fundamentally does not work in a space game because the scale is too big. There’s waaaay too much space on even a single planet to populate with meaningfully interesting things to find. So there’s maybe one or two interesting handcrafted things per planet and you spend all your time in system and galactic scale maps to find them, rather than stumbling across them while out on a walk.
The only space games that work imho, are either ones with tiny planets like The Outer Wilds, or ones that are more linear and driven by very good writing and space is more of a backdrop than the actual millions of km you have to travel through and explore (like The Outer Worlds, or Mass Effect).
So I think Bethesda has a higher chance of success in literally any other, more limited, setting, given that writing isn’t their strong suit, but all that being said, I still don’t know if they’ll course correct.