Neato

Neato, rok temu

The Matrix Awakens ran on the console presented by Nintendo with “graphics comparable to current generation consoles from Sony and Microsoft” , citing that medium. The demo included “advanced” ray tracing and used Nvidia’s artificial intelligence upscaling technology, the well-known DLSS .

So Nintendo didn't share specs. And they saw a handheld Unreal 5 demo that they thought looked as good as ps5/xbsx. But it was also running DLSS so it might have running at significantly lower resolutions.

But on a handheld screen that's harder to tell. And Nintendo are masters of making games running at low resolutions and levels of detail look like they are a lot better. So there's zero chance it's actually as capable as a PS5 but there is a decent chance they can run Nintendo games that would appear to be. So maybe TOTK at 4k@60 with higher resolution textures? Honestly that'd be plenty.

Neato, rok temu (edited rok temu)

Its on Game Pass, Todd. If it doesn't run well I'll just not play Skyrim-Space Edition.

My partner who is interested has a PS5 and an older PC. If her PC doesn't run it, she'll probably just keep playing Stardew Valley. Honestly it's not like anyone is going to really be talking about Starfield in a month or two except ridiculous ship builds on social media.

Neato, rok temu

I'm not worried. They literally titled it "Vaporware". If that doesn't show how insanely out of touch they are then nothing will.

Dozens of companies have tried to make storefronts and launchers to claw back some market share but none have come close to feature parity with Steam.

Neato, rok temu

Well, maybe? A Steam competitor could try what Epic did and offer better deals. This time to publishers and players if they actually want customers. Or they could try to offer things Steam doesn't. Or they could just try for parity and see if it works? We haven't seen a platform with parity yet so maybe people would want a new option?

Neato, rok temu

You are all saying that both games have boring, procedurally generated planets. Sounds like both games were designed with boring elements people don't want. Just because ED is more boring, doesn't mean Starfield is good.

Neato, rok temu

There's ways to make places feel barren, open, unexplored and still be interesting. I've played several games that had sections that were essentially "empty" but still hand designed to be interesting. We don't need 1000 planets, we need good content.

One of the primary reasons people like Bethesda games is that they give players a large world to explore that's jam-packed with interesting things to see a do. If Bethesda abandons that and admits that majority of the content they expect players to interact with is going to be boring, procedurally-generated, then why should people play Starfield?

Bethesda isn't known for deep, complex stories. Their best writing is traditionally their side content with main stories panned. Their combat is pretty basic, but functional. Their RP is pretty sad and NPCs could be a lot better, especially these days. So it seems Bethesda has given away their biggest plus: an interesting world to explore.

Neato, rok temu

I guess there's an argument that boring space exploration has an audience. I just didn't think that overlapped much with Bethesda's audience.

Neato, rok temu

I bet you'd complain about your new car having roll up windows or no ac. Times have changed and we can do better. Especially with their budget and 6 years. It's pathetic.

Neato, rok temu

This shows you've missed the point and haven't researched the game.

It's all the animation transitions between space and ground. No Man's Sky had fifteen developers and accomplished this years ago. Bethesda is pathetically incompetent.

Neato, rok temu

Bethesda doesn't have deep quests either. The creation engine is a weight around the devs necks. I'm not sure what you're trying to say but you're making my points for me.

Neato, rok temu

It's definitely a Bethesda game. Their dialogue choices and roleplaying has always been shit. People like Bethesda games primarily because they're given a large open world to explore. But they made most of this one procedurally generated so they've lost their main good quality. I really hope the players are pushed by the stories and side quests to the hand-crafted worlds and the procedurally generated are mostly in the background for players that want to go off the beaten path.

Neato, rok temu

I'd be perfectly happy to see content at the same levels as BG3 campaign. Ideally a new campaign entirely, but if it's just DLC then an extra Act or a side campaign with new characters as a prequel or sequel or something would be neat.

Neato, rok temu

5e at high level sucks because WOTC didn't bother to actually test any of it. They admitted they didn't test past level 10 and their inclusion of magic items is so bad that the recommendations for how many to include show the devs are terrified of them; you get so very few by official recommendations.

Save or Suck spells make higher level 5e (and 5e in general) a huge PITA to plan encounters for when players can just get lucky and end things outright. Magic items don't have a power level listing, just a rarity doing double duty that is wildly inaccurate. Class balance is shit: martials are boring. All they do is swing the weapon most of the time and very few class abilities really alleviate that. Spellcasters are so vastly more powerful and fun that multiclassing is way more popular than it should be.

Monsters in 5e are boring. Most of them are just bags of hit points that swing. Very few have bonus actions or reactions and the ones that do are often just "parry: increase AC once". They came out with gem dragons 2yr ago and they gave them all the SAME bonus actions: shapeshift and misty step. It's like they don't even bother to try, which is evident in recent releases.

/rant. But seriously, I love high level D&D. You can really raise the stakes. I'm DMing a level 12 5e campaign now and my primary way to make encounters interesting is two-fold: firstly is 3rd party content to get monsters that are actually interesting. Secondly I create objectives that aren't just "murder monster". I just had a bunch of literal street children hit my party with a net trap and arrow that makes them drop their items that said children tried to steal and run away with. 2 got away but they were able to find the hideout and defeat the boss. Actual stakes besides just getting killed.

Neato, rok temu

If you're a 3.5/pf1e player, I'm sure you can imagine how high level spells can get really complicated to program in a game engine. And more importantly, how impossible to balance for them it can be. BG3 does a decent job of adapting spells to not be annoying or broken to use in a video game, but some high level 5e spells are way more ridiculous and open ended.

Neato, rok temu

Why would this work when others get blocked? Is it a novel way to block YT ads that's not popular? Because I think YT isn't looking for specific extensions but looking for certain kinds of behavior.

Neato, rok temu

You reminded me it's not on PS5. The PC my partner (who might be interested in this) plays on can't handle this. So...guess we won't play it. Oh well.

Neato, rok temu

It's also on Gamepass. You can play it instantly for a much lower cost to make sure it works. Then buy it if you still want later when it goes on sale.

Neato, rok temu

They are in a no-win situation. If they aren't making enough from subscriptions they can pull their games, but then they lose a massive amount of marketing and visibility. Much like Spotify and other streaming services, smaller artists just aren't making much from these. And with the way that contracts and subscription fatigue works, it's unlikely a competitor is going to be able to offer better deals while also attracting sufficient customers.

Neato, rok temu

Playing Armored Core 6 right now. First AC game. pewpewpewpewpewpewpewpewBOOM. It's a lot of fun. :)

Neato, rok temu

It's pretty different from the soulsborne games. Fast paced mech action with a focus on tinkering with builds. I'd watch some videos from vaatividya or iron pineapple to get an idea of how it plays.

Neato, rok temu

3-4 is more like it. And it never wants to charge on usb on my PC for some reason.

Neato, rok temu

This is stealing directly from artists

This is factually untrue. Artists have already been paid for their work and have possibly already been let go. (in many big gaming companies majority of the dev teams are let go on release, they operate on a hire-and-fire cycle) Artists pretty much never have a stake in the company or profit sharing. So there's no real way the # of copies sold has any bearing on their income.

At worst this is Bethesda having 150 copies stolen. Not even tiny devs would blink at that as they get copies stolen through places like G2A constantly. A huge company like Bethesda is worried more about early copies breaking embargo date that shows bad or buggy gameplay, negatively harming sales. Which, TBH, I am 100% not sympathetic towards. Review embargos any more restrictive than a week prior to launch is just trying to hide something.

Neato, rok temu

It's a concession by Xbox at this point. Series S is too underpowered for split screen to work at the level of quality and stability Larian demands. Microsoft caved on the requirement because the alternative is it'd never release on Xbox at all.

Neato, rok temu

That's impressive that they got ac6 to work on the Deck when it's such a fast paced game.

Neato, rok temu

Yeah. Copyright should exist for like, 20 years or so? Or no more than 10 years after the holder's death so dependent family can adapt. This 90-100 years is bullshit. It doesn't benefit the creators, it benefits the rights holders. Almost always a corporation profiting off the back of their workers.

Neato, rok temu

I saw Mario movie for Jack Black. Could've skipped 100% of mario content.

Neato, rok temu

Dark Souls 1. It's tutorial is decent for controls but it doesn't go nearly far enough. It doesn't explain rolling, weight and stats are only in level up screen, at least for prompting. So many things about the game you need to know that they leave to expensive trial and error.

I like The Backlogs' video on it. It's a flawed masterpiece.

Neato, rok temu

Mobile games and popular mobile IPs print money.

Neato, rok temu

Besides the weird portals, the pits and the train, looks mostly like the same game with a visual upgrade. I hope it's still as easy to parse. I'll get it anyways; I played the first one's content into it's post-release content patch before the complexity overwhelmed me.

Neato, rok temu

Companies are terrified of AI making their work obsolete. To such a degree they are trying to do it first. Thankfully AI is so painfully bad that the companies that have tried this are failing hard.

Neato, rok temu

What the fuck? First they call out Empress for actually being a man from Bulgaria. Then they drop a transphobic slur. Then they defend DRM and publishers.
I can understand supporting the developers and promoting buying software you enjoy when you can. But one of the big motivations for cracking software is software preservation and removing DRM that harms legit user experiences. So I say again, wtf?

Neato, rok temu

Yes. But if they're predatory then they are abusing mental quirks. Similar to gambling there needs to be regulation. Especially on loot boxes and gatcha which are gambling.

Neato, rok temu

It's the soundtrack and some DSO2 cosmetics that everyone who bought the game during early access got for free. They're selling it to everyone else for $10.

Technically it's DLC, not MTX as MTX almost always entails individual purchases of items, usually in-game. It's more of a Collector's Edition than anything. That no one seems to care about, even the people who detest predatory practices.

Neato, rok temu

$10 purchase for soundtrack, dice skin and some DSO2 cosmetics that everyone who bought the game in early access gets. This allows everyone else to purchase.

Neato, rok temu

Do you mean the Mask of the Shapeshifter? That allows, once per long rest, to change appearance to another random character. Effectively a Disguise Self cast.

There's also the dagger that's 4-7 weapon. But I replaced that before I even dealt with the goblin camp. There's so many magic items I wasn't worried about it.

The biggest coup is the hat and cape. They offer no bonuses but they look so fly I'm probably never taking them off.

Neato, rok temu

Lol. Goodbye BlazeIt! Go out in a...YourName of glory!

But I think people want those characters to show up when the player does and disappear the rest of the time. Otherwise your CoOp saves pretty much need to be 100% co-op. Can't really drop in and out with your friends.

Neato, rok temu

I think BG3 is riding on the D&D brand and marketing campaign

With how much they adapted 5e's rules for a video game (thankfully, 5e can be jank) I'd wager it's more to do with them riding on the Forgotten Realms setting. It's hugely popular (see: BG 1-2, dozens of books, most popular D&D setting through the last few editions) so it helps drive interest that there's a competent game that is both faithful to the lore and excels at storytelling.

For instance I really liked a tiny scrap of paper dealing with the Mines of Phandelver hundreds of years ago. That's a bit of flavor from the 5e Red Box. Tons of stuff like that calling back to adventures and books in the series.

Neato, rok temu

Mmmm good point! I'm imagine some of the bigger 5e 3rd parties straight porting their magic items, spells and monsters into the game (monsters would be for custom campaign eventually).

Neato, rok temu

And...every single ubisoft game. And bethesda games. I could go on...

And Baldur's Gate is multiplayer. You can easily play 4-player online co-op.

Neato, rok temu

For full price games on release? No, they really aren't.

People always says "cosmetics are fine". They aren't. Cosmetics are gameplay. Humans love looking cool. They NEED it a lot of the time. The entire fashion industry wouldn't exist if looking cool wasn't a major part of human psyche. These MTX wouldn't sell if it wasn't. Locking all or most of the interesting looks behind additional paywalls is bullshit. And it's not OK. I don't engage with games that do that. There's plenty to play that don't abuse their customers.

Neato, rok temu

I'd prefer we stop calling these MTX. They are paid cheats.

Neato, rok temu

Food prices have skyrocketed and people still go out to eat. What you are proposing is austerity. People denying themselves things because of price point preference and principals will generally not work because people like having things, like having fun, etc. All it does it ensure companies can squeeze people that have very limited time for their limited cash.

Neato, rok temu

I don't really get this argument. Titillation occasionally is nice. Similar to prestige shows. But if it was soft-core all the time or too much, people would lose interest in the plot.
That and there's quite a few decent porn games now. Ones that look better in the...dongles than BG3 does. Ones with decent stories. If people want interactive porn, it's there already. And oftentimes cheap or free.

Neato, rok temu

Civility argument is about protecting the powerful. Let people have opinions. We all know why people are upset. Downplaying it just makes someone sound like an apologist.

Neato, rok temu

"Tantrums" show your true purpose: denigration.

Neato, rok temu

Sites like IGN must follow gaming trends to survive. BG3 is a huge release and I've been seeing this story everywhere for weeks, increasing in frequency.

Neato, rok temu

They're complaining because they make RPGs that are pathetically shallow and now people know what a AA studio can do.

Neato, rok temu

Ubisoft rehashing the same old game with abusive mtx? Who'd have thunk it?!