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In the US at least, they actually do, in many cases. If you are in a drought region, your water utilities can be shut off if you’re wasting it all on watering a lawn or filling a swimming pool, for example. ISPs cut people off all the time for torrenting, sometimes even if it’s not pirated content (though it was ruled not long ago that ISPs aren’t utilities anyways).
Agreed, I think it also hurts the games trying to even have a singular “villain” in the first place. Halo 1-3 had villainous figures, but I don’t think anyone was under the belief that just killing the 3 Prophets would solve the problem of the Covenant, or that killing the Gravemind would mean that the Flood would never be a problem again. The Halo series relies on having compelling factions with clear purpose and ideology to act as antagonists in a more general sense.
The Prometheans in 4 weren’t bad, but outside of the Didact, they had no real purpose or personality. They were just an obstacle. I was really looking forward to the premise of 5 with the concept of going rogue and tackling the underlying themes of fascism at the heart of the UNMC, but then it just rapidly pivoted to some other garbage with Cortana and the Guardians which led to nothing in the end anyways. And so I didn’t even bother to play Infinite.
You can!
Worth noting for anyone looking to play both N64 games is that OoT Gerudo stay stunned indefinitely (until the area is reloaded) but the Pirates in Majora’s Mask who are borrowed from the Gerudo guards only stay stunned for a short time before getting back up.
This incentizes use of the Stone Mask, which can be obtained from the invisible guard by giving him a red potion. If playing the N64 version, he is located outside of Ikana Graveyard, which is a place that you can get to at that point in the game but many might not have bothered exploring yet. In the 3DS version, they moved him directly into Pirates Fortress so he’s harder to miss, but it does require just a little bit of stealth to get to where he is first.
I just think it stopped being a good deal the moment they implemented their first price increase. That signalled that they’re willing to do what every other subscription service does and raise prices as arbitrarily high as people are willing to pay, with the enticement being that once you’re in deep enough, you can’t unsub or you’re left with no games.
If you have copious time for gaming and are always on the hunt for sometbing new, is it still a better deal than buying every game at release? Sure, at least for now. But the patient gaming strat at least gives me a backlog of affordable titles too long to finish them all, and I can also return to it at any time without worrying about titles eventually disappearing from a subscription catalog.
That’s exactly it, they have the ability to go about certain scenes in different ways.
I still only have the Astarion/Cazador example, because that’s the only origin character I played as, but one moment I remember as different between Astarion as party member versus Astarion as player is the conversation with his former lover Sebastian before confronting Cazador.
In my playthrough with Astarion as an NPC, he basically auto-piloted through most of that conversation. He remembered who Sebastian was, it was somewhat touching, and the player was able to ask Astarion questions for context.
In my playthrough as Astarion as the player, you can navigate that conversation in different ways, but there are also certain things that are no longer a given. You actually have to roll to remember who Sebastian is (which I flubbed) and that changes the course of the conversation away from the NPC “default” conversation.
Edit: I found some examples of that specific scene on YouTube, to compare the differences.
but if you play as any of the characters you barely hear them, or so I’ve heard.(haven’t done it myself)
This is the case. There are a small set of instances where the character might get a one-off voice line, but in general you’re left mute, even during high impact story moments where the character would usually get a spotlight (e.g. Astarion confronting Cazador).
It’s just a bit of a shame because you’d think people would opt to play characters they like because they want to experience more of them while playing, but ironically you get less that way.
I am seeing more and more of these “review bomb” takes lately, too. Dragon Age Veilguard getting review bombed because their game is too woke. Moon Studios saying they might have to close because trolls are review bombing their new game. Monster Hunter Wilds being review bombed on Steam because entitled PC gamers expect their games to be stable, I guess.
Too many people out there are deflecting legitimate criticism in favor of what are basically conspiracy theories—that there must be a concerted effort to specifically punish these developers in particular for the crime of releasing a misunderstood masterpiece. No one wants to accept the possibility that they just put out a bad game.
Almost guaranteed, at least. Consoles are now in the habit of closing their stores after a new generation or two when they stop making enough money, and there are a lot of games today that aren’t really playable without a day 1 patch or additional content requirement that are simply not included on the disc.
A lot of games (not even just Nintendo) don’t even include the game data on the physical media anymore. The disc/cart acts only as a license and the entire thing is downloaded from the store when first used.
Part of the confusion is that there was a different Prey game being worked on a couple years earlier that actually was connected to Prey 2006, but that project was canceled and the studio working on it closed.
Given the quick turnaround between Prey 2 being canceled and Prey 2017 launching, I have to assume that Bethesda just took a separate project that Arkane was working on and slapped the “Prey” name on it to try to save face and show that the IP was still alive and well after the sequel was canceled.
I remember during the initial console reveal, basically the only thing they had to say was that the sticks are larger and smoother (in motion, not the caps themselves).
I don’t know if they mentioned much else later, but they were very tacit about their durability/longevity. I don’t have much hope that things will be better, at any rate. I still bought a Switch 2, because I know it will still bring me joy to play, but as much as I enjoyed the comfort of playing with a Joycon in each hand, I’ve learned from the original Switch to avoid using the Joycons where possible and opt for a separate controller when playing docked (I’m just using the Pro Controllers I have left over from my original Switch).
I don’t think the Xbox One was a disappointment due to a boycott, I think it was just a product people didn’t feel the need to buy.
Sure, there was early controversy about the always-online DRM approach they planned to take, but it didn’t launch with that in the end. What killed its hype was just being US$100 more expensive than the PS4 and having no killer exclusives lined up.
One factor might be just that Mass Effect came out first and was also Bioware’s last game before EA bought them.
The rest is just my opinion, but I do believe that Mass Effect simply told a better story (multicolored endings aside) and had a better cast of characters. Not to mention the fact that it was a single narrative across the three installments helped keep engagement up. And shooters were incredibly popular at that time.
Novel interactions and consistency remain a factor, though.
Xbox is essentially straight and standard, but Nintendo and Sony games often make use of controller features (gyroscope, touch, IR sensors) which, while not exactly widely utilized, allow for interesting methods of interacting with games that are not typically found on multiplatform releases that mostly support only features common between all platforms.
And with that in mind, you can safely make some of those novel interactions into core features of first party games when you can safely assume everyone is using the same input devices and has the same hardware.
This is basically a very minor nitpicky consideration, but as an example, gyroscopic aiming was born out of first-party games. If you’ve played a game with gyro aiming, it’s very cool and nice to have, but it will never become a standard part of most third-party games if only a subset of users have hardware capable of supporting it.
Yeah, ultimately it’s a matter of personal discretion.
Mainly I think we’re at the point where new consoles, now including the Switch, are more like upgrading your PC. Get the newer model to run existing games better.
Games are going to be releasing for both Switch and Switch 2 for a while, so there’s not much incentive to upgrade unless the very small list of Switch 2 exclusives is enticing right now. But if someone’s priority is playing through older games in higher quality now that it is possible to do so without pirating, there are a lot of reasons to upgrade.
It took several years for PS5 to get to the point where it was probably worth it for exclusives alone (and may still not even be there yet for many), but it was worth getting day 1 if there were PS4 games someone wanted to play at higher resolutions and/or framerates, and they didn’t mind the price.
Actually on the topic of price, also worth acknowledging that the market is a bit fucked, and existing consoles have only gone up in price since release, in complete disregard for earlier trends where they usually drop in price over time, so that could be a other reason for someone to want to get in on it early.
Also color me disinterested.
I thought it was actually going to be a novel take on arena shooter formats, with a moving game map that would bring in new parts of a stage over time as others disappear. But the more I learned about it, the less interested I became.
So if anyone is looking to make a Rubik’s cube arena shooter, the market is still open.
Absolute embodiment of less is more. Controls are simple but intuitive, you can beat it in one session, there’s no major payoff in the end. It’s just a game about the journey and the friends made along the way.
I still remember having my mind blown that the other figure I met after the tutorial level was not just an NPC, when I noticed their movements were too deliberate and they were solving some puzzles for me.
I made it all the way to the end of the game with that person. Never knew who they even were until their name showed up at the very end. What a cathartic experience. I’ve also never been able to achieve anything similar since then.
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Congrats on 1 year!
As someone who never has much time to play games these days, honestly just seeing your posts has helped keep the passion alive. I love seeing all of these games I enjoy still being appreciated today. Thank you!