It annoys me because I’m writing my own story, agonizing over excess word count and trimming every scene I can, but I still feel like they’re all additive and value - even if not to the core plot, to some very valuable theme.
Then I play a JRPG and there’s just a random scene where two characters go play hide and go seek for pure padding.
It seems to make for fun clips, but I can’t tell what the gameplay is other than walking into a room, seeing something, dying with no chance of escaping, and then hitting the “record clip” button for your audience.
I might be a bit unusual, but I feel like the main thing I’m looking for in a JRPG isn’t just good characters, but good storyline that gives each of those characters real moments to shine. Something in the vein of Cloud Strife
spoilerrevealing he built up a fake persona based on his idol
, or FFXIV
spoilerhaving your team resolve a generations-long war against dragons
. I have heard that Sea of Stars has one really impactful/good character in your party, but not heard much in the way of super-heavy story beats; and it’s seemed the same way for a lot of JRPGs that have come from the indie sphere.
I tend to be less excited for prequels because of this. Good stories can go in a completely unexpected direction, for instance having a villain “win” in an unexpected way, or killing off characters you expected to survive. Prequels are often just an excuse to give more content of the same, especially in order to star someone that’s been killed off in other media.
We here at Naughty Dog respect that, though they are great games, our fans have felt some exhaustion at seeing only remasters of Naughty Dog’s old games. Hence, we are proud to announce our newest project: Skyrim Remastered.
The eight main heroes are receiving an alert about the empire starting its invasion, and the hero’s cousin is leading the charge? That scene deserves good VA. It’s dramatic, plot important, and can get you invested in characters.
A farmer is giving you a radiant quest to kill an optional boss? That kind of thing absolutely doesn’t need VA. It even means that people cycling through content can speed-read his introduction, and aren’t forced to listen to horrendous voice acting.
The only thing I wanted for the corruptor or was just to slightly reduce its giga giga armor so it doesn’t take a whole supply drop’s worth of ammo to whittle down. I know it’s meant to have a weak point system after you’ve foamed it off, but it didn’t seem to work for me, especially with the many low-accuracy weapons you tend to use and other enemies around.
People have floated this idea of “dockable devices” for decades. Microsoft even made a Windows Phone that did it. The only time it worked was the Nintendo Switch, where they sold the dock together - and even then, I think their studies showed that a majority of players only play in one mode.
So it comes down to consumer friction. What do they get in one box, and how likely are they to buy a second?
I get the impression any more urgent gaps will be covered by the community.
I’ve used my Deck in its desktop mode, plugged in a dock, for extended periods when I didn’t have access to my PC, and it was a decent enough experience for the most part.
Any chance of this being a flop? Years ago, we would have said no way, but we’ve seen some high-profile screwups before. It’s certainly at the time period where Rockstar might have brain drain on its better developers.
It’s great that the well-paid gamers have their options of exciting, linear singleplayer games. Realistically, if we want AAA gaming to be defined by that, it needs to be profitable enough, which means people buying those games on release consistently, and even maybe accepting the $70 price tags.
Some people do so - but many others are only buying one or two games a year due to shrinking personal budget. And those games need to fill the hundreds of spare hours they’ll have during that year.
The situation could be reversed if more people had a generously-sized personal budget; if they weren’t fearful of managing their rent each month, or debating whether to save a few pennies from their paycheck for retirement. $40 or even $70 for the hot new 10-hour singleplayer game of the month shouldn’t be a lot in the grand scheme of things, but it’s everything in a world with so much income disparity.