Videogames - The definitive Edition, remastered

[Xray the Enforcer]

On 10/18/2020 at 7:42 AM, Stannis Eats No Peaches said:

Yeah I’ve just finished playing it with my girlfriend. Lovely game.

@Stannis Eats No Peaches it really is. I finished it earlier this week and was a freaking wreck. Had to hug my cats and they were so very confused. I just went back and restarted, because my first time through I played without really researching options online (wanted to see how the game progressed organically) and therefore missed some shenanigans, or leveled certain utilities too late (or not at all). I had forgotten how damned slow the boat is at the beginning

[Stannis Eats No Peaches]

20 hours ago, Xray the Enforcer said:

@Stannis Eats No Peaches it really is. I finished it earlier this week and was a freaking wreck. Had to hug my cats and they were so very confused. I just went back and restarted, because my first time through I played without really researching options online (wanted to see how the game progressed organically) and therefore missed some shenanigans, or leveled certain utilities too late (or not at all). I had forgotten how damned slow the boat is at the beginning

Yeah we just went through it without being completionist; I think some of the atmosphere would have been lost if we had. We had it on Switch and it’s not very optimised for playing on a single joy con, but yes it was still very affecting.

[The Anti-Targ]

On 10/19/2020 at 1:41 AM, Werthead said:

I think Jace's obvious comment was about Bethesda selling PlayStation users down the river by joining Microsoft, not about the Monster Hunter thing.

As a PC+PS gamer I barely raised a shrug at that news. Though I imagine there are some people who are big fans of TES and / or Fallout who only have had a PS in the past. The question, I guess, is whether these people will invest in another console, switch console entirely, or divert "second gaming hardware" money to a gaming PC. Gaming PC is, I think, the logical choice, but these days a lot of people perhaps don't have a PC because they do all the things people used to need a PC/laptop for on their mobile phone / tablet.

In other news, the self-imposed exile of Gabe Newell in New Zealand has turned into an application to become a permanent resident and a request to meet our PM to get it. If he gets it I will be a little bit pissed off. I have a friend who moved here from Canada recently and she works in a sector that is short of qualified staff (aged care nursing), but they won't give her permanent residency, yet, which means she has to pay full foreign student fees for her daughter to go to university. If she had residency she would pay NZ fees. The difference between the two is about $60,000 per year.

[Rhom]

56 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

As a PC+PS gamer I barely raised a shrug at that news. Though I imagine there are some people who are big fans of TES and / or Fallout who only have had a PS in the past. The question, I guess, is whether these people will invest in another console, switch console entirely, or divert "second gaming hardware" money to a gaming PC. Gaming PC is, I think, the logical choice, but these days a lot of people perhaps don't have a PC because they do all the things people used to need a PC/laptop for on their mobile phone / tablet.

The closest comparison I can really think of would be Square leaving Nintendo to publish FFVII on the PS.  

I will readily admit that was the primary factor in my choice of the PlayStation over the N64 at the time.  But I don't know what I might have done had the game been available on both PS and PC at launch.   

[The Anti-Targ]

6 minutes ago, Rhom said:

The closest comparison I can really think of would be Square leaving Nintendo to publish FFVII on the PS.  

I will readily admit that was the primary factor in my choice of the PlayStation over the N64 at the time.  But I don't know what I might have done had the game been available on both PS and PC at launch.   

But even then that's only a loose comparison. FFVII was a seismic event in the console gaming world. Because FO and TES both grew up on PC, even though they have become highly successful on console it doesn't feel like the kind of game changer FFVII was.

Also, based on no objective evidence at all, I feel like most PS owners primarily get PS for the first party titles, even though they might play a lot of 3rd party games as well. And the number of people who will ditch the 1st party library to follow TES and FO to wherever they lead is probably not going to be that many. My personal hope is that MS bought Bethesda to effect some significant change in the poor quality of output and PR screw ups coming from Bethesda recently, rather than seeing it as a way to give hardware sales a major boost. Though if they don't make any changes at the top of Bethesda I'm not sure what change is likely to happen.

[Werthead]

12 hours ago, Rhom said:

The closest comparison I can really think of would be Square leaving Nintendo to publish FFVII on the PS.  

I will readily admit that was the primary factor in my choice of the PlayStation over the N64 at the time.  But I don't know what I might have done had the game been available on both PS and PC at launch.   

It was available on PC, but only about a year after PS launch. The PC version was actually pretty good, once they released the first patch anyway, although there was a nasty problem where they tied the performance of the minigames to the CPU cycle. Which at the time (with 233 and 266 mhz Pentium II CPUs) was fine, but just a few years later it made the game almost unplayable. That's been fixed since then, but at the time it was quite comical.

[Red Tiger]

So to the folks who are familiar with the name.

Do you guys think that Elden Ring is still being made?

[Werthead]

20 minutes ago, Red Tiger said:

So to the folks who are familiar with the name.

Do you guys think that Elden Ring is still being made?

Yes. The current, "we've heard nothing about the game for 18 months, it must have been cancelled!" is hysterically funny to anyone even remotely familiar with video game development. We heard nothing at all about Cyberpunk 2077 for almost five and a half years, we've literally heard nothing official about Starfield for two and a half years. It's pretty normal.

[Red Tiger]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Yes. The current, "we've heard nothing about the game for 18 months, it must have been cancelled!" is hysterically funny to anyone even remotely familiar with video game development. We heard nothing at all about Cyberpunk 2077 for almost five and a half years, we've literally heard nothing official about Starfield for two and a half years. It's pretty normal.

Im not familiar with Starfield, but Cyberpunk had the excuse of the studio being busy with making stuff for the Witcher 3. On the other hand, From Software is currently not updating any of their games and only has Elden Ring coming out.

[Kalbear]

It's not that surprising. If they aren't hitting specific demo/presentation windows they're not really releasing any updates, by design - every time they do that it costs time that they could be spending on development. 

I suspect you'll probably see another demo/presentation around the E3 timeframe, as they've already missed holiday season stuff and that's usually the big next win. 

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Red Tiger said:

Im not familiar with Starfield, but Cyberpunk had the excuse of the studio being busy with making stuff for the Witcher 3. On the other hand, From Software is currently not updating any of their games and only has Elden Ring coming out.

The Witcher 3 came out in May 2015 and the first proper trailer was in June 2018, so that was still more than three years of total radio silence.

Starfield is the next big CRPG from Bethesda Game Studios, their follow-up to Fallout 4. It entered full-time production in 2015, its existence was leaked to the public in 2016 and it was finally confirmed to be a real thing in June 2018. Aside from one mega-brief teaser, we still nothing about it from official sources (there are a few more leaked images and reports of varying degrees of credibility). They also announced The Elder Scrolls VI (the sequel to Skyrim) on the same day and we know even less about that.

Elden Ring is some considerable way into development - it was in development for at least a year or two before the announcement - so we will likely hear more about it soonish, depending exactly on how ambitious the game is. It does sound like the open world approach alone will mean a radically different and more ambitious and larger game then anything they've done before, so the fact it's taking a while is not a surprise.

[Fez]

Darkest Dungeon 2 is coming. Not many details yet, but it will be Epic-only during early access (sometime in 2021) and come to other stores once it releases. And there will be 3D assets in the game. Not sure if that means a full switch in style, like Risk of Rain 2, or a mostly 2D game with some 3D assets. Most importantly, same narrator.

[Werthead]

3 hours ago, Fez said:

Darkest Dungeon 2 is coming. Not many details yet, but it will be Epic-only during early access (sometime in 2021) and come to other stores once it releases. And there will be 3D assets in the game. Not sure if that means a full switch in style, like Risk of Rain 2, or a mostly 2D game with some 3D assets. Most importantly, same narrator.

They're doing a boardgame Kickstarter and disappointingly they seem to have gone down the route of doing an uber-expensive mega-ton of miniatures thing, which was disappointing. There's also a Frostpunk Kickstarter going on which is somewhat saner in price, which I decided to back.

[Caligula_K3]

I started Disco Elysium. I'm usually not so into the CRPGs but this one may be for me, especially since there seems to be very little combat. It's pretty funny and unique so far; I love that you have conversations with different parts of your personality.

 

I think I'm pretty much done with Hades at this point after about 35-40 runs. It was a lot of fun, but getting to the ending started to feel a bit tedious towards the end (great credits song, though). I was hoping to finish some of the major sidequests, but I've also gotten a little bit tired of doing a run, going back to Hades' court, hoping the right dialogue triggers, hoping I run into the right person on the next couple runs, etc...

Still, great game and the first rogue-like I've ever liked.  I'm sure I'll go back to it at some point.

[Fez]

47 minutes ago, Caligula_K3 said:

I started Disco Elysium. I'm usually not so into the CRPGs but this one may be for me, especially since there seems to be very little combat. It's pretty funny and unique so far; I love that you have conversations with different parts of your personality.

I'm about 15 hours in so far and its been a great experience. I do feel like the gaming is fading a bit from the highs of the first several hours; though that may be my own fault. I've mostly been playing it straight-laced and at this point (maybe also from my high intellect score) I have a good understanding of the world, part of own backstory, and the case so far. And I haven't been getting quite as many completely insane dialog options. I'm turning into a relatively normal cop. A couple of my personality elements even made fun of me for it. I also went moralist for my political leanings, which, as the centrist path, seems to have the least fun in dialog as well. And I'm not sure the central mystery is good enough to stand on its own as a straight-forward detective story.

[Heartofice]

I really like Disco Elysium.. but it exposed my own laziness. I really cannot be bothered to read that much text when playing a game any more. It feels more like reading a good book than playing a game 

[Caligula_K3]

2 hours ago, Fez said:

I'm about 15 hours in so far and its been a great experience. I do feel like the gaming is fading a bit from the highs of the first several hours; though that may be my own fault. I've mostly been playing it straight-laced and at this point (maybe also from my high intellect score) I have a good understanding of the world, part of own backstory, and the case so far. And I haven't been getting quite as many completely insane dialog options. I'm turning into a relatively normal cop. A couple of my personality elements even made fun of me for it. I also went moralist for my political leanings, which, as the centrist path, seems to have the least fun in dialog as well. And I'm not sure the central mystery is good enough to stand on its own as a straight-forward detective story.

Ahh, well I've gone the opposite route with my character (very low intelligence, high perception, lots of instability). Hopefully it doesn't get too boring, even if the central mystery isn't that interesting.

[RumHam]

Nintendo is localizing the original Fire Emblem for switch. Problem is that like the recent Mario collection it's a limited time only thing. This is really a terrible thing they've started with this artificial scarcity for digtal downloads. I hope Microsoft and Sony don't follow suit. I'm just gonna keep emulating the mario games, and I bet there's a fan translation of Fire Emblem if I ever felt the need to play that. ]

Plus like if you bought one of these games in the window, and then next year get a new switch will you even be able to re-download them? Or till it become another PT situation. 

[The Anti-Targ]

10 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I really like Disco Elysium.. but it exposed my own laziness. I really cannot be bothered to read that much text when playing a game any more. It feels more like reading a good book than playing a game 

Ohhh this is so me. As soon as full voice work came along in RPG games my tolerance level for text only for in game dialogue and narrative dropped precipitously. And I have never been a reader of the Codex.

[Whiskeyjack]

8 hours ago, RumHam said:

Nintendo is localizing the original Fire Emblem for switch.

Marth!