Absolutely what I noticed too. The tweets didn’t seem like they were even “panicking” but just saying to players “Don’t expect this because most studios aren’t going to devote the same resources and ability to the party-based classic isometric-inspired RPG genre because the genre is fairly niche.”
I also question how much that bar has truly been raised. I’ve not played Baldur’s Gate but I have seen people treat games like generation-defining games for them to just kind of not exist outside of their bubble. Like Uncharted 4, Last of Us, Spiderman, and God Of War. I just finished Uncharted 4 and it was truly amazing but for a lot of people, it did not raise their standards for the entire industry. I feel like, if anything, Baldur’s Gate 3 will raise standards for AAA RPGs. Then again, it might have just preemptively killed Starfield.
There are even great AAA studios out there that aren’t pushing mtx. I just played uncharted 4 and I can’t believe that is almost a decade old. It still holds up. Far better than Rockstar’s red dead redemption 2. That said there is room in the industry for everyone. The indie team that takes 6 years to make high quality games to the AAA studio pushing games out every 2 years. Including small indie studios of 5 people making huge hit survival games and indie games that were made in 9 months but have a lot of heart.
Quality is subjective and I think we’ll start to see our genres break down as people go towards more and more specific definitions. We’ve already seen this a bit with the fps reverting back to doomlike with games like prodeus.
I’m a game developer. No game developers are panicking about this game. I’ve not played it but I’ll probably play it soon. It looks great but even if it blows my mind it doesn’t cause me to panic. It inspires me. I don’t know of a game developer that gets panicked at the sight of good games. I know monetary goblins that might realize they can’t push heartless games anymore but in the last decade we’ve started to see games really take shape as cinematic masterpieces. Experiences that truly top movies. This is the inevitable next step. Games with more interactions and more meaningful choice out of those interactions.
Ah, okay. Yeah, looking at Steam’s pricing it doesn’t give me the option to regionally price for shillings of any kind. The most I can regionally price is the South African Rand. Do prices on Steam then just show in USD for you or do they actually sell stuff in shillings?
In those places, the games are differently priced. Regional pricing is on Steam, epic, and a few other stores. Also, I only buy games, I don’t pirate and I rarely buy games for 60 dollars. I typically just wait a bit and pick them up for 30 or less. That said I understand, pirating is easier and for AAA games it might truly not matter if you do or not. Indie games are certainly a different story and each purchase, even extremely discounted, gives the developer that little bit more which can mean a lot.
Honestly, Game Pass is a pretty good deal if you are okay with Windows. It’s entirely how they are locking in the next generation of players but honestly, if it’s a good deal and you are using Windows anyways (because at this point is far better than Linux, sorry but it’s true.) then there really isn’t an issue. The monthly trial isn’t the reason most people started with game pass. Especially with Starfield going on game pass day one people will be flocking to game pass just to try it.
I don’t feel like Uncharted ever had a false sense of urgency. A lot of the time I would go at my own pace. Where Rockstar specifically slows you down and prevents you from going as fast as you’d like. Uncharted does this but far less often and it is far less noticeable because Uncharted doesn’t have a sprint button. So I am not explicitly telling the game my intent and having the game directly ignore it. The game is giving me feedback directly of “this is the pace we are going”. Rather than “this is the pace I want to go.” and the game telling me “no.”
He has 1.8 million subs and makes videos about fantasy universes and video games. He’s an obvious choice IMHO. Also again, unlikely anyone at Larian said “yes, him exactly” and more that an ad agency sent out emails to contacts and worked with people to pick the best and most able.
Yeah, I was caught off guard by it and thought it was a joke but it seemed clear by the end it was Joel’s way of displaying that the video was a paid ad. IMHO, is far too late in the video to display such information.
Why do you appreciate Larian more? Larian is just paying people to make ads. A lot of studios don’t even do their own marketing and just pay ad agencies. Either way seems silly to praise Larian for paying for ads.
I love Joel but the ending where it was like “SPONSERED BY BALDUR’S GATE 3” really woke me up to realize I just watched a 6-and-a-half-minute ad and that’s it. In fact, I feel like if he had put at the start of the video, I would have taken it a whole lot differently.
I was playing red dead 2 a few weeks ago and picked it up with my steam deck. Now I’m playing uncharted 4 and realizing how rockstar and naughtydog built very similar games between the two. Rockstar is far more slow and frankly full of themselves. Not respecting the players time. Meandering through the story with no real semblance of player respect. I put 26 hours into red dead 2 and I feel like I’ve literally done nothing and feel very under accomplished. I’ve put 8 hours into uncharted 4 and feel extremely accomplished and invested in the characters.
Even though I’m pissed at Nathan. He’s such an idiot, I hate him and can’t wait to play him more. Author Morgan is just a bland cowboy that tries so much to just get by. Red dead 2 introduced more main characters than uncharted 4 has in side and main characters. Yet in red dead 2 they’ve developed none of them part the point of the basics. I’m uncharted they’ve developed all of their characters. Even the side ones that barely show up.
Likewise in red dead 2, they kill one character I only liked because their accent allowed me to actually tell them apart from the rest of them. The other character the big baddies kidnapped and I’ve played like 2 hours waiting to go get him back. It’s like wtf, let me go rescue the damn character already. Yet the game keeps saying we’ll do it as far as possible. We gotta track down all this shit. It’s clearly like this filler content because during it another random main character gets kidnapped, they find her right away and it’s rescued in one mission. Like what universe is this?
In conclusion, red dead 2 is trying hard to do what uncharted 4 did extremely well. The open world system does not help it one bit and it’s turned me off of open world games altogether for a while.