Quetzalcutlass

@Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨LIARS!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  (I know this is a shitpost, but I couldn’t resist lore-dumping)

  The Dark Sign is actually Gwyn’s curse on humanity to seal away their potential (the Dark Soul being the only fragment of the First Flame that can be shared and passed on without weakening, he feared humanity growing powerful enough to topple the gods through sheer numbers). That’s why the Dark Sign appears as a flame encircling the Dark. When the First Flame weakens enough, his seal becomes visible as the Dark within humanity begins breaking free.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered - Official Trailer⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Shivering Isles rivals Morrowind in my mind. It has a strange and unique setting and most of the content is incredibly well-written, which contrasts sharply with the standard medieval setting of baseline Oblivion (mandatory reminder that Cyrodiil was supposed to be a rainforest, but the devs retconned it to make development easier).

  The other expansion, Knights of the Nine, was just a bunch of fetch quests to unlock an armor set and was disappointing in comparison to even the base game (though at least the final boss fight was cool). It also put behavioral tracking on the DLC’s rewards that would disable them if your character gained infamy, forcing you to repeat a bunch of boring travel quests to fix them whenever this happened. There’s a reason KotN never comes up in discussions about the game.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Euphoria Engine Introduction (Older than 2008)⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Digital Molecular Matter, the DMM you mentioned in Force Unleashed, is just as interesting IMO. It calculated how objects would break under various types of force and produced some of the best and most realistic destruction in gaming. It even simulated wood splintering vertically when twisted!

  I’m guessing it had similar problems to Euphoria since I haven’t seen it mentioned since.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered - Official Trailer⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  90% of Oblivion’s voice acting budget must have gone to paying for Patrick Stewart and Sean Bean to say a few dozen lines. It’s long been a meme that basically every other person in Cyrodill shares the same six or seven voice actors.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered - Official Trailer⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Jeremy Soule did amazing work. Unfortunately it turned out he was a terrible person and he was blacklisted from the industry after multiple allegations were made against him during the #MeToo movement.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I know you all have big plans for this man⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The vampire stuff in Oblivion is interesting but short. There’s maybe an hour of content spread across the entire game world.

  Morrowind had multiple vampire clans you could join (that were completely hidden and hostile to anyone not infected with their strain of the virus, so probably missed by 99% of players not using a guide), each with their own specialties and questlines, and there were unique interactions with NPCs and factions based on the progression of your vampirism.

  It’s disappointing that Oblivion was such a step backward in that regard. My guess is the expense of universal voice acting made detailed optional questlines and responsive NPCs prohibitively expensive. Even Skyrim, which dedicated an entire DLC to vampires, was lacking compared to what was arguably a throwaway feature from Morrowind.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I hope future installments steal from some of their competitors. A few of them (I think Jagged Alliance 3 and some Valkyria game on consoles?) have a system where aiming is done in first person using a reticle that displays a large circle the shot is guaranteed to land within and a smaller circle with an x% chance of it landing within.

  It doesn’t make the game any easier in most situations, but it feels a million times better when you can visualize the exact odds and see how you could possibly miss before you commit, plus you no longer need to worry about missing point-blank shots just because the RNG hates you.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m in the middle of a playthrough right now, and while I’m enjoying it (I originally came to this thread to post about Remnant 2, then read your comment and realized I agreed with every single thing you said), it’s frustrating how they chose to design things. The games had great intentions held back by poor implementation.

  They wanted to make the game replayable, but they did so by artificially limiting what you could encounter in a single playthrough. For completionists this is torture. For one-and-done players it could be a deal breaker.

  They wanted endless exploration, but the random maps make exploring unrewarding. I lost count of the number of interesting map features I explored that ended up being completely empty aside from common enemies and some smashable pots (which are empty 90% of the time and drop a paltry amount of basic currency when they aren’t). Remnant 2 is at least way better about this than the first, where the maps were a chore to get through.

  They knew one of people’s favorite things about Souls games is piecing things together from obscure clues, so designed the game in a way that the entire playerbase would work together to learn how to unlock everything. The downside is that obtaining many basic things like classes and gear require ARG-level shenanigans (plus a hefty dose of luck), and if you don’t use a wiki you’ll miss some of the game’s best content.

  I love the gameplay, the lore, the characters, the visual and sound design, but I’m left with the unpleasant feeling that these games would have been significantly better if they dropped half of what made them unique in the first place.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, Microsoft kept the publishing rights to the first game and Tango gets nothing if you buy it.

  I don’t know if they still do it, but Microsoft used to give a free month of Game Pass to entice new signups. If that offer’s still open, you could grab it and play the game without giving them a cent.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The Remnant games are a completionist’s nightmare. Want a specific weapon? Hope the right world generates, hope the right storyline for that world is picked, hope the side quest for that storyline that drops that weapon is picked, hope you don’t miss it entirely due to 90% of the world looking identical…

  And it’s not just weapons. As you noted, the archetypes (your character class) are also gated this way. One of them was only found through data mining, the unlock criteria was so obscure. I don’t want to have to pass several dice rolls to have a chance at content I enjoy.

  It’s telling that the class dedicated to exploration and level grinding is unlocked by beating the game. You’re expected to play through the campaign several times to see everything, but since it’s all random you’re just as likely to roll stuff you’ve already done. Which the developers clearly realized since you can roll individual worlds as side adventures.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Hi-Fi Rush really is a nearly perfect game. Everything from the gameplay to the art style to the animation to the writing is just… *chef’s kiss*

  Made me even more mad over everything that happened to Tango Gameworks (and, frankly, the game industry for the past decade or so)

  Fortunately for Tango Gamrworks, they did find a buyer (Krafton) after Microsoft cut them loose, and they kept the IP and plan for more Hi-Fi Rush content.

  Let’s hope the new owners treat them better.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨German experiment gave people a basic monthly income – the effect on their work ethic was surprising⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I believe a province in Canada was also trying it with promising results until a right-wing politician got elected and scrapped the trial program.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do it⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Time In A Bottle.

  Oh no…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk would like to ‘delete all IP law’ | TechCrunch⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I would point at Android as an example of what would happen. It’s not public domain but the end result is similar, namely that the open source originator (AOSP) suffers from a severe lack of features compared to the commercial offerings.

  The default AOSP apps are incredibly barebones compared to the ones Google and the carriers put in their ROMs. You have to choose between “have nothing more than the basic features and compatibility with only well-established services” or “get the latest and greatest with all the bells and whistles (plus a huge heaping of telemetry and invasive advertising)”.

  It turns out it’s really hard to compete with a major corporation who can throw entire teams at a problem and can legally copy anything you add to your own version. That’s not even getting into the things that open source projects lack due to their haphazard team structure such as unified UX designs (Blender pre-2.8 and GIMP pre-3.0/unified window mode being the most famous examples of terrible user interfaces that lingered for far too many years).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Lost 2004 Mobile Version of King’s Field Finally Preserved | Retro Gaming News 24/7⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Kings Field relied heavily on timing attacks as you move forward so they’d land just as you came into range of an enemy’s hitbox, then immediately backstepping before the return attack hits you. That and circling behind enemies and strafing around to take advantage of their glacial turn speeds.

  Both of those were hard enough on the pre-analog stick PlayStation controller - it would be miserable to do them on a mobile keyboard.

  (I’m still probably going to try it. Kings Field, my beloved)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨V Rising's first big post 1.0 update brings a bevy of additions, combat reworks, and Steam Deck support later this month⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Crafting will be a bit easier too now as you can take ingredients from your vault without having to actually go to your vault to get them.

  Why is “craft from chests” always only added to survival crafting games ages after launch despite players begging for it from day one? It should be considered a basic QoL feature at this point.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨V Rising's first big post 1.0 update brings a bevy of additions, combat reworks, and Steam Deck support later this month⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Does it require a connection for single player? I’ve been playing solo since early Early Access with no problem, but I haven’t tested with my WiFi off.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hot take: Get your game reviews from gamers, not from collectors⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  “My Steam backlog wasn’t enough, let’s add a couple thousand more to the pile through romsets.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨FromSoftware aren't abandoning single player in favour of games like Elden Ring: Nightreign, says Miyazaki⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Rock Paper Shotgun went downhill a long time ago. The original was an opinionated humor column about video games founded by talented writers. It was sarcastic but all on good fun. The owners left more than a decade ago, it was sold to one of the media conglomerates that hoovered up a bunch of other games journalism sites, and RPS even operated without an editorial staff for a while (not sure if that’s still the case as I stopped being an active reader around this time).

  The new guys try to ape the sarcasm and style of the old stuff, but it comes across as disinterested at best to downright mean-spirited a lot of the time. The useless clickbait titles don’t help either.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Embracer studio Eidos-Montreal has laid off 75 employees⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Embracer is also splitting into three separate companies to shed the tainted Embracer name, all still owned and run by Wingefors of course.

  Asmodee Group (for board games) and Coffee Stain Publishing (for indie games) are the only two with official names last I heard. The unnamed third is the big one and Embracer’s direct successor, but I guess they’re delaying naming it to minimize bad press associated with the name.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Roblox players are going to start getting paid to watch ads⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Because so far that type of monetization scheme hasn’t made headway outside of the mobile space. This is yet another frog-boiling moment where they gradually push what they can get away with.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Yes, in the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  When I was a kid my parents still called the remote control a “clicker” because of these.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How Ubisoft spent $2.1M on influencers to secure the launch of Assassin's Creed Shadows⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Or just excitement at getting “exclusive” early access as a small streamer. If you don’t know there are thousands of others, it’d feel like an opportunity to make it big.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The story behind the Oblivion mod Terry Pratchett worked on⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It must have been surreal for Pratchett meeting Emma in person at the Snuff launch party. Since she voices the character herself, it must have been like meeting two separate friends at once - his writing correspondent and research partner, Emma, and his virtual guide/friend in Vilja.

  That feels like a scene with the sort of bizarre, semi-irrational emotional undertones that Terry himself would often write about. I wish he was still around to ask how it felt.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH gets a smaller download on Steam Deck⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s an old internet law about computer programs endlessly expanding to gobble up every resource as computers improve. Nowhere is it more obvious than in gaming. Textures you’ll never use, translations included in the default download for no good reason, the same files duplicated many times over because it gives a slight improvement to load times on consoles, delta patches using up an entire CPU core and taking longer than simply redownloading the whole game, ten minutes spent compiling thousands of bespoke shaders on startup…

  Ugh, shader compilation is the worst since it can ruin an entire planned gaming session. As annoying and performance-crippling as it is in its early stages, I can’t wait for ray tracing to become the default. Modern computer graphics are built on hacks upon hacks upon hacks. Ray tracing, by virtue of acting how light actually acts, cuts the Gordian Knot and vastly simplifies things. Hopefully it’ll help do away with the multitude of shaders used to imitate perfect lighting through imperfect means and we can just simply run our games again.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra's release may fall in Christmas 2025, according to the Black Panther⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I was ambivalent until the article mentioned Amy Hennig. There’s a chance this might actually be good!

  I’m still salty about that canceled Star Wars heist game she worked on.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Former Fable dev behind hit free Ultima-style RPG adds 100-floor megadungeon for a fiver⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Someone should do a roundup of what all the old Bullfrog/Lionhead devs are up to these days.

  I know a bunch of them teamed up to make Kynseed, an okay attempt to make a game that delivered on Fable’s promise of the world growing up/around your character, and which had the misfortune to compete against the sudden resurgence of life/farming sims due to Stardew Valley’s then-recent success.

  And Peter Molyneux is… around, doing Peter Molyneux things (as he is wont to do).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH gets a smaller download on Steam Deck⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I hope the Steam Deck-specific content depot gets used more often.

  I also wonder if the Steam CLI can download from it on other platforms. I’m running a 4060, so being able to trim out all the texture boat I can’t even run would be a godsend.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Sims 4's Businesses & Hobbies expansion pack will let open your own business and tattoo your Sims⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Too little, too…

  and it lets Sims open their own tattoo parlour, pottery studio or - if you have the right complementary expansion - a cat café.

  Fuck.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Release Flashpoint Launcher 14.0.0 · FlashpointProject/launcher⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It has pretty much every Flash game and animation ever made, no matter how niche, except for a few that the creators asked them to remove from the collection. I believe the full collection is over one and a half terabytes.