With all the news coming out the past couple days about The Veilguard, I’m starting to piece together a suspicion that Bioware is picking things back up where they last had decent ideas: early to mid 2010s.

I think Veilguard will feel like a stuck-in-time successor to Inquisition, stale by that period’s standards and grossly outdated by today’s, especially in the wake of Larian’s enormous success reinvigorating the kind of game Bioware has forgotten how to make.

That’d be great if it was true but there have been rumors that development largely reset when they left. Guess we’ll have to wait until they release credits to know for sure.

the devs given any reason to doubt them

I agree that it’s super early for much speculation, but Dan Houser and a few other key players left Rockstar after RDR2. He and Michael Unsworth (who I think also left the studio with Dan) were two-thirds of the GTA 5 and RDR2 writing team. Without their involvement, I fear a scenario where the core single-player narrative has less gravitas, around which much of the detail and realism of the gameplay and game world has previously resolved, and the company leans more into the success of its GTA Online style gameplay.

I’m sure they can still be wildly successful with that formula, but it will be a huge disappointment for me personally.

I can’t disagree. But as one facet among others, I also think “concern” is reasonably warranted in conducting a comparative assessment.

Edit: also worth highlighting: “there’s nothing wrong with being against gay marriage because it’s a political opinion” is certifiably homophobic. How much responsibility Kagi’s moderators bear for not removing that comment or otherwise explicitly advising that homophobia won’t be tolerated is debatable, but it’s not great.

Seems fair, in reference to Kagi:

Unrelatedly: I’m concerned about the company’s biases, as it seems happy to use Brave’s commercial API (allowing blatant homophobia in the comments) and allow its results to recommend suicide methods without intervention. I reject the idea that avoiding an option that may seem politically biased is the same as being unbiased if such a decision has real political implications.

Shame. Shortly after it’s release Best Buy was selling it for like $10, which is such a potent indicator for the state of its reputation on release. Anyway, I couldn’t pass it up. I encountered tons of bugs, but they were all superficial and didn’t impact the gameplay or my progress.

I loved it. World building and atmosphere were grade A, and I even liked Johnny Silverhand and his relationship with V. Like I said in the post, I’ve been waiting for new game plus to replay, but I guess now I’ll just dive back in without.

Interesting. I heard the main character is insufferable. Would you disagree or is the story good in spite of him?

Watcher Knights I think are near the top of my list. I just rewatched my recording of beating them and I was fumbling so badly lol. It’s obvious I’m running with the “pure desperation” tactic rather a more skillful approach, but it finally managed to work out.

I was addicted to exploring that world but I am satisfied with the one playthrough I think.

I was persuaded to pick Elden Ring back up despite not really feeling a pull for it, but lo and behold once I was back in I fell in deep. I never actually finished the game with my first dex/bleed-based character, so I continued making my way through Crumbling Farum Azula. I’ve given Malekith a couple of attempts but I’m pretty burned out on bosses at the moment. I started up a new sorcery-based character and that’s been the real joy. Magic really does make the game significantly easier, and part of me wishes I’d done my first playthrough this way. But I’d beaten Demon’s Souls remake not too long before starting Elden Ring originally and wanted something different.

To fall back on when I get too frustrated, I’ve been playing 10tons’s Undead Horde. Their game Dysmantle wound up being a major highlight the year that I played it (I really, really liked it), so I finally bought Undead Horde 1 and 2. It’s not nearly as good as Dysmantle, but it’s a really great, lightweight dungeon crawler. I like their vibe very much and am really looking forward to Dysplaced.

I also gave the Saints Row reboot a try since it was free a while back on PS+ and it’s really, really (really) dumb. It’s also kind of fun, a little at a time. Not sure it’ll hold my interest all the way through but it’s nice having an open world game that’s just…easy to play and asks very little of the player.

I’m further behind in Ori but I’m enjoying it greatly. I’m not a big metroidvania aficionado, but I played and loved Hollow Knight despite it’s difficulty (some of the bosses really tested my tolerance for punishment). I appreciate that Ori is (so far) a more accessible game.

They claim that entertainment companies exist “to provide that entertainment.” Sure I think creative leads and the devs (especially in the games industry) are there to provide entertainment that they are passionate about. But idk if I can ever see a period where the publisher was in it for the art, despite what they may say.

I agree with you, except that up until the early-to-mid aughts, before Fortnight, and skinner box mobile games, and the promise of persistent revenue capitalizing on addictive tendencies and FOMO, publishers believed that the best path to profit was good games. Konami, to pick the (previously) worst example, published one of the weirdest, most cinematic, ambitious, influential games of all time with Metal Gear Solid. And then, eventually, they saw a straighter, shorter path to profit.

I am…way more personally upset about the Arkane closure than I usually get about these things. I have so much respect for what that studio created. This article is great though and gives the holistic perspective I’ve been looking for the past few days:

The point here, ultimately, is that this cycle has been repeating, and repeating, and repeating, and it does not show any sign of coming to an end. Xbox buys talent, mismanages it in search of impossible scale, and cuts it loose - be that the 20-year experts of Fable, or the battle-scarred makers of Dishonored, or the invigorating new generation behind Hi-Fi Rush. Xbox’s leadership clearly knows it’s a problem…they have to step behind this first, surface-level layer of justification for closing studios, and get to the real cause - not the decisions themselves, but the principles that inform them. The principles that say expertise, creativity and talent are less valuable than the cost to let them flourish.

There’s a PlayStation community I was subscribed to whose main mod posted a gamergatey rant over the weekend with a number of factual inaccuracies. I wanted desperately to assume they were just benignly uninformed, but it didn’t turn out that way.

I’m not interested in subscribing to a community at risk of being affected by that kind of toxicity, so I had to leave. Which is a bummer because I liked having PS-specific news in my feed.

When we were trying to book a hotel, my partner clicked on the top link of a Google search, which was of course a sponsored link and took her to some completely off-brand intermediary whose website was designed to mimic the appearance of the hotel’s. She completed the booking there before ever realizing it wasn’t the hotel itself, and when I quoted the same stay directly with the hotel it wound up being some $100-$200 cheaper.

I had to have a lengthy phone call with their customer support and exchange a few emails before they finally agreed to refund us. I suppose we’re lucky they even had a reachable customer service, but I was and remain infuriated by the conditions that created the situation in the first place.

Thanks! I looked at Graveyard Keeper a while back, might give it a go.

I finally tried out Hardspace Shipbreaker. I’ve played a few hours and just finished the reactor tutorial. So far it’s that diamond in the rough I’m always looking for: an engaging but chill gameplay loop and enticing progression. Something I can turn on to relax and zone out with noncommitally, but that isn’t just an objective-less sandbox ala No Man’s Sky.

If anyone has recommendations for other games that fit the bill please let me know!

Exact same reaction. First person feels so inappropriate for this property that I immediately assumed comparisons to Uncharted and Tomb Raider must have been a, if not the, major contributing factor to going first person.

First person perspective blurs the line between player and character for a specific type of immersion (when done well). An Indiana Jones game should be all about playing as motherfucking Indiana Jones, no blurred lines necessary. His stature and costume is integral to the formula that makes him iconic, and without them, the gameplay segments of this trailer make it look like Far Cry: The 80s Adventure Serial.

Seems nothing has changed in the past 2 years: Take Two Is Being a Dick

I changed my first name because it started with an R and I didn’t want to infringe on any of Take Two’s precious trademarks.

I’ve said before that being a PS Plus subscriber has changed the types of games I play by making indie games more accessible to try, with low stakes. Prior, I usually reserved my funds for what I assumed was the biggest bang with AAA titles.

There’s value there with having a library of games to just try out. That being said, the trajectory of subscription services generally and “digital ownership” (see Playstation’s recent Discovery kerfuffle) is really concerning.

I think Ubisoft’s mindset here is on the wrong track (surprise…). Luckily, as others have said, there’s not a lot of temptation here for Ubisoft’s modern library (Prince of Persia being an admitted exception).

Alan Wake 2. I’ll spare any commentary on all the things it does well and that make it a one of the most ambitiously distinctive (AAA) games…ever? because that’s been well covered.

On the other hand, I am kinda surprised that the combat is as… deficient as it is. I never liked the combat experience in the first game. I don’t like how the enemies were programmed to run off screen to the sides of view, because Alan isn’t nimble enough to pivot direction sufficiently to track multiple enemies, and it just felt cheap and frustrating. Dodging is clunky too.

Control was the next Remedy game I played, and I thought the combat in that game was fantastic. The gunplay felt right, and the paranormal powers were weighty and responsive. Even the levitate power looks and feels fantastic; the animation is super cool and I love watching it.

So I had high hopes for Alan Wake 2, but the combat again feels too imprecise and unbalanced. Dodging is still clunky, projectiles clip through objects, etc.

Oh well. It’s a bummer, but in a game like this it’s well overshadowed by the strengths.