With all the news coming out the past couple days about The Veilguard, I'm starting to piece together a suspicion that Bioware is picking things back up where they last had decent ideas: early to mid 2010s.
I think Veilguard will feel like a stuck-in-time successor to Inquisition, stale by that period's standards and grossly outdated by today's, especially in the wake of Larian's enormous success reinvigorating the kind of game Bioware has forgotten how to make.
At the 2024 Summer Game Fest, BioWare creative director John Epler gave some insights on Dragon Age: The Veilguard's back-to-basics character focus.
![Dragon Age: The Veilguard sees BioWare refocus on companions](https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/be94fde9-ae74-4859-9af0-b9e0c8aeb04f.webp?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
That'd be great if it was true but there have been rumors that development largely reset when they left. Guess we'll have to wait until they release credits to know for sure.
the devs given any reason to doubt them
I agree that it's super early for much speculation, but Dan Houser and a few other key players left Rockstar after RDR2. He and Michael Unsworth (who I think also left the studio with Dan) were two-thirds of the GTA 5 and RDR2 writing team. Without their involvement, I fear a scenario where the core single-player narrative has less gravitas, around which much of the detail and realism of the gameplay and game world has previously resolved, and the company leans more into the success of its GTA Online style gameplay.
I'm sure they can still be wildly successful with that formula, but it will be a huge disappointment for me personally.
I can't disagree. But as one facet among others, I also think "concern" is reasonably warranted in conducting a comparative assessment.
Edit: also worth highlighting: "there's nothing wrong with being against gay marriage because it's a political opinion" is certifiably homophobic. How much responsibility Kagi's moderators bear for not removing that comment or otherwise explicitly advising that homophobia won't be tolerated is debatable, but it's not great.
Seems fair, in reference to Kagi:
Unrelatedly: I’m concerned about the company’s biases, as it seems happy to use Brave’s commercial API (allowing blatant homophobia in the comments) and allow its results to recommend suicide methods without intervention. I reject the idea that avoiding an option that may seem politically biased is the same as being unbiased if such a decision has real political implications.
Shame. Shortly after it's release Best Buy was selling it for like $10, which is such a potent indicator for the state of its reputation on release. Anyway, I couldn't pass it up. I encountered tons of bugs, but they were all superficial and didn't impact the gameplay or my progress.
I loved it. World building and atmosphere were grade A, and I even liked Johnny Silverhand and his relationship with V. Like I said in the post, I've been waiting for new game plus to replay, but I guess now I'll just dive back in without.
CD Projekt Red's latest data show that no devs are currently working on the sci-fi open-world game
![For The First Time In A Decade, Nobody Is Working On Cyberpunk 2077](https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/e683f11c-95e1-4fb8-942a-68133543c082.webp?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
I've been waiting for new game plus to replay, but it sounds like that just may not be in the works.
Interesting. I heard the main character is insufferable. Would you disagree or is the story good in spite of him?
Watcher Knights I think are near the top of my list. I just rewatched my recording of beating them and I was fumbling so badly lol. It's obvious I'm running with the "pure desperation" tactic rather a more skillful approach, but it finally managed to work out.
I was addicted to exploring that world but I am satisfied with the one playthrough I think.
I was persuaded to pick Elden Ring back up despite not really feeling a pull for it, but lo and behold once I was back in I fell in deep. I never actually finished the game with my first dex/bleed-based character, so I continued making my way through Crumbling Farum Azula. I've given Malekith a couple of attempts but I'm pretty burned out on bosses at the moment. I started up a new sorcery-based character and that's been the real joy. Magic really does make the game significantly easier, and part of me wishes I'd done my first playthrough this way. But I'd beaten Demon's Souls remake not too long before starting Elden Ring originally and wanted something different.
To fall back on when I get too frustrated, I've been playing 10tons's Undead Horde. Their game Dysmantle wound up being a major highlight the year that I played it (I really, really liked it), so I finally bought Undead Horde 1 and 2. It's not nearly as good as Dysmantle, but it's a really great, lightweight dungeon crawler. I like their vibe very much and am really looking forward to Dysplaced.
I also gave the Saints Row reboot a try since it was free a while back on PS+ and it's really, really (really) dumb. It's also kind of fun, a little at a time. Not sure it'll hold my interest all the way through but it's nice having an open world game that's just...easy to play and asks very little of the player.
I'm further behind in Ori but I'm enjoying it greatly. I'm not a big metroidvania aficionado, but I played and loved Hollow Knight despite it's difficulty (some of the bosses really tested my tolerance for punishment). I appreciate that Ori is (so far) a more accessible game.
They claim that entertainment companies exist "to provide that entertainment." Sure I think creative leads and the devs (especially in the games industry) are there to provide entertainment that they are passionate about. But idk if I can ever see a period where the publisher was in it for the art, despite what they may say.
I agree with you, except that up until the early-to-mid aughts, before Fortnight, and skinner box mobile games, and the promise of persistent revenue capitalizing on addictive tendencies and FOMO, publishers believed that the best path to profit was good games. Konami, to pick the (previously) worst example, published one of the weirdest, most cinematic, ambitious, influential games of all time with Metal Gear Solid. And then, eventually, they saw a straighter, shorter path to profit.
I am...way more personally upset about the Arkane closure than I usually get about these things. I have so much respect for what that studio created. This article is great though and gives the holistic perspective I've been looking for the past few days:
The point here, ultimately, is that this cycle has been repeating, and repeating, and repeating, and it does not show any sign of coming to an end. Xbox buys talent, mismanages it in search of impossible scale, and cuts it loose - be that the 20-year experts of Fable, or the battle-scarred makers of Dishonored, or the invigorating new generation behind Hi-Fi Rush. Xbox's leadership clearly knows it's a problem...they have to step behind this first, surface-level layer of justification for closing studios, and get to the real cause - not the decisions themselves, but the principles that inform them. The principles that say expertise, creativity and talent are less valuable than the cost to let them flourish.
There's a PlayStation community I was subscribed to whose main mod posted a gamergatey rant over the weekend with a number of factual inaccuracies. I wanted desperately to assume they were just benignly uninformed, but it didn't turn out that way.
I'm not interested in subscribing to a community at risk of being affected by that kind of toxicity, so I had to leave. Which is a bummer because I liked having PS-specific news in my feed.
I think I have it. OP was staying at a hotel when it was evacuated by SWAT. This evacuation event was notable enough that it wound up on the front page of the paper (A1), so OP wound up being a source for a front-page story. As a result of reconnecting with people at the paper, they decided to try emailing the editor about any job opportunities.
There goes the benefit of the doubt I guess.
I wish you a swift escape from your sisyphean grievances. Best of luck.
Hey, I appreciate the work you do here with this community so I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt on some of the issues with your post, but I also want to correct the record on those issues.
IGN did not suddenly invent the idea that RE5 had racist undertones. That accusation existed from as early as the game's release in 2009. And it doesn't exist in a vacuum but ties into a recurring observation that western media (EDIT Maddie fairly pointed out that Capcom is not Western; this label would perhaps be better revised to "media of developed nations") has very often treated non-western cultures as savage hellscapes, and its inhabitants as demonic predators (see early American Westerns). The fact that IGN gave the game a 9 on release and now acknowledges its issues is not a sign of hypocritical woke fever but that a niche dialogue has been elevated to higher prominence in the past 15 years.
Interestingly, the article at the link above actually directly addresses the distinction between RE4's setting and RE5's that you reference.
As for Cliffhanger games...you kind of did make that up. Lalonders's actual quote:
“I’m not saying white people are creating unsafe environments, I’m saying sometimes it’s hard to work with white people because sometimes they think something is okay, but it’s really a microaggression."
Is this racist? Maybe. Certainly it's discriminatory, but it sounds way more like a reaction to poor past experiences than it does like anything malicious.
More importantly, you claim that Lalonders "of Cliffhanger Games has gone on record that the studio [implying Cliffhanger] will not hire white people." Except the quote from Lalonders is from 2021, when they were working on a different game at Veritable Joy Studios.
Rather for the sake of profit, transparently.
Republican state representative Tiffany Esposito, who sponsored the new workplace heat bill, spent years as an operative in the business lobby before being elected in 2022.
When we were trying to book a hotel, my partner clicked on the top link of a Google search, which was of course a sponsored link and took her to some completely off-brand intermediary whose website was designed to mimic the appearance of the hotel's. She completed the booking there before ever realizing it wasn't the hotel itself, and when I quoted the same stay directly with the hotel it wound up being some $100-$200 cheaper.
I had to have a lengthy phone call with their customer support and exchange a few emails before they finally agreed to refund us. I suppose we're lucky they even had a reachable customer service, but I was and remain infuriated by the conditions that created the situation in the first place.
I've been waiting since its release, definitely pumped for that one.
Thanks! I looked at Graveyard Keeper a while back, might give it a go.
I finally tried out Hardspace Shipbreaker. I've played a few hours and just finished the reactor tutorial. So far it's that diamond in the rough I'm always looking for: an engaging but chill gameplay loop and enticing progression. Something I can turn on to relax and zone out with noncommitally, but that isn't just an objective-less sandbox ala No Man's Sky.
If anyone has recommendations for other games that fit the bill please let me know!
The latest rebranding of subscription service Ubisoft+ accompanies the release of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
![Ubisoft Wants You To Be Comfortable Not Owning Your Games](https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/dcf67d71-112a-4434-849c-581d2b1512ba.webp?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
This year is already looking to be another horrible one for people making games
![10 Days Into 2024 And 2300+ Video Game Layoffs Have Been Announced](https://lemdro.id/pictrs/image/3449f2d8-72f5-4c10-a7f8-f2014a92ba19.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
Mostly from Unity: 1800 through the end of March.
Booksmart star Kaitlyn Dever will join Bella Ramsey as the star of the show’s second season
![The Last Of Us Show Has Found Its Abby](https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/73397c6b-3bab-4e29-a07d-b2e9c3724c48.webp?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
The next game from Batman: Arkham City devs sounds a lot like a live-service shooter, even if the studio isn’t ready to admit that
![Suicide Squad Boss Downplays Live-Service Elements Of Obviously Live-Service Game](https://lemdro.id/pictrs/image/371d2cf3-661b-4830-981f-828257f5e387.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
With its market share hitting a new low, can Firefox rise from the ashes or is this the end?
![The fall of Firefox: Mozilla's once-popular web browser slides into irrelevance](https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/d71b0974-7273-4678-bb60-039df6b3d801.webp?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
Article seems pretty flawed. Relevance is a vague metric, and the author relies pretty heavily on data related to government site visitation, which seems subject to bias toward certain types of users.
Market share is likely still incredibly low, but Firefox's relevance should be spiking right now due to Google's shenanigans with Chromium. The fact that like 90% of revenue for its for-profit wing is from Google is still troubling.
Any alternative views out there?
Sony has been fined €13.5 million by French antitrust regulator Autorité de la Concurrence, which has accused the compa…
![Sony fined €13.5m by French antitrust regulator](https://lemdro.id/pictrs/image/8c3c690d-db33-4e3b-aabb-7db77e9af60f.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
I’m going to miss Mimimi Games
![Mimimi Games revived a genre, pushed it forward, and then shut down](https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/84f45d37-b8ea-484d-b17f-f2d4af5d83eb.webp?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
I regret to admit I have never played any of their games despite having Desperados 3 on my list for a while. I feel some relief on their behalf though that their closure was evidently a deliberate choice rather than a market failure.
We look at the past year of video game adaptations and why they're so damn good. Could the trend continue with future productions?
![Video Game Movies And TV Shows Finally Got Good In 2023](https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/a2e01f9b-afd0-4a33-bb54-fab0c2cef35d.webp?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
Layers of Fear and The Medium developer Bloober Team is set to develop a game based on an IP owned by Skybound Entertai…
![Silent Hill 2 Remake developer teams up with The Walking Dead's Skybound Entertainment](https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/f9bfc9aa-af52-4031-ace2-362c343bf077.webp?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
Sony Interactive Entertainment and Warner Bros. have reached an agreement to stop the delisting of PlayStation Discovery TV shows.
![PlayStation and WB Reach Agreement to Not Pull Discovery Shows for Now - PlayStation LifeStyle](https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/3bcec3a4-ed9c-4d79-8bbe-482694cd0844.webp?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
Good news for anyone who owns this content, but the damage is certainly already done. The original news broke as I was making the transition to a Plex home Media server + vpn, and I only feel further validated for it.
![](https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/3635c4bb-1462-4728-ae7a-6b852ce00132.webp?format=webp&thumbnail=512)
YouTube Video
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One of my favorite YouTube game critics explores every single Fallout game and their place within a collective idea of what the franchise has been and currently is.
You wake up at an abandoned train station in Krat, a city overwhelmed by madness and bloodlust. In front of you lies a single note that reads: "Find Mr. Geppetto. He's here in the city." Play as Pinocchio, a puppet mechanoid, and fight through everything in your path to find this mystery person. B...
Reviews currently trending positively in the low-80s.
Also, apparently Metacritic's site design was updated at some point.
![](https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/c21a4301-20f9-4580-838c-8930e317f290.webp?format=webp&thumbnail=512)
YouTube Video
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Subpar CG, messy genre identity crisis, and flagrant visual references to its inspirations mar this ridiculous action flick that I owned on DVD and watched at least a dozen times as a tasteless high schooler in the early 2000s.
No regrets.
The hills are alive with the sound of music and successful skill checks.
![Bards are Baldur's Gate 3's best class and I can't imagine playing it as anything else](https://lemdro.id/pictrs/image/21d0e9ad-daf2-4bd2-ba56-f9ca363e4990.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
I was planning on paying a rogue, paladin, or warlock (based on my tabletop characters), but this article nearly has me convinced. I am waiting for the PS5 release, so any agreement or dissension from my PC friends? Other class recommendations?
https://web.archive.org/save/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcgamer.com%2Fbards-are-baldurs-gate-3s-best-class-and-i-cant-imagine-playing-it-as-anything-else%2F
![](https://lemdro.id/pictrs/image/9e6c289e-6601-4d19-aade-d7abd5ec5042.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=512)
YouTube Video
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The whole video is worth watching, but this section in particular makes a better case than I've seen in other analyses: that the game condemns player involvement not by simply chastising the player for choosing to continue playing itself (as I've seen other analyses argue), but rather for carelessly and uncritically engaging with the power fantasy that games like this cater to.
Stop me if you've heard this before: "Our game has more words than the Lord of the Rings and the Bible put together! It's a billion, kajillion hours long! You can't finish it! No one can finish it!"
![Starfield and Baldur's Gate 3 have reignited the 'quantity vs quality' debate around RPGs that promise a billion hours of gameplay, but I think they can actually deliver](https://lemdro.id/pictrs/image/4e2a31e8-7600-4095-8e49-6aefce181675.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=256)