Miyazaki hasn’t really innovated since Demon Souls. The other games are slight variations on the same gameplay and design. Sekiro is the biggest change, but the overall design is still very similar. The rest are just “more aggressive / faster” or “open world/metroidvania” in comparison. There are other differences, but the core experience is basically the same.

Fumito Ueda, while similarly iterating on similar ideas, was far more ambitious in his game design between Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Last Guardian. Ico was very different to mainstream gaming at the time. SOTC pushed animation and scale to the limits of the hardware while doubling down on “design by subtraction”. Guardian, while similar in concept to Ico, was a bold move in relying on a “true to life” creature and developing your relationship with that creature as gameplay design. Each were far less mainstream than Miyazaki’s design which is why, as acclaimed as they are, you will find more division about them from so called “core” gamers.

He’s the more important auteur in the medium. You don’t get Dark Souls without Ico.

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This is the direction the big companies are looking to move in. This is the direction Microsoft is banking on, too. Even if you like one service more, the end result may be the same. It’s a matter of time before we see subscription exclusives.

GamePass subscribers are the pre-orderers and mtx consumers of yesteryear, normalizing the industry to practices harmful to general consumers.

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People that act like the media landscape was better or people more informed overall when everyone got their news from the same big 3-4 networks and 2-3 newspapers BLOW MY FUCKING MIND. Like, please read Manufacturing Consent once.

This take that things only got “political” when conservative talk radio got popular…I honestly can’t.

they’re just not representative of the general population.

Good. If I wanted the general population, I’d scroll Facebook

"I don’t like Reddit.

Its interface is ugly as sin. There are fewer users there and they’re all pretentious, extremely liberal, and anti American."

-Some Digg user circa 2008/2009 (probably)

Yeah there was a little bit of that in the original WW2 games: CoD 1-3 and the expansion games and console exclusives.

Sony started this game

Did they, though? I think exclusives predate Sony and even the PS1. They’ve been a part of the console space since basically the inception of the medium. Xbox itself launched with an exclusive “killer app” in Halo. Timed third party exclusivity and exclusive Map Packs were very popular with the 360 when it was on top in the seventh generation as well.

I don’t think Sony has ever made an acquisition of the same scope as Zenimax either in price or in how much of the market was fenced off from a studio they previously had access to. That’s not even going into the Activision deal.

Maybe we can now point to Bungie, but that was still half the price. Most of Sony’s acquisitions over its time were studios that were already de facto developing exclusively for their consoles. Even Insomniac. If you look at their history, Sunset Overdrive is a lone anomaly.

Exclusives suck, but I don’t see them going away as long as consoles and capitalism exist. You’re basically throwing shade at Sony for daring to fund the development of critically and commercially acclaimed games that gave them the reputation of having a quality first party library. Starfield on the other hand was developed as cross platform title until Microsoft paid 7.5 billion to acquire a major publisher. Wasn’t this confirmed this week by the document leaks?

Few complain when Halo is released exclusively because no one is being surprised that those games are now exclusive titles. That isn’t the case with the new Bethesda deal.

What the fuck did you think was going to happen?

Microsoft would develop their existing first party studios and improve the quality of their first party titles, invest in third parties that they already had exclusive relationships with, or invest in up and coming studios?

Had Bethesda published a Microsoft exclusive since Morrowind?

Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy

Now, it’s kind of the point. But I don’t know if it was my mouse or what but I found the controls to be too poorly implemented with how difficult of a game it already is. Sometimes, the hammer would basically glitch out or would apply way more pressure relative to my movements and fling me back down to the button. It served as an element of frustration that I think goes against the design goals. I’ve seen speed runs that make me think it could have been my hardware, but I’ll never know. Actually, remembering, I think I switched to a different mouse eventually that was better but still not great.

I also just didn’t really ever buy into the premise. I know it’s an ode to B games, but the piling of random assets is not what I would consider good design even if they serve the purpose of what the game is going for. There are plenty of difficult video games that are about perseverance but still put in the effort in level design, mechanics, controls, etc.

Tbh, I found it an interesting enough experiment with failed execution. I don’t understand people who hold it up as one of the better “art” games in the medium.

No I think this is worse. It’s not a deal. These are all first party studios now essentially, through nothing but the purchasing power of a trillion dollar company. They will and can be as locked as Microsoft prefers.

There were 360 deals before PS4/PS5 deals. There were Xbox One deals even during Sony dominance, like Tomb Raider. Sony is just one player, but the others are not angels.

Nothing here stops those deals from continuing.

What has happened is that the second or third largest third party publisher’s studios and “IP” now belong to a first party publisher.

And I predict more acquisitions, and thus consolidation, will come from Sony.

They already have cut benefits and raised prices. I expect more price raises in the coming years

The fact their Overton windows aren’t so skewed that a center right party is considered “the left”?

Grandmas, young people. Most people are notoriously far from financially savvy. Many overpay or fail to track their subscriptions.. If you didn’t know at least one person paying for a subscription they didn’t actually use in the last month I would be surprised.

You have to keep up with your gaming habits long term to keep up with the subscription costs, basically never replay anything (especially not long RPGs that can take you months to finish), not waste subscription time playing non-GamePass games, or remember to cancel. And Microsoft, like most subscription services, are banking on people maintaining subscriptions they aren’t fully using.

No subscription deal is ever a good financial decision long term and companies know that. Most people keep their subscriptions running and will end up paying more long term.

That’s not even getting into the “ownership” vs renting aspect.

Capital wins again. If only the FTC didn’t sit on its ass for the last 40 years, maybe such market consolidation wouldn’t be allowed and normalized.

Also shout-out to this comm. The Beehaw community seems delighted. You can sometimes really tell which instances skew toward leftists vs liberals

Those two games are both on PC

Most of them have already been named but the ones I’d choose are:

• Ico
• Shadow of the Colossus
• The Last Guardian
• Journey
• The Last of Us
• The Last of Us Part 2
• Half Life 2
• Bioshock
• Mass Effect 2
• God of War (2018) / Ragnarok
• Kentucky Route Zero
• Limbo / Inside
• Abzu
• And similarly RDR2

Edit: I could also potentially consider Dear Esther and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. Similar to the other first person games I listed, they designed their environments so that certain features are prominent as you move forward into them, which to me qualifies as this type of “cinematography” or framing we’re talking about in games

Apparently, they’re saying this only applies to the collector’s edition and not the standard edition.