Personally I’ve never been a huge fan of JRPGs, Some I’ve enjoyed, but rarely will I ever play them twice.
Also I think there’s a fair argument to be made that if you cannot play a role, if there are no choices to be made on how you play it, it’s not really a role playing game. It’s action adventure if it’s a linear story with only one way to play it.
I hadn’t even thought about preferences for photorealism being a streamlining thing, but it does fit the idea.
I think it’s also a risk aversion thing as well. Few people will complain about a game looking realistic, so it’s very low risk from the point of view of publishers/investors/marketing. Most people will prefer a unique and stylized look that meshes with the game, but investors and marketing teams can’t be sure in any given case, so it’s written off as a risk.
For me, what I like to see in an RPG, is the ability to play a game multiple times and have notably different experiences, both in terms of play-style and narrative. It should make me want to go back and play again to see what I missed or how else I could do it.
The idea of having multiple ways to deal with a quest, and having that impact further story beats in meaningful ways is what I want to see. What i don’t want to see is meaningless scale full of nothing but filler.
I don’t think dagger fall is the best example because much of its size was just procedurally generated landscapes. The ability to actually specialize and complete quests in unique ways, as well as a branching story, is great. Mindlessly massive map, not so much.
I think, at this point, most of the nostalgia is for Skyrim, despite being the newest one in the series, it is nearly 14 years old now and way more people have played it. It had issues, and lost a lot of what was great in Morrowind, but it’s a beacon of quality compared to what came after.
It’s started to impact their success though, starfield has only sold like 3 million compiles so far, compared to the 12.5 million of fallout 4 on launch day. Hell, Morrowind has sold 4 million copies, albeit over 23 years.
It’s probably to late for Bethesda to turn things around, but, it’s a great example of what not to do for other studios and publishers.
It’s a question of longer development time with smaller teams, or short timelines with big teams. A small team working on content in series is more cohesive, but, requires a longer timeline. A big team can do a lot in a short time by making content in parallel, but this necessitates that content be siloed to prevent needing constant revision. A few long quest lines with lots of outcomes, or a bunch independent quests with simple outcomes.
A small team working longer will cost the same as a big team working shorter (generally speaking). But the priority is short timelines, for the sake of chasing trends and packing the latest greatest tech in. This same kind of priority also leads to spectacular failures of long timeline games, like “black flag” or “duke nukem forever “. The issue there is not the long timeline, but the constant changes in priority to chase trends.
Would be nice if those cushy piles of money got in to the hands of the local orgs doing material good. Might convince people that the party isn’t just there to Hoover up money based on fear.
part of the change that needs to be made is to start incorporating organizations and groups that have actual local presence in to the planning structure, and stop relying on consultant groups who have little to no direct connections to people on the ground. Groups that do something in communities and are active beyond just the election cycle, something along the lines of food banks, unions, and non profits that do actual material good for people, not just write white papers.
They have much more trust, and much better understanding of what the needs and concerns are, rather than people who’s main source of information on issues is opinion pieces in nationally published “news”.
It’s not necessarily even more expensive to develop, it just impossible to do with the management techniques brought in recent years. Techniques brought in with the intention of streamlining personnel management and to make lay offs easier.
This is story is rage bate for the news media to obscure the attempt to purge the civil service to make space for cronies.
Just put out an ultimatum to 94% of civil servants. “Work from the office or else be fired” including “paid leave” until September.
From what I know, they’re lumping a broad range in to this “end of work from home” order. Lot of people included work remotely as part of their job, such as USGS people who are doing survey work in the field or staff at embassies.
Would be nice if we could see the same kind of chain of response from other models.
I’d love to see what other implicit biases other groups have built in to their models.
Wonder if someone anonymous could maybe re add those bike lines quietly.
I really do want to see risc V succeed in the desk top and laptop space. The fact that there are only two major architectures and both are owned by companies is a serious potential issue. Especially if they both ended up being owned by one company somehow.