I think it's far more likely they've decided to copy GTA with the multiple characters than that the Polygon articles swayed a multi-billion euro corporation.

Feudal Japan didn't have a lot of tall buildings and is extremely cliché.

I am a mega AC fanboy and I can't wait. Hype Train Engaged.

Spore was, as a game, too ambitious. The original title was 'Sim Everything', and it shows, because even if they'd had 2500 developers on it for six years and spent hundreds of millions of dollars on development, it would still have failed.

I think core games will have a new lease of life when we end the era of consoles and start the era of streaming. In ten years time, consoles won't exist, you'll just boot up the Rockstar App on your Smart TV, login to your account and stream GTAVII. And when that happens, that $300 barrier to play console games…

I agree, but there's a big issue when Partner A can get all the extra-marital/relationship sex s/he wants, while Partner B cannot.

Pointless anecdote: The only polygamous relationship I ever knew that worked out was one in which both partners were extremely conventionally attractive (and thus could both get laid easily, reducing the jealousy factor) and very very laid back.

The funny thing is that the voice acting wasn't racist at all. In fact they specifically hired South-East Asian voice actors from Singapore and Malaysia. They just *really* sound like that.

I haven't set foot in a grocery store in about five years (except when going with other relatives), and I absolutely agree. Why even go to the store anymore?

The fact is that sales information is some of the most important information there is to companies. Why should Steam (or EA, or Activision etc..) give away numbers? If the numbers are good, they'll send out a big press release a week after launch boasting about their numbers. If the numbers are shit, they'll wait as…

What to make of it is simple- more evidence that playing games, even those that contain violence, brutality, or expressions of unsavoury societal attitudes (sexism, homophobia etc..) has minimal, if any, impact, on the player, and certainly does nothing to encourage violent or prejudiced tendencies in them.

Compare the Citadel Presidium in ME1 and ME3, for example. The entire visual language has evolved.

I think a lot of it really is lost in translation. A lot of these French devs like Spiders and Dontnod actually have quite decent writers, they just don't understand how English dialogue works and/or outsource it to some shitty translation agency.

Yeah, they've put a lot of work into the way they do lighting/shadows, which makes SUCH a big difference now.

One of the things that really disappointed me about the later Mass Effect games was that they went from this amazing, brutalist, concrete, 1970s vision of the future to the general 'white plastic and glass' future that can be seen in all sci-fi from Minority Report onwards.

I agree, it has been a little disappointing.

Care to upload a picture of yourself, just, you know, to prove you are who you say you are. You're welcome to leave out the face, just a post-it note with your username.

Yeah, Spirit/Ghost Watch definitely seems the most likely if they do a direct translation.

No engine is free. All the above have quite large royalty fees. If you're a major dev, you always negotiate a custom contract that (usually) involves an upfront purchase cost in the high six/low seven figures for a duration, and then sometimes involves a second payment if the title is released.

The fact is that even if Amazon released a AAA game every 4 months for a decade, something they have nowhere near the development capacity for, they've still probably overpaid if it's just for gaming.