Just hopping between Resi Evil 4 and Dead Island 2 mainly at mo, occasional Horizon:FW DLC (hey that combat is ass-gripping enough on higher difficulties, not eased by it locking my under-leveled save file on the DLC island with no option to grind elsewhere!) Tho you have reminded there's an Evil Within 2 save I still gotta finish, remember much story progress was made but something must've interrupted life flow at the time.
Guess you’ll have to wait for GTA6 then for realistic characters and environments. In the meantime have you ever tried RDR2? It’s big, highly detailed, has a ton of character interactions to toy with, interesting side quests, etc. Still a high water mark for big open worlds with a lived in feel.
YoVideoGames (especially Simmons) have been calling out the "graphics don't matter" crowd since 2012. While graphics are important, having a distinct art style or visual design is even more important. The problem with going for realism is that you're either going to get an uncanny valley effect, or those realistic graphics are going to age within the next year or year and a half. With low diminishing returns each time. There's some exceptions, but not even they can last forever. The RE engine has done this the best, but even it has it's minor slip-ups every now and then. At least Capcom bothers to take the engine and still stylize it with their other games not named Resident Evil.
They can still make them big, but just don't work your developers to death nor fill it with boring checklist. Downsize on on a smaller scale. Resident Evil 4 Remake is a large game, but Capcom knew how to Pace it with its level design and not just make it full of too much padding. Some of the side quests are weak and just require backtracking.
You're talking about, but pendants like that just say whatever to please the masses. They're known for changing their opinions on a dime. You should see all these pundents lamenting the death of Nintendo with the Wii U back early to mid 2010s. They'll say anything to sound and act as if they're on top of everything.
Even then, I'm not going to put in $70. If I'm trading something in or selling a game to make up the difference, which is getting rarer by the day, I'll just wait or never buy it at all. It's why I've been going to to mid budget games or Indie. I'm usually getting my money's worth at a better and more affordable price.
I remember playing GTA V with a graphics mod, walking around and in awe how realistic everything looked, and then I stop noticing it 3 hours later. It's the same story with RDR2, all that attention to detail stops mattering, except when it became a nuisance. Your hat falls off and horses poop, but none of it matters when you can kill an entire town and come back as if nothing happened.
Sure, but I want to play a battle with 25,000+ soldiers at 60fps. I don't want to see 25,000 polygons of peach fuzz on a character. I don't want to see a photorealistic city where there are only 10 buildings you can enter. I don't want to see fps games with the hyperreal 200fps firing animations and visual recoil, but you are running around like Quake deathmatch.
The bigger the world, the more assets have to be created. How much labour and cost do you think goes into asset creation? I'd guess it's the most labour and cost intensive part of production. I'm not saying that if you took $20 million from art and spent it on gameplay, games would suddenly have better gameplay, but what I'm saying is that developers and consumers have a twisted priority on visuals and spectacle.
I can only speak for myself, but I wouldn’t have over five hundred hours into RDR2 if it wasn’t as detailed. Even RDO time which is over half that, wasn’t from the typical MP death match, koth, etc. game types, other than as much as needed to get Platinum. It was from the character building aspect.
The first Mass Effect had lots of different armours for the characters with relevant stat increases, problem is by endgame you wanted everyone at their best so everyone had the same armour and the same guns. Subsequent games - although 2 is the best for this - removed stats from all armour except for Shepard’s in order to give each character a distinct and unique look. That left Shepard with having some customisation of their armour and it’s paint job or allowing them to wear one of several specially designed sets.
I'm not coming for the defense, nor against Jedi Survivor, but that was the main complaint from the last game. The story was either to stale, predictable, or didn't take any risks due to also being a prequel. I know Pat found the story boring and obviously cliched. I don't mind cliches when they're done right, but for what I'm seeing from everybody talking about this, is that it doesn't do enough risk or makes things too obvious that an elementary school kid can figure it out. If you like the story though, or power to you.
I agree. It is interesting you brought it up, because the recent example I can point to you talked about just a couple of days ago in another thread. Weird West's 1st chapter is one of the most cliche western stories there is. Former law enforcement (or in this case bounty hunter) retires to farm to try and live normal life. Then spouse/kid gets kidnapped/killed... and so on. It seems like you didn't stick around to see it get "weirder" so to speak (and I can't blame you due to the bizarre control system.) But it does well utilize that cliche story at the beginning, a story that is familiar enough to fit like a glove in order to help acclimatize you to a fairly non-standard setting and style of game.
This all may go beyond videogames. I think there are whole genres, be it movies, comics, novels, that benefit from basic structural tropes. When you're in the mood for some buddy movie, or some monster of the week flick, or some ghost story, or some nice Western, you're usually in the mood for a comfy stereotype. You know how it'll go, you're at home, you're not exploring new grounds. You want, essentially, to re-watch the same story for the first time. And just see more cars asplode at the predicted beats. A too experimental Columbo episode ceases to be a Columbo episode, which is bad news if you really wanted to watch a Columbo episode.
If someone leaves their car unlocked, it's morally okay to steal it.
Even before discussing the Zelda leak, they were already blacklisted from Nintendo by something else. They literally lose nothing. I don't like coming for Kotaku's defense. I don't like coming for Kotaku's defense, but Nintendo has their own screw-ups as well, and I don't like howt they've reacted to people who leak stuff. They go way too far, and expect everybody to be their bitches.
Because that has nothing to do with Nintendo. I never forgot about that moment and it still dumb, but I'm not going to rag on Sterling for not bringing it up. At least they stayed on topic. It also still doesn't solve the issue of the hypocritical parts of the gaming audience that want "journalistic integrity", but at the same time want all gaming journalists and outlets to fall inline with the games and game companies they like or care for, and be their extended OR department. They want to have it both ways. That is not journalistic integrity, that's just people hearing what they want to hear and getting mad at somebody that has a disagreement, or because they reported on something that was already known, and said company or psychotic fan suddenly has a problem with it and is in shock.
So in other words both sides have a point, and neither are better than the other. They both suck as far as I'm concerned right now.
