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After VtM 1’s tumultuous release, not to mention the drama surrounding the sequel’s development, that makes sense to me.
That being said, I don’t think it’s quite as big a leap as the person above is making it sound. To use their words, The Chinese Room are known for “strong art direction, atmosphere, and story, [and] weak gameplay”. They also suggest that the games TCR make are “the exact opposite” of Bloodlines 1. Which is kinda boggling my mind, cause I’m pretty sure the critical and user consensus of that game is that it excelled in its art direction, atmosphere, and story, and fell comparatively short in its gameplay. In fairness, I think he was referring to the limited open world nature of VtM 1 vs the straight linearity of the “walking sim” genre, but still. I’d argue the most memorable section of VtM is the Ocean House Hotel, which is, basically, a linear walking sim level, and it’s not as though the og game did a ton with its open world.
Now there’s an argument to be made that Paradox made the wrong call by doubling down on the peripheral elements of the game, rather than hiring a team that has ARPG gameplay bonafides, but I think that’s only an argument that can be made with the benefit of hindsight. Additionally, is it true that the gameplay/combat of VtM2 is glaringly bad? I can’t speak for myself, but the handful of reviews I read characterize it as serviceable at worst. Which, again, seems right in line with the first game.
I’m very much on the outside looking in though.
Apropos of nothing more than my idle speculation, I’d guess they will return to the transport tycoon genre if they are able to do so. Before Skylines took the crown from SimCity as the preeminent example of the genre, they made the Cities in Motion games, which were narrowly focused on improving the mass transit of existing cities (as opposed to building the city itself). I know the second CiM game had some interaction between the city and your efforts as transportation czar (in the same way you could indirectly influence a citiy’s development in, say Railroad Tycoon), but the emphasis was always on transit. I imagine the newly independent team will want to keep their focus narrow, unless another publisher swoops in to replace the safety net.
Unfortunately, you are mistaken. Ross is indeed the founder of the initiative. If you look at the SKG homepage you’ll see Ross is the sole contact listed.
Additionally, here is a PC Gamer article from April 2024 (the month The Crew’s servers shut down) which cites Ross as the founder of the initiative.
I believe he may have reduced his most visible contributions to the movement after it became about gathering signatures in the EU, since he is not a citizen. I could be wrong on that front though.
Are you insane, or have you achieved CHIM?
Not that there’s an appreciable difference…looking at you, Michael Kirkbride.
Try these cool moves, like, playing the game!
…God I miss forum-based let’s plays. I was never a SA member (Something Awful, not Sturmabteilung, though there’s probably some degree of overlap there), but I did browse the lparchive website once upon a time. Some folks put so much effort into their presentation, I want sure where the game ended and the LP narrative began.
There was one in particular that was an LP of the Blade Runner adventure game. That’s a game I had watched my dad play on our family Compaq back in the day, so I thought I knew what I was getting into, but the combination of the game having secret narrative branches (that change based on a random seed when you start a new game, I think) and the posts being written in a first person, hard-boiled noir style, made me think that we had played different games.
Interesting. I remember taking a look at the previous game from a couple of years ago because, in spite of myself, edgelord dark fantasy is still appealing to me if it’s done knowingly (which is different, I’ll hasten to add, from not taking it seriously). However, one glance at the screenshots told me it was a deck-building game and I immediately disregarded it. It’s just not a mechanic or loop that I enjoy.
However, given that this appears to be to Skyrim what, say, The Outer Worlds is to Starfield (narrative tone notwithstanding), my interest is piqued.
Are you enjoying the game?
I mean, would you say modern Italian culture is the same as Roman culture? Devoid of context, the idea that your civilization evolves over time isn’t a bad one from a fluff standpoint, and, as another user mentioned, it increases the likelihood of niche or late-game specific civs getting play, so I can see mechanical benefit too.
That being said, if anyone said the execution fell flat, I’ve no reason to doubt them.
I mean, that’s the goal of all of these AI companies. If you peruse any marketing material for Google, Microsoft, ChatGPT, Grok, etc. they almost all mention the “agentic capabilities” of their flavor of spyware.
Personally, an AI model which is capable of doing tasks like this would actually interest me. However, no organization (for profit or otherwise) is trustworthy enough to have access to all of the data on me that it would take to make an agentic AI actually useful, so, for me, it would have to be something I run locally. However, rather than invest all of the time, effort, and money into learning how to make that happen, I think I’ll just call the damn dealership and schedule an appointment. I may suffer from terminally online brain rot, but I’m not so paralyzed by human interaction I can’t make the occasional phone call.
AgenTic, not Agenic. As in, an AI that acts as your agent. Meaning, the goal would be to have an AI model that you could direct to perform certain tasks in the background while you focus on other things.
For example, youre in the middle of doing something or another when you remember that your oil change is due. You pull up KraftonAI and tell it to “book me a service appointment for my vehicle at the dealership this weekend”. The AI proceeds to work on that task in the background, only prompting you for input if it meets a road block it doesn’t understand.
I agree that there is something bland about the aesthetics of the game. From a distance (or in a thumbnail), it looks very good and faithful to the art style of the original games, just with some extra bells and whistles. However, upon closer examination there is something about the design language which feels like I’m looking at a mobile game ad. It could be that I associate HoMM with a hyper specific micro genre of fantasy art. My views are very HoMM 2 coded, and that game feels its art was ripped from the book jackets of Del Rey and Tor published paperbacks circa 1987. I love the look, especially the hero portraits.
So, this new look doesn’t really do anything for me. I’m not knowledgeable enough to suggest that AI was used to design some of these assets, but that’s the impression the art gives me, which I’m sure was not their intent.
I mean,isn’t that what a foreclosure sale is?
I’m honestly asking. The world of corporate raiding is a foreign and distasteful place to my arts and sciences brain. The world of home buying is also foreign to my arts and sciences brain, but that’s cause I leaned more into arts than sciences.
That being said, you put up 20 grand of your money for a down payment. The bank loans you 200k. You fail to make your payments. Bank forecloses and sells off the property to cover the remaining debt, or at least claw back whatever they can get from it. Would that be so different than what’s likely to happen if EA fails to pay JP Morgan back? Is it the liability of Kushner et al vs the liability of a homeowner that is the primary difference?
Star Wars is not exclusively listened to EA anymore. The original deal between Disney and EA was slated for 10 years of exclusivity, signed in 2013. However, after several PR disaster (mainly the Battlefront 2 controversies), Disney apparently terminated the exclusivity contract when they announced Star Wars: Outlaws would be published by Ubisoft in 2020. Of course, that game released in 2024, so, I guess EA technically got their 10 years?
I don’t know of any other projects pending, though I’ve fallen off tracking gaming news that closely in recent years, so I could be mistaken.
more info than you could ever want about Pitchford’s porn habits
In short, there was a legal dispute between Pitchford and a former counsel for Gearbox. As part of a pattern of suit-countersuit, the former employee alleged that Pitchford had left a USB stick at a local restaurant which contained proprietary company info as well as underage pornography. Pitchford confirmed that all of the above, with the notable exception of the “underage” part. Given nothing came of it, and he was remarkably candid about what type of porn was actually on the USB, I’m inclined to believe him.
For both rich atmosphere and unique game mechanics, you could do a lot worse than Return of the Obra Dinn.
If you’re unfamiliar, the presentation evokes early PC (or Mac, more specifically) black and white “1 bit” games, but real time 3d. This already is very distinctive, but the gameplay also sets it apart.
You are an insurance investigator with a magic pocket watch which allows you to travel back to the moment in time that someone expired, if you find their corpse. From these brief flashes (and by cross-referencing the ship manifest) you piece together what happened to all the crew and passengers on the ships ill-fated voyage, before it’s baffling reemergence years after the fact.
I mean, I guess I just don’t view entertainment options as a finite resource. Amusements abound. Games, movies, shows, books, lectures, theater, articles, podcasts, music, sports, etc. The means to dispense with my free time far far far exceed the amount of free time I have to fritter away. So, while you may view backlog management as unhealthy min/maxing, I would counter that your preoccupation with “running out” of entertainment is, at least, equally as unhealthy a min/max mindset.
Also, I can’t speak for others, but your clothing analogy made me think of this: when I talk about not wanting to purchase a game because of my backlog, usually I don’t mean “aw man, I’d really like to get Baldur’s Gate 3, but I haven’t finished my Madden dynasty yet”. Rather, it would be closer to, “I’d really like to get Baldur’s Gate 3, but I bought both of the Owlcat Pathfinder RPGs last sale and I haven’t even booted those up yet”. So, it’s less about deciding whether or not to buy a shirt based on how many pairs of jeans you own, and more about deciding whether you need the latest, most fashionable cut of Levis when you’ve got 3 pairs of Costco jeans at home still.
Ultimately, it’s neither right nor wrong of you to hoard digital games. It’s your money, you do with it what you will. It just seems like a wildly hot take to come into that conversation swinging around accusatory statements like “that’s an unhealthy min-max mindset”.
That’s not really what’s implied in that statement. A better comparison, using your streaming service analogy, would be that you subscribed to Apple TV because you heard Severance was really good. However, one thing led to another, and now it’s months later, and you still haven’t watched Severance. So, instead of starting a new series (say, Ted Lasso) you queue up Severance instead.
It’s still not a great analogy, because the streaming service implies a real, ongoing cost to maintaining access to the service, which is not the case with most people’s game libraries. That being said, with Gamepass and GeForce Now etc, it’s not necessarily out of the question.
The purpose isn’t to “deplete entertainment options”, it’s to utilize the options you already have financial investment in before sinking more money into more options simply for their novelty.
The “point of the product” isn’t to provide theoretical novel entertainment value by sitting, unplayed, on my digital shelves. Bold take here, but I’d suggest the point of a video game is to be played.
You’re the one suggesting that your lack of attraction to these character models is an objective flaw. Which is, of course, semantically silly, if nothing else. Not finding a character (or person) attractive for whatever reason is your business. Taking to the forum and yelling about androgyny being objectively unattractive (in an online space which I’d wager has a disproportionate representation of trans and NB individuals) is an interesting choice.
Idk, I suppose you can argue that the binary morality system of the first BioShock was integral to the franchise identity, considering the time it came out and all, but I don’t hate that Infinite has one definitive ending to the story it wanted to tell. In fact, given the game’s emphasis on tropes and meta commentary, I’d imagine that setting a story in a universe with infinite possibilities and then removing the “choice” from the player to influence the ending was done deliberately. However, it’s been a decade since I played it, so I could certainly be misremembering some details.
I’m a homm2 guy myself ( shout out fheroes2 engine ), but I can’t sympathize with you on that front. Much like some folks’ relationship with Civ, I’m constantly in a “one more turn” loop when I play, to the point that I won’t boot it up if it’s after a certain time haha
They have made one Warhammer game, Rogue Trader. It is a party based, turn based, RPG based upon a tabletop ruleset. It’s quite good, though I admit that I play it on story mode difficulty cause I can’t be bothered to learn another RPG system right now, and idgaf about build crafting. With that being said, it’s a positively ENORMOUS game, with extraordinary amounts of optional content to interact with. If you go on expecting Space Marine 2, or Dawn of War, you’re likely going to be very upset. However, if you are prepared for something which apes the old Infinity Engine games of the 90s, or games inspired by the same, such as Pillars of Eternity, you’ll likely enjoy yourself.
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Mmos and arpgs are intrinsically linked by their gameplay loops. Admittedly, this can vary to a greater or lesser degree depending on the specific games being compared, but Diablo 2 was, in many ways, proto-WoW.