Random video game news... RNG 4 EVA

[Wormerine]

1 hour ago, Hurlshort said:

Not being a superhero game is good enough for me. I enjoyed Chimera Squad. I'm not sure what you mean about the DLC though, as those all added quite a bit to the strategic layer of the game.

I think @MrBrownmight have meant the overall tone and shallow, quippy characters. I must say Chosen really try my patience on every playthough. When I criticised XCOM2 world map for being empty and shallow I didn't mean aliens talking at me everytime I enter it. WotC was a superb expansion though. Chimera Squad was fine for what I paid for it.

As to Suns - I don't know, I am open to new mechanics, but I always found digital card games awkward. Even if mechanically sound it just feels to artificial for me. It is just one of those things that should stay in physical realm. I might pick it up on deep sale, but definitely not interested right now.

Edit. About WotC. I have it installed for a while now, and am planning to do another playthrough. Thanks to Covid I became Trekkie and I have to say that extensive use of TGN cast made WotC even more cringy for me.

Edited November 17, 2022 by Wormerine

[Zoraptor]

35 minutes ago, Malcador said:

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/saints-row-dev-merging-with-gearbox-after-new-games-lukewarm-reviews/1100-6509233/

Alas, poor Volition

Doesn't seem to mean much except them deciding a US based studio is better off* being managed in the US rather than in Germany, which makes a reasonable amount of sense. If it's just the ownership that is being transferred internally it's similar to Embracer giving the Deus Ex IP to Eidos Montreal; just shifting stuff around internally.

*Plenty to complain about in Gearbox's management of course, but then Deep Silver isn't called Derp Silver for no reason either.

[Hawke64]

The Rogue Trader gameplay trailer somehow lacked the actual gameplay (combat system with UI, inventory and party management, conversations, etc.), but the animations look nice. I hope that optimisation will be better than in WotR and it will be a complete game in 1-2 months after the initial release (WotR is still in active development, judging by the bug fixes and paid content updates; at least, GOG protects from the forced updates). I probably expect too much from Owlcat, though.

[MrBrown]

11 hours ago, Wormerine said:

I think @MrBrownmight have meant the overall tone and shallow, quippy characters. I must say Chosen really try my patience on every playthough. When I criticised XCOM2 world map for being empty and shallow I didn't mean aliens talking at me everytime I enter it. WotC was a superb expansion though. Chimera Squad was fine for what I paid for it.

I meant the overall game mechanical focus on superhero-esque powers, in both your team and the enemies. Xcom1 felt more like you were controlling a group of soldiers. Chimera Squad and the Xcom2 DLCs felt more like fights from superhero movies.

[Hurlshort]

5 hours ago, MrBrown said:

I meant the overall game mechanical focus on superhero-esque powers, in both your team and the enemies. Xcom1 felt more like you were controlling a group of soldiers. Chimera Squad and the Xcom2 DLCs felt more like fights from superhero movies.

Yeah, the originals were more gear-centic than ability-centric, so I can understand that. Thankfully I also have Xenonauts for the more traditional experience. 

[HoonDing]

100GB for Rogue Trader is a non-starter

Edited November 19, 2022 by HoonDing

[uuuhhii]

where are the size of all these new game come from

even rage was just 20 gb on release witcher 3 are just 40

[Wormerine]

29 minutes ago, uuuhhii said:

where are the size of all these new game come from

Usually it's textures (the higher the resolution the bigger they are), sounds etc. Raycevick made a good video on that subject.

Why an Owlcat game take so much space though, I have no clue. Will it have full VO? 4k textures? It could be just the result of weaker optimisation then AAA titles.

Edited November 19, 2022 by Wormerine

[Mamoulian War]

On 11/17/2022 at 11:46 PM, Malcador said:

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/saints-row-dev-merging-with-gearbox-after-new-games-lukewarm-reviews/1100-6509233/

Alas, poor Volition

Looks like alienating long time fans of the series was not the best marketing strategy

[kanisatha]

A couple of recent news stories about possible future D&D video games:

First, Tuque Games, the WotC-owned studio that made the new Dark Alliance game last year, has been rebranded as Invoke Studios and is now headed by a new, veteran game designer. And WotC confirms that Invoke Studios is now working on a new AAA D&D game using the UE5 engine. This of course is in addition to the two previously announced D&D game projects under Hidden Path Entertainment and OtherSide Entertainment, both of which are said to be progressing well.

Second, there is this very intriguing story I saw from inXile Studios. It has been known for some time now that they are working on a new IP AAA steampunk RPG using UE5, codenamed Project Cobalt, which the head of Xbox Games recently raved about after seeing a playable vertical slice of it. But now inXile has announced in ads seeking to hire more talent that they starting work on another new AAA project using a challenging but exciting existing IP (their words). Given that (a) inXile boss Brian Fargo has long wanted to do a D&D game and lobbied WotC for BG3 way before Larian jumped in on that, (b) inXile having done their Torment: Tides of Numenera game as a spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment, and (c) WotC bringing back the Planescape setting next year for TT D&D gaming, I am wondering if maybe this new inXile project is a Ps:T sequel?

[Wormerine]

1 hour ago, kanisatha said:

But now inXile has announced in ads seeking to hire more talent that they starting work on another new AAA project using a challenging but exciting existing IP (their words). Given that (a) inXile boss Brian Fargo has long wanted to do a D&D game and lobbied WotC for BG3 way before Larian jumped in on that, (b) inXile having done their Torment: Tides of Numenera game as a spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment, and (c) WotC bringing back the Planescape setting next year for TT D&D gaming, I am wondering if maybe this new inXile project is a Ps:T sequel?

An inXile D&D would be cool. Hopefully not the Torment. They tried once, leave it alone. Narrative ain’t your thing.

If Bethesda was open to someone doing a Fallout game, inXile is a usual suspect as well. 

[uuuhhii]

torment was decent

all the text just lack a good structure to be actually interesting

[Mamoulian War]

Sighs, I see AAA, my expectations became low  looks like All that talks that MS buying all these smaller studios to offer more variety with AA games, were just wishful thinking…

Edited November 21, 2022 by Mamoulian War

[Hurlshort]

55 minutes ago, Mamoulian War said:

Sighs, I see AAA, my expectations became low  looks like All that talks that MS buying all these smaller studios to offer more variety with AA games, were just wishful thinking…

Pentiment is definitely proof of the AA model though. It is fantastic but the furthest thing from AAA gaming.

[Keyrock]

24 minutes ago, Hurlshort said:

Pentiment is definitely proof of the AA model though. It is fantastic but the furthest thing from AAA gaming.

Agreed. Pentiment is exactly the type of game I was hoping for from Microsoft's acquisition spree. Ironically, I think Pentiment looks better than a fair number of AAA games with 20X the budget. Obsidian took the Nintendo approach of looking great via strong and consistent aesthetic, rather than just more shiny.

[Sven_]

Finished Pentiment on Saturday, cozy and refreshing an experience (I'd like more "traditional" games to take a few cues off it, RPGs included, such as the focus on a single settlement/location and how time and possibly your actions impact that over the course of things). Unsure if that is a sign of things to come though. This was a project apparently 30 years in the making in some form or other. And somebody (Sawyer) pushing really hard for it for years and years.

Initially I was also puzzled why inXile a) went back to a big publisher in MS and b) doing triple A games. Their crowdfunding success/es and Wasteland comeback was all about doing things independently, and on budgets that didn't dictate huge sales numbers just to barely break even. Don't know what's changed since. 

But overall, yeah, it's definitely good that bigger studios / publishers aren't exclusively tied to crowdpleasers anymore. In particular in the RPG space and similar. The exodus of much of the Western (PC) RPG industry around the 2000s is still felt. Including the rift it's caused in between a (very few) devs getting bigger and bigger and their games increasingly catering to action/adventure crowds  -- and the indie/crowdfunding scene. There's a huge space in between that's not much being catered to anymore.

Speaking of that space in between, A D&D Gothic-style game done right could be great. Or Ultima Underworld, or... wait, that was what Descent To Undermountain was supposed to be back then, right?  




 

Edited November 21, 2022 by Sven_

[Lexx]

5 hours ago, Sven_ said:

Their crowdfunding success/es and Wasteland comeback was all about doing things independently, and on budgets that didn't dictate huge sales numbers just to barely break even. Don't know what's changed since. 

IMO this is just not sustainable. First, because the Kickstarter-hype is pretty much dead, and second because you need to deliver "hits" that sell well in order to stay afloat. Also I'm almost sure they burned too much money on stuff like voice over (even added more with later patches to W2 instead of updating things that would be more worth it... like more content in the 2nd half of the game).

tl;dr - I think the only way to have a small, sustainable indie-studio is to either have a mega hit that keeps giving you a crapton of money, or you have a *really* small team of only a hand full of people max. Neither inXile nor Obsidian have that.

[Sven_]

56 minutes ago, Lexx said:

tl;dr - I think the only way to have a small, sustainable indie-studio is to either have a mega hit that keeps giving you a crapton of money, or you have a *really* small team of only a hand full of people max. Neither inXile nor Obsidian have that.

With Obsidian I knew -- with inXile I was under the impression that they had massively scaled down prior to going Kickstarter and were being "burnt" prior, similar to Larian (who equally grew much larger again post ca. D:OS2). Naturally, California is also a pretty tough area for an independent studio likely.  Will be interesting to see how Owlcat fares in the long run.

However, I'm puzzled that inXile immediately jumped back to AAA -- when it's the space in between AAA games and Kickstarter / indies is what's pretty much unoccupied. I used to put it that way: The (Western) RPG genre is pretty much split in two.

On the one end of the spectrum you've got barely a handful of developers (most of them the few who survived the 2000s RPG crash) who are ever growing, targeting ever larger audiences to the degree that their games oft play very similar to Assassin's Creed or any other action blockbuster game on the market. On the other end, there's the Kickstarters and indies, oft doing either Dungeon Crawlers, BG- or Fallout-lookalikes. 

BG3 may bridge a few gaps with its blockbuster-style presenation, and there's also a few companies such as Piranha Bytes, still busy trying to reclaim their Gothic heydays. But generally: Where's the in betweens? Even the kind of games Bioware succesfully used to make whilst transitioning from Baldur's Gate to eventually Mass Effect, they're basically gone. E.g. NWN, Kotor, DA: Origins. 

Edited November 21, 2022 by Sven_

[Mamoulian War]

4 hours ago, Lexx said:

IMO this is just not sustainable. First, because the Kickstarter-hype is pretty much dead, and second because you need to deliver "hits" that sell well in order to stay afloat. Also I'm almost sure they burned too much money on stuff like voice over (even added more with later patches to W2 instead of updating things that would be more worth it... like more content in the 2nd half of the game).

tl;dr - I think the only way to have a small, sustainable indie-studio is to either have a mega hit that keeps giving you a crapton of money, or you have a *really* small team of only a hand full of people max. Neither inXile nor Obsidian have that.

And that is the issue. Spending bloated budget on VA or photorealistic graphics. No one asked for it from them. A lot of japanese developers are producing a lot of AA games, and they have no issue staying afloat and be profitable. It’s just the western obsession to have all the useless bells and whistles, instead of better story or gameplay, which always killed the smaller studios, not the lack of sales. You still have similar profit if your budget is 1 million and sell 100k units, as if your budget is 20 million and you sell 500k copies.

[Serrano]

18 hours ago, kanisatha said:

 I am wondering if maybe this new inXile project is a Ps:T sequel?

It would be kind of funny and ironic to do a Planescape sequel now that the player has forgotten everything that happened to the Nameless One.

[Lexx]

43 minutes ago, Mamoulian War said:

And that is the issue. Spending bloated budget on VA or photorealistic graphics. No one asked for it from them. A lot of japanese developers are producing a lot of AA games, and they have no issue staying afloat and be profitable. It’s just the western obsession to have all the useless bells and whistles, instead of better story or gameplay, which always killed the smaller studios, not the lack of sales. You still have similar profit if your budget is 1 million and sell 100k units, as if your budget is 20 million and you sell 500k copies.

Agreed. When I heard about the new VO for W2 I was like WTF... Of all the things in the game, THIS is what you decide to spend more money on? What a waste.

Same thing with Obsidian and Deadfire... There was no reason to voice every single line of dialog. Just doing the most important characters, or just the first or second line they speak would have been totally fine.

[Wormerine]

12 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

Pentiment is definitely proof of the AA model though. It is fantastic but the furthest thing from AAA gaming.

Hopefully it will stay that way for a while, and Microsoft will keep indulging their teams after the honeymoon period finishes.

1 hour ago, Lexx said:

Same thing with Obsidian and Deadfire... There was no reason to voice every single line of dialog.

Company owners disagreed . It is definitely nice, but no, not necessary.

[kanisatha]

Well I think MS has demonstrated it is not just about AAA big-budget games. It needs a certain volume of games for its GamePass, and that means also having a good number of AA games coming out of their studios.

I think in D&D video games these days, the impetus for AAA is coming from WotC and not from the studios themselves.

@Sven_, re. your hope for a D&D gothic-style game, I have a feeling that OtherSide Entertainment's D&D game may indeed be such a game.

[kanisatha]

I think at least one MS-owned studio making a D&D license game *will* eventually happen (if not already happening unbeknownst to us). How could WotC pass up having a D&D game in GamePass? And a Larian game doesn't give them that.

[Sven_]

@kanisatha Given OtherSide's heritage, my immediate suspicious would be an Underworld-style game: (Ok, they already did Underworld Ascendant, which didn't fare too well).  Which COULD also actually be pretty cool though, with distinctive D&D classes providing distincintly different playing experiences, such as on System Shock 2. Have there been any more news on this so far? Their own website doesn't even list the game yet (or I'm blind).  

Re: Voice-overs, insterestingly, Solasta seems fully voiced too. Despite not even having companions as such... Will be interesting to see what Owlcat will do with their new Warhammer game.

Edited November 21, 2022 by Sven_