Final Factory Launch Trailer

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

The space elements were a big part of the marketing. I knew better than to expect atmospheric flight or anything but simple space combat, but intra-system travel being only done in menus and the space sections being put in small lightboxes with planet renderings was rather shocking. That’s 20th-century stuff. It’s especially bizarre given how much of the Bethesda magic has leaned on roads in the past, and there aren’t any roads outside of cities. Even the cargo runs are 100% in menus, without talking to a single person.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

Us space sim types would tell you it took a few steps back as far as genre standards go. And I wasn’t even expecting much on that side of it.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

Starfield only getting one nomination–and in a category it has no chance of winning–is not at all what I would have expected going into this year.

I don’t know if that speaks to how nuts this year has been for new releases or to how much Starfield fell short, in light of the fact that its player counts on Steam are starting to fall below Skyrim.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

Well, a bunch more talent just hit the job market with The Escapist melting down, too.

I encourage anyone that hasn’t yet to try any subscription-based journalism for a month just to see how different the writing is when it’s not beholden to advertising and SEO.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

Heh, yeah, that’s one of the popular styles right now. I’d rather see more detailed sprites.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

“The Big Cheese is the Dark Souls of poses” from the Destructoid review gave me a good chuckle. Unfortunately, The Big Cheese was also the Dark Souls of poses back in Smooth Moves, and it’s not encouraging to hear this game might be just as fiddly.

This November isn’t as stacked for me as last year’s, but I think I’m still going to wait on this one a bit.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

I just finished Atelier Totori. Third game in the series I’ve tried, second I’ve finished (after Rorona). I mostly nibbled at this one (did much the same with Rorona, especially early on) but I liked the story and characters a lot more here. I laughed, I cried. The progression system was much more interesting, too. Even with all that, the UI/UX is just plain brutal. I really hope the next game I play in the series is better about this. I’m also quite surprised that I did almost everything with months to spare, considering everything I heard about how strict the time limit is in Totori.

A friend and also just finished our Baldur’s Gate 3 multiplayer campaign (her first run, I had a lot of hours in it before she started). Amazingly I still don’t think I’ve fully gotten the game out of my system yet.

WarioWare: Move It! comes out in a few days and I’ll likely be picking that up right away. Other than that, I’m not sure. Maybe I’ll finally pick up Phantom Liberty.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

It hasn’t exactly been banger after banger for me personally this year, but I can still recognize how big 2023 has been and how much excitement there has been year-round, from Hi-Fi Rush’s shadow drop to Alan Wake 2 right now.

It’s also been a great mix of new properties and long-running franchises. Zelda, Resident Evil, Diablo, Final Fantasy, Street Fighter, Baldur’s Gate, Mario, and even Armored Core all had well-reviewed, major releases this year.

I’m nowhere near calling 2023 the best ever–I think it’ll take a complete paradigm shift in the industry to ever top 1998–but a lot of people have been eating very good this year.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

I’m on a continuing multiplayer campaign in Baldur’s Gate 3 and I’m also playing Atelier Totori.

It’s amazing how much new stuff I’m still seeing in BG3, and I’ve gotta be in hour 350 or something like that. I’m playing with a long-time video gaming partner and I’m just letting her run with it because I’ve already played through the game.

I really started to get into Atelier Totori once it started rolling, but I’m beginning to run out of steam. I’m really missing some of the UI/UX improvements that were in Atelier Rorona DX, and I also feel like the combat isn’t quite as sharp for some reason. I’m genuinely interested in the story at this point, however. If it wasn’t for that, I probably would have just jumped to Meruru.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

When I got my PSX in 1997, the games sure felt like a good deal at $50 after paying $70+ for cartridges for years. I only got one new game per year at full price for my SNES. I also generally felt happier buying on PC because new games were also less than consoles for a while.

Now with the indie scene, there is a lot more variance, even though I also occasionally grab top-shelf releases. I still think FTL might have been the best $10 I’ve ever spent on a game. At the same time, I paid $60 for Persona 5 Royal right at launch even though I had played the original game, and I still thought it was incredible value.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

Yes and no. My second play had countless new characters–three of them playable–several new zones, and a ton of new gameplay. I was constantly finding new places, new encounters, new conversations. I know there are still several zones I haven’t poked around in.

The main story beats don’t change much but there are still a lot of branching paths to get to them. Hell, you could even completely skip the goblin camp if you wanted.

Game studios just don’t do the kind of extra work to cover player choice like Larian did here. It’s why the game made waves in the industry. I’d say unless you really went over it with a fine comb the first time around (125 hours or more), it’s absolutely worth revisiting at some point.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

I like Disco Elysium. I like BG3. They are much better narrative RPGs. I also feel absolutely no desire to go back and replay them.

Really? This is crazy to me. I get Disco, but outside of intentionally regenerative games (such as roguelikes/lites), I don’t think I’ve had my hands on a more replayable game than BG3 in years. There’s so much you don’t see in a given playthrough.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

It is, and it doesn’t, but one of the important functions of journalism is a public accounting of details such as these and engendering conversation thereof.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

Since you’ve played P4, Persona Q might be a good on-ramp into Etrian Odyssey. It’s essentially EO’s gameplay with personas, characters and skills/spells from P3 and P4. Q2 has the P5 characters as well but only the Japanese voices (which is why I never got around to it).

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

So this is a de facto price increase? From a manufacturer that just reported a record high annual profit? 175GB (the slightly increased storage) hasn’t been worth $50 in years.

This generation sucks. I was already annoyed that we probably weren’t going to see price drops with this or the Switch, but I certainly didn’t see a price increase for an unproven hardware revision coming.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

It’s the

ending spoiler

suicide ending.

All of them have calls during the credits, this one just hits very different.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

It’s too bad you didn’t like the narrative structure with the calls in CP2077. That one ending uses them (or I guess you could call them voicemails, considering) to devastating effect. One of the most harrowing sequences I’ve seen in a game. It might have even saved a couple of lives.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

1998 was such a monster year because it spawned so many big franchises, including two that were arguably the genesis of e-sports. It’ll be a while before we know how 2023 measures up in that regard, although there’s not much new stuff this year that might have legs. Hi-Fi Rush and Starfield, maybe?

I’ve been thinking for a while that this is probably already the best year since 1998 though.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

This isn’t exactly giving me high hopes that Jedi: Survivor is going to be playable on PC anytime soon…

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

I first played Cyberpunk after 1.3 came out so I never had that early bad experience so many did (I only ran into one major bug, blocking progression in one sidequest). It was also my first introduction to anything in the Cyberpunk setting so I didn’t know what to expect, but I quickly fell in love with it. Even without Phantom Liberty, I’m sure I still have a half dozen major sidequests on top of the nomad origin story that I haven’t done yet.

I’m pumped for this, especially after being a bit disappointed in Starfield. I’m ready for graphics that pop again, the amazing facial animations, the fluid combat, and more Cherami Leigh. Hell, I’m ready to hear the character creator music again, lol.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

Not even that, but hostile takeovers are still exceedingly rare in Japan among domestic firms.

What buzz there is over this is just ethnocentric thinking.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

Finished up my time with Starfield for now. If you’d told me a month ago that it would be the main story that would keep me playing, I wouldn’t have believed you. The story was way better than I was expecting and far and away my favorite one in a Bethesda game. As for the rest, ehhh. There are a lot of steps back here, and I really don’t like the visuals. Felt like my character was smoking inside her helmet or something. Having framerates regularly dip into the 40’s even with DLSS and tons of other tweaks really didn’t help.

I will say this: aside from some sounds with oddly harsh high frequencies (there’s a mod for that), the audio team really nailed this one. The voice acting is phenomenal, and I’d love to hear this soundtrack performed live.

Feeling non-committal at the moment. Was considering replaying Disco Elysium, but really I’m just waiting for the new Cyberpunk content.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

Well, they wouldn’t, because not all of the nine thought the game was perfect. A 100 on Metacritic only means the game placed in the top score for a given publication (4 out of 4 stars in WaPo’s case, for example).

In games criticism, a top score doesn’t always mean a perfect game. It can mean the game met or surpassed the current benchmark in its genre, or it simply was good enough to be in a top tier.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

Shit-talking the god was worth the price of admission, too.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

Tactics Ogre Reborn works just fine too. Both it and LUCT have their pluses and minuses. The especially nice thing about Tactics Ogre (both of these versions) is that it has something like 4-5x the content that FFT has.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

I was more speculating on what Delita was doing next. By the end of the war, the heads of virtually all the major houses are dead and he had strong support from the commoners, so it’s certainly possible he just upended the whole system. We don’t know, though. Given Delita made his deal with the church to rise to power and it taking centuries for the truth to come out, I’d say it’s implied that from then on Ivalice became a theocratic state or went heavily in that direction.

And yeah, the joke has been that it’s only there because JRPGs always have to have some sort of high stakes, non-human confrontation. I think Matsuno handled it much better in Tactics Ogre than he did here.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

The excellent Cane and Rinse podcast just did one as well.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

I’m amazed it took this long, honestly. These are like gaming chairs: overpriced configurations with a combination of features that result in lower quality/durability when put together. I switched to a separate desktop mic years ago (paired with a fantastic set of Sennheiser headphones, coincidentally) and haven’t looked back.

I highly recommend a dedicated mic. The low-end options are very affordable and you’ll still sound way better on Discord (or Zoom calls!) than you will on a gaming headset mic or a webcam mic.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

The Durai Papers were suppressed by the Church at the time. The overarching plot structure is that Orran’s descendant uncovered them centuries later and this is a retelling. I’m sure Orran could have had conversations with Ovelia, but I doubt there would have been much he could have told her that she hadn’t already seen with her own eyes. It’s probably like you said: Delita just couldn’t turn it off. He always struck me as the kind of person that woke up every morning reliving Tietra’s death in his dreams. Going on a successful crusade to wipe out the nobility might have satisfied him at the time, but it wouldn’t bring her back in the end.

As I recall from back in the late 90’s/early 2000’s, the discourse around the ending was largely the same. Plenty of people also thought the two surviving was a bit of an ass-pull. For me personally, it’s one of my favorite JRPGs, but I just pretend the plot ends somewhere in chapter 4. Wiegraf was the game’s best antagonist, and I was never big into the Lucavi plot anyway.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

Possibly. And if so, that’s perfectly okay.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

The ones for the bigger games (Baldur’s Gate 3, Starfield, probably Cyberpunk soon) have been active enough to make it work.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

Ooh, was this your first time with Freelancer? It’s amazing that it’s twenty years later and it might still be the benchmark for non-HOTAS space sims.

I enjoyed Shipbreaker much more than I thought I would. Not typically my style of gameplay, but the setting is fantastic.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

Yeah, the hope is that once I become familiar with what systems are available, what I should avoid, and what needs modding, I’ll be able to settle into the same cozy game loop as I have with the previous games.

What concerns me is I’m struggling with some of the core systems like bad companion AI (can’t reposition them in combat anymore for some reason), the main quests being so unpolished that I’m not exactly looking to jump into the side content, and especially the nested prereqs in the crafting system.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

I’m on Starfield this week. About 12 hours in.

Have to admit, I’m struggling to have fun, which I really didn’t see coming. I have hundreds of hours in Fallout 4, probably over a thousand each in Fallout 3 and Skyrim, and I adore space settings, so this was my most anticipated game for years. Seemed like it would be a slam dunk.

Another huge surprise is that it might be the main story that’s keeping me going. I’ve never come close to being this invested in one of Beth’s stories.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

For sure. The core gameplay loop is in 15 minute segments, at least at the point I’m at.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

Yes, there are a couple of situations in the game where one can end up in a dead end situation, and that’s probably the easiest of the bunch to stumble into. The player pretty much has to either make a deal with the chief ahead of time or just not do the battle. It’s not ideal, especially since it’s likely easy for a player to go into it when needing a rest, too.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

One thing I learned about the game fairly early on (actually in that same area, with a certain imprisoned bear) is that once you do something that makes NPCs hostile, they are going to stay hostile for good. That’s not to say there aren’t opportunities to flip allegiances a bit, but going fully subversive isn’t well-supported. And to a degree, that makes sense; a good DM’s going to make it difficult on you, because once you’re seen with the enemy, it’s going to take a lot of convincing.

For the Grymforge event, you can also just…

spoiler

not excavate and let Nere die in the poison trap.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

I’m shelving Baldur’s Gate 3 for now after a full run plus more. Had a great time with it, but I think I’d rather wait for more polish first before I tinker with it any more or check out the story branches/side quests in Act 3 I didn’t see.

I started playing Hardspace: Shipbreaker and I was surprised at how quickly it grabbed me. The story has a very similar vibe to Papers, Please and something about the UI and the artistic design is reminding me a lot of old space sims. Surprisingly cozy game, though I might look into seeing if I can swap out the music. Don’t know if I like what it says about me that I really like games that are work simulators, though.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

DuckTales

The Moon theme is now in my head.

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

These two don’t show up there unfortunately under normal circumstances. The first Horde Breaker attack shows up there, the follow-up doesn’t until the first has already been executed. The feat one doesn’t even have a similar indicator there. It’s kind of a weird implementation.

Final Factory Launch Trailer

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