It had a few graphical upgrades through the huge content updates it got year after year.

Now there is more biome diversity, more decorative flora, better underground environments, more creature types…

If anything, they tried so much to populate it that sometimes I feel it’s lacking some truly desolate environments. “Empty” planets are uncommon, and even those are mostly cluttered with weird stuff and “anomalous” living things.

I’ve not played Forbidden West, but I’ve played all of Zero Dawn. I’ll just say, as much as I like the game (I do, quite a bit), it’s bad at being open-world.

Most narrow paths are only related to quests, and if you try exploring them before you need to go there the game punishes you by making it a chore to go and to leave for no gain. Also, the terrible message “you’re out of bound, turn back now or we reset to your last save” is one of the worst failure at world design ever. It pops up constantly if you’re just trying to explore.

And yes, I tried playing HUD-free for a bit (I had a great experience doing that on Breath of the Wild). As you said it’s almost impossible, the environment, while looking good, is way too messy to spot the small details you’re supposed to… Unless you turn on the magic compass and GPS.

In other games, paths and important items are highlighted with lighting and clear and functional visual cues. Beside the infamous yellow paint, HZD does almost none of that efficiently.

Also there are ultra-popular movies about you.

However they keep messing up how you look on purpose, because since they’ve learned more about you, they think all the made-up bullshit was cooler than the real you.

[De Beers] stating that the economics of lab-grown diamonds for jewelry were not sustainable.

“That’s cheating, we can’t throttle the market of these shiny rocks! The indistinguishable ones you need are still those we’re killing people for!”

I hope one day you can make a perfect gemstone for the cost of a burger, so people just stop caring about them at all.

Even if it’s self-imposed, that still sounds like a terrible idea to me.

I sure do. A lot of it is Beat Saber, but it is quite a lot.

I’ll get a PS5 in like, 4 years. Maybe. If I find something I absolutely need on it.

Nice “crossover” Microsoft. Know what, put some Fable or Hi-Fi Rush in Call of Duty next, I’m sure that’s what the fans really want.

I am sure marketing people have concluded I was in the minority, but I developed a complete aversion to clicking on something with that kind of title.

Oh yeah, this trend that is killing games. Respectfully, fuck off, gameranx.

By searching that, I’ve just learned about the concept of architectural follies…

That case is batshit crazy, but there are worse ways to spend a fortune I guess.

This is what bothered me in the original discussion, making it seem like being in STEM somehow doesn’t prepare you at all for critical thinking in general. On the contrary, I believe too there are people who develop it in part because of the S in there. It’s not necessary, but it’s an important tool.

Hopefully people don’t need a college degree in literature to understand basic subtext. We ask kindergarteners to do that with Dr Seuss.

Sorry, dude, what you said must have been very interesting, but at some point I just stopped reading to optimize a watermelon workflow instead. Weird.

Okay, I’m all for good, complete education, but blaming people not understanding media on “too much STEM” is a bit ridiculous.

Foamstars was a new IP, so they didn’t count on brand name to carry this one.

Unless they thought “Square Enix” would be enough to hype it, and yeah, for a game that far away from their usual, that would be completely disconnected from reality.

Paraphrasing : those expectations are not too high, they’re the direct result of the games’ budget.

Yeah, okay, let’s admit that for a second. It’s not like they have no control over the scale and budget of their own games. Seems to me this still counts as unrealistic expectations…

Yeah. It was revealed mostly through a couple of “scrolls”, rewards in the single player mode.

There was a human fossil (somehow petrified while playing Wii U) dated 12,000 years ago, and documents from scientists warning about global warming and oceans rising.

Last scroll was a message from a scientist, “the professor”, in the middle of the big extinction event 10,000 years before Splatoon. At that point all land life would disappear very soon. The professor did the logical thing and saved his cat.

Fun fact : this was the (slightly hidden) premise for Splatoon.

Those happy, colourful descendants of squids and other marine animals are playing paintball over the ruins of our civilization, long after human extinction.

They worship an old fax machine they found, too, for some reason.

The most baffling part of it is how it looks like zero attempt was made to attribute credibility to sources.

Using Reddit as a source was bad enough (of course, they paid for it, so now they must feel like they need to use this crap). But one of the examples in the article is just parroting stuff from The Onion.

Edit : I’ve since learned that the Onion article was probably seen as “trustworthy” by the AI because it was linked on a fracking company’s website (as an obvious joke, in a blog article).

If all it takes for a source to be validated is one link with no regard for context, I think the point stands.

If you don’t want people revealing the stuff they find, maybe don’t include assets you’re not using yet in your compiled game. At least not what you want to keep a secret.

Are they serious, they’re going to blame people for discovering sound clips that were left there unused for 2 years? Do they just enjoy wasting people’s disk space or something?

Talarico has been milking investors with the intellivision brand since 2017, while delivering absolutely nothing.

So sure, it works for 2024, but it’s been true for a while.

Buy Game on Platform A.

Go to Platform B and tell them : see, I bought Game already, let me play it here too.

Platform B : “who are you and why should I care?”

Proving your digital ownership never was the problem. The problem is those platforms are different companies and have no reason to honor a purchase from somewhere else.