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Post by therevanchist25 on Jun 23, 2022 16:02:51 GMT
And to be honest are the devs really insulting Elden Ring or it's just fans overzealously defending their game? Honestly I'm beginning to think that Elden Ring is one of those games that are good but their fanbase is obnoxious akin to the Sonic fanbase. To be clear, it is 100% devs shitting on the game. Plenty of articles have been written about it. Some who work at studios who get pissy when fans shit on their games for not "understanding", so apparently their also flaming hypocrites. Soulsborne fans can be incredibly obnoxious to be sure, many of them have a very warped sense of what the whole point of the "series" is. But in this particular case it was Devs poking their head in, throwing digs at the game and trying to walk away without notice. Fans noticed and laughed at them. Like most fanbases of basically anything, some go too far, and others logically explain why the shots they made are not really valid. Same song and dance.
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Post by therevanchist25 on Jun 23, 2022 2:08:17 GMT
Should've? I wouldn't say that. A thousand barren planets with nothing to do except build settlements/scan flora and fauna is exactly what I don't want to be doing in Mass Effect personally, at least not as the thing that's going to drive the majority of your playtime hours. If I wanted to do that crap I would just play No Man's Sky. Also, this is Bethesda, so the companions are probably gonna be ass, again, not something Andromeda should have emulated, despite the ones in Andromeda being bad already. Combat is typical garbage Fallout 4 combat. If there's one thing Andromeda did well it was that, so again, not something to emulate. Storyline about ancient alien artifacts and uncovering mysteries? Andromeda did in fact do that, it was just lackluster. But again, this is Bethesda, their story writing is typically not that good either, As bad as Andromeda's plot was, Skyrim's plot is a literal meme it's so terrible. Let's not forget their newest release, 76 literally didn't even have human npcs and told the entire story through fucking holotapes. That's as bad as it gets imo. Honestly the only thing from this game that I personally would want to see Mass Effect adopt would be some form of space combat and immersive space traversal. Mass Effect wasnt open world game. Despite BW efforts to transition their game concept to that. The difference is that the open world RPG a la Bethesda uses the world as the gameplay. The story is just there to guide the player around thenpoints of interest. NMS does this also, but of course the procgen doesnt deliver predictable vistas and interesting sights they tie the story to game activities and loot progression since more loot allows you to do wider range of activities. I have no doubt Bioware is going to keep trying to make their games open world. Because that's "The Trend" that everyones following now, and as we know, video games is about conforming to everyone else. You're not allowed to make a Triple A RPG/Action Adventure that isn't Open World anymore. The only RPGs that can get away with it are CRPGs on PC because their considered "niche" enough to actually have creativity. The constant barrage of devs from other companies who keep shitting on Elden Ring talking about they don't understand why people like the game, and keep talking about the game is sub-par in various ways, is a prime example. The games these devs work on are just the same Ubisoft style copy paste open world games that flood your screen with nonsense, five thousand map markers and constant tutorial/hand holding pop ups and pointless collectables. Most of these Western Devs have seemingly been taught how to make games in only 1 way, because most games feel very much the same these days and it's very dull and tedious. Now Elden Ring isn't for everyone, obviously. But so many people love it because it isn't "just another" open world game that's dumbed down, overly casualized, and hand holdy with obnoxious levels of UX. There's a lot of gamers in the market tired of the current mainstream style of game, and Elden Ring is like the first game in years to really give those people a different, more challenging experience. The crazy part is, Elden Ring isn't even THAT different. It's just different enough to be refreshing. It's not "Ubisoft/Witcher 3 Clone #24635465". And for many gamer's that's enough to satisfy them, and personally I find that really sad, that the market is so copy paste across the board that something that's only barely different makes such massive waves across the industry. Not for everyone? Maybe. But Fromsoft have done pretty great deal on accommodating the UI minimalism from the world and item design to minimal amount of active quest, so you won't need that much of support system just to play the game. To quote Hayao Miyazaki, "A film made for 'everyone' is a film made for particularly no one". Its a populist game philosophy that is expertly designed to be an "8" with rated E/everyone, because they didn't dare to make the sacrifice to be a "10". So yeah, not everyone will like soulslike games, because it didn't even attempt to cater for "everyone", but for people within that target audience? Its GOAT for them. The fact that so many Devs online can't seem to understand that, I think speaks volumes about the state of gaming. It's also why Bioware will likely keep trying for open world games. Because honestly, Inquisition felt like a single player MMO outside of the main story sections. and Andromeda shared many of these problems as well.
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Post by therevanchist25 on Jun 22, 2022 6:41:38 GMT
Personally, I find it highly amusing that Bioware is apparently the only studio that can't achieve procedural generation technology. Because I feel like Starfield is literally what Bioware wasted 5 and half years trying to make, and Bethesda will have started, and finished the whole process within the same 7 year span that Bioware had. Mind you, this isn't exactly what I want Mass Effect to be, but I feel like this very much resembles what Bioware was trying to do originally. This is what Andromeda should've been. Should've? I wouldn't say that. A thousand barren planets with nothing to do except build settlements/scan flora and fauna is exactly what I don't want to be doing in Mass Effect personally, at least not as the thing that's going to drive the majority of your playtime hours. If I wanted to do that crap I would just play No Man's Sky. Also, this is Bethesda, so the companions are probably gonna be ass, again, not something Andromeda should have emulated, despite the ones in Andromeda being bad already. Combat is typical garbage Fallout 4 combat. If there's one thing Andromeda did well it was that, so again, not something to emulate. Storyline about ancient alien artifacts and uncovering mysteries? Andromeda did in fact do that, it was just lackluster. But again, this is Bethesda, their story writing is typically not that good either, As bad as Andromeda's plot was, Skyrim's plot is a literal meme it's so terrible. Let's not forget their newest release, 76 literally didn't even have human npcs and told the entire story through fucking holotapes. That's as bad as it gets imo. Honestly the only thing from this game that I personally would want to see Mass Effect adopt would be some form of space combat and immersive space traversal.
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Post by therevanchist25 on Jun 21, 2022 15:01:15 GMT
KOTOR 2 is a highly overrated game that basically railroads you the entire game with a plot that literally makes no sense when you stop and think about the words characters actually say, even accounting for the restoration patch.
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Post by therevanchist25 on Jun 18, 2022 17:55:15 GMT
To anyone upset that this seems to not be in a a less human centric province, I too am a bit bummed, but the last two ES single player games have a distinct trend of taking fhe weirdness and flavor out of the setting. Even FO4 did this a bit. So i’d Reall worry whether Bethesda could embrace the weirdness to give an elf or beast centered zone. Morrowind was old Bethesda. New Bethesda un ironically likes saltines. Hammer fell has a decent amount of weirdness about it and they could explore Orc stuff too (my favorite race). I’m just really hoping it is not high rock as I just know if they do high rock they’ll ignore what makes it interesting and unique and make it a bland Europe analogous high fantasy thing.cc Actually, I think it's gonna be set in High Rock. If you see the video I posted, I think Camel is actually wrong for a couple of reasons. I think a lot of people thought Hammerfell because it's the perfect place to continue with the story of TESV (the aldmeri dominion and the war), but if we look at past games, most of them take place centuries after the last game with completely new story lines, wrapping up every plot bit of the last game without much explanation (something I've never been too fond of). So my guess is that the whole Elven War would be over one or other way by the time the next ES takes place. I could be wrong though, and maybe they decide to keep some continuity going. This is wildly false. Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Battlespire, Shadowkey, and Oblivion all take place during the reign of Uriel Septim the 7th, with Oblivion opening with his demise. All those games take place during a single lifetime. Redguard was a spin off set in the 2nd era leaving Skyrim as the only game that takes place after a long time skip.
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Post by therevanchist25 on Jun 18, 2022 17:50:36 GMT
Personally, I find it highly amusing that Bioware is apparently the only studio that can't achieve procedural generation technology. Because I feel like Starfield is literally what Bioware wasted 5 and half years trying to make, and Bethesda will have started, and finished the whole process within the same 7 year span that Bioware had.
Mind you, this isn't exactly what I want Mass Effect to be, but I feel like this very much resembles what Bioware was trying to do originally.
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Post by therevanchist25 on Jun 15, 2022 15:17:14 GMT
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Post by therevanchist25 on Jun 13, 2022 21:32:29 GMT
I really do wonder what people expect from games that are already that huge. It's a bit ridiculous IMO. Infinite handcrafted content! But seriously, I think some people just think game space should be equally used, because it's a concept pushed by certain devs. But Bethesda never cared. Saying that, I do think Fallout 4 is the worst Fallout, but quest density or the settlement system isn't why. Oh make no mistake, the terrible quest density or settlement system makes up a very very small percentage of what makes Fallout 4 bad, but they are very much symptoms of the actual reasons. Also, that never having been Bethesda is simply not accurate. Morrowind is very much so a case of that. Even Oblivion is more content relevant space than not.
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Post by therevanchist25 on Jun 13, 2022 20:53:52 GMT
Boston itself was was one section of a wider map sir. Your cherry picking at best. The Glowing Sea has 2 quests related to it, 2. And it's almost a whole quarter of the entire game play area. Everything south of Boston, aka about half the map, has a handful of quests at best, and exists purely to facilitate grinding materials for Settlements. What kind of low expectation argument is this? at least half the map is entirely empty fluff that has no real reason to exist except to mindlessly grind and build worthless settlements. I know exactly how little content that game has. I spent hundreds of hours in game looking for it, across multiple characters, and always ran out of content once you reach the lower half of the map. Even then, the parts of the map with quests, the quests are fairly mediocre at best and can all be described with 1 sentence summaries. "Crazy magic family is dumb" "A kid is stuck in a fridge for 200 years" "A deathclaw is stuck in the museum" "Man sells travelers ghoul meat" etc etc. There is no depth to the quests that the game actually does have. these descriptions fully encapsulate the entirety of what the quests entail. There is no twists, or divergent paths in almost any case. It's like the quests were picked by interns by pulling slips of paper out of a fish bowl with these 1 sentence descriptions written on them. Naturally the main quests are more detailed, but their still fairly mediocre and is utterly welded onto the train tracks it's running on, to the point that even picking a faction is almost entirely pointless, and gives you the exact same copy and paste ending for all of them except 1 because people stupidly threw a fit about Fallout 3 having the gall to actually end to show you different epilogues and all these idiots wanted to just run around forever and ever doing basically nothing on 1 character rather than start over and try different outcomes. Every fallout before 4 was a vastly better RPG in almost every way possible. Because 4 isn't an RPG, it's Junkyard Minecraft, by design. Which is fine, people like Minecraft and it's a popular genre type. But it's not a real Fallout game, and it's not what I'm looking for. a) I find it enormously funny that you would spend 100s of hours in a game you are so mad about because of it's lack of content. I mean, seriously? b ) I played through FO4 once and did everything (all quests, explored just about every dungeon, I even build out the settlements enough to be self sufficient but no more). According to my Steam Library that took me 153 hours. It's one of the games in my Steam library I spent the most hours in for a single playthrough. In that time, I had a lot of fun and never ran out of content. Yes, building the settlements there was slightly repetitive but I did them in between other quests so it was no bother at all. So that was my experience with the game. I hope you'll not tell me that it is "wrong" in some way.
c) I don't care that half the map is "useless" or whatever you want to call it. I was in the glowing sea for those 2 quests as well and then I never went back. So what? That's fine. If you want to spend another 100 hours uselessly wandering through the glowing sea, that's your problem but it doesn't mean the game doesn't have enough content. In fact, I am hoping (and expecting) the same for Starfield. Give me all that possibility to go places without forcing me to. If there are only, say, 20 planets out of those 1000, which have actual hand crated content on them, that's perfectly fine if that content also gives me 150 hours of quests to do. Perfect. Everything else would be completely overblown expectations. The rest is for addons and modders. d ) As for the quest and dungeon quality, well, bit of a matter of taste there. I do agree that it wasn't all super inspired but there were definitely fun moments in it and honestly, I haven't really played a Bethesda game where the stories were super brilliant. In Bethesda games, IMO the story is more of a background thing that gets you a hook to explore their worlds. And in that regard, FO4 IMO wasn't worse than, say, Skyrim or Oblivion. For Starfield, I don't expect more or less than that.
I really do wonder what people expect from games that are already that huge. It's a bit ridiculous IMO.
What I expect sir, is games to stop being so fucking big for literally no reason. Every damn open world game does this, and I'm sick of it. They make giant landmasses and copy and paste like 40 hours of curated content across it's size to artificially create 140, 200, 1000 hour grind fests that only serve to drain away a players time doing busy work. The fact that you think it's entirely acceptable, to have literally a quarter of a games map just sit there, and be useless is fucking insanity, and just speaks to how conditioned everyone is to just accept this garbage. Just because a map is gigantic does not mean it's good, or that it's well designed, or that it's even desirable. I wandered the Glowing Sea because I wanted to know why it was even in the fucking game to begin with. I thought "okay there must be quests out here, why else would this giant section of map even be here?" But no, it's just there, for no reason. Probably months of work for some level designer and it just sits there taking up file space when it could have simply been cut entirely and the work that went into it diverted to something actually useful. That's what I spent all my hours in game doing, wandering around looking for quests that didn't exist, and wondering why whole sections of the map even existed when there was nothing for massive swaths of time. Game worlds should only be as big as the developer needs to implement the content they have. What's actually ridiculous is how no one realizes what a colossal waste of time and manhours so much of open world design actually is, because people are under the wrong idea that Dollars Per Hour is a great metric of a games quality.
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Post by therevanchist25 on Jun 13, 2022 19:30:07 GMT
Yes, because Bethesda gave everyone an empty ass map devoid of content and told you to "make your own fun". Lazy developer cop out. Uh, you mean in Fallout 4? 'Cause that's simply not true. Boston was pretty densely filled with quests and explorable locations. You may not have liked the style (I am not a big fan of Fallout myself) but come on now. Boston itself was was one section of a wider map sir. Your cherry picking at best. The Glowing Sea has 2 quests related to it, 2. And it's almost a whole quarter of the entire game play area. Everything south of Boston, aka about half the map, has a handful of quests at best, and exists purely to facilitate grinding materials for Settlements. What kind of low expectation argument is this? at least half the map is entirely empty fluff that has no real reason to exist except to mindlessly grind and build worthless settlements. I know exactly how little content that game has. I spent hundreds of hours in game looking for it, across multiple characters, and always ran out of content once you reach the lower half of the map. Even then, the parts of the map with quests, the quests are fairly mediocre at best and can all be described with 1 sentence summaries. "Crazy magic family is dumb" "A kid is stuck in a fridge for 200 years" "A deathclaw is stuck in the museum" "Man sells travelers ghoul meat" etc etc. There is no depth to the quests that the game actually does have. these descriptions fully encapsulate the entirety of what the quests entail. There is no twists, or divergent paths in almost any case. It's like the quests were picked by interns by pulling slips of paper out of a fish bowl with these 1 sentence descriptions written on them. Naturally the main quests are more detailed, but their still fairly mediocre and is utterly welded onto the train tracks it's running on, to the point that even picking a faction is almost entirely pointless, and gives you the exact same copy and paste ending for all of them except 1 because people stupidly threw a fit about Fallout 3 having the gall to actually end to show you different epilogues and all these idiots wanted to just run around forever and ever doing basically nothing on 1 character rather than start over and try different outcomes. Every fallout before 4 was a vastly better RPG in almost every way possible. Because 4 isn't an RPG, it's Junkyard Minecraft, by design. Which is fine, people like Minecraft and it's a popular genre type. But it's not a real Fallout game, and it's not what I'm looking for.
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Post by therevanchist25 on Jun 13, 2022 17:44:07 GMT
On a more serious note however. This is clearly just Fallout 4 in space. Which I suspected would be the case, but was still hoping it wouldn't be, because Fallout 4 was nothing but worthless Settlement mechanics and god awful radiant quests with a few mediocre scripted quests thrown in now and then. Those "worthless" settlement mechanics was what made Fallout 4 more alive. The radiant quests were fine but needed more variety I'd say. Yes, because Bethesda gave everyone an empty ass map devoid of content and told you to "make your own fun". Lazy developer cop out.
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Post by therevanchist25 on Jun 13, 2022 9:46:23 GMT
On a more serious note however. This is clearly just Fallout 4 in space. Which I suspected would be the case, but was still hoping it wouldn't be, because Fallout 4 was nothing but worthless Settlement mechanics and god awful radiant quests with a few mediocre scripted quests thrown in now and then.
the 1,000 planets and the "land literally anywhere" is most likely the patented Todd overpromise/lie. Even if it's not, I highly doubt there's ever gonna be a reason to really take advantage of a system like that, because unless they have like literally 1,000,000 man hours into development then 95% of those planets are gonna be empty, barren rocks with nothing to do except farm resources and build stupid settlements that probably still won't provide you with much of anything. The gunplay still looks terrible, like their shooting the same old fake bullets that enemies don't react to.
They seemingly took a step in the right direction in regards to skills and character customization however. Finally let us construct a basic background for the character and even give us optional traits to take to grant additional flavor? That's a huge step up from their most recent releases.
However, until I get some assurance that this isn't basically just another Building Simulator and that these planets(that are unrelated to the main quest) will have actual crafted content, I have no real interest in wasting hundreds of hours just building pointless shit.
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Post by therevanchist25 on Jun 13, 2022 8:10:48 GMT
What do you think the odds are that one of those 1,000+ worlds is Nirn/Tamriel/Starts-Loading-Skyrim-The-Moment-You-Land? "Hey, you! You're finally awake!"
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Post by therevanchist25 on Jun 11, 2022 15:03:56 GMT
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Post by therevanchist25 on Jun 11, 2022 15:03:19 GMT
Counterpoint: Until EA bottlenecked the entire pipeline by buying an exclusive on Star Wars for 10 years, the Star Wars titles were developed by multiple studios and were for the most part a good product on average, some exceptional. Sure, LucasArts was overseeing things then, but so many good developers made good Star Wars games. What is necessary is a firm grasp of the lore and someone in charge of it at BioWare. Their entire job is managing a small group of loremaster/continuity supervisors, making sure any peripheral product is in line with known lore, getting approval when they are expanding the lore, and get guidance on any "new" things they want to add to our universe. This team will be employed by BioWare - the IP is the valuable thing, if it is treated with respect then I support licensing to other interested developers... Fallout: New Vegas would never have happened if Obsidian didn't pitch it again and again - they really wanted to make a Fallout game, and it turned out to be a pretty popular one all things considered. What I'm saying is, like with anything, managed well this could be a wonderful thing. It is all in implementation. BioWare doesn't have a great track record with this and the novelization of their IPs, as we know from Deception and the rancid work of Dietz getting through Biower filters, so they would need to be committed to it or it is indeed a bad situation. That is indeed the crux of it. Bioware seems to be fairly incapable or unwilling of managing the lore in their own releases, nevermind the lore of the novels or comics. Star Wars did indeed have a lot great concept games before the EA deal, and several very promising titles were being worked on before the Disney purchase. Lord of the Rings went through the same phase in the early 2000's. Games from multiple studios, some good, some great, most mediocre.
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Post by therevanchist25 on Jun 4, 2022 7:49:40 GMT
If it's "not even a question" why hasn't Biower moved DA4 there? Or formally announced ME5 will be there? Is Biower "intentionally nerfing" their next two flagship releases years before actual release? Anthem looked and played good on a High end PC with FB at 4k with high FPS. Recently Death Stranding (Decima Engine, designed for consoles but has a great PC port) also looks and plays well at 4k. Elden Ring (Seikiro Engine, also designed for consoles and a gimping fucking controller - has a shit PC port), and though it looks great at 4k, playing suffers greatly from problems with that goddam port job. So maybe UE5 is so godlike - and like you say it's "not even an arguement", but I can't suss out why Biower, or other studios in this genre, aren't all dumping whatever they are using and jumping on the UE5 train. Because DA4 has been rebooted twice already? and is too far along to change that now? asking why for DA4 is just being facetious. They posted multiple job openings for UE in regards to ME. They wouldn't be doing that if they planned on using Frostbite, that's just common sense. You realize these games have been in the works for years right? you dont just port assets over to a new Engine and keep going like nothing happend dude. That's not how the technology works. Also devs might have aesthetic preferences in terms of art style...but you cannot make an art style argument for ME, because it's always had a realistic style.
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Post by therevanchist25 on Jun 3, 2022 2:29:28 GMT
I hope it is Frostbite. I've had a lot less issues with games on that engine compared to Unreal. Runs better, looks better, just is better. I'm sorry, if you think Andromeda had better graphics than this, you need glasses lol No other engine offers the suit of tools UE5 does. Period. If your making a Zelda game, obviously your gonna be using something else. But for any developer that's making a photorealistic game, then anything other than UE5 is just nerfing your product for no reason at this time. Frostbite and the others might get there in the future, but right now? it's not even a question.
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Post by therevanchist25 on Jun 1, 2022 15:32:07 GMT
It's important to note several things here. 1) Frostbite was not getting any easier for them. Jason's articles made that fairly clear. UE5 is basically the ultimate game engine, pre-designed for basically every need, the learning curve will be much much shorter as it wont have to be beaten into submission first. 2) Andromeda was given 7 years, and wasted almost all of it on pipe dreams. If this new Studio Head is able to make the hard decisions as you suspect, those first 5 and a half years wouldn't be wasted on stupid crap. Andromeda was slap dashed together in 18 months, as per the Bioware standard of late. 18 months and they managed put that together. As much as I don't like the game, I have to be realistic. There are much worse games than Andromeda out there. I have unfortunately played several of them. If they are given a focused, dedicated vision for a full 7 years? using an Engine that's actually cooperative? I can't even imagine what that game could have been. Personal bias here, but I don't take Jason Schreier without a second opinion. I find he editorializes a lot of his content to the point I am not sure if its his source talking or its his opinion. I also don't take any gaming article to be 100% accurate to the situation they are reporting on. Its all clickbait now and laziness to make clickbait. 1) Its not about a learning curve, its about institutional knowledge and what they have already created and the time needed to catch up to that. They don't need to do those thing with Frostbite for they already exist over the last decade of development at BioWare. No matter how much UE5 has built into it, there is going to be a need for something to be developed and/or altered to fit what a studio needs it to do. How long is up for debate and if it was a completely clean slate and BioWare was throwing everything out and starting from square 1 then UE probably makes more sense, but that isn't this situation. 2) I don't believe that if they were working on UE with Andromeda it would have been any better under the exact same circumstances, the leadership would have been chasing pipe dreams all day long regardless of the game engine used. Then 18 months prior to release they would have a new person taking on leadership and piecing together what has been already created and making new content to try and make a coherent game out of the mess the prior decision making process created. It might have not been seven years, but it still would have been a management problem damaging the game. I just don't see how switching a video game engine would be zero sum at the end of development of a new game. That is where my viewpoint is right now for I think the first game of an engine swap no matter how easy UE might be to develop for or how complex Frostbite is for development. I just see that in some ways there is either going to be a reduction in the game or sales expectations will be higher to cover increased costs which might kill the IP or studio if it has any issues. If they were being successful I don't see the same level of issues arising, but then if they were being successful they wouldn't need to switch either. As I said, I was speaking in hypotheticals in regards to ME Next. You said you suspect the new Studio Head is someone whose actually willing to make the hard decisions, and get a coherent vision going. If that's true, and Bioware is given 7 years for ME again, then regardless of a new engine their bound to have a product superior to what they've done lately, because it's not going to take them 5 and half years to figure out Unreal 5. Epic is very forthcoming with Tech Support for Unreal. Whereas according to what we heard, Bioware could never get Frostbite support from DICE due to Bioware being a low priority studio. Either way, continuing with Frostbite would have imo been a massive mistake and only making Bioware's job harder than it needs to be. Definition of Insanity and all that. if your game isn't an FPS, Frostbite sucks ass, there's really no way around it. If that wasn't the case, Bioware wouldn't be changing Engines. They clearly did so because they think UE5 will be easier for them to use. That's the only possible explanation for the change.
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March 2017
therevanchist25
Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, Anthem
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Post by therevanchist25 on Jun 1, 2022 7:43:22 GMT
I agree. I have long laid the myriad failures at Biower directly on their leadership, or lack thereof. I keep hoping things will change, but this is past ridiculous... With going for someone outside BioWare to run the studio I think its a move in the right direction. They need someone to make the hard decisions and tell people to deal with it, for I think that was something that was needed during the issues with BioWare Edmonton and BioWare Montreal if the reports on the issues between them were true. The studios were working independently learning Frostbite while making their games. I think a lot of wasted time could have been removed if they were working together and sharing ideas, but the reports made it sound like they weren't talking about much. I actually have more faith in the next Dragon Age game then I will in the next Mass Effect game if they move it to UE5 for its going backwards again and starting from scratch and probably spending months getting the basic building blocks developed. My concern is if they change engines again its just going to be another Andromeda situation where they were chasing too many fires to focus on the game itself. It's important to note several things here. 1) Frostbite was not getting any easier for them. Jason's articles made that fairly clear. UE5 is basically the ultimate game engine, pre-designed for basically every need, the learning curve will be much much shorter as it wont have to be beaten into submission first. 2) Andromeda was given 7 years, and wasted almost all of it on pipe dreams. If this new Studio Head is able to make the hard decisions as you suspect, those first 5 and a half years wouldn't be wasted on stupid crap. Andromeda was slap dashed together in 18 months, as per the Bioware standard of late. 18 months and they managed put that together. As much as I don't like the game, I have to be realistic. There are much worse games than Andromeda out there. I have unfortunately played several of them. If they are given a focused, dedicated vision for a full 7 years? using an Engine that's actually cooperative? I can't even imagine what that game could have been.
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inherit
4588
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therevanchist25
1,741
Mar 15, 2017 23:07:06 GMT
March 2017
therevanchist25
Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, Anthem
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Post by therevanchist25 on May 31, 2022 15:47:12 GMT
Thanks. I know there were quite a few Souls type games by From Software, but with Elden Ring, that makes 7 games in 13 years, call it an average of about 1 game every 2 years. And I assume some of those games had DLC, or multiple DLC's on top of that. Is From Software 10 times the size of Biower or something? Sheesh. No the difference is that FromSoftware builds upon what they have already made and updates and improves upon it where BioWare starts over all the time adding months if not years to development and having issues enter the mix because everything is new so the problems aren't identified and squashed. This is correct. I think ME2 to 3 was the last time they "built upon" stuff they already had. Because from a gameplay standpoint ME3 was 2's combat refined and perfected. Not a single Dragon Age game has ever built upon the previous. A casual observer of the franchise could be forgiven for not realizing the 3 games is even the same series if they didn't know the names of the titles. Andromeda basically threw out all the work done from the Trilogy to chase stupid open world trends and Anthem was...well Anthem. At most Bioware has reused Art Assets a handful of times in recent years. FromSoft knows what they wanna make, and players can take it or leave it, their not for everyone. Bioware's problem is, they seem to never know what they want to do, but more than anything, seem to hate the way they used to make games, because they refuse to go back to that despite having no other ideas seemingly. Granted, EA could be forcing them to not go back to the old way of making games, but I don't think that's entirely true, as Bioware has famously said that EA "gives them enough rope to hang themselves". Now weather that statement is still true in recent years after several failures in a row, who knows.
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therevanchist25
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March 2017
therevanchist25
Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, Anthem
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Post by therevanchist25 on May 30, 2022 14:53:02 GMT
It could, given the current situation with "Rings of Power" I have no faith in Amazon producing a show that will be worth a damn. My Magic 8 Ball agrees with your opinion, "Signs point to yes" - it will not be worth a damn. Amazon production value is not up to this, and it will sadly be evident. Amazon is trying to break the way TV/Film is made, "disrupting" things by abusing every contract to the fullest extent. The Boys is the exception to this rule, and really the effects aren't what make that show a success, it's the talent. They cut every corner possible and many they shouldn't. As a fan of the soutce material, I will be very pleasantly surprised to be wrong. I still haven't watched The Hobbit movies, if that further explains my particular PoV. Was too unhappy with the trilogy's choices in editing to bother. I expect this to be another thing I just ignore. I enjoy the Hobbit quite a bit. Sure it is of lesser of quality than the original trilogy, but honestly, the original trilogy is as close to cinematic perfection as your going to get. I cannot reasonably hold that against the Hobbit given all the behind the scenes issues they suffered. The Hobbit is still better than most of the Hollywood dreck that I see these days despite that, which is really sad honestly. Rings of Power, however, is just pure "WTF" distilled into a single show. They show absolute disdain for Tolkien's material, saying it's Racist Power Fantasy, one writer saying he thinks Sauron is homosexual as if that's even remotely relevant to the story, and Galadriel running around in a suit of armor mowing people down like a bloodthirsty lunatic because being a symbol of femininity and grace is sexist despite the fact she was the most respected character in the story. Their interpretations of Tolkien's work makes no sense, and many of their themes actively contradicts what Tolkien's message is. The Hobbit in comparison just didn't have enough time to get made properly so they had to cut corners with heavy CGI usage, and adding some characters that added nothing to the story.
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therevanchist25
Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, Anthem
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Post by therevanchist25 on May 29, 2022 18:32:29 GMT
The Amazon TV series could lead to all kinds of third-party licensing agreements - books, shows, games, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon end up buying the Mass Effect license or BioWare if they do make a go of it. It could, given the current situation with "Rings of Power" I have no faith in Amazon producing a show that will be worth a damn.
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March 2017
therevanchist25
Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, Anthem
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Post by therevanchist25 on May 29, 2022 18:28:13 GMT
On the Quality/Quantity point of the video on other franchises and their ultimate profitability - I wonder how Elden Ring has impacted the Souls franchise of From Software? I am no Souls fan, never having played one of them or their spinoffs, but those who have - how often did From Software pump out a game in the franchise, and how good were they vis-a-vis Biower and the ME empire? I think we know, or can guess, that From Software must be making out well with their latest addition. the OG Demon's Souls was 09, Dark Souls 1 was 2 years later, DS 2 was 3 years after that, Bloodborne 1 year later, DS3 a year after that, and Sekiro 3 years after that. but considering FromSoft basically just makes the same game over and over again with slight variations, which they ironically get no shit for, despite every other studio getting blasted for that constantly.
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therevanchist25
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March 2017
therevanchist25
Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, Anthem
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Post by therevanchist25 on May 29, 2022 17:39:46 GMT
Jehanne said the same thing when making the first Greedfall. At first she just wanted to emulate BioWare because she liked to play those games, but now it's about making that type of games BioWare isn't anymore. She just never had the budget BioWare had and probably never will, but Greedfall 2 budget is probably higher than Greedfall 1 (so higher than $5m Euro). Looks like they are adding party member control in Greedfall 2 and going more for RTwP gameplay. It's like they are working backward BioWare's design evolution as their budget grows. Yeah Bioware used to be trailblazers in RPG-making. But for years they've just been followers. I'm not sure if even that is accurate, given that they can't ever decide much of anything until they run out of time. Even being a follower means you have a vision of what you want, which is to copy everyone else. If anything their last two releases proved they can't even do that. They just sit around for years metaphorically drooling on their desk making art assets until their 18 months from release. That's not even following man, that's just straight up being Lost in the Desert.
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inherit
4588
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2,875
therevanchist25
1,741
Mar 15, 2017 23:07:06 GMT
March 2017
therevanchist25
Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, Anthem
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Post by therevanchist25 on May 25, 2022 9:10:27 GMT
No no no! Its Gabe for sure, he would talk such condescending things on Bioware forums TBF if anyone is condescending here, it's Revanchist, not Gaben. Okay, if that's what you wanna think, cool.
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