Professional software and game developer from Finland.
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The title is a bit missleading considering that the actual article mentions a lot other problems that plagued the development.
Project 8 faced both progress and challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic made team stability difficult, but some quality improvements were achieved. However, critical issues persisted, causing delays and budget increases. The latest review revealed unresolved problems needing more time and money, along with revised sales forecasts, raising doubts about the project’s profitability.
– TLDR by Microsoft copilot
While there’s still demand for “narrative-driven story-rich games” one should keep realistic expectations. For this genre I feel smaller scope and indie developers work much better.
They’ve probably spend a lot of budget to make the combat in this game this fluid. However as a side effect the game has become even more of an action game with leveling and loot shoveled in than before. I just hope Bioware can pull off at least some level of build diversity with different classes, skills, items and abilities so that there will be at least some depth with character progression.
Gameplay looks fine but also very similar to most triple-A action games on the market. Combat is fluid and cinematic meaning you can probably pull off all sorts of combos by mashing light and heavy attack buttons then do bunch of acrobatic moves to dodge any enemy attacks. You can probably also counter attacks execute all sorts of cool cinematic takedowns with single button or QTE.
But this often means that the combat lacks any sort of meaningful weight, emergent gameplay is non-existent and actual player choice is very limited and thightly controlled by what the game and level designers allow.
The trailer makes my eyes hurt so it’s a definate skip for me.
I mean the whole thing seemed to be animated exclusively with 3s or 4s which to me looks like the characters are micro-warping around instead of moving. When watching In to the Spiderverse and LOVE, DEATH & ROBOTS (SUITS) I literally had to take breaks and watch elsewhere so rest my eyes and this looks a lot worse.
Was about to comment about the developers probably had to meet some diversity quota but the “hero shooter cast” sounds even more descriptive. Personally don’t really mind much if the gameplay is good and the game is free of the usual triple-a monetization shenigans.
But in a post Baldurs gate 3 world Bioware will need to work extra hard to meet the increased expectations.
Looks like more doom which is all right in my book. Now If they can keep out the always online and live service bullshit out of this one and focus on single player it might turn out to be yet another good doom game. Not sure about the dragon and mecha though, I would rather not have any vehicles, mounts and anything like that in Doom games.
The cutscenes hurt my eyes with the frame rate but the gameplay looks alright.
Honestly not fan of the the way some 3d animations animate with 2s/3s to create fake stop motion videos. It’s even worse when they try to make it look like a cartoon/anime and completely forget to add any smear frames that make the these animations look a lot smoother than they actually are. For me these look like characters constantly warping around instead of moving which hurst my eyes, luckily it seems to only affect the characters and not the movement camera.
The gameplay looks alright but very unoriginal, there’s seems to be this basic combat with dodging, light and heavy strikes and then these fly using streams of wind/magic/energy and energy hook-shot to get you exactly where developers want you to go. Maybe the theme, story and visuals will be enough to make this shine above the competition.
Honestly they’ve been on a steady decline in my eyes at least. With each and every new entry they’re becoming more and more like the rest of the Triple-A studios.
Sure many of their games are still decent fun if you can ignore:
- Dark patterns
- Microtransactions in full priced games
- Battle passes
- Denuvo
Personally I just can’t as mere existence of these thigns ruins my trust towards these developers/publishers.
I wish more players would just ignore these cosmetic microtransactions and go with the default skin or at least limit themselves to ones that can be obtained by actually achieving something in the game. Using default skin while outplaying people in competitive games could probably induce some people to make quite salty comments.
Grim Dawn feels a little mechanically dated at this point but it’s still solid
Honestly Grim dawn is probably the most polished action rpg I’ve ever played. The developers have spend a ton of time adjusting the game mechanics, balance and build variety to be as good as possible. This is quite a contrast to games like path of exile where the developers are costantly adding new mechanics and bunch of new items each season. Sure doing so keeps the game feeling fresh which is important for live service but results in a lot more rough edges.
Actually bought Diablo III: Eternal Collection for PS4 just because it can be played offline and all the content is on the disc. For my understanding both Diablo 4 and Diablo II: Resurrected require internet connection.
MIght still pick them up for a discount to just check them out at some point ignoring most of the live service bullshit stuff like skins and special mounts.
Prismatic bolt embermage is really strong in vanilla and cannon engineer is probably easiest class to play in the whole game. Melee engineer and many other embermage builds can be quite tough and the game has plenty of weird difficulty spikes and enemies with “shotgun” skills that can melt through player health in an instant.
In Torchlight 2 you can reset the world and grind for levels and gear but that can feel like a chore.
Yeah both Sacred games have their fair share of jank on you’ll need to apply community patches and possibly mods to even make them work on todays systems. However what they do not lack is soul as both games are clearly made with love and feel very unique compared to many modern games.
If you can forgive the jank and don’t mind to play older games with somewhat dated graphics I feel these games can still provide a lot of enjoyment. Would love to see remasters for these games or eveb a spiritual sequel.
Currently playing Sacred 2 with community patch, enchanted edition mod , more enemies mod and music mod and having a blast. The EE is tough as nails though and I am frequently getting my ass handed to my by elite enemies and bosses even on silver difficulty.
Torchlight 1-2 are decent fun for normal playthrough but plagued by bad design decisions and downright silly difficulty spikes on harder difficulties. Mods probably fix many of these issues but in vanilla the build diversity on harder difficulties is quite bad with only handful of viable builds with skill trees full of “trap skills”.
That approach works for some studios and some game projects but it’s no silver bullet. A lot of times gamers don’t know what they want until it’s handed on them on a silver platter which can make taking the correct kind of feedback really difficult. Sometimes outside influence may also stray the developers from their original vision.
That being said, developing game in complete secrecy for years and expecting it to become a success has pretty much the same chance as winning in a lottery. Getting MVP out there asap to see if the game will receive any sort of traction and feedback is generally the best approach unless it already has an audience (sequel or well known developer). It can be prototype, demo or early access as long as it’s something.
[edit] Removed some repetition
Hopefully this wont be full of microtransactions even of the cosmetic kind. Monster hunter world was amazing but Capcom has become more and more greedy for the past few years.
It’s probably really tempting for them to convert Monster Hunter franchise in to a modern live service with bunch of premium cosmetics, battle passes and Fomo traps. Exoprimal and Street Fighter VI are already suffering from these.
It has also secured an age 18 rating, with mention of violence and in-game purchases.
Hopefully they don’t get too greedy.
Capcom has been slowing morphing in to becoming yet another EA, Ubisoft or Activision with the monetization in their recent games (e.g Street Fighter VI, Exoprimal). Battle passes, Fomo-traps, social pressure, skinners boxes, Denuvo etc. At least most of their games are still good if you can ingore all the bullshit.
At least in this you can probably just throw all the pawns with paid costemtics to the nearest ditch for being walking advertisements.
Sure but for how long and in what state?
There’s a lot of enshittification going around with games and services with more greedy business practices and it would be naive to think GGG is immune to it. When it comes to live service games certain level of skepticism is healthy to have. Now I do hope we’ll be able to play POE1 even 10 or 20 years from now with it being just as good.
Maybe I am just getting old but I’ve started to spend a lot more time with older games and titles that may be rough around the edges but have some unique ideas and actually take some risks with their game mechanics.
One of these games is Outward which has a lot of walking (quick travel is almost non existent) and serviceable combat system that leaves a lot to be desired. However both of these do give the game some flavor that is missing from many modern games now combine this with interesting “death” mechanic where instead of respawning you’re thrown in to random scenarios related to the area where you died. Another mechanic is backpack which you’ll need to carry any meaningful amount of items and which will limit your movement in battle if you do not drop it with all your items. The way palyer needs to sacrifice health to receive mana is also interesting and how different each mastery tree is is also nice. I do have to admit that I’d like the game a lot more without time limits on quests as they stress really me out.
Another one is Incredible adventures of Van Helsing which is diablo-style ARPG that doesn’t take itself too seriously. It took me awhile to understand the games mechanics which lead to bad time initially but once I understood the power-up system, focus on flat elemental damage bonuses instead of percentage based ones and how silly some skills where with power-up the game got me hooked. The dialogue and story is also pretty good for ARPG and fully voice acted.
Third one is Wurm: Unlimited which is basically special version of MMORPG Wurm: Online where players can host their own servers with their own tweaks and mods. While Wurm Online is substriction based mmorpg with very very slow progression most Wurm Unlimited servers are free to play and have quadruple experience modifiers making the game a lot more enjoyable. The game is basically medival fantasy sandbox where players can terraform the world, build all sorts of structures, hunt, farm and even do pvp on pvp servers. While a lot of the game is just pressing buttons and waiting for action timers to pass there’s a lot of depth in the game and it can get suprisingly immersive. I do however recommend joining to one of the long lasting servers like Sklotopolis instead of playing the game solo on self-hosted server as the experience is a lot better with small community even if you prefer to do things solo as the world will feel a lot more interactive and a lot less empty.
I second Grim Dawn as it’s clearly labor of love from the developers and still getting updates. I also like the fact that its not live service like Path of exile meaning that it does not require online connection and can be even be modded.
It remains to be seen with GGG will do with Path of Exile 1 when they release Path of Exile 2, it would be cool if they would release something like POE Unlimited a premium version of the game that would allow people to play the first game as single player experience, mod it and host their of servers.
But in this day and age it’s much more likely that they’ll just force people to move on to their next big thing.
The problem is that the content is already in wiki fandom and there are no contributors invested/interested enough to migrate all the information to alternative wiki. These fandom wikis have no teams just random individuals making contributions of various sizes.
If I do ever get invested enough to a game to actually create a wiki I’ll definately use something else than fandom.
Well old games like The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing: Final Cut or Moero Chronicles.
Neither of these where completely empty when I found them. Been updating them and filling some gaps in the wiki for the fun of it.
Many would consider both of these games “dead” by many metrics but people can still buy them, play them and have fun with them.
Fandom hosts a lot of wikis for long forgotten nich’e games and with these games there usually isn’t enough interest to move to another wiki. When it comes to these wikis theres rarely if ever a team behind updating the wiki and more often than not the content is just being updated and maintained by random invidividuals who just happen to be engaging with the content at given time. The very low barrier of entry makes this possible as you don’t really need to join a team to edit pages or even coordinate with other people.
When playing one of these games I like to record and share some my observations and findings about games mechanics etc but more often than not the only wiki I can find is fandom wiki that is either incomplete and possibly even abandoned. I cant be bothered to create my own Wiki for these games so I’ll just start editing that one instead because it’s easy, the foundation is usually already there and I don’t need to bother taking any sort of responsibility/mantle of maintainer or admin.
While Fandom may not be the most optimal choice and there may be better ways to host wiki out there its still better than some obnoxious google document or poorly formatted steam guide that no one else can edit.
Sure and almost all large corporations where small businesses at first until the grew to their current size. The problems usually arise when they hit a wall with their growth and have to start looking for more ways to grow. Often this happens by buying off the competition and eventually enshittification or something like it.
This is not always the chase and there are quite a few independent developers that just spend those profits to make new better games or just keep improving their one successful title.
All that literally every business that has ever existed cares about is profits. Businesses aren’t charities. People don’t work for free.
Well one thing related to profits that businesses care about above all else is cost effiency. In market economy if a produt or service can be made more cheaply and more efficiently without employing any people then there’s no incentive to keep people employed.
There’s also quite a difference in some small business with handful of employees that is content with just making some money to keep roof over their heads, food on the table and cover the cost of other necessities compared to some huge multinational corporation where most money goes pretty much everywhere but the developers like to fund the already lavish lifestyles of the filthy rich, tax havens and developing the next get set of dark patterns to leech even more money from customers.
Probably most hours I’ve spend where with Conquer Online back in the days before mysteryboxes where introduced. After that probably puzzle and dragons.
Luckily after those games I learned to question my time spent in these games. (Basically just one day after grinding tower of gods for umpteenth time to spend my 1k stamina/energy, I asked myself wtf am I doing with my life, was I having fun?)
After that my most played games have been Grim dawn, Sacred2, Monster hunter world, No Man sky, Incredible adventures of van helsing then various 2d fighters like Blazblue, undernight inbirth and Granblue fantasy versus that I play on locals.