Superhero stories in general have a perhaps unresolvable thematic conflict with the police. There’s no real way to remove the subject of vigilantism from the equation. Regardless of whether a police force is portrayed as purely good or almost entirely corrupt, the message is that they’re unable to handle the level of…

I can’t count the number of rock-chewers I’ve come across who outright worshipped The Enclave and legitimately thought the Fallout series was about the betrayal of America by liberals and Communists.

“Hey NPC, can you tell me where to find the Sword of Radiant Light?”

“in-game character responding in real-time to words the player says out loud”

Darktide desperately needs new content.  The game is/was fun to play, but it felt very barebones in the state it was released in.  Notwithstanding the multiple crashes to desktop etc. in the first few weeks, it mostly just needs more content and a proper campaign.  I have faith in Fatshark, since Vermintide 2 is…

I kind of like it. I wish more cool franchises would loosen up their licensing. Yeah, there’s a lot of trash, but there are more gems, too.

Looking forward to Rogue Trader. Aside from that, Warhammer games are like throwing paint at a wall. Sometimes you get art, but most of the time it’s a mess.

Kind of surprised that no one has done “What if Ursula was the good guy?” yet.

I’m sure I’ll get dumped on here, but as a fan since the original, I have not fully understood what was going on in a Final Fantasy game without outside sources since FFVII.

Part of it is because I played FFVIII-X in a communal environment that kept me from just playing through and finishing it, and part of it is…

“autonomous, intelligent, in-game NPCs”

I’m just tired of every fucking game turning into Destiny.

The Potter series isn’t unique in this way, but its always bothered me that in so much media ambition is considered inherently evil. Its morally neutral. Bravery and loyalty aren’t inherently good either. 

Definitely agree. If anything, Slytherin should be representative of some of the very best wizards in history as well as the very worst. The entire framing of it could have been “Drive and ambition and thirst for power and glory can lead to great success, but it can also be the most corrupting.” Instead you get a…

Really the idea of a magical hat deciding the trajectory of your entire high school career based off whether it thinks you’re a Hero, a Nerd, an Asshole or too boring to fit into the other three is a fucked system to start with.

I was talking to friends recently about why we all enjoyed AC Odyssey so much more than Valhalla even though on a technical level they are just as competent as each other. And aside from a much more visually appealing setting, the thing I realised was how enthralled all the NPCs were with the world they occupied. Even…

On the surface it sounds good. But I’m really suspicious that it’s a tool for a role that teams loooove to skip hiring for. Watch as game designers start using this to delay hiring a writer for even longer/reduce how much writing from an actual writer they need to pay for.

Otherwise it doesn’t sound too bad. If it’s…

As if Ubisoft’s writing wasn’t wooden enough.

Get used to it. First it’s gonna be NPC barks, then reusable assets, then who knows.

One of the more interesting and applicable functions I could see for the ChatGPT-style bots in the very near future, would be as NPC integration in games. The idea of being able to deepen the dialogue trees through interaction rather than a series of preset choices is very appealing. Even just finding different ways…

More honest PR: “We’re looking into firing our writers but want to be sure they train the ML text generation script long enough for it to handily take their jobs”