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Destiny's Light and Darkness saga has come to an end, marking the conclusion of a ten-year journey with Destiny 2: The Final Shape. However, I can't help but feel disappointed with the overall direction Destiny took over the past decade.

I’ve played all the DLCs except for The Final Shape. While I’ve only watched its cutscenes on YouTube, so I may be off the mark on a few points, my feelings about the series as a whole remain largely unchanged.

In general, I feel that Destiny lost much of its potential and original tone, trading something unique and inspiring for a safer, less ambitious approach. Destiny 1 was far from perfect, but despite its flaws, it carried a sense of intrigue. The universe felt dangerous yet hopeful, grounded despite being a fantasy sci-fi setting. The best way I can describe this is by revisiting the original Vault of Glass raid. Its mystery and atmosphere, the cosmic horror of the Gorgons erasing you from time itself, and the tragedy of Kabr’s fireteam encapsulated what I loved most about Destiny. It gave the impression of a universe filled with truly alien entities and untapped, ominous depths.

The Vex, in particular, stood out as the most compelling part of Destiny 1. They felt alien and terrifying, with goals that went beyond simple destruction. The lore added layers of darkness and nuance to the universe, creating the sense that humanity, while surviving, remained under the shadow of incomprehensible threats—looming entities capable of unraveling everything.

Destiny 2, in contrast, departed significantly from this tone. With a few exceptions (Forsaken being one), the series became more lighthearted and, ultimately, more generic. Enemy factions were stripped of their mystique, given human voices, vices, and virtues, and began behaving like humans. These supposedly ancient, alien creatures now interact with the Guardians as if they’re secretly just humans in disguise. The danger and alien nature that defined them were sacrificed for something safer and more relatable.

The Witness, the eventual "big bad" of the series, encapsulates these shortcomings. As a villain, it feels shallow, like a teenager's interpretation of nihilism. It spouts surface-level nihilistic truisms and concludes that the solution is to nuke the universe. The original idea of the universe being shaped by the cosmic back-and-forth between two unknowable gods was abandoned in favor of something far less interesting. The final confrontation of The Final Shape felt like an MCU-style good-vs-evil showdown, complete with an Avengers: Endgame-style "everyone assembles" moment.

Looking back on the past ten years of Destiny, I feel sadness. Bungie never seemed to give its own lore the seriousness or attention it deserved. They squandered genuine potential for the sake of playing it safe. Perhaps I have rose-tinted glasses when reflecting on Destiny 1, but I genuinely feel that Destiny 2 lost something essential that made the original so special.

I've had this gripe for years but it was cemented but hellgate London. Now Im not talking a game that uses procedural generation to place trees or rocks, nearly every ,modern game does that. More when it's advertised as a feature " we have 10 billion unique planets" and proc gen is how ,most game spaces are created. Procedurally generated maps are a terrible idea. It leads to:

• samenesss, all maps have equals amounts of twists and turns in equally generic environments. Even if there's a cool hot lava world... It becomes the same when there's 10 variations

• no uniqur moments or collective experiences. There's many iconic moments in half life, or halo games. If all the maps are random there's no unique moment everyone can even talk about

-reuse of a limited number of elements. Procedurally generated settlements or towns always end up with the same collection of buildings and vendors just in various layouts they dont forge any identity because of this.

• no human architectural or design sense. layout and flow the ability to focus the eyes on a feature or impart a mood with scale and layout is never there. Random mountain verse carefully created winding mountain pass can be felt

-Trades quality for quantity: witcher 3 wouldn't have been better if it had 20 velen sized play areas all with random fetch quests and generic towns.

• hurts quest design. By nature it forces random generated quests or generic placement of quest items.

-Reduces replayability. If you found some really cool unique or fun encounter you never get to play it again, or it could be hard to reproduce if it relies on a generated quest to take you there.

To me the worst offenders are games like starfield, even hits like Diablo 2 or Diablo 4 could probably do better with more hand crafted areas and encounters. A game like witcher 3 or horizon zero dawn heavily use procedural generation for terrain but all quests are unique and areas still feel hand crafted. They do it right.

This is a mini rant but it's something I feel strongly about and want to hear what others feel.

Mario Party was the absolute best in its prime days of GameCube. It had quick board game rounds, the best mini games, and fun mechanics all around. There was a real enemy (Bowser) that mattered, and you got to feel like you were really strategizing around the board as well as in the mini games.

You had games like book squash, dungeon duos, and mr blizzards brigade where you actually had to move around and have skill. Dungeon duos was a minute and a half partner dungeon where you actually had to work together, use skill, while competing against the other duo.

I played jamboree a few times and the mini games are no fun. A lot of the games are "feel the rumble" and press a type of game. There was also one where you count, and where you hit a dice block as the entire game.

Each turn feels dragged out just to give more gameplay time. I've seen this first hand with game designers who just add things for the sake of saying "so and so amount of game time!"

I'm tired of big game companies trying new for the sake of being new, and being lazy. I wish they would bring back the basics of what makes gaming fun.

TLDR: Mario Party lost everything that truly made Mario party fun.

Hey, all!

In this thread, the rules are more relaxed. The idea is that this megathread will provide a space for otherwise rule-breaking content, as well as allowing for a slightly more conversational tone rather than every post and comment needing to be an essay.

Top-level comments on this post should aim to follow the rules for submitting threads. However, the following rules are relaxed:

• 3. Specificity, Clarity, and Detail
• 4. No Advice
• 5. No List Posts
• 8. No topics that belong in other subreddits
• 9. No Retired Topics
• 11. Reviews must follow these guidelines

So feel free to talk about what you've been playing lately or ask for suggestions. Feel free to discuss gaming fatigue, FOMO, backlogs, etc, from the retired topics list. Feel free to take your half-baked idea for a post to the subreddit and discuss it here (you can still post it as its own thread later on if you want). Just keep things civil!

Also, as a reminder, we have a Discord server where you can have much more casual, free-form conversations! https://discord.gg/truegaming

I'm playing through Baldur's Gate III right now, and to merely survive the game at the normal difficulty level is requiring me to think outside the box, constantly review the capabilities of every scroll and seemingly-useless-at-the-time item I picked up because it was there, and to consider how they might function in concert in any given situation. It got me thinking: this is how we used to "break" a game. Giving Celes double Atma Weapons with Genji Glove and Offering in FFVI back when it was Final Fantasy III in the US. Stacking the Shield Rod with Alucard's Shield in Symphony of the Night to just tank through anything while constantly healing Alucard.

It seems to me that the only difference between brilliance and "cheating" is how difficult the game itself is. If the game is hard, then you are smart to come up with this. If it's less difficult, then you are judged as corrupt for using the mechanics that are presented to you.

Anyway, just a random thought as I head to bed. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

So new technologies such as WebAssembly and WebGPU have arrived, bringing with it the promise of desktop quality games to the web that can run at near native performance. A big glaring issue such as large download times can be addressed by tech like asset streaming, and more and more titles are choosing to go cross-platform. Not to mention, many developers are looking for alternatives to storefronts that charge anywhere from 20-30% in exchange for distribution.

With all that being said, I'm curious what this subreddits opinion is on the most likely future for next-gen gaming on the web? If high quality browser games were a thing, would you play them, or would you stick to Steam or consoles? If so, why?

I'm currently playing Baldur's Gate 3 right now. Haven't finished it yet, but I'm very much enjoying it. Most of it. I'm sure I'm not the first to say this, but it's kinda weird how much many of the NPC's want to fuck my character. I'm sure my human male Paladin is quite handsome, but the level of thirst many of the companions exude is downright immersion breaking.

Many companion interactions are set-up in such a way that even if you're trying to build up a platonic friendship with them you will end up in strangely romantically charged scenes. Spoilers below for some mid-game examples.

• Gale is one of my favorite companions and a main stay in my party. But a large number of interactions with him are clearly sexually charged. This is of course great if you actually want to romance him, but I did not. I just wanted to be his buddy. So naturally when he >!was anxious about being told to blow himself up by his goddess!< I wanted to be there for him and support him. What follows was a very romantically charged scene where you sit underneath the stars with him in his magical realm and the both of you stare longingly at each other while he talks to you like you're about to kiss. All of this in spite of my character having very clearly turned him down before. This could have been interesting if it was portrayed as Gale still having a crush on my character despite me previously declining his advances, but it seems much more like the developers just wanted to give me the option of fucking him here and just accepted that it would be awkward if this isn't what you want.

• !The Emperor summoning me to a dream where he is half naked and tries to seduce me isn't just weird because he's a brain eating squid monster. But also because my character has been cold and suspicious of him throughout our interactions. Including the very dialogue choice before he tries to get it on with me. I don't want any spoilers on him because I haven't finished the game yet, but I don't entirely trust the squid man and his attempts to make my character eater his mind worms. So the fact that he thought I'd be even slightly willing to do the dirty with him completely took me out of the game for a moment. It was so bad that I immediately decided to write this post as a coping mechanism. No Larian, I do not want to fuck the squid man and I've never even so much as hinted at it.!<

And out of all the characters at my camp there were also Halsin, Lae'zel, and>!Mizora !<who are trying to get some action with my character, the latter two being extremely blunt about it too. I think this is slightly more well executed with Lae'zel who is like an alien who doesn't know our customs. But Halsin is a character I met only a day ago, and>!while Mizora is a demon who might be trying to seduce me to gain something from me, or is just simply out for hedonistic pleasure, I have been openly hostile towards her the entire time. She knows my character is a Paladin who would destroy her if the circumstances were different. Why would she even try?!<

A related point is that perusing a romance always seems to be an option. I'm not romantically interested in Gale, yet my character seems always be one dialogue choice away from hitting on him. The option to ask for more "magic lessons" with him is always there whenever I talk to him. I know I should just ignore that, but it's kinda distracting. It's as if my PC always has to keep banging an option.

I think all of this is a symptom of two things. The design choice to allow the player to romance the majority of companions while also allowing them to romance no one, and the game's main focus being combat rather than dialogue and character relations. Larian just didn't have the time or the resources to add a proper build-up towards romancing the companions. But I don't think that excuse is bullet proof. The game is more than long enough to allow for a slower build-up. And if the player is clearly not showing any interest in character through dialogue choices then scenes should have been changed to remove romantic undercurrents. This would even grant Larian additional opportunities to characterize the romancable characters. They could keep Lae'zel's blunt sexual advances early in the game to highlight that she's alien to this world, and perhaps make Shadowheart more reserved which would be fitting of someone who worships an evil goddess of loss and hopelessness. And personally this also makes it more fun. The entire reason why I like Karlach as a romancable option is because even though she wants to she literally cannot have sex with you on account of her always being on fire. This makes finally fixing her machine heart extra "rewarding".

Well. No good way to end this essay. Thanks for reading lol.

I have had this in my mind ever since I couldn’t enjoy Witcher 3. I didn’t know if it was the combat or the world or maybe the graphics, but I felt like I was suffocating while playing. I have crossed out every aspect of the game by comparing them with other games I enjoyed.

Then I realized it is the rpg mechanics. All of the games I like the most such as rdr2, Detroit: become human, cities skylines, death stranding, shadow of the colossus are completely devoid of any rpg mechanics.

This doesn’t mean I automatically hate games that have levels and skill trees but I hate it as it gets more layered. First there is character levels and basic skill trees. Then there is enemy levels and weapon levels, then each individual item has a level. Then there is 10 skill trees and different types of damage. Also there is 5 characters you have to manage individually and they have their own skill trees and levels of course. Then there is level scaling and minimum levels required to play the goddamn game. So you have to run 50 errands before entering a new area if you want to deal more than 2% damage to enemies from an arrow to the eye. The more it goes the more it feels like a horror story to me.

Now, I have made my peace with it, even though it crosses out some of the best writing and world building in gaming, at least I know why I dislike some games.

Warning: wall of text and spoilers incoming. Read at own risk!

--

Death’s Door is one of those games that gets better and better in your head the longer it’s been since you’ve played it.

In reality, it was never really that good.

Let me be abundantly clear that I hate to write stuff like that sentence.

“Game good. Game bad.” It reeks of snobby, impossible-to-please gamer jerk typing big bad scary words from behind his keyboard.

And uh, I’d like to think that’s not me.

The point I want to make here is that Death’s Door just fumbles the bag so hard — but they had the bag! Firmly in their hands! It was all there to make something truly incredible. Instead, we spent hours chasing down the witch of pots and lord of frogs. For what?

--

I adoor the premise of Death’s Door (sorry).

It’s such a brilliant and fun and interesting idea to build a game world upon.

Exploring the topic of death really isn’t that unique to games or media as a whole, but the corporatized spin that developers Acid Nerve place on their exploration of death is clever and poignant and just begs to actually be used in some sort of narratively relevant way.

These ideas;

• The corporatization of making a “deal” with death
• Automating soul reaping
• Using the “profits” to bolster the lifespan (read: fill the pockets) of the world’s “CEO”

Are immaculate and ingenious. The real life parallels are on-point and if you squint hard enough, they lean into a pointedly critical socio-economic commentary that I’d crave for this game to make — especially since I work in the corporate world in my own 9-to-5.

It’s all set up to explore those parallels further; to create more 1:1s of

• Life under hierarchy
• Life within the confines of HR rulesets
• Life under overbearing bosses
• A life of monotonous grinding just to pay the bills

(this article is not a subtle commentary on my own day job — I actually quite like where I work. Thankfully.)

There are some hints in the game’s early dialogue about the futile cycle the process of soul reaping encompasses. In Death’s Door, reaping souls provides you with extra years on your own life — years you will only spend reaping more souls, so you have more life to live to reap more… you see the never-ending circle.

Unfortunately, Death’s Door spends net-zero time exploring the complications and nuances of this business-inspired worldbuilding. The office-like hub area where you encounter much of what I’m describing here — The Hall of Doors — is deftly built and managed, using 50s-style film noir color palettes and piano riffs to build the cubicle-like ambiance of the soul reaping career field.

It’s so thoughtfully done and beautifully realized — only to be painfully underutilized for the remainder of your 8+ hours with the game.

And I’m sad about it.

--

Rather than go the route of exploring the complexities of its own universe and worldbuilding, Death’s Door opts for a more personal route, telling the story of an old Grey Crow who’s failed to hunt down his assignment and has aged in the process. He’s close to his expiration date. He doesn’t want to die.

Ok, fine. Tell that personal story and use the Grey Crow to say something meaningful about the flight from death and how all humans run from it.

…Nope.

After meeting and tracking down the Grey Crow in your first hour of gameplay, you’ll not see or speak to him again for the bulk of your playthrough. You won’t experience the world through his eyes, you won’t sympathize with him, you won’t get to understand him and his struggle. He won’t return until the game’s final hour.

In between that, you’ll experience a riveting, corporate-inspired narrative, rich with symbolism and demonstrating its story and worldbuilding through clever gameplay mechani-

/s.

Let me start over. In between that, you’ll head down the three branching paths to find the three arbitrary McGuffins at the end of them. Those three arbitrary McGuffins are needed open the door that you and the Grey Crow need to open to complete your assignments.

In order to get these three arbitrary McGuffins, you need to navigate three maze-like dungeons. Eventually, in said dungeons, you’ll come across rooms you cannot progress through without an ability upgrade. To get said ability upgrade, you’ll need to head down three branching paths.

(Bored yet? Stay with me.)

On one path, you’ll complete a combat challenge to get a key. On another, you’ll solve a puzzle to get a key. On another, you’ll traverse a platform challenge to get a key.

Those three keys will open the chest to give you the ability upgrade that will allow you to progress. Once you use the ability upgrade, you’ll find a locked door with three more branching paths. At the end of these paths are the souls of lost crows that you need to “free” (read: press the A button in front of). So you’ll progress down each branching path — you’ll solve a puzzle, shoot a target, complete waves of combat challenges. Once you have your three freed souls, they will act as keys to open the door. Then you can fight the boss.

Rinse. Repeat. Three times to get to the endgame.

Now, was that boring as all fucking hell to read?

Good, because that’s what it was like to play Death’s Door. It set itself up to be something more, but Death’s Door just feels so painfully videogame-y.

Nothing that you do in any of these dungeons or down any of these branching paths is interesting whatsoever*.*

Why? Because none of it is tied to the game’s corporatized premise.

There are attempts at mini side-stories on these branching paths. The Witch of Urns has a son. The Frog King seeks to be his region’s apex predator. The yeti chick has a love story, or something? Idk. All the above is hardly present, expounded upon, or interesting.

Painfully, none of these miniature side-stories are connected to the story you, the player, are navigating regarding the cycle of life and death, the mystery of why the cycle has been interrupted, and how it’s caused the world to fall into ruin. If the Witch of Urns, King of Frogs or yeti momma had anything to do with the game’s central narrative, maybe I would’ve been invested in what I was doing.

But alas.

--

Surely it wouldn’t have been that hard to — having built this brilliant corporate narrative landscape in the first place — lean into the worldbuilding and tell your story within its mechanics and parameters?

• Why don’t we have quotas and deadlines to meet?
• Why don’t we get berated by our bosses?
• Why don’t we have to fill in for our MIA coworkers on PTO?
• Why don’t we spend time exploring the power trips of middle and upper management on those lower on the corporate totem pole than themselves?
• Why don’t we team up with colleagues on a project, only to realize their incompetence and have to cover for them on work they should’ve been able to complete themselves?
• What if we saved a clumsy intern from the clutches of his first soul reaping assignment?
• Where’s the watercooler chit-chat?

What if, rather than a “Witch of Urns,” we hunted down an AWOL female coworker on our bosses’ orders to turn her into HR for skipping out on the job — only to find she was nurturing a newborn and couldn’t get maternity leave approved? What if we explored the complexities of equality in the workplace?

Or maybe that’s not your cup of tea. Maybe we could focus on what’s already there, as I make my endless slew of suggestions punctuated by question marks.

What if we just explored the dynamics of modern CEOs, boards of directors and shareholders? With the Lord of Doors as the selfish CEO filling his pockets while the layman gets his hands dirty and only makes enough to barely get by.

You could argue the game does demonstrate this, but you certainly can’t argue that it explores it or says anything interesting or meaningful about it.

And it just kinda stinks. The first and last hours of Death’s Door are rich with interesting storytelling, but everything in between — 5–8 hours of gameplay, roughly — feels like meaningless padding.

--

What’s worse is that Death’s Door’s smart premise and interesting conceptual foundation is delivered entirely via dialogue exposition in the game’s final 30 minutes.

There’s no player discovery or gameplay interacting with it or within it. It’s just… explained. Then go kill the final boss. K bye.

I had always heard how highly-regarded this game was and is. Playing it myself, I fail to see it.

Yes, the game’s presentation and art design is top-notch. The gameplay is slick and smooth. The world is beautiful, and a distinct personality is present in the form of humor, quirks and stylized components.

But Death’s Door just doesn’t do anything meaningful with any of it. They had the whole world in their hands with the most wildly unique, interesting and promising narrative setup I’ve seen in a while. But they just fumble the bag so hard, instead opting for a dull, outdated “press three switches to get three keys to unlock three doors” gameplay experience.

The game boils down to a very simplified Zelda-like that fails to leave any impression despite setting itself up to be a powerful piece of symbolic commentary.

Bummer.

A typical consoles life cycle is around 7 years average. Even for consoles with late releases usually, hardware and software sales have considerably slowed near the end.

But the Game Boys life cycle is quite fascinating to place into context. It's long. The second best-selling game, Tetris is from 1989 while the third one is Pokemon Gold/Silver in 1999. That's a decade apart. Major high-selling black-cart games like Dragon Quest Monsters 2 (compatible with DMG/Pocket models) were still being released in 2000/2001.

Think about it in 1989 , the major home-console was the Famicom/NES, Chip'N Dale Rescue Rangers had Just released on TV, Madonna was topping the charts in her Like A Prayer era. By 2001, The Dreamcast and PS2 have been in the Market, One Piece is a popular show and in fact TV animation had mostly fully switched to digital by that with some shows being done in HD already. In 2001 Destiny's Child's was in their Survivor era and Britney Spears was about to enter her Britney era. By that point, Madonna was already considered a legacy act.

1989 and 2001 are sooooo far removed from each other. The Game Boy launched when 8-bit games were king on home, continued when home consoles became 16-bit, and then first became 3D, and then ended at the start of the PS2/DC era. So much evolution that it had gone through.

If we look at software releases per year, it started at 25 games in 1989, a peak of 116 games in 1992 and then a decline to 57 games in 1995 and 38 games in 1996. But then, it rose to 97 games 1998 and then an even higher peak of 174 games in 2000. I rechecked and at least around 70 of these games released in 2000 are black cart games that could still work on the 1989 handheld.

Looking at it, the Game Boy has two console life pans within it, the pre-Pokemon life span and the Post-Pokemon life span. Honestly, a lot of the games Pre-Pokemon are Puzzle games and Platformers while the post-pokemon era, a lot of pokemon-like games eg. RPGs, Trading and Collection Games, Monster Sim Games, Card Games etc. boomed in the Game Boy's Library. So like, Dr. Mario is a good representation for the first half, Yu-gi-oh! Duel Monsters for the second half. Something like Yu-gi-oh feels so detached from 1989, don't you think?

That seems to be how the handheld from the late 80s adapted into the late 90s and early 2000s. I find it fascinating.

I'm not from a country that speaks Arabic so bear with me if my entire premise is wrong.

My understanding is that spoken Modern Standard Arabic should be a lingua franca for over 300 million people in the MENA region and that written MSA should be commonly understood by speakers who are also literate (which should still be a pretty large number).

So why isn't Arabic (or MSA) as commonly available compared to other languages. Based on my observations using SteamDB there are around 8,000 games available in Arabic which put it in the same ballpark as Thai and Ukrainian. For the 5th most spoken language in the world this seems small.

Is it because the market isn't as lucrative? The Gulf States alone are around 60M people and they are relatively wealthy. Poland with a population of around 37M has 25,000 games available. Is the MENA gaming market just that smaller?

Is it because some of these countries also speak European languages?

Or maybe it is because Arabic is such a pain to programmatically account for and as such isn't worth the effort?

I'm basing my observations on availability on Steam, so maybe my entire premise is wrong and there's some other platform Arabic speakers use.

I suppose the same questions could also be asked of South Asian languages like Hindi and Bengali but I'm guessing those markets aren't as lucrative yet. English also seems to be widely understood by the middle class in the region.

Hey, all!

In this thread, the rules are more relaxed. The idea is that this megathread will provide a space for otherwise rule-breaking content, as well as allowing for a slightly more conversational tone rather than every post and comment needing to be an essay.

Top-level comments on this post should aim to follow the rules for submitting threads. However, the following rules are relaxed:

• 3. Specificity, Clarity, and Detail
• 4. No Advice
• 5. No List Posts
• 8. No topics that belong in other subreddits
• 9. No Retired Topics
• 11. Reviews must follow these guidelines

So feel free to talk about what you've been playing lately or ask for suggestions. Feel free to discuss gaming fatigue, FOMO, backlogs, etc, from the retired topics list. Feel free to take your half-baked idea for a post to the subreddit and discuss it here (you can still post it as its own thread later on if you want). Just keep things civil!

Also, as a reminder, we have a Discord server where you can have much more casual, free-form conversations! https://discord.gg/truegaming

Many video games, especially AAA titles, use fake accented English for "foreign" characters.

Take Assassin's Creed: Odyssey as an example. If you set voice language to English, the characters speak English with a fake Greek accent. I know some voice actors are actually Greek, but there are Canadian/American voice actors too. The in game explanation is that the Animus translates Greek into English, but why would it preserve accents? (And converts French into British accented English?) No translator in real life does that. And it seems other language dubs don’t add fake accents either.

And Metro series. I'm sure many of you would know its exaggerated Russian accent English.

I get that developers want characters to sound "authentic", but this seems unique to video games. Other media rarely do this. In Chernobyl (2019), most actors are British so they spoke British English. They don't use fake accents because they are acting as Soviets.

Similarly, most dubs default to American/British English that the voice actor use, unless there’s a specific reason not to. Japanese anime dubs, for example, don’t typically add fake Japanese accents to the English dialogue.

But in video games, you’ll hear lines like, “I bet dey a in da maket now, arong da main road”, from the Assassin’s Creed: Shadows trailer, and it rarely draws attention.

Why does this seem to be a video game-specific trend?

Disclaimer: I’m not referring to situations where characters are explicitly meant to be speaking English, like in Overwatch or Apex Legends. This post is about the characters are dubbed by fake accented English when they are suppose to speak other than English.

edit:

Several comments pointed out that modern movies and shows do this too-thank you. Also I didn’t mean to say that all foreign accents are fake, and I apologize if this post gave that impression.

I'm a big fan of UI in video games and I'm a bit disappointed the general discourse around it is mostly about its looks and rarely around its function.

Most of the time, if reviews mention UI, it'll be to appreciate how minimalist it is. Barely present UI has mostly become synonymous with good UI. You rarely get a comment on how useful it is or how it gives the information you need. There's very little analysis on what information should be given at which moment (except for waypoints), which is so much more interesting to discuss than "is it pretty?".

One of the most popular gamer memes in recent years has been "Elden ring, if it was made by Ubisoft", which roughly translates to "Elden Ring, if it were bad" in non-gamer speak. It's mostly just Elden Ring with a lot of UI elements. Because a lot of UI = bad, right? This is not to say that Elden Ring doesn't have good UI, but rather that there is a more interesting discussion to be had.

In turn, most game developers have opted to display as little UI as possible, which is pretty much accepted as good. UI is now "dynamic" only showing combat UI when in combat, for example. So swinging your sword at the air to see how much HP you have or what item you have equipped has become standard and I have a hard time believing we all just agree that that's what good UI is.

During a 2004 conference, Jason Rubin talked about his grievances concerning the treatment of game devs in the industry. He opens by talking about how famous actors are given preferential treatment over game devs. Official Playstation parties that are ostensibly about the industry invite actors While Rubin himself has to call around for an invite and is told he should consider himself lucky that he gets invited. While this seems trivial, It is done to show how these companies don’t value the developers they employ. The general point that he builds up to is that gaming is a talent based industry that is being treated like a product industry. Deliberate obfuscation is used to tie games to nebulous companies rather their individual creators in most cases.

Rubin’s plan to remedy these various issues is to start mimicking aspects of Hollywood. He urges game developers to put themselves out there and become public figures similar to how movie directors are. He hopes for a world where gaming companies start courting developers because of their talent.

It seems the opposite has actually happened. TV and movies are starting to become more like gaming. The creatives who create the art are being devalued.

Quote from Anthony Mackie:

“There are no movie stars anymore. Like, Anthony Mackie isn’t a movie star. The Falcon is a movie star. And that’s what’s weird. It used to be with Tom Cruise and Will Smith and Stallone and Schwarzenegger, when you went to the movies, you went to see the Stallone movie. You went to see the Schwarzenegger movie. Now you go see: X-Men. So the evolution of the super hero has meant the death of the movie star. ”

For various reasons, the influence and clout belongs to the company that simply owns the movie rights to a comic book character. Playing a major character in one the biggest movie franchises of all time has not greatly helped Mackie’s career.

John Stewart and Conan O’Brien talked about how tech companies have disrupted the previous standards for writing television. They don’t believe in curating groups of creatives. Writers are now seen as atomized units that can be shuffled around like gig workers. The number of writers per show has been drastically reduced and the rooms themselves have been relegated to virtual Zoom meetings.

Netflix has begun to give bizarre feedback to the showrunners they work with. “This isn’t second screen enough.” Netflix doesn’t want their content to demand too much attention. People should be able to follow along while they’re scrolling on their phone. If they get confused while browsing Instagram, they may turn off the show completely. Netflix sees tv shows as more of a white noise machine than something to be consumed with intent.

All of these examples are indicative of a talent based industry that is being treated like a product industry. I would urge you to listen to the full Jason Rubin talk if you are at all interested.

Wittgenstein, when talking about his concept of "familiarity", often used games as a concept: Many had little to no similarity to one another, as if Theseus' ship was already rebuilt thrice over. And despite their lack of common features, we still group all of them under the same term, the same category.
As such, games would be considered "open-bounded", since there still wasn't a situation that forced them to be more strictly and well defined. I feel that videogames inherited a similar problem.

Let's first separate the problem into two things: "The lower-bounds" of what constitutes a video-game, and the "upper-bounds".
The lower-boundary is about what's the bare minimum characteristics something has to have in order to give a video-game. At first it might seem like a serious question, but the simple fact we can't all still agree whether Visual Novels are video-games or not already proves us that it is still an open debate.

It's upper-boundary, however, is still miles trickier.
Historically, poetry was something to be recited out loud, the way it was written on paper being an useless information... Until "concrete poetry" came along.
Granted, the change brought forth by concrete poetry forced the definition of poetry to become a little bit looser, but not enough for concrete poetry to be considered anything else.

Let's imagine, however, if there was a book whose message was about "learning to let go", and the book is made in a special way that in order to get the rest of the story, some procedure must be done that makes the previous part of the book unreadable (e.g. Soaking it with water in order to hidden text to appear, having to rip it's pages in specific ways to rearrange them to form a secret message, use your imagination to think of further examples). At this point, it's experience goes so beyond the realm of simply literature that we would have to classify it as something else.

The reason that comics are not classified as literature is the same reason that movies aren't classified as music: They can't be fully analyzed by literal theory (Or music theory, in the latter example) alone (And in some cases, they might not even contain words nor music).

Which finally leads to video-games: From the old days that codes contained in physical manuals had to be inserted as anti-piracy measures, to DDLC requiring you to manipulate computer files (Which it copied from ToToNo, but I digress), the medium many times expands from the confines of it's medium.

A painting that gets out of it's canvas would be called a sculpture, poetry that goes beyond the words being spoken would be called a performance, but video-games can interact with the entire universe and still be considered video-games

Is this correct? Why is that so?

So in most genres of games, a little bit of "failure" is an expected part of the gameloop. You'll assume you're going to take a few hits in a fighting game. You can expect to miss or get shot at during a shooter. And a zombie bite or two is a core part of many survival horrors.

But stealth games seem, at least to me, prone to encouraging a savescum playstyle to get Ze Perfect run. Though I suppose it also heavily comes down to the type of player. Like I'm sure there's some folks that just sprint through Splinter Cell like it's a parkour course, and others who get fuming if a guard even mentions hearing "a rat".

For me I'll be one or the other and it'll usually come down to these factors..

• What kind of information do I have? (Ex.Do I know what's behind the door I'm about to open?)
• How reliable are the mechanics? (Ex. Will I be able to knock this guard out if I hit them? Or will it just get their attention?)
• How easy is it to 'set up' again to after a mistake? (Ex. Are there safe areas I can retreat to, will guards 'reset'?)

I think the game that's done my favorite twist with stealth are the Batman Arkham games. I've never felt the need to reset unless I'm doing a specific challenge mode. They're not dedicated to stealth, I'd call them an adventure game myself. But the stealth segments (called Predator segments in-game) are always a blast to go through and think these aspects help me roll with the punches.

• Stealth is your 'weapon' not your objective. Predator segments take place in locked arenas where you have to 'takedown' 5-8 crooks patrolling the room. So you /have/ to engage with them. Being 'Quiet' and being 'Loud' just lead to the same result and have no further complications, so that leaves you free to do it however you need to.

• You have all the info you need to make on-the-fly plans. There is a 'detective mode' that highlights all the crooks locations as well as the 'props' in the room (ex. vents, breakable walls, mines). Not that stealth games need wallhacks, but in Arkham having all that tactical information allows the player to do ballsy plays or adjustments instead of panicking. When a player doesn't have enough information, they'd likely stick to super safe (and arguably boring) playstyles.

• Their AI is simple to predict, and their basic behavior never changes. Crooks are /always/ patrolling the room, never really idle. If you take one down (or make a loud noise), they'll congregate to the location then fan out. Take down enough and they'll group up and be more cautious. The rooms is also laid out in a way that heavily telegraphs how they'll path their patrols. Not having to guess how an NPC will react or where they'll go helps keep up the pace in what's otherwise considered a slow game genre. What the game does to keep things dynamic is to give enemies an occasional power up (ex. Nightvision goggles, Sniper rifle) to make you play around that.

• Your tools/abilities have simple mechanics and the game tells you if they'll work. Most of your gadgets have a very specific use and you have a lock-on to use them. You'll never 'miss' a batarang, you're told what can be destroyed with explosive gel. If you're in range to do takedown, you have a prompt where you press a button to perform it. It makes execution a lot easier, but it also really eliminates uncertainty and lets the player have higher faith in the mechanics. Which they may be more willing to play around with.

• You're given a quick 'reset button' in the form of a smoke pellet. If you're ever spotted, you're given a prompt to throw down a smoke pellet and grapple to safety. The smoke is 100% concealing and you're free to reposition however you want. This gives you the utility of reloading a save, without killing the game's momentum. And since the AI never meaningfully changes, and the segments are self-contained, there's not really a practical reason to reload besides style points.

Hey, all!

In this thread, the rules are more relaxed. The idea is that this megathread will provide a space for otherwise rule-breaking content, as well as allowing for a slightly more conversational tone rather than every post and comment needing to be an essay.

Top-level comments on this post should aim to follow the rules for submitting threads. However, the following rules are relaxed:

• 3. Specificity, Clarity, and Detail
• 4. No Advice
• 5. No List Posts
• 8. No topics that belong in other subreddits
• 9. No Retired Topics
• 11. Reviews must follow these guidelines

So feel free to talk about what you've been playing lately or ask for suggestions. Feel free to discuss gaming fatigue, FOMO, backlogs, etc, from the retired topics list. Feel free to take your half-baked idea for a post to the subreddit and discuss it here (you can still post it as its own thread later on if you want). Just keep things civil!

Also, as a reminder, we have a Discord server where you can have much more casual, free-form conversations! https://discord.gg/truegaming

If I had never played a video game in my life before and I had to guess what the most popular genres in gaming would be, I would say the overwhelming majority would be about cowboys, knights, and pirates. And yet in all three of those categories, there are so few entries. The only real worthwhile Western games are the obvious red dead entries, and call of jaurez gunslinger. As far as medieval goes, there's thousands of fantasy games to choose from, yet aside from Kingdom Come Deliverance and Mount & Blade there's not a single other medieval game that's reasonably grounded in reality. This isn't to say I don't love my fair share of fantasy, I do, and I'm cool if they're not 100% simulated historically accurate games, but there's a distinct difference between nonfiction and flat out fantasy. Sometimes I want to fight mano a mano against other knights and dive headfirst into the front lines of battles without seeing ogres and skeletons. The only pirate game I can think of is Black Flag, which don't get me wrong, can scratch the itch, but with the focus on stealth, and the very arcadey naval combat, there's so much more that could be done with the genre. Each of these games are immensely popular whether they were developed by an indie darling or AAA blockbuster. There's a clear demand and crave for more, so why are 99% of action games some form of nondescript sci-fi or fantasy? Where's my Western boomer shooter or dime novel video game adaptation? Where's my war of roses or hundred years war game? Where's the golden age of piracy game where I command my own ship and manually fire cannons and repair my ship, or execute raids on coastal towns? It's so odd to me.

This is in general, but ive always hated the idea of games adding "secret stuff" or stuff in levels but you cant get the item because you dont have something else to get it.

For Example I was playing a game, i was on level 2, i had no items because i had JUST started. In level 2, there are hooks you can swing to, to reach special mystery items. In order to use the hooks you need a whip.

Now that in itself sounds like a simple normal game concept, but just wait

I was unaware of the fact i needed a whip first, so after i kept attempting, and eventually gave up in frustration I continued to play.

By Level 7 I received the whip. Which i was able to use to get to the special mystery items from the previous levels.

THAT is what i hate. I dont want to go back to an already completed level and get something i SHOULD'VE been able to get on the first play through of that level. I think the idea of having to keep playing and finally get the item to then GO BACK is extremely frustrating and just pointless.

I played and finished three indie games this month. They are Inscryption, Immortality, and Return to the Monkey Island. All three games received high reviews from both critics and players.

They all starts out very strong narratively. They hook you with intrigues and mysteries of a unique world, pushing your ever forward, eager for a grand reveal of something profound.

Then all three of them did the same thing with their endings: they go meta. Some of them were better executed than others, but essentially they all pull the same trick. Instead of crafting an complete, self contained story, they involve the player in their narrative as cop out for the big emptiness in their plot.

Imagine you are reading Harry Potter, and when it comes time for the final showdown between Harry and Voldemort, the novel suddenly address to you directly: "Actually, there's no ending! Magic are not real. Its all fictional. That's it, bye!". But what happened to Harry? Don't know. What about Voldemort? Don't know. What about all the nuance you introduced to the characters? Not important. Why are you doing this? Because it's meta! Clever, isn't it? (I'm not exaggerating. This is literally what Monkey Island did with the ending.)

Meta narrative has always been a gimmick to me. It's only innovative for the first person who tried it. When Stanley Parable did it more than 10 years ago, it was refreshing. When Magic Circle did it a few years later, it was already getting stale. Today, indie developers seem more obsessive than ever with the idea. Don't know how to make your game stand out? Just go meta. Instant innovation!

What's more egregious with the three games I mentioned is that they hide their meta narrative from the players, two of them until the very end. Stanley Parable is a good meta game partly because it is upfront about it. The game is built around the idea, not just using it as a "clever" trick or cop out.

I've had my rug pulled from under me so many times now, I fear opening the next indie game. It's like half of narrative indie titles (especially well reviewed ones) are meta in some way now. It's also disappointing that most people don't seem to share my view. All 3 games i mentioned were loved by its community, partly because of its meta elements. But personally, I'm so tired of it.

Games should have unique names.

I very much appreciate that Midnight Suns was not called Midnight Sons because search engines distinguish between the comic (Sons) and the video game (Suns). Similarly, Vampyr is a unique spelling, preventing us from confusing it with the multitude of things named Vampire and Vampyre. The game's stylistic use of the Y symbol also helps engrain this in the player memory.

The X-COM remake had a worse idea. The original 90s game was called X-COM: UFO Defense in North America and UFO: Enemy Unknown in Europe. Titling the remake XCOM Enemy Unknown is like remaking The Matrix and calling it Matrix: Reloaded Revolution.

Are there any other games that strike you as having particularly well or poorly chosen names?

Choice based narrative games are among my favorite games to play though multiple times to see how the outcomes can change based on my decisions. What makes a good game in this genre though? And what makes the choices matter to you?

SPOILERS for all games below!

The first game I played of this type was Telltale's The Walking Dead, which started a bit of a resurgence in the popularity of the genre. The game is well written with a great cast of characters, but in terms of choices the game doesn't change a whole lot. You can choose if a character lives or dies on multiple occasions, but they will end up dead not too long after you save them if you choose to anyways. I'd argue that this still "matters" but some would disagree.

My bigger issue with the choices here is that they are almost entirely independent of each other. Choices made early won't affect your options later in the game. They are binary and only take into account what is happening in that particular scene. This takes away from the feeling of choices mattering in a significant way.

A game that I feel like improves on this is Life is Strange 2. The first Life is Strange game is similar to The Walking Dead with binary independent choices. Life is Strange 2, however experiments with dependent choices (well, choice). The game has a hidden morality meter in the form of the player character's little brother. Every choice you make will have leave an impression on him, moving him "lighter" or "darker". This all culminates in the game's final choice, which is a binary. The outcome of this, however, is decided by your choice as well as the morality of your brother, resulting in 4 possible endings.

This feels a lot better to me, because the choices I made throughout the game come back in the end to form the outcome, rather than the ending resting on the final choice entirely.

This isn't to say that the ending is all that matters in terms of choices in these games. The journey is often just as important to me. Supermassive Games developed games like Until Dawn and House of Ashes that I think illustrates this well.

These games are less "choices matter" and more "stereotypical horror movie simulator". You can play through getting every character killed in horrific fashion, or play to save them all. These games, especially Until Dawn, will more or less play out the same regardless of your choices, just subtracting characters that have died from subsequent scenes. This often causes an issue with characters that have possible deaths being sidelined for most of the game should they survive.

Where these games do shine, I believe, is in the variety of ways characters can die or be saved. It's rather morbid, but seeing how one small choice early can doom a character or save them in the eleventh hour can be equal parts devastating and satisfying. Choices definitely matter a lot here for better or worse.

Finally, I want to talk about Quantic Dream and David Cage. Developers of games like Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls and Detroit: Become Human. David Cage is the lead creative mind behind all these projects and his writing is simply not very good. Dialogue is awkward, plot holes are plenty and performances are stilted. Despite this I enjoy these games a lot due to the choice variety. Detroit in particular is the pinnacle of this genre in terms of your choices mattering. The amount of branching for everything you can do is astounding and has yet to be replicated since. Entire plot lines can be skipped and ending sequences can vary wildly. Pair this type of branching with better writing and you would have a nearly perfect game.

I would like to talk about As Dusk Falls and how its animation style lends itself well to this type of game but this post is getting long.

So do you like these types of games? Do you agree or disagree with my analysis? What other games do you think deserve to be mentioned here?

I played a lot of shooters, but Red Orchestra 2 will always hold a place in my heart. I played it a lot back in school and returned to it just recently and the game holds up pretty well, even better than BF1 IMO. I also picked up it's sequel Rising Storm 2 and guns are even deadlier because bolt action rifles are replaced by automatic assault rifles. No BS RPG stats, zero recoil pea shooters, or superpowers (except for bombs and artillery, I guess haha). You hit, you died, except for a very few lucky shot.

Instead of run and gunning, you want to be observant and unnoticed. You won't be seeing enemies running to you and exposed from cover because that would be a suicide and why bother running towards them when you can pop them 100 meters away.

And Even though people are smaller the further they are, a slight movement is still very noticeable. Tree stands still, but human do not. Muzzle flash is also very visible too and to shoot someone, you must at least exposed your head so you can see your target, so there will always be a possibility of getting shot when you sighted your enemy.

Everyone now wants to become even smaller than an ant trying to shoot you instead of run and gunning and being an easy target.

The game helps me a lot in getting comfortable with shooting from a very far and minimizing my exposure than most games do. I also noticed a similarity in airsoft too. Playing airsoft taught me to be very concerned of how you are exposed from cover, and appearing smaller will always be better and makes you harder to hit by a lot.

Or at least I wish there are more games that handle gunfight similarly to what I described instead of becoming jumpy and speedy movement shooter like newer Call of Duty or other trendy shooters. Hunt: Showdown and The Last of Us just hit the spot for me. I'm impressed with how far enemy can shoot in TLOU and it makes you think about your positioning. And Hunt: Showdown, although it's not realistic, guns are pretty deadly but rate of fire is slow, making every shot fired feels like moving a chess piece, careful and calculated.

For 2 months in a row I've been looking at the main page of New&Trending and for 2 months in a row there are 3 Nsfw games, 3-4 goat simulator games and a couple of action roguelike games. I decided to write a review of a game that I liked and share my thoughts on trends.

So, I first saw Hidden Pass in a post in r/pcgaming almost half a year ago – and already then I knew that I would definitely play it. But as was described in the title, I would not have been able to see the game I would be writing about even by accident, if it were not for chance. And an even greater chance is that I played this game.

But as it usually happens, there are plenty of other games, so I added the game to the wish list and forgot about this title. I returned to it no later than September. The title Hidden Pass Skirmishes popped up in the offer on Steam. It turned out that the developer had finished a separate mode (consisting of  3 separate battles of different difficulties), and I finished playing Tactical Breach Wizards - I was just looking for something new. Rogue Waters looked easy to me in terms of mechanics - and that's how it all came together.

I'll say right away that I liked the game, although it's clear that it's still very much unfinished. But the game has its own spirit, an atmosphere if you will, which really made me fight my way through the abyss of understanding the gameplay. And yes, this is a game, which is a rarity these days. When I finally figured out how to play Hidden Pass, I got the feeling that this title could be interesting to me at the level of Into The Breach, which I played for about 100 hours and continue to play. But the start of the game is quite difficult, since a lot of things are unclear.

But first things first. The gameplay is based on turn-based battles, everything is classic here. The heroes are positioned in the arena and take turns hitting each other. In each round, you can take a better position and spend action points on attacks - one strong or, for example, a medium and a push. Buffs and debuffs are also in place: set fire, blind and stun enemies or strengthen your fighter.

Digging into the abilities is interesting, because the arena is filled with flying gnome grenadiers, nimble girl-snipers with invisibility, giants waving logs and causing meteor showers. By the way, the presence of huge units (2x2 on the grid) really caught my attention. Before that, I saw this in X-Com and Wasteland, but it was just machinery, like tanks. And here - a huge ogre walking through stones and throwing opponents like fluff. It is obvious that the developers wanted to add more mechanics for such units, but what is already interesting looks.

Elyrium plays a special role in Hidden Pass. This is mana that both strengthens and drives heroes crazy. Each magical ability fills the Elyrium scale: a weak shot - slightly, a meteor shower - almost half. When there is no space left, the hero goes crazy. In this state, magic does much more damage, but greatly absorbs health.

The Elyrium  is a key factor. You constantly think about whether to hit weaker and leave the character sane or to destroy half of the enemies with a mad grin and (with a high probability) die. The temptation to go crazy is great, but the price is also prohibitive.

This is where my brain started to squeal with delight. Yes, it took almost 40 minutes to analyse the game, but that's exactly why I go into tactics. Let me dig into complex mechanics!  Am I a nerd? Oh yeah. And by the way, I'm not embarrassed about it at all.

And that was the point where it felt like the game could be of the calibre of Into The Breach. Even thinking about whether to drive the hero mad or not was enjoyable. And what would happen if the hero possessed by Elyrium died?

This is where I was surprised. Because I didn't expect space marines x Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector crossover. A very original solution. You can summon an automaton in place of the dead - walking combat machines, stationary turrets and others. They have interesting abilities - from lethal shots to mines that stun enemies in a large area. They also fill their Elyrium scale. The only thing is that the automatons are not capable of going mad, and therefore immediately explode, which is also useful in battle.

Another great feature are multi-level locations. The dwarf grenadier soars into the air and vigorously attacks ground enemies. Alas, flight itself  fills that very elyrium scale. Is it worth sacrificing sanity for the sake of damage? Another riddle that is pleasant to solve in your head.

To sum it up.

The game is a bit raw, and there are a lot of bugs. For example, instead of exploding, the automatons can throw you onto the desktop. But this is the first title that really interested me in a long time. There are games that you play - well, cool. Like the same Tactical Breach Wizards, a great game by the way, but this is for one time and even then it is not a fact, you can just get swamped with other games and not finish it. And there are games like Into The Breach, Rimworld, HoMM, or from the latest I liked Songs of Conquest, that is, for a long time. Like a reference book, which even after reading, you still reread it to feel the warmth of reading.

And here is an important point. Is it really the fate of not being seen that awaits many games that attract with gameplay? If the game has ordinary visuals. And there is nothing to catch the eye.

It's good that the developers have time to polish it - early access is scheduled for February 4, 2025, although it's not clear whether it's early. I read their diaries - maybe it's a full release. I'd really like them to finish what they started. There are a lot of games coming out now and the trend is constant towards simplification, reduction and compression among indies that make complex games. I understand that the audience is casualizing. But what should I do if I love such games? And I suspect that I'm not the only one.

It is obvious that this developer has focused on gameplay and it is quite difficult to expand it, especially considering that the more casual audience will look at the visuals, which are ordinary. And more hardcore players may not have time to get into the game, simply due to the wave of game titles, lack of visibility and, again, quite ordinary visuals.

I have outlined my thoughts, I hope it is clear. If you, like me, are a fan of this kind of games (X-Com, HoMM, Into The Breach, Songs of Conquest), then it makes sense to try the game for yourself and make up your own mind:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2430170/Hidden_Pass/

Valhalla’s main campaign may be confusing to some because it adopts a method of storytelling new to the AC franchise (and mainstream titles as a whole): arcs. That’s not to say that Valhalla’s arcs are completely unrelated to the other (in fact, several continue/reference events from prior ones); however, they definitively have a beginning, middle, and end, allowing you to complete them without feeling like you’re ending on a cliffhanger. The process generally follows as depicted: Eivor will consult Sigurd’s wife Randvi about a territory, learn of its predicaments/politics, pledge to obtain their allegiance, resolve whatever qualms exist, and then return and confirm with Randvi that the deed is done. Rinse and repeat.

Now, this format has led to accusations that Valhalla is full of filler, and it’s one of those things I both agree and disagree with, though even my agreements are laced with provisos. If we were to condense the arcs under themes, Valhalla has four overarching storylines: Kingmaker, Order of the Ancients, Asgard, and Sigurd. Kingmaker has you running all over England forging those aforestated alliances, Order eliminating members of the proto-Templars, Asgard reliving memories of the Norse Gods (more on that later), and Sigurd’s a combination of all three, albeit one which trails continuously throughout Valhalla’s runtime.

In fictional storytelling, especially AAA releases, audiences are used to conventional chronicling wherein event A goes to B to C to D ad nauseam. Because of this mindset, it’s my theory that conventional gamers appropriated the Sigurd thread as Valhalla’s primary campaign, and I don’t blame them: Sigurd was a major figure in the intro and the whole reason Eivor departed to England in the first place. Eivor’s purpose is to serve his adopted sibling, and given the recurring nature of the man in the story, at first glance it would appear Ubisoft agreed.

However, upon closer inspection, I do think Valhalla is more experimental than that given that progressment, even in Sigurd’s sections, is primarily reliant on the formation of those dutiful liaisons since Eivor utilizes them to aid his sibling (more on that later). The reason I consider this approach experimental is because, in mainstream releases, you usually get the opposite. Think about it: in other games, the A plot is a singular strand which lasts uninterrupted whilst side content occupies shorter bursts of self-contained tales; in Valhalla, though, the self-contained tales pull double-duty as autonomous contes AND building blocks for the development of Eivor and Sigurd’s relationship.

But that begs the earlier inquiry of is this filler? If the player has to do these elongated set pieces to advance the A plot, did Valhalla’s writers fall prey to the scourge of shōnen anime? Again, not to dodge the question, but the answer is somewhere in the middle. For me, if I’m going to label something as filler, it needs to contain two components: one, have no importance to the macro, and two, not be referenced in postliminary scenarios. I theorize the reason critics have championed this accusation is because Valhalla’s non-Sigurd arcs are largely deficient in the latter, which is what most people look for when gauging continuity. However, it is not zero sum, and, more importantly, contains the former in spades. We’ve already established that Sigurd’s storyline, itself, is not completely independent due to it being tied to the Raven Clan’s confederacies/the brothers’ connections to the Old Gods. As such, by having dedicated individualized chapters to both those threads, you avoid falling into filler territory by my definition.

Still, I am sympathetic to the quibbles, and definitely agree that more connecting tissue should’ve been implemented to guide players from arc-to-arc, and I honestly feel these problems derive from Valhalla’s wish to be open-ended. This is a game that wants you to do certain beats in a certain order whilst concurrently providing a freedomic approach towards said objectives a la A Link to the Past. Unfortunately, in a story-driven enterprise with recurrent characters, you can’t exactly have that because it interrupts the flow, which is the dilemma gamers no doubt faced here. Thus, to alleviate this for future players, my suggestion is to do what I did, which is, well, role-play. Imagine why Eivor would want to embark on Y next as opposed to Z. Trust me when I say it’ll go a long way towards making your experience a lot more enjoyable. Valhalla is a ROLE-PLAYING game, so technically such a tactic isn’t out of the left field. However, I understand this isn’t a legitimate answer to the qualm of the arcs not being strongly-tied together, which is why I said the answer is ultimately muddled.

Tl;dr, I don’t think the absence of narratorial links make the non-Sigurd arcs filler, but it definitely hurts the pacing unless you do some imagineatory gymnastics on your part.

Reposting to de-listify.

I've been thinking a little bit about this as we stray farther and farther from the beginning portion of the 2020s where styles weren't so obviously distinct to the contemporary. One game that has made me notice this the most is actually Watch_Dogs 2. The first game is somewhat like this, although that game seems much more bland and is better encapsulated as a holdover from the previous generation of games on the 360 and ps3. But Watch_Dogs 2 just feels so much like a game from the 2010s, and its actually kind of weird to go back and play it as a person living in the 2020s rather than the previous decade.

First of all, the themes are just straight up dated in a very specific way, which is somewhat inevitable for a game was that much commenting on the cusp of the silicon valley, dawn of tech bro culture it is immersed in. The way the game has takes on privacy, hacktivism, culture issues like LGBT+, nostalgia, AI, self driving vehicles, and internet cultures all place it solidly in 2016. For example, the gags about self driving cars would not exist prior to 2013, a few years before the game released. But today they already feel dated, as the future of self driving vehicles didn't come as fast or as strong as the game implies they were. There's plenty of examples of that which I don't think are issues with the game, but make it almost feel like a "period piece" for the time period it was in.

Also of course the game design itself feels like peak 2010's ubisoft. This applies to many games that came out around that time, but Watch_Dogs 2 is seriously a microcosm of the open world design that completely dominated the decade. It has an open world with lots of collectibles that contribute to a skill-tree based progression system. There's "gadgets" that you use to solve puzzles, which inexplicably integrate with a "scan mode" that feels so textbook. The only thing it's really lacking is any tower based puzzle, which were probably cut because around that time it was so frequently criticized that it basically became a staple of the genre with negative associations. It also has an "invasion" and in universe co-op mechanic that feels like it was implemented as an experiment in the Dark Souls conception of multiplayer experiences. Its a mechanic that would probably feel trite if lifted wholesale straight into a game today, but it really distinguished itself from the lobby based systems we are all familiar with that really started in the 2000s.

Also, just aesthetically, its from a time just after "grit" was making a stylistic exodus in pretty much all games coming out at the time. This is a great point of comparison with the first Watch_Dogs, because that game was very much still a part of the edgy white guy phase. I mean its the game that was infamous for the "iconic duckbill hat", the main character's name was "Aidan Pierce" and he was motivated by revenge for Christ's sake. It seems that the team for the second game were trying to abandon that trope entirely, to the point where they wrote a character who was basically the opposite of that.

Its one of the first mainstream games I remember intentionally breaking from the heavy handed grit based realism, but was still trying to have a grounded and realistic aesthetic. Someone in the previous thread pointed out that this was as a result of post 9/11 hollywood aesthetics, which I agree with. I think culture in general around the turn of the decade became disenchanted with the foreign politics that sparked a lot of the military bro cannon of games. Even games around that time that appeal to that crowd like Ghost Recon Wildlands share much more in common aesthetically with Watch_Dogs 2 than they do with Ghost Recon games of the 2000s.

All of this is to say, I think Watch_Dogs 2 is one of the most of its time games that came out in the 2010s. And I just think that is interesting. It came out near the middle of the decade, and it is so clearly a product of the 2010s that I think someone not familiar with games could still tell you when it came out. While I don't think the game is perfect, or even really a great game, I find it interesting to play because it feels so much like a period piece to me. Even though at the time it was really aiming for a near future contemporary reality that just doesn't land in the year 2024, I find that really cool.

This is mostly a topic I'm writing for my school newspaper, and I've read many articles about cultural appropriation. I've focused on Genshin Impact because that's the video game with the most vocal criticism right now. There's a lot of discourse on the topic right now in general media, but I am not too involved with the video game sphere, as I do play a lot of video games, but my involvement with the community is limited because I think a lot of the discourse is really weird.

Especially with the Genshin stuff, but anyway, if you don't know, they have been using Indian, Arabic, African, and South American figures and cultures as their inspiration for their regions. It's very obvious that it takes direct inspiration, but almost all of the characters are pale despite the figures they derive from being very dark-skinned. Some are darker skinned, but you could honestly mistake them for just having a really good tan. Of course, the discourse is very weird as the development company miHoYo is a Chinese company and there's a lot of colorism there.

I've watched many, many videos and articles on this topic, and literally, none of them are useful or inciteful. Just repeating two different things, cultural appropriation is bad because they are staling and not paying respect (which is valid, but every article refuses to go beyond that), and the other side is yt gamers telling POC that their feelings are invalid and for some reason they all use Nordic examples as good representation?

Like I don't like Resident Evil 5 but its depiction of (African people), kinda made my ass itch, but the developers presented it in a way that could excuse it because it's a fucking apocalypse, but it still felt kinda weird. I know it got a lot of backlash at the time, but I wasn't there for it and also it was the early 2009 so I think people were more lenient with it.

Now as gamers who presumingly have lives, can you add a new perspective on this topic, I am tired of people trying to tell me Cultural appropriation doesn't exist (it does), but it's very complicated because I am unfamiliar with the process of making video games vs other types of media such as music, movies, etc. I do not specifically want to ask about your morals regarding this topic, but more so about the way it was depicted.

There is a very fine line between Cultural appreciation and appropriation and I appreciate when developers take the time and energy to not properly represent culture in their video games, but that they respect it and the people they are depicting.

And it doesn't have to be as blatantly obvious the way Genshin is, as it's not stealing culture, but more so just erasing it and saying that they like the aesthetics and culture of a group of people, but not their skin color or them and that in a world where anything is possible, they can't imagine creating a world where the people they take inspiration from are in their video games.

But yeah, I please if you have time discuss this topic and please answer these questions.

What responsibilities do game developers have when using real-life cultures as their inspirations?

Why do you think people resort to cultural appropriation, is it usually intentional or unintentional?

How do game developers ensure respectful representation?

Those are the main ones that I have played so if you can any criticism on depictions of culture, heck not even of other cultures, of representation of the U.S. as in overseas games please let me know. And don't call me a snowflake. Thank You.

I'm almost done playing through Metaphor ReFantazio and I just suddenly lost the urge to finish it. The game gives you a huge chunk of free time much longer than the normal times just before the final dungeon to wrap up everything and I just have not been able to get through it.

I started thinking about other games I didn't finish and noticed almost all of them suffered from really bad pacing issues towards the end. E.g. Chrono Trigger, FF7R, and Nine Sols of the games I played this year. This mainly seems to happen in JRPGs that like to give you a ludicrous amount of side quests just before the end to get the optional uber-gear, bosses, dungeons; as well as metroidvanias that give you an ability super late and force you to check the entire map again.

The game that had it really, really bad is definitely Hollow Knight. I tried playing it 3 times in 2017, 2019, and 2023 but always ended quitting just before the final boss, and I can think of several reasons

1. The game displays a "completion" percentage on your save file. Other games usually keep track of things like collectibles, recipes/ingredients, bestiaries, etc. that the player can easily ignore. But Hollow Knight's completion tracks almost everything and afaik there's no way to turn it off.

2. There are some MASSIVE difficulty spikes towards the end of the game that suddenly slows down progression to a halt like the dream bosses, trial of the fool, white palace, NKG, flower delivery, and the entire godmaster dlc. Most of these can take days to weeks to complete and by that point it's very difficult to justify opening the game again

3. Fractional upgrades. This game doesn't give excess materials like many games do so you're forced to scrounge the entire map to get the last fragment or you feel like you wasted time collecting the rest of the shards for nothing. The upgrades are also substantial and the optional content in late game demands it. Elden Ring got flak for not giving extra scadutree fragments but the power is specifically tuned to a S-curve make last few tiers not nearly as impactful. Hollow knight does not.

4. The completionist ending is supposedly the "good ending". I won't be spoiling but it's not really an open to interpretation kind of thing and most people would 100% prefer one kind of ending.

So do yall think games should handle this kind of issue and if so what's the best way of going about it? The main ones I can think of are to add quest lockouts (nier automata) and time limits (persona) as to prevent the player from being stuck a certain stage of progression for too long but these systems tend to have pretty mixed reception. Alternatively they could improve QoL to reduce the anxiety a bit with things like chapter select and more precise completion tracking (celeste).

I know there's the argument that "ok but the player can just ignore it and finish the game" but it feels more like an cop out than an actual solution

Hey, all!

In this thread, the rules are more relaxed. The idea is that this megathread will provide a space for otherwise rule-breaking content, as well as allowing for a slightly more conversational tone rather than every post and comment needing to be an essay.

Top-level comments on this post should aim to follow the rules for submitting threads. However, the following rules are relaxed:

• 3. Specificity, Clarity, and Detail
• 4. No Advice
• 5. No List Posts
• 8. No topics that belong in other subreddits
• 9. No Retired Topics
• 11. Reviews must follow these guidelines

So feel free to talk about what you've been playing lately or ask for suggestions. Feel free to discuss gaming fatigue, FOMO, backlogs, etc, from the retired topics list. Feel free to take your half-baked idea for a post to the subreddit and discuss it here (you can still post it as its own thread later on if you want). Just keep things civil!

Also, as a reminder, we have a Discord server where you can have much more casual, free-form conversations! https://discord.gg/truegaming