Sven_

On-topic: Replaying a game definitely made by someone for someone. And taking its ideas (sandbox slapstick) and inspirations (Dark Messiah) and RUNNING with them. And KICKING with them. And BANANA SLIPPING with them. Unlike those bloated open worlds full of side activity to farm that people insist on 100% completing anyway: This one can be finished in 7-8ish hours or so. Sorry in case you're allergic to bananas tho. You've got to pick your lane somehow. 😁 Sir Kicksalot is the Perfect Dark Messiah Parody

More like: After dealing with boring quest checklists to be completed at work... ... dealing with boring quest checklists to be completed at home... All question marks on the map unlocked, all side quests and fetch activity cleared, completion rate at 100% -- boss says you're all done now, god job! 😁 By the way: My above take wasn't an argument for time mechanics in every game. GODDAMN PLEASE NO! :) (The path of the spreadsheet design is beset on all sides by the lack of imagination of the CEOs -- and the tyranny of the shareholder value. See Ubisoft et all, and Witcher 3 REALLY wasn't that far off in its world design). It thus all depends on the game. The mood and emotions it targets. And the stories it tries to tell. As such I'm still waiting for the mod that: ..adds more combat to Disco Elysium? (I’m narcoleptic and always fall asleep when there’s that much text) ...swaps the Brütal Legend soundtrack for country music? (I hate metal and need something I actually like) ...gives Death Stranding infinite carrying capacity? (I work in logistics and want to be able to switch off when I’m home) ...adds a pacifist mode with tranquilizer darts to Doom: The Dark Ages? (I'm a hippie at heart and full of BFG remorse) ...caps the speed in Autobahnraser at 130 km/h? (I’m a Green Party supporter and want to see that implemented—at least in the game) ...unlocks a rocket launcher in Thief 2? (I’m a speedrunner and learned to like the rocket-jump) ...removes the puzzles from Portal 2? (I hate it when a plan doesn’t come together) ...gets rid of the choices in The Walking Dead? (You should see me frozen in the super market, eternally facing those 100 different frozen pizzas to pick from...) Wait, why MODS? Unlike movies, books and music, games will hit so much more if they're truly made for everyone, straight outta the box. 100% convenience. 100% retention and completion rates unlocked! Just like a lawnmower! Come on triple-A studios, CEOs and shareholders! You can make it if only you truly try! ^^

Re: Blood Of Dawnwalker (and that supposedly "timer"..) I sympathize with people disliking elements of a game (be glad if you're not as allergic to markers for everything as I am btw ^^). But this still highlights why I'm barely playing triple-A blockbusters anymore. Numerous mainstream outlets have already highlighted how they've had all the time to explore almost everything (GameStar ran articles and a video, PC Gamer argued they were near invincible after 20 days of 30... calling it a bit tame.) But more importantly: The moment there's even a tiny bit of friction teased, people panic (or mod it out). Let this sink in: It isn't a game over, as the game carries on. Or a real-time clock ticking. It's just trying to represent the consequences of your (in-)actions. In a way that only a game could do. A book may describe a tragedy. A movie may show a hurry. But only a game could make you find a pile of corpses and realize: "Oh my GOD, if I hadn't wasted the prior 1000 hours on brainlessly farming every question mark on the map, that Ciri girl, er, my family may still be alive!" Hollywood is laughing, with gaming throwing its core advantage away, one formulaic triple-A blockbuster at a time. :D And yeah, rather hesistant to pay premium for ideas that sound grand on paper ("Narrative Sandboxes!") -- but then get nerfed in playtesting to barely matter anyway. The good thing is that studios that go with the friction can be winning (Warhorse being the most recent example). Whilst those that are desperate to please everyone in the room and heavily compromise, they may suffer (Bioware). After all, these aren't the mid 2000s anymore, where the entire market was gatekept closely by major publishers (and even retail). Similar to music, this is now a heavily fragmented digital one. Where playing it bland now can run the risk of being ignored (in particular if your product isn't a part of an established franchise or studio still riding high). Prior, lawnmower product makers worldwide only had to upload a glitzy trailer -- and hit the launch button. No more.

Started playing Parkside: Decayed Soul Manipulation. TL;DR: It's Deus Ex, had Deus Ex been a launch smash on PSX. When I first tried the demo a couple weeks or so ago, the game didn't win my heart immediately over. As basically a solo take on huge ideas, there's naturally bit of jank. But then I appreciated the openness of the levels. The varied mission goals. Some non-violent solutions (which also involve dialogue choice or environmental interactions). And lately the game "shocked" me also with making a decision of mine permanent, influencing my gameplay experience from now on... (There's no auto or quick saves, and now I understand why). What needs tuning a little is the aggro of the AI (you're weirdly frequently attacked by security/police force when you didn't even open the aggro, e.g. a bunch of druggies starts coming after you). And it seems a little inconsistent what "theft" NPCs react to. Otherwise, it's fun. And just my type. When there's no more ImmSim in triple-A hell, the indies will make your day. Oh, and you can drive cars and put rats on peoples' plates too. Rats on the table -- probably the last ever feature in the milky way that Ubisoft has yet to paste+copy for its checklists.

OH **** OH ****, this was my personal GTA 6 moment (due to reasons... -> Fallen Aces Preview - Gabagood Immersive Sim ) And it's heeeeeeeeeere! (Biggest steal on Steam right now, btw).

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. 😁

I'm at the point now where you can unlock the "Thief" difficulty (I think this is what it's called). Curious also. I think that even when they add stuff to it (more mission variety would also be nice from what I've seen so far), it's naturally never gonna be a classic Thief / Dishonored replacement. The game wasn't made with that in mind. I'm sometimes thinking of the "Dunwall City Trials" DLC, which was entirelly about challenges (though singleplayer, naturally). Still playing Sir Kicksalot first now. I was expecting some Dark Messiah combat madness...... but that the stealth is this fun also I hadn't on the radar (mostly based on noise/lines of sight). Playing on medium difficulty, but without saving mid-mission. That was a tense 40 minutes and I enjoyed every minute of it. Game also has a demo btw, but this level wasn't in it, ended with climbing up a lighthouse, coming down and then throwing bombs on pirates that had spawned/landed on the beach below. 😁It's such a chaotic mess at times, it's LMAO kind of fun. Tempted to try a ghost run, or do another playthrough as a mage just making people burn. :D

Raphael Colantonio and Harvey Smith playing and talking about the making of Dishonored...... The creators of Dishonored react to their own game after 14 years | Devs Play Part 1 Each are working on new games with their new teams/studios. I'm so horny for more 0451 at this point, SHODAN could sell me her socks tbh! TL;DR: SCREW YOU BETHESDA 😒 "All I can tell you is that part of the reason why I left Bethesda was that they did not want to do the kind of games that we wanted to make," Colantonio says. He likens Arkane's approach to studios like Larian and FromSoftware: "Those are people that have been doing, over and over, the thing they know exactly how to do, until it hits super hard. So to me, that's what Arkane had to do." Colantonio wanted to keep building on what Arkane had achieved with Dishonored and Prey, but due to disappointing sales, Bethesda "decided that was not part of the strategy anymore".

For a fiver it was a no-brainer (fan of the type). Still feels a little barebones (played 4 or 5 contracts so far). It's naturally also a more challenge-type game rather than a big narrative focus (still haven't tried CoOp, have you?). Funnily, I currently enjoy the (optional) simple stealth in Sir Kicksalot more (including the skill tree for a Thief type of character). But then that also sees me hopping from level to level, rather than the same 2 maps. And there's a lot more tools... I mean anything is a weapon, including fishes. Speaking of which, no idea why there's fishes jumping all over the place when I throw a baguette into the waters. And the postman upon hitting him just picked a chair to hit back. But then that's exactly the type of sandboxy madness I luv. 😁 (One of the first things I did in KCD2 was stealing guards and the tavern maid their clothes and armor, they were guarding and serving in their underwear for days hahahahah).

Thanks gaming gods for the indies. ❤️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ci6dTx7HJs4&t

Thick Asssss Thieves. Plus The Adventures Of Sir Kicksalot. LMAO! 🤣 POV: If developers hadn't spent the past 20 years on further exploring visual fidelity and cinematics, but physx and simulated sandbox chaos instead. The Adventures Of Sir Kicksalot - Trailer Can even be stealthed (there's three skill trees for warrior, thief, mage type of abilities, which you can also mix).