Wormerine

Ouch. Hope you will get past it soon!

Because it’s a better, deeper game? Still, nothing fundamentally wrong with Outer Worlds, it just needs to be expanded.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/playstation-exclusive-uncharted-4-is-coming-to-pc Uncharted 4 is coming to PC. Which is nice, BUT WHERE IS BLOODBORN?!

I don't know. For the game to have a niche fanbase it needs to do something exceptional, and this one seems like a mess. Which doesn't surprise me. For me it was always promising too many conflicting things to not make me suspicious. And as far as Ubisoft open world games go, I still have couple left in my library, that I hear are pretty decent.

That's far more positive then what I gathered from reviews I read/viewed. The only two good things I got are: it's ambitious, artstyle is good. It will be a skip for me.

Ah! My personal Half-Life3

Sure, but that's unrealistic if you also want to be nice looking game, with cinematics and good VO (see: Baldur's Gate3 and the Mistery of Confused Identity), and if you make an adaptation of book series, with Clint-Eastwood-but-fantasy protagonist - seriously, first short story recreates opening of A Fistfull of Dollars/Yojimbo.

It could very much be an issue IMO. What made Witchers great was that Geralt is perfectly suited for an RPG with narrative choices, with a heavily defined protagonist - even back in books he is a neutral party with his own goals, having to deal with outside forces and "choosing the lesser evil" - a perfect RPG protagonist with set motivations and goals, and yet space to allow players to make choices. Trying to do the same but with Ciri or a new character could not work so well. I am not terribly worried though - CDPR "got" Witcher world well, and at this point I doubt they will majorily mess it up, even if W4 will be weaker then W3. Even Thronebreaker, from what I played, was more or less alright.

That's good to know. I remember that saying it pre-cyberpunk, but with how I hear news about "Witcher4" I started to worry they got desperate.

That’s all fair worries. How to continue series is CDPRs problem - they might find a right answer, they might not. I, in general, am against doing Witcher4 - where do you go from here? While good both Witcher1&2 had issues that could be resolved, things that could be improved upon. Witcher3 isn’t perfect (I for one think all systemic RPG systems could be ditched in favour of a better tuned action combat), but I don’t see an easy or clear way to improve. Do the same game once again, and people will start noticed faults of the design. There is a reason, I could never get too deep into 2nd playthrough. Do radical changes, and unless they strike another gold, you alienate fans and overall make game which will be unfavourably compared to Witcher3 (even if it’s good by itself). But it CDPR. I didn’t believe in Witcher3 either due to it going openworld. Maybe we will get another great game, maybe it will by another Cyberpunk. But look at half-life - leave alone when it’s at its peak and the IP is remains priceless. Keep milking the IP without clear ideas on what to do with it, and you will run it into the ground.

Nay, just all I have been hearing was companies abandoning E3, and doing their own thing. Just check and Microsoft indeed does still plan to have a showcase. E3 or no E3 I am always up for news about avowed.

Does anyone plans to be on E3 at this point?

I played through the trilogy not so long ago, and personally, ME1 hold up the best to me. ME2 was definitely my favourite at the time of release, but I enjoyed it less and less with each playthrough.

Interesting, I always enjoy Daud's DLCs far more then base game - outside being a tighter and more "Thief-like", Daud as protagonist was for me a major improvement. Corvo just felt very artificial to me as a silent protagonist. I am curious what you will think of the sequel. I have currently Prey waiting on my disk. I want to complete Control, before I dive into it, though.

Time will tell, but not necessarily. So far all we hear claims, that Microsoft has no interest in messing with any of the studios it purchased. https://www.ign.com/articles/bethesda-will-run-semi-independently-under-microsoft As far as I can tell, Bethesda Softworks still exists it is just Microsoft subsidiary, instead of ZeniMax Media. Or rather if I read it right: ZeniMax Media is now Microsoft subsidiary, which further makes Bethesda Softworks Mic’s sub-subsidiary. On a side note, I am not sure what is worse: Ep. 1-3 or 7-9. Anyhow, there are still only 2 good Star Wars movies (ep. 4&5) and two passable ones (ep. 6 and Rogue One), and one pretty entertaining show. So far Disney isn’t terribly behind. My takeaway isn’t “Disney is worse then Lucas” but “don’t continue milking a cow, after it runs dry”. oh, coming back to the thread - high on Titanfall2 excellence I played through Fallen Order - which is a pretty fun StarWars romp. Easily the best SW game since KOTOR. Not quite as good story wise as those, and not genuinely great action game as Outcast/Academy, but it’s quite alright! See, EA, all you need to do is to release average games with lovable IP and everyone is happy.

It depends if we talk about Bethesda Game Studios (developer) or Bethesda Softworks (publisher).

Huh. If you backed Solasta, the 1.0-ish version is available for you to play (Steam only). You should get an email with information on how to access it. I am generally, against giving backers special treatment, but I have been eager to check it out for a while. Last time I played it was kickstarter demo. I have been happy with everything I have seen and heard about it so far.

I would argue more among the lines: what's the point of full VO if your don't commit? The benefit of doing VO of protagonist is that you can define him more as a character. Then again, it is possible that Larian is going to do just that for BG3 - from some of their early comments it can be understood that the game will have full VO, protagonist included. That means full VO for all origins. It still seems to me unlikely, and misguided, but it would fit what BG3 is doing so far.

Josh Sawyer defined crunch as "Excessive Overtime: 60+ hours per week for more then 8 weeks. As I understand discussion regarding crunch isn't: "game devs should have a right to a more comfortable right and not be taken advantage by employers", but "game devs are being worked to the point that is unproductive, bad for their health, and drives talented people away from the industry". Baby steps I suppose.

Ehh. I think it is just more of a jRPG then I expected. It has basic but perfectly functional combat system, with a nice customisation through program pods, but heavily undermined by actual leveling system which just messes up the balance of combat. I also had expectations - I knew it was Platinum game and that it was great and had "great combat system" and you need to play it multiple times to get true ending - so In my naive mind I imagined Bayonetta/DMC style game where replayability is further enhanced with story changes. Didn't do much more research then that, thanks to "you should go into it blind" comments. What I got was just a whole lot of running and repetition to get what was not so good of a story. And I am enough of a Ghost in the Shell junkie, for it to not make a big impression on me.

Yeah, controller is a must. Even so, I still don't see why the people love the game so much. 😆 Finished Fallen Order. Mediocare action/adventure, great Star Wars game. After having a blast with Titanfall2, after putting it off for years, I jumped into Doom 2016. Not terribly impressed so far. Combat is getting better as weapons and enemytypes count increase, but so far it's been rather dull. "Atmosphere" just isn't my cup of tea, I guess - I can tell, because I don't care for the soundtrack, which is aparently amazing.

Outer Wilds, aka. the best game in recent memory that I really should complete one of these days, is getting a DLC! Allegedly.

I didn't play either of LoU, but I do find it to be a common issue. It is interesting to watch a character in the film make all the wrong decision, but it does feel forced when the game forces you to do something you know is wrong and then slaps your wrist for doing that. I think one game that managed to pull it off is Spec Ops the line - thinking about unavoidable scene. And I think it hits as hard, as it is usually the point when people go through the motion without thinking and then realise what kind of game they are really playing.

Honestly, I really appreciate not having a cutting edge PC growing up. If I had, I would never use DOSBox, nor discovered some real classics. I gave a try to UFO: Enemy Unknown, Pirates!, Another World, Flashback, Deus Ex, Thief1&2, Systemshock2, and much much more purely out of necessity.