I actually thought about the Mass Effect games while reading this, although even beyond this example here.

Ubi proc-gen’d the islands in Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, but then they went over it by hand. They used the proc-gen as a the canvas, not the final painting. And the world was pretty damn good.

In Fallout 3, in one of the subway stations, there’s two skeletons.

You know the phrase “the ends justify the means”?

The great thing about Skyrim and Fallout 4 is that every single square mile is filled with so many things to find outside of any quest lines... little caves with the remnants of drama, pipes that take you somewhere special, oho a little puzzle treasure vault! And every single one of those things is there for a reason,…

I’d have gladly taken 3 planets packed with a lot of unique and memorable content. Hell, make it 1 planet. Dense content is better than sparse content.

The problem isn’t the size per se but more that the size was the selling point and then it was implemented so poorly. At least in terms of gameplay. Exploring the many systems is neither particularly fun nor particularly rewarding. And it doesn’t tie in to the story. This isn’t a game about interplanetary exploration…

I had a hunch that this endeavor wouldn’t be worthwhile in the long run. The idea of procedural generation can be effective in moderation. No Man’s Sky faced similar issues, and many games that heavily rely on procedurally generated content and promote endless exploration often come up short. It can result in…

Quality is always better than quantity. I don’t really care if a game has 100 solar systems to explore if said systems are boring to explore. Starfield has so much POI recycling and the planetary traversal is so boring that BGS somehow ruined what’s historically been the best part of their games: exploration.

Finally, there’s the fact that under Elon Musk’s reign, X, formerly known as Twitter, has become a hotbed for the worst kinds of gamer engagement bait

Freakin Nintendo.

Say what you will but the gratuitous edginess of 90's game marketing was at least amusing. The shit that goes on in modern social media is just dumb.

Wow, that’s certainly more absurd and nauseating than, say, this ad that suggests shooting N64 devs...

No, see, it’s so absurd and nauseating it had to go on the front page with a big picture of the butt comparison, so we can all see how degenerate it is!

Sorry, Admiral Asskicker. I’ll do better next time.

“The console war has never been more absurd or nauseating”

this is a console war i can get behind

Nice, you listed 3 different racing games that are vastly different from Ratchet and Clank!

This. Or even better, make the duration customizable, maybe with like 3 levels? Sort of like iOS lets you customize the duration needed to activate Haptic Touch.

I think there’s an obvious simple solution - Insomniac could just make it a configurable option. Enable or disable “hold to confirm”. Some people hate this feature in general, so I think it would be a good idea to be able to turn it off anyway.