Bethesda games definitely feel more like ‘exploring a world’ rather than ‘rewatching a movie’, for sure - the narrative’s not set, so it’s different every time. There are certainly films I’ve seen dozens of times, but with most, I can’t do more than a handful of re-watches before there’s just nothing left to surprise…

Yeah, and it’s just something that’s weird to me because I don’t... get it, I guess? I’ve never cared if someone else liked Star Trek even though I liked Star Wars; I also liked Star Trek, just not as much. And I’ve never cared if someone liked Star Wars MORE than I did (or at least made ‘liking Star Wars’ more of a…

I’m the same way with Bethesda (and Bethesda-adjacent) games, though my ‘switch’ is significantly further in than yours - probably at closer to the 60-70 hour point. (That’s just a question of personal preference, I think, though it also may come down to the fact that it sounds like you’ve played these games…

I think Horizon did a much better job than some of the other games under discussion in making its various side-quests and characters feel unique, absolutely; I still just hit that point at maybe three quarters in where I was kind of like ‘okay, I’m about ready to start wrapping this up - I’m still invested in the…

Yeah, the difference between comics and video games is primarily that you don’t have to pay four hundred bucks to read Marvel comics, then pay another four hundred if you want to read DC. Which only exacerbates the problem - once people have paid out that kind of money, they definitely feel a certain level of…

I’ll definitely be curious to see how they handle the Zenimax stuff (as someone who primarily plays on Xbox, I still think console exclusive games are a terrible idea; I can kind of see the justification if it’s part of your corporate ‘brand’ like Halo or God of War, but still... pretty terrible), but I also think…

Inquisition was absolutely what I was thinking of; there’s a great 20-30 hour game in there, but it’s an absolute slog at 100+ hours. And no, you don’t necessarily ‘have’ to do all of the sidequests, but the game is pretty much always prompting you to at least attempt them, even if it boils down to just ‘walk across…

Yeah, I haven’t played it (don’t own a Switch, can’t quite justify buying one JUST to play that), but I’ve heard it gets closer to that sense of ‘creating a wide, inviting open world that you don’t HAVE to dig through every corner of’ that so many of the other games seem to miss.

I feel like this has been an issue for a LOT of games - Ubisoft games specifically, but also gaming in general, everything from Horizon Zero Dawn to latter-day BioWare - and I generally pin the blame on Skyrim, if inadvertently. Lot a lot of things in gaming, it felt like other developers looked at Skyrim, said ‘oh,…

Has Microsoft removed games from other platforms once they’ve purchased a developer? (I’m not trying to be snarky; I legitimately hadn’t heard of that.)

I do find it interesting how much videogames seem to drive that ‘self-identification with the corporation behind your entertainment’ thing; the only creative culture I can think of that has more of it would probably be comics. I mean, I get it, to an extent - if you spend ~$400 bucks on a gaming device, you don’t want…

I think ‘Tell Me Why’ releasing on GamePass also gave a patina of credence to those rumors as well; honestly, prior to the Zenimax purchase, Dontnod is much more the sort of company, size-wise, I would have said Microsoft was trying to buy up.

I tend to think that one thing Tencent (and, to make a generalization, Chinese investment companies as a whole) tend to be good at is acknowledging that just because something wouldn’t play at home, it can still be profitable overseas. Tencent knows full well that LGBTQ representation would get them in hot water with…

To be fair, I think it would still be news if a western developer (rather than an investor firm) was doing this much purchasing - if Activision had bought a large stake in Dontnod, for example, I tend to assume Kotaku would still have covered it. But you’re right in that they don’t really seem to be doing anything…

At this point (at least in the Western market), Tencent feels less like a company that develops videogames and more like some sort of mutual fund or investment firm that specializes in buying up just short of board-control amounts of video game companies’ stock. I mean, this should concern me - and does, kind of! -…

You know, you’re probably on to something: I wonder if other MMO players feel the same level of ‘ownership’ toward their gear the way Destiny players do? I mean, take the Gjallarhorn fiasco all the way back from D1, where players who had the gun were angry that other players were buying it from Xur and getting it ‘too…

And I feel like all of that is absolutely a legitimate reason to stop playing the game; I just wonder what it is about Destiny that makes so many ex-players decide that Destiny ‘cheated’ them somehow, to the point that it feels like every time I see an article about Destiny the first comment is always someone who used…

Well said! My experience is definitely colored by the fact that I don’t really ‘do’ high-level play - matchmade nightfalls are about as difficult as I can handle - and the two friends I play with play even less than me. They both came to it later (though still years ago, at this point), and didn’t really have any…

Here’s the thing about the entire discussion in this thread, I think: it’s all about endgame-level content, in a discussion about whether or not NEW players should play the game. Take Felwinter as an example - you’re absolutely right that it was poor planning for it not to be available (even if they didn’t realize it…

Yeah, I do understand that - I bounced off of Warframe when I tried it for pretty much that exact same reason - and that’s definitely something Bungie should work on, but I still don’t know that ‘there’s a chance it might be too dense with subsystems for you to enjoy!’ is really a strong enough reason to assume ‘no…