Computerchairgeneral

I remember reading about this mod years ago when it was still in early development, can’t believe it actually has a release date. It’s always nice to see one of these huge Skyrim mod projects actually make it to release.

I have a lot of nostalgia for The Force Unleashed, but even playing it back then I remember thinking the combat was kind of rough. I can only imagine how dated the gameplay must feel for someone picking it up for the first time these days. The idea of being this unstoppable Force-user was cool, but from what I remember the game struggled to live up to that promise. Like pulling down the Star Destroyer. It was everywhere in the marketing to show just how powerful you were going to be, but in the game itself it was just this tedious section that dragged on longer than it needed to. At least that’s how I remember it.

I’ve been working my way through the Baldur’s Gate series after putting about ninety hours in BG3. BG1 was fun even if the story was a bit predictable and generic, although it did feel like playing through a DnD campaign. Really enjoyed Shadows of Amn, but Throne of Bhaal just turned into a slog at the end. I think the most interesting part of playing through the trilogy was watching Bioware’s style develop over the course of the three games. As someone who was introduced to Bioware through Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire I’ve always thought Bioware’s character writing stood out, especially in the old days, so it was a bit jarring to play through BG1 where the companions feel more like hirelings you pick up for their class rather than full-fledged characters. BG2 felt more like a classic Bioware game with banter, romance, and companion quests, although the Real Time advancement system kept glitching out on me. I was hoping to move on to Planescape: Torment after TOB, but I’m feeling burnt out on Infinity Engine games. So right now I’m trying to find something in the Summer Sale to serve as a palate cleanser.

Yeah, it would be great if Kojima was still working on Metal Gear, wouldn’t it Konami? I wonder why he isn’t?

Glad to see the Stop Killing Games initiative continuing even if the most likely response from the UK government is going to be “No”.

Accidents happen. Your finger slips and suddenly your game is full of Nazi symbols. Happens all the time. Also, I get the gist of Garriss’s response, but mentioning that he had men and women at his house and his mother was always present just makes things sound weirder than a simple denial. Sounds like a horrible situation all around.

Child labor is child labor. It doesn’t matter what “skills” the kids are learning.

Good. This was a terrible idea. Even setting aside all the privacy concerns, which are numerous, how well would this have even worked? Trusting algorithms to guess the age of users was only going to result in a ton of people not being able to play a game because the algorithm decided they look like twelve-year olds.

I’m impressed at how well thought out this battle plan is. I’m usually pessimistic when it comes to governments taking pro-consumer stances, but then again all it takes is one government siding against game companies to set a precedent. Hopefully this picks up steam and gets to a wider audience. It feels like one of the few things gamers can agree on these days is how much they hate business practices like this.

Still a relatively small number, but its good to see the unionization trend expanding beyond QA testers.

Yeah, besides the PSSR feature, I’m struggling to see the point in upgrading to this if you already have a PS5. It feels like Sony and Microsoft are just going with plans they made at the start of the generation when they assumed they would need a mid-gen refresh. But with the massive shortages it doesn’t really feel like we’re at the kind of midpoint that calls for a console refresh.

I’m really tired of politicians who barely understand the internet trying to write sweeping legislation to regulate it.

So, did that whole “late discovery” thing just not happen with Cyberpunk? Because I just have a hard time imagining CDPR looking at the state that game launched in and thinking that they’d made a game that was basically perfect. I mean, at least they learned in time for Phantom Liberty’s release, I guess.

At least they’re being upfront. And given their stated desire to move on from BG3, it makes sense that they want to put out something simpler but workable instead of something complicated that might need long-term support.

The microtransactions are bad enough, but the fact that none of these were present in the build given to reviewers just makes it worse. I mean people would still be complaining about them, but I don’t think the backlash would be as bad if Capcom had made it clear from the start that the game was going to be riddled with microtransactions.

It’s a shame we’re not getting more Baldur’s Gate from Larian, but it’s completely understandable. All the people they worked with and trusted at WOTC have probably been laid off and Hasbro is probably desperate to replicate BG3’s success. There’s no way they’d be given the same creative freedom they had when they were originally working on BG3. Looking forward to whatever they put out next.

GOG continues to do great work. Alpha Protocol isn’t necessarily a good game, but it has a lot of interesting ideas in between long stretches of glitches, jank, and broken gameplay. Hopefully this sells well enough to justify bringing more abandoned titles to GOG. The little mini-documentary they put out going over the process of getting the game on GOG is also great and highlights all the recent efforts to push back against the “own nothing and be happy” mindset game companies are trying to push.

What a breathtakingly stupid decision. Can’t wait to see how it pans out for them.

The thing that gets me about this is that it’s always some nefarious outside group pressuring devs to make their games “woke” or whatever. It never seems to occur to these people that the people making the games might actually hold those beliefs and aren’t being forced to put them in games at gunpoint. Also, did the guy complaining about Ragnarok play GoW 2018? The fact that Kratos isn’t the same person he was in the old series is basically the entire point.

It’s been an interesting trend to watch, but at the same time I’m not sure how great it is for video games. Hollywood celebrities aren’t cheap and the more stars you stud your cast with the more that is going to eat up your budget. Everyone already complains about the cost of AAA development and casting Hollywood actors isn’t going to bring those costs down. Not to mention the impact on voice actors, who aren’t having the same luck breaking into Hollywood. Still, it’s going to be interesting to see just how much the lines between the two industries blur as time goes on. From the tone of the article it still feels like people are treating this like a novelty, but at least we’ve moved on from the days when people were baffled at the idea of serious actors starring in a video game.