I'd say it's a matter of preference than anything "next-gen". I really liked using a hybrid approach with the Steam Controller a few years back for some third person games with archery, but it has its own drawbacks and complexities so I could see why people would prefer the simplicity of the good ol' analogue stick.
I had to learn more about it after that short clip and found an overview page which is fun to read if your browser can translate it: https://www.dentsubo.net/circle/spe256.html
I'd go as far to say Heavensward may be the benchmark for whether people will enjoy the rest of the game. It's where the voice acting and general presentation upgrades to a level that, to me, remained consistent throughout the rest of the MSQ.
Most importantly, at least to me, you get new plot twists to some earlier events which tells you A LOT about the narrative structure going forward. There's a reveal during the middle of Heavensward that basically killed narrative tension for me throughout the rest of the MSQ.
It's not that their direction there is bad, I had just gotten swept up in the "omg it gets so DARK" hype so I was dissapointed when it consistently walked back major events. It took me until the middle of Endwalker to realise "oh, right, that's not the kind of story and experience they want to tell".
Keeping details minimal because I can't for the life of me get spoiler tags to work on kbin:
In the middle of Heavensward we learn that a very dramatic death sequence that led to some major events was a ruse. The character is alive and things will quickly return to normal.
I get what they wanted, but big fakeouts like that are not my thing. It felt like the consequences were walked back so I could never take the rest of the story seriously. Anything bad that happens could just be reverted.
Endwalker has a point after a lot of stuff goes down where I was thinking "Yeah this is edgy and all, but they really held back from doing anything actually substantial" then we get introduced to a bunch of cuteness and silly things. It took until then to really settle with me that they mostly want to tell fun and uplifting stories, so making stuff look dark and dramatic but keeping the lasting impact down is more of an objective of theirs than a narrative flaw.
I can appreciate that, and a lot of other things about the game and its story, but that in particular is just not for me.
If this does indeed happen it’s likely to lose The Walt Disney Company millions of dollars as seen with Lightyear.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Yes, it is perfectly possible that the studio's writing work might be a bit shit, I dunno. If you find they are consistently involved with writing you don't enjoy, then sure, whatever. The point of this article is the absolute insanity this kind of stuff gets taken to, like it's a massive conspiracy rather than just the work of another studio managing the struggles and interests of our age.
To quote the 2+n paragraph article:
It’s a conspiracy theory that checks all the boxes: It conveniently explains pretty much everything happening right now, ties it back to organizations of which people are understandably suspicious, links it to a much larger ongoing panic (DEI), validates preconceived notions like “go woke, go broke,” sprinkles in a few kernels of truth regarding powerful interests, and – most importantly – provides a clear and identifiable enemy. It’s also almost entirely bullshit.
While diving under the ice in McMurdo Sound, some of the team came across giant Antarctic sea spiders that appeared to be mating. So, they gently collected the animals and transferred them to observation tanks to figure out how the heck these enigmatic creatures procreate.
I imagine LTT did that for meme purposes more than anything else. Threadrippers are not built for games. They're built for production workloads which don't translate to gaming performance.
I started with Ubuntu and slowly tried getting used to Gnome over the course of a few months (mainly using windows, every now and then hopping into Ubuntu when not gaming). I learned of KDE, tried it in Kubuntu, and it all instantly clicked for me. I switched over in about a week and haven't had much reason to boot Windows since.
It turned out that front-facing experience was incredibly important to me.
I haven’t heard anything about them in quite a while. It’s like they were a hot-button topic of conversation, and then everyone just stopped talking about them. If they’re still around, what would be the reason they seemingly disappeared from the news?
I can still feel it when I think the vast majority of these people are vulnerable individuals who have been led to be believe they're being victimized. Things like QAnon provide a the right-wing equivalent of a safe space and community for them.
It's got to be tough seeing it slowly tumble away.
VRR is fantastic for games, I really notice the difference and I use Wayland because of it.
The downside to that is (from my understanding) Wayland forces some form of Vsync on everything, so if you don't have a VRR monitor then games can become very stuttery and have noticeable input lag. There is an option to "force lowest latency" which supposedly allows screen tearing for things like games, though I didn't test how well it worked myself.
If people are interested in experimenting, then VRRTest is a great utility to see what VRR is doing and to test various settings.
Over the last few years my family and I have binged all of Star Trek, then moved on to Star Trek adjacent shows like The Orville and Stargate. At the moment we’re not really watching anything sci-fi. I was wondering if anyone had recommendations for similar shows (or maybe some books) that fill the void left by Star Trek. In...
I liked it in general, especially after the first seasn. However, I still get frustrated at how Michael-centric it is (it feels like every time a character has an opportunity to do something cool on their own, they always need help from Michael somehow) and tend to dislike the galaxy being at stake every damn time.
Strange New Worlds delivers on that for me though, so it's good to have different options!
I worked with a startup once where we had individual company emails and had a good giggle at how different the spam is compared to personal stuff! Mostly in our case it was dubious offers of office space, furniture and other such services.
Jedi Survivor's performance issues are annoying but I wouldn't call it "unplayable" by any stretch. It depends on how you define it. My definition of that would be either "literally doesn't launch / hard crashes consistently" or "massively fluctuating frametime on appropriate hardware and settings that makes the intended gameplay too difficult to enjoy".
In my experience, it's mostly traversal stutter and TAA ghosting at low frames in the giant hub level which you don't really get during actual combat. I also partially inflicted that on myself by choosing to play on max settings with RT and no FSR. I use a R5 3600, RX 7900XT and 32GB Ram.
Obviously, your mileage and personal tolerances will vary. Definitely consider the refund window and use the big city vistas of the first area to judge if you'll enjoy it at that performance / quality level you choose. The art direction is really good so I think it will hold up on lower settings.
I think from their perspective Tuvok and Neelix weren't "dead", which was why they were more inclined to "correct" the situation at hand and save their crewmates while they still had the chance to do so.
Regardless, it's a fucked up decision, I don't envy it.
It can be an indicator of post-launch performance. In this case, it performed well at launch but has now stablised like most games do. By my metrics, 30k a day is pretty good at a glance. You'd have to find more actual comparisons to make informed conclusions though, which you sort of find if you go through Forbes' source which is a quote tweet of an article from GamingBolt ( just link the article lmao):
Cyberpunk 2077 may have seen a major new update and a paid expansion, Phantom Liberty, but that was in September. It’s sitting at 23rd in the most-played games chart on Steam, with a 24-hour peak of 36,246. Starfield is currently in 43rd place behind games like Elden Ring, Valheim, Stardew Valley and Terraria.
There are more paragraphs with the same vibe, with the obvious disclaimer that it's on game pass too. But there's a number of other things that would go into an actual performance analysis. e.g, are the "competing" games currently on sale? What other factors affect the current landscape of games played? What do each of these games' numbers look like in the same time period following their launch?
That's the kind of data the publishers have access to and do actual analysis on. I think this reporting is just chasing a trend for engagement. 22 - 30k is not bad for a singleplayer game without mod support (yet) which people will pick up, play, and put down. I don't see anything to indicate it's "in trouble" (we'd probably have heard by now of internal planning changes at Bethesda if that were the case).
It's a good, but flawed game. I got really into it for a month and developed a love/hate relationship with it, but overall enjoyed that time.
That's as somebody who loves sci-fi and got really into building my ship. I was pretty much the target audience so I may have been more willing to immerse myself in it than others would care for.
Also, it was super refreshing to me playing a game where my companions are all in their 30s with a lot of history. It feels quite mature in that sense. Which I guess is why the main story really disappointed me when you get an antagonist who feels like a 12-year old who just discovered the Wikipedia page for Nihilism, but hey ho.
For me it's not so much the travel; the main story tries to sell this idea of exploring the unknown, but literally everything you find is a known quantity in some form or another.
I think usage of that particular phrase was probably overkill or an oversight, but I agree with her that criticising the actions of Israel's government is not Antisemitic.
It reminds me of when a trans representative was censured for condemning restrictions on gender-affirming care using the phrase "you will have blood on your hands" and opponents jumped on that to say she was out of line. It gives me a strong impression that their motivations go far beyond the language used, using excessive pedantry as an excuse.
I wouldn't say "more worthwhile". But comparing them (in my personal opinion): Outer Worlds trades variety and scale for a more narratively dense world.
Biggest thing is you get significantly more choice in questlines. Bethesda's approach in Starfield is very railroad-y, almost all the big questlines end up picking between two distinct options while leaving you thinking "you know we could just do a third one, or both depending on the circumstances". They also, outside of maybe one or two circumstances, have zero opportunity for creative player intervention. If it's not explicitly mentioned as a quest objective, it's not an option. e.g. No, you can't use the EM gun on this guy to bring him in and face justice, the objective is to kill him, so you will kill him and his guards too. No, you can't go and talk to your superiors for backup before confronting somebody over a major crime. Stuff like that.
Outer Worlds is like Fallout New Vegas in that the world responds to your actions as well as dialogue choices. Every NPC is killable, and they've written a number of scenarios (some of them absolutely gut wrenching) for killing certain people at certain points. Big quests tend to present two options which both have dire consequences, but by doing other quests, talking to other characters, you can uinlock additional options or improve how things will turn out. e.g. You can uncover an internal power struggle in a faction and help choose its leader, which changes how a peace talk can turn out with another faction.
Outer Worlds also gives you more tangible consequences for your actions, like changing the feel of an early town if you deprive it of power. The epilogue is significantly more detailed than the one Starfield gives you, covering a lot of minor quests and each major character you've interacted with.
None of that is to say though, that Starfield does not have a rich and interesting world with cool characters. I've loved my time with both games and I think SF has more fun combat gameplay, obviously both are similar gun-based RPG games where you mag dump bullet sponge enemies, but hey ho. SF also let me build and fly a ship, go where I want with it and take pretty pictures, which has been a lot of fun. Starfield may have less quest choice, but it offers more variety in what those stories cover, compared to OW's more narrow focus.
I will also say that SF made a pretty bold narrative decision in its main story that I was not expecting from a Bethesda game. Even though I have a love/hate relationship with how it developed after that, and think the moment itself could have been handled better, I still respect it. OW also really hams up the evil corpo humour in ways some people might find annoying and difficult to take seriously.
A measure of worth between the two games really comes down to what you're looking for in a space-themed RPG. Personally, I think they complement each other very well as distinct experiences.
Steam Deck Motion Sensors Being Worked On For Linux's HID-Steam Driver (www.phoronix.com)
[News] Somebody managed to coax the Gab AI chatbot to reveal its prompt (infosec.exchange)
[Whatcookie] Why is PS3 emulation so fast: RPCS3 optimizations explained (www.youtube.com)
I may have said this before... (lemmy.world)
How A Small Video Game Narrative Studio Wound Up At The Heart Of A Massive, Anti-Woke Conspiracy Theory - Aftermath (aftermath.site)
Sweet Baby Inc doesn’t even remotely do what many think it does, but on the modern internet, that doesn’t matter
We Finally Know How Giant Sea Spiders Come Into This World (www.sciencealert.com)
Frustrations with Cities Skylines 2 are starting to boil over among city builder fans and content creators alike: "It's insulting to have a game release that way" (www.gamesradar.com)
Hot take (lemmy.ml)
Is QAnon still a thing?
I haven’t heard anything about them in quite a while. It’s like they were a hot-button topic of conversation, and then everyone just stopped talking about them. If they’re still around, what would be the reason they seemingly disappeared from the news?
I don't... (sh.itjust.works)
More things like Star Trek?
Over the last few years my family and I have binged all of Star Trek, then moved on to Star Trek adjacent shows like The Orville and Stargate. At the moment we’re not really watching anything sci-fi. I was wondering if anyone had recommendations for similar shows (or maybe some books) that fill the void left by Star Trek. In...
This fucking scourge, when you own a business. Even if it's the top result in a search in your area (lemmy.world)
Is PC Dead Space and Jedi Survivor abandoned by EA?
The stutter issues in Dead Space and bugs in JS. They are basically unplayable on PC right?
This was inevitable. (startrek.website)
Reach out and touch them (lemmy.world)
On Starfield’s ‘Plummeting’ Playercount 80 Days After Launch (www.forbes.com)
Beloved League of Legends dev quits social media after “death threats” (www.pcgamesn.com)
More people are playing Skyrim on Steam than Starfield (www.eurogamer.net)
Starfield's been left out to dry at The Game Awards—and even dedicated fans are 'not terribly surprised' (www.pcgamer.com)
BioWare's endless cryptic teases for Mass Effect and Dragon Age aren't just frustrating, they're arrogant (www.pcgamer.com)
The studio's acting like it's on a victory lap, when it should still be on its apology tour.
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Why Cities: Skylines 2 performs poorly (blog.paavo.me)
The Outer Worlds sells 5 million copies (twitter.com)
https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/f981524a-e724-4eda-a8c4-0bdedb90c783.png