The Miscellaneous PC & vidya Games Thread

[crazy canuck]

The latest Bioware game, Anthem, was released to the masses yesterday after a week-long early access period. I played a 10-hour trial last week.

If you were hoping for a great narrative-driven video game with memorable NPCs and a unique story in the vein of the Baldur's Gate series or Knights of the Old Republic, boy do I have some bad news for you.

That it is too addictive because it is all that and more?

[Valmy]

The latest Bioware game, Anthem, was released to the masses yesterday after a week-long early access period. I played a 10-hour trial last week.

If you were hoping for a great narrative-driven video game with memorable NPCs and a unique story in the vein of the Baldur's Gate series or Knights of the Old Republic, boy do I have some bad news for you.

Yeah it is really making me nervous. Mass Effect got the axe after one substandard game with Andromeda (and note it was stripped down in order to get all resources dumped on this Anthem thing) and now I am a little concerned about the future of the entire studio. I have no idea who thought it was a good idea to make a RPG company make a looter-shooter...

But the whole future of the studio is in doubt if this thing flops. It was kind of a lose-lose proposition for me anyway since if Anthem was a huge success well fat chance Bioware was going to keep making RPGs anyway.

[Barrister]

Yeah Anthem is just getting killed in the reviews I've seen.

[Valmy]

I guess what I have to hope for is for Anthem to be just marginally be successful. Enough to keep Bioware going but not enough for Anthem to be EA's new cash cow.

[Caliga]

Between this debacle and Bethsoft and their latest Fallout flop I assume the future of CRPGs is now in serious trouble.

[Syt]

Most common comment I see about Anthem: Gameplay is fine, but everything else sucks - 'bleh' story, horrible load times (and plenty loading screens), and bad tethering when your team mates rush forward.

I'm not into looter shooters, so I had little interest in it in the first place. I watched some streams and it just looked so generic and bland.

And I think EA screwed it additionally with the F2P Apex Legends releasing shortly before which has been highly acclaimed and has become popular fast - it's taking hero shooter mechanics (i.e. characters with different skill sets) and combines with the battle royale. It's 3-man teams and I understand that they managed to make co-op between team mates easy and intuitive, even without voice chat, by having a context sensitive "ping" system, which sends messages to your team mates; e.g. "ping" your ammo slot and you ask for ammo, with "thank you" just another button press.

(Anthem heavily insists on voice chat between players, with no text chat possible - which is a great idea when you have a lot of in-mission story voice-overs.)

[Syt]

Between this debacle and Bethsoft and their latest Fallout flop I assume the future of CRPGs is now in serious trouble.

Well, Obsidian is still working on their sci-fi RPG. Though they tampered expectations by saying that it's not an open world sandbox, and that playthroughs will probably around 40 hours.

CRPGs will stay around, but I doubt they will be AAA affairs. My money is atm on smaller outfits, like Larian with their Divinity games, and Obsidian.

[Valmy]

Between this debacle and Bethsoft and their latest Fallout flop I assume the future of CRPGs is now in serious trouble.

Well, Obsidian is still working on their sci-fi RPG. Though they tampered expectations by saying that it's not an open world sandbox, and that playthroughs will probably around 40 hours.

CRPGs will stay around, but I doubt they will be AAA affairs. My money is atm on smaller outfits, like Larian with their Divinity games, and Obsidian.

AAA RPGs are probably dead. They just do not fit the current market obsession with trying to make another Fortnite.

[Syt]

AAA RPGs are probably dead. They just do not fit the current market obsession with trying to make another Fortnite. multiplayer game with long term engagement with "recurring spending oppoertunities"

FYP.

MP games are better return on investment, because player retention tends to be higher than with linear story driven games. A lot of MP games have adopted a seasonal structure of having content available for a limited time, exploiting Fear Of Missing Out where possible, and getting players to log in for their dailies or weeklies and entice them to spend more money on their 60 or 70 or 90 ("Ultimate Editions" ) bucks games. It's rather depressing, really.

[FunkMonk]

Most common comment I see about Anthem: Gameplay is fine, but everything else sucks - 'bleh' story, horrible load times (and plenty loading screens), and bad tethering when your team mates rush forward.

I'm not into looter shooters, so I had little interest in it in the first place. I watched some streams and it just looked so generic and bland.

I enjoy looters and looter-shooters but Anthem is a fine example of mediocrity in the genre. The combat is passable but repetitive, which isn't uncommon in the genre but other games hide their repetition much better than Anthem.

Character progression is almost non-existent. You level your mech suit up to 30, but all that does is unlock new slots that let you equip gear or unlock one of 4 mechs. There aren't any interesting choices to make. Your skills are attached to the gear you equip but some skills are clearly superior to others and you can only choose 2 active combat skills at a time so the choices are essentially made for you. Item progression, in the form of new gear and weapons, is reduced to simple, gradual increases in numbers to a few stats. There are no interesting or unique mechanics attached to gear or weapons until you get to end game. Even then, from what I've seen, these unique weapons are subpar compared to similar mechanics in PoE, Diablo, or Warframe.

I was hoping for something accessible and fun to play that was deep enough to sustain my interest long term. Anthem is fun in bite-sized pieces but there isn't much left after the first few bites.

[Oexmelin]

CRPGs will stay around, but I doubt they will be AAA affairs. My money is atm on smaller outfits, like Larian with their Divinity games, and Obsidian.

I still have some hopes for Projekt Red (is it AAA now?). As far as narrative-driven games go, RDR2 may have given ideas to others, and I am also hoping the best for Beyond Good and Evil 2, even if that one may still take some years to get there.

[viper37]

I still have some hopes for Projekt Red (is it AAA now?).

Quality wise: AAA
Budget wise: AA

The Witcher series got them a leg to jump on, they built bigger&bigger until #3 and its expansion.

Damn, what a fine game that was.

But the author is pissed they didn't respect his IP integrally.  Well, frankly, playing a novel is kind of boring, and I felt Geralt of Rivia was in all ways the same as in the books.  But to each their own.

Anyway, their new Cyberpunk game looks great, but lots of things can happen.  They had to start from scratch for all their characters this time, with no guidelines.

[FunkMonk]

I played some RDR2 tonight and I was struck how different I feel when I'm playing that game versus when I was playing Anthem last week. The world of RDR2 feels alive, real, and immersive. Its characters are fully-fleshed out people, and the dialogue is well written. Anthem's world feel generic and born in a board room, and it's characters are one-note and boring, if not outright annoying half the time.

I know they're different genres, but still... It's funny to see the different directions Rockstar and Bioware took over the past 20 years. The studio that popularized extreme video game violence on city streets now has some of the best writing in the industry while the studio that virtually created the narrative-driven CRPG is reduced to giving players two false dialogue choices in a mediocre third-person shooter.

[Syt]

On the streams I watched the in mission dialogue lines were possibly the most depressing thing. The unengaging banter sounded pretty much like the fake multiplayer voice chat that game companies like to put in E3 game trailers and which makes you cringe because it's so unnatural.

[Grey Fox]

Anthem wise, what I disliked from the betas, was that for a looter shooter there is not a lot of loot & looting. Finding out what your loot is also very very slow.