I never thought I would see blade of darkness again. Thank you for sharing.

A betting man would play this one slow. I am definitely part of the crowd that wants this to do well but I am not counting on it.

The qunari design is the weirdest thing to me. They Bioware spent so much effort solidifying who the Qunari are in 2 and had a great design to reflect that. Then in 3 I feel like they maintained and perhaps even improved the design, but kinda watered down the characterization of the culture. Perhaps I’m misremembering and the group of Qunari present in 2 are a more extreme sect than they are representative of the people as a whole. Now in Veilguard they seem to have really softened everything about the race. I’m just confused about the design direction which is disappointing because I really enjoy the qunari of DA2.

DA2 has several bad qualities. I personally would not generalize it as a bad game. I am willing to concede that this is an unpopular opinion, however.

I had forgotten how hard that trailer went. Also, I just got a weirdly nostalgic pang from that EA blood dragon that for me is really reminiscent of the end of the era when you could trust that anything published by the EA/Bioware team was going to fucking excel.

Origins is excellent. but all of them are in different ways.

Exactly. Origins was revolutionary at the time for it’s broad branching character and narrative options. DA2 actually had a fantastic if comparatively linear story and arguably the strongest setting of all three games. DA3 for all of its bloat had a huge beautiful world to explore and strong characters. I know it’s a controversial opinion, but I actually really enjoyed the combat in DA3 as well.

People get really hung up on the rose-tinted novelty of Origins at the time of its release, and it was amazing at the time, but it’s hardly the best RPG ever made. I don’t know if I would even consider it part of the discussion.

The Baldur’s Gate series has been my favorite franchise since the first game launched, I adored each of the Dragon Age games for what they were, and I really don’t understand what the point of this article is. It’s just a love letter to Origins. She keeps pointing out that BG3 sure is a great successor to Origins which was in itself a successor to BG 1/2, which just…duh? Is she trying to convince people to go back and play Origins? I don’t think that is a terrible idea, but I would point them instead to the original games if you want to experience what BG3 is truly resurrecting.

This game was actually pretty fun if you could find a lobby but it was buggy as hell and could become lopsided pretty quickly.

I know nothing about game development, so feel free to reference back to that. If the player is controlling an actual toddler in this game, rather than a 2ft tall Ethan Winters, have you considered trying to alter the camera and movement controls so they are more wobbly/unsteady? The most jarring observation I had from the trailer was "No toddler on the planet moves that purposefully.

Otherwise I think you have a fantastic spooky atmosphere and I think the idea of playing a helpless child really lends itself to the horror genre in a powerful way.

Do you think you could expand on what the gameplay is actually like?

I had no idea Guild Wars was still releasing content. The first game was my first big boy MMO and I have so many fond memories.

Don’t get me wrong I adore BG3 and it is absolutely stunning, but I don’t know if we can compare a heavily curated experience like that to something like this which allows for such a high degree of customization and player created content. It will be interesting to see if the final product actually looks like this. You can damn well guarantee all of those customization options will be locked behind micro transactions though.

I have zero interest in playing this but it’s visually stunning. I can’t think of another game with this combination of graphic fidelity and smooth complex animation.

I have considered it a few times and I even have Helldivers installed still, buuuut I’m balls deep in my first run of Elden Ring right now and I haven’t even hit the DLC yet, so 🤷‍♂️.

It’s a very different experience, but have you considered Baldur’s Gate 2?

How is the Helldivers community these days? I had so much fun with that one before the whole PSN debacle. It kinda killed the vibe for me at the time and I have since moved on to other things, but I was so surprised how much a third-person online shooter sucked me in at this point in my life.

I wonder if any of this has been corroborated. I feel more conflicted about this kind of stuff recently because for every one asshole saying awful shit there are hundreds of other people that poured years of their life into making a game like this.

Definitely this. It’s pretty easy to lookup exactly where you are and find mostly spoiler free walkthroughs or sometimes even hints. IIRC there are a few spots that a lot of people got hung up on.

This game is too good not to finish.

It would be a real stretch to classify doom as a platformer.

You’re not wrong. The mass proliferation of listacles with the same 5 advertised products stamped behind a novella of filler to appease SEO algorithms has been increasingly problematic for at least 10 years now. The issue has only been compounded with the flood of “AI” generated content and deceptive ads. I almost prefer when every website had sidebars full of blatant advertisements. Sure they were ever present, but they weren’t trying to literally trick you into buying something.

Lmao I’m leaving it.

Non-essential and predatory are not mutually exclusive, especially given Blizzard’s history of player manipulation. They have perfected the science of making you want someone that you don’t need.

Haha ok so you’re just one of those people whose understanding of the universe isn’t capable of expanding beyond “this good, that bad”.

I haven’t defended anyone and never intended to. I’m just saying get your comparisons straight. “Hey this game has a bunch of annoying bugs” =/= “Yo this shit is effectively non-functional and empty”.

I’m not downplaying anything, but comparing a dumpster to a dumpster fire and saying they are the same thing is, at best, a little misleading.

The release of Witcher 3 was bad, but it was industry standard bad. Cyberpunk shipped straight up broken and incomplete. It has been fundamentally reworked at least twice since launch.

I don’t think anyone is apologizing for The Witcher 3 at launch, but let’s not pretend they are the same thing. There are more shades than black and white.

CP2077 was far worse, but that doesn’t mean the Witcher 3 was okay, it was still absolutely botched.

This is literally a rewording of what I just said.

I’m not so sure we’re talking about the same scale of horrendous here.

Yeah but Josh Sawyer and his team at Obsidian are very active. Most recently they released Pentiment with Avowed coming later this year. FO:NV was likely chosen because it’s one of their better known games. He has relevant insight into the industry.

It seems like they’re using burnout as a stand-in for “stress” in this case. The article doesn’t do a very good job of elaborating on what that means exactly and it seems like the quote might be missing context. TBF Josh Sawyer isn’t exactly known for being able to convey an idea with brevity.

Ok? I don’t think that changes my argument very much.

That is pretty reductive. Like, it’s a sim. You could describe just about any sim the same way. “You just do this thing to do that thing”. How is this any different from any other game?

I’m not saying it’s the best space game, but I had fun when I played it and it definitely didn’t just feel like I was mining materials just to mine more materials.

You convince anyone to take away my wireless earbuds and I’ll hunt you down.

Enjoy. One of the best games ever made.

I mean, he’s not telling people to not buy the game. He just said if you’re strapped for cash it won’t hurt to wait.

No.

It’s extremely popular because it is a well polished Harry Potter game; something the world has been begging for for a long time. It does invoke that sense of magic that the films do so well, so if you’re just looking to get a fresh hit of the Hogwarts world it’s great. There are also a lot of really interesting and well designed characters. Most of all the world, particularly the castle, is beautifully and lovingly crafted.

The game buried beneath all that polish is a pretty basic-ass RPG. It is crammed with filler fetch/find quests. The dialogue system is just another exhaust all options non-system. The combat has some really cool ideas on paper but I personally ended up mostly mashing buttons against one of like 5 generic enemies most of the time. Also the only customization in this RPG is your appearance.

It’s not a bad game by any means, but i wouldn’t say it’s great either.

As much as I would love for this to be a hit, my skepticism is through the roof.

It’s an older game but Beyond Good and Evil is a classic.