Videogames Thread: Steaming Ahead

[Gorn]

1 hour ago, Jace, Extat said:

I bought the Balder's Gate 3 game yesterday but discovered my hard drive is too small for the game. Is it worth upgrading to a bigger hard drive or should I just get a refund?

If you plan to play any new PC games in the future, you might as well bite the bullet and buy a bigger hard drive now. Installation sizes aren't going to get smaller, and 100+ GB is the new normal.

[Werthead]

16 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

If they just go back to making actual historical games again, instead of that fantasy crap, I’ll be very happy. 

They never will. The fantasy games and the historical-but-fantasised games have done well, the historical ones have done worse, so even their future "historical" games will always have heroes and cooldowns and all that other horseshit in them. Medieval III will have El Cid and King Arthur duelling on the battlefield, Empire II will have Napoleon walking unharmed through a hail of gunfire to clash blades with the Duke of Wellington in a personal duel.

That's why it's important that Medieval II Remastered is completed, it'll update the graphics, get rid of the hideous memory limitations and hopefully CPU-binding that can still make it a resource hog on 2023 machines (!), and the modding scene is still vibrant and active enough that we can hopefully see the likes of Third Age and Westeros: Total War (still easily the best Middle-earth and Westeros video games ever made) ported up to the new edition.

Edited September 29, 2023 by Werthead

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

5 hours ago, Werthead said:

They never will. The fantasy games and the historical-but-fantasised games have done well, the historical ones have done worse, so even their future "historical" games will always have heroes and cooldowns and all that other horseshit in them. Medieval III will have El Cid and King Arthur duelling on the battlefield, Empire II will have Napoleon walking unharmed through a hail of gunfire to clash blades with the Duke of Wellington in a personal duel.

That's why it's important that Medieval II Remastered is completed, it'll update the graphics, get rid of the hideous memory limitations and hopefully CPU-binding that can still make it a resource hog on 2023 machines (!), and the modding scene is still vibrant and active enough that we can hopefully see the likes of Third Age and Westeros: Total War (still easily the best Middle-earth and Westeros video games ever made) ported up to the new edition.

I’m ready to take the historical but fantasised games also at this point, just not yet another warhammer game pls.time to return to empire II. 

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

Finished Detroit Become Human, really enjoyed it along with all other Quantic Dream games going back to Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy. Heading back into BG3 and cyberpunk now 

[Corvinus85]

9 hours ago, Werthead said:

They never will. The fantasy games and the historical-but-fantasised games have done well, the historical ones have done worse, so even their future "historical" games will always have heroes and cooldowns and all that other horseshit in them. Medieval III will have El Cid and King Arthur duelling on the battlefield, Empire II will have Napoleon walking unharmed through a hail of gunfire to clash blades with the Duke of Wellington in a personal duel.

That's why it's important that Medieval II Remastered is completed, it'll update the graphics, get rid of the hideous memory limitations and hopefully CPU-binding that can still make it a resource hog on 2023 machines (!), and the modding scene is still vibrant and active enough that we can hopefully see the likes of Third Age and Westeros: Total War (still easily the best Middle-earth and Westeros video games ever made) ported up to the new edition.

 

3 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

I’m ready to take the historical but fantasised games also at this point, just not yet another warhammer game pls.time to return to empire II. 

Well the soon to be released TW: Pharaoh looks to be 98% historical. It's built on Troy, but without any of the mythical creatures and magic. There is still a god pantheon that awards some bonuses, I guess, plus the faction leaders don't die unless the faction is defeated. I'm not even sure how many years the game is supposed to take, just that it starts in 1200 B.C. 

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

36 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

 

Well the soon to be released TW: Pharaoh looks to be 98% historical. It's built on Troy, but without any of the mythical creatures and magic. There is still a god pantheon that awards some bonuses, I guess, plus the faction leaders don't die unless the faction is defeated. I'm not even sure how many years the game is supposed to take, just that it starts in 1200 B.C. 

Nobody gives a shit about this spin off bro, we all want Medieval 3 or Empire 2. Not a bone thrown, made by a spin off studio that usually makes expansions. I’m guessing they’ll just make warhammer 40k or another fantasy game set in china considering  the current day CAs love for easy cash. I dont want Rome 3 either, let’s have a fresh time period in the early modern history period pls. I still play shogun 2 and empire darthmod regularly, but none of the others. The age of revolution, ship combat, colonies etc has so much potential. Love gunpowder combat and canons!

Edited September 30, 2023 by Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II

[Corvinus85]

8 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Nobody gives a shit about this spin off bro, we all want Medieval 3 or Empire 2. Not a bone thrown, made by a spin off studio that usually makes expansions. I’m guessing they’ll just make warhammer 40k or another fantasy game set in china considering  the current day CAs love for easy cash. I dont want Rome 3 either, let’s have a fresh time period in the early modern history period pls. I still play shogun 2 and empire darthmod regularly, but none of the others. The age of revolution, ship combat, colonies etc has so much potential. Love gunpowder combat and canons!

lol, you say above that you'll take any fantasized historical game over Warhammer, then you go on a tirade that you don't actually want that, you want your Empire 2 mainly. Cool. I want Medieval 3, too, but like Wert said, it's doubtful CA will return to the old historical formula. 

Warhammer 40K is very likely because of how profitable their partnership with Games Workshop has been, but right now everything is uncertain. There were even rumors that they were finally working on a new engine, but who knows now with all the layoffs.

[Caligula_K3]

Got my X Box Series S! I'm pretty happy with it- it's a nifty machine and does exactly what I want it to do for a fair price.

I ended up getting a Gamepass subscription. The amount of choice is overwhelming, but I'm starting off by playing Starfield. Much as I want to play Elden Ring and some other games, I'll wait for the holiday sales.

After a pretty lame and boring opening, Starfield has started to become a lot more fun. I'm starting to find good quests, and despite the simplicity of the space travel and fighting system, I'm enjoying it. I just wish there was a bit less forced fast traveling/loading. It feels like a very segmented game.

 

[Heartofice]

The cancelling of Hyenas is a big thing I think as is the realisation of just how much money they are losing with these poorly thought out decisions.

Pharaoh just looks dead in the water with almost no major buzz about it. 
 

Warhammer really is CAs cash cow right now and the only thing that seems to be doing reasonably well. Which makes it all the more galling when they under deliver with their DLCs and take so long to patch major issues. But this news goes some way to explaining their behaviour.

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

does SEGA enforce these decisions on CA? its not like theyre struggling to get financing for their games

[Werthead]

Sega owns CA outright so CA has to listen to what they say. To start with Sega was hands-off with them apart from making them rush to hit release dates (which was a key problem with both Empire and Rome II being crap on release) but over the years appears to have taken a closer and closer controlling line with them. The Warhammer trilogy also moved them into a new profitability tier where Sega's suits are much more interested in what they're doing, and want them to repeat that with every new release.

Edited September 30, 2023 by Werthead

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

4 hours ago, Werthead said:

Sega owns CA outright so CA has to listen to what they say. To start with Sega was hands-off with them apart from making them rush to hit release dates (which was a key problem with both Empire and Rome II being crap on release) but over the years appears to have taken a closer and closer controlling line with them. The Warhammer trilogy also moved them into a new profitability tier where Sega's suits are much more interested in what they're doing, and want them to repeat that with every new release.

Ugh what’s next , console releases?

[Kalbear]

5 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Ugh what’s next , console releases?

They've already done that.

[IlyaP]

Let's not slam consoles/console ports - they're a vital part of a studio's income when making games. 

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

35 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Let's not slam consoles/console ports - they're a vital part of a studio's income when making games. 

Im not against consoles in general but the game mechanics of TW simply can’t be translated into the Xbox without dumbing it down.

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

I do look down on mobile games though, fuck that shitty cash grab.

Edited October 1, 2023 by Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II

[Werthead]

9 hours ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

They've already done that.

The core Total War series has never been available on console. They had the Total Warrior spin-off series specifically for console but that never really took off. Apparently they were looking into it to expand their revenue streams, but in previous gens there were too many memory limitations. It would be possible now for XBS/X and PS5, but I think they've been looking at other strategy games on console and their performance has usually not made it worthwhile.

Still, I can see Sega vigorously pursuing the idea to increase revenue.

[Kalbear]

I was talking about tw wh3:

https://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/store/total-war-warhammer-iii/9NGGB0GZPB9D

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

I was talking about tw wh3:

https://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/store/total-war-warhammer-iii/9NGGB0GZPB9D

PC only (it even says in the link). But I believe it's the first Total War game released for Xbox Game Pass for PC (or is it just called PC Game Pass now?).

[Heartofice]

Total Warhammer is CA's cash-cow, and you would think they would pour as much resources into milking that as much as possible. It's been established that Warhammer fans are totally happy to pay for endless DLC, but only if they are good and add a lot of value to the game. What appears to have happened is CA have cut corners and upped prices to compensate for the mess in the rest of their business and to pay for the Hyenas shit show. That is only going to irritate fans more, and they are not a good place right now. The latest DLC performed pretty poorly and Warhammer user numbers have been rocky over it's lifecycle, with only new and good DLCs lifting them up to previous games numbers.

My hope is that they are able to move resource over to WH3 and the next few DLC will do more to justify the price. I bought the latest one and have barely touched it. Mostly I was disappointed by the lack of content. None of the 3 new lords are all that interested. The Trickster is essentially a broken campaign as you cannot lose, the AI can barely even see you to attack you, so you just wander around unchallenged the whole game.

Mostly though, there is just a lack of innovation in the game, none of the mechanics are really new, they are just rebadged versions of existing mechanics created in WH2 or in Troy. You can just see the lack of effort. Plus only getting 3 new units per faction is really irritating. 

I can't see WH3 dying out, but there is a timeline where that happens if more of these DLCs are flops and they basically never fix the core issues of the game.