Videogames: All Valves on Deck

[Ser Not Appearing]

The last Indiana Jones game I played was 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Action Game. I was 7 when it came out and probably between 7-10 when I played it. Don't recall the age but I remember much of the game.

I read just now that it's notoriously difficult, which is interesting. I remember playing sections forever but I did eventually beat it.

The new one is intriguing. I'll jump in for sure.

[IlyaP]

I'm curious, @Kalbear, about the following, and wondered if you could speak to it:

I've been digging into Divinity: Original Sin 2 while I wait for BG3 to get a bit more patched up, and learned that DOS2 cost about $4 million USD to make and grossed $85 million USD. 

The cost to profit ratio on display there - would it be fair to say, as an outsider to the industry, that such returns in relation to cost in the gaming industry are, outside of some specific triple A titles like Call of Duty, not the norm? 

Not really angling towards wanting to be able to make any kind of point with whatever you're able to address - am simply intellectually curious, as I've only worked in the gaming industry for a brief period of time, back in 06, and for a Russian gaming company where the budgets were quite small for the games we made/shipped.

[Ser Not Appearing]

16 minutes ago, Ran said:

I did not expect it to be primarily first person, but then again that's Machine Games' bread and butter. But I also suppose they were also afraid third person would draw too many comparisons with Uncharted. Troy Baker (Joel in The Last of Us games) seems to be doing a sort of "notes of Harrison Ford, but just notes" approach to the voice, which is probably the right way to go if he can't sustain a full-on impersonation.

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/bethesdas-indiana-jones-both-first-205100407.html

“Our game is about putting you in the shoes of an iconic hero,” said MachineGames design director Jens Andersson, “Since we are doing this mostly in first-person, you have the chance to truly become Indy.”

“First-person makes you part of this world – allowing you to explore and experience things more intimately. What will you do when you’re dropped into this adventure with your wits and your whip? The world of Indiana Jones is a world with mysteries around every corner, where you’re racing against the clock and outsmarting your enemies as you hunt down artifacts.”

However, as shown during the Direct, MachineGames will pull the camera out during certain moments, like when climbing around the outside of a building or during certain cutscenes, letting players see the iconic character in action.

 

[Ran]

3 minutes ago, Ser Not Appearing said:

The last Indiana Jones game I played was 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Action Game. I was 7 when it came out and probably between 7-10 when I played it. Don't recall the age but I remember much of the game.

Last one I played was Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis adventure game from LucasArts (RIP). That one was actually quite good, but this was during the adventure game renaissance at LucasArts where they were firing on all four cylinders. Man, I miss traditional adventure games at times, was my favorite genre back when I was a kid. LucasArts (Sam and Max, Secret of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, The Dig...) and Sierra (King's Quest, Gabriel Knight, the more RPG-ish Quest for Glory...)

[Kalbear]

It's pretty uncommon for that return, yeah. Certainly that ratio. COD costs way more to make, and while it makes a lot back it doesn't make anything like a 12x return on investment. 

That budget is certainly reasonable for more indy studios (and many games have been made for a lot less). By comparison Hades probably cost about $15m to make, and definitely did not make $180m. Undertale cost something like $50k pledged and made $25m back - though the actual cost was probably higher given that it was like 1 and a half people working on their spare time. Same with Hollow Knight, which had a similarly low budget.

[Werthead]

Avowed looks promising. Carrie Patel has been one of Obsidian's more promising writers and designers, so interesting to see what she does as a project lead (TIL she's written a fantasy trilogy, Recoletta, which sounds interesting).

The dual-wielding mage-spellslinger looks particularly cool.

What is amusing is that Obsidian look like they pursued this project because they wanted to make a blockbuster AAA-looking RPG because the market seemed to be saying that was the smarter move than making Pillars of Eternity 3. And now the market seems to be saying the exact opposite. Maybe they'll tap Josh Sawyer to do a higher-budget PoE3 now.

[polishgenius]

32 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Avowed looks promising. Carrie Patel has been one of Obsidian's more promising writers and designers, so interesting to see what she does as a project lead (TIL she's written a fantasy trilogy, Recoletta, which sounds interesting).

The dual-wielding mage-spellslinger looks particularly cool.

What is amusing is that Obsidian look like they pursued this project because they wanted to make a blockbuster AAA-looking RPG because the market seemed to be saying that was the smarter move than making Pillars of Eternity 3. And now the market seems to be saying the exact opposite. Maybe they'll tap Josh Sawyer to do a higher-budget PoE3 now.

 

I know this doesn't necessarily speak to a bad game and in fact the weirdness and richness may well be found in the story rather than pure setting, but it's a touch worrying that that breakdown repeatedly highlights how strange and wonderful the setting is and... it's not, really. At least not visually. The game she's describing makes me want to see modern AAA money thrown at a Planescape: Torment or Disco Elysium (really should give that a full play) setting and what they're showing is a desert. A pretty standard desert.

[ASOIAFrelatedusername]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Avowed looks promising. Carrie Patel has been one of Obsidian's more promising writers and designers, so interesting to see what she does as a project lead (TIL she's written a fantasy trilogy, Recoletta, which sounds interesting).

The dual-wielding mage-spellslinger looks particularly cool.

What is amusing is that Obsidian look like they pursued this project because they wanted to make a blockbuster AAA-looking RPG because the market seemed to be saying that was the smarter move than making Pillars of Eternity 3. And now the market seems to be saying the exact opposite. Maybe they'll tap Josh Sawyer to do a higher-budget PoE3 now.

Not really convinced by the animations and the "feel" of the combat. It seems to lack weight and impact.

Edited January 18 by ASOIAFrelatedusername

[Ser Not Appearing]

Avowed looks good but I was instantly distracted.

I don't care what anyone says, casting spells with a wand will always feel/look weak. Give me a staff and thanks in advance.

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

4 hours ago, Werthead said:

Avowed looks promising. Carrie Patel has been one of Obsidian's more promising writers and designers, so interesting to see what she does as a project lead (TIL she's written a fantasy trilogy, Recoletta, which sounds interesting).

The dual-wielding mage-spellslinger looks particularly cool.

What is amusing is that Obsidian look like they pursued this project because they wanted to make a blockbuster AAA-looking RPG because the market seemed to be saying that was the smarter move than making Pillars of Eternity 3. And now the market seems to be saying the exact opposite. Maybe they'll tap Josh Sawyer to do a higher-budget PoE3 now.

Why is it so cartoony looking ? Or is that the result of using UE5 ? 

[Darryk]

13 hours ago, Ran said:

Sierra (King's Quest, Gabriel Knight, the more RPG-ish Quest for Glory...)

Ah the memories....

[Darryk]

14 hours ago, Ran said:

I did not expect it to be primarily first person, but then again that's Machine Games' bread and butter. But I also suppose they were also afraid third person would draw too many comparisons with Uncharted. Troy Baker (Joel in The Last of Us games) seems to be doing a sort of "notes of Harrison Ford, but just notes" approach to the voice, which is probably the right way to go if he can't sustain a full-on impersonation.

This looks good IMO. Like the Indy sequel we've been waiting for.

[Relic]

17 hours ago, Ran said:

Last one I played was Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis 

What a banger of a game. Loved it when I was a kid.

[Caligula_K3]

On 1/18/2024 at 11:57 AM, Ser Not Appearing said:

 

Somehow it rises to classic status for me despite the gripes ... but, yes. I literally wouldn't have been able to complete this game without the internet. I simply ran into too many things that I couldn't figure out.

It's the only open world game I think that's true about. There's just so much stuff locked behind randomness or non-logical and very much not obvious solutions.

If you want a specific ending, btw, you'll need a guide. Especially the Ranni one. And if you want to avoid a certain, potential unsatisfying ending that you can accidentally trigger, you'll need a guide.

Thanks for the tips. I'd started the Ranni questline on my own, but yes, there's no way I would have finished it without a guide. You need to talk to a doll three times? Huh? Meanwhile I still never figured out how to get Nepheli to stop moping.

I actually beat Elden Ring yesterday (with Ranni's ending). It was a pretty hilariously anti-climactic ending, but then again, I don't think any ending would have worked for me since I'm so over Miyazaki's approach to storytelling. By the end of the game, the only two things/people that From Software had gotten me to care about were the turtle in a pope hat and the pretty tree.

Spoiler

Sadly, the game makes you burn the pretty tree for... reasons. And there doesn't seem to be an ending where you can make Turtle Pope into the Elden Lord.

It was a great game overall. Definitely weaker after Leyndell, but the last parts of Dark Souls games have always been weaker than their beginnings and middles. The gameplay is generally top notch all the way through and they created a beautiful world that was fun to explore. Alongside Dark Souls 3, they've also finally removed many of the most frustrating parts of Dark Souls gameplay. I'm sure I'll play again sometime, either in New Game + or with a completely different build (sorcery, maybe?).

Edited January 21 by Caligula_K3

[Rhom]

I’ve been playing Super Mario RPG Remake.  Not sure how I never picked it up for SNES back in the day.  It has some good old school JRPG vibes and cheeky humor.  It’s a fun little time waster so far.

[Toth]

I guess I am currently again back in a Star Wars Legends mood. Went back to writing on my fanfic, continued my glacial New Jedi Order read-through... and booted the Empire at War mod "Thrawn's Revenge" again.

Damn, this game is just such an incredibly addicting curiosity cabinet full of obscure Star Wars lore. I always find it fascinating to keep open Wookiepedia and look up whatever stuff I'm using and see just how deeply they needed to dig to flesh out their vision of the factions and their balancing.

I first started the very small 16 planets "Inner Core Conflict" campaign as the "Greater Maldrood". Which, despite the weird name, is just an Imperial warlord faction with a focus on small-ish cruisers. Which... I found quite frustrating to deal with, because this frigate and cruiser roster only consists of different flavors of "some guns on a fragile chassis", which... is just a very costly way to wage war, particularly since this campaign is an only Imperial warlords brawl, so you have to figure out a way to counter Star Destroyers and Bellator dreadnaughts without any bombers, since the Greater Maldrood has no carriers whatsoever. In the early game I got hammered by a massive wall of ISDs, but thankfully that was just the starting units the AI had and eventually they ran out of them and instead got obsessed with building hundreds and hundreds of gunships. I ended up building only ISD-1s and Tector type Star Destroyers (essentially ISDs with no hangar, but extra armor) with a corvette screen, where eventually I switched out the ISDs with more Tectors, because the ISDs ended up too fragile for the continued onslaught and I had some battles where only the Tectors survived. Even then, defeating the Bellators forced me to build my own, because there was just no other way to take them down without receiving horrible losses otherwise. Somehow ground combat was more relaxing, particularly the MAATs proved super powerful. Those are repulsorlift troop carriers that are the successor of clone wars LAAT/is... which only appeared once briefly in The Force Unleashed 2. And yet here they became a crucial way for me to traverse the huge maps, drop Navy Troopers (since I didn't even have Stormtroopers for some reason) behind enemy lines and scout for bombardments.

After eventually beating that campaign, I went on with the "Corporate Acquisitions" campaign, playing the titular Corporate Sector Authority. Which has a fun ship gacha in form of the black market, where once a month it gets a random ship added that you can buy, with it ranging from tiny corellian corvettes to gigantic Mandator dreadnaughts. My motley fleet of hand-me-downs looks extremely silly, but it is quite funny to try out various odd units like Lucrehulk ball-pieces without the ring-pieces or combine various CIS, Republic, Imperial and Rebel ships in one ugly pile-up. Very recently I got lucky and the ship gacha put out a Tagge battlecruiser. What is that? An oversized star destroyer that showed up only in a comic from 1979, where it's the "strikebreaker" of an Empire affiliated mining company. And here I am using it as the bulwark of my fleet, soaking up damage while my other smaller ships dish it out. Meanwhile on the ground I have this weird mixture of multi-role police units, many of which can repair or heal nearby units as an ability, shielded by large swathes of old CIS battledroids. Which are still extremely useful, particularly the B1s with their sheer mass and the Hailfire tank droids because they punch really, really hard, even if they are fragile.

[Ser Not Appearing]

I've been sucked into Palworlds. I've played it (on Xbox because Gamepass) long enough that I think the best description is Fortnite Legos base-building and progress (kinda loosely similar to dragon quest builders) with Pokemon slapped on top and some strong BoTW vibes in things like climbing, paragliding, cooking animation and even music ... and I find myself going to a high point at night to spot new fast travel points and other items ... and they added evergaols from Elden Ring.

It's rather addictive and yet has room for filling in.

Kind of hard to believe it hasn't been sued out of existence but I haven't followed that side of it much.

Edited January 25 by Ser Not Appearing

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

13 minutes ago, Ser Not Appearing said:

I've been sucked into Palworlds. I've played it (on Xbox because Gamepass) long enough that I think the best description is Fortnite Legos base-building and progress (kinda loosely similar to dragon quest builders) with Pokemon slapped on top and some strong BoTW vibes in things like climbing, paragliding, cooking animation and even music ... and I find myself going to a high point at night to spot new fast travel points and other items ... and they added evergaols from Elden Ring.

It's rather addictive and yet has room for filling in.

Kind of hard to believe it hasn't been sued out of existence but I haven't followed that side of it much.

Is it better than the last 4 Pokémon games ? 

[polishgenius]

1 hour ago, Ser Not Appearing said:

 

Kind of hard to believe it hasn't been sued out of existence but I haven't followed that side of it much.

As far as I can tell it comes down to 'all the designs are just changed enough that Nintendo have no claim'. Mods that make them actual Pokémon are getting law-bombed.

 

 

1 hour ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Is it better than the last 4 Pokémon games ? 

Tbf graphics aside the last Pokémon was pretty great, and so was Legends Arceus.

[polishgenius]

lmao, the next game the Palworld studio have in development.