HolyDuckTurtle

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 love how parkplace is literally the kind of single-minded insanity this article talks about (which is significantly longer than 2 paragraphs btw)

Like, skimming through their articles and you get stuff like this https://thatparkplace.com/wish-actor-harvey-guillen-says-he-believes-disney-will-make-a-queer-princess-in-his-lifetime/ where they relay the quotes then immediately jump to:

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.

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.

That said, the point still stands. This game needs the most powerful gaming hardware (e.g. Ryzen X3D series and RTX 4090) on “recommended” settings and 1080p to get averages above 60fps, which is wild. There’s a rather dedicated fellow on reddit who does detailed performance tests after each patch.

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.

He’s been dealing with them for years. Probably just finally got worn down enough to say “fuck it, not worth the stress”

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.

The moment I saw HDRP mentioned I thought “Yup, that’d do it”

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.

It’s been genuinely distressing to see people condoning such horrific behaviour. Thank you for the small dose of sanity.

There is no system in the world, religeous or otherwise, safe from the dangers of radicalization.

You are supporting the rape and murder of ordinary people. Nothing justifies this behaviour. Especially not with the pathetic “but what if any of these people could go on to become the new Hitler? Checkmate!” line.

I don’t know if you’re a troll who thinks this is funny, or something worse. Either way, it needs to stop.

I do not believe it to be an outright scam. However, it is horribly managed and I do consider the funding model to be predatory.

The whole “pledge” store should not be a thing at this stage IMO. It’s just a cash shop they can justify huge prices with. It’s actively contributed to the scope creep by introducing new vehicle roles, which they sometimes admit to not having designed gameplay for yet. Nor does it currently tell you if you can actually rent or buy the ship in-game (subject to progress wipes). Heck, the closest thing to a scam they’ve had recently was a “new starter bundle” of in-game gear that you lose upon your first death / unrecoverable body. This is a game where 80% of your deaths are to bugs or unintuitive behaviour.

They also keep trying to change their standards to match modern games. Ships have gone through multiple reworks which take months for a single ship. A sensible dev would lock that in and commit to releasing under those standards. It’s been pointed out that with the current rate of progress, they’ll still be releasing currently announced ships into the 2030s.

That’s not even mentioning the single player component, Squadron 42, which got indefinitely delayed a few years back before a major demo showcase which never materialised. Supposedly, it’s been scrapped and re-done more than once.

Their last big chance to show they’ve pulled things together is going to be the upcoming CitizenCon (yes, it has one) where they’ll supposedly be making a big Squadron 42 announcement. A former customer service employee, who recently criticised the company’s spending practices, claimed they’d taken a much more serious approach to the scope creep and that we’d see some results of that towards the end of this year.

I’m not holding my breath though. They’ve been known to create bullshit for presentations before (e.g the infamous sand worm) and I absolutely would not be surprised if Chris Roberts feels pressured to one-up Starfield.

As a side note, does anyone else get the impression this article was written by an AI? It repeatedly lists of buzzword features, like the Hangar module which hasn’t been relevant for years, and barely discusses what the game is actually like.

Yeah, in particular them saying now “You will keep the license of the version you use” rings very hollow when they literally showed they can retract that whenever they want ANd get a lawyer to defend that move in no uncertain terms.

I’ve actually been really enjoying it. It’s a pleasant universe to just get absorbed in.

Sure, it’s got a lot of very valid complaints (performance, UX etc.) but they matter less to me the more I get into it. Writing is not groundbreaking, but it gets pretty good. Since very good voice acting from otherwise random NPCs.

Also the first game I’ve played that lets me use non-binary pronouns as a third option, rather than just Gendered or not. Very cool and I hope to see more games do that.

I’d say the most disappointing thing is how straightforward almost every quest is. They don’t do what Obsidian does in games like New Vegas and Outer Worlds where lots of quests have multiple resolutions, some hidden. In this game if it’s not in the objective list it’s usually not an option. It’s the typical Bethesda experience of course, rather than Obsidian’s, so it’s still nice for what it is.

It’s the closest I’ve personally felt to exploring and interacting with the worlds of Mass Effect 1 and Knights of the Old Republic in a long time. It’s got that sense of wander about it for me.

I hear Godot’s own scripting language is preferable to C# if you’re willing to learn it.

Yeah the base colour tones are absolutely nuts. I spent a lot of time on launch just trying to figure out if my HDR display was bugging out or something.

Very weird how those were absent from release, but I’m glad they’re getting added. Good to see I’m not the only one who found the lack of an “eat” alt-option annoying as well!

Meaningful connection. A lot of these people are in these places because that’s what they lack and think they’ve found.

Similarly to cults, few people escape these mindsets without somebody reaching out to help them.

The truly terrifying thing is, as the article shows, a lot of them are already retreating from their loved ones. After that, who is left to be able to help them out?