Codex

He likens Arkane’s approach to studios like Larian and FromSoftware: “Those are people that have been doing, over and over, the thing they know exactly how to do, until it hits super hard. So to me, that’s what Arkane had to do.”

Damn, what a concept: doing the same kind of game multiple times, iterating on the design to perfect it. Obviously Bethesda gets releasing the same game over and over again, but this idea of “improving” the design is so alien to them. Wouldn’t adding thousands of microtransactions be an improvement?

I was wondering why HW3 was “controversial” and apparently I didn’t realize:

1. It’s been released.
2. It’s worse than the first 2
3. Because Gearbox is publishing it!

Thanks Randy! Fucking grease weasel ruins another great franchise.

Stephanie Stirling has been beating the drum on fake “quality” modes that give you RT at the expense of everything else. Think it was this one but it might also have been this one.

I’d wait to see if fans are still trying to port Starfield to new engines in 20 years before I start talking about my company’s “best” work.

Man, I’d love to play Alan Wake 2. Big Remedy fan; Control was my game of the year for two years. Be nice if they’d release it on a platform I’d buy it on.

The best written games are all indies now. Text and story heavy games are pretty common, with varying amounts of “game” to carry the story. Check out Citizen Sleeper, Disco Elysium, or Book of Hours.

It’ll have no trouble meeting my expectations, because I expect that Bethesda today can’t make a good game so I expect it to be shiiiiiiit!

But also, fuck Bethesda and this “lower your expectations” bullshit. No Todd, it isn’t impossible to please your fans. No Todd, it isn’t impossible to make a good AAA game. No Todd, it isn’t a burden or a problem to have millions of fans who have high expectations for you.

If you can’t cut it, fucking quit and hand the reins over to someone with fresh ideas, someone who’s still hungry and still wants to make good things.

I wish games just wouldn’t license music, or would attain a perpetual license that allows the work to remain whole and as intended. Can you imagine if your movie collection just auto-updated to change the soundtrack or add some new scenes in now and again? It’s fucking stupid what people put up with in games and software.

So are we switching from metacritic to NASDAQ for our game reviews now? No longer will we buy or subscribe to games, now we invest in them. With the blockchain, we will…

Maybe they confused it for another game.

Jeeze what’s next, the simple wholesome thrills of Moonman Doom?

(I don’t think they should have taken it down, political satire like killing Thatcher/Trump/Biden in a game isn’t in the same ballpark as actually bad or dangerous Doom mods like moonman or various maps that copy layouts from schools and malls.)

Maybe they’re secretly working on the PC version of Bloodborne?

Hmm, an intriguing idea, an adventure game but you have to use a fantasy version of git or svn to mine through old source code repos looking for erased clues, abandoned forks, and other hints of The Truth hiding in the code. Using file diffs to compare versions of a .finger file found on two different VMs where some significant detail has changed (a file hash or a phone number or something).

Could be good in several genres too. Secret romance in the all queer dev team, lovecraftian digital dieties hiding in the archives, counter-espionage trying to locate a critical secret under time pressure, etc

More exciting to me than finding one of Hemmingway’s typewriters! Ah, imagine if like the original id software NeXTSTEP machines had been preserved? Or the devkits used to make NES classics? What a treat, to boot up and look through the scattered virtual desk of one of the founders!

I’d never of heard of this game before but in the last like 2 days it has been everywhere. All over Lemmy, but also in several recommendations on YT, and a few Mastodon posts. They are marketing the fuck out of this one, huh?

It’s the data diving that’s really ruined the fun of this. You can’t hide anything in a game now because for a legion of hackers, exposing every locked or hidden thing in new releases is the game. I think that’s why so many indie games that want to have deep hidden content end up making ARGs, so you only have to put hints in the game and the solution is on your website or in a geocache or something. Then the worst the data miners can do is dig up all the clues faster.

I also feel like part of the appeal of “lore over plot” is tied up in this. With YouTube and Twitch, it’s likely that more people will consume your game in the form of “lore analysis” videos than will ever play your game.

If your game just tells a straightforward plot, then a 12 hour commented Let’s Play is going to eat some amount of people who might otherwise play your 60 hour game. I definitely found Whitelight’s 7 hour walk through of Death Stranding a lot more interesting than playing it.

With the lore-heavy games, there’s no consensus story to spoil so everyone can make their own 10 hour long interpretation of what Goldmask’s finger positioning implies about the elden lord’s dining habits. It feeds a whole speculative video ecosystem and encourages people to play the games and “decide for yourself” what it all means.

I wanted to find the “Brazil mentioned” meme but with HL3, but this will do too:

Oh shit, Frost was my favorite new thing about 2nd Wind. I hope he lands well, I want to keep listening to that sultry voice!

It never bothered me in Source games, but I don’t really care for it as a mechanic. Specifically in Half-Life, I don’t like how it overlaps with long jumping either. (Jump then crouch to crouch jump, crouch then jump to long jump.)

But I wouldn’t want it in other games because manteling is a superior mechanic. Mantelling is usually when you can hold down the jump key close to a ledge to grab it and pull yourself up, rather than jumping. In most games that have it, mantelling into a smaller space (a vent or pjpe) auto-crouches as you enter.

It allows for making longer jumps, exciting last moment saves, pulling yourself up into small spaces, simpler climbing mechanics, and more. It’s just a better, more intuitive mechanic that replaces long jumps and crouch jumps and requires no extra key presses.

🤣🤣🤣 Ah man, I forgot about that Souljaboy review! My friends and I loved that when it came out, cracked us up for weeks. “He look like mario from the future! It ain’t got no point to the game! Woaaaaaah! Oooohwooooop!”