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Videogames 2023: Dreams of the Sandbox Kings


IlyaP
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I've been replaying Expeditions: Rome, because I realized just during the Steam winter sale that the game had a DLC + a few major updates. The DLC adds a new character class, the Gladiator, and an arena quest for each act. I have to say I'm not particular fond of this class. It has a few good perks and the retaliation ability is good, but mobility is not its strong suit. The biggest change to the gameplay from the updates is making legion battles a little more complex and challenging, though once you get your centurions levelled up and get the legion's morale to be positive, they still become a formality.

I've made a few different decisions from my previous playthrough to see how things change, though often you're at the mercy of ensuring your praetorians are happy. I'm not sure if some of the updates added additional content, but I realized there way more cool weapons and shields in the game than before, and I regret not playing as a princeps again. I'm currently about 2/3 into Act II. I'm not sure how I wish to end the game yet. Maybe for Act II I'll not kill Cleopatra this time.

I've also attempted to play its predecessor, Expeditions: Viking. But I struggle to get into this one. Rome feels much more immersive, it sucked me right in with how all the Latin titles were pronounced correctly and the game has a small educational component. And its UI is miles better than Viking's UI. I have to squint way too much to read what all those skills do. Viking does have a superb soundtrack, though. 

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It came with Ragnarok so I’d have to go get the previous one to make the story make more sense. Not sure I want to invest that much time in those two games. I’m not that enamoured seeing Kratos butcher every god. As a father to two sons though maybe the Atreus stuff will be interesting.

Edited by Arakasi
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2 hours ago, Arakasi said:

It came with Ragnarok so I’d have to go get the previous one to make the story make more sense. Not sure I want to invest that much time in those two games. I’m not that enamoured seeing Kratos butcher every god. As a father to two sons though maybe the Atreus stuff will be interesting.

Yeah, there's a reason a lot of the original God of War fans that were in for the butchering and such would give this game the derogatory name "Dad of War."  LOL

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The Skyblivion team have confirmed they are targeting a 2025 release date at the latest, though they hope to get some more help on board to get them out the door in 2024.

They also released a new dev video with Q&A:

 

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I've been replaying X-COM: Enemy Unknown. For some reason the DLC doesn't run on the Steam Deck, it causes it to crash. At first I was disappointed but it may have been a blessing in disguise. I don't miss worrying about collecting Meld. The base attack was cool but I don't know that I need to play it again. 

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2 hours ago, Werthead said:

The Skyblivion team have confirmed they are targeting a 2025 release date at the latest, though they hope to get some more help on board to get them out the door in 2024.

 

Am I alone in thinking it somehow looks a bit...underwhelming? Maybe it's just the limitations of the Creation Engine, but it just...doesn't wow me as much as I perhaps hoped? 

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1 hour ago, IlyaP said:

Am I alone in thinking it somehow looks a bit...underwhelming? Maybe it's just the limitations of the Creation Engine, but it just...doesn't wow me as much as I perhaps hoped? 

Well Skyrim's graphics are as old as A Dance with Dragons, so...

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5 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Am I alone in thinking it somehow looks a bit...underwhelming? Maybe it's just the limitations of the Creation Engine, but it just...doesn't wow me as much as I perhaps hoped? 

Honestly, for me, all it has to do is look and play better than Oblivion, which is not exactly a hard barrier to cross.

But I'm also someone who thinks Skyrim still looks pretty good. Maximum graphical fidelity is not exactly what I primarily look for.

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20 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Am I alone in thinking it somehow looks a bit...underwhelming? Maybe it's just the limitations of the Creation Engine, but it just...doesn't wow me as much as I perhaps hoped? 

It is a 17-year-old game running in a 12-year-old engine, even though that have managed to add in some graphical updates and tweaks and upgrades since then, but yup, it's not going to look like a brand-new, modern game at all.

I think they have an element of stylisation in the graphics which does work well though and sells the otherwise underwhelming models. And it is a massive improvement over trying to play Oblivion in 2022, even with graphical mods.

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Yikes. Microsoft has fired 10,000 people across its operations, and reportedly has gutted 343 Industries (who work on the Halo franchise). Bethesda Game Studios was also hit, which was a surprise since they are close to shipping Starfield and spooling up production on The Elder Scrolls VI, almost-guaranteed giga-sellers.

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32 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Yikes. Microsoft has fired 10,000 people across its operations, and reportedly has gutted 343 Industries (who work on the Halo franchise). Bethesda Game Studios was also hit, which was a surprise since they are close to shipping Starfield and spooling up production on The Elder Scrolls VI, almost-guaranteed giga-sellers.

Always sucks when layoffs hit. I'm not surprised by 343 though, they've mismanaged Halo for a long time now. And, even independently of Microsoft having company wide layoffs, I wouldn't have been surprised to see something happen there and Halo was passed along to another studio. Bethesda is a surprise, but since it's the only other studio mentioned I wonder if it's primarily redundant positions leftover from pre-acquisition that the smaller studios don't have (e.g., HR). The kind of employees that would've been reassigned elsewhere in the company if the economy was doing better but instead are losing their jobs two weeks into the new year.

I suspect this more due to the wider tech slowdown rather than anything gaming specific; and these layoffs are the same kinds of things Apple, Amazon, etc. have been doing recently. In which case hopefully this doesn't herald the start of anything across the gaming industry, and that companies only operating in that space are insulated.

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Bethesda have made a big thing in the past about how their process of having one game in pre-production and one in full swing (and even another one further down the line in very early stages of discussion) means that they are not susceptible to the usual swings and roundabouts of having to lay people off as one project ramps down and hire back up as the next project ramps back up. That now doesn't seem to be the case.

I've seen some speculation that this was because of duplication of services in things like admin between Bethesda and Microsoft and those positions were now redundant, but I believe all those positions would have been at Zenimax, whilst Schreier's reporting specified that BGS itself was hit.

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On 1/17/2023 at 12:54 PM, Arakasi said:

It came with Ragnarok so I’d have to go get the previous one to make the story make more sense. Not sure I want to invest that much time in those two games. I’m not that enamoured seeing Kratos butcher every god. As a father to two sons though maybe the Atreus stuff will be interesting.

I was not a fan of the old God of War games at all, I only played the Norse ones in the last two months. As Rhom said it is a very different feeling.  You do off some gods of course but for the most part its actually self defense.

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It's taken 145 hours, but I've finally completed the main story in Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, and have no will power left in me to go through all the DLCs and beyond. 145 hours is quite enough for any one game, and ACV has definitely outlived its welcome, for me personally.

Back to Pentiment, finally!

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1 hour ago, IlyaP said:

It's taken 145 hours, but I've finally completed the main story in Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, and have no will power left in me to go through all the DLCs and beyond. 145 hours is quite enough for any one game, and ACV has definitely outlived its welcome, for me personally.

Back to Pentiment, finally!

My "one simple trick" to enjoy Assassin's Creed games (or any 100+ hour game) is to play them along another game to cleanse the palate. If I tried binging them, I would burn out.

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7 minutes ago, Gorn said:

My "one simple trick" to enjoy Assassin's Creed games (or any 100+ hour game) is to play them along another game to cleanse the palate. If I tried binging them, I would burn out.

I have a hard enough time remembering what the main story is in those sorts of games even without adding another game to the mix!!!! :lol: 

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