In the same boat, it’s such a beautiful game, especially the less you know about it beforehand. It’s been awhile since I’ve played a game like that. I’m just about finishing up the DLC, then going back through the final sequence to see how that affects the ending, I might try to go back and finish out the Steam achievements on it too, just to have them done. If I could have any memories erased in my life, it would be all knowledge of that game, just so I could go back through it one more time with fresh eyes. The ending kind of mirrors the reality of finishing out the game itself, it’s kind of sad and bittersweet, it’s like a book that I never wanted to end.
Pretty much just finishing up Outer Wilds +DLC, I just haven’t taken the time to collect some last scraps of information to close out some clues and then finish the game again (after now going through the DLC area). I had actually started this game up about 2 years ago, but got stuck and had some other things come up so that I put it aside. Then I resolved to just watch somebody else’s playthrough to spoil the game. I started by watching an astrophysicist playthrough, ‘Oliver Plays’ on Youtube. I watch as he starts out and relive some of my own experiences of discovering the early game, when suddenly in one of the episodes, I notice something small that brings me back to where I had been at in the game in my own playthrough and the solution instantly became clear. So I jumped back into it like I had never left and now I’ve pretty much about to finish the game.
I originally went in blind because of everything I kept reading about it being such a great game, blah blah blah. And it lived up to the hype, it was such an awesome experience going in completely blind (I didn’t even watch any trailers), but the shitty thing is, I can’t really talk about the game that much. So much depends on experiencing it for yourself and discovery, that saying anything about the game potentially spoils somebody else’s first experience with it, and I don’t want to take that away from anybody. It’s just such a beautiful gem of a game, I’ve not really played anything like that before (though I’ve read of some others that may be similar).
It could be interesting for procedurally generated games. Imagine a world with no fixed map, settlements where every person is completely unique and will talk to you about any subject you want to talk to them about (instead of the same canned phrase or two), a completely different roster of baddies to fight every time, maybe even the storyline itself never plays the same each time, or the style of play changes from game to game. I’m hopeful we’ll start to see some truly unique games with AI helping out, though I’m guessing we’ll get a mountain of shovelware that just uses AI to generate shitty non-sensical art assets and meaningless dialogue.
I never suffered from the game-stopping bugs others had, but IMO the other half of the game that needs fixed is the storyline itself. The character’s storyline itself is so linear that nothing you really do makes a difference, your background is just reduced to a set of extra dialogue choices. It’s all just window dressing over a very on-rails game. All they needed to do was just copy GTA V more and it’d be an improvement over this game.
Not just companies, but countries too. We’ve apparently reached the Age of Idiocy where everyone that got big is just doing these epic face-plants. I don’t know if it’s desperation, arrogance, greed, or a combination, but so many shitty decisions coming out left and right all over the place.
Just the latest in a wave of companies that seem to be looking for ever-more scummy ways to take advantage of their customers in search of the Holy Dollar.
This is hardly a comprehensive list, there’s so many recently, but this is just what I could remember off the top of my head:
I would love to see some GMing tools and the ability to do custom campaigns. Like I could imagine a group using BG3 to run an actual game of D&D in. It wouldn’t need to be incredibly complicated, just some sort of modular tiling and the ability to add objects/monsters, you don’t need dialogue (or keep it basic) or need to fuss with scripting or anything like that, just a basic scenario builder that’s easy enough for most GM’s to figure out. It’d still be more work than pen&paper, but a bit more approachable and it’d just look so beautiful.
In TTRPGs encumbrance seems to be the #1 rule that players conveniently forget about and GMs only ever seem to bring up when they want to fuck with the players. It’s probably one of the more annoying, unexciting aspects of TTRPGs to keep track of. I like the approach that BG3 has taken, you essentially have an unlimited Camp inventory, but your personal inventory is limited. Is it realistic? No, absolutely not, but neither are Bags of Holding, which are basically a GM’s way of throwing up their hands to say, “Fuck it, I’m not dealing with this shit anymore.”
I apparently wasn’t ever paying attention bc I had never heard of gamescom before now, and now it’s been a flood of trailers coming out from there. Is gamescom the successor to E3? That was traditionally where I remember new releases coming out way back when before it dissolved/died/whatever.