Wormerine
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Everything posted by Wormerine
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They might have been looking for a replacement of St. Petersburgh Larian, which they shut down when the Russian kerfuffle started. Warsaw sounds like a decent place for a studio on a budget with a lot of talent to draw from, and it is close enough within the time zone to support their 24h development cycle. ex-CD Project folks are an obvious titles, but there are a lot of polish devs and would-be-devs out there. It also seems like CDPR folks are more than happy to leave on their own, considering the ammount of "by ex-CDPR devs" attacked to indie projects, so I wouldn't worry too much. If anything, big budget RPG competition, might made CDPR care a bit more about their employees.
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Yeah, and apparently there was supposed to be more Monarch. I don’t think the game has foundations strong enough to support large amounts of gameplay and it is better of when it sticks closer to early-BioWare type RPG.
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Former Microsoft senior PR manager Brad Hilderbrand on recent studio shutdowns: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bradhilderbrand_there-are-two-reasons-why-all-those-bethesda-activity-7193668143305670657-wUSw?utm_source=li_share&utm_content=feedcontent&utm_medium=g_dt_web&utm_campaign=copy Gosh, I wish the Activision-Blizzard deal would have fell through, if that means the smaller, more interesting studios will get their heads chopped.
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I am not surprised. This is Arkane Austin - they have done Prey and its DLC and Redfall. Prey is an acclaimed, if not particularly profitable, and Redfall is a flop, that allegiedly drove away about 70% of staff that made Prey. So it's not even the case of "abandon Refall and work on something else", as the folks who made Prey are mostly gone and you have a live service oriented studio, that clearly didn't come together very well (not aiming on judging individual devs of course - **** happens). Tango is what surprised me. Sure, it probably didn't break the bank, but they made THE game that delivered some positive buzz for XBOX. Even if it somehow a perfectly sensible move (like keeping the talented devs and putting them to work elsewere, but shutting down the studio now when the founder is gone) it is still a terrible look.
Hades2. It's alright. More of the same so far. Like really more of the same. Improved, but in 6 hours nothing popped up which would explain why this sequel had to be made (money, obviously, but I am still willing to give Supergiant benefit of a doubt). That said, EA seems rather chunky and quite complete in many aspects, so it is not possible that more cool stuff is yet to come (or still to appear in this build). One thing was mention so far, which I am not sure what it is supposed to be - so I am looking forward to finding out. Street Fighter6 update - I decided to switch my main - while Luke, whom I have been using up until now, is supposed to be by far the strongest character currently in the game, I felt I was reaching a peak of what I was able to achieve with him. To move foward I would have to get the hang of his perfect timing charge attacks, and figure out his rush combos - which at the moment are a bit too much for me. So I switched to the good, old Ryu. I am still getting used to it (tend to miss inputs a bit more often for now), but he seems more straightforward and deliberate.
Ouch. Austin Texas being shut down is not surprising - I would mourn it as they create one of my fav game out of Arcanes output (Prey!), but allegiedly Redfall already drove most of that team away. Tango Gameworks though.... that's surprising. Hi-Fi Rush was the best thing XBOX released so far. Unless a lot of developers went after Shinji Makami when he left the studio, or something. Well, Grounded has been doing shockingly well, and Pentiment was super low budget. We will see how Avowed and Outer Worlds2 will do (not feeling great about Avowed so far...!).
Terror from the Void, a total conversion mod for Phoenix Point reached 1.0. I meant to check it out for a long time - Phoenix Point was a game with a fantastic pitch, and some good ideas in the finished product, that seemed to lack polish to really deliver. I am somehow doubtful if a mod can fix game's issues, but there are some smart and insightful folks behind it. I am curious if they managed to achieve their vision. Will have to make some time for it in a near future. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/839770/view/4176601697647254493
This is how I used to think as well, but I am not sure how true that is. Your logic assumes that if a game doesn't get VO, than it can invest more money into other features. I just don't think it works that way. I suspect it is more reasonable to assume that if a game won't get budget for a major or full VO, it will also be underbudgeted in other aspects as well. I can think of two instances of when RPGs got full VO post release - so I think it might be better to think of VO an extra accessibility/mass market appeal feature. I think it is less of a case make great RPG or full VO RPG, and more of creating a great RPG and spending extra money to expand your potential audience. It really comes down to how many sales one could loose without including full VO, and that's something I can only speculate about. Unfortunately, it seems that higher ups at Obsidian decided to have the cake and eat it too - spend money on full VO, but still skimp by not accomodating production schedule putting a lot of extra burden of devs. Perhaps it had an impact on the final game's quality, but even if not it seemed to come at a cost of devs wellbeing and morale. Why not take a cue from D:OS and DIsco Elysium and wait with VO post launch, if you can't fit/afford it for 1.0?
I don't think that's true. Full VO seems like a rather coveted feature - no doubt you will find a lot of support on this forum (including myself, as I don't require full VO or VO at all to enjoy a game) but you will cut your self from a potential player base. There is also no evidence of "VO limits writing". Yes, Bioware games became smaller and smaller in scope as they wramped up production value, but there are also enough examples to the contrary. It seems that if one can afford it, full VO seems like a rather valuable feature to have - both for audience and marketing (aka. streamers) From what I remember (Josh mentioned decision to full VO in his Post Mortem) full VO was mostly a scheduling nightmare - as they didn't plan for full VO, having to fit recording sessions took a toll on the devs - it is not as simple as sending a script to a third party and having it recorded. Yeah, I also thing the "feature" he mentions was the Ship Combat.
Decided to take a break from Dragon's Dogma1, and reinstalled Final Fantasy7Remake to do a hard mode run. I wouldn't recommend it unless ones feels like doing a 2nd playthrough and want to untick remaigning achievements and the handful of extra battles. I am nearing the end, and it just hasn't been very interesting - the gimmick is that one can't use items. Which means MP used for casting spells is rather limited. After struggling with the first boss in the game, I switched to utilising non MP Materia's (Chaklra, Prey for healing, elemental and synergy for elemental damange).... and so far that's been pretty much it. Climbing through the ranks in SF6. Eached Platinum1, which I believe is most populated, most middle of the road rank. The game tends to funnel players into it, as up to this point leveling up is far easier than leveling down. It is quite interesting how quality of matches got worse - previously players often weren't great, but they tried. I had couple good matches in platinum, but most opponents where cheesy, one tricks ponies. It is also rare to get rechallenged after winning. Wierd bunch that platinum1. I sincerely hope I won't get stuck in that bracket.
Pathfinding aside they hold up very well, even on an iPad.
I retrieved my heart in Dragon's Dogma. What happened next surprised me, and I don't quite know what to make of it.
Ah! If I knew at some point that you can give orders to your pawns at some point, than I completely forgot about it after the tutorial. Might give it a go, next time. I must admit, I am liking DD more and more. Started encountering more large monsters, and while rather gimmicky they are fun. The game has issues, but it sells the idea of party adventuring like few other games. In a way it feels like playing classic RPG, and I like it. I even grew to like UI. It was a nightmare to start with, but once I got used to it, it became fairly efficient to use. Unlike, let’s say Baldur’s Gate3, in which the more time I spent the more issues an inefficiencies I found in the UI. speaking of BG3, I wonder if Dragon’s Dogma was one of Larian’s inspiration. Grabbing&throwing enemies, exploding barrels, mayhem and fire everywhere, pawns hurting themselves while autofollwing you, gimmicky boss fights. It seems curiously similar.
