Upcoming games and E3

[Jericho]

Hi All,
I'm still reeling from the huge disappointment of Mass Effect Andromeda.

I'm blasting my way through Borderlands 2 trying to speedrun with shotguns to the head to cleanse myself.

Is anyone aware of anything decent coming up soon, or on the near-ish horizon?

RezRog is out today, I'm hoping for good reviews. Isometric RPG dungeon crawler, where the characters look like a cardboard cutout. It just has a nice look to it.

South Park. Loved the first one, really looking forward to the next installment.


I'm hoping the Todd Howard is going to repeat his 2015 E3 stage show performance with some new juicy Bethesda stuff... But I fear it's too soon for Elder Scrolls, and it will just be Prey DLC and no Todd Howard.


Any good RPGs coming soon? I keep meaning to finish Witcher 3, but I look at that map with it's backlog of tasks and just panic "Where do I begin?!?!"

[Ezarkal]

I'm quite eager for Hellblade, but there's been no official release date yet. Hopefully E3 will bring good tidings this year.
(And hopefully ninja theory won't mess up the ending of this one.)

[pjknibbs]

Looking forward to the Shadow of Mordor sequel later in the year, but I have several games that are already out on my list of stuff to play so no idea when I'll get round that that!

[muppetts]

Looking forward to the Shadow of Mordor sequel later in the year, but I have several games that are already out on my list of stuff to play so no idea when I'll get round that that!

Yeah this, amazed no one has co-opt the Nemisis system into another game yet.

[kurush]

I'm still reeling from the huge disappointment of Mass Effect Andromeda.

Is it so bad? I spent a few hours watching the story on youtube and it is OK. Is the rest of gameplay just horrible?

[pjknibbs]

What killed any plan I had to get Andromeda was learning that the studio which made it have been effectively shot in the head by EA and there's very little prospect of a sequel, yet I believe the game plot is left open-ended on the assumption there will be one--so you'd just be left hanging at the end no matter how good the game is.

I am playing Starpoint Gemini: Warlords which just left Early Access, though--anyone else tried it? It's sort of like Starpoint Gemini 2 but with additional Mount & Blade-style elements.

[Antilogic]

I'm still reeling from the huge disappointment of Mass Effect Andromeda.

Is it so bad? I spent a few hours watching the story on youtube and it is OK. Is the rest of gameplay just horrible?

Well I love it. Not finished it - or even gotten far - yet though.

[Mightysword]

What killed any plan I had to get Andromeda was learning that the studio which made it have been effectively shot in the head by EA and there's very little prospect of a sequel.

I think that's a bit overdramatic, EA Montreal was scaled down and staffs were moving around a bit but I doubt they killed the franchise. ME is still a very popular franchise, and while Andromeda fail to live up to the hype I don't think it's a total flop. Think about it, Dragon Age 2 didn't kill DA, no way Andromeda will kill ME.

They probably withdraw whatever long term support for Andromeda (like DLC w/e) and only leave a small team for technical support, and look at what went wrong. After that I think they gonna boots thing up again. If it's not head by Montreal, it might be handed back to their Edmonton branch, but it'll live.

[RegisterMe]

I am playing Starpoint Gemini: Warlords which just left Early Access, though--anyone else tried it? It's sort of like Starpoint Gemini 2 but with additional Mount & Blade-style elements.

Yeah, I've played quite a bit of it, through early access and on to release. I uninstalled it yesterday. It's got all the "systems ideas" in it that I want, it's just that they get 4/10 rather than 7+/10 .

[Morkonan]

From some of the independent views I've read, SG:Warlords sort of "missed the mark." But, maybe they'll make some changes/additions to bring it up to what the fans were expecting.

For myself, I'm eagerly looking forward to... something. Most of the games that have great expectations for them are in Early Release and getting their polishing coats, I think. "New"... I dunno.

That RezRog game looks promising. I might have to try it. I'd love to find a good, deep, complex, dungeon-delving rpg, squad-based or not.

Meanwhile, I'm gonna start playing Medieval Total War II again, while i wait for something new. Darn wonderful game.

[Mightysword]

Meanwhile, I'm gonna start playing Medieval Total War II again, while i wait for something new. Darn wonderful game.

Probably the TW that hold the dearest memory, in one game I was playing as Genoa I joint a Crusade and took Jerusalem and the surrounding area. I dug in and defended it for a full generation against Arab force and the Golden Horde, fighting multiple battle each years, with fresh force constantly shipped in from Italy. I manipulated the Pope to call other Crusades to other cities in the region so European will send more relief force to distract the local. I think I rebelled like dozens of invasions, until alas the Horde brought up their seige rocket and I had to yield. The young prince who left Italy in his later teen had to leave Jerusalem an old man, it was a sad day.

One of the thing that disappointed me the most is MTW2 was the last TW game that put an emphasis on the RP aspect.

[Morkonan]

...

Probably the TW that hold the dearest memory, in one game I was playing as Genoa I joint a Crusade and took Jerusalem and the surrounding area. I dug in and defended it for a full generation against Arab force and the Golden Horde, fighting multiple battle each years, with fresh force constantly shipped in from Italy. I manipulated the Pope to call other Crusades to other cities in the region so European will send more relief force to distract the local. I think I rebelled like dozens of invasions, until alas the Horde brought up their seige rocket and I had to yield. The young prince who left Italy in his later teen had to leave Jerusalem an old man, it was a sad day.

One of the thing that disappointed me the most is MTW2 was the last TW game that put an emphasis on the RP aspect.

I love those sorts of After Action Reports. MTW2 really lets players develop their own stories and the npc units develop their own histories, their own personalities, and really become "Heroes" for the player.

There are some really epic stories the player can tell while playing that game. Anyone who's played it for very long knows that and that's one of its best features.

One thing I was disappointed in with Empire was the loss of family trees... Even though they didn't really play a huge role in MTW2, I still liked seeing them and using them to fuel my imagination. (Darthmod for ETW brings those back, IIRC, in a sort of ad hoc way.)

[Jericho]

Is it so bad? I spent a few hours watching the story on youtube and it is OK. Is the rest of gameplay just horrible?

It feels like The Phantom Menace while the original trilogy were the original trilogy. Put it that way.

1) The human characters heads stick out of their bodies at 45 degrees. The artists had never seen a human neck before. I can live with it though.

2) The Turians all have bright primary color faceplates. The artists had no idea how to make them subtly shaded.

3) The human faces are fantastic in some lights, and diabolical in other lights. I think different teams did different areas, and all the terrible screenshots you see are from bad lightning setups so they render badly.

4) The maps are all created by 1 team with random buildings thrown around. Then a second bunch says "OK, we'll have a random encounter here, and another one here, and another one here." Just feels awful. Everytime you turn your head, the scene behind you reloads and here comes the 'random' dropship, right on cue, just like every single time.

5) A bunch of humans and a few aliens (and all the krogan) were thrown off the nexus before the story starts. According to the stats of people that I've killed, they must have kicked out a small country's worth of people. It's madness, and doesn't follow from the book Nexus Uprising.

6) Great mystery with unlocking your dad's audio logs, hidden room, another a reverlation. Yet no conclusion. Hopefully DLC.

7) A lot of the script is bad. Really badly written.

Cameo from Liara in some voice messages. This is the worst voice-over I've ever heard. I suspect that bits of it were copy&pasted from bits of the first 3 games. You know how in an action movie they need to grab the voice recording of some guy to get through security, so they play random words to form a sentence? That is what this is like.

"I'm... Dr, Liara.... T'Soni.... Hello... blah blah"

It is like she had the words appearing on her phone at random, without any punctuation or idea of how long a sentence was, so she was just reading them out as they appeared.

The fact that someone thought this was acceptable is the big insult.

9) A lot of voice over work is like that, random soundbite that don't have the correct inflections.

10) Liam's voice actor is dire. He's clearly reading the lines for the first time ever, and they took the first take each time. Painful the way he ends each sentence.

11) They tried to add humor, but didn't hire comedy writers.

12) There is no music. Well, there is, but it is forgettable. In the original trilogy, the music was a character in the game and created an atmosphere. Here it almost absent. You explore the while Nexus in silence. Horrible horrible horrible. (Remember the background music for the Citadel?)

13) Everytime I enter the club on the Nexus, there is silence, and 7 people standing around bored. Sometimes there is an Angaran standing on the stage. I assume he is supposed to be singing or something. The developers have clearly never been to a club.

14) Same story for the other club. No music unless you stand at a specific point.

15) The flophouse! The flophouse! The flophouse! Showed in lots of trailers, and mentioned by lots of people in the game! Clearly, this is going to be a big thing! Nope, just blast your way through. Just another collection of random buildings. They obviously cut some big 'thing' about this area. Maybe a faction system?

16) The whole game just feels cheap, unpolished, built by different teams that had no communication with each other. They took Dragon Age Inquisition, copied it exactly, re skinned it, and made it worse. And this is after they promised that they were not just copying DA:I.

[Ketraar]

4) The maps are all created by 1 team with random buildings thrown around. Then a second bunch says "OK, we'll have a random encounter here, and another one here, and another one here." Just feels awful. Everytime you turn your head, the scene behind you reloads and here comes the 'random' dropship, right on cue, just like every single time.

This more than anything was rather jarring, I call it the Farcry 2 outpost syndrome, where FC2 had the excuse of being the first to do it and then moving on to fix it in 3. All it would have needed for ME:A was to have a look at that and realise how to proceed based on FC2 failings.

But even all the Graphical issues and the rather bad UI, the biggest downer I can see is that it lacks any character, its just a ME(h) open world shooter. And the thing that bothers me the most is that they removed many of the fun and non intrusive mini-games, like planetary survey stuff, and replaced them with boring stuff, like animated planetary transitions that get infuriatingly repetitive after the 3rd time. Also the fetching is rather atrocious, often having the need to fly and land on a planet to just talk to a random NPC that will give a navpoint to another planet, that is clearly put in as time filler to stretch out "content" but really hurts the game imho.

MFG

Ketraar

[pjknibbs]

And the thing that bothers me the most is that they removed many of the fun and non intrusive mini-games, like planetary survey stuff

You have to be the only person I've ever heard of who thought the planet scanning stuff in ME2 was fun...unless you're talking about something else?

[InFlamesForEver]

I'm hoping the Todd Howard is going to repeat his 2015 E3 stage show performance with some new juicy Bethesda stuff... But I fear it's too soon for Elder Scrolls, and it will just be Prey DLC and no Todd Howard.

Is it really though? The last in the main series Skryim, was released in 2011, so surely its about time for a new instalment? I mean the time between Oblivion and Skyrim was about this length.

[Morkonan]

...The last in the main series Skryim, was released in 2011, so surely its about time for a new instalment? I mean the time between Oblivion and Skyrim was about this length.

We've had Fallout 4 since then, though.

[pjknibbs]

We've had Fallout 4 since then, though.

We had Fallout 3 in between Oblivion and Skyrim, so it shouldn't be beyond their abilities to produce another TES now. I imagine Elder Scrolls Online is more the reason why there's been an unusually long gap since the last TES game, though.

[Jericho]

You have to be the only person I've ever heard of who thought the planet scanning stuff in ME2 was fun...unless you're talking about something else?

I really liked it too.
Nice to take a break and try to get that super-high resource.

Also the hacking was fun.

I really miss the pipe-mania Bioshock hacking.

I did like the Andromeda alien sudoku though. That was fun.

[Jericho]

Is it really though? The last in the main series Skryim, was released in 2011, so surely its about time for a new instalment? I mean the time between Oblivion and Skyrim was about this length.

I'm hoping they have a new engine. I'm so, so, so, so, (repeat 4098 times), so tired of their old engine.

"We've made so many changes to the engine in Skyrim, that it's effectively a new engine!!!"

No it wasn't. Take a loaf of bread off the table, everything else on the table still jumps up. Stand in front of someone, wait 24 hours, they are still standing there. Nothing changed.

I loved Skyrim though and never found any bugs (while the rest of the world complained about Skyrim bugs). (Found plenty of bugs in Andromeda. Grrrrrr).



So, yes. Hoping for a new engine, which would no doubt slap a couple of extra years of development time onto any game.

Would love a new Elderscrolls, but I think they will be hyping the Morrowind expansion for Elder Scrolls Online instead.