CosmoNova

CosmoNova, 5 miesięcy temu

You forgot to mention they sold 30% stake of the company to the world‘s largest game conglomerate Tencent. They‘re also working on a supposedly much larger game than BG3 now and plan to release it within the next 4 years which means they will have to at least double their staff. Honestly, judging a developer entirely by a recent success isn‘t a good practice even when it‘s as massive as BG3. Most people who talk about Larian have a very warped impression. Even when their games are great recently, the tides can change rapidly in this industry.

CosmoNova, 5 miesięcy temu

That makes much more sense now. I was also wondering why people didn‘t pick up on it earlier given the incredible popularity of this game. So of course people noticed it, but it just didn‘t make much sense. I can see why someone would shrug it off a messy bit of text that probably wasn‘t supposed to be there and will be removed or edited or something. Well edited it was… just not as expected I guess.

CosmoNova, 6 miesięcy temu

I‘m starting to get the impression people build them up precisely to watch them fall and kick them down. It‘s in our DNA, I‘m afraid. I mean the praise they get for the most mundane claims (and often they are just that) is ridiculous to the point they‘re becoming the developer version of the life of Brian. And deep down we‘re already anticipating to watch them bleed out at a cross.

CosmoNova, 6 miesięcy temu

The „gamer“ label has become sort of redundant given the industry is much bigger than movies and music combined now. They‘re just consumers and no matter what silly decisions some of them make, they need protection from certain practices for the good of all of us. Just blaming a small portion of them doesn‘t help us out of any mess.

CosmoNova, 6 miesięcy temu

I’m not hopeful at all. If Bethesda or Blizzard are anything to go by, they can keep messing up big time for years, maybe decades to come and consumers will keep coming back, begging to be disappointed once more. You’ll have more luck looking for alternatives out there in the ocean of indie games.

CosmoNova, 6 miesięcy temu

Your argument has nothing to do with UE5‘s or Godot‘s strengths and weaknesses. You could literally flip it and it would make just as much (or little) sense: Give me one good asset library game in UE5, rather than 100 custom asset containing $80 micro-transaction infested always online Godot games. See? The argument doesn‘t actually say much about the engines, just about monetization which you can handle completely independently from the software. If your project makes a million or less, UE5 is free to use for anyone. That makes it pretty good for tiny indie devs and hobbyists actually.

CosmoNova, 6 miesięcy temu

On one hand even the Nintendo Switch is just a modified Nvidia shield so this task would be a simple one for most states. On the other hand: Sanctions and insane corruption. I‘d be surprised if they manage to release anything that could keep up with Consoles from 2 generations ago.

CosmoNova, 6 miesięcy temu

It seems like this would break some EU and Australian consumer laws. Though I‘m not sure if „for free“ counts as a discount.

CosmoNova, 7 miesięcy temu

Yes, despite what Larian wants you to believe, 30% of the company was sold to Tencent years ago to raise more money for BG3. Afaik Danny O’Dwyer dug that up from the irish business register because Larian never even made a statement about it. Instead they keep pointing out how privately owned they are and that there is nothing to worry about.

BG3 was a massive success, but I wonder how much of that cake is left after 450 employees, Bioware, WotC and Tencent got their pieces of that. If they really want to release a much bigger game in half the time, they’ll need to tripple their employees which will absolutely explode spendings. They have nothing else in the works until then, no mobile game cash cow or big merch sales to keep them afloat. The only way to generate more money when production costs will inevitably exceed expectations is… to sell more of themselves.

CosmoNova, 7 miesięcy temu

Just read an article about how their publisher offered to take care of a PC port only to be turned down. The stigma against PC games in Japan still prevails in some parts despite their steady rise and Sony‘s and Capcom‘s massive success on the PC lately. These people will likely go bankrupt before making financially wise decisions at this point.

CosmoNova, 7 miesięcy temu

Worth noting that BG3 was Larian‘s effort through and through. They took the initiative and asked for permission from Bioware to make another Baldur‘s Gate game and as far as I know that wasn‘t even the first time they asked. So finally after they got permission, they also had to compensate Bioware and WotC generously for the use of their IPs. It‘s kind of a rights nightmare where Larian took several big risks while WotC could just lean back and watch. And of course after BG3’s massive success, Hasbro think they struck gold when their own official DnD game is the complete opposite of BG3 in terms of monetization, popularity and critical acclaim.

So, everything considered we shouldn‘t expect greatness from this. Honestly I would be surprised if we ever actually get official announcements with working titles from half of these games before they get shut down early in production and I would be more surprised to see even a quarter of them come to life.

CosmoNova, 8 miesięcy temu

Few people do because Larian keeps lying about it. Part of me understands you don‘t go around telling people a Chinese government asset has big money in your company, given the ongoing genocide and all (speaking of toxic work environment eh) but it‘s publicly accessible information anyway. They‘ve been so consistently dishonest about it that I can‘t take them all that serious about anything anymore. Because alternatively to lying they could just… shut up and keep making great games. They don‘t need that sugar coating.

CosmoNova, 8 miesięcy temu

It’s so irritating to see how eager people come to defend Larian on their lies every time someone calls it out. You’re acting like I said Tencent has Larian on the leash. I mean you’re not even disagreeing with anything I said. Tencent holds shares. They are shareholders, as the article states. Maybe read it again? Do you also claim Larian didn’t receive funding from Tencent? Because Larian was very vocal about not receiving any funding, playing dumb when people wondered how Larian even made such a huge game.

Rumors have it Hasbro’s gonna sell D&D and Tencent is the most likely buyer. We’ll see how much of Larian’s soul will be left when they get approached to make a huge D&D mobile gacha or whatever Tencent comes up with.

CosmoNova, 8 miesięcy temu

No, I am saying Larian will do it on their own accord rather than losing out on money in the end. It‘s a tale as old as the gaming industry. We‘ve seen so many downfalls that parallel this pattern and if they‘re already this dishonest at their peak, then I‘m really worried how bad it will be when they‘re at the bottom. Even CDPR didn‘t show nearly as many red flags prior to the Cyberpunk debacle.

Oh yeah if Habro says so it must be true… boy oh boy.

CosmoNova, 8 miesięcy temu

Possible minor FF7 remake spoilers ahead if you want to play knowing nothing about it!

So I have tried to finish FF7 Remake, which has been really enjoyable until it stumbled and smashed it‘s teeth on the pavement literally 3 steps away from the finish line. That last chapter is an utter mess with too many boss phases, bosses, unskippable cutscenes, confusing restart messages and lack of save options. How did the game do so much right just to be so utterly frustrating in the very end? It also seems so forced story wise but that’s a different topic. I have no clue what drove the devs to such madness but I ended up watching the final cutscene on Youtube after hours of painful repetition.

Of course I was wondering if I‘m the only one feeling this way so I looked up what others have to say and… yeah Square Enix really just messed up there after doing almost everything else right. Baffling.

CosmoNova, 9 miesięcy temu

It’s depressing and hilarious because the execs who decided this most likely have no idea about Palworld (yet) because they’re completely ootl while the dev team most definitely did at the time. Oh well maybe the team can stick together and form a Pocketpair US division as a cherry ontop.

CosmoNova, 9 miesięcy temu

What do you mean start over? Palworld is up and running and the team has plenty expertise in survival games. Microsoft got nothing to do with it. And of course I was partly joking because A) the logistics to find the team a proper office in the area as a small indie dev are close to impossible. B) Microsoft/Blizzard being the piece of shit companies that they are would claim the team uses work that belongs to MS even when they don‘t and give them a lawsuit and C) US employees are pretty expensive. A new division on another continent has huge benefits for game testing purposes, but there are cheaper places to do that.

CosmoNova, 9 miesięcy temu

Glad to see it‘s finally complete after all this time and ready to leave early access.

CosmoNova, 9 miesięcy temu

It looks pretty good and I’ll most definitely try it once it’s out of early access. It kind of feels like the Renaissance of survival games or something. Especially since Blizzard just axed theirs. They’re the type of company who would completely stumble and break an ankle over a trend like this one.

CosmoNova, 9 miesięcy temu

Ah this reminds me of my Divinity OS2 experience. It was so tough but sooo rewarding. What I recommend is to look up some basic build guides. Trust me you’ll have have plenty opportunity to make creative decisions regardless. No need to make it unnecessarily frustrating for oneself. You’ll get the hang of combat eventually and still not see half of all the possible ways to deal with enemies.

I really had to look up some D&D lore for BG3 though. Had no idea what was going on during the first act so I‘m ending up spending even more time reading lore and watching videos about it despite growing up reading Drizzt Do’Urden stories and playing BG1. It‘s a very complex universe and challenging to follow as a non-D&D player I have to say.

CosmoNova, rok temu

One gripe I have with this video is that he said the situation at the unity office - namely the supposed death threat by an employee against their employer - was “understandable”. It absolutely isn’t understandable. No matter how shitty your tech CEO is, unless they happily throw puppies into a wood chipper in the office, death threats are definitely not understandable.

CosmoNova, rok temu

The tale of producers dumbing down plot and dialogue for greater main stream appeal is as old as show business. And from my experience said producers are almost always wrong. Sorry pal, but you can’t blame social media for something your peers have always been doing.