They’re saying this is the introduction of the Elseworlds so it’s a joker but not the one from the previous games. Seems like a cheap way to justify skins and any other DLC they bolt on.

I’m in the camp of ‘I’ll wait for reviews’ on this one. Indiana Jones is a character with a controversial past and many of his character traits are not exactly modern. The puzzle stuff looked kinda fun and I’d be interested to see just how many there are in the game. Solving what looks like a blood sacrifice bowl with a bottle of wine is neat. Or it will be if that isn’t a telegraphed narrative. If there are point and click vibes where you pick up a clown nose in the first ten minutes of the game and then use It in the 9th hour, that kinda puzzle-bypass would be great.

I will say, ‘The Great Circle’ is such a boring name when they have ‘Circuli Magni’ right there. They give a clear translation in the trailer but ‘Indiana Jones and the Circuli Magni’ is significantly more interesting. SEO considerations I guess.

I grabbed Star Trek: Resurgence to fill the gap until Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth and was surprised how much I enjoyed it. For those unfamiliar, it’s a Tell Tale- like narrative game where you switch between two characters as you’re presented with Star Trek style situations and moral quandaries.

It’s very firmly in that AA category and is a little rough in some areas, but I felt there was weight to some of my choices. There’s a decent amount of action and mini games that don’t feel too awful. A solid 7.5/10 for me.

I’m looking forward to trying Palworld based on the streams I’ve seen and will be playing Brotato on the side once it hits Game Pass.

These are just a few random quotes I found with a minute of Googling but there are many more out there. I think people were expecting exceptional and had huge expectations because Bethesda and Microsoft were very much pushing the hype train a lot. They set up the game as one thing and what was delivered was a pale shadow of it. I agree you can’t expect for the success of Skyrim, but it was 100% presented to the world like it would be. There are many parts of the game that fall short of what Skyrim did 13 years ago and what other Bethesda RPGs were doing decades ago in terms of quest design and dialogue.

“We’ve always wanted to play the game we’re making and no-one else has quite pulled it off in what we’re doing. And we feel that once we started putting some pieces in place and playing parts of it, there’s something really… I don’t want to say too much but… pretty incredible there.”

“It’s very big, yeah. People are still playing Skyrim and we have learned from that. We spent more time building [Starfield] to be played for a long time, if you so chose that you just wanted to keep playing it. It’s got some more hooks in it for that, that we added later to a game like Skyrim… while still making sure that somebody who just wants to play it, and go through the main quests and “win”, or feel they’ve accomplished something large is doable.”

“And it has large scale goals and storytelling, but that minute-to-minute feels rewarding for you. And if you just want to pass the time and go watch the sunset and pick flowers it’s rewarding in that way too. The quiet moments feel really really good.”

For me, it was a lot of small moments that added up quickly. (By a few hours, I gave it at least 10 or so). One big one was I’d chosen the talent where you get a house on a planet but with a mortgage. I thought this would be a cool way to give me an economic incentive to explore more etc.

I get to New Atlantis and follow the quest for this and I find out the ‘mortgage’ has no penalties, isn’t paid in installments, and can only be purchased in a lump-sum. So, it was a talent that gave me the ability to purchase a house and be able to essentially rent it on a per day basis until the full amount was paid. When I finally do get there the house is empty, and not all that fun to be in. No special quests etc tied to it.

Another moment that soured it for me, and this is a minor quibble but again they added up, was visiting The Eye for the first time. There was this big pile of trash in a corridor used as the block to the door to prevent further exploration. It just entirely took me out of my immersion in what should have been an epic moment. So much so I actually took a screenshot of it at the time.

A lot of folks are likely happy to look past those things but they all added up + reviews from folks further along in the story and gameplay giving a bad impression made me move onto something new. Super happy other folks were able to find enjoyment, just wasn’t for me.

I also didn’t resonate with any of the companions to a degree where I found them actively annoying to be around. I know some would say ‘just don’t loot’ but their constant calling out people who like to loot was annoying too.

Whereas with Outer Worlds I immediately loved Pravati (and most of the other companions too). Starfield I felt like I was talking to puppets only there because I was playing the game. Outer Worlds I felt a connection to their stories as much as my own.

That said, many systems in Outer Worlds were underdeveloped and parts of the game felt empty. It was a game of high highs but also low lows. It did make me excited for the sequel to build on that foundation though.

Genuinely curious, but what systems did you feel added more substance to Starfield? Dialogue choices and completing quests in various ways really made Outer Worlds shine for me, particularly in the DLCs.

6.5/7 is fine if you’re not paying $70 for the base game. It might be worth it now the costs have come down, but paying a premium price for a mid game justifies some of the shit people gave it.

That said, I played on Game Pass, big fan of the genre, and could only make it a few hours in. Just wasn’t for me. But then I really enjoyed The Outer Worlds and people shit on that too.

Given the Devs are even saying this too, I’d love them to implement a ‘recap’ system for catching back up on the story. I went back to Like a Dragon after a similar break and I was entirely lost to what I was doing in the plot. But was wayyy too far along to start again. Ended up just quitting because I was struggling to remember so much. I’ll watch a YouTube recap before this one I guess.

I’m curious what the design, and reaction to, of Starfield might say about what we’ll expect from ES6. For three games now (Fallout 4, Fallout 76, and Starfield), have been marked by Settlement building and Radiant quests.

While radiant quests were there in Skyrim, in these later games it felt a lot like Bethesda were making it a core part of the mission design structure. There are a lot of blurred lines in Starfield that make it difficult to tell them apart. (That’s more a comment on main missions being so generic than the radiant quests being so good, unfortunately).

Settlement building seems to be a core part of Bethesda’s DNA now, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the narrative follows a Kingmaker style where you build up a settlement of rebels over time or similar. I imagine the other ES staples will be tied to this too, Thieves Guild = establishing a branch within your new settlement to attack Big Bad Evil Vs joining an established one etc.

I really wonder how much of this poor reaction to Starfield makes its way through to actual change, but my feeling is ES6 will have a lot of hype, but similar feelings of disappointment. I hope I’m proved wrong.

Played both, and I’d argue that Outer World’s is significantly stronger if only for its companions. Starfield I sunk a good few hours into and I struggle to remember one name. Starfield made me the Main Character and there wasn’t much room for anyone else. Outer Worlds has some pretty fun companion side-quests.

Starfield wins at the sheer quantity of ideas it threw at the wall, Outer Worlds for the decent to good quality of the ideas it threw at the wall. Neither was brilliant, but on my personal preference Outer Worlds has way stronger bones leading into the sequel.

Yeah the DLCs made it feel like a full game. The base was a fun proof of concept, the the DLC fleshes that out. Both made me excited to see what version 2 with more time and funding could accomplish.

I hope they build on the more unique systems like the Holographic Shroud and give those systems more opportunities to shine.

That’s most tech corporate jobs tbf. Lots of middle managers with nothing much better to do than play musical chairs once a quarter. It’s like that XKCD meme about there being the standard that will clean up the mess of there being so many standards. Surely my way of working will solve all our problems of underinvestment and losing key talent…

The first 10 hours or so of Valhalla are great too. Learning the new systems and making your first parts of the settlement are pretty engaging. It’s the other 60+ hours that become a slog. You quickly realise that the main quest chain that was kinda outstaying its welcome is what you can expect for every single kingdom. Yeah, there’s some variety, but they’re really a slog to get through. The settlement upgrades were pretty good, but your mainly unlock things that would have been ‘free’ in other games. As the gear system leans towards microtransactions nothing you unlock is really mind-blowing. Especially as you’ll have to raid yet a other generic copy-and-paste monastery for the materials to upgrade.

If we look back to a game like ACII’s Villa upgrades, they provided access to things that would be behind a perk point today. I remember grinding out my capacity upgrades etc. There was direct tie from my effort to the upgrade. With Valhalla, and the other recent games, I feel like I’ve got to gring out the lootbox/heka chest(or whatever the premium currency is in a particular game)

That’s not to say Mirage is perfect. I really hate the token system and it feels so tacked on. I am enjoying being stealthy again though. I used a cheat trainer to add in one hit kills to Odyssey a while back and it improved the game so much.

The largest owners are Advance Publications and Tencent. Advance also own Condé Nasty (Reddit even used to be under the Condé Nast banner). Weirdly they also own everyone’s favorite plagiarism detection service Turnitin.

There’s a trait you can pick that exactly explains my problems.with the game. The trait is ‘Dream Home’. It is described as

‘You own a luxurious, customizable house on a peaceful planet! Unfortunately it comes with a 125,000 credit mortgage with GalBank that has to be paid weekly.’…

I thought this was a cool way of adding increased difficulty for myself. I tend not to play at the hardest setting because I don’t have much time to play. But having to plan ahead and work around this limitation sounded like it would add an interesting wrinkle to the strategy I’d have in the game.

However, when you start the game you discover that the loan has to be paid off in full… And you have unlimited time to pay it off. The only way to be foreclosed upon is if you actively go tell the bank to foreclose on you. It’s like they had the idea, but couldn’t be bothered to implement it.

What’s worse is 120k is nothing in the game. You can easily get there within a few hours of play. This is just one example, but it speaks to the game’s complete unwillingness to give the player anything negative or push them any way from their ‘freedom’. The sheer fact you are not locked out of any faction or faction mission is another example. There are 0 stakes in the game and you feel 0 connection to the people you meet or places you visit. Not helped by Sarah potentially being one of the most annoying judgemental characters in any Bethesda game I’ve ever encountered.

Update: I eventually visited this ‘Dream House’. It kinda sucked. The planet it is on is kinda ugly. There is more to this mechanic than I originally thought, however. When you visit you can pay 500 credits for 1 week of access as a ‘payment’ towards the principal. Still very deceptive of the original description.