Sven_

Gaming's Last Action Hero chimes in. Arkane Studios Founder Brands Game Pass 'Unsustainable' and 'Damaging' - Insider Gaming I think Gamepass is an unsustainable model that has been increasingly damaging the industry for a decade, subsidized by MS’s “infinite money”, but at some point reality has to hit. I don’t think GP can co-exist with other models, they’ll either kill everyone else, or give up.

Watching your opinions getting reaffirmed on Youtube is one helluva drug.

Still Arcanum... The dungeons here are really bad, they make even Owlcat's look almost lovingly handcrafted pieces of tunnel crawling art. But yeah, one does not simply play Arcanum for the combats. It's for the setting, the concepts (both in systems and world design) and that unique soundtrack, though it gets a bit repetitive due to its lack in tracks.

“Not every game is for every single person. Sometimes you have to pick a lane” - The Outer Worlds 2’s director on meaningful role-playing consequence and banning respec https://www.rpgsite.net/interview/1...ctor-interview-respec-rpg-choice-consequences# https://www.gamesradar.com/games/rp...e-can-stealth-properly-through-each-location/ Obsidian learning a lesson here? What's omitted of course is that respecing et all wasn't necessary in the first game either way. It was too Vanilla RPG: Can't Do No Harm (or Interesting) Edition for that. And it was certainly one of those games that tried to please (almost) every single person. Aka being scared of chosing a lane and committing to that. However, with even big IPs such as Final Fantasy and Dragon Age underperforming by going that "scared cat" kinda route of not committing to anything (including their respective IP's legacy), there may be a shift in strategy. One even approved of by upper management. May be wishful thinking on my part, of course.

This just in: How Warhorse tricked the system -- the full story of how Czech Mates managed to successfully pitch Dungeons&No Dragons to them releasing KCD2... In a digital space of following trends and chasing larger audiences at ANY cost, Kingdom Come is the kind of project that is giving me gaming hope.

Looking at midrange GPUs now going for 600+ bucks and there being no end in sight: It's not all bad when you are looking for alternatives. It wasn't in 2023+2024 already! Drova - Forsaken Kin bei Steam SKALD: Against the Black Priory bei Steam Plus some Josh luvin' of course: Pentiment bei Steam

Considering that New Vegas has (in the long-run) turned out to be the no.1 fan favourite, even amongst those who started with FO3, I'm actually somewhat hopeful. So many games doing spectacularly well that according to industry wisdom shouldn't have, helps -- whereas vice versa, those that went with perceived wisdom often times struggled. Or at least: failed to set the world on fire even if they set out to do so. Generally, a lot of industry people still seem to act as if it was 2005, and young males playing plenty Gears Of War and Call Of Duty on Xbox was the only big crowd to convince and go after. Speaking of which: The Outer Worlds 2 hands-on preview: There's a chance this is Obsidian's greatest game, and the best shooter of 2025 | GamesRadar+

Minus the benefit of a rewarding character system and costumization of course (par for the course for Bethesda since). The "seamless" exploration (like a fantasy themed Elite). The lovely bunch of 320x200 pixels. And the dungeon complexity -- to be fair, as everything in Daggerfall was RNG, any seemingly simple "fetch my slippers" quest to get 10xp could lead to a multi-level hellhole putting POE's Endless Paths, Ultima's entire Underworlds plus Skyrim's Blackreach combined to shame. Like: "All I wanted to do is fetch the slippers and now I can't find the exit no more." @Lexx Yeah, and the lack of consequence is actually by design... Raw size and scale is all what matters to them. FO3 still tried SOME of it. But overall, it's one of the big tragedies of the 21th century that Bethesda landed Fallout. An IP once reknown for coining the term "choice&consequence", right from character creation to technically being able to walk right to the big bad and talk him out of it -- THE END. No more.

This is a stance clearly taken by Bethesda games, which consequently have well earned their "wide as an ocean, deep as a p*ss pot" tagline. (And as Starfield had replaced the distractingly beautiful work of their world and art team for procedurally generated specks of dust and greys at the arse of the universe: Everybody got to finally see it.)

Arcanum. Never actually finished it. This time, I might -- with a Necromancer Elf that made a pact with the devil. And is as beloved throughout Arcanum (or most of it) as hemorrhoids. PS: I don't want to crap on The Outer Worlds too much. It's not a "crap game". Still: How do you go from this to The Outer Worlds, where perks as exciting and game changing as "+10% to damage" or "+5lbs to carry weight" rule? I have a few suspicious. But still, it's one thing to try to make something more accessible, widespread industry process and no. 1 priority since ca. 2001. It's another to turn it into something as bland and vanilla as frozen burger patties sold en masse at Walmart.

That was me and Bioware, like ca. post NWN. One of the reasons I didn't buy into Avowed... I may one day, but it has a very Bioware feel to it. And that's not a route I'd want. From its production chasing market trends (Phase 1 -> Phase 2 -> reboot) to where it eventually seemed to have ended up. "Moar action" had been Bioware's answer to everything for two decades, after all: "When you press a button, something awesome has to happen." Germany's GameStar liked it, but they described the game's strengths as rather atypical for Obsidian as well. I understand that Obs were unsure where to go with Eora after Deadfire. But I'd hoped for something bigger into RPG, and be it say a Vegas or Bloodlines-Like. Or a Skyrim with actual depth to it, like systems proper and consequences to your actions (and a more condensed game world that would have been manageable). Of course, the push for multiplayer during the mid to late 2010s had poisoned many a well, see also Arkane and Redfall... I think it's a good thing that some of the bigger successes in recent years have shown to have some system depth to them (like KCD2, BG3, et all). Like them or hate them, these are projects that weren't scared to carry their RPG tag proud and loud. That doesn't mean that every game needs to be super indepth. But the vice versa applies also. I have a feeling the super compressed action/adventure/RPG-Like space may solve a few things here all by itself. Even Ubisoft can't do without some looting and leveling anymore, after all. You're walking into a super crowded room here. Meanwhile a Belgian dude in armor can walk right in, and turn heads simply because there's nobody quite like him in there.

Finally put some ca$h into purchasing The White March, my final piece of the puzzle. (Bought both PoE 1+2 immediately upon release each.) A choice made for capitalism by capitalism.

About to have my first rendezvous with lovely Ravel in PS: Torment since.... 15, 20 years? Any tipps on what I should get her? Chocolates? Flowers? My heart ripped out and put on a silver plate? May continue with another run of Fallout 2 next. Records of this Pip-Boys orgy inspired me to think about it.

Well it's a horror game (and a well done remake, should have added it). Personally I was getting aquainted early (the Amiga version had so much better music tho). Well, it did have one. But at times you got the feeling they first started out with a Best Of horror (kinda like Waxworks from above!) and the rest came after. I think the second game actually lost a bit when it went into more of a typical (thriller) story. In the first game, you never knew what would happen next ... or where you would be taken to. That was messed up, but in a good way.

Resident Evil has effectively been a corporate mascot, a brand name, a branding under which a corporation gathers and sells whatever it sees as the most profitable. Zombies, werewolves, presidential daughters, 10 feet booby women, explosions, cheesy dialogue, quick time events and pushing rocks — under this corporate Umbrella, anything goes. Because as long as all that nonsense is being sold with a Resident Evil™ tag on it, someone's gonna bite. The only really legitly good entries from my end were 1+2 and 7. I can accept 4 though, although it was a really big departure from the rest until that point and all its tonal cheese. Still, if Capcom would be in the Hollywood business rather than gaming, half of those games+spin-offs would have been trashed the same way as a Michael Bay movie -- or the dumb sequels to Jaws or The Terminator. They aren't in Hollywood though, but gaming. And in gaming, professional critics like or at least tolerate everything, for as long as it's not bugged to crap (proof: count the major releases with a Metascore below 50 or even 60). Still curious for the 9th entry, as every once in a while, Capcom still seems to find something (see RE7, first half of it anyway). PS: I quite liked The Evil Within also, if that counts.