Computerchairgeneral

I’ve been working my way through the Baldur’s Gate series after putting about ninety hours in BG3. BG1 was fun even if the story was a bit predictable and generic, although it did feel like playing through a DnD campaign. Really enjoyed Shadows of Amn, but Throne of Bhaal just turned into a slog at the end. I think the most interesting part of playing through the trilogy was watching Bioware’s style develop over the course of the three games. As someone who was introduced to Bioware through Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire I’ve always thought Bioware’s character writing stood out, especially in the old days, so it was a bit jarring to play through BG1 where the companions feel more like hirelings you pick up for their class rather than full-fledged characters. BG2 felt more like a classic Bioware game with banter, romance, and companion quests, although the Real Time advancement system kept glitching out on me. I was hoping to move on to Planescape: Torment after TOB, but I’m feeling burnt out on Infinity Engine games. So right now I’m trying to find something in the Summer Sale to serve as a palate cleanser.

Amazing game. One of the few shooters I can think of that really drove the “War is Hell” message home. Shame it got delisted over an expired music license.

I had genuinely forgotten about the sequel until I saw this. Started wondering how I had missed that and then I remembered it was a straight to streaming cash grab. Time to go back to being blissfully ignorant.

Yeah, really hoping this is just a misstep from the marketing team. It’s such a whiplash inducing shift in tone from all the previous marketing and trailers that they’ve released. If not then they certainly picked an interesting game to fully shift the tone from dark fantasy to…whatever Veilguard is aiming for.

Fable having this realistic art style still feels weird to me, but at least it seems like they’re matching the tone of the other games.

Yeah, the art style definitely feels like a holdover from the live-service days. I could see them having to work with whatever assets were left after that version of the game was scrapped and just having to make it work.

Not sure how I feel about the art style. Varric and Harding look decent, but it felt like the longer the trailer went on the more the characters turned into something out of a stylized hero shooter. Honestly, the whole trailer felt more suited to a hero shooter than a single player RPG. Hopefully the gameplay looks better, but this was a very odd way to formally reintroduce your game after ten years of scattered trailers and announcements.

Glad to see the Stop Killing Games initiative continuing even if the most likely response from the UK government is going to be “No”.

Accidents happen. Your finger slips and suddenly your game is full of Nazi symbols. Happens all the time. Also, I get the gist of Garriss’s response, but mentioning that he had men and women at his house and his mother was always present just makes things sound weirder than a simple denial. Sounds like a horrible situation all around.

Child labor is child labor. It doesn’t matter what “skills” the kids are learning.

I’m impressed at how well thought out this battle plan is. I’m usually pessimistic when it comes to governments taking pro-consumer stances, but then again all it takes is one government siding against game companies to set a precedent. Hopefully this picks up steam and gets to a wider audience. It feels like one of the few things gamers can agree on these days is how much they hate business practices like this.

I have an unhealthy cycle of this with Hearts of Iron IV a WW2 grand strategy game. I’ll realize the embarrassing number of hours that I’ve put into the game and then I’ll stop playing for a while. But then one of the big mods for it will update and then I dive back in and lose a weekend and then the process repeats.

The other game I consistently come back to is Threads of Fate or Dewprism it’s a PS1 action-RPG with dual protagonists where each one has their own campaign or story to play through. I guess it’s nostalgia that keeps me coming back to it, but it really wasn’t a favorite game growing up and I didn’t beat it until years after I’d gotten it. But every few years I’ll just remember it out of the blue and get the urge to play through it again.

Yeah, besides the PSSR feature, I’m struggling to see the point in upgrading to this if you already have a PS5. It feels like Sony and Microsoft are just going with plans they made at the start of the generation when they assumed they would need a mid-gen refresh. But with the massive shortages it doesn’t really feel like we’re at the kind of midpoint that calls for a console refresh.

So, did that whole “late discovery” thing just not happen with Cyberpunk? Because I just have a hard time imagining CDPR looking at the state that game launched in and thinking that they’d made a game that was basically perfect. I mean, at least they learned in time for Phantom Liberty’s release, I guess.

At least they’re being upfront. And given their stated desire to move on from BG3, it makes sense that they want to put out something simpler but workable instead of something complicated that might need long-term support.

It’s a shame we’re not getting more Baldur’s Gate from Larian, but it’s completely understandable. All the people they worked with and trusted at WOTC have probably been laid off and Hasbro is probably desperate to replicate BG3’s success. There’s no way they’d be given the same creative freedom they had when they were originally working on BG3. Looking forward to whatever they put out next.

GOG continues to do great work. Alpha Protocol isn’t necessarily a good game, but it has a lot of interesting ideas in between long stretches of glitches, jank, and broken gameplay. Hopefully this sells well enough to justify bringing more abandoned titles to GOG. The little mini-documentary they put out going over the process of getting the game on GOG is also great and highlights all the recent efforts to push back against the “own nothing and be happy” mindset game companies are trying to push.

The thing that gets me about this is that it’s always some nefarious outside group pressuring devs to make their games “woke” or whatever. It never seems to occur to these people that the people making the games might actually hold those beliefs and aren’t being forced to put them in games at gunpoint. Also, did the guy complaining about Ragnarok play GoW 2018? The fact that Kratos isn’t the same person he was in the old series is basically the entire point.

It’s been an interesting trend to watch, but at the same time I’m not sure how great it is for video games. Hollywood celebrities aren’t cheap and the more stars you stud your cast with the more that is going to eat up your budget. Everyone already complains about the cost of AAA development and casting Hollywood actors isn’t going to bring those costs down. Not to mention the impact on voice actors, who aren’t having the same luck breaking into Hollywood. Still, it’s going to be interesting to see just how much the lines between the two industries blur as time goes on. From the tone of the article it still feels like people are treating this like a novelty, but at least we’ve moved on from the days when people were baffled at the idea of serious actors starring in a video game.

Shame. If they are laying off most of their staff I don’t see Wyrdsong coming out now. In retrospect 2022 was a bad year to found a new gaming studio, even with all the talent they had on hand.