Comment on Baldur's Gate 3 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 show that the future of RPGs is in games way more ambitious, weird and unexpected than anything Bethesda and Bioware have to offer

addicity@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

• TachyonTele@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Morrowind was thier hail mary to stay in buisness.

  Then they have the series to Howard and his crew…

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  • addicity@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Morrowind: An oral history on Polygon is a wonderful read.

    All the little stories Kirkbride tells are great. My favourite is him designing progressively weird shit to dupe Howard with. He’d be like “Hey Todd, can we put this in the game?” and after he knowingly got knocked back he’d present him something more palatable.

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    • Coelacanth@feddit.nu ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      That’s a classic negotiation technique abusing the psychological anchoring effect.

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      • addicity@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        Yeah, I’ve heard of writers on shows like the Animaniacs doing it, insisting heavily on a more outrageous joke having to go in knowing it’ll get knocked back as a Trojan horse to slip the real jokes they want in.

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  • Ashtear@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    It’s like the super bowl champs giving the next decade to the Bears.

    nowhere is safe 😫

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    • TachyonTele@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Lol if it makes you feel better I was going to say Buffalo originally

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• SmoothOperator@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Indeed, as the article writes

  Even Skyrim—certainly a weird, ambitious, and janky RPG in its own right—refined and streamlined the formula set by Morrowind and Oblivion, rather than expanding on their eccentricities, and that trend only continued in the studio’s following games.

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  • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Skyrim wasn’t “weird” by any definition I’d use. More like bland.

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    • Galle_@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      We’re talking about an article that considers Baldur’s Gate 3 to be weird and ambitious. Words don’t have meanings anymore.

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• Galle_@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I find it bizarre that people think Starfield isn’t “weird and ambitious”. Starfield is absolutely weird and ambitious, that’s why people didn’t like it, it tried to do something new and that something new turned out to not be fun.

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  • SleepNotRequired@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I disagree, if anything I think Starfield was Bethesda not going far enough.

    They created a new setting and added a couple of new mechanics, but they cradled it in the same tired formula that they have been doing for decades.

    I had hoped that since it was a new IP, this would be the moment they would take a chance and try something new. Try a new approach to quest design and world building, don’t just make the game bigger but make the experience in it more varied with more interesting interactions. Instead it felt like new coat of paint on an old house and when they got called out on it, they became defensive.

    I broke my heart when they said the lesson they learned was to stick to the same formula and when they tried to do it with Shattered Space, people hated it even more.

    I hate to say it but it seems like Bethesda already peaked.

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