Sven_

Matt Chat with Jane Jensen (of Gabriel Knight fame). And I'm hurt. They actually got to a Gabriel Knight 4 pretty quickly (10:40ish). So Jane et all got contacts at MS (who now own the IP). They put together a full pitch (story, concept arts, ...) They sent it to the contacts. They tried multiple times. NO ANSWER WHATSOVER !! Wtf. If anybody from Obsidian is reading this: try to get this noticed at MS plz!

Finished Broken Sword 5 (meh, Nostalgia bait). Replaying Pentiment -- Obsidian's game for the Christmas season you don't even realize is Obsidian's game for the Christmas season until you play it. Damn shame that the subforums here have like a handful of threads at best. Then again, Pentiment ain't a game for everyone. But as a wise dev once said: "A game for everyone is a game for no one." *

That's the point. If a game requires META knowledge of the game / campaign, it's on the game's design. Considering that Obsidian have listed Deus Ex as one of the influences (and knowing their prior games), I doubt you could ever could get seriously "stuck". No less as The Outer Worlds in parts was conceived to be an "accessible / casual" Fallout. There's always supposed to be a way. Think about my New Vegas character breaking the banks of Vegas: Sure, he's having a harder time surviving out in the wastelands of the Mojave Desert due to being lacking in combat and physical skills -- which is actually part of that character's experience drawing it unique. But how cheap would it be if he could switch from gambler to say, master sniper at will? It renders the entire experience pointless.

Dunno about TOW2 yet, but the original game was rather light on this. Like baby's first Fallout-Like. Even if you didn't specialize or cared much, you wouldn't face that many a hurdle. The same would apply to the game in general, like ressources being plenty and all over the place, also completely contradicting the game's lore and fiction of a struggling economy. They've announced they wanted to go a bit deeper with part 2. Which naturally may alienate those introduced fresh with the original. That said, respec remains the single most bizarre "mandatory" feature ever introduced into single-player RPGs. Still waiting for the racing game that lets you change car, gear and tires on the fly. That Life Is Strange-Like that simply lets you reset all your choices, all the way to the start of Episode 1. And of course the first Command&Conquer that lets you switch sides in the final battle -- Brotherhood of NOD has been cooler than boring GDI all along! If a game makes you think it'd NEED respec, it's poorly designed, not because of the missing respec. FOMO doesn't apply though -- the entire point of character choice and specialization is offering a unique path that (in theory) only your character could experience this way. Whilst another player may have a completely different road to the ending credits. The three traditional archetypes targeted have been Combat, Evasion/Stealth and Diplomacy (see OG Fallout, Deus Ex. etc.). Naturally, with more nuances comes more options... Seeing this as a case of "missing out" is completely missing the point. The endgame is offering your specific character build his/her unique adventure. I once build a New Vegas character that was basically all brains, sweet talk and luck. He had to "sneak" his way into Vegas, but in there, he broke the bank.

'tis just "in" and uploaded most recent: Have you heard about this game? And man? Can you tell me something about them?

Tried that too, only demo so far though. Seems really interesting, also with time being a bit of a factor. That makes it so you have to plan a bit ahead, as the place has an actual schedule with events taking place. It also gives off an illusion of a world with characters carrying their own agenda, rather than being frozen in time. Reminds me of The Last Express and Sierra's Colonel's Bequest (Laura Bow). Great mood also. Raw Fury seems really good in finding such games. On related note, I'd always wanted to check out the murder mystery DLC for The Outer Worlds. But I struggle to see how that would even work, given that the base game, to put it mildly, doesn't quite trust in your cognitive abilities. There's never any thinking or deduction or being "available" involved whatsoever. It's a completely AFK experience, like follow the dotted line (and pick up the ammo/ressources available in abundance), and you're done. Often times it doesn't make sense that you'd immediately know exactly where to go and what to do next, but it is what it is. Good idea for a DLC though, which can always be a bit more experimental/risky than the base games (see also NWN2)... Speaking about AFK games... there's an auto-battler I tried that sort of has the potential to nail the Lt. Gorman Simulator experience. If you're asking who the hell Lt. Gorman is, maybe the rather unsubtle trailer makes it clear -- this is not an official Aliens licensed game at all, mind. Seems a bit minimalist so far, the final release is said to get a story campaign tho... @BruceVC The Bunker is one of my recent favs also. Really quite the rollercoaster. I think in some ways it even improves upon Alien Isolation with the "lonely stalker" in that in particular later on, you may not see the beast for minutes on end (provided you're keeping it low). Overexposure leads to familiarity -- and that's always hurtful when it comes to being scared. The moments of tension always are in the build-up, you KNOWING (and oft hearing) that there's something out there. But if it pops up over and over, eventually you're getting used to it. After experiencing the ending, the main menu music has a completely different feel to it too... A similar game in low-poly PSX aesthetics is Stay Out Of THe House. It's basically the same core idea, except that you're trapped inside of a house rather than inside of a bunker. And the thing out to get you is a cannibal serial killer. However, you can even lay and prepare traps... which your enemy may do also though. Also multiple ways to solve situations, and (I think) 2 endings. The goal is basically a low budget slasher sandbox.

When this popped up in my recommendations, I thought it was a fan trailer. But damn... it's real. And the Pathologic guys are involved. Still gotta get into Pathologic (tried once), but a few WTFs seem guaranteed. ALSO: Project Shadowglass is a love letter to classic immersive FPS stealth sims such as Thief, Deus Ex, and System Shock, built with unique 3D pixel ar..... SHUT UP AND TAKE MY FIRST BORN!!!!1 Project Shadowglass bei Steam

Luckily I'm a bit the vice versa. Don't care much about pixel perfection or ever bigger screens anymore (even the insanely pretty Kingdom Come 2 oft gets flak due to its lack of HW raytracing and thus less than "pixel perfect" lighting, shadows and reflections). Even pop-ins, I don't care about. Also, the best game I've played last year, and that's no joking: I think the only way I'd put more focus on all that again would be the widespread adoption of VR. After all, the promise of VR is that you're "forgetting you're just playing a stupid video game". But unlike Looking Glass (Thief!), most games are moving into the opposite direction, with cluttered HUDs, tons of arrows, tourist guides, etc. Making it IMPOSSIBLE to mask that you are, indeed, just playing a "stupid" video game. Speaking of which: Are "dummy" markers making you sleep walk and never mentally engage with the game world, quests and characters in TOW 2 optional this time? Or is it all similar to Bloodlines 2, where the next fetch quest is giving you, the elite eldritch vampire spawn, a mandatory in-game GPS system: "Deliver this package to the location 239 metres away, PRESTO, Mr. Bloody Heffernan."

That said, I'm afraid you're not gonna "survive" the UE5 era if you're set against AI / upscaling, DLSS or otherwise. It's been a thing since forever on consoles. And it's come to PCs too and is going to stay anyway. No less as "brute forcing" performance gains is reaching its limits in the meantime. Even after 7 years and 3 generations of graphics cards later, the 2080Ti would still rank as a ~top20 GPU for reason, being roughly onpar to a 3070 (without being limited by just 8GB VRAM though where the 8GB limitation applies). Consoles, running on hardware roughly equal to a RX 6700 (non-XT) and RX 9060 XT respectively, have their issues with TOW2 as well. At least both PS5 versions have. See also how a stable 60fps is still the optimimum here, rather than the bare minimum. Whilst Nvidia are already pushing the 1,000Hz screens for PC, as clearly: The more you fps, the more you buy!

DF take (2080Ti is still a stronger card than the 4060, seems heavy on the CPU though): Re STALKER: The indie-Likes are coming here too. One is with furrys! The other has a demo still up. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1963610/Road_to_Vostok/

Stygian: Outer Gods. Still Early Access, with a final release scheduled first half of 2026 or so. But as I'm playing highest difficulty and really take my time, I've already clocked ten hours into it according to the in-game clock. Still not finished. Stygian's got Cthulhu, Lovecraft's Kingsport as a sort of hub world gradually unlocking, some RPG elements (including a skill that lets you talk with 'em dead), a bit of stealth -- plus Raphael Colantonio (Arkane's founder, former CEO and gaming's Last Action Hero) as the voice of THE SEER. Had to have it. The mood is already pretty damn spot on. Positive that this can be a better game than the ancient Dark Corners Of The Earth.

At some point the system may change anyhow. The console generation cycle has always relied on experiences that were fundamentally unachievable with prior hardware. If there's no novelty involved, any new console generation becomes a bit of a hard sell. Graphics advancement has significantly slowed down. Whilst actual photo realism is still a good few years away -- not every game may sell on realism as is already. This is also a part of the triple-A crisis: "Decent graphics" are pretty much everywhere. Much like special effects in Hollywood, it's all dime a dozen. It's hard to truly "WOW" anybody anymore. For decades, studios could rely on that Police Academy 25, er, Assassin's Creed 15 would sell anyhow, as it looked so much more realistic than the one before it. No more. And one day games may be consumed the same way as movies -- or similar. It's when people don't at all care how old a game is. For as long as it's not from the stone ages of video gaming, where hardware limitations proved still a severe challenge. They aren't really anymore. Haven't been for a few years already. Outside of ultra realistic graphics and literally building the holodeck, game makers could make anything they wanted to make today. Only that, they rarely do. They are afraid to do it. Or aren't allowed to make it. As with rising budgets comes rising risk. Even THE NEXT BIG THING this industry is waiting for is another sequel to a franchise now entering its third decade. Meanwhile Warren Spector's once dream project idea is far more likely to be tackeled by 'em indies -- naturally, with a more focused scope, rather than GOING ALL IN WITH EM MILLIONS OF CA$H.

It's OUT. And it's not 100% what you think it is (another typical Boomer Shooter / Blood clone). What sold chapter 1 to me back then was the end of the demo, where suddenly the music stopped, you were crawling through a tight space with but your lighter showing the way. And the thing opened up into a genuine survival horror-ish setpiece... Apparently chapter 2 goes even more into that direction.

Dev advice: Don't go fully-on Nanite+Lumen if it doesn't hugely benefit your project. E.g. a comic book-style game that has been "nailed" with technology a couple years ago already. Placing a tenner that if you'd ask 100 people on the streets which is the more recent game in between Borderlands 3 and 4, the hit ratio would be pretty mixed. Unless it's 100 tech enthusiasts, maybe. ALSO: Dishonored (UE3) still remains a more beautiful game than any Borderlands anyway. EVERY FRAME A PAINTING. Sue me, Pitchford!

Who needs Unreal Engine 5 if you've got true artists? #Dishonored #UnrealEngine3 #RipViktorAntonov