I get Game Pass when it’s a dollar and play whatever interests me for that month, cancel and won’t think about it again until it goes on sale for a dollar. I’m not their target audience for any of this, which is fine. Sony wow’d me pretty good with their PS5 conference because a lot of what they showed was at least in-engine. A lot of Microsoft’s was just pre-rendered teaser, which doesn’t do much for me anymore.
I’m settling for getting a PS5 eventually. I’m at least more curious to see system-level stuff on that platform than I am with the Series X.
Oh and Microsoft needs to take another pass at their storefront. It’s poop from a butt.
The biggest announcement for me was really in the pre-show:
Yuji Naka and Naoto Ohshima working with Square Enix of all studios to make a new 3D platformer that has a lot in common with NiGHTS into Dreams. Even the studio’s logo evokes Sonic Team’s logo.
This is super cool, a spoiler FAQ for Tell Me Why that lays out concerns people may have with possible mishandling of LGBTQ themes:
I really hope stuff like this becomes the new norm in games. Why not allow people to spoil themselves if that makes it easier for them to access the work?
Completely agreed. This is like ten thousand times better than all the TLOU2 bullshit where even after release a lot of wikis and stuff still have bogus “leaked” info instead of accurate plot summaries.
Slowly coming to grips with the fact that I just don’t like the Halo games, or Bungie’s general gameplay and level design ethos.
Not Xbox specific but apparently the port announced today of Dragon Quest 11 S is using the downscaled Switch assets, and won’t offer existing owners an upgrade path (similar to Persona 5 Royal). Square-Enix is real frustrating sometimes with how they treat their back-catalogue of games.
Everwild looks really cool, but this is the second time we see it and I still have no idea what the game actually is? I think it’s the game that I’m most curious about.
Avowed looks like totally my shit, especially as who knows when the next TES is coming out (Like 2025?). Love me some first person RPG stuff, and it gave me some LOTR movie vibes in a good way. Again, I wish there was more info about it. This whole showcase was super light on gameplay, which was disappointing.
Part of the reason we haven’t talked a lot about Everwild is because we’re still feeling a lot of these things out. We’re still playing around with gameplay ideas.
I’m always torn on these kinds of things. On the one hand, check out that art style. On the other hand, I feel like “I don’t need to see this right now.” Don’t put in all the hard work to cut a trailer together yet for something if you aren’t sure what it is yet. Take your time and call me when it’s done.
It’s cool that Rare has creative freedom to pursue ideas that don’t have clear analogues to contemporary game structures, like Sea of Thieves being a mechanical exploration of just being a pirate, or this game being about communing with nature in some sense. I’m a little worried that it’ll run into the SoT problem of trying to fill the gap of structure with a very dry skinner box.
Ubisoft owes a bunch to Stalker, and now Stalker gets to owe Ubisoft on making Stalkeresque open worlds approachable and accessible and actually playable, even when being ~hardcore~ about it.
And even the “console dumbed down!!!” types have quieted off now that both design language and tech has evolved to the point where simmy games aren’t actually that rare anymore. Being bound to a controller/console specs doesn’t guarantee any significant bottlenecks, which is incidentally especially good for Stalker’s A-Life shenanigans.
I mean, in a world where Pathologic 2 both exists and exists on major consoles, yeah, now’s absolutely the time for another STALKER coming to an increasingly weird new console gen.
Wow amazing how easy it is for a creative studio to actually offer an ounce of humanity without somehow ruining the narrative by telling you Things Happen In It.
This might also be a way forward on making glibber queer stuff. Queer narratives should absolutely get to explore morbidity, cynicism etc. beyond the straight-friendly version of those things we’ve been permitted, but it’s especially hard to do that for an actual queer audience without coming off as insincere and exploitative, because it’s a natural red flag to see queer characters in certain kinds of tepid situations.
The language of media has not been kind to us, including modern ostensibly liberal-progressive shit, so having a raw “here’s the worst of it with specific examples from wherever it may be” is a pretty awesome idea.
I wasn’t very jazzed about much in the xbox games showcase. Mostly because Halo was the only game that has a launch date. And supposedly I’ll get to play it on PC with games pass and forgo the whole purchase of the xbox one x edition + whatever it is called.
I like Halo, I have loved Halo, but I always want something more from Halo. And I’m not sure what that Halo is. Perhaps it is a more open world Halo where you can literally drive a warthog the entire length of a Halo.I think even when Bungie were in charge of the series they were constantly chasing the ghost of just remaking Combat Evolved. 343 for the most part have tried to do their own thing with the series, but 4 and 5 were quite disappointing, so I’m sort of interested in them going back to the well and perhaps even doubling down on the open world and it’s open ended fire fights.
I’m interested to see more of Fable and Everwild. Over recent months I have jumped into Sea of Thieves in a big way, and Everwild looks like a cross between that and Viva Pinata? I sort of thought about a Fable game without Peter Molyneux, and then I got sad. Fable had it’s flaws but I did love the world.
Oh and Stalker 2 was announced? As if… There’s no way that’ll be good. Right? It’ll just be another Metro.
Overall - I was more jazzed about the PlayStation V reveal. Not that it revealed anything particular next gen either.
