Jan 2022: “Heres xenoblade 3, an absolutely gigantic single player game, no microtransactions, pushes the console to it’s absolute limit, Monolithsoft at the top of their fucking game. Announced today, out in september.”
April 2022: “Lol, it’s now out in july. Enjoy.”.
Baldurs gate is fucking sweet, but let’s not act like it’s a unique occurance in AAA gaming.
This isn’t a pissing contest and no one is acting like this is unique. We saw the same excitement for the last 2 Zelda games, God of War, Spiderman, Elden Ring etc. (post more examples, I don’t pay as much attention to the industry anymore so I’m sure I’ve missed a bunch). Let’s celebrate them if that’s what you’d like to see more of. They’re all awesome and they all add to the evidence that there is a large population that still want to experience games this way.
Yes actually, they are. That’s the entire reason this debate began; some developers claimed that Baldur’s Gate 3 is a unique occurrence and should be treated as such, rather than an example of a AAA video game meeting the expectations of consumers.
I think that was the point the person you replied to was getting at: not only is it completely fine for consumers to have these expectations, but it’s actually not even as rare as these developers are making out. There are other examples of AAA development studios and publishers who aren’t engaging in blatantly anti-consumer practices, so the ones that do really have no excuse.
My example was just the first that came to mind. But like baldurs gate, you can tell the amount of care and passion that has been put into it. And it’s a AAA title no matter whether people think otherwise due to it being a Switch exclusive (admittedly, I only play switch games nowadays on my PC emulated in 4k60fps but still…)
botw and todk are fps limited to 30fps by default due to their physics engine being tied to the framerate. There are workaround/hacks though to get them running smoothly in an emulator. (At least there is for the wii u version of botw in cemu, I’m not quite up to date with switch emulation but I’d be surprised if there wasn’t)
No, that was 2. That mechanic and plot point doesn’t exist in 3. 3 has very little, if any, fanservice, most due to its dark subject matter (infinite war, limited lifespans)
And yes, AAA. It cost multiple millions, hundreds of staff working on it, hundreds of hours of VA including notable UK talent (Jenna Coleman, etc), a fully orchestral soundtrack by Yasunori Mitsuda recorded in multiple countries, and the game itself pushes the switch to breaking point. It absolutely counts and is considered by Nintendo as one.
There’s loads of other examples of decent single player experiences without bullshit, this one just came to mind first. And I hope Baldurs Gate’s success brings more like these
Here’s my thing: I don’t necessarily care what sort of game you make, I just want it to be feature-complete and technically solid (I.e. mostly bug-free). Whether that’s a small indie game or a massive AAA game, those two things should be true.
I think what most people find frustrating is that the in-game store is the most well developed part of most AAA releases nowadays, which often ship riddled with bugs.
I just want it to be feature-complete and technically solid
So, Diablo 4.
I wanted to get BG3, but the constant deep throating by neckbeards is making me gag. Now I don’t want it for the same reason bigots won’t play TLOU2: politics.
I’m sure BG3 is fantastic. It’s also not a reason for people to tell me why I shouldn’t enjoy the games I do.
I dunno the part where they try to make themselves out to be some kind of hero over racism randomly because they didn’t play a game has gotta decrease the score by at least a couple. Just feels like they’re trying too hard I dunno. Feels basic
“I won’t try this game because it’s too highly reviewed!” What a weird hill to die on.
D4 seemed to have been great at launch, but the seasons and battle pass stuff ruin it for me (though you can like it if you want, I don’t care). I don’t like the idea of a game being on a timer and asking me to play the way they want me to play it. This is what BG3 does right. It’s a game with many options and many ways to play. It never tells you how you should and you also don’t need to pay extra for other crap. You get a complete experience from start to finish with no timers and nothing extra asked of you.
I feel you on the deepthroating shit. It’s a great game, no doubt about it. But some of these articles act like it’s the second coming of Christ, and if I am to be entirely honest… It’s not quite as good as the original games. It’s lacking a lot of depth in the story telling (it’s almost entirely voiced so there’s more brevity in any given conversation than the pages upon pages of text even a random nobody can give you in BG2), but makes up for it with mechanical depth.
I agree it’s a big deal for a major release to not have MTX or a season pass or other bullshit, and that should definitely be applauded. But some of the things I’ve seen said about the game are out right fraudulent. Like an article the other day saying it is the most polished AAA game in over a decade, which is absurd. The game is plagued with issues and the polish is literally the one thing I can not give it praises for. It even feels amateur in a lot of ways. Like it has many little issues I would not expect from a seasoned developer, and many bugs ranging from minor inconveniences to full blown game breaking stuff like scripts firing wrong leading to an outcome you didn’t choose to take or characters becoming comoletely broken being unable to move or be interacted with.
Story is great. It actually feels like a remix of the first Baldur’s Gate story. Characters are some of the best I’ve seen in a long time. The combat is super fun, especially when you try to do weird random shit just to see if it works; cuz 90% of the time it does. There is a depth to the changes you can have on the world at large that are extremely cool and haven’t been done on such a scale before in all the RPGs I’ve played over the years…
Although that last part is where the previous talk about bugs really starts to drag the experience down. There have been so many points in my two playthroughs of the game where I took one path, but got the dialogue and changes to the world of another path. Like currently, my party keeps talking about one of the companions killing another. But they didn’t; I stopped that from happening. So now this character is standing around in the background while other characters talk about her death. And that’s not even the worst one I’ve encountered.
I think it’s funny talking about the second coming. It really is the second coming if anyone follows it. The thing is, it’s not extraordinary in the grand scheme of gaming. It’s just not something we’ve had in a long time on a large scale. It pretty much follows the norm for 2000s/90s games, but that’s why it’s an outlier. We don’t get those anymore. Bioware used to make games like it, but they don’t now and they’ll tell you it’s not going to happen again despite technology being better.
I understand that publishers will force them to do certain things, but most AAA studios have the capability of making games that follow the same standard (but maybe not scale) of BG3 if it weren’t for publishers. They shouldn’t copy it, but they should internalize that players want complete experiences in the box, and they want to be treated like adults who can think for themselves.
Not all the issues are bugs. There are issues in the actual design of some systems that are amateur at best (such as the UI). Even most indie developers wouldn’t have these issues, so seeing them in a AAA game that was in early access as long as this one has is totally unacceptable.
BG3 has still been riddled with bugs for me and since it doesn’t have MTX or a store or anything, it feels kinda worse. At least I know why the crap riddled with MTX is rife with issues; what is BG3’s excuse?
I probably wouldn’t mind the bugs so much if the whole game was shit. But the game is fucking awesome. I just want to play it without being frustrated by technical issues. 😩
I’m hoping that by the time the PS5 version launches, it’ll be much smoother.
I actually agree with you. People praise BG3 as if it were the most perfect 10/10 video game in existence. Its far from it. It is riddled with bugs reaching from minor to game breaking. The best example is the very first few seconds of the game. The first thing the players are likely to interact with is the tadpole pool after awekening on the ship.
Minor spoilerIt explodes, knocking you back and causing damage.
As someone who made a few characters and played the intro section a lot, the animation is often times bugged and confusing. And thats the first interaction a player has with the game.
A few seconds later you stand in front of a door. Usually the door opens and you can go through. But sometimes the opening animation doesn’t play. This happened on my very first time playing and I couldn’t figure out where to go, because my first instinct wasn’t to clip through the closed door. Things like this are absolutely unacceptable in the tutorial area.
Even though they already have full controller support it is very clear why the console release is delayed. The console player base is expected to be a lot more casual and unless they iron out all the confusing bugs they run the risk of people being frustrated and dropping the game.
And then there are other major things.
Why is there no native option for 3rd person WASD movement even though it is fully implemented for controllers?
Why does only the controller get a search area function but the keyboard doesn’t?
Why is there no camera sensitivity for controllers?
Why are there no deadzone settings for controller joysticks?
Why is there a 1 second delay on movement when using a controller?
Why can’t I set the text size below 64px when using a controller?
Why in a game that has been in early access for so long and a world full of magic can’t we change our characters appearance post creation? (I know it’s announced but why just now?)
Why do we not have advanced difficulty settings? (I’d love the enemies to be smart like “tactitian” but not be unhittable bullet sponges.)
Why is every adult character so goddamn hot in this game? I need my blood in my brain.
Why can we select a player voice, if the player isn’t voiced beyond some minor quips?
Why isn’t there a random name generator for your character?
Why can’t I shift + click multiple items or containers to queue them up for pickup or search?
Why do container windows open on top of each other or other inventory windows?
Why can’t I rename containers in my inventory?
Why can’t I filter out or hide wares in my inventory?
Why can’t I sort or filter items during trading or in the party view?
Why do containers always open in a 5x2 grid instead of trying to fit all the items without scrolling?
Why can I skip the rolling animation but not the success-continue animation?
etc.
I know I’m nitpicking here, but for a game that is as highly praised as this, I expect it also to nail all those minor things that other games have already figured out already (some of which were even their own older titles). Especially because it was Early Access and they had a lot of user feedback. I see it times and times again that studios apparently throw out all their previous knowledge of videogames and seemingly start from scratch on every title, making small stupid mistakes that could have been easily avoided. It’s like the research process for video mechanics and UI never consists of actually looking at other games.
So for me, it’s a very pretty game, its a beautifully sounding game and even a very fun game. But nowhere near a 10/10. It’s a 7/10 game. Fix the bugs to bump it up to 8/10 implement some QoL for 9/10 and release modding tools so the community can make it a 10/10.
I can’t say for anyone else, but Karlach is hot because of that infernal engine she has for a heart. :P
Why can’t I sort or filter items during trading or in the party view?
You can on a controller. Press in the left stick. The fact the UI between a controller and the M&KB is so completely different and you get dumb differences like this is another amateur hour move. I’ve played entirely on controller, but from talking to other people and seeing my sister play on her laptop, the M&KB interface is garbage and offers for fewer options far some damn reason.
I know I’m nitpicking here, but for a game that is as highly praised as this, I expect it also to nail all those minor things that other games have already figured out already
You realize that smaller companies have to do triage and prioritize what they’re working on, yes? Take bugs/enhancements in a certain order? And usually the major things get taken care of first before the minor things are.
Also, some of the things you ask for, they may just not agree with you as being needed in the game.
Have you submitted that list to them for their consideration, directly (Github, etc.)?
Stupid question, but have you been letting Steam do game updates?
Unless you’ve changed the default settings, you have to let Steam do updates while not playing any games through Steam. By default it won’t do any updates in the background.
Yes, everything updates automatically. I’ve gotten all the updates so far. Only a few of the changes made in any of them actually affected me. Most of the things I’ve experienced have yet to be addressed.
Most of the things I’ve experienced have yet to be addressed.
I was going to reply humorously with a comment along the lines of you should be moving from a technical to a spiritual solution, an exorcism perhaps, but I don’t want to kick somebody when they’re down, for the sake of comedy.
I know and I fucking hate it. I was one of the fanboys defending them even through the first SwSh trailers, but the more they showed stuff the more it was clear it wasn’t the franchise I used to love anymore.
Man I hope the next great Pokémon (even if it’s not pokémon) doesn’t take until I have kids to come out. I heard good stuff about Coromon but I’m not sure if it’s genuinely great or “great for an indie”.
Would it be so bad if games didn’t have insane budgets? Most of my favorite games from the past decade are from small studios operating on pizza and hope.
Lower budgets would probably be better. High budgets mean high risk, developers and publishers try to minimize that risk and you get bland games that try to cater to too many tastes. Movies suffer from the same problem. They get budgets in the hundreds of millions and you wonder what they spent it all for.
I can’t remember who it was. A famous actor, anyway. They were talking about what’s happened with movies. There’s nothing in the middle.
It’s either $100m+ or less than $3m. Either it gets a big producer and they pump so much money into it that it must be safe because it can’t lose money. Or is a small producer doing it for the love, but a small budget doesn’t go very far. The risky narratives done well would be funded somewhere between the two extremes but it’s just not how it’s done anymore.
In a strange way, to get more money in for the riskier productions, we need to get the money out of Hollywood. Can’t see it happening, myself.
Edit: I forgot the reason I told this story: it won’t be much different in the game industry.
You can’t? We just had a summer filled with high-budget flops, and now both the actors and the writers are on strike meaning that the studios won’t be able to recoup their losses any time soon. Add the reduced to non-existent theatre turnout in the first couple of years of the decade due to COVID and there’s been a hell of a lot of money “getting out of Hollywood.”
I disagree that a flop means lost revenue. This is an industry that’s so adept at hiding income to avoid paying taxes, actors, and every other studio worker that dodgy accounting is known as ‘Hollywood Accounting’. Maybe we’re talking about different things. When I say Hollywood, I mean the movie industry as a whole.
Hollywood has failed to capture some income streams. From theatres, for example, as you say. But there’s still too much money to be made (and too much propaganda potential) for enough big money to leave that the problems of monopoly finance capital go away.
High budgets are killing the film industry. In the case of gaming, it plays a factor, but greed is probably the main issue. Most big budget AAA games in the past made large amounts of money even if they didn’t have universal appeal. Because companies realised that they could make large amounts of money off loot boxes, microtransactions, cash shops and battle passes, they started trying to funnel players into games, mainly so that players would buy things. That’s one of the main reasons the AAA industry is getting worse: games need to appeal to as many as possible, while coming out as fast as possible, all so that players will buy the overpriced in-game items endlessly shoved in players’ faces.
I love me some good AAA games and want them to stick around. But I think it would be much better if they were a bit fewer and further between, and the big studios shift to more regular AA games, and give their devs chances to do some more oddball stuff with even lower budgets. More expiremntation and risky projects can only enrich the industry.
You never know what those experiments can lead too. There will be a lot of failures however someone is going to look at the failure and realize what needs to be need to be tweaked.
Good point. And it’s a lot easier to accept ‘failure’ (there could still be something learned in a game that doesn’t quite hit the mark) if the budget isn’t astronomical.
There are games like FFXV that get quite creative on a big budget. (Not sure if it’s AAA.) I enjoyed that game but some of the novel features bugged me a little bit and they skimped on some important features, I thought. Maybe there’s a better formula for trialling novelty than an all or nothing approach.
Yep. The final fantsay series was a bunch of lads in an attic. Now those lads are legends… with a fantasic legacy. Yet I’m still waiting for ES5 and GTA 6…
BG3 did have a pretty huge budget though. I would totally be fine if games took notes from BG3 but reduced scope a lot. Bioware used to make games similar to BG, but they stopped and now make garbage. The idea other studios can’t make similar games is wrong. They can’t make games this big usually though without publishers telling them they need to include microtransactions and other bullshit.
Black Isle was the publisher, Bioware developed the game. Baldurs Gate lead to BG2, which lead to Neverwinter Nights, which lead to Knights of the Old Republic.
Kind of! Though if we are being entirely honest, the real thing to blame is the head writer being replaced and the dev time cut by almost a year.
Personally would have enjoyed it more if they went with the Biotics/Dark Energy that Drew Karpyshyn had put down groundwork for, rather than the AI subplot that Mac Walters hastily slapped together for ME3 that directly contradicted ME1 threads and subplots.
True, but IMO the link wasn’t nearly as strong between KotoR and ME as any of the previous games in the link which were all clearly D&D based systems. ME1 had a lot in common with KotoR but there were some major deviations too as they moved away from the table top standard.
Yep, you’re right. I didn’t realize they were a studio at that point. Yeah, they have no reason to complain about new expectations. They could have created BG3 if they had kept doing what they were known for, but EA and the money were too good…
You could give studios unlimited budgets and they’d still complain they don’t have enough time / money to get things right. The rhetoric is that “games are just so complex nowadays” and that justifies their 4/5/6 year development periods.
I’m not seeing the complexity that warrants that type of long development period. The visual fidelity on some games is impressive, but is it actually worth that 5 year dev time?
That’s what I don’t get. These are expectations that I’ve had for years. The indie space has kinda proven that creativity will take a game a hell of a lot farther than cash ever will. With few exceptions I simply don’t buy AAA games anymore because honestly I just don’t expect the same level of effort will be put into making them.
Nintendo does the same with BoTW and ToTK. Long dev cycles that releases a functional game without micro-transactions.
FromSoft does the same with most of their games. Where people actually beg them to release DLCs.
But no… it’s Larion they seem to go after.
Nintendo is huge. FromSoft has their own cult. But Larion? What’s can they blame there? Nothing. Most big studios that bitch about this is larger than Larion. Maybe because they are more scared that if Larion can do it. There’s no excuse anymore.
I think it’s due to the little guy making a huge wave that other people don’t feel they’re “allowed” to make. These other devs work on “AAA” companies working on big name titles from studios everyone has heard of so. But now a small, indie studio comes along with a grand slam and they don’t like it kind of makes them look bad by comparison. Showing you can release a big complex game without it being an absolute buggy mess, doesn’t need microtransactions, doesn’t need to sell millions of copies to be considered a success, and isn’t just a copy paste of the previous game with a handful of modifications made to slap a new “FOR SALE” label on it…
Even then I feel like they were too underrated for their obvious potential. I’m glad the studio is fully in the spotlight now. With so many shitty companies out there it feels like they earned and deserve it. Now we just have to hope they don’t fall to temptation and turn to crap like so many others
I personally think this is because gaming journalism isn’t real journalism. They don’t actually care, they just want clicks and perceived relevancy when people repost their tweets to reddit
but I’ll keep working for them because they pay me.
That’s just it, you can move to a different company that has a better working situation in environment. You just have to be a brave enough to fight the inertia that keeps you where you’re at.
And in fact, if you want your salary to steadily increase over your career, you’re supposed to move from company to company every couple of years.
I think the “problem” for those people is that the game broke out of its bubble. nintendo, from soft and also larion up until now all had their own bubble of fans. Larion broke that mold and even people who have nothing to do with the genre celebrate it.
There was plenty of distaste for Elden Ring when it came out – devs at Ubisoft I believe ridiculed how the UI wasn’t informative and such.
I think AAA studios are terrified because they’re seeing just how much consumers value quality over quantity and MTX bullshit. Games that should be in self contained bubbles are now hitting mainstream and becoming absurdly popular.
Lmao Ubisoft of all folks should shut the fuck up about UI, they are literally the source of the meme about cluttered and overly complicated UI. If Ubisoft is complaining about a UI I have to automatically assume it is a good UI.
Also, if AAA developers have been paying attention for the last decade, they would know that consumers have valued quality and shown disdain for MTX since MTX started becoming pervasive. MTX overall can generate a lot of revenue, but it isnt sustainable, hence why there is always some sort of FOMO characteristic included with the MTX system, making things limited time and constantly shovelling low effort “new content” to fill out the MTX system.
They’ve been working for almost a generation now on changing the mindset of gamers as to what they should expect from a game, and here comes a really good game from a little known studio doing exactly what games used to expect before the mind changing was attempted.
I’m as frustrated with D4 as the next guy, but I’d hardly call their in-game shop invasive. Their MTX has been minor and cosmetic thus far. There are far better examples including one within the Diablo universe.
The shop had an un-clearable red alert notification any time they released a new skin for your character chat.
The only way to clear it was to open the shop and scroll to find the new item and click on it, opening the store page. Then when you backed out it would go away.
You had to do this for every single item that was released.
Maybe I’m neurotic or autistic or OCD or all three but those stupid red alerts trigger me and I need to clear them all to keep playing the game.
I don’t even want the fucking store in my game. Give me an option to turn it off for fuck’s sake.
Not to victim blame, but if you looked at everything Blizzard have done over the last 10 years, and thought “maybe this one will be different” then perhaps the problem is you.
Ironically I’m less concerned with battle passes as long as they don’t sell power. The actual mtx itself doesn’t bother me, I’ve easily spent hundreds in path of exile. But I prefer to enjoy the game first, and then at some point decide that I want to support the devs, and then maybe I buy something.
Yeah it blows my mind how much I’ve spent on league supporter kits as well. Not sure if it is because I enjoy the game or I respect the business model.
I’m not against battle passes, but there are plenty of examples of how they fall under the predatory monetization category. Not selling power is hardly a justification that they aren’t unethical.
The lesson here is you can trust most big Japanese publishers/developers and it’s the opposite for American/European ones. Christ, Death Stranding was almost ruined by all the “subtle” product placements they put
If devs actually think all 800k active players + the ones who pirated it all play DND, then they have another guess coming. Most of them probably have never touched a Handbook
Maybe we need to update the nomenclature. Software with loot boxes, pay to win mechanics, predatory gameplay loops, and storefront-first design should now be called “casinos”. They should have disclaimers about gambling and addiction in their load screen, have age restrictions, and should be forced to institute limits on what can be spent in a certain time frame. Feature-complete software with zero storefronts of any kind would be allowed to brand themselves as “games”.
Fair but let me make a vain attempt to save face: Did that actually make an impact in the industry, given they’re small countries with not much customers.
Oohh. I like this. I’ve been bothered by the rise of gambling in different packaging in the world over the last decade. We really should be acknowledging that gambling is different from gaming, separating them meaningfully. Are toy department shelves still full of child gambling reandom toy bullshit too? I haven’t had reason or opportunity to pay attention to that for a few years.
I’m not sure about toys, but watching my son grow up with app stores has made me very aware of how so called “games” have been monetizing our children makes me want some real legislation and restrictions on what is legal to market to children. The “idle” category of games is just egregious. They’re a flimsy and thin veneer of game painted over a bank machine. AAA is not much better - they just have more complicated routes take your money.
Honestly, this kind of pleading from the other AAA developers is just making them look pathetic. Yes, it’s reasonable not to expect BG3 for every AAA games, but it’s not because of time and money, but simply because developers are just not always going to make lightning strike twice. But these devs have plenty of time and money and they look terrible in comparison to a dev that took it’s time to make sure it was well polished before release.
Exactly. Every new game doesn’t have to be an instant classic that breaks new ground. But they should be functional, playable, and have enough polish to be considered finished. That doesn’t necessarily mean bug free, but we all know what a finished game looks like, and what one doesn’t.
The worst one I’ve ever personally played was the Lego Hobbit game. My wife and I used to line up kamikaze shots and play Lego games, figuring a child and a drunk adult were about the same level. The game stops when Smaug flies out of the mountain. Roll credits. I guess the last movie did so poorly that they never bothered making the rest of the game.
For ages, AAA games were classed as such by brand recognition, not by quality. Inevitably, they devolved into being just a platform to sell microtransactions. The shareholders want their dividents and the CEO needs a new yacht with coke and hookers.
It’s too easy to exploit the dopamine rush playing the new, official installment of a well-known series. Even if it’s terrible, the customers get their joy by ranting about how trash the game is and how they hope the next one will be better. BG3 being an actual game does not change anything and will not reset expectations.
That’s sad because TT’s games were quite good, I think they hit their apex at Lego Marvel Superheroes 1. Awesome open world, a ton of characters, and lots of exploration in addition to the normal level quests.
Those developers trying to shit on Larian need to cry and seethe more. Terribly incompetent people who can’t create good games themselves, why not trying taking notes instead?
But I was told every individual ruthlessly and insatiably acting solely out of greed for personal gain — regardless of ethics, morality, or empathy — was the greatest, most efficient, bestest, freedomest thing to have ever existed?
Why would corporate sociopaths lie? What could they po$$ibly have to gain?
I’m not talking about Larian, I’m talking about the studios who want to keep cranking out suppisedly AAA games that are little more than creatively bankrupt, dressed up vending machines.
The picture in the OP is PR for a publishing company. There are many other accounts of people who work in the industry who are angry/jealous of Larian. You’re probably just not looking in the right places.
Try actually reading what the developers are saying. Most are saying that they can’t make good games because the suits won’t let them. They keep fucking over and chasing off the most experienced and visionary people, force teams to chase trends instead of concentrating on one type of game and never give them enough time.
From all that I’ve seen it’s more like they are trying to dismiss the success that Larian has found by saying that they are a special case which is nothing but smoke and mirrors. Larian did hard work and are being rewarded for it.
I have no problem if games reached this via a similar model that Larian used here (lots of experienced staff, pre-built systems, 6 years of development, 3 years of expertly done early-access with a highly engaged player base) but they’re not going to. They’re going to implement more crunch, more abuse, more destruction of the few people who want to work in games in order to get there. And that’s where I have the issue.
I want shorter games, with worse graphics, made by people who get paid more to do less. Because that’s what’s needed to make truly great games. People who are passionate, not burning themselves out just to barely make deadlines, make great games.
I want shorter games, with worse graphics, made by people who get paid more to do less.
Honestly that’s an excellent summary.
Don’t get me wrong BG3 is probably one of the best games I’ve ever played and I eventually want BG4 or whatever expansion/spin-off/sequel they want to make. However I waited 23 years between BG2 and BG3, I don’t want to wait that long again, but I can wait.
But to your point I want good games. I don’t need 100+ hour adventures. In general I don’t want 100+ hour adventures. Those should be rare. I want games that I can finish (at a casual pace) in a weekend or two.
Portal 1? Braid? Both are short puzzle games that are absolutely fantastic.
Stanley Parable? Gone Home? Excellent story games. You can beat them in about as much time as it takes to watch a movie.
It’s disappointing that AAA studios don’t recognize this. I don’t want a bloated game that takes 300 hours to experience most of it. I don’t want a giant map. I want a good game. I want a small map filled with life, not a large one with soulless procedurally generated dungeons.
I don’t think demanding quality games is inherently at odds with wanting studios to not abuse their workers. What we really should support is broad labor protections and labor unions for developers. Because clearly the AAA studios don’t need the excuse of high demand for features from gamers in order to abuse their people since they have been doing that for years while churning out trash titles.
Completely agreed. The issue is that gamers™ aggressively advocate for better quality, and do not care about workplace abuse or worse products with more features. This creates the current feedback loop we have where games that are longer, have flashier features, and aren’t finished at launch.
Labor unions and protections would be excellent, but isn’t something that I, a non-game developer, can do much to advance, besides avocation.
What’s particularly notable about this well above average gaming year is that the clearly top two games so far aren’t using state-of-the-art graphics.
Given how messy PC gaming has been lately, with a recent history of GPU shortages followed by an underwhelming new generation and some very poor game optimization, I wouldn’t mind seeing a trend of game development slowing down on graphics tech for a bit.
But also legitimately. Like remember how good games would get near the end of a console’s lifecycle? Then a new console generation would drop and the games would look sharp, but also a bit wonky, until enough years has past, and thennn… another new console generation would drop, and the constraints would disappear again. Always too soon, I thought - just as the games were getting truly good again!
Heh, yes, I still have fond memories of the late 16-bit generation and early fifth-gen games that didn’t get on board the 3D bandwagon. Sprite-based games started to look mighty sexy until everyone decided that untextured polygons were the way to go for a while. 😑
Always preferred Duke 3D to Quake. The later is way more sophisticated from the technical standpoint (though Build does allow some neat tricks) but Duke is just so vibrant and fun. Destructible environment, original weapons, large enemy variety and proper bosses… Meanwhile Quake is just… brown.
Educate a pleeb here, I’ve been out of the gaming loop. What’s the notable exceptions of great games this year and what two that are not state-of-the-art graphics do you mean?
This thread’s on Baldur’s Gate 3, that’s one of them. I should have specified the other of the two most highly-rated games this year; it’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Both games are more or less running last-gen graphics tech and are ahead of the pack on review scores. Zelda looks good for a Switch game, though.
You could probably ask a dozen gaming enthusiasts and get a dozen different answers on why this year has been exceptional. I’d say it’s because we have a lot of big releases from venerable franchises arriving all in the same year (Baldur’s Gate is one, plus Diablo, Final Fantasy, Harry Potter, Resident Evil, Star Wars, Street Fighter). There are hits from new IPs like Cassette Beasts, Dave the Diver, Hi-Fi Rush, and maybe Starfield in a few weeks if it’s not a disaster.
It’s a nice mix of old and new worlds and plenty of surprises. On top of all that, it’s only August. I think there’s a sense that the industry is starting to leave the pandemic behind, too.
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