NoxAeturnus

As someone who is highly motivated by narratives in games, I almost never buy this sort of DLC. It's like reading the Silmarillion. It's backstory. It's side content. It's best used sparingly, and I'm certainly not going to SPEND MONEY on it. If it was meant to be part of the story it would have been part of the narrative from the beginning, and if the story couldn't stand without it then the game's narrative is broken and it rightly deserves criticism (looking at you FFXV).

To be fair, I rarely enjoy side quests in games anyway. They usually detract from the pacing of the main plot and rarely add anything to the experience for me. It's a rare game that can invest me in a tangential plot. Just another reason why The Witcher 3 is a rare gem.

Edit: I'm much more apt to care about standalone story content, because it's a fully realized narrative of its own. I'd buy a spinoff before I buy a tack-on or a plothole-patch.

@HungryWolf Sure, I see that. FF is a lot of things to a lot of people. It's still a big name, it still pulls in sales numbers. But eventually their poor management of the franchise and their company will catch up with them.

@3MonthBeef The sales of one game don't live in a vacuum and don't necessarily mean guaranteed sales of future games. Criticism after the fact is absolutely relevant, especially since all of this criticism is aimed at the future of the company. The comments here, and on every FFVII remake article, and most SE articles are a bad sign for SE. They now have a poor reputation thanks to the mess that was FFXV's development and subsequent milking. Even if FFXV was profitable for them (which is a minor miracle considering) that poor reputation will catch up with them eventually.

I'm sure there's no way that this could go wrong.

They're victims of their own success. I seem to remember some interview from the FFXV purgatory days where someone said that the development team all has very different ideas about what makes a game final fantasy. Not surprising since every single one has been different. But with no centralized vision on these projects, they're doomed to running in circles, restarting, taking new directions, and never reaching the finish line.

Nomura barely counts as centralized vision. He turned FFXV into Kingdom Hearts, and my bet is he does the same to FFVII. I really hate that battle system in all of its incarnations. If FFVII isn't using some form of ATB, then it isn't being true to its source materia.

@ronb44 A deftly handled prequel could be interesting, but as @toffeecrit says, From's world building relies on ambiguous clues and fragments, so I'm not sure how they'd manage that.

This sounds like Super Mario Bros. movie levels of bad. I'm in. Grabs popcorn.

@PS_Nation No pixel shall go uncriticised, no texture unremarked. We shall strike against the screenshot at dawn!

I too would enjoy a Demons Souls remake.

tries to contain excited jittering

@whywai88 No such thing as difficulty in these games. Sure, they could neuter the AI and make enemies deal less damage, but it would ruin the experience. Danger is a central theme, and the high reward for high risk gameplay is what makes the games so powerfully fun. An easy mode makes it a different kind of game, one not in line with their vision, which is to use stiff challenge to teach the player to play better. Souls fan jerks toss around "git gud" as an insult, but it truly is core to what the games are designed to push you to do. If that's not your thing, it just might not be for you.

Sales begging is the corporate equivalent of fan port begging.

If I am ever tempted to pay to bypass the reward structure of your game, then your gameplay loop is poorly designed. Who is this for? People who want to play the game but don't want to play the game? Easy mode used to be free.

Microtransactions have no reason to be in this game, or any other full price single player game, except as meaningless aesthetic peripheral content.

I like the score, but I'd prefer if the conclusions section of reviews gave more of a summarized justification for the score. For example something like "The online features are sub-par so far, so we felt the overall score was only a 7 as a result. However, if you don't care about online, this game might be an 8 or 9 for you." Assigning an overall score is useful, but I think a little more reasoning why it got bumped up or down or why the score ignored minor faults or can't forgive major ones would be helpful for me in deciding where I might score the game, and thus whether or not it's a must have, buy later, or skip purchase for me. I do this on my own usually as I read the whole review, but if it was up front it might help with skip-to-the-number types.

@Th3solution To each their own I guess. It takes something away from the experience for me that I'm not allowed to take on enemies alone. Less rewarding to my mind. I guess I just don't see why an AI companion like that can't be optional. Best of both worlds.

@Th3solution I'd be more excited for Code Vein if they weren't chaining me to an AI companion.

"Souls-like" = Instant skepticism.
Split-screen co-op = Instant high interest.

I'm so conflicted.

That price for Bloodborne is criminally cheap.

Last I checked, PC is the best place to play this game.

Also, the Switch version has been getting bad press lately because post launch patches introduced some unacceptable bugs. Epic seems to be working on it, but I'm wondering if this statement was a clumsy shot at Nintendo.

Am I the only one who kind of likes the release screenshot better? I can see more detail out the window in that shot, like the trees because there's less light glare.

In that E3 shot Spider-man looks greased up. Like he's got to save this guy fast and then get to a tanning booth to recharge his spandex.

@CK97's outrage is over 9000!

But seriously, who cares? Even if true, does it make the game less fun? Puddles? I'll be too busy saving that guy with some sick web-slinging action to care about the water on the floor.

Oh internet, you silly today.

After the announcement I was ambivalent, but the Gamescom footage has made me a believer. I can't wait to see if a more direct approach to storytelling works out for them.

@LieutenantFatman I'd pay extra for an erroneous tick box, but not for an erroneous box of ticks.

@Rudy_Manchego Are preorders like double negatives? If you cancel twice do you actually get the game?

@Ralizah Oh see, I'm not sure you'll have anything to worry about on that front. If you're a fan of the genre, you probably shouldn't miss this game just because it LOOKS derivative. The Witcher 3 was extremely impressive. It's not just that it was narrative driven, it's that the variety and depth of the content was insane, and that choices mattered in ways that I hadn't really experienced in other games. Sidequests in that game put main plots of other games to shame for narrative depth. Even though they're retreading well worn ground with Cyberpunk 2077, CDPR's got the chops to easily make it the best version of that genre seen to this point.

@Ralizah I feel similarly, but that's because I've never been a huge fan of the whole cyberpunk aesthetic. It is what it is. My imagination is slamming together the two rocks of what they've shown with how impressive the The Witcher 3 was, but so far no sparks. I'm not out, because it has so much potential, but I'm not hyped either. Probably for the best considering how long we'll all have to wait for it to release.

@ShogunRok I haven't been following any of the PS5 rumors, but is there any reason to assume PS5 will be backwards compatible? It seems to me that in the last two gens the industry has largely moved away from backwards compatibility in favor of ports, remasters, and (eventually) subscription services, because money.

@tameshiyaku Perfect summation. I would just add that I enjoyed Demons Souls more than any Dark Souls, and only slightly less than Bloodborne, but that's just my opinion. I wonder if Sony will ever do anything with the ones they own. From is talented, but Sony has a lot of talented people that could probably do interesting things with Demons Souls or Bloodborne's worlds and gameplay.

Sekiro does look cool. I wonder what they'll do next. I'll certainly pay attention to just about anything From announces.

It still looks just ok.

AI companion? No thank you.

Sekiro seems like a pretty barebones game. I think From is experimenting with a more overt narrative, which is fine. I'm interested, but nothing I've seen so far has me dying to get my hands on it (ha! No...? Ok.). In fact, the animations so far have looked kind of janky, worse than Bloodborne certainly, hope they clean it up a bit before launch.

LOCAL CO-OP!

I'm in.

Very top of my list for most anticipated game right now. It looks amazing.

I'll take him at his word and say sure, maybe RDR2 will redefine the industry... right up until Cyberpunk 2077 shows up.

If he's strictly speaking about narrative, they've got some stiff competition to live up to that kind of hype. Ghost of Tsushima and Last of Us 2 both look poised to deliver some extremely high quality storytelling.

Victims of their own success. I expect the next one will be an equally troublesome hodgepodge when my descendants finally get to play it.

@Kidfried Not even the Vita wants to be the Vita.

@Jaz007 I know someone else sent you that other link, but if you do a little digging on the NMS official site, they have release notes for all of the major patches: Foundation, Pathfinder, Atlas Rises, and NEXT. Be warned that it's a lot of reading. Each of those four major updates was hefty and they've added and changed A LOT since launch.

I'm glad to hear the weekly updates won't be replacing future giant updates. I came back after Atlas for another 20 hours or so, but it's been sitting on my shelf again since. I like the relaxing solitude in NMS, so NEXT's multiplayer isn't pulling me back. Foundation and Pathfinder weren't that interesting for me personally, I never spend enough time on a planet to make it worthwhile. When I play I see myself as an astrozoologist, so if they work on the flora/fauna more after NEXT, I'd be back in an instant. That's what I've wanted more than anything since launch. Either way I'll pick it up again at some point. There's just something delightfully carthartic about NMS.

@XxKHDxX Remember when it was cool and trendy to hate this game? Yeah, that time is past. NEXT is the 4th massive update. The game has been completely overhauled, it's no longer what it was at launch. Your insults are petty, mean spirited, and two years out of date.

I'm not going to continue to beat the dead horse that death threats are not ok, because obviously.

"I was naive and overly excited about my game. There are a lot of things around launch that I regret"

While I don't think Murray is totally above criticism, because he and Hello Games way overpromised, he strikes me as a guy that overpromised to himself. He's not a PR guy, and he never was, and Sony kind of threw him to the wolves by hyping up the game, especially at E3, then marketing it like a AAA, and then backing way off. I wouldn't be surprised if there was more to the story, but Murray isn't going to point fingers. There's no point now, he doesn't want to damage potential or existing business relationships, and he's clearly learned his lesson about being in the public eye.

Still, I think the whole fiasco should be water under the bridge at this point. They've spent two years vastly improving a game that is still widely viewed as both a flop and a failure when they could have just taken the money and run. It's time to stop using NMS as the gaming community's whipping boy. It's not a relevant criticism anymore in my opinion, even if it is or was deserved.

@Knuckles-Fajita @Flaming_Kaiser I wouldn't count on Octopath jumping ship to PS4. Nintendo is the publisher. They've almost certainly got some sort of exclusivity deal in place.

Good thing? Depends. Are they fining companies for changing their release date? If not, then there's nothing to stop them putting in a placeholder date, then changing it later, which is already pretty standard practice. This might be a meaningless move.

I enjoyed the modern segments with Desmond in the original Assassin's Creed, back before it was clear they didn't have a plan. I remember specifically thinking that the modern segments had a lot of potential. I really liked how they used it as an in universe explanation for HUD elements and gamey bits. I kept waiting for it to turn out that he wasn't just experiencing his ancestor's genetic memory, he was actually changing the past, but then things got weird and the segments felt more and more tacked on, and I honestly don't remember a single one from any of the other games at this point.

I won't miss it. I tend to play souls games offline anyway. Sekiro looks like a lot of fun, but I'm not sure anything can supplant Bloodborne for me. That game is so good.

Cross-play is not critical for me, but I'm more likely to choose a game that has it on a network that allows it. I don't play on PS4 for cross-play though. I play on PS4 because they have killer exclusives I can't get anywhere else.

This is a lose-lose situation for Sony, but if they were thinking long term, they could spin it as a winning situation for PS5, which will automatically start with a much smaller install base. Launch the new system with some cross-play games and watch Nintendo and Microsoft's stance change when their install bases, which will be larger than a brand new system's, are suddenly hijacked by Sony's new piece of kit. Of course, any attempt to backpedal at that point would be an even bigger PR nightmare.

The thing about this kind of pressure is that it can get out of control and prove more harmful than the protected advantage is helpful. It's the exact same sort of thing that originally derailed the XB1 (albeit, much less egregious than those policies), and that weakness is what Sony capitalized on to create the success of the PS4 in the first place. Even though this is a small thing for most people, the noise it's making runs counter to Sony's brand message this generation: For the players. This policy undermines that strong brand message, which is why it would be foolish for their competitors not to try to capitalize on that.

@RedMageLanakyn I guess it makes sense why you'd be fatigued then because what you describe is roughly the central mechanic of all those games. On the other hand, if your fatigue ever wears off and there isn't something new and shiny, Ghost of Tsushima could be an awesome one to revisit. That's what happened with me and The Witcher 3, just played it for the first time a couple months ago.

@RedMageLanakyn Just curious, what about it reminded you of Dark Souls? Seemed to me to be more similar to Witcher or Assassin's Creed. Of course, all of those are similar from a broader perspective.

@Octane So true. The first person perspective is literally the only thing putting me off this game.

I've been saying this for years, souls games are not about difficulty or in this case mechanical systems. It's been technically possible to completely ignore the RPG elements anyway. Souls is about deep lore and skill based combat. If it has those elements I'll love it. Limiting all those character options sounds to me like this time around they want to tell a more overt story, which is also fine by me.

@YeYa As one of the few people who was never disappointed by No Man's Sky, I implore you to give it a try if you haven't. The massive outpouring of disappointment in the game is largely based on faulty expectations, and fueled by the developer's overpromising or not I think that's a shame. The disappointment at launch might have been justified, but the hatred for No Man's Sky has long since crossed from legitimate into trendy. More than any other game, I think you get out of No Man's Sky what you take in with you.

Definitely one of my most anticipated games for E3, I'm really glad Sony decided to give us advance notice they'd be spending time with it there. It's kind of been... ghosting... under the radar since its reveal. Where Death Stranding is using its mystery as a marketing strategy, Ghost of Tsushima seems to be benefiting from it almost by accident.

I'm not surprised at the high interest. How long have people been calling for an asian setting in Assassin's Creed? People have been asking for a game like this for years. I think the hype train will really leave the station for me after the "deep dive".

Honestly, it's not surprising. What does Xbox have to offer that Sony isn't doing better? Certainly not games. If 30 mil is accurate, XB1 has barely sold twice as much as Wii-U.

@NoCode23 Why not pick up JC4 anyway, just 'cause?