Xbox Game Pass for PC

[DjchunKfunK]

I'm going to give it a go once I finish Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes. I quite enjoyed the fourth game and I like the sound of the stuff they have changed.

[Animalmother]

Having a go of the first mission and making a right tits of it so far.

[Snowy]

Having a go of the first mission and making a right tits of it so far.

Me too.

Ended up doing a lunatic game of cat and mouse around the long grass in the dunes with about 8 nazis trying to find me. I would pop out, headshot one, then leg it about 100 feet away and let the next one come to where I was last - rinse and repeat.

[Animalmother]

I absolutely murdered my way through the second level, the area just outside the chateaux entrance was littered with dead Germans. I'll replay it at some stage using a stealth approach. I must say it's a very pretty game, the building interiors all seem to be unique with lots of detail. The afore mentioned chateaux is beautiful.

[Animalmother]

Starfield looked nice but I just assume it will be broken as fuck when it comes out, there's a definite whiff of No Man's Sky about it all. Being able to build your own spaceship and bases is a great idea though. Be interesting to see how it pans out.

[ManBearSquid]

Yeah, I'm actually quite intrigued by it now but I'm also reserving my expectations. The last Besthesda made game that I bought was Skyrim upon release and, aside from the bugginess, the whole thing eventually felt quite hollow to me.

Admittedly, I find open world games to be very hit and miss in general. I'm in no way a completionist when it comes to these massive titles but even the ones I really like often end up tediously paced.

[Raid]

Yeah, I'm actually quite intrigued by it now but I'm also reserving my expectations. The last Besthesda made game that I bought was Skyrim upon release and, aside from the bugginess, the whole thing eventually felt quite hollow to me.

Admittedly, I find open world games to be very hit and miss in general. I'm in no way a completionist when it comes to these massive titles but even the ones I really like often end up tediously paced.

Yeah, that's pretty much how I feel too. They really had me by the point they showed off the ship building, but then they announced you could land anywhere on any planet in any one of 100 star systems. So 500-1000 procedurally generated planets. Just... why? I get it's part of the space-faring fantasy, the freedom of going anywhere, but it just doesn't work in gaming. Procedurally generated content is almost always a waste of time because it all ends up feeling repetitive, and that's really not going to help with it feeling hollow.

I also really don't like the Bethesda RPG conversation style where it's a close-up, unmoving focus on an NPC's face, and they're constantly staring at you.

[Solitaire]

I agree that a few systems with a couple dozen bespoke planets and moons would be much preferred to procedurally generated. I'm digging the base and ship building, and intrigued by the crafting stuff. Yeah, it's kinda the same old thing, just in space, but I'm such a sci-fi geek, there's no stopping me from getting this.

What had me rolling my eyes are the ubiquitous tropes of 1. mysterious floating bits of things, and 2. I'm gonna be hallucinating for no good goddam reason ("Did you see the visions?" or whatever dude said). Laziest way of story-telling there is. Just let me fly around and find stuff, or not, whatever.

Obviously no co-op in this, right? Because that would be too much to ask, to be able to build shit with a couple of buddies.

[Alan]

It’s one of those games that sounds great as bullet points but bigger is rarely ever better. I bet there will be a fast travel system and you’ll probably never bother flying your ship other than to do specific missions.

In that showcase only AVA really piqued my interest and they didn’t even score any of that! Scorn has a good look too but most of it just isn’t for me. Diablo looked ok though the focus on end game and pvp is never what I come to Diablo for. They did a good impression of Apple where every basic feature in a life changing revelation.

[Wrathbone]

I don't see 1000 procedurally-generated planets as a problem, nor as a selling point beyond giving Bethesda a big number to throw around. It's doubtful that the focus of the game is going to be aimlessly exploring these planets (aka No Man's Sky), so they're just the sandbox. I expect there will be the usual procedural quests that Todd Howard seems to love, but hopefully there will be at least one actual interesting thing to do on each planet.

I'm excited for any Bethesda sandbox RPG as they're my bread and butter, and Starfield looks to have solid potential. If it ends up being No Man's Sky with a purpose, that could be very enticing.

EDIT - Thinking about it, the 1000 planets could be interesting if they play the exploration mission right. Let's say you've been tasked with finding some trace of alien civilisation or whatever, and it could be on any planet. Rather than having those locations be fixed, the game could generate the specifics based on where you go. e.g. The first planet you go to leads you to a clue, which then generates a unique breadcrumb trail leading you to the next narrative point. Tailored content via generated means and locations. There would still be a whole load of nothing in the 1000 planets, but the ones you actually go to would prove worthwhile.

[Raid]

The problem with that is that as soon as you realise that you can go anywhere and find the same quest in different locations, the colossal amount of space you have to explore becomes pointless. I remember Oblivion had a vaguely similar problem due to the difficulty scaling; you can build these incredible areas full of mystery and danger, but the moment you realise that the challenge lowers itself to your level, that danger goes away to some extent. That's my issue with procedural generation; it's all an illusion - it's sold as giving you more choice, but it's simply not possible to provide for all of those choices, so you've still got the limited scope you'd have had if it had been a much smaller world. The game still gives you the same amount of content.

As for the rest of the show; did anyone else feel rather disappointed? There were only two other games that really piqued my interest; Redfall and The Last Case of Benedict Fox, and I'm not certain I'll really get into either of them. The former could be brilliant or extremely average, based on what happened with Back 4 Blood, and the latter's just more of an unknown quantity.

I want to be excited for Diablo 4, but it's really difficult to ignore all of the shit that Activision-Blizzard are causing.

[Wrathbone]

Obsidian's new game, Pentinent, looked unique and intriguing.

[DjchunKfunK]

I really liked the show, there were a lot of games I want to play such as Plague Tale: Requiem and Flintlock. I thought Pentiment looked a lot of fun and was the standout. As for Starfield I liked a lot of what I saw, NMS is a really good game now it just has terrible combat, so if Starfield can marry NMS with Bethesda systems then it will be a hit with me.

Regarding procedural generation I think it has real power in gaming when done correctly and when making multiple planets which are mostly lifeless it is the best way to go about things imo. The problem with space is that it needs to feel big, if you take Outer Worlds as a recent example of a space game with hand-crafted worlds, it felt small to me and not like a real place. Any planet that wasn't a main place to visit felt tiny and it just didn't hang together well. For all it's faults at launch I thought the procedural generation for the planets was pretty good in NMS. I think what people forget with regards to space is that there are a lot of barren lifeless rocks out there, most planets are not like Earth, it wouldn't feel right to make every planet like that and it's not possible to do so in a game due to the time and money it would cost. If you want a space game like this to simulate large systems you need procedural generation and that's not a bad thing because if done correctly procedural generation is capable of producing some interesting stuff.

EDIT: I was not impressed with Diablo 4, the combat was really lacking, there was no oomph to it and since playing Lost Ark my expectations have changed with regards to how combat should feel. Spell effects looked particularly weedy. It could just be the areas they showed but it was all a bit too muted for me, as if they heard the silly backlash about the colours in 3 and took it too far the other way, draining the world of any vibrancy.

[ManBearSquid]

I'm also keeping an eye on Redfall as I think Arcane are great. Looks fun, just not 100% sold yet.

[Animalmother]

Pretty much everything was for release in 2023 wasn't it? I'm also genuinely surprised they didn't announce another version of Skyrim was being released