Classic WoW exists & you could play Vanilla again if you wanted do. However that’s not really what I’m talking about. For me peak WoW was Legion and Pandaria probably and I still somewhat liked Cataclysm up until the final patch at least.
What is happening now is that if you have no interest in Mythic raiding or Myhtic+ timed dungeons, then there is barely anything else. The cash shop is also increasingly ruining everything, there is also how thanks to WoW tokens my brain just won’t allow me to casually buy something expensive on the AH anymore since gold has a tangible real $ value & then there is the abomination called the Trading Post.
The only Activision game I care about is WoW, but the game changed so much in a niche hardcore direction that even with Microsoft owning them, my hope is very limited about the game, probably I’ll never play again.
Imagine if people could buy a background music only -subtitle dialog- edition of Baldur’s Gate 3 for €40. How would the sale distribution go? I think this is a rather interesting thought experiment, I would personally opt to buy the cheaper version for sure, even though I do know the voice acting in BG3 is a landmark in gaming.
I played Morrowind, Oblivion & Skyrim at release. Compared to Starfield they were far more polished to me. Yes crashes & the odd broken quest happened, but overall they were playable, people without an internet connection could buy the games in a shop & then finish them. Also Oblivion had the best graphics for an open world rpg when it came out, while also running pretty well on the shit tier GPUs of the time. In my mind, Starfield is not pretty on ultra, runs like shit on decent hardware even at relatively low settings and the list of broken things is endless.
So far Bethesda is the only company that is clearly cutting the corners of their AAA products.
Starfield is the sloppiest Bethasda game ever, cutting corners to save cost is not how I would describe its development at all.
I agree with what you are saying though. Spending 40% of the budget on voice acting and cinematographic dialog is extremely wasteful. As long as the gameplay is good and graphics are pretty gamers will like the product.
studios targeting genres other than open world action-rpg.
With the corporate culture that’s developed in the industry I don’t think anyone should want that. Indie has the small project space covered & they make far better games than EA or Activision ever could in those genres. Corporate sellouts cannot beat passion, but they can make games so large in scope that small studios just cannot compete with that.
In a good rpg, having a couple of these is fine, but in my opinion in Baldur’s Gate 3 these intentionally undecipherable decisions are overabundant. I’m not saying BG3 is bad, in fact many and perhaps most things are absolutely incredible. I just feel that that presented choice options & some parts of the big plot could have been done better.
I think the problem with player choice is that you are often not presented with the choice that you or your character would normally want, or that the game intentionally hides the information from you that you would need to make an informed decision. Also this is subjective, but I don’t like being pranked by the dungeon master, I quit tabletop rpgs due to this reason as a kid.
And the case about the game being interactive fiction instead of a “game” game is not entirely unfounded either. Not that I would consider that a bad thing necessarily.
(edit: I wrote this 1h into Act 3. Since then I finished the game & I found Act3 the best part of the game & rather amazing on the whole…)
I don’t recommend doing this. The dialog is far worse with the awkward gaps of silence.
I remember watching a few short vids on Youtube where people were making claims that Friends is unfunny garbage with out without the laugh track, but the truth is the awkward silences kill all jokes.
I don’t recommend doing this. The dialog is far worse with the awkward gaps of silence.
I remember watching a few short vids on Youtube where people were making claims that Friends is unfunny garbage with out without the laugh track, but the truth is the awkward silences kill all jokes.
I don’t recommend doing this. The dialog is far worse with the awkward gaps of silence.
I remember watching a few short vids on Youtube where people were making claims that Friends is unfunny garbage with out without the laugh track, but the truth is the awkward silences kill all jokes.
I don’t recommend doing this. The dialog is far worse with the awkward gaps of silence.
I remember watching a few short vids on Youtube where people were making claims that Friends is unfunny garbage with out without the laugh track, but the truth is the awkward silences kill all jokes.
I don’t recommend doing this. The dialog is far worse with the awkward gaps of silence.
I remember watching a few short vids on Youtube where people were making claims that Friends is unfunny garbage with out without the laugh track, but the truth is the awkward silences kill all jokes.