I’m not convinced by what I’ve seen just yet, but I’m happy we’re getting a game at all and I’m trying to be hopeful. Every fiber in my being is wishing for this to end up a GotY slamdunk after all the developers have been through.
I loved Shadow of Chernobyl and I probably have a couple hundred hours in Anomaly so I will buy it regardless, not least to show my support.
There are so many other games to play that I’m still probably on the plan to postpone my second playthrough until the Definitive Edition comes out (probably next summer), but this is a much needed patch.
The way Larian describes the new epilogue, I’m thinking this is them re-adding some of the “17 000 endings” they were talking about pre launch. In any case, more and better epilogues were sorely needed so this is great.
Hopefully they can keep salvaging cut content and polish up Act 3 until it reaches the same quality of the other two.
It brings up some valid points about how the PeopleMakeGames video frames the issues, as well as criticizes how they press the creator of the IP very hard while being extremely lenient in their interview with the corporate suit who did the takeover.
While the PMG video is very impressive (at least the first half of it), it derails toward the end in a way that sadly might influence the opinion of many viewers. Even if the allegations are all true and Robert Kurvitz actually was a terrible boss who was a bit of a jerk and created a toxic workplace environment, that does not mean he deserves to have his IP stolen from out under him.
It’s not just AAA gaming but all over Hollywood too, has been for a while. Nostalgia is a powerful force and churning out sequels or prequels or spinoffs off of recognizable IPs is just less risky an investment than trying to make something new.
It’s hard because it depends on the type of melancholy. I get what you mean about wistful melancholy and “good sad” if the stories are on the smaller scale. Human tragedy, personal failure, doomed relationships, lost love, that sort of stuff.
I have a harder time dealing with elaborations on an existential level: the ultimate end of all things, the futility of existence, the meaninglessness of life etc. I’m hesitant because I’ve gotten the impression this is the sphere Outer Wilds operates in.
I’ve been hesitant to play it because I heard it’s existentially depressing and I don’t think my mental state is in a good place to deal with that. Otherwise I’d probably give it a go. I loved Return of the Obra Dinn and many people who love one of those games seem to also love the other.
I watched some videos on it after it released and for about a week after my whole YouTube frontpage was full of Starfield-bashing (many with several hundred thousand views) so it’s definitely out there.
For me, it’s the vast expanses of procedurally generated nothingness in Starfield that turns me off the most, especially combined with the menu-based fast travel heavy way you get around.
The magic of Bethesda games comes from their handcrafted open worlds, always full of things to see and explore and get sidetracked by. Its the feeling that kicks in when the horizon first opens up after you exit the sewer/vault/customs office and you realize that you can just pick a direction and start walking and you’ll come across something interesting.
Starfield doesn’t do that. You can’t just pick a direction and go, it’s all fast travel. And if you’re down on a planet you can, but there is no magic to be found because it’s all procedurally generated emptiness between copy-pasted points of interest.
In their ambitions to have a bigger scope than ever they sacrificed the very thing that made their games so compelling to begin with.
There are some decent ones where you can find fragments of stories told through letters and/or environmental storytelling, but most of the question marks are just mindless monster nests, bandit camps and buried treasure. Skellige in particular is notorious for all the question marks in the water that are just vendor trash flotsam to collect.
In general exploration in TW3 would be more rewarding if the itemization wasn’t so scuffed. The only gear worth using is the Witcher sets (which you craft), which really lessens the excitement you feel when looting. There were so many times where I found a guarded treasure, defeated the boss and looked at a cool unique sword, only to realize its stats were beyond atrocious.
Much like Elden Ring last year, BG3 is a usually-niche game that actually broke through into the mainstream on the back of its sheer quality. I imagine it stands a good chance of winning, though I wouldn’t be surprised if TotK takes it (only disappointed).
I think Welonz is great. She’s played Alan Wake 1, Control and the AWE DLC before so is well familiar with the story and always pays close attention to story games.
I’ve been hesitant to buy it out of performance concerns and have been watching her instead.
Forgot to mention I have a gaming laptop. So not equivalent of the 2060 in performance, although it contains the mesh shader support so it won’t literally refuse to run. But seeing as the desktop variant is minimum spec I’m not optimistic.
I wish I could play it, but I don’t think my PC could handle it, being right at the edge of minimum specs. Has anyone played it on a 2060? I can live with 1080p and no Ray Tracing but I’m scared of sub-30 FPS.