demagogue on 25/8/2023 at 14:26
Quote Posted by Sulphur
what does the prospect of a Bethesda game which promises an excess of everything they've ever done, and promises to exacerbate the issues of their gameplay ideology being so incredibly broad that any sense of depth vanishes, have to do with being the guiding light of gaming?*
Yeah, yeah, fair point.
I was just riffing off a direct analogy to Skyrim. If you go back 10 years ago, Skyrim was a kind of cultural phenomenon, and the modding scene just extended it and allowed a community to build around it. I was even saying that doesn't mean it was the greatest or even a great game, but it's the thing a major mainstream newspaper (that doesn't have anyone that really understands the gaming world) would write an article about before any other game. Today, if a major newspaper wrote about one game, I think it'd be RDR2.
Okay, the difference between Starfield in 2023 and Skyrim circa 2013 is that back then Skyrim stood more alone with its scope and community, and now it's a wider field. There were a couple of recent epic open world RPGs that tried to take this mantle like Cyberpunk 2077, Elden Ring, Legend of Zelda BotW, Death Stranding, Ghost of Tsushima, Kingdom Come, No Man's Sky a bit ago... that were each their own little phenomena for their time but were either kind of "niche" (ER and LoZ) or that kind of relatively fizzled on release and didn't have staying power.
So I'll conceded it's probably not like Starfield is going to stand head over shoulders over them as much as Skyrim did in its time. But I think it's going to have more staying power if it's made in the model of Skyrim and has a strong modding scene. I mean except for ER and LoZ, which are "niche", I don't think you can really replay any of the games above like you can with a modded Skyrim still today. It may just be me being overzealous though.
Sulphur on 26/8/2023 at 03:34
I think if a major newspaper wrote about one game today, it would still be either GTA or The Last of Us.
Skyrim was a gamer's game - for all that entails, for good and ill - and was popular back in 2011 because of Beth's success with Oblivion and Fallout 3 (both of which remain terrible games today in my firmly objective opinion). It was celebrated because it continued Beth's philosophy of wide-ranging go-anywhere-do-whatever design and the freedom that brought compared to, say, The Witcher 2 or Dragon Age 2, or even Dark Souls, all of which were its direct competitors that year. And yes, the mod community is definitely a big reason for these games' popularity - on PC.
Starfield releases into a world that now has Baldur's Gate 3 and Tears of the Kingdom, both of which are huge RPGs that prioritise systemic design and emergent gameplay, which is our current gamer zeitgeist as far as I can tell because that's what has been fuelling the memes so far. Starfield is going to be mega bonkers huge, but apart from that, I can't tell what exactly sets it apart from Oblivion or Skyrim, and I just don't think 'you can visit a thousand planets' is some sort of beacon of influence for gaming design. Starfield will of course be a huge launch, and mod makers will make it better than it has any right to be, but that will be despite itself. Just to be clear, I think a game being mod creator friendly is fantastic, but if much of its success is owed to mods, then what does that say about the game itself beyond 'we can depend on our community to fix our shit'?
I'm willing to concede that if it has a strong enough gravitational pull (in anything other than environment design, because Beth has always excelled there) that ignites your imagination, it can be what you're talking about, but so far I've not seen anything that sets it apart, again except for its scope. And maybe you're right, and that illusion of depth is good enough for most people, but at this point I'm thinking some people must finally be over the smoke and mirrors. Beyond that, I'm also willing to stand corrected if there's an argument to be made for its quality, but I'm not sure 'Mass Effect, but more, but worse' is good enough for gaming today.
Sulphur on 26/8/2023 at 13:09
Back on topic - wow:
[video=youtube;aZyZoSkgeuE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZyZoSkgeuE[/video]
demagogue on 27/8/2023 at 02:02
Quote Posted by Sulphur
I think if a major newspaper wrote about one game today, it would still be either GTA or The Last of Us.
At the risk of stretching this, I guess this is a personal kind of list.
Those two are of course at the top of the list and I thought about them. But I can't in good conscience recommend GTAV as the definitive game to anyone because the story is abhorrent and it's still set missions, although I think the GTAV RP & modding scene is the best picture of things to come. But RDR2 also has a good RP & modding scene, and it has the same amazing open world and gameplay, and the story is one of the best.
Last of Us probably does have the best story ever next to Disco Elysium. But as a game, the whole thing is railroaded set pieces, and as a good imm sim discipline I couldn't vouch for that either. The fact that there's a whole cultural moment around that game kind of rubs me the wrong way, although I still love the game.
But anyway I'll admit my personal considerations are driving this car.
On Starfield, sure, I can't be sure about the splash it'll make. I think if the modding scene turns into people making their own civilizations & landscapes for their own planets, like is getting hyped now, and you get 10,000 some odd of them, that might be something interesting to see.
Sulphur on 27/8/2023 at 12:57
That's the thing. I didn't choose those two because I like them - I actually can't stand GTA most of the time, and playing any of the GTAs requires me to set aside my dislike of their general vibe and structure to engage with the bits I do like. But if you wanted to point at what modern day video gaming is as a hobby (i.e., not casual gaming a la mobile games), GTA remains the conversation starter. The Last of Us I do like, but that's not the reason I chose it; it's managed to capture the imagination of people for narrative quality for the longest amount of time, and for good reason. While RDR 2 makes sense for both gameplay and narrative and I really do adore it, I think it simply wasn't as popular as either GTA V or TLoU for whatever reason, so people tend to not talk about it as much, and it's dropped out of the public eye.
As for Starfield, I guess I'm the party pooper knee-jerking at people splooging over its expansiveness. Being a massive game is great and all, but the bigger question is what you're going to do with all that real estate to justify it - and no, I don't think just wandering it like an infinite Desert Bus is a good use of your time except for the odd chill jaunt. And I don't think shooting people and vacuuming resources off of highly tessellated rockslides to fuel a resource/crafting loop with the traditional Bethesda paper-thin narrative on top of it is good enough either.
Jason Moyer on 27/8/2023 at 21:46
Luckily, I don't give a shit about a game's cultural relevance I just want it to be fun, and Bethesda's explore/fight/loot/talk thing is fun as hell. I don't think it works for a Fallout game, but otherwise it's fun. I mean, Yars' Revenge is the greatest game ever made and it has no cultural relevance whatsoever.
Nameless Voice on 28/8/2023 at 01:26
I loved Daggerfall back in the day, but these days a stupidly massive open world just sounds tedious to me.
Jason Moyer on 28/8/2023 at 18:50
Quote Posted by Nameless Voice
I loved Daggerfall back in the day, but these days a stupidly massive open world just sounds tedious to me.
I hate open world games when anyone else does it, but Bethsoft does something that makes it work for me for some reason. Probably because they focus so much on the design of the world instead of things like story reactivity and whatever that I'd want in a normal RPG. Their style started as open-world RPG's that were kind of boring to explore (Daggerfall) or had really shitty action game mechanics (Morrowind) and have gradually morphed into open-world action adventures, where you spend like 10 minutes walking down a road and end up on some adventure you weren't expecting.
Sulphur on 29/8/2023 at 05:30
Yup, that's the one of the things Bethesda's been fantastic at since FO3. They've made the act of wandering around and always discovering something new around the corner a sort of science.
Jason Moyer on 14/9/2023 at 18:24
Please be good. Apparently it's the DiRT Rally team and not the team that makes the arcadey games, but I'm gonna be skeptical until I play it.
[video=youtube;uZfLyIC9vuQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZfLyIC9vuQ[/video]
