I’m annoyed by the discourse for maybe the opposite reason. Not every piece of art is going to be for every body. Blockbusters movies that make a billion dollars have a formula. So did many top selling AAA games. I think there is plenty of things to be critical of Elden Ring about but so much of the discourse seems to…

We need a poll to see how many players actually missed it. Personally, I think it’s fine. Yes you can miss it. But I think it’s pretty standard RPG design “Big main door” and “Little Bonus Area”. Not to mention the player was just killed and really has nothing to lose. It also establishes that the game isn’t…

I also feel like dying is so common and respawn points common enough that it really isn’t a big deal if you die.

Same. Kids these days have it too good. 

Yeah I don’t really want a live service Bioware game but I’ve always felt there was a lot of opportunity for co-op in their games. I would love to see them take some inspiration from Divinity Original Sin 2 and make dueling protagonists and only one player can “Win”.

I feel like calling it “Remedy’s new shooter” and treating it like that is a little unfair to Remedy. It seems to me like Remedy took contract work to help make someone else’s game. 

I didn’t mean to imply it’s not an RPG, just that I think the design stinks. 

Exactly. It’s not that it’s not an RPG, it’s just that it’s more like “Action RPG” but RPG is in super small font

Didn’t mean to imply that it shouldn’t be called an RPG. I just meant that it is an RPG that I kinda of think stinks.

It’s been said, but for me it is the lackluster RPG design that is keeping me from playing. I played about 15 hours and the gameplay just wasn’t emergent enough for me. It never felt like I was discovering solutions to missions, it felt like I was either picking solution A or solution B based on my skill tree.

I think the smaller dev team model is actually super sustainable. I think we are starting to see it a lot, especially on PC. You don’t need to make 300 million dollars on launch day. Just enough to support your small team. Free content launches get your old players talking and it brings in new players. 

I feel this kind of thing is to be expected at this point right? Multiplayer game gets launched, player base peaks, and then slowly drops until the first real content updates start launching. 

If your gut reaction to this is to get defensive (like many people in the twitter replies) then it might be time to start examining your personal bias. 

It’s a video game blog and they are writing about their experience playing a very popular game.

I’ve been waiting for this type of article ever since the Direct. Your boss paying you in currency you can only use to buy things from your boss is just insane!

This is how a lot of the AC:NH comments have been for almost  the past year. Just people demanding lists of features. 

I mean what even is a “full game”? It’s just an interesting question in gaming right now. Pretty much every AAA game has DLCs and updates that come out post-lauch. Even most paid DLCs will get bundled with a game a year later and be called “definitive edition” or something.

Just based on how lore and easter egg obsessed the series is (based on my memory from around 2015ish) I get the impression Scott isn’t the most fun person to collaborate with creatively.

My partner has a Switch lite and has been wanting to upgrade. The new screen is enough to make me want to buy it for her but not enough to get me personally excited about it. 

If people love this and buy it, I wouldn’t be surprised if they remake the sequel too.