Patrick and Cado both saw Natalie Watson’s Mario movie, and Patrick is psyched it passed the “can I watch this 6 million times” parenting test. Ren is checking out Everspace 2, a promising arcade-y space combat game, and an ambitious fan-made expansion to Darkest Dungeon, Black Reliquary, that goes in a different direction from the sequel. Of course, Rob’s got buyer’s remorse around certain office upgrades, alongside some doors he hasn’t opened in Resident Evil 2 Remake. Separately, Patrick wrapped up the Resident Evil 4 remake, where Ren is absolutely loving her choice to play the game on hardcore difficulty.
Rob’s story of missing the Magnum in RE2 reminds me of my pain of missing the shotgun in Metal Gear Solid 3. I guess I just didn’t go inside the right bunker, but that shotgun really would have made my life better.
Just staring off into oblivion like Professor Farnsworth wondering about the Finglonger, except its that one gun you missed in that PlayStation game.
EDIT: Deeply sad they changed the fizzled awkward attempt at a Bond movie one-liner ending in RE4 Remake.
I don’t think anything Cloud Imperium does can be called a success until they release a finished game. They are not alone in their “transparency”. Paradox puts out weekly updates about in-development features for all their grand strategy games. That has not stopped the community from being a bunch of whiny babies, nor has it prevented Paradox from releasing bad and broken products.
I also find the talk about all the technical innovations in their game to be hollow. Video game development is not like scientific research. Unless they are developing an engine that they are going to license or releasing in-depth documentation all of those innovations is confined to as-yet unfinished games. The state of the art has also changed a lot since the Star Citizen started development and will continue to change. I am fairly certain that Rockstar, with their functionally unlimited amount of money, is also doing wild stuff with object states for GTA 6.
I just finished up Diablo (1997) and you can throw anything on the ground and it will still be there later. In multiplayer the state of stuff on the ground is shared between players (albeit not saved between sessions, though I’m sure I’ve played survival games that do that). There’s a gulf - technical and practical - between stuff like that and what is supposedly being implemented in Star Citizen, but I agree claims about its revolutionary tech ring hollow.
All the technical wizardry in the world means little if the game it’s wrapped in isn’t fun or interesting to play, and right now there isn’t even a game.
Editing to flesh out this train of thought: during this segment I kept thinking of Elite Dangerous. As I believe Cado mentioned on the pod, they added the ability to land on planets! And in a later expansion, get out of your ship and walk around! It’s been years since I played Elite so I don’t know if those features are well implemented (I did tool around in a moon buggy a little but that was as far as I got) but it’s the kind of stuff Star Citizen has long been making promises about and delivering little. In the meantime, games like Elite Dangerous, No Man’s Sky, and (potentially) Starfield are delivering a lot of Star Citizen’s raison d’être without the same limitless crowdfunding budget and starship sale grift.
Involving a community in development is an absolute art. It takes a lot more than putting out development logs/videos and then sifting through the outrage of people who mostly only read the title of the post (or went out of the way to misinterpret what you did say for internet points).
It does seem to work sometimes:
Subnautica and Hades famously used Early Access to build great games via crowd feedback.
Amplitude’s (Endless Legend) corny (but effective) Games2Gether thing seems to work pretty well too.
Absolutely. The point I was trying to make is that transparency is not an inherent virtue in game development. Well run early access can have fantastic results or a great game can be announced and released on the same day.
The more I consider it the more I think more journalists should scrutinize Star Citizen more. I don’t think it’s being deliberately run as a scam, but in all outward appearances it kind of is one.
