The only thing that stands out thinking about the game is the dialog choices you get when you play through the game with really low intelligence. I think it gets the best ending.
If you assume 25% of player will buy at 80, 50% will buy at $50, and 25% will buy at $20. Per 100 buyers they stand to make $5,000. However if they start at $50 with 75% of buys buying at that price, they will make $4,250. This is about maximizing profit by selling to fans with deep pockets first then discounting latter to captured the rest of the player base.
But what they don’t take into account is that 75% all at once creates an excitement buzz around the game that ends up causing even more sales then would ever happen otherwise. Look at games like Pokémon go or PalWorld that generated so much buzz. I tried both of them because of the hype and I normally wouldn’t have bothered otherwise.
With a game like there has probably been existence market research to account for how much buzz the game will get. They may even be counting on the buzz to sell more copies at full price.
That tactic would work if it was a multiplayer game or a major franchise but with a single player cookie cutter game there’s no urgency for me to get started and no FOMO. It just isn’t that interesting of an IP
People still will, because lots of people spoil, some like watching streaming etc. When new stuff comes out and I’m not ready to start it, it often also involves stop visiting certain communities, discords, etc.
right, so that would put you into the 50% or the lower 25%, but there are people that will buy higher price, and as long as there is 1% willing to buy before the first sale it is worth it for them.
Just as heads up, Obsidian, I’ll require this to be at least 75% off if it’s good and over 20 hours of single-player campaign. If it’s shorter, I can be enticed at 90% off. I’ll wait for a few years, no problem, my family group backlog is in the thousands.
Setting aside prices, I’ve seen an unexpected amount of sourness directed at the first game. While the first game wasn’t a greatest of all time RPG and had flaws, I found it overall enjoyable enough and it was clearly a project with some passion that I didn’t regret sinking time into it.
I expect similar of the sequel, with hopefully improvements based on feedback from the first game. I plan to have fun with the game, and it is a bit tiring to see things like the pricing prompting people to badmouth the game itself when they are separate things.
Am I going to pay $80? No. No I’m not. This is a single player RPG though. There’s no FOMO of getting left behind on the multiplayer unlocks or the lore of a new season. It’s a singleplayer game. Put it on the wishlist and buy it on a sale. Simple as.
I got it for cheap layer (I almost never buy new games) and found it kinda shallow and boring. I wanted to like it, I love the theme and settings but ehhhhhhhhh
It was hyped up to be Space Fallout and I did not get Space Fallout out of it. Even like… Space Bad Fallout. I just got mediocre space game.
It also wasn’t up to the obsidian standards we come to expect.
But then again i understand not being able to realise it was not a well written or designed game as a large chunk of people think starfield wasn’t that bad.
The expectation that it was an open world modern style Fallout game does seem to be a theme among people who didn’t like it. That wasn’t helped by pre-release marketing that emphasized it came from the studio that made New Vegas (despite the writers and game leads all being different).
I went in to the game without expectations and found the structure of the game closer to a classic BioWare RPG. Rather than a single huge open world it was a series of curated hubs to travel between. At those hubs there was space to explore but it was more limited and curated than a full open world. The more curated approach meant that the game could be designed with certain builds in mind since players would interact with certain areas coming from known directions, allowing alternate routes or quest solutions for different builds to be placed.
Accepting it as a hub based RPG that leaned into a specialized build made the game click for me.
found the structure of the game closer to a classic BioWare RPG.
Yes, exactly. It followed that formula, not Fallout. That probably should have been made more clear so people wouldn’t be making a comparison that didn’t fit at all.
I don’t think it was the lack of open world that put me off from it, as I’ve always preferred hub based games ever since Dragon Age Origins. I think it was just the writing honestly. I don’t like the whole “le soooo epic zany & ttlly rndm” writing that it shares with Borderlands. I don’t find it funny, endearing nor entertaining. It’s just annoying to me and it was everywhere at the time because millennial culture was at its height.
I wouldn’t categorize it that way at all. It extrapolated nationality to one’s employer and religion to the law. It was unsubtle in its views of classism and such, in a way that I appreciated, but it wasn’t just doing zany things “just because”, unless you’ve got a good example that’s slipping my mind.
I can’t say I follow you. I would call it satire rather than “totally random”, but if you didn’t care for the writing, you didn’t care for the writing.
Besides that I just kept feeling like it was “been here, done that”. I remember at one point there is a small village and you have to choose to pull their power source or leave it and it felt so damn familiar, I didn’t bother continuing much past that. I felt like if I hadn’t played a bunch of elder scrolls and fallout games it was probably great but for me it was so much retreading old ground I couldn’t stay interested.
…yup. I didn’t get far. I vaguely remember there were a bunch of other little things but that one drove it home. It was literally a tamer version of fallout 3 opening.
I feel like Outer Worlds at least tried to have a message. But they got scared and pulled away and gave up before the end. It starts way stronger than Fallout 3 imo. At least when it comes to writing and story. It’s of course not a SERIOUS game, but it tries to say something even if it does give up. In my experience Bethesda games are allergic to having a message or point.
I made it maybe 20 min before I un-installed. I don’t vibe with Fallout in general (but I’ll suffer through them) and with the writing style, just wasn’t my thing. Maybe the 2nd one is a bit more polished and I can get into it cause I heard good things.
They probably meant that it felt like a game that was stripped down and shallow compared to similar AAA “full price” games and I completely agree. After playing the first one, I wouldn’t only consider buying this new game if it was at least 50% off.
To be clear, I find this rhetoric pretty silly given that price has no influence over a game’s intrinsic qualities and vice versa.
I’m not arguing for games to be priced higher either, because a lot of that money likely wouldn’t end up going to the devs, but I think the price argument doesn’t stand either way.
Pricetag sets expectations, simple as that. It is documented that no matter the product, people have more trust in a more expensive product than a cheaper one, even if they are actually identical. And thus, people also rightfully expect more of a more expensive product. Let’s talk about cars for example : if I buy an old overused small one just to get from point A to point B, I’ll be absolutely satisfied if I paid a few hundred bucks, and absolutely not if I paid a few thousands.
Same with games, if I have a small indie game entertain me somewhat for a few hours, I’ll be super okay if it cost me a few bucks, and super not ok if it cost me 60 or 80 euros. The intrinsic quality may not change, but that was never what was discussed in the first place.
I think the equivalence doesn’t apply, because a car is a functional product and you should expect price to correlate with added features.
Indie games, as well as AAA, can offer similar quality levels at wildly different prices, so price doesn’t (shouldn’t) enter the equation imo.
Quality, possible enjoyment and my tastes are what I take into account when buying a game or not, not its price point, so that might be the difference.
That’s not what I’m saying.
What I find silly is to expect price to correlate with quality in the video game space, because you have Indies as well as AAA, with wildly different prices, ultimately offering similar qualities. Price shouldn’t come into the equation when talking about a game’s quality or “value” imo.
I guess this is just a difference in how we look at it. I have for decades now used what I perceive as quality/value to decide whether I should buy a game or whether it may be worth if later if it goes on a steep sale. For example, some AAA game that get polarizing reviews or is known to be very short might be an instance where I’d be not be inclined to pay full price because to me, it wasn’t worth the price. Raising the price of a game to $80 means that I personally will want more value out of it. I just bought a game on Steam yesterday for $20 on sale, which was to me worthwhile. If it had been $80, there is no way I would have bought it.
I’ve always maintained that the first was a fine game that was tanked by the price. It was priced to drive gamepass subs, not sell the game. At $35-40, it would have been received much better, imo. Years later, now that it’s more appropriately priced, it seems to be more well-reviewed.
Unfortunately the second is going down the same path. It may take 5+ years for the game to be appreciated to its fullest (assuming no glaring issues), through no fault of the devs.
It was a fine game that was tanked by the massive inconsistency of its quality as you progressed. The game starts out absolutely fantastic, but the quality takes a very sharp and sudden fall after a few hours, and then it just sorta ends not long after. It was a very weird experience. Definitely felt like something went very wrong during development and they had to make big changes.
The first game was like RPG soul food. It didn’t do anything new, the gameplay was fine and the story wasn’t bad. Nothing innovative but nothing poorly executed. I think people should look to the game as explanation for why Nintendo doesn’t make the ‘normal Mario game’ they want. Innovation is the simplest way to dress up a game, even if you like the loop it’s healthier if the sequel is different.
I honestly don’t know why so many game journalists and bloggers are obsessed with innovations, and judge games based on that. A game doesn’t need to reinvent a genre to be good and enjoyable.
I know a lot of people hyped up Outer Worlds as a spiritual successor to New Vegas and were disappointed when it didn’t reach the same heights of writing. Obsidian not being given any time to make New Vegas and then missing their contracted bonus payout by a single Metacritic point was brought up a lot before release, and gamers trumpeted this new game as what Obsidian could have made without Bethesda mismanagement. Then it came out and had the temerity to be average, leaving fans acting like they’d somehow been betrayed by Obsidian.
It wasn’t Obsidian’s or the game’s fault that people decided it had to be a 10/10 masterpiece, it just got caught up in a stupid fanbase war against Bethesda and its reputation suffered when it couldn’t meet people’s sky-high expectations.
I won’t buy this at full price, when Outer World’s two goes on sale at 50% or more off, that is when I will buy it! By then, all the major bugs should be resolved, and new content will be making this game even better. I blame Obsidian Games from not trying to shout down Microsoft and fight them in a Waffle House parking lot over this price.
While the company would love you to buy it at launch for $80, they’re fine if you wait for a (first party) sale.
Look at the first Outer World. At launch sold for $60. Three months post launch, $50. Six months post launch, $40. One year post launch, $30.
If this new game sells the exact same, but starts at $80, they’re ahead. Even if the $80 number scares away a lot of people, they’re ahead. Only if it scares away a shit ton of people will it be a problem.
In a way, I hope it scares enough gamers away that it sends a message. I want there to be repercussions, Nintendo might get away with it (due to fanbase), but other companies need to be curtailed and fast!
Nintendo gets away with it because their games rarely have a discount. An $80 game today will be $80 in a year. After several years you sometimes get a limited discount for their best selling games. A bundle or a voucher can be a small loss leader, usually if you buy one of something you buy another.
The other thing of course is that Nintendo makes absolutely top tier games. The fan base is earned. You can buy a Mario or Zelda game, knowing nothing about it, and it’s going to be good. Pokemon is the obvious exception here, the mainline games are fine, but would be nothing without the brand. (I also won’t forgive them for Super Mario Party, that was a $30 game, not $60.)
I don’t expect $80 games to go away, because as long as someone will pay it, it’s free money. But if sales slump too much in the long run I do see quick discounts, possibly even for Nintendo games.
Nintendo makes pretty good games but nothing about their product is “top tier”. The online experience is terrible, their flagship games suffer from framerate dips, pop-in, and stuttering because they don’t invest in better hardware, and speaking of hardware they went with the same will-break-down-and-drift sticks because they’ve been coasting for ages. Meanwhile they’re suing fan projects into the dirt and growing increasingly out of touch. (Sony and Xbox are hot on their heels, the big three could really do with some outside competition)
Oh I absolutely agree there are plenty of criticisms about the company itself and their other offerings, but the games are absolutely top tier.
Their online is miles behind, games from Smash Bros to Mario Maker to Mario Kart could all be improving with better online, but since they were terrible at online I never used them, but those games were still excellent.
A lower powered system or poorly optimized game has some frame rate dips or stuttering, but never in a way that gameplay was affected. I know people will disagree but I’ve never had an issue with it.
Yes, joycon drift is a real problem. But that’s a hardware problem. We should absolutely give Nintendo shit for hardware problems.
Suing fan projects or being aggressive about YouTube/Twitch take down, all fair. Fuck Nintendo for all that.
But all of that is different from their games being solid. I don’t blame people who choose to emulate their games, they’re awesome games.
I’ll give you that Sony might be competitive, I don’t see Xbox/Microsoft anywhere close. I think Valve and the SteamDeck are probably 4th in the race, but Valve has to actually make a game. They made great games and should continue to do so.
This is what I have a problem with. The fan base WAS earned but now is taken for granted.
You can’t just pretend that online play isn’t important for multiplayer games. It’s a huge knock against the titles you mentioned.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land tries so hard to keep gameplay smooth that any enemies more than like 15 feet away drop to 8fps and it still dips when there’s too many effects on screen. Breath of the Wild simply banishes mobs that get too far away (or just run for too long) to keep the memory functional (and many things don’t even render at the edge of bow range). Super Mario Odyssey also aggressively culls actors and gets a bit sad when you force too much on screen (high up in Metro Kingdom, for example) It might not matter to you but it impacts the game enough for me to notice it.
I simply don’t think that you can trust a Nintendo game to be worth the day 1 cost.
I suppose the reason I’m so forgiving of the online features, is that I don’t use them. They’re a nice little addition for sure, but I do not see them as core to the game.
I think it’s embarrassing that they’re sooooo far behind. Definitely if they’re a thing you’re expecting, it’s going to sour your view of the game.
Performance is a personal thing.You’re not alone, it’s a common complaint, I won’t deny that. I’ve played all three of those games, Kirby, Zelda & Mario but never remember having an issue. I’m sure I did, but it never stuck with me. I remember Arceus looking like an GameCube game. But I also remember completing the Pokedex 100%.
I was burned by Super Mario Party, so that franchise is dead to me. Maybe others will burn me too.
I think the Switch 2 launching with just Mario Kart was a huge mistake. No Mario. No Zelda. I can’t remember the last time that happened. Donkey Kong is coming soon, and it’s supposedly similar to Oddessy… But we’ll have to see. There are great DK games, but he’s no Mario and it’s been a while.
I really enjoyed the first game, not AAA new game price enjoyment though. I mean, I got as much fun out of it while playing as I have anything else, it just wasn’t as rich and deep as a fallout game. I give it a pass since it’s establishing a new universe but as much as I liked it, it’s most certainly a blue light special fallout clone.
So, asking inflated AAA prices seems, somewhat short sighted. I’d absolutely pay what I did for the first game, 80 bucks is a hard no for me though. I might buy it when it’s cheaper, but by then I’ll likely have seen enough clips, read enough reviews and gotten busy enough to just forget about it.
I bought the first one for $20. For the second I’ll play on Game Pass, if it is available, or again wait for $20. Maybe even less if I forget about it, which I might.
Support your local libraries. My city’s library system is so good that I borrow games on release day all the time. You get them for 1-2 weeks, Most games that are older than a few weeks you can keep for up to 3 weeks, which gives me plenty of time to knock them off my list. Im sure I’ll get this one soon enough, im currently playing AC Shadows which I borrowed
Not sure how it works nowadays, actually! As a child I would borrow PC and PlayStation games from the library. They were physical copies of course. But with Steam keys and all I’m not sure!
There’s these things called consoles, that let you put a disk in, they both contains the game and a license to play it. Though these days some games just sell an empty box with a code to download the game.
What a bizarre concept. I doubt they’ll ever catch on. We already have computers, and you don’t need any fancy “discs” or “empty boxes” to play games on them, either. Just download what you want straight from the internet.
It’s great, I can lend my friend the games he doesn’t have, and I can do the same with his games. In this way, we can play many more games than we have the money for. Especially useful since we’re in the US, and internet infrastructure is still poor here, his only option is satellite, which takes far too long to download anything.
Yeah but who needs friends when you have millions of random strangers on the internet to talk to? The infrastructure issue is a problem that I’m too urbanized to understand. My neighborhood alone gives me the choice of cable, DSL, fixed wireless, and fiber. Move to a place like this, and you won’t need friends or these newfangled “con-souls”.
Some games, some are on cart too. Switch 1 is actually probably the best because just about every game is fully playable unlike ps and Xbox which require patches often to run alright. Switch 2 I hear cyberpunk is fully on the cart, but I doubt many publishers are willing to pay for the bigger carts, so we’ll probably see a lot of third parties be just the key, which is ridiculous.
Yar har fiddle dee, 80 bucks a game just ain’t for me, yar har fiddle and fat, I’ll just fucking sail the high seas numbnuts publishers, good job trading the 60 bucks I was willing to pay for the 0 you’ll be getting from me now.
And remember kids, if buying isn’t owning, pirating isn’t stealing.
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Wasn’t the first game entirely average? And now he wants $80 for the sequel.
The only thing that stands out thinking about the game is the dialog choices you get when you play through the game with really low intelligence. I think it gets the best ending.
80? What the hell?
If you assume 25% of player will buy at 80, 50% will buy at $50, and 25% will buy at $20. Per 100 buyers they stand to make $5,000. However if they start at $50 with 75% of buys buying at that price, they will make $4,250. This is about maximizing profit by selling to fans with deep pockets first then discounting latter to captured the rest of the player base.
So if we assume the world is a magical place where poor people don’t exist, it makes perfect sense.
That is exactly how people making these decisions think. Its all numbers to them, there are no people involved in their thinking.
But what they don’t take into account is that 75% all at once creates an excitement buzz around the game that ends up causing even more sales then would ever happen otherwise. Look at games like Pokémon go or PalWorld that generated so much buzz. I tried both of them because of the hype and I normally wouldn’t have bothered otherwise.
With a game like there has probably been existence market research to account for how much buzz the game will get. They may even be counting on the buzz to sell more copies at full price.
Being that it’s a known game and this is a sequel you may very well be right.
That tactic would work if it was a multiplayer game or a major franchise but with a single player cookie cutter game there’s no urgency for me to get started and no FOMO. It just isn’t that interesting of an IP
Space rats make it a buy for me, but I’ll still wait until it’s 75% off.
People still will, because lots of people spoil, some like watching streaming etc. When new stuff comes out and I’m not ready to start it, it often also involves stop visiting certain communities, discords, etc.
right, so that would put you into the 50% or the lower 25%, but there are people that will buy higher price, and as long as there is 1% willing to buy before the first sale it is worth it for them.
Also very true. I’ll just wait.
Just as heads up, Obsidian, I’ll require this to be at least 75% off if it’s good and over 20 hours of single-player campaign. If it’s shorter, I can be enticed at 90% off. I’ll wait for a few years, no problem, my family group backlog is in the thousands.
Them: “we don’t set the price”.
You: “I’ll buy it if you set a lower price”.
So people don’t even read the headlines anymore?
No, I’ve seen it, that is feedback and it should be invaluable to all interested parties, not only those who set the price.
Bummer, but that’s gonna be a no from me, dog.
Setting aside prices, I’ve seen an unexpected amount of sourness directed at the first game. While the first game wasn’t a greatest of all time RPG and had flaws, I found it overall enjoyable enough and it was clearly a project with some passion that I didn’t regret sinking time into it.
I expect similar of the sequel, with hopefully improvements based on feedback from the first game. I plan to have fun with the game, and it is a bit tiring to see things like the pricing prompting people to badmouth the game itself when they are separate things.
Am I going to pay $80? No. No I’m not. This is a single player RPG though. There’s no FOMO of getting left behind on the multiplayer unlocks or the lore of a new season. It’s a singleplayer game. Put it on the wishlist and buy it on a sale. Simple as.
The first game got heat for no other reason than it was an Epic exclusive. Pissy pants gamers were upset it wasn’t on their monopoly.
I got it for cheap layer (I almost never buy new games) and found it kinda shallow and boring. I wanted to like it, I love the theme and settings but ehhhhhhhhh
It was hyped up to be Space Fallout and I did not get Space Fallout out of it. Even like… Space Bad Fallout. I just got mediocre space game.
Also it was just… Boring.
It also wasn’t up to the obsidian standards we come to expect.
But then again i understand not being able to realise it was not a well written or designed game as a large chunk of people think starfield wasn’t that bad.
I tried giving it a chance but it just felt like a bad Fallout 3 with Borderlands writing. Got to like the third planet I think and I dropped it.
I really liked Avowed though, which elicited similar reactions.
The expectation that it was an open world modern style Fallout game does seem to be a theme among people who didn’t like it. That wasn’t helped by pre-release marketing that emphasized it came from the studio that made New Vegas (despite the writers and game leads all being different).
I went in to the game without expectations and found the structure of the game closer to a classic BioWare RPG. Rather than a single huge open world it was a series of curated hubs to travel between. At those hubs there was space to explore but it was more limited and curated than a full open world. The more curated approach meant that the game could be designed with certain builds in mind since players would interact with certain areas coming from known directions, allowing alternate routes or quest solutions for different builds to be placed.
Accepting it as a hub based RPG that leaned into a specialized build made the game click for me.
Yes, exactly. It followed that formula, not Fallout. That probably should have been made more clear so people wouldn’t be making a comparison that didn’t fit at all.
I don’t think it was the lack of open world that put me off from it, as I’ve always preferred hub based games ever since Dragon Age Origins. I think it was just the writing honestly. I don’t like the whole “le soooo epic zany & ttlly rndm” writing that it shares with Borderlands. I don’t find it funny, endearing nor entertaining. It’s just annoying to me and it was everywhere at the time because millennial culture was at its height.
I wouldn’t categorize it that way at all. It extrapolated nationality to one’s employer and religion to the law. It was unsubtle in its views of classism and such, in a way that I appreciated, but it wasn’t just doing zany things “just because”, unless you’ve got a good example that’s slipping my mind.
My critique is not of the content itself but rather it’s presentation, and its over reliance on what I can only call “millennial humor”.
I can’t say I follow you. I would call it satire rather than “totally random”, but if you didn’t care for the writing, you didn’t care for the writing.
Besides that I just kept feeling like it was “been here, done that”. I remember at one point there is a small village and you have to choose to pull their power source or leave it and it felt so damn familiar, I didn’t bother continuing much past that. I felt like if I hadn’t played a bunch of elder scrolls and fallout games it was probably great but for me it was so much retreading old ground I couldn’t stay interested.
That’s literally one of the first missions 😭
…yup. I didn’t get far. I vaguely remember there were a bunch of other little things but that one drove it home. It was literally a tamer version of fallout 3 opening.
I feel like Outer Worlds at least tried to have a message. But they got scared and pulled away and gave up before the end. It starts way stronger than Fallout 3 imo. At least when it comes to writing and story. It’s of course not a SERIOUS game, but it tries to say something even if it does give up. In my experience Bethesda games are allergic to having a message or point.
I made it maybe 20 min before I un-installed. I don’t vibe with Fallout in general (but I’ll suffer through them) and with the writing style, just wasn’t my thing. Maybe the 2nd one is a bit more polished and I can get into it cause I heard good things.
The first game wasn’t bad, but it didn’t really feel like a full price title.
What does that even mean? And what do you consider “full price worthy” in that case?
They probably meant that it felt like a game that was stripped down and shallow compared to similar AAA “full price” games and I completely agree. After playing the first one, I wouldn’t only consider buying this new game if it was at least 50% off.
To be clear, I find this rhetoric pretty silly given that price has no influence over a game’s intrinsic qualities and vice versa.
I’m not arguing for games to be priced higher either, because a lot of that money likely wouldn’t end up going to the devs, but I think the price argument doesn’t stand either way.
Pricetag sets expectations, simple as that. It is documented that no matter the product, people have more trust in a more expensive product than a cheaper one, even if they are actually identical. And thus, people also rightfully expect more of a more expensive product. Let’s talk about cars for example : if I buy an old overused small one just to get from point A to point B, I’ll be absolutely satisfied if I paid a few hundred bucks, and absolutely not if I paid a few thousands.
Same with games, if I have a small indie game entertain me somewhat for a few hours, I’ll be super okay if it cost me a few bucks, and super not ok if it cost me 60 or 80 euros. The intrinsic quality may not change, but that was never what was discussed in the first place.
I think the equivalence doesn’t apply, because a car is a functional product and you should expect price to correlate with added features.
Indie games, as well as AAA, can offer similar quality levels at wildly different prices, so price doesn’t (shouldn’t) enter the equation imo.
Quality, possible enjoyment and my tastes are what I take into account when buying a game or not, not its price point, so that might be the difference.
So, just so I am clear, you think that it is silly to want different amounts of quality or value from products based on how they are priced?
That’s not what I’m saying.
What I find silly is to expect price to correlate with quality in the video game space, because you have Indies as well as AAA, with wildly different prices, ultimately offering similar qualities. Price shouldn’t come into the equation when talking about a game’s quality or “value” imo.
I guess this is just a difference in how we look at it. I have for decades now used what I perceive as quality/value to decide whether I should buy a game or whether it may be worth if later if it goes on a steep sale. For example, some AAA game that get polarizing reviews or is known to be very short might be an instance where I’d be not be inclined to pay full price because to me, it wasn’t worth the price. Raising the price of a game to $80 means that I personally will want more value out of it. I just bought a game on Steam yesterday for $20 on sale, which was to me worthwhile. If it had been $80, there is no way I would have bought it.
I’ve always maintained that the first was a fine game that was tanked by the price. It was priced to drive gamepass subs, not sell the game. At $35-40, it would have been received much better, imo. Years later, now that it’s more appropriately priced, it seems to be more well-reviewed.
Unfortunately the second is going down the same path. It may take 5+ years for the game to be appreciated to its fullest (assuming no glaring issues), through no fault of the devs.
It was a fine game that was tanked by the massive inconsistency of its quality as you progressed. The game starts out absolutely fantastic, but the quality takes a very sharp and sudden fall after a few hours, and then it just sorta ends not long after. It was a very weird experience. Definitely felt like something went very wrong during development and they had to make big changes.
The first game was like RPG soul food. It didn’t do anything new, the gameplay was fine and the story wasn’t bad. Nothing innovative but nothing poorly executed. I think people should look to the game as explanation for why Nintendo doesn’t make the ‘normal Mario game’ they want. Innovation is the simplest way to dress up a game, even if you like the loop it’s healthier if the sequel is different.
I honestly don’t know why so many game journalists and bloggers are obsessed with innovations, and judge games based on that. A game doesn’t need to reinvent a genre to be good and enjoyable.
Not every game needs to reinvent the wheel. You’re absolutely right.
However, games that ask me to spend $80 absolutely need to bring something exceptional to the table.
I know a lot of people hyped up Outer Worlds as a spiritual successor to New Vegas and were disappointed when it didn’t reach the same heights of writing. Obsidian not being given any time to make New Vegas and then missing their contracted bonus payout by a single Metacritic point was brought up a lot before release, and gamers trumpeted this new game as what Obsidian could have made without Bethesda mismanagement. Then it came out and had the temerity to be average, leaving fans acting like they’d somehow been betrayed by Obsidian.
It wasn’t Obsidian’s or the game’s fault that people decided it had to be a 10/10 masterpiece, it just got caught up in a stupid fanbase war against Bethesda and its reputation suffered when it couldn’t meet people’s sky-high expectations.
Obsidian themselves were hyping it up…
I won’t buy this at full price, when Outer World’s two goes on sale at 50% or more off, that is when I will buy it! By then, all the major bugs should be resolved, and new content will be making this game even better. I blame Obsidian Games from not trying to shout down Microsoft and fight them in a Waffle House parking lot over this price.
While the company would love you to buy it at launch for $80, they’re fine if you wait for a (first party) sale.
Look at the first Outer World. At launch sold for $60. Three months post launch, $50. Six months post launch, $40. One year post launch, $30.
If this new game sells the exact same, but starts at $80, they’re ahead. Even if the $80 number scares away a lot of people, they’re ahead. Only if it scares away a shit ton of people will it be a problem.
In a way, I hope it scares enough gamers away that it sends a message. I want there to be repercussions, Nintendo might get away with it (due to fanbase), but other companies need to be curtailed and fast!
Nintendo gets away with it because their games rarely have a discount. An $80 game today will be $80 in a year. After several years you sometimes get a limited discount for their best selling games. A bundle or a voucher can be a small loss leader, usually if you buy one of something you buy another.
The other thing of course is that Nintendo makes absolutely top tier games. The fan base is earned. You can buy a Mario or Zelda game, knowing nothing about it, and it’s going to be good. Pokemon is the obvious exception here, the mainline games are fine, but would be nothing without the brand. (I also won’t forgive them for Super Mario Party, that was a $30 game, not $60.)
I don’t expect $80 games to go away, because as long as someone will pay it, it’s free money. But if sales slump too much in the long run I do see quick discounts, possibly even for Nintendo games.
Nintendo makes pretty good games but nothing about their product is “top tier”. The online experience is terrible, their flagship games suffer from framerate dips, pop-in, and stuttering because they don’t invest in better hardware, and speaking of hardware they went with the same will-break-down-and-drift sticks because they’ve been coasting for ages. Meanwhile they’re suing fan projects into the dirt and growing increasingly out of touch. (Sony and Xbox are hot on their heels, the big three could really do with some outside competition)
Oh I absolutely agree there are plenty of criticisms about the company itself and their other offerings, but the games are absolutely top tier.
Their online is miles behind, games from Smash Bros to Mario Maker to Mario Kart could all be improving with better online, but since they were terrible at online I never used them, but those games were still excellent.
A lower powered system or poorly optimized game has some frame rate dips or stuttering, but never in a way that gameplay was affected. I know people will disagree but I’ve never had an issue with it.
Yes, joycon drift is a real problem. But that’s a hardware problem. We should absolutely give Nintendo shit for hardware problems.
Suing fan projects or being aggressive about YouTube/Twitch take down, all fair. Fuck Nintendo for all that.
But all of that is different from their games being solid. I don’t blame people who choose to emulate their games, they’re awesome games.
I’ll give you that Sony might be competitive, I don’t see Xbox/Microsoft anywhere close. I think Valve and the SteamDeck are probably 4th in the race, but Valve has to actually make a game. They made great games and should continue to do so.
This is what I have a problem with. The fan base WAS earned but now is taken for granted.
You can’t just pretend that online play isn’t important for multiplayer games. It’s a huge knock against the titles you mentioned.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land tries so hard to keep gameplay smooth that any enemies more than like 15 feet away drop to 8fps and it still dips when there’s too many effects on screen. Breath of the Wild simply banishes mobs that get too far away (or just run for too long) to keep the memory functional (and many things don’t even render at the edge of bow range). Super Mario Odyssey also aggressively culls actors and gets a bit sad when you force too much on screen (high up in Metro Kingdom, for example) It might not matter to you but it impacts the game enough for me to notice it.
I simply don’t think that you can trust a Nintendo game to be worth the day 1 cost.
I suppose the reason I’m so forgiving of the online features, is that I don’t use them. They’re a nice little addition for sure, but I do not see them as core to the game.
I think it’s embarrassing that they’re sooooo far behind. Definitely if they’re a thing you’re expecting, it’s going to sour your view of the game.
Performance is a personal thing.You’re not alone, it’s a common complaint, I won’t deny that. I’ve played all three of those games, Kirby, Zelda & Mario but never remember having an issue. I’m sure I did, but it never stuck with me. I remember Arceus looking like an GameCube game. But I also remember completing the Pokedex 100%.
I was burned by Super Mario Party, so that franchise is dead to me. Maybe others will burn me too.
I think the Switch 2 launching with just Mario Kart was a huge mistake. No Mario. No Zelda. I can’t remember the last time that happened. Donkey Kong is coming soon, and it’s supposedly similar to Oddessy… But we’ll have to see. There are great DK games, but he’s no Mario and it’s been a while.
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Pretty much. Greedy publishers are just following Nintendo’s lead that they can fleece gamers for more.
Its cause absolute idiots keep preordering digital products at full price.
I really enjoyed the first game, not AAA new game price enjoyment though. I mean, I got as much fun out of it while playing as I have anything else, it just wasn’t as rich and deep as a fallout game. I give it a pass since it’s establishing a new universe but as much as I liked it, it’s most certainly a blue light special fallout clone.
So, asking inflated AAA prices seems, somewhat short sighted. I’d absolutely pay what I did for the first game, 80 bucks is a hard no for me though. I might buy it when it’s cheaper, but by then I’ll likely have seen enough clips, read enough reviews and gotten busy enough to just forget about it.
Bummer.
Good news!
As long as it doesn’t have Denovu, we can!
What is Denonvu?
A DRM that is notorious for being not only hard to crack, but also causes performance issues in the games that use it.
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It’s what I do with Denuvo games. De non vue.
Oh no, someone misspelt a brand name, whatever shall we do
IDK but I hope someone comes along with an answer
Denuvo, not whatever you said
Fit Girl Repacks here we go.
I bought the first one for $20. For the second I’ll play on Game Pass, if it is available, or again wait for $20. Maybe even less if I forget about it, which I might.
One of the theories behind this game’s price is Microsoft is trying to force more people onto the premium game pass.
Support your local libraries. My city’s library system is so good that I borrow games on release day all the time. You get them for 1-2 weeks, Most games that are older than a few weeks you can keep for up to 3 weeks, which gives me plenty of time to knock them off my list. Im sure I’ll get this one soon enough, im currently playing AC Shadows which I borrowed
Borrowing games from the library? How does that even work? Do they give you a Steam login and just change the password every 2 weeks or something?
Not sure how it works nowadays, actually! As a child I would borrow PC and PlayStation games from the library. They were physical copies of course. But with Steam keys and all I’m not sure!
Imagine they just crack it.
There’s these things called consoles, that let you put a disk in, they both contains the game and a license to play it. Though these days some games just sell an empty box with a code to download the game.
What a bizarre concept. I doubt they’ll ever catch on. We already have computers, and you don’t need any fancy “discs” or “empty boxes” to play games on them, either. Just download what you want straight from the internet.
It’s great, I can lend my friend the games he doesn’t have, and I can do the same with his games. In this way, we can play many more games than we have the money for. Especially useful since we’re in the US, and internet infrastructure is still poor here, his only option is satellite, which takes far too long to download anything.
Yeah but who needs friends when you have millions of random strangers on the internet to talk to? The infrastructure issue is a problem that I’m too urbanized to understand. My neighborhood alone gives me the choice of cable, DSL, fixed wireless, and fiber. Move to a place like this, and you won’t need friends or these newfangled “con-souls”.
Unless it’s a switch 2 then all you get is a key on the cartridge… Biggest waste of time on both sides
Some games, some are on cart too. Switch 1 is actually probably the best because just about every game is fully playable unlike ps and Xbox which require patches often to run alright. Switch 2 I hear cyberpunk is fully on the cart, but I doubt many publishers are willing to pay for the bigger carts, so we’ll probably see a lot of third parties be just the key, which is ridiculous.
Ah, you’re one of those who think only pc gaming exists
Games were $60 three decades ago, inflation hits us all.
Yar har fiddle dee, 80 bucks a game just ain’t for me, yar har fiddle and fat, I’ll just fucking sail the high seas numbnuts publishers, good job trading the 60 bucks I was willing to pay for the 0 you’ll be getting from me now.
And remember kids, if buying isn’t owning, pirating isn’t stealing.
Then why DRM?