Sven_

Triple-Indie is the way. No shareholders or kings. Only games. ❤️

Have you played Pentiment? IIRC you weren't particularly fond of lots of combat, so just your kind of game. Granted, it was always set up to be a more niche experience (art style, narrative, historical focus). I still think it deserved to go a little bigger. Btw, what's being done do id Software highlights how crazy this industry is. They didn't only make games, after all. They had one of the most experienced engine tech teams in the industry. In other words, major long-term assets. Which is something that Obsidian for instance don't have, didn't have even in the Black Isle days (without Bioware's Infinity Engine, most of their games as we know them now would have never been). Throwing all (or most) of that under the bus just figures. And that by MS -- for which gaming isn't the main business anyway. In other words, they could "afford" to keep those assets. Rather than axing them straight away.

Wasn't Game Pass supposed to be about "minimizing risk" too? Speaking of which: New Vegas 2 -- the GaaS/ Live Service Unlimited Adventure. 😍 Joking, surely they learned that lesson on that one. Commercially, a new Fallout has the chance of being Obsidian's greatest hit now. When Vincke was shopping for IPs to capitalize on, he considered Fallout too... Larian CEO Swen Vincke says there were only two other RPG series he was interested in working on if he couldn't get Baldur's Gate: Fallout and Ultima | PC Gamer

Ya, to be honest, I'm not even that hyped about Fallout anymore. At least Obsidian's take may be spicy again, rather than another postapoc Bethesda theme park. There's certainly still themes and conflicts to explore in this world. Hoping for another more adventurous smaller project too (see Pentiment et all).

Obsidian doing Fallout was always a likely outcome. Not only because they want to work on that themselves (they even pitched TES spinoffs to Bethesda way back, so who knows...) But because it's just a BIG NAME. One of those that hasn't been "served" by a main line game in well over a decade too now. And it's obvious that Bethesda can't handle it all themselves at these crazy dev cycles (7 years plus for Starfield). Franchises such as Call Of Duty still release regularly because it's studios taking turns. Else, not a chance. Question is, what is going to happen with inXile after Clockwork Revolution.

The Man. The Legend. Gaming's last hope. 😁

Then again, outside of Star Citizen, there are zero "PC showcases" anyway. Which means even the Ryzen 5600/RTX3060/16GB DDR4 combo can technically still play everything. Plus, as consoles are affected too, there are speculations about the longest CrossGen period in existence once the PS6 hits. E.g. PS5 2020 tier hardware still being supposted for years to come. Bad news for tech enthusiasts, I guess. If that comes to pass, they may get a few additional bells and whistles. But games at their very core will be made with then lower end hardware still in mind. Overall, the most traditional business practice for the past decades may be cooked though. Which can be summed up like this: "Buy Ass Creed XIV! It's even prettier than the last one, promise!" I mean, it was fun for as long as it yielded net positive returns (and genuine ooohs and aaahs). But else: Good riddance. :-) Tech would naturally still advance. But it won't be the main/major selling point. And who knows, Nvidia may have long anticipated this, hence their "exit" to AI. ;) Doom, Quake & Wolfenstein: 30 years of id Tech graphics evolution 1993-2025

That's what happens to fragmented markets: There's fewer space for "one size fits all product". Same as in music and the decline of the omnipresent super star that everybody agrees on. Or as a wise dev once put it: "A game made for everyone is a game made for no one." Personally, I think that's a good thing. Whilst there's overall TOO many releases now even to keep track of, there is a game and a catalogue to build for pretty much everyone. Back in the mid 2000s to mid 2010s, that plain wasn't the case. As the increasingly fewer monolithic publishers and even physical stores dictated what got funded, made -- and eventually played... RPG devs stopped making games like Baldur's Gate 'because retailers told us no one wanted to buy them', says New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity director Josh Sawyer | PC Gamer

There's a ton of games like that. :) There are 20.000 games on Steam alone now. That is, 20.000 games released new every single year. Yeah, most of them are tiny/obscure projects. Still, I'd argue that's part of the overall issue, at least from a publisher's/studio's end. Hard to get noticed. Even harder to stand out from the rest. For everyone involed, big and small. This isn't strictly about "quality". See my personal take on "elevator pitches" above (Obsidian rarely do as good as with Grounded here, if you ask me). It's overall a pretty crowded market, similar to music. Everybody can totally pick their lane / personalized playlist... and outside of production values, indies can be fully competitive with bigger games now too. Doubly so for games that don't "overstay their welcome", as producing something with a smaller scope is more viable on lower budgets.... Meanwhile, live service could be seen as desperate corporate attempt to bypass this increasingly crowded market by trapping a player forever to a single product... That's basically the true "war" going on: It's one of an increasing number of games vs finite player time.

"Honey, I Shrunk The Kids -- The Game" is easily their most efficient elevator pitch since "A New CRPG From The Makers Of Planescape:Torment + Fallout 1+2 + Icewind Dale". The latter triggered primarily nostalgia though, whereas the former was something fresh and untapped into (as to gaming anyways). On Obsidian's own traditional genre home turf, Larian (The "definitive" D&D Simulator) and Warhorse (Dungeons WITHOUT Dragons, Medievals for REALZ) recently found a lot catchier ideas. And if the latter don't blow it, "OMG! LOTR -- but it's finally a proper single-player RPG!!!" will be huge too. IMO.

I am Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question: Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? "No!" says the quest marker, it belongs to the impatient. "No!" says the in-game GPS, it belongs to the blind. "No!" says the witcher sense, it belongs to the stupid. I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Gothic. The Gothic Remake Shows What's Wrong With Modern Games

Hey! I'm going to the Bear Pits this winter. Ya wanna come with? 😁

You're gonna need a bigger pants.

To me it's the core flaw of the game, as it makes everything completely repetetive and mindless. "Just go exactly here and do exactly this." The only real choice / mental engagement (in an Arkane game) is experimenting with your weapon loadout and abilities, in a sense. But even in that regard, it feels oft like Dishonored leftovers.

I'm also mixed on Deathloop. The moment to moment game and gunplay can be fun. As a package it is is really repetetive though as the real loop of the game is a tutorial that never ends. Deathloop = butchered by playtesting. :( It's one thing to take feedback on board. It's another to drop or nerf the entire core idea, as testers found it "tedious to figure a time loop puzzle out"... I mean, by the end the game even reiterates every single step so you wouldn't possibly miss it. To be fair, Arkane were under pressure to "deliver" at that point. And it WAS a rather unique idea that lay at Deathloop's core. The Redesign That Saved Deathloop Arkane : the studio that wanted to make games for smart gamers... and realized they weren't that many. 😁