At this point they’ve had time to basically go through a full development cycle post Hardsuit Labs firing, haven’t they? I think the game will be fine, it just won’t be the Bloodlines 2 we were initially promised - or wanted. As far as I know they more or less threw out 90% of the previous project, kept some assets and had The Chinese Room make a new game.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 20 Aug 11:29
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Damn, I didn’t realize the team that started with Dear Esther ended up on Bloodlines 2.
I have faith in that team, but at the same time, its… generally an ominous portent when any game’s development has a team of idiot corpo mismanagers driving the whole process.
And yes, for clarity, if its needed, Paradox is a fucking awful publisher, they don’t know how to make a ‘strategy’ game that involves any strategy other than ‘cheese the AI’, the ‘strategy’ they know is ‘keep stringing along neurotic obsessives with an endless flood of pricey dlcs and false promises.’
Aidinthel@reddthat.com
on 20 Aug 09:51
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The System Shock remake was really good, and that went through dev hell also, so it’s completely possible.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 20 Aug 11:31
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Yes, but the publisher (ie, corporate slave drivers) on that wasn’t Paradox.
As usual I won’t read shit about it, pirate it when it’s out. And if it doesn’t suck (no pun intended) I’ll buy.
I’m fairly optimistic with this one though. The expectations surely are high, but it would be a horrible shame to fuck this great series up.
Especially considering it’s kinda niche customer-base. It’s not the next multiplayer war-game or FIFA.
I thought it was dumb enough when Age of Empires jumped on the bandwagon. But they managed to find something even less in-keeping with the original game’s themes…
Luckily, as being no die-hard rts-fan, this went by me (or I just forgot…). But it sounds bad.
My current fear is also the remake of “Gothic”. After all those many many years it really gets one.
The aoe thing wasn’t too bad tbh. It wasn’t a standalone game, just a game mode, like a custom scenario. And it was kinda fun for a little while, but they added a full queue for it in the UI and everything. It was moderately popular for about two weeks, and now there’s a queue languishing that nobody ever uses. It was amusing.
The aoe thing wasn’t too bad tbh. It wasn’t a standalone game, just a game mode, like a custom scenario. And it was kinda fun for a little while, but they added a full queue for it in the UI and everything. It was moderately popular for about two weeks, and now there’s a queue languishing that nobody ever uses. It was amusing.My current fear is also the remake of “Gothic”I only learnt about Gothic fairly recently, thanks to this really interesting video. I’m certainly hoping the remake does it justice, because it looks really interesting.
Lol. OK that is amongst the funnier things. But could’ve been. Counterstrike was once just a nod/gamemmode too.
If you’re not into RPG or not German,Polish or Russian (that seems to be only still active people who keep the original alive to this day) you might’ve missed it. It was a revelation like half-life back in the day. For once not USA-centric, it used a fitting harsh language (can only speak for the original german VO) for an original idea. You’re no superhero but just a regular are able to maybe lift a stick and kick a bug 😁
Small world but every item counted, blahblah I could go on for hours :-)
With all modern updates and fanworks it still works and better than ever.
Remake not sucking has low probability though. Expectations are most likely impossible to fulfill even if they do a true remake with no bullshit.
I mean, LoL was inspired by DotA, which was originally a mod for Warcraft 3, so it wouldn’t even be the first time RTS spawned a major new genre.
You’re no superhero but just a regular are able to maybe lift a stick and kick a bug
That’s exactly what appeals to me. I really enjoyed that aspect of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, too. Though unfortunately I don’t have a lot of time for big open-world computer RPGs. I never finished KCD, and barely started Baldur’s Gate and the original VtM Bloodlines (among the only other RPGs I can remember starting over the last decade). I don’t think I finished anything since like 2016. But at least in principle, everything I’ve seen about Gothic appeals to me, so if the remake is good I would definitely like to give it a try.
I have a generally positive impression of remakes at the moment, since the games I’ve put more time into than any other over the last 5 years have all been extremely good remakes. Age of Empires 2 and 3 Definitive Editions, Age of Mythology: Retold, and Spyro Reignited. And I’ve heard good things about Oblivion. So without knowing who the developers behind the Gothic remake are, but knowing how beloved it was, my hopes are high that it’s being done with care.
Oh right! I forgot about the wc3 mod which spawned a genre. So yeah, another example.
Oh kingdom come. In theory I would have highly enjoyed the last one. But I only managed 5 hours or so. It’s just too “realistic” for my taste somehow. It even managed to be realistically boring most trips. Not in the sense of “omg this is how I’m gonna die” but more like “this is a forest. And that’s about it”. If that makes sense?
It also felt artificially hard, like the souls-games. Hard for the sake of being hard. Maybe I’m just getting too old but it didn’t really click with me. Sadly so, will try again though.
The oblivion remake really deserved the label. I expected some new ai-upscaled textured slapped on the old shit, but no. Completely redone from the ground. The hate it gets mostly stems from the modding-community (which actually kept those games afloat. Without mods they’d all be long gone to, well, oblivion). Same with skyrim. Another new base to re-make eeeeeeverything. Fragmenting the modders AGAIN.
Despite that, if you never played oblivion and don’t wanna fiddle with mods, there’d be no reason to use the old one.
Remakes are hard to do anyway. Either you fuck up or you can never meet nostalgia. Also you get cussed at for doing nothing new OR for doing something new.
Gothic new could be super awesome but would never ever be Gothic again. Like playing half-life today. It’s never the same, no matter how great it is. But a great remake at least gets the franchise floating again due to younger people who can enjoy it the same. Maybe.
As for time I am probably more blessed, I game at least 5hrs a day since the Atari 2600. Besides my servers, smart-home and wifey my great passion 😁
But…Gothic isn’t a big open world. It’s like the size of bg3’s tutorial. If even.
It’s just not empty wasteland. Every step has an importance and no hand holding. You learned where not to go by dying 😁
By today’s standards that map-size would not fly. But it was nore than enough. Still is.
It respects your time. Quick save and exit anytime and continue exactly there. How it should be.
Oh kingdom come. In theory I would have highly enjoyed the last one. But I only managed 5 hours or so. It’s just too “realistic” for my taste somehow.
Oh yeah for sure. Personally I quite liked its experience of travelling in it. That’s a kind of realism that I enjoy, because the cost (in terms of time) of travel made me think about whether I want to travel.
But its combat system was certainly really polarising. The Souls comparison is a really good one, I think. Usually in an RPG, your chances of success depend mostly on your character’s stats. But KCD’s combat is more like a soulslike or an action game than an RPG. It’s more about your skill as a player than about your character’s skills or gear. And it’s designed to be extremely punishing if you’ve got multiple opponents. Which is realistic, but not usually very fun.
But…Gothic isn’t a big open world. It’s like the size of bg3’s tutorial
To be honest, I find some gamers’ obsession with the land area of open world games rather tedious. I remember the same criticism being levied at KCD during its Kickstarter, saying things like “oh, that’s less than a quarter the size of Skyrim” or whatever it was. I don’t really care. The density of things to do within the area is much more important. And even more important than that is the verisimilitude of the world. That quests feel interconnected in believable (not forced) ways, that questgivers feel like the quests they’re giving are things they would actually care about and that would actually matter, given the worldbuilding and story. That’s all stuff that, from what I’ve heard about it, it sounds like Gothic does really well. Idgaf if Skyrim or BG3 have a larger land area.
Good point about the travel in KCD. And yes, i actually found the battle in KC1 extremely unsatisfying. KC2 had it a bit better. But still, my patience grew thin over the last decade, i must admit :-)
For me, personally, that skills-approach doesn’t went well with an RPG. Skills belongs to things like Destiny(2) (which i love btw), but in an RPG it should be about the character I’m playing, not ME. As it’s literally in the name RPG :)
But no complaints, I love everything that is not US-centric for a change and KC totally wasn’t.
Totally agreeing with you on the map-size-topic. I really hate the bigger-and-bigger-trend that usually (logically?) comes with less and less value. Even gothic did fall victim to the trend. G2 was “triple the size!!!” (or whatever, but THAT was the leading argument) And G3 was “EVEN BIGGER!” …and what was it? more walking, less exploring, less interesting stuff, just large plains of nothingness filled with filler-mobs. Nonetheless G2 was absolutely great, and had a fucking great Addon (when addons actually were like 1/3rd more of the base game, not just cut content resold as “DLCs”). G3 was …good.
Also questing in G1 was really great. And actually felt absolutely fitting. Not some “kill a dragon” shit but “go clean the toilet you piece of shit”. Or “steal this”, then you steal it, and they give you a beating not a reward :-) You really work your way up. Every weapon-, armor- or skill-upgrade REALLY mattered and changed everything.
Back then it also had a fantastic unexpected gimmick in it (which now is removed due to licenses): Suddenly in act 2, a famous midage-band had a “live-concert”. Back then it was one of my favourite bands and suddenly they perform in game…that was a chin-dropper :)
And it was one of the (or the?) first game(s) that had NPCs do have an actual job/routine. They ate, drink, pee, work, sleep. Ah you see, I could go on and on …
Skyrim was very vast, but at least they really tried to fill it meaningful. Most of it. So exploring mostly paid off. But without mods it was just okay-ish anyway. But it’s THE game that got the greatest mod-community there ever was (and sadly probably will be). Last time i spent like hundreds of hours modding until i ended up with like 2000 mods, kid you not. Didn’t actually PLAY for half as long :-)
BG3 was also incredibly good. Very memorable!
Even gothic did fall victim to the trend. G2 was “triple the size!!!”
If “triple the size” comes with triple the budget—or at least triple that component of the budget that goes towards writing, worldbuilding, and modelling & animating characters, terrain, and buildings—along with triple the time for those tasks…then that sounds brilliant! But more often they get the budget for maybe 1.5x the content, leaving the world feeling half as full.
Yeah exactly…and it was - who would’ve thought - 1.5x the content. At best. Just stretched to fill the land.
Everyone thought (and still seems to think) that size is everything in an open world.
Only procedural games like No mans sky beat this with even less soul. While being technically fascinating, they’re ultimately boring once you’ve seen all the “ingredients”.
dukemirage@lemmy.world
on 20 Aug 09:24
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Like most major releases the past decade.
That’s disingenuous. You have terrible games now, you’ve got them 40 years ago.
Sure. But there was a time where even AAA didn’t suck so much. Where a failure was memorable. Now the ones that are great are memorable.
And I’m gaming since the Atari 2600.
The amount of re-iterated boring crap, filled with micro-transactions, pre-order and ultra-mega-deluxe bundle with season pass.
All that highly calculated to please the least common denominator.
dukemirage@lemmy.world
on 20 Aug 11:50
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I think you’re high on nostalgia. Failures are not memorable, that’s why we can’t remember them. What you describe are a bunch of big money makers from the big publishers. It’s very easy to stear around them and still get more great games than there’s time to play them.
Plus, making games is so much easier that the industry is cranking out more games than ever. Even if the proportion of stinkers stays constant, someone with bad statistics knowledge and an obsession with the negative would notice an increased number of bad games.
Luckily you actually already know the exact proportion of good vs bad games, and even over the last 3 decades. That is awesome.
And “never been easier”…yeah sure. Except we went from one-dude-did-it-all-in-a-week to hundreds of people working for years and spending even tons of millions of moneyz.
Luckily I never claimed that I did. And those “one-dude-did-it-all-in-a-week” games are getting eclipsed by things people churn out in a 48 game jam, what’s you’re point?
I can tell you’re just an ornery arse, so I’m gonna dip.
Nah, totally no nostalgia. I wish it would be just that and AAA was still good.
And yes, I did speak of “big money makers” AKA AAA.
Also speak for yourself, but failures like e.g. duke nukem forever or even ET (on Atari) were memorable.
The big money makers are Fortnite, yearly iterations of CoD and EA Sports titles, and mobile gacha crap. They overshadow „smaller“ AAA releases, which still mostly don’t have any mtx.
Your examples are legendary. But do you remember any other flop on the 2600? Or games like Haze? Now forgotten like most other flops.
zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 20 Aug 14:47
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To be fair, there wasn’t really much “gaming news” in existence back then. One only heard about game flops when it became so notable that regular news picked it up as was the case when E.T. and well the whole existing console industry when Atari imploded.
Of course I don’t remember every flop. But also not every success.
But if just checking AAA releases of the last 5 yrs, I could name a loooot of games with >40% bad reviews. It might still be a financial success though, and this is what sadly really counts.
Especially established franchises usually just go down, in tendency. If something releases a part 4, my expectations are already at zero.
The louder the hype, the worse the product.
I would have to think a while longer to name good games that also were hyped. Cyberpunk? Even through even that one got a lot of hate since release. All others that come to mind were Indis.
It’s almost certainly going to be complete shit (if you are looking for a roleplaying game with strong world building and well written characters).
A mediocre action-RPG with a VTM theme. And Paradox are going to release a whole bunch of pricey DLCs while abandoning the core game and ignoring critical bugs.
I used to buy Paradox games 10+ years ago, by this point they are a European EA.
And paradox are going to release a whole bunch of pricey DLCs while abandoning the core game and ignoring critical bugs.
I wanted to push back on that. I know they do that with their strategy games, but to do it with story-driven games too? “That’s far-fetched,” I thought. But no, you were spot on: There’s day 1DLC, two clans are behind a pay wall.
Yeah Paradox bought White Wolf in 2015, a couple of months after the previous publishers announced they were working on 5th edition. White Wolf brought the development of the game in house, underneath Paradox.
Then shortly after the release of V5 in 2018 there were a few scandals within White Wolf, and Paradox dissolved the company, handing off development to Modiphius with Paradox retaining final approval rights.
In late 2020 they partnered with Renegade to do the publishing of future V5 products. Paradox Interactive were the developers of Werewolf W5, and Renegade published it. It’s unclear to me who exactly is developing W5 and V5 supplementary material, but I think it might be a mix of Paradox, Modiphius, and maybe others.
Then earlier this year, Paradox announced they were re-forming White Wolf to be the company in charge of licensing and publishing of World of Darkness content.
It’s all super complicated, but the bottom line is that since before the release of 5th edition, Paradox has been the big business daddy.
When you lay it out like that it does sound like a mess.
But actually looking at what they’ve done, from the outside, it wouldn’t be obvious at all. They’ve had a steady pace of what seem to be fairly well-received books, and accompanied them with decent media such as the Jason Carl–storytold LA By Night actual play series. A lot of the old folks don’t love the changes to lore and mechanics, especially in Werewolf, but more broadly they seem to have attracted relatively positive reviews.
I replied to @Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world with more information about the corporate structure, but the TL;DR for the purposes of your comment is that Paradox bought White Wolf, dissolved White Wolf shortly after V5’s release in 2018, and brought White Wolf back earlier this year and White Wolf is back in charge of both licensing and publishing. (I suspect they also have in-house development, but it’s not super clear.)
I’m not 100% clear on what you’re getting at in your final paragraph, but Werewolf W5 came out in 2023, and there have been numerous non-vampire World of Darkness video games released during the Paradox era, including 2020’s Werewolf: The Apocalypse — Heart of the Forest.
As for Changeling, after doing Vampire: The Masquerade, Hunter: The Reckoning, and Werewolf: The Apocalypse, the lead designer at White Wolf has said their next likely release will be a 5th edition Mage: The Ascension, but he also hinted at Changeling: The Dreaming, so it’s not unreasonably likely that that will get a 5th edition release some time in the next decade. 2018 for VtM, HtR in 2022, WtA in 2023, I’d think worst case 2027 for Mage, 2031/32 for Changeling, unless they stumble across problems that force it to be cancelled.
Yeah fair enough. As I said, there was at least one Werewolf game released kinda recently. It doesn’t seem to have had a brilliant reception, but it does exist. They also did release a Wraith game not too long ago, so they’re obviously not afraid to reach into the more niche parts of the world. Changeling may be possible at some point.
BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world
on 22 Aug 01:35
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I’m still a sucker for Stellaris and Crusader Kings 3, but the HoI and Vicky followups have been stinkers. Their modern DLC pricing is also unhinged. I hope they will turn things around, but I don’t expect them.
bagodogs@sh.itjust.works
on 20 Aug 11:34
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Too many red flags, I can’t see this being good. Would love to be proven wrong though.
a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 21 Aug 12:19
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The review does sound pretty dope tho, like a mixture of dishonored, disco elysium and enhanced telltale-game. like you i will keep my expectations low, but what i read in the hands-on review sounded better than expected from a game that has been through dev-hell and back.
Lasombra and Toreador being locked behind DLC doesnt exactly spark my confidence
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
on 20 Aug 13:56
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I don’t have much faith in this for a LOT of reasons, but that aspect isn’t necessarily bad.
Bloodlines 1 was… interesting. The problem is that the coolest clan to play as was Malk but Malk also only really “worked” as a second or even third playthrough when you can understand all the fourth wall breakages. In a world where the budget of the game would line it up with (let’s say) a 60 USD price point but it was actually 50+DLC=60?
That actually seems perfect to me. The people with a lot of faith/hype pay full price. The rest of us get the game at a discount and then buy the DLC on sale in a few months.
That said? I am not familiar with Lasombra but Toreador are basically the charisma clan and… most CRPGs are best played as a charisma/diplomacy build anyway. So… yeah. Feels kind of bad?
Like, I will always think locking NG+ behind DLC (hi Sega/RGG) is a ridiculously shit feeling thing to do. But also? It sort of makes sense that the people who would even care about NG+ are the ones who are really into the game.
But I think a better example is how a lot of ARPGs will wait for the DLC to add the advanced classes that either require a lot more piano playing or who are just a radically different design philosophy (often minion masters) that the game just wasn’t actually built around.
Which I think gets back to Day One DLC always feeling bad but actually making a lot of sense if you understand the game dev lifecycle. Like, I’ll never like it but I also acknowledge there isn’t a lot of value in “We finished up the DLC during QA but aren’t going to sell it for a month so that people don’t get pisssy”
In a world where the budget of the game would line it up with (let’s say) a 60 USD price point but it was actually 50+DLC=60?
Unfortunately, in Australia the base game is $85, and the version that includes Lasombra and Toreador is $130. That makes the DLC almost as much as an entire new game, not merely a DLC.
But yeah, I agree that if the DLC was added to a game that was receiving otherwise good press, and if it didn’t feel like they had just lopped off something that most players are going to want, I could maybe look past it. But this really feels like pouring salt into the already gaping wound.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
on 20 Aug 14:51
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Well, the good news is that batshit insane pricing is coming to the entire world… Although there is “hope” that basically everyone will decide that physical distribution isn’t worth the hassle and everything becomes digital and all of the “We are going to price this to not piss off the people bringing discs into the country” goes away.
And I am not going to at all pretend I am immune to this. But it is important to think of the actual practice independent of the game and company. Because… what you described is effectively “I am okay with this if it is a game I like but not if it is a game I don’t”. Which is 100% true but it also is what has fueled so much of the shittiest behavior in the industry.
sad_detective_man@leminal.space
on 20 Aug 12:37
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getting ready for my next fell-for-it-again award 🧛
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Please
Don’t
Suck
Like most major releases the past decade.
it’ll be some kind of a miracle if the game ends up being even decent after all the tumultuous dev-hell it went through…
But I sure hope it’ll be good.
At this point they’ve had time to basically go through a full development cycle post Hardsuit Labs firing, haven’t they? I think the game will be fine, it just won’t be the Bloodlines 2 we were initially promised - or wanted. As far as I know they more or less threw out 90% of the previous project, kept some assets and had The Chinese Room make a new game.
Damn, I didn’t realize the team that started with Dear Esther ended up on Bloodlines 2.
I have faith in that team, but at the same time, its… generally an ominous portent when any game’s development has a team of idiot corpo mismanagers driving the whole process.
And yes, for clarity, if its needed, Paradox is a fucking awful publisher, they don’t know how to make a ‘strategy’ game that involves any strategy other than ‘cheese the AI’, the ‘strategy’ they know is ‘keep stringing along neurotic obsessives with an endless flood of pricey dlcs and false promises.’
The System Shock remake was really good, and that went through dev hell also, so it’s completely possible.
Yes, but the publisher (ie, corporate slave drivers) on that wasn’t Paradox.
As usual I won’t read shit about it, pirate it when it’s out. And if it doesn’t suck (no pun intended) I’ll buy. I’m fairly optimistic with this one though. The expectations surely are high, but it would be a horrible shame to fuck this great series up. Especially considering it’s kinda niche customer-base. It’s not the next multiplayer war-game or FIFA.
Remember when World of Darkness jumped on the battle royale bandwagon?
Yes. With great regret I remember this 😔
I thought it was dumb enough when Age of Empires jumped on the bandwagon. But they managed to find something even less in-keeping with the original game’s themes…
Luckily, as being no die-hard rts-fan, this went by me (or I just forgot…). But it sounds bad. My current fear is also the remake of “Gothic”. After all those many many years it really gets one.
The aoe thing wasn’t too bad tbh. It wasn’t a standalone game, just a game mode, like a custom scenario. And it was kinda fun for a little while, but they added a full queue for it in the UI and everything. It was moderately popular for about two weeks, and now there’s a queue languishing that nobody ever uses. It was amusing.
I only learnt about Gothic fairly recently, thanks to this really interesting video. I’m certainly hoping the remake does it justice, because it looks really interesting.
The aoe thing wasn’t too bad tbh. It wasn’t a standalone game, just a game mode, like a custom scenario. And it was kinda fun for a little while, but they added a full queue for it in the UI and everything. It was moderately popular for about two weeks, and now there’s a queue languishing that nobody ever uses. It was amusing.My current fear is also the remake of “Gothic”I only learnt about Gothic fairly recently, thanks to this really interesting video. I’m certainly hoping the remake does it justice, because it looks really interesting.
Lol. OK that is amongst the funnier things. But could’ve been. Counterstrike was once just a nod/gamemmode too.
If you’re not into RPG or not German,Polish or Russian (that seems to be only still active people who keep the original alive to this day) you might’ve missed it. It was a revelation like half-life back in the day. For once not USA-centric, it used a fitting harsh language (can only speak for the original german VO) for an original idea. You’re no superhero but just a regular are able to maybe lift a stick and kick a bug 😁 Small world but every item counted, blahblah I could go on for hours :-) With all modern updates and fanworks it still works and better than ever. Remake not sucking has low probability though. Expectations are most likely impossible to fulfill even if they do a true remake with no bullshit.
I mean, LoL was inspired by DotA, which was originally a mod for Warcraft 3, so it wouldn’t even be the first time RTS spawned a major new genre.
That’s exactly what appeals to me. I really enjoyed that aspect of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, too. Though unfortunately I don’t have a lot of time for big open-world computer RPGs. I never finished KCD, and barely started Baldur’s Gate and the original VtM Bloodlines (among the only other RPGs I can remember starting over the last decade). I don’t think I finished anything since like 2016. But at least in principle, everything I’ve seen about Gothic appeals to me, so if the remake is good I would definitely like to give it a try.
I have a generally positive impression of remakes at the moment, since the games I’ve put more time into than any other over the last 5 years have all been extremely good remakes. Age of Empires 2 and 3 Definitive Editions, Age of Mythology: Retold, and Spyro Reignited. And I’ve heard good things about Oblivion. So without knowing who the developers behind the Gothic remake are, but knowing how beloved it was, my hopes are high that it’s being done with care.
Oh right! I forgot about the wc3 mod which spawned a genre. So yeah, another example.
Oh kingdom come. In theory I would have highly enjoyed the last one. But I only managed 5 hours or so. It’s just too “realistic” for my taste somehow. It even managed to be realistically boring most trips. Not in the sense of “omg this is how I’m gonna die” but more like “this is a forest. And that’s about it”. If that makes sense? It also felt artificially hard, like the souls-games. Hard for the sake of being hard. Maybe I’m just getting too old but it didn’t really click with me. Sadly so, will try again though.
The oblivion remake really deserved the label. I expected some new ai-upscaled textured slapped on the old shit, but no. Completely redone from the ground. The hate it gets mostly stems from the modding-community (which actually kept those games afloat. Without mods they’d all be long gone to, well, oblivion). Same with skyrim. Another new base to re-make eeeeeeverything. Fragmenting the modders AGAIN. Despite that, if you never played oblivion and don’t wanna fiddle with mods, there’d be no reason to use the old one.
Remakes are hard to do anyway. Either you fuck up or you can never meet nostalgia. Also you get cussed at for doing nothing new OR for doing something new. Gothic new could be super awesome but would never ever be Gothic again. Like playing half-life today. It’s never the same, no matter how great it is. But a great remake at least gets the franchise floating again due to younger people who can enjoy it the same. Maybe.
As for time I am probably more blessed, I game at least 5hrs a day since the Atari 2600. Besides my servers, smart-home and wifey my great passion 😁
But…Gothic isn’t a big open world. It’s like the size of bg3’s tutorial. If even. It’s just not empty wasteland. Every step has an importance and no hand holding. You learned where not to go by dying 😁 By today’s standards that map-size would not fly. But it was nore than enough. Still is. It respects your time. Quick save and exit anytime and continue exactly there. How it should be.
Oh yeah for sure. Personally I quite liked its experience of travelling in it. That’s a kind of realism that I enjoy, because the cost (in terms of time) of travel made me think about whether I want to travel.
But its combat system was certainly really polarising. The Souls comparison is a really good one, I think. Usually in an RPG, your chances of success depend mostly on your character’s stats. But KCD’s combat is more like a soulslike or an action game than an RPG. It’s more about your skill as a player than about your character’s skills or gear. And it’s designed to be extremely punishing if you’ve got multiple opponents. Which is realistic, but not usually very fun.
To be honest, I find some gamers’ obsession with the land area of open world games rather tedious. I remember the same criticism being levied at KCD during its Kickstarter, saying things like “oh, that’s less than a quarter the size of Skyrim” or whatever it was. I don’t really care. The density of things to do within the area is much more important. And even more important than that is the verisimilitude of the world. That quests feel interconnected in believable (not forced) ways, that questgivers feel like the quests they’re giving are things they would actually care about and that would actually matter, given the worldbuilding and story. That’s all stuff that, from what I’ve heard about it, it sounds like Gothic does really well. Idgaf if Skyrim or BG3 have a larger land area.
Good point about the travel in KCD. And yes, i actually found the battle in KC1 extremely unsatisfying. KC2 had it a bit better. But still, my patience grew thin over the last decade, i must admit :-) For me, personally, that skills-approach doesn’t went well with an RPG. Skills belongs to things like Destiny(2) (which i love btw), but in an RPG it should be about the character I’m playing, not ME. As it’s literally in the name RPG :) But no complaints, I love everything that is not US-centric for a change and KC totally wasn’t.
Totally agreeing with you on the map-size-topic. I really hate the bigger-and-bigger-trend that usually (logically?) comes with less and less value. Even gothic did fall victim to the trend. G2 was “triple the size!!!” (or whatever, but THAT was the leading argument) And G3 was “EVEN BIGGER!” …and what was it? more walking, less exploring, less interesting stuff, just large plains of nothingness filled with filler-mobs. Nonetheless G2 was absolutely great, and had a fucking great Addon (when addons actually were like 1/3rd more of the base game, not just cut content resold as “DLCs”). G3 was …good.
Also questing in G1 was really great. And actually felt absolutely fitting. Not some “kill a dragon” shit but “go clean the toilet you piece of shit”. Or “steal this”, then you steal it, and they give you a beating not a reward :-) You really work your way up. Every weapon-, armor- or skill-upgrade REALLY mattered and changed everything. Back then it also had a fantastic unexpected gimmick in it (which now is removed due to licenses): Suddenly in act 2, a famous midage-band had a “live-concert”. Back then it was one of my favourite bands and suddenly they perform in game…that was a chin-dropper :) And it was one of the (or the?) first game(s) that had NPCs do have an actual job/routine. They ate, drink, pee, work, sleep. Ah you see, I could go on and on …
Skyrim was very vast, but at least they really tried to fill it meaningful. Most of it. So exploring mostly paid off. But without mods it was just okay-ish anyway. But it’s THE game that got the greatest mod-community there ever was (and sadly probably will be). Last time i spent like hundreds of hours modding until i ended up with like 2000 mods, kid you not. Didn’t actually PLAY for half as long :-) BG3 was also incredibly good. Very memorable!
If “triple the size” comes with triple the budget—or at least triple that component of the budget that goes towards writing, worldbuilding, and modelling & animating characters, terrain, and buildings—along with triple the time for those tasks…then that sounds brilliant! But more often they get the budget for maybe 1.5x the content, leaving the world feeling half as full.
Yeah exactly…and it was - who would’ve thought - 1.5x the content. At best. Just stretched to fill the land. Everyone thought (and still seems to think) that size is everything in an open world. Only procedural games like No mans sky beat this with even less soul. While being technically fascinating, they’re ultimately boring once you’ve seen all the “ingredients”.
That’s disingenuous. You have terrible games now, you’ve got them 40 years ago.
Sure. But there was a time where even AAA didn’t suck so much. Where a failure was memorable. Now the ones that are great are memorable. And I’m gaming since the Atari 2600. The amount of re-iterated boring crap, filled with micro-transactions, pre-order and ultra-mega-deluxe bundle with season pass. All that highly calculated to please the least common denominator.
I think you’re high on nostalgia. Failures are not memorable, that’s why we can’t remember them. What you describe are a bunch of big money makers from the big publishers. It’s very easy to stear around them and still get more great games than there’s time to play them.
Plus, making games is so much easier that the industry is cranking out more games than ever. Even if the proportion of stinkers stays constant, someone with bad statistics knowledge and an obsession with the negative would notice an increased number of bad games.
Luckily you actually already know the exact proportion of good vs bad games, and even over the last 3 decades. That is awesome.
And “never been easier”…yeah sure. Except we went from one-dude-did-it-all-in-a-week to hundreds of people working for years and spending even tons of millions of moneyz.
Luckily I never claimed that I did. And those “one-dude-did-it-all-in-a-week” games are getting eclipsed by things people churn out in a 48 game jam, what’s you’re point?
I can tell you’re just an ornery arse, so I’m gonna dip.
As if I’d care about some murican’s opinion 😁 Now go back to work/school.
Nah, totally no nostalgia. I wish it would be just that and AAA was still good.
And yes, I did speak of “big money makers” AKA AAA. Also speak for yourself, but failures like e.g. duke nukem forever or even ET (on Atari) were memorable.
The big money makers are Fortnite, yearly iterations of CoD and EA Sports titles, and mobile gacha crap. They overshadow „smaller“ AAA releases, which still mostly don’t have any mtx. Your examples are legendary. But do you remember any other flop on the 2600? Or games like Haze? Now forgotten like most other flops.
To be fair, there wasn’t really much “gaming news” in existence back then. One only heard about game flops when it became so notable that regular news picked it up as was the case when E.T. and well the whole existing console industry when Atari imploded.
True. If you weren’t knees deep into the scene it all went by unnoticed unless it went nuclear.
Of course I don’t remember every flop. But also not every success. But if just checking AAA releases of the last 5 yrs, I could name a loooot of games with >40% bad reviews. It might still be a financial success though, and this is what sadly really counts. Especially established franchises usually just go down, in tendency. If something releases a part 4, my expectations are already at zero. The louder the hype, the worse the product.
I would have to think a while longer to name good games that also were hyped. Cyberpunk? Even through even that one got a lot of hate since release. All others that come to mind were Indis.
TORtanic would like a word.
Maybe you forgot, but the original Bloodlines was notable for being released in an extremely broken state.
And? It was still awesome. Shit today is bad AND broken. Not so say it’s OK to release broken stuff. It sure ain’t.
Okay Grandpa, pacman was great, we get it.
How does that even work
Touché 😁
I hope it‘s everything fans hope for, they‘ve had to wait for too long
I truly hope the delays was due to the fact that they “give a fuck about their game”… But, I won’t believe it until I see it…
It’s almost certainly going to be complete shit (if you are looking for a roleplaying game with strong world building and well written characters).
A mediocre action-RPG with a VTM theme. And Paradox are going to release a whole bunch of pricey DLCs while abandoning the core game and ignoring critical bugs.
I used to buy Paradox games 10+ years ago, by this point they are a European EA.
I wanted to push back on that. I know they do that with their strategy games, but to do it with story-driven games too? “That’s far-fetched,” I thought. But no, you were spot on: There’s day 1DLC, two clans are behind a pay wall.
You should really not be expecting any different with Paradox, they are truly awful.
I would have held my nose with the Day1 DLC if the game was good, but nah, they transformed it into an action RPG.
It’s really too bad that Paradox was the company that got the VTMB license.
From what I can tell, Paradox bought White Wolf and is actually licensing the publication rights for the TTRPG to another company now.
Which means I’ll probably never see a Werewolf or Changeling game.
Didn’t know they bought out the license owner. That makes it even worse.
Yeah Paradox bought White Wolf in 2015, a couple of months after the previous publishers announced they were working on 5th edition. White Wolf brought the development of the game in house, underneath Paradox.
Then shortly after the release of V5 in 2018 there were a few scandals within White Wolf, and Paradox dissolved the company, handing off development to Modiphius with Paradox retaining final approval rights.
In late 2020 they partnered with Renegade to do the publishing of future V5 products. Paradox Interactive were the developers of Werewolf W5, and Renegade published it. It’s unclear to me who exactly is developing W5 and V5 supplementary material, but I think it might be a mix of Paradox, Modiphius, and maybe others.
Then earlier this year, Paradox announced they were re-forming White Wolf to be the company in charge of licensing and publishing of World of Darkness content.
It’s all super complicated, but the bottom line is that since before the release of 5th edition, Paradox has been the big business daddy.
Ha! Seems like development on the TTRPG side is just as much of a mess as with VTMB.
When you lay it out like that it does sound like a mess.
But actually looking at what they’ve done, from the outside, it wouldn’t be obvious at all. They’ve had a steady pace of what seem to be fairly well-received books, and accompanied them with decent media such as the Jason Carl–storytold LA By Night actual play series. A lot of the old folks don’t love the changes to lore and mechanics, especially in Werewolf, but more broadly they seem to have attracted relatively positive reviews.
I replied to @Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world with more information about the corporate structure, but the TL;DR for the purposes of your comment is that Paradox bought White Wolf, dissolved White Wolf shortly after V5’s release in 2018, and brought White Wolf back earlier this year and White Wolf is back in charge of both licensing and publishing. (I suspect they also have in-house development, but it’s not super clear.)
I’m not 100% clear on what you’re getting at in your final paragraph, but Werewolf W5 came out in 2023, and there have been numerous non-vampire World of Darkness video games released during the Paradox era, including 2020’s Werewolf: The Apocalypse — Heart of the Forest.
As for Changeling, after doing Vampire: The Masquerade, Hunter: The Reckoning, and Werewolf: The Apocalypse, the lead designer at White Wolf has said their next likely release will be a 5th edition Mage: The Ascension, but he also hinted at Changeling: The Dreaming, so it’s not unreasonably likely that that will get a 5th edition release some time in the next decade. 2018 for VtM, HtR in 2022, WtA in 2023, I’d think worst case 2027 for Mage, 2031/32 for Changeling, unless they stumble across problems that force it to be cancelled.
My comment about werewolf and changeling was about video games, not TTRPGs.
Yeah fair enough. As I said, there was at least one Werewolf game released kinda recently. It doesn’t seem to have had a brilliant reception, but it does exist. They also did release a Wraith game not too long ago, so they’re obviously not afraid to reach into the more niche parts of the world. Changeling may be possible at some point.
I’m still a sucker for Stellaris and Crusader Kings 3, but the HoI and Vicky followups have been stinkers. Their modern DLC pricing is also unhinged. I hope they will turn things around, but I don’t expect them.
Too many red flags, I can’t see this being good. Would love to be proven wrong though.
The review does sound pretty dope tho, like a mixture of dishonored, disco elysium and enhanced telltale-game. like you i will keep my expectations low, but what i read in the hands-on review sounded better than expected from a game that has been through dev-hell and back.
Lasombra and Toreador being locked behind DLC doesnt exactly spark my confidence
I don’t have much faith in this for a LOT of reasons, but that aspect isn’t necessarily bad.
Bloodlines 1 was… interesting. The problem is that the coolest clan to play as was Malk but Malk also only really “worked” as a second or even third playthrough when you can understand all the fourth wall breakages. In a world where the budget of the game would line it up with (let’s say) a 60 USD price point but it was actually 50+DLC=60?
That actually seems perfect to me. The people with a lot of faith/hype pay full price. The rest of us get the game at a discount and then buy the DLC on sale in a few months.
That said? I am not familiar with Lasombra but Toreador are basically the charisma clan and… most CRPGs are best played as a charisma/diplomacy build anyway. So… yeah. Feels kind of bad?
Like, I will always think locking NG+ behind DLC (hi Sega/RGG) is a ridiculously shit feeling thing to do. But also? It sort of makes sense that the people who would even care about NG+ are the ones who are really into the game.
But I think a better example is how a lot of ARPGs will wait for the DLC to add the advanced classes that either require a lot more piano playing or who are just a radically different design philosophy (often minion masters) that the game just wasn’t actually built around.
Which I think gets back to Day One DLC always feeling bad but actually making a lot of sense if you understand the game dev lifecycle. Like, I’ll never like it but I also acknowledge there isn’t a lot of value in “We finished up the DLC during QA but aren’t going to sell it for a month so that people don’t get pisssy”
Unfortunately, in Australia the base game is $85, and the version that includes Lasombra and Toreador is $130. That makes the DLC almost as much as an entire new game, not merely a DLC.
But yeah, I agree that if the DLC was added to a game that was receiving otherwise good press, and if it didn’t feel like they had just lopped off something that most players are going to want, I could maybe look past it. But this really feels like pouring salt into the already gaping wound.
Well, the good news is that batshit insane pricing is coming to the entire world… Although there is “hope” that basically everyone will decide that physical distribution isn’t worth the hassle and everything becomes digital and all of the “We are going to price this to not piss off the people bringing discs into the country” goes away.
And I am not going to at all pretend I am immune to this. But it is important to think of the actual practice independent of the game and company. Because… what you described is effectively “I am okay with this if it is a game I like but not if it is a game I don’t”. Which is 100% true but it also is what has fueled so much of the shittiest behavior in the industry.
getting ready for my next fell-for-it-again award 🧛