there are people in this thread who are putting forward the argument that it is–i’m not sure why we need to pretend someone who says this is a Degenerate AI User peddling clickbait or any other number of goofy charges.
Not even close. As others pointed out, this is definitely recency bias. Maybe 1-2 games this year will become “classics”. There are years out there with 7-10+ games like that.
Games wise, very likely. There are way too many 2023 games that I bought (that’s on sale) that I haven’t even touched yet, and still more heavy hitters that I’m waiting for a bigger discount (e.g. Alan Wake 2, Baldur’s Gate 3, Yakuza Gaiden, Spider-Man 2, etc). It’s not only newer IPs, there are many games based on older IPs that are well received, e.g. Dead Space, FF16, RE4, Armored Core 6, etc.
Game devs wise, it’s probably one of the worse. There’a already more than 9000 layoffs, with many studios shuttered. Half of them probably came from Embracer Group. We are probably gonna be seeing a rapidly shrinking number of mid-size games within the next 5 years.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Remember for the first half of the year every new release competed with the last to be “the worst release of all time”. The second half of the year was spectacular though!
you could have just googled this–and the answer is no, you’re either accidentally making something up wholesale here or confusing this with High on Life, a completely unrelated game which was made by a studio he helped found but which he resigned from.
You're thinking of High On Life, the FPS metroidvania from last year. Hi-Fi Rush is the cel shaded character action game where you're essentially playing a Saturday morning cartoon version of Devil May Cry in time with music.
No, not even remotely. The biggest game of the year was an antiquated cRPG, followed by a bunch of sequels and remakes. The industry as a whole has been rocked with scandal after scandal, with the most recent being the large, widespread Christmas layoffs. Innovative gameplay is now something that completely eludes AAA studios, who only seem to know how to regurgitate trends popularized by better games.
2023 was another shite year for gaming, and rewarding it with brain-dead articles like this is why 2024 probably won’t be any better.
To me, it fell into the same trap basically every cRPG falls into; late game combat is a chore. Once the number of enemies and skills you have to juggle gets high enough, you can’t realistically use real-time on the harder fights, but you can run into so many enemies that turn-based takes forever.
I don’t even really mean that as a criticism of Larian, since nobody else ever managed to fix that issue either. It’s a big reason why the genre died off for so long.
Real-time isn't an option at all in BG3, and RTWP always felt messy to me anyway, even as I'm now playing Pillars of Eternity. Especially in a lot of those old Infinity Engine games, it felt like it incentivized devs to add more trash mobs, as opposed to paying closer attention to pacing and encounter design.
I totally apologize, you’ve unlocked a memory. It’s so good in KOTOR that my brain doesn’t remember it’s a cRPG. I’m really hoping that if it gets a remake, it keeps all the guts of the original combat system, and doesn’t get simplified to a toggle between real time and pause.
"Antiquated" is certainly not a word I've heard anyone describe BG3 with until now. Personally, this is the first year in a long time that AAA has spoken to me, because they haven't been catering to me much for the past number of years.
I mean, Larian isn’t even a AAA studio. They’re still technically an independent studio, though with the success and polish of Divinity I think most would have considered them AA even before BG:3. Also you’d need a lot of evidence to convince me that any cRPG isn’t a product of antiquated design, there’s a reason the genre completely died off. From my experience playing it, even Larian couldn’t figure out how to make combat with 20+ enemies feel fun, a problem nearly every cRPG has had for years.
The genre didn’t die off though. It may have become a niche, but died isn’t the right description. Not saying that means you should like it, just that it has been in the background for a very long time.
I'd consider them a AAA studio, at least at this point. BG3 had a budget of $100M, a team of 400 people, and if I remember correctly, a 30% stake from Tencent. I think they count now.
As for antiquated, they added emergent design elements on top of a solid CRPG foundation and married that with a level of production value that we typically associate with RPGs that had to tone down their RPG systems, like Mass Effect or Cyberpunk, which is why I'm having a hard time meeting you on that word. If I was going to assign reasons to why CRPGs died off (only for about 10 years at that), I'd say it was because people were chasing that production value, but the audience still hungered for the depth that their predecessors offered. I had a ton of fun in the BG3 combat encounters with 20+ enemies. I love XCOM, and I thought BG3's combat encounters were more fun than anything I played in XCOM.
I’d even say the genre never died, just became a little more niche. I think the ARPG kind of dominated there for a bit, but CRPGs still existed. The time between Baldur’s Gate 2 and Dragon Age: Origins was only 9 years. There were several games between those games that I quite enjoyed (Arcanum, Fallout Tactics, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2, and more). I realize that wasn’t your argument at all, just wanted to add a little more weight to what you were getting across
I haven't played DA:O to know if it counted, but I do know it was at least trying to tap into that lineage a bit. I was mostly going from NWN/KOTOR-ish to the Kickstarter boom that birthed Shadowrun, Wasteland, and Torment successors, among others.
Not saying you‘re wrong, but your arguments are weird. cRPGs are obviously not dead, and I‘ve encountered a group of more than 10 enemies maybe a handful of times. And, subjectively, that was fun.
I mean you’ve got Ocarina of Time, Baldur’s Gate 1, Half Life, Banjo Kazooie, Final Fantasy VII, Resident Evil 2, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Sonic Adventure, Pokemon Red and Blue (in the US, Yellow dropped that year in Japan), Goldeneye 007, Metal Gear Solid, Spyro The Dragon, Starcraft, the first Thief game, Xenogears, Unreal (as in Unreal Engine), Crash Bandicoot 3, Gran Turismo 1 (in North America and the EU), Tekken 3, Beatmania, Marvel Vs. Capcom, Mario Party 1, Tribes 1, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, Need For Speed III: Hot Pursuit (aka the first good one), Fallout 2, Gex: Enter The Gecko, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six, Castlevania: Symphony of The Night, Jazz Jackrabbit 2…
Suffice it to say that a lot of wildly important game franchises started that year, and several older ones were reborn in 3D for the first time.
I have read and used the term “The Jackpot” to describe the current era of human life because of the overwhelming choice of every movie ever, every show ever, every song ever, every play ever, every game every everything being available all the time in my domicile plus many of us get get to pooh indoors which is nice/antibiotics.
Because contrary to the opinion of most terminally online people, media consumption is a very tiny part of life and happiness. It’s literally non-essential.
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