Computerchairgeneral

Good. I can maybe see the argument for a remaster that improves the graphics, but they don’t really need a ground up remake in a new engine. Not as long as they’re still playable on modern computers.

Well that’s a shame. Not a fan of Paradox’s DLC policies, but some kind of competition in this genre would have been nice.

Yeah, really hoping this is just a misstep from the marketing team. It’s such a whiplash inducing shift in tone from all the previous marketing and trailers that they’ve released. If not then they certainly picked an interesting game to fully shift the tone from dark fantasy to…whatever Veilguard is aiming for.

Fable having this realistic art style still feels weird to me, but at least it seems like they’re matching the tone of the other games.

Yeah, the art style definitely feels like a holdover from the live-service days. I could see them having to work with whatever assets were left after that version of the game was scrapped and just having to make it work.

Not sure how I feel about the art style. Varric and Harding look decent, but it felt like the longer the trailer went on the more the characters turned into something out of a stylized hero shooter. Honestly, the whole trailer felt more suited to a hero shooter than a single player RPG. Hopefully the gameplay looks better, but this was a very odd way to formally reintroduce your game after ten years of scattered trailers and announcements.

Accidents happen. Your finger slips and suddenly your game is full of Nazi symbols. Happens all the time. Also, I get the gist of Garriss’s response, but mentioning that he had men and women at his house and his mother was always present just makes things sound weirder than a simple denial. Sounds like a horrible situation all around.

No? Xbox might not be in the greatest place right now, but it’s a far cry from where Sega was when they discontinued the Dreamcast. Yeah, Microsoft stepped on a lot of rakes with the Xbox One, but it wasn’t a Saturn-style disaster and Microsoft is still doing well enough to buy out a major game publisher.

I’m impressed at how well thought out this battle plan is. I’m usually pessimistic when it comes to governments taking pro-consumer stances, but then again all it takes is one government siding against game companies to set a precedent. Hopefully this picks up steam and gets to a wider audience. It feels like one of the few things gamers can agree on these days is how much they hate business practices like this.

Because the games are good? Does their need to be a deeper reason then that? I mean, I guess a boom in retro games among Gen Z and younger says something about the state of the modern industry, but younger generations have always liked older things despite entertainment industries trying to push them towards the shiny and new. Still definitely nice to see though.

It’s an impressive battle plan. I’m always a little pessimistic when it comes to these things, but at least this effort is casting a wide net. If even one of them succeeds that could impact the entire industry. Hopefully some government body, somewhere chooses to take this seriously.

Hopefully this showcase is successful enough to become a tradition. It would be nice to have an indie-focused showcase that doesn’t have to juggle their time between the games, advertisements, and sponsors.

No ads? No awkward celebrity cameos? No sponsors? Just video games? At a video game event? Ridiculous.

More seriously, there are a lot of good studios on that list and I’m excited to see what they have to announce.

Feels like forever since I heard Ken Levine ramble on about narrative LEGOs and game design. It’s an interesting concept and hopefully the game lives up to expectations. I’m still cautious that it might all end up being pre-release hype, but he certainly seems passionate about the idea and I’m certainly curious to see what narrative LEGOs actually looks like in execution.

I have an unhealthy cycle of this with Hearts of Iron IV a WW2 grand strategy game. I’ll realize the embarrassing number of hours that I’ve put into the game and then I’ll stop playing for a while. But then one of the big mods for it will update and then I dive back in and lose a weekend and then the process repeats.

The other game I consistently come back to is Threads of Fate or Dewprism it’s a PS1 action-RPG with dual protagonists where each one has their own campaign or story to play through. I guess it’s nostalgia that keeps me coming back to it, but it really wasn’t a favorite game growing up and I didn’t beat it until years after I’d gotten it. But every few years I’ll just remember it out of the blue and get the urge to play through it again.

I’m really tired of politicians who barely understand the internet trying to write sweeping legislation to regulate it.

From what I understand, fast travel isn’t locked behind microtransactions, despite some claims I’ve seen. You can buy an item that you can place that lets you teleport back to that point, kind of like fast traveling to a map marker. These items are available in game along with fixed fast travel points between major cities. So the reviewers would have had access to fast travel they just wouldn’t have been able to use real money buy them whenever they needed them.

The microtransactions are bad enough, but the fact that none of these were present in the build given to reviewers just makes it worse. I mean people would still be complaining about them, but I don’t think the backlash would be as bad if Capcom had made it clear from the start that the game was going to be riddled with microtransactions.

Genuinely excited to see Alpha Protocol available for sale again after all this time. Was not expecting to see it on the front page of GOG. It is such an interesting game, even if it isn’t, strictly speaking, a good game.

Unsurprisingly the people who have had to deal with Reddit’s leadership for years don’t trust them. Shocking. That said I could see a lot of Redditors still buying in, just out of fear that they might miss out on the next big “get-rich-quick” opportunity.