When I start making notepad lists of long term goals or shopping lists and such, usually in open world games with lots of tasks where you’d forget on your own what you might be working toward

It’s not always the best option, like if you wanna save your gold for the ship upgrades it’ll eat a big chunk out of that, but you could totally keep your gear perks that way if you really like them, you can upgrade at 61, don’t have to wait for 62

My best guess is that it’s a debris effect from your ship taking damage, and it’s supposed to fly away and expire, but somehow got stuck instead of disappearing, so now it’s an “effect” on your character that doesn’t know its supposed to have timed out already.

Other Bethesda games, especially Skyrim, had bugs like this of status effects that would get stuck on your character longer than they were supposed to and you’d only realize hours later when your character has some weird blue fog following them

Once you get the perks you want you totally can hold onto it. Every ten levels all of your perk and major attack stat bonuses on gear get more powerful, (but there’s no stat bonus to upgrading before the 10 level threshold at all) even when you upgrade the same old gear you had, but it happens at the “first” level of each ten, so not at level 20, instead it’s 21, 31, 41, etc.

Basically I’ve had the “same” gear for like 30 or 40 levels, now, just every time I hit the new stat range I go and upgrade all of it. It costs a shitload of gold, but aside from ship upgrades I don’t have another major gold sink, so it’s worth it to me, my perk loadout is extremely optimized for assassin damage, which is important for me since I’m basically playing it as an open world stealth game where I only fight if I get caught, I can one shot anyone I want, no exaggeration (using critical assassination when necessary).

The final ship upgrades are very expensive, yeah, just seems like they give you something to grind for if you get that far

The ones that aren’t timed (don’t have the hourglass icons) are worth picking up because they’re all just like “kill 20 Athenians”, “sink 5 ships”, basically shit you’re already doing, so you just swing by, pick them up, and keep playing like you already were and randomly one will pop and you’ll get fat XP for doing what you were doing already anyway, but that’s only if you want the extra XP, it’s totally unnecessary

Nintendo hire this man

Sorry, my intent was not to sound condescending, I was erring on the side that you weren’t aware of the ways you could get around those issues in order to enjoy the parts you wanted to. Your criticisms are definitely valid, I would agree that even needing to know about the workarounds sort of proves that what was included wasn’t an entirely cohesive and tight product to begin with, the way I played is not necessarily right or wrong, and neither is yours, it’s just how I was able to mine the most enjoyment out of what was there.

My main idea is to not let someone see your comment and assume that that’s how the game is and there’s not another way to enjoy it or any clear ways to identify where content you’d want to play begins and ends, I was able to figure out and selective play the parts I enjoy, but even still there is content in that game that I skip because it’s, definitively, not fun. Even still, it’s become one of my favorite games of all time, but no one game is for everyone, thanks for the mature discussion, sincerely!

You can just pay off your bounties instantly at any time from the map screen, and I’ve always had so much money in that game that I’ve never had to deal with a bounty hunter unless I wanted to, and I don’t even sell any gear, I dismantle it all.

If you’re a compulsionary completionist then the game is probably too big, but they make it as friendly as they can to not have to complete the world. Unique gear drops only seem to come from unique Cultist leaders or checking vendors, and there’s no achievements for completing all map markers, it’s just supplemental content for XP and some gear or if you just really want to do it, there’s no huge cost to just moving on to actual quest content if you want.

They don’t tell you when you’ve completed a whole region for a reason, to disincentivize completing it all unless you’re a madman. I’m doing world completion just because I like grinding the game, but it’s been two years in the making with big breaks in between, and if you ever feel like your gear or levels are behind the curve and you have to grind, the difficulty settings can be changed and can be set as forgiving as you like, they actually alter the level scaling and RPG aspects.

I think it’s a great game worth playing, but you do need to be ready to tell yourself when enough is enough because they give you too much for weirdos like me that just wanna experience it all over a really long… Odyssey.

The quests you get from the quest boards, especially the ones with the hourglass icons can be pretty much blanket ignored. Otherwise you can tell when talking to the quest giver if Alexios/Kassandra accepts the quest generically and doesn’t respond to anything the giver says very specifically other than “I’ll take care of it” or things like that.

I love the shit out of that game, have been world exploring and only doing the unique side quests.

Funnily enough playing BotW on CEMU was what got me to get a switch, it was just so good I wanted to play it without any caveats or messing with settings or working around the gyro controls and the allure of playing it portably anywhere was high.

I think video games’ volatility and ties to specific hardware and issues of bugs and technical problems hold them back from being the best medium.

Almost all other kinds of art are much more easily preserved in their original form and have more longevity and deliverance of artistic intent.

Absolutely. There are a few studios I love so much that I know what they produce I’ll enjoy well enough to find it worth it, and so I’ll watch a gameplay trailer or two to get a baseline understanding of the type of game I should expect, and as soon as I’m satisfied by the premise, that’s it.

I wait for release and explore around the possibilities myself and wonder things, and test things, and get mad that I didn’t realize I could do a thing the whole time, but it’s really just an awesome way to experience a game.

Of course, this only works if I trust that the studio will put out a baseline of quality and expected type of gameplay. If a game is of questionable quality money becomes a larger issue than ideal experience.

Absolutely. A huge reason why soulslikes are so beloved. Through a huge combination of deliberate decisions touching nearly every facet of the game, an ethos is crafted all for the sake of intriguing the player, challenging the player’s mind and physical execution, and then triumphing, with discovery of several forms peppered throughout the way.

The lack of a map, enabled by a well designed and memorable world is one of the best examples for me. Nothing else I’ve played quite matches navigating Dark Souls without a map. You’re in one spot of this large, interconnected, seamless world. You just finished grinding an item in Darkroot Garden, and you want to return to Firelink.

Mentally, a collage of images appears in my mind, laying a pathway, a map of the world, the different paths and elevators I must take to get to where I need to go, and I begin walking, and I follow my own directions. That experience is all over the place in that game, and for all the obtuseness that’s in there, it was still so worth it to commit to that design so hard.

I didn’t say that understanding and agreement are the same. What I wanted was for that user to understand where the other side was coming from, and acknowledge that, and if they still had a different opinion, then okay, but I just wanted to try and explain the side I’m on in a less directly hostile way than the other commenters are.

You make some logical points, I won’t go into my opinion since it already seems clear, hope you have a nice night, genuinely, people should be able to discuss this stuff maturely.

It’d be hard to find because it’s just called GoldenEye 007 link

I didn’t even know there was a modern control scheme in that, wow! How’s that mess with it?

Depends on if the character’s supposed to be a self insert. In a game with deep customization you may be trying to make yourself, and not playing as Lara Croft or Geralt, so being able to choose your pronouns helps immersion, and immersion’s a big deal to many players who’ll take it anywhere they can get it in a game, whether it’s pronouns, or being able to see your torso and feet when you look down.

I can understand that having pronouns or nonbinary or trans characters in games can be a bit of a culture shock. As a culture we’re beginning to grow more overall accepting of these people that have been here all along, but never felt comfortable to “be a seen part of society” out of fear. The same sort of thing happened, or is still happening, with homosexuality, though that’s further along the acceptance curve than trans/nonbinary.

Eventually it won’t be so obviously “woke garbage” that sticks out to you as something noticeable and startling, and it’ll be just another feature of the game like anything else, just another NPC like any other, but that one gets called “they” instead of him or her. It takes time for it all to become normalized and not be something you raise eyebrows at and feel upset by. You may always wonder sometimes what gender someone is identifying as when it may not be obvious, but it will become easier to simply ask them, or be okay with not knowing, it’s okay to not know.

I’m not going to pretend that mentally working through these things isn’t a part of this whole process, but trying to somehow fight back against it by calling it all garbage and refusing to extend the hand to understand where it’s all coming from is… inappropriate, we all need to get along, we all live on this planet together and the only way to make it the best it can be is to try and understand each other.

Sure, you may have a point in there about desiring a platform where people can upload any mod they like, and that could totally be a thing, Nexus Mods doesn’t want that to be their thing, specifically, and whether you’re okay with that or not is your perspective, and I’m okay with that, but you should try and understand why Nexus is taking that stance. Nonbinary and trans people are on the back foot, culturally, so it’s clear that many places will take a stand to hard defend their representation because they’re so far behind the “biological genders” and could use a helping hand.

Oh wow, how’s it hold up? I think the Xbox version of that 2010 remake came out in 2011, the original was a Wii game. I assume that means they made it backwards compatible.

That’s a full on reimagining of the original game, new Bond and everything, so the balance wouldn’t be comparable to playing the actual original with modern controls, but I heard it was a better game than you’d expect from messing with the original Goldeneye.

I was talking about the original Goldeneye 64 that came out on Switch’s NSO N64 games.

Which one? I played the one that was released on Switch, which is just the OG and had the same controls. What do you mean recent? You mean the 2010 remake?

That seems a little better, but seasonal content must be paid for, right? Does that mean the content I paid for that’s sunsetted id have to pay for again seasonally? And what about the campaign?

I had just never heard anyone speak about it, the premise and Japanese mythology already interest me, and it’s developed by Tango, the studio ran by Shinji Mikami, so I’m definitely interested to check it out (though I know he’s not directly involved, it lends a pedigree to their studio, to me.)

Oh shit, that actually sounds pretty cool, I was expecting some straight forward RPG by the name of it, I’ll definitely check it out. Thank you

That would be when I quit, yes.

Some games are so borked from a technical perspective they’d need a remake to work right, like Oblivion. That game is so technically bottlenecked by itself that even on modern hardware I fucking stutter, and I’ve trawled so many performance mods with fellow players in the comments just having to come to terms with the fact that no mod can fix the inherently poor optimization on an engine level.

Remakes can definitely be warranted in certain cases. Sometimes it’s easier to just start over clean than try to untangle an existing mess and Frankenstein it back together. Sometimes making vast changes can produce an alternative reality of a game to be enjoyed by more or a different audience, like the Resident Evil Remakes, which are fucking excellent, or the FF7 remake, which, while contentious, is mostly only so because of purists, who do still have the original they can play (and I do believe companies should always keep the original around)

I’d love to live in a world where I could just install everything and never struggle for storage space.

Hey, don’t conflate those two, Unicorn Overlord sounds fucking awesome when you say it aloud, whereas Various Daylife is just as confusing, but instead seems downright pedestrian and boring in comparison.

What is it? I’ve heard the name around but have no idea what the premise or appeal is.

I quit it because of sunsetting content. I love to know what I have in a game and that if I wanna stop and play other things for a few months or something that I can return and still play through that content.

As soon as they sunset entire planets and disallowed you from being able to play the campaign on your own time, relegating the entire thing to randomized heroic missions on a daily rotation, I just couldn’t do it anymore and left. It’s absolutely the worst FOMO implementation I’ve ever seen in a game and it fucking disgusts me.

I couldn’t believe what a breath of fresh air it was to play through Borderlands 3 this year and just be able to know what the whole game was, what all the content was, and that I could play that content any time I wanted, forever, without any chance that it would simply disappear on me, after I’d already paid for it.

That’d be like playing Goldeneye 64 on a PC with mouse look. It’d be hilariously easy because all of the enemies are tuned to be handleable with the primitive control scheme.

Makes sense, some of their port jobs on switch I would consider as disasters. If they really remade KOTOR and completely boned it I’d hate them even more than I already do. That sounds a little harsh, some of their ports are passable.

Some people, like me, are probably just waiting to see what happens. Payday 2 was awesome, but after release it got microtransactioned and piecemeal DLC’d to high fucking heaven. I don’t care if the beta is good, I want to see what it’ll become before I get invested.

PR Guy: I dunno, boys, the headline ‘Our boss is okay, you’d probably be fine sticking indie and not being owned at all’ doesn’t look… good. I’m thinking maybe we just… completely reverse that, yeah that’s more like it."

Imagine if FromSoft fired back with Chromehounds 2… realrobots rise up!

SOMA is pretty good for that, it’s got a mode where the monsters can’t hurt you. I played on that mode and enjoyed it immensely for its story and environmental merits.

Real excited for this. I loved Helldivers 1 and every other game Arrowhead’s made.

Tons of third party controllers for any system clone existing buttons, which is nice when the official controllers don’t have that. Something interesting about doing this on a switch is that because each joy con is its own independent controller you can only map each joy con to an input from the same joy con, for example, the left wouldn’t be able to map to face buttons, and the right wouldn’t be able to map to the d pad.

I use a Steam Controller on PC and really enjoy being able to map anything to it which helps being able to play games how I want. Cloning buttons is great for the whole “retain joystick movement while hitting a face button”, but without being able to directly map different game controls to it it’s just a copy of an existing function you already have.

I would love for grip buttons to be normalized and allow for more controls in games, it’s pretty much the last part of my hands that aren’t doing anything on a modern controller layout.

The actual act of doing it gets old, but I do like the fact that you can’t fast travel out of a situation in ED, it means if you go on a deep space expedition to make discovery money you are gonna be in DEEP SPACE, and you better be fucking prepared with a ship spec’d specifically for it because you do not want to turn around and give up because you couldn’t fuel scoop or make a jump.

You definitely get a feeling of being a very small person in the galaxy with lots of things going on far away that you’ll never see, and having limited fuel and constant frameshift jumps allows for more mechanics and complexity like fuel scooping or being interdicted.

Starfield lets you go wherever at a moment’s notice which makes the galaxy feel very small comparatively and lacks stakes for exploration and jump range (along with the infinite fuel), reducing the need to have specialized ships. It also allows you to miss out on some random events that only happen when a ship in orbit with you hails you on comms. You miss those experiences if you fast travel past them all, which is echoed in other Bethesda titles with their own random encounters during travel that can be missed due to fast travel.

That being said, it’s a Bethesda fantasy version of space, you want to do fun space opera things and having hardcore travel might clash with that, I can understand why it wasn’t implemented that way. For example, no one mentions this, but I fucking LOVE bethesda’s save system of saving the exact state of everything in the universe in that exact moment. Im a filthy save scummer and I love it. I like being able to save scum difficult space battles, and I don’t think you can do that in most other hardcore space games, but I’m so grateful that I can here.

I mean, there are parts of the game’s major criticisms that are understandable and do impact the game experience in a way. The worst one for me is the lack of a local map. I’ve gotten lost in cities or complexly laid out buildings a number of times already, which is, suffice to say, not enjoyable and nigh on unforgivably clumsy to experience repeatedly.

I’ll forgive, or even enjoy, say, Dark Souls for the same thing because it’s not as complicatedly laid out and the world is smaller and much more visually distinct in its areas to make it up on the back end, along with the entire design ethos being very hands off in terms of delivering info to the player, which sets a standard compared to Starfield’s polished to a sheen experience, which suddenly becomes less so in other spots, creating a negative contrast.

Others, like the lack of seamless planet to space transitions were never advertised, and though having them certainly increases immersion, visual spectacle, and thus perceived enjoyment and value of a game, is not really important in the grand scheme unless you wrongly expected it. I don’t have enough time to worry about a planet transition, I’m thinking about what I’m gonna do there and what I’m gonna do next within the gameplay itself. With this sort of criticism, the game would be undoubtedly better with such a feature if it wouldn’t have delayed development too significantly to implement, which no one can really say for sure.

Then there are criticisms like the fact that planets are limited in scale and you can’t fly your ship close to the ground on the surface, which is just wildly beyond the scope of what Bethesda would be able to deliver and still say it’s the same game. That would’ve been so complex it would’ve sacrificed other features undoubtedly, and shows more about a given player’s desire for “Starfield 2: We Added all That Space Sim Stuff People Wanted that we couldn’t before because we’d end up like Star Citizen” than it really does about Starfield’s successes or failures in the features it explicitly attempted to deliver.

The article suggests it’s strictly for smartphone apps. Could just be vague wording on the part of the article, but I struggle to understand how this would be as feasible for console or PC releases.

The issue would be believing anything not explicitly said or shown in a pre release showcase. You don’t expect anything not extremely, extremely obvious or you just let yourself down and then blame the studio for underdelivering.

A bunch of that is of course the fault of marketing itself, but this goes for almost anything marketed ever, beyond video games.