emptyother

emptyother, 8 months ago

Its music level released on YT gave it a lot of exposure. If even that wasn’t enough, what hope do we have for an Alan Wake 3 or Control 2 without a crappy tacked-on monetization scheme? Because thats always next if a singleplayer game series doesn’t make as much money as the publishers wanted it to.

emptyother, 9 months ago

Yeah, sex scene and sex jokes was a bit surprising, compared to how tame Bethesda games are on stuff like that. Well, at least the unmodded ones.

But didn’t scare me away after first episode either. Looks promising.

emptyother, 9 months ago

Would be nice if every game publisher was required to contribute a version of their game, that can be played without an external network or license, to the country’s main library. For cultural safe-keeping. I know at least one country does that for books.

emptyother, 10 months ago

Arkane Studios, for Dishonored, Prey, Dark Messiah, Deathloop.

Used to be Looking Glass Studios. And then Ion Storm. Do you see a pattern?

emptyother, 9 months ago

Half tempted to love any gamedev company that promises to keep making singleplayer games, that can be played offline, without microtransactions and battlepasses. It would take more than a few botched game launches to make me give up on them.

emptyother, 10 months ago

I got the feeling media has been saying “people are over superhero movies” for quite a while. Eventually it had to “come true” as Marvel has turned down the stakes and mostly focused on some cheap (relatively speaking) tvseries that probably nobody but comicbook fans watched, and some movies that are connected to these, with less known heroes.

They’ll be back again for Deadpool, Fantastic Four, and Blade, and the “over superheroes” trend will be forgotten. Again.

emptyother, 11 months ago

And when you finally get the game to run, it needs to compile shaders. Then it need to download another update, from inside the game (and sometimes even restart the game… Looking at you, MW2! ) And the user agreement have changed so you are forced to scroll to the bottom of one or more LONG legal text before you can click “Accept”. And then a season intro cutscene (fortnite and CoD games does that). Then maybe a “Whats new” screen…

I remember Commodore 64 games could take up to 30 minutes to load. But at least I could just go make some food while waiting. Didn’t have to sit there and press buttons.

emptyother, 1 year ago

The generic white muscled male, who can do anything the plot throws at him (with only a bit of fake struggle), and gets the girl at the end, is so damn overdone in every media. People talk about characters being Mary Sue when John Sue is way more common.

I want variations in my fiction! All kinds of genders, preferences, cultures, opinions, and species. The only rule I have is for the fiction never to encourage cruel acts IRL.

emptyother, 1 year ago

That was a coincidence, I’ve just started watching it! Season 2 now. Love it so far. But Sokka don’t deserve being such a buttmonkey, considering how often he is right.

emptyother, 1 year ago

Idk, I don’t feel like I can relate to some bad-ass. /s

emptyother, 1 year ago

But you can only choose one. That isn’t very realistic. 😄

emptyother, 1 year ago

Oh, the game where you could choose between the furry-suiter plumber, or his occasionally crossdressing brother. Thats pretty diverse, right?

emptyother, 1 year ago

I’m pretty sure it was only one in at least one of the Fallouts. But yeah, you are right, in NV one can choose both.

emptyother, 1 year ago

Mostly I choose gender based on how good they look. If males look brutish and carrot-y (no offense to Carrot Ironfounderdsson) or soldier-like, I choose female. If women look like drawn by Rob Liefeld, I choose men.

Though I do have a preference to a ginger short-haired woman (elf if fantasy) if I can’t decide on what I want to make.

emptyother, 1 year ago

I assume they’ve already replaced the CEO with an AI before they replaced the workers, right? That should be the easiest to swap out because any AI generated mistakes would be caught by the people doing the work just like we’ve always done with CEO generated mistakes.

emptyother, 1 year ago

And if one aren’t in the mood to learn something completely new, theres always Pathfinder.

emptyother, 1 year ago

Not a traditional AC? Origins and forward isnt traditional. Syndicate was so traditional they didnt even bring with them the improvements Unity had added (because both games were developed in parallell). It was the last traditional AC game in the series.

Also I loved that London. Also I loved those fight clubs. Also Evie looked damn sexy when fighting in said fight clubs.

emptyother, 1 year ago

Eh… Mirage is back to the old. Very minor skill-tree. Everything dies easy. No real sidequests. Social stealth works better.

But… It feels like a copy of AC. Like someone else without access to the source code of the originals tried to re-create it in Origins’ engine. Also the cutscenes kinda suck. And the city is a bit un-impressive and repetative.

emptyother, 1 year ago

So no different than every other BGS game newer than MW then.

emptyother, 1 year ago

Oh, they are. I keep telling people to WRITE DOWN YOUR PASSWORDS, and NEVER use same password on two sites. They dont listen. Its a lot easier to just remember 1-4 variations of a password and use that than carry around a password notebook. And they think themselves safe.

I’m thinking most people shouldnt use passwords at all anymore. They are a huge point of failure because people are people. We need something else to be the norm. How can we make hardware keys or something the norm for logging in? Have everyone carry around a bankcard-like thing that fit into every computer where people need credentials. Would’nt that be safer while still being accessible and convenient?

emptyother, 1 year ago

Nothing is simpler than passwords. But we want something thats both simple and safe. Even for lazy people, tech-unsawy people, and people with bad memory.

What if every pc came with a jubikey-ish reader and every website supported a browser api for it? Probably not jubikey, but something that fit in a wallet like bank cards do (but also was an open tech so that anyone can implement and sell cards). Wouldn’t it be both safer and simpler than passwords? It would take some time to turn around of course but the same was probably the case for https, 2fa, ipv6, and tpm’s.

emptyother, 1 year ago

The game was kickass for a kid who loved all kinds of weird action games! I probably shouldn’t try it again and ruin my memories of it.

But a top down shooter where you could fire in different directions than you were walking was revolutionary for a kid who had mostly played metal gear solid on his new PlayStation.

emptyother, 1 year ago

Not surprised. But I had never seen a game like that by then. And very rarely after too. Most recent one I played was… Alien Swarm, I think? I loved that one too.

emptyother, 1 year ago

Jup. Thief 3 had the best horror. No jumpscares, just a sneaking game where you spent many levels training to listen for footsteps and now heard footsteps where there was nobody. One of the few games that has ever scared me.

First and second Amnesia game had some of the same type of horror too. After that they got less and less scary. Don’t know why.

emptyother, 1 year ago

Of course nobody want to optimize. Its boring. It messes up the code. Often reqires one to cheat the player with illusions. And its difficult. Not something just any junior developer can be put to work on.

emptyother, 1 year ago

I might have generalized a bit too much. Of course some individual devs love the challenge of getting better performance out of anything.

But not enough of them that every dev company has an army of good developers who know how to do this with the expertise they are needing performance for. Theres a lot of ways one dev can specialize: gpu api (directx/opengl/vulcan/etc), os, game engine, disk access, database queries. One who knows graphic api well might not know how to optimize database queries. It doesnt help throwing money at the problem either, those who know this stuff usually already have good jobs. So you might have no choice than to use the devs you have, and the money you have budgeted, to release the game within contracted time.

emptyother, 1 year ago

Spotify did that too. Got to listen to THE definitive worst cover of Hotel California I’ve ever heard. I don’t trust cloud services with my music anymore. Mp3’s forever.

emptyother, 1 year ago

Better attitude than John Carmacks “Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It’s expected to be there, but it’s not that important.”

emptyother, 1 year ago

No, just that there are no invisible walls. After 7 hours of flying, she reached a paper-cutout of the planet.

emptyother, 1 year ago

I am curious and exited to hear what tricks they have used.

Theres nothing in the engine reqiring to fill every cell between two cells. Might as well be empty space, or cells with random generated terrain.

Also how are they doing the ship interior cell? Loading a cell without removing the old? Why aren’t they using the same thing for interior windows in houses then?

emptyother, 1 year ago

2008?! Nope. No. Not even close. 2015 maybe.

True, it doesn’t have raytracing, like most big game engines now. And the first city you come to is VERY plain and clean and oversized and underdetailed. It would probably be better if one started out in Akila or Neon or The Well somewhere with more details. But not every game, particularly one as open and customizable as this, can have EA level models or Cyberpunk level details. Nor is it the engines fault. Seen the Unreal Engine? How old is that one, 1998 i think? Nobody complains about that.

It is the fault of what they want to create. They want an engine that can do big open worlds, with interactable and persistent junk of all kinds, but that they can also very quickly create new content for. And is easily moddable with as little risk of mod conflicts as possible. And a very simulated AI, one that doesn’t need handhelding through pre-placed paths, but can navigate freely even through user-created buildings and chaotic situations. They end up looking dumber than other games AIs, but thats only because other games rely more on the illusion of a smart AI.

emptyother, 1 year ago

Screwed over? What promised stuff didn’t 76 deliver on?

For me it seemed like Bethesda wasn’t entirely sure what they wanted from 76, except that they wanted to create a multiplayer version of Fallout, and make money on micro-transactions. Todd tried to drag it in the PvP direction, which was ridiculous when its their first multiplayer and fallout haven’t exactly been known for being balanced. Someone internally dragged it in the coop PvE direction, someone else towards roleplaying and building. And after a backlash, they reacted by focusing on getting NPCs in and on PvE coop. And house building because that sold.

I liked the initial story personally. The changed story with NPCs became too disjointed from the world already built. And had no driving force in it. No reason to care except seeing one faction win.

emptyother, 1 year ago

Both Sonic and Mario sucked. Alex Kidd rocked!

Nah, not serious. I, like everyone else, wanted a Nintendo.

emptyother, 1 year ago

Everytime if they just listened to a guy on the internet who has no clue what it takes to create a game.

emptyother, 1 year ago

Is whispering while sneaking so easy though? It would double the voice acting budget, time, and the audio asset size. Theres no magic audio filter for making believable whispering out of regular voices.

Well, maybe there will be once game studios start using AI voice actors.

emptyother, 1 year ago

I played BG3 first. Near the end of it now. What could Bethesda have done to measure up to BG3?

Be less buggy? SF is a more complicated game than BG3. More stuff than can go wrong. Also BG3 has a lot more bugs later in game, in the part that hasn’t been out for early access for years now.

Have more story branches? If ME didn’t convince Bethesdas earlier games to put in more choices, why should BG3? Most people know what they get from these games.

Better writing? Thats a very subjective thing. And BG3 have a lot of already existing lore to build on top of.

Some times the quality of a game comes down to luck, timing, and what skill you got available. And trying to figure out which of two good games is objectively the “best” is a waste of time. We should be happy we got two good new games. In two different genres. And measure them against their prequels instead. Has the game evolved since the last game? BG3 has two parent games, BG2 and D:OS. It has improved on them both in combining them. Starfield was born from Fallout. Definitely an upgrade too, while staying true to what we expect in that line of games.

Thats my take on it. If a new XCom came out tomorrow, I wouldn’t be disappointed it wasnt BG3, I’d be happy and hope it had improved on XCom 2.

emptyother, 1 year ago

Oh yeah, forgot the preorder crap. Didnt think of that as part of the game.

emptyother, 1 year ago

Unless Bethesda fucks anything up behind the scenes, I think this modding scene is gonna be BIG.

emptyother, 1 year ago

Same. I almost always hold on games until just after release, when the preorder is still up, so I can read user reactions and gameplay videos before buying but still get the crappy preorder rewards.

emptyother, 1 year ago

Im near the end of BG3, and “stuck”: I’m just unwilling to end it. Happens often with RPGs for me. So a good time to take a break and play something else.

emptyother, 1 year ago

Well, movies and music doesnt come with microtransactions. Unless we count popcorn, and concert merch, i guess.

emptyother, 1 year ago

Huh, a new thought… Micro? Why is it called “micro” transactions still when theres nothing micro about them any longer? Skins for 20$ and the like isnt exactly micro. Should probably be called desi-transactions. Deca-transactions in some cases.

emptyother, 1 year ago

You can’t get the lava to empty? It only empties in turn-based for some reason, so just switch to turn-based and do nothing for 2-3 rounds.

emptyother, 1 year ago

My biggest complaints about it is awful performance, and that it silently deletes the savegames if I uninstall the game, no cloud save even!

I spent so damn long in the editor creating this kickass Eddie Riggs wannabe and now he’s gone because I wanted to wait a bit for a performance patch. 😭 So I haven’t had the motivation to return to the game since I found out.

emptyother, 1 year ago

Remember that they asked for the BG license just after they finished D:OS1. The game was what they used to prove themselves. The game mechanics is probably what they always had planned for if they was ever allowed to create BG3.

I’m glad for it. The game mechanics of surface elements and mixing to create new effects was fun but way overused in D:OS series. After 2 games, their third got the right balance between fun and annoying, I think.

emptyother, 1 year ago

Yes. Yes it is. Excellent story so far. Gameplay is the best of DnD mixed with the best part of Divinity Original Sin 2. Difficulty is maybe a bit harsh the first few levels when an encounter with a bad initiative can take you out before its your turn. It looks graphically good and runs fine on older graphic cards. The companions have interesting backstories and related quests.

I havent tested it in co-op yet.

I have encountered a few bugs: Actors missing in cutscenes. Money-stacks getting corrupted. The ugly pre-order clothes just disappearing after a patch. But nothing serious.

emptyother, 1 year ago

I’ve seen a bunch of good games being ruined by microtransactions and battlepasses. At least I believe that they could have had so much better sales and reputation if they didn’t include it.

For example: Shadow of War. Deus Ex Mankind Divided. Good games. These had microtransactions hooked on as an after-thought. It didn’t affect gameplay at all and could be completely ignored. Still they received so much hate for it. And then there are games adding microtransactions and nobody care. Most Ubisoft games for example. I think it has with who their target audience is. Though I can’t see what DX and SoW audiences has in common. Do they have less casual players than Ubisofts games? Idk.

emptyother, 1 year ago

The most important thing, which DA:O shares with Mass Effect, is that it gives the player an illusion that choices matter. That dopamine effect, together with a good but mostly linear story, and interesting companion characters, is a recipe for success with many people, like me. I mostly only play it once, rarely replay, so the illusion of choice isnt as easily ruined.

And companions is a big comparable thing between DA:O and BG3. Larian has really focused on that in this game, so of course it would make people compare it to DA.