Where’s the timeline where EA doesn’t buy Bioware and make them release Mass Effect 2 as a corridor shooter punctuated by cutscenes and conversation prompts?

The difference between ME1 and DA:O and their direct sequels developed under EA’s tenure is stark. Honestly, the trend never reversed as those series continued.

Everyone is whining about this requirement. Do you guys not have a hyperbolic time chamber to jump into? I’m already Super ChatGPT Plus God Mode.

I’ve had a Netflix subscription from before they even did streaming. I had the 4k plan, and even when I wasn’t watching much on there anymore, my kids would use it often. The price hikes just would not stop. Then they started moving into video games, and I started seeing headlines reading “Netflix plans to open brick and mortar locations” - followed by more price hikes and ads being integrated. It started to feel like I was just funding their dumb business moves that I’m not ever going to benefit from.

So now I have a beautiful new NAS running Plex. Just accounting for the Netflix subscription price, I’ll break even in 2 years, and I’m using it for a lot more than just a media server.

I love companies swinging between “we have to increase your subscription costs to allow us to offer more great features” and “our customers are excited about our new features so we need to leverage advertising to continue providing them”. Just repeat until everything is loaded with ads AND costs twice as much!

The big thing I’ve run into is regular use vs occasional use. I only use my PS4 as a Blu-ray player these days, and each time I turn it on, it has to figure out if it shut down correctly last time(of course not). Then, after a memory check, it boots. I sign in, and then it yells at me that it has a mess of OS updates to install, which I don’t want to wait for because I just want to watch this damn movie. Plus, my controller barely holds a charge anymore, and if I don’t use the right USB controller plugged into the PS4, the controller doesn’t pair and control the damn thing. If I were using the PS4 every day like I did back in 2016, a lot of these problems wouldn’t be there, but because I boot it once every 3 months, it’s a hassle.

I would love to be able to just slide in a disk and watch in the rare cases I’ve decided to. As it is, I’m about to buy a dedicated Blu-ray player instead of using the hardware I already have.

I better sell my 1,000 copies of Celeste I’ve been sitting on then. I was waiting for retirement, but might as well take the tax hit.

I did not know that, I got a 2080 in the lead-up hype to initial release, don’t think I’ll be doing an upgrade just for this.

The huge update that completely rebalances the game, improves UI, and changes the gear system is free. As for PL itself, I’ll happily continue BG3 until the hype dies down and I get a feel for whether it’s actually worthwhile.

I mean if you look at the post history, OP has posted a LOT of things, but also posted two mary sue articles with kind of inflammatory takes on BG3, and Starfield. So I would not say they specifically have been posting rage bait.

Yeah - of course games are hard - but all he did was rough out a planet-to-space experience in Unreal Engine with a Starfield aesthetic. If he started trying to build an actual game on it… Well an 8 year timeline doesn’t seem crazy.

Absolutely, the Brand Mines are deep, and no IP will be left unexploited.

Does slapping the Marathon brand on an extraction shooter count as a remake?

That’s all people ever wanted: “Give us AC4 with just the piratey ship parts!” And that would have been great… back in 2015. Now it’s a full decade later, and Ubisoft seems determined to instead develop an over-monetized, forever game. The iron isn’t exactly hot anymore, so I really don’t see the point.

Feels like a pure sunk-cost fallacy to continue trying to squeeze this one out.

“Dull on Purpose” is a hell of a box quote. Do you think that will be on the Game of the Year edition?

BG3 is the one I’m thinking of. Specifically, the issue was the Series S didn’t have enough RAM to allow them to do split-screen, a feature that has been notoriously difficult to implement. Even 343 had to throw the towel in on that one for Halo Infinite.

Though apparently, that position has changed, and now BG3 will be able to launch on Xbox without that feature.

Yeah, the comparison to what’s happened in the TV and Movie streaming space had occurred to me. Major studios burned down their existing businesses to try and jump into the streaming space, only to very quickly hit a hard cap on the possible number of subscribers.

Gaming is obviously a very different market, and apparently, console and PC gaming make less revenue than the Mobile/Freemium market, so maybe Microsoft sees it all as moot at this point.

Is it just me, or does the Xbox brand seem in a really bad place - outside of Gamepass - right now? Microsoft’s strategy of rotating contractors through its first-party development studios seems to have squandered a lot of talent. Games are being held back by the requirement that all features are available on the Series S.

It sort of feels like they’re so focused on the Gamepass revenue that they’ve just let their console business wither outside of that. I only have a PC and Switch this generation, but none of the games that have made me consider a console have been on Xbox.

Pro-tip: if a low-health enemy is close to escaping to call for help you can just throw Baldur’s Gate 3 at them for that last bit of damage!

Ass Orion, The Mighty Hunter… Of Ass.

Especially if you’re playing a class not covered by the default companions. My paladin has been awesome, smashing goblins with a Warhammer, and still able to talk her way through just about anything. Playing a wizard, rogue, or cleric feels like it would make it tough to justify bringing someone along.

I can second this. Every time my parents have expressed a political view, it came from some shock-news spin of how America was a murderous wasteland on the brink of disaster (not because there are more guns than people, but because of all the non-white people who live here).

When I told my parents I was going to New Orleans for a weekend vacation, they were terrified I would get murdered because they had been barraged with news about it being a lawless Democrat-run warren. (Not to downplay the actual violence that has taken place in NO, but their response still made it clear they had seen some first-class fearmongering).

Yeah - the interview touches on the lack of new F-Zero and, to a lesser degree, Star Fox games. Apparently, they just haven’t been a priority, there was a reference to games being canceled far into development, so I wonder if that happened as well.

I love the idea of Nintendo finding a good partner studio to bring a fresh take to F-Zero.

Yeah - I certainly don’t hold out a ton of hope - glad I got my Stadia money back though. Makes it hard to have a ton of hard feelings about the whole thing.