Random video game news... RNG says "Nope"

[xzar_monty]

38 minutes ago, Gorth said:

I didn't get into Dragonlance until I was in my twenties (blame lack of Dragonlance book supply for that! ). What I did read at age ten to fifteen was what they had in the school library. Alistair Maclean in particular was a favourite. Fond memories of Guns of Navarone, Fear is the Key, Ice Station Zebra etc. suddenly resurfacing. Man... it's been many, many years since reading those.

 

Edit: Books weren't really accessible to me unless there was a Danish translations. Didn't pick up reading English paperbacks until I got forced at gunpoint to read The Hobbit

I've never read any of the Maclean books, but of course I'm familiar with his legacy -- and I certainly know that he's the guy behind Where Eagles Dare, which for me is mainly an Iron Maiden song (I may have seen the movie, but I'm not sure and certainly don't remember anything about it).

There are plenty of names like this that might, in a way, be interesting to (re)check, but I think it's unlikely it'll happen. I've never read any Graham Greene, for example, and I've only read Shogun from James Clavell's works. I loved it at the time, but I have no idea how it would look to me now.

As for reading books in languages other than my first, I think the Dragonlance stories may have been the very first books I read in English. If not, they were certainly among the first, say, ten books that I read in English. Stephen King was among the first ones, too. I remember how funny it was, at the time, to be able to read King fairly easily and then try some Poe and find that my vocabulary was woefully lacking.

[Gorth]

10 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

I've never read any of the Maclean books, but of course I'm familiar with his legacy -- and I certainly know that he's the guy behind Where Eagles Dare, which for me is mainly an Iron Maiden song (I may have seen the movie, but I'm not sure and certainly don't remember anything about it).

There are plenty of names like this that might, in a way, be interesting to (re)check, but I think it's unlikely it'll happen. I've never read any Graham Greene, for example, and I've only read Shogun from James Clavell's works. I loved it at the time, but I have no idea how it would look to me now.

As for reading books in languages other than my first, I think the Dragonlance stories may have been the very first books I read in English. If not, they were certainly among the first, say, ten books that I read in English. Stephen King was among the first ones, too. I remember how funny it was, at the time, to be able to read King fairly easily and then try some Poe and find that my vocabulary was woefully lacking.

The Hobbit was a necessity

 

I had bought this adventure game for my Commordore 64, The Hobbit from Melbourne House. In the box was the tape, the instruction pamphlet and... The Hobbit (in English). I ended up stuck int he goblin tunnels and kept getting killed in the dark. This was a decade before the internet, so the only goto aid was the paperback book. Eventually i figured out (by reading the book), that I had to trick the 3 trolls to stay out in the open when the sun rises and turns them to stone, then loot their camp. This little shortsword named "Sting" had a the ability of glowing in the dark when greenskins were near. Hence, i now had a lightsource in the goblin tunnels and could escape

Nevermind that Gandalf and Elrond were both pricks, kept taking my map so I couldn't leave Rivendell. Every time I managed to get the map back, the other one would take it out of my inventory

Don't get my started on Thorin, who would, while escaping from the goblin tunnels, plunk his lazy dwarf butt down on the ground and singing about gold, getting us all killed

 

Anyway, school library... the only other series of books I remember from top of my head (mostly because it was a struggle of mental fortitude to get through) was a series of books by some guy named Donal Stephenson (iirc). About a guy called Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. the chose one and the wielder of White Gold (which made him special in some way, even though he was a leprosy patient and the white gold was his wedding ring). Maybe I should read it again and I might understand it better as an adult. There were many other books, but their names escape me today

[xzar_monty]

48 minutes ago, Gorth said:

The Hobbit was a necessity

 

I had bought this adventure game for my Commordore 64, The Hobbit from Melbourne House. In the box was the tape, the instruction pamphlet and... The Hobbit (in English).

Oh, I remember that game. When the going gets tough, Thorin sits down and sings about gold... Some years after that, there was also a Lord of the Rings text adventure game; or The Fellowship of the Ring game, to be more precise. I started playing it with great expectations but very quickly found out that it was terrible. It was also very buggy, and this was at a time when I hardly knew what bugs were, or that they could even exist. Man, that game was not a good experience! The same company also came out with a game called Shadows of Mordor, or something like that, but I hardly even tried that one.

But I did remain fond of text adventure games for some time. The Pawn, The Guild of Thieves... I wonder if anyone anywhere remembers those titles, from (I think) Magnetic Scrolls. They were pretty good, for their period.

Edited June 11, 2023 by xzar_monty

[Keyrock]

If we don't see anything about Avowed today I am officially writing it off.

[Sarex]

Tbh, I'm more hyped for Fable.

edit: Got your wish.

Edited June 11, 2023 by Sarex

[Keyrock]

13 minutes ago, Sarex said:

Tbh, I'm more hyped for Fable.

edit: Got your wish.

I've never had any attachment to the Fable series, so my hype level is minimal, but that was a nice trailer, I'll give it that.

 

[Sarex]

PoE Gothic

Edited June 11, 2023 by Sarex

[Keyrock]

Much much more important than Fable or Avowed, though, my mother****er Ichiban Kasuga is back!

And it looks like he's in... Miami(?) Somewhere in the US, anyway. Hopefully my girl Saeko Mukoda managed to make her way over to The States as well. 

Edited June 11, 2023 by Keyrock

[MrBrown]

That Avowed trailer didn't really tell much. It's pretty much just "we got graphics!"

[Raithe]

For yet more cinematics and no idea of actual gameplay...

 

[HoonDing]

Lionhead went full WOKE with Fable

Pre-ordered

[Keyrock]

8 minutes ago, Raithe said:

For yet more cinematics and no idea of actual gameplay...

 

I'll say this for UbiStarWars, it looks like they're focusing on the interesting part of Star Wars, the underworld, and not the boring part, the space wizards with laser swords. I'm sure that at some point some ***hole with a laser sword will show up because Star Wars can't help but shoehorn those boring ****s into otherwise interesting stuff, but hopefully there will be minimal ***holes with laser swords.

[Keyrock]

InXile's Definitely Not Bioshock, Why Would You Even Suggest Such A Thing? looks pretty dang good:

 

[HoonDing]

But what's the gameplay in that Star Wars game. Just pew pew pew in corridors and in space?

I like though that they're seemingly recycling characters from Extended Universe that got erased with nu-Star Wars

Edited June 11, 2023 by HoonDing

[MrBrown]

Starfield looks like it's going to have way too much content for any of it to be meaningful or interesting.

[Keyrock]

45 minutes ago, HoonDing said:

But what's the gameplay in that Star Wars game. Just pew pew pew in corridors and in space?

I mean, it's an Ubi game. There will be a giant map with a metric ****ton of icons on it. 80% of said icons will be copy/paste bull**** collectibles and "activities". There will be a bunch of outpost for you to liberate.

Speaking of liberate, Phantom Liberty (look, it's the best segue I could come up with):

 

Edited June 11, 2023 by Keyrock

[HoonDing]

I just want teh Elder Scrolls VI

[Wormerine]

1 hour ago, MrBrown said:

That Avowed trailer didn't really tell much. It's pretty much just "we got graphics!"

But do we?

1 hour ago, HoonDing said:

But what's the gameplay in that Star Wars game. Just pew pew pew in corridors and in space?

It's supposed to be open world. Gameplay is supposed to be revealed in Ubi showcase.

Starfield looks rather decent, doesn't it?

Edited June 11, 2023 by Wormerine

[Keyrock]

I thought what was said during the Starfield showcase sounded great, but I take anything The Todd & Co. say with a large quantity of grains of salt. I've been hating on Bethesda for quite a while, I was hating on them long before it was fashionable to do so. That said, I would love nothing more than for them to knock it out of the park with Starfield. I would be thrilled if Bethesda became the company that made Morrowind again. I'm not holding my breath but color me very cautiously optimistic.

As an aside, flightstick support is probably too much to ask for, isn't it?

[Sarex]

I think that the biggest issue the game will have is empty worlds.

 

The IGN live show just shat all over Avowed... I mean, the trailer didn't grab my interest, but I don't like these type of games. Saying that I still would not feel comfortable ****ting on the game that I haven't played. Really rubbed me the wrong way how they commentated on it and not only that, but the comment was braindead. It was something along the line "I heard they wanted to make it on the scale of Skyrim, but dialed it down. Why would I want to play it then, when I can just go and play Skyrim."

Edited June 11, 2023 by Sarex

[HoonDing]

I hate this trend of going over 100 GB.

Elder Scrolls VI will likely be over 200 GB

[Malcador]

56 minutes ago, Keyrock said:

Speaking of liberate, Phantom Liberty (look, it's the best segue I could come up with):

 

Pre-ordered

[Sarex]

Apparently Phantom Liberty revamps the whole game, plus a new ending. Don't know how much of it will come as a free patch to the game though, or if it will at all.

Edited June 11, 2023 by Sarex

[Wormerine]

1 hour ago, Keyrock said:

InXile's Definitely Not Bioshock, Why Would You Even Suggest Such A Thing? looks pretty dang good:

I can't figure out if it's Bioshock or time loop game. I don't know what it is, but I am interested.

 

7 minutes ago, Sarex said:

Apparently Phantom Liberty revamps the whole game, plus a new ending. Don't know how much of it will come as a free patch to the game though, or if it will at all.

That's a very good news. I can't imagine a possibility of good content in Cyberpunk as it is.

[Keyrock]

28 minutes ago, Sarex said:

It was something along the line "I heard they wanted to make it on the scale of Skyrim, but dialed it down. Why would I want to play it then, when I can just go and play Skyrim."

That sounds like a positive rather than a negative to me, assuming that by "scale" they mean the size of the game world. I've been a vocal proponent of smaller worlds. This ties in to your concern with Starfield's size and the potential for a lot of it to be empty and/or filled with dull and generic "content". I've written this before, some of the best open worlds ever created are some of the smallest. Ryu Ga Gotoku is the gold standard for making open worlds IMHO and they make some of the smallest.

Not much to go on for South of Midnight, but I love the art style, so there's that:

 

Edited June 11, 2023 by Keyrock