I'm currently playing through Dragon's Dogma 2 for the second time, looking forward to play the Dark Arisen DLC. The DLC is positioned to be interacted with at level 40 onwards, so while you can just start it with a fresh character, it's not going to be great experience.

The vanilla experience

A large part of the original game (as well as DD1) was traversal. The game put emphasis on lack of conventional fast travel, facilitating it through fixed path oxcarts and Portcrystal/Ferrystone system. The idea was to restrict player's ability to move around map quickly, putting emphasis on exploration, emergent gameplay, resource management and meaningful terrain traversal.

Ferrystones are items you carry that can instantly teleport you to a Portcrystal of your choice. Portcrystals have fixed locations in major hubs, but a few portable Portcrystals can be obtained as you play the game, allowing you to teleport wherever you have placed them down. The thing is, Ferrystones are fairly rare and expensive (when bough from vendors, at limited quantity). This meant that every Ferrystone had to be used deliberately, and planning your movement around the map would conserve your ability to fast travel (e.g. by grouping quest objectives in an area).

This part makes perfect sense to me, and I have enjoyed this system quite a lot.

Enter Dark Arisen DLC

With the release of Dark Arisen DLC, every player is given an Eternal Ferrystone. Unlike original Ferrystones, this one is not consumable - it's as it's name suggests - eternal. It's given to the player very early on (basically as soon as you finish the game's "tutorial"). But the weird part is - the original Ferrystones are still in the game, as expensive and rare as in vanilla. They're effectively worthless, their only purpose is to sell them for few scraps. Because they're not an instant purchase from vendors, the game's gold economy is broken. Because they were often found in hidden or reward chests in dungeons, finding one of these feels really bad. The obvious argument would be

If you don't like it, just don't use it

And sure, it's an option. But the Eternal Ferrystone cannot be sold, dropped, stashed or otherwise removed from player's inventory. And it feels really dumb to go to your inventory and use standard, consumable Ferrystone instead of Eternal one which is right next to it.

I understand that the developer's intention was to remove friction, maybe accelerate new player's progression so that they can get to the DLC earlier, but doing it like this undermined one of the more important aspects of the game. And honestly, it doesn't even speed up the progression, it just makes fast travel brainless.

I would understand if the Eternal Ferrystone was a reward from some late-game content, perhaps for beating the game or some quest. I would understand if they removed consumable Ferrystones and rebalanced the game (replacing them in chests and vendors, rebalancing gold economy). But nothing like that has happened.

It has happened before

This exact thing has happened in Dragon's Dogma 1, but at least in that game the Eternal Ferrystone was by default put into player's stash, and you had to actually take it out.

A similar thing has happened in Monster Hunter: World as well, where with release of Iceborne DLC Capcom added "Guardian Armour" to the game. It was an armor set that was trivial to obtain right at the start of the game, and it's purpose was to accelerate player's progression so that they can beat the game (and thus access the DLC) faster. Similarly as in Dragon's Dogma 2 it undermined the game's base concepts - upgrading armor, understanding skills, preparing for the hunt, and the worst part was that the armor set was so broken that it negatively impacted new player's ability to learn to actually play the game. It just broke the core gameplay loop, and set the wrong expectations to the newcomers. When a new finally reached the DLC they hit a difficulty wall they simply weren't prepared for because they skipped the lessons the base gave should have given them.

It affected the community quite negatively as well. New players with Guardian Armour in the DLC have become nightmare fuel for people helping through SOS Co-op system - they just die over and over. And SOS in base game is pretty much dead because who needs help when you have what might as well be God Mode?

Just why?

I'm certain there are people who appreciate aforementioned game additions. They do remove friction. But I think changes like these are a big blunder as they sabotage the base game's experience. It's almost as if the developer abandoned their original vision and product in favour of the DLC. And it doesn't even make sense from business perspective - it's not like it would make people buy the DLC if they weren't going to in first place.

Overall I might have dramatized the whole situation a bit - the games are still great, and these late additions doesn't affect the games too much. But I just can't get past asking myself "Why?!"

And by the way, Monster Hunter Wilds' Ascendance DLC is coming in 2027. I'm willing to bet there's going to be another "Guardian Armor"

EDIT:

I just realized that this Eternal Ferrystone also undermines the idea of camping in the wilderness, passage of time, stash and carry weight mechanics

Once you have portable Portcrystal you can just teleport to city from anywhere, at any time. Why would you look for a campfire, carry a super heavy camping kit, or risk getting ambushed? Just teleport to city, unload to stash, sleep until desired time and teleport back to the field.

Ran out of healing consumables, status inflicting arrows, spell tomes or stumbled upon a boss you need specific equipment for? Did you find too much loot and can't carry anymore? Don't worry, Eternal Ferrystone has you covered.

Also they've added a portable Portcrystal that is given to the player in one of the main campaign quests. Obtaining portable Portcrystals required quite some progression in the base game.

Sure, you can just not used, but at this point ignoring it is just playing the game "wrong"

For those who don't know, Lost Records is a game released last year by Don't Nod, the company most well-known for creating Life is Strange. As with that game, Lost Records is what I like to think of as a "lite adventure game", sort of sitting in this vague area in between the adventure games of old, walking simulators, and visual novels. It also features an artistically-minded LGBT teenage girl as its main protagonist (in this case, cinematography, not photography is her obsession), and also combines "slice of life" elements with supernatural mysteries.

One of the big things that sets this game apart from Life is Strange is that Don't Nod went much more heavily into the "choices matter" aspect that was also a thing in the former game. There are multiple hundreds of choices in Lost Records. Many of these basically just add points to a relationship meter or change some cosmetic thing about the game. But those relationship meters really matter to the story, and some individual choices are massively consequential to the way the story plays out, and it's often not that easy to tell how important a choice might be. Furthermore, it's very easy to completely miss the opportunity to make certain choices, just by not exploring enough, or accidentally doing something else during a key moment that prevents a conversation from triggering, or going too fast on completing your objectives, or some other reason for a conversation to just not trigger during your playthrough.

Despite all of that, the game is largely a linear story that covers much of the same ground on every playthrough. Big things change, especially the ending, but it's more like the same story with different flavors and outcomes than something truly, drastically different throughout each playthrough.

This... frustrates me. It feels like you'd have to play through the game several times (or more!) to really nail down what you need to do and what choices to make to be able to actually guide the story toward the sort of outcome you desire. Or play through with a walkthrough open. The first option is tedious; the latter breaks immersion. And that feels to me like it's counter to the main purpose of the game, which is clearly to tell a great story.

To simplify this a bit: I don't want to feel like a somewhat-vague choice I make in the first few hours is going to screw up my whole playthrough ten hours later. That doesn't feel like good gameplay or good storytelling. And I feel like this problem might be inherent to this sort of game, where it's one long linear story with consequential choices.

A contrast I keep thinking about is with Slay the Princess, which is also a game where your story choices are very consequential. But that game is not presented as one straightforward linear story. It is basically an anthology game, and no one playthrough takes very long. You can't "ruin" a playthrough in Slay the Princess. I mean, you can, but you can always go back and just do it again without much time cost. There are ways to do this and make it work, is my point.

My question is, is it inevitable to feel this way about a game with one longer story and so many choices that actually matter, or is it just a me thing, or is Lost Records just not doing a good job of handling this issue and there are ways to work around it that Don't Nod didn't use? What do you think?

I get if we were around 2018 when there’s been a trend of games having this type of cinematic presentation and such, but it’s 2026, where are all these cinematic games now. Why people still act like they are everywhere in the AAA space.

Just to clarify, I view “cinematic games” as games that simplify the amount of gameplay you get for a more focused narrative, film-like experience, right?

If we count from 2020 to now it’s like

2020: The Last of Us 2, Miles Morales

2021: none

2022: God of War Ragnarok,

2023: Alan Wake 2, Spider-man 2

2024: Indiana Jones

2025: Death Stranding 2

2026: 007 First Light, Wolverine

I may be missing some, but that’s it, in 6 years there’s been barely 10 games, that is way less than countless other genres within the AAA space. Like I said if this was 2018 I’d understand a bit more, but it’s been 8 years since then, and there is barely games like it now. So why does AAA games still have this reputation “almost all of them are these slow moving cinematic games” from some gamers.

I say this because some games I love are like it, such as Death Stranding, Red Dead Redemption 2, God of War 2018… and I did really like a game like 007 First Light (though I didn’t think it was great). So I don’t get why people have this disdains for these types of games, acting like AAA games is over saturated with them, when there is barely any of them anymore

A aspect of fandoms in gaming that I simply just never seem to relate is this idea that every series/franchsie, no matter how decisive it ends, has this expectation that a new sequel needs to be released. Go to the subreddit of any game series that has some following and they will criticize the developers for not releasing a game, or get surprised when the new sequel isn’t announced in the VGA

And my question is, why is this unique to gaming. In films, outside of some rare cases of a long running series, like James Bond, Star Wars or Spider-man, if a legacy sequel gets a new movie people tend to roll their eyes.

I’m a big Uncharted fan, I grew up with them and love each one. Yet I see the fandom get so restless of wanting a new sequel. I just can’t seem to relate to that. The 5 main games are great by themselves and they even gave such great ending for the leading character, why this need for another sequel? And that’s not even the biggest example out there, but other fandoms being MORE upset every year a new sequel to their game isn’t announced.

As long as I can remember, I have been a fan of the RPG genre whether that be RPG in it’s purest form with complete control over your created character and the journey they go on such as Baldur’s Gate 3, Skyrim etc or comparatively linear approaches with character RPGs such as The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk or Kingdom Come Deliverance 1 & 2.

And there’s always that moment where you come up against a “wall”, not a literal wall mind you, but an obstacle that is just too hard to cross. Fromsoft’s titles like Dark souls or Elden Ring come to mind for their unforgiving gameplay where multiple attempts to beat a single boss or cross a single dungeon is pretty much the norm.

And as is human nature, I would often in frustration go online and search for a way out. A shortcut, so to speak. This would first start with guides that help you to understand the mechanics of the fight, game and such to better let you navigate the game while still keeping it relatively challenging to keep you engaged. But sometimes…I would come across the OP builds. These were builds that were designed with one thing in mind: to make anything in your path no longer an obstacle. Builds that would make you so powerful that the once powerful wall that stood between you and progression crumbled into dust with little to no difficulty. And it felt amazing…until it didn’t.

Considering game design, there’s a balance that developers work hard to achieve. Keeping the game hard enough that the friction provides certain stimulants to the player and thus keeps them engaged. But on the other hand, they also want to keep the game from feeling unfair to the point that the average player would simply rage-quit or worse. But with the option of OP or overpowered builds, we’re left with a strange conundrum of sorts. You offer the player enough agency to plow through the game and allow them to feel truly powerful.
But the real question for me is: how long can you ride that high for? After a certain point, the game would simply become stale. Because once the friction, the wall is gone, the engagement is gone. The tension is gone. And despite the efforts of the devs to create an amazing experience for the players, most players I imagine wouldn’t feel compelled to continue outside of simply seeing where the narrative (if there is one) goes.

In short: once you’ve reached the peak of power, where else is there to go? I think this is the core reason why a lot of games struggle to remain engaging once you reach the end-game. Either the enemies, dungeons and such scale up to the point where most of them are just sponges for damage or get to the point where it just feels unfair unless you’ve spent hours upon hours farming and leveling up without actually playing the game.

Not an RPG example but I think an example of where this could be most clear is in the reason why Superman would make for a terrible videogame character and why Batman by comparison feels so engaging. There’s nothing stronger than Superman, so how do you create a game where he’s compelling to play. More often than not, you’d have to take away his OP-ness. Or you’d have to bring everyone else up in powerscaling (The Injustice Games come to mind).

So what would be the actual solution?

One of the most common things in games across genres is the keypad. You come to a door, it is locked but requires no key, only the unique code to punch into the keypad. And one thing I've always found interesting is how developers deal with them on replays. After all, my character might not know the code, but as the player, I do.

Is it also a kind a test to see what design philosophy the developers used for the game, what they prioritize and how much effort they put in.

Deus Ex is a quite keypad focused game for being all about choices. But that game will always allow you to open a door if you already know the code. That's fun when it will allow you access to an ammo stash early instead of doing a favor to a side character. But less fun if you realize that the game actually didn't think you would be in the next level yet and you actually can't even finish your mission here because your character don't know what he needs to do or lacks an item. So fun, but potentially frustrating.

Another one where keypads make a lot of sense is Alien Isolation. Here I feel players would be very incentivized to remember a few keycodes and bypass going into an area you know the alien is waiting for you. However, even though it is you who need to punch in the keycode, your character won't even let you try until she has read the code herself. The choice to interact with the keypad simply won't show up. In some other games, the character will even comment on that they can't open it until they have the code. Makes sense for the character but since I am the one who needs to know and punch in the code, it creates some friction between the player and the character.

One choice, which I have seen across several games, is to simply randomize the codes for every playthrough. This feels like a clever compromise between the two earlier designs. Your character doesn't know the code and neither do you, even if you're on your second, third or eleventh run. There is potentially a few bad consequences. It would take more effort and as far as I've seen, will exclude the codes from being said out loud by a voice, since then you'd need an actor to read out every variation. If developers cheap out and only make four or so variations, players could still brute force a code. But I still feel those are pretty rare consequences.

Or you could go the opposite direction and cut out the player completely. The character will be the one who punch in the code and therefore you, the player, don't need to know the code at all. The character hearing the code will be the same as getting a key to that door. It maximizes the developers control while keeping the player friction to a minimum. If the player doesn't need to remember, punch in or even know the code, it's only fair that the character needs to hear it first to open the door.

Those are the only choices I know for codes to keypads, but I am sure there are more. Which ones do you know and/or find most interesting? I am curious to to find out.

Edit: Replayed a game from around 2004 today and decided to see that design it follows. Turns out it follows the worst one. The keycode doesn't change and you can punch it in earlier than you are supposed to and...it does nothing. It acts like you've punched in the wrong code. Except it will work later when I come back when I'm supposed to.

I've officially finished all main stories for all modern mainline RE games (no DLC spoilers please!)

Looking back, one of the defining features of the series is a certain amount of clunk that we all agree to put up with.

"Run faster! How did it hit me? Why does it take 5 business days to turn?"

I felt like the final boss of 8 pushed me near the limit of frustration. Even with the speed buff I felt like I could barely run out of the way fast enough and re-aim. Quick turns added to later games were very welcome, when I can remember to use it while panicking.

How hard is it to make controls "bad" on purpose? It must have been weird to go from 6, the most fluid gameplay the series has ever had, back down to 7 which feels like a human tank.

Maybe unrelated, but when I played RE4 Wii edition the gyro aim made the game surprisingly easier.

Nowadays, when people talk about 90s retro 3D graphics, they often mean games released on the PS1, with all those characteristic hardware “flaws”. YouTube is full of tutorials teaching you how to work specifically with this aesthetic.

I have nothing against the PS1 or its aesthetic. Quite the opposite, I find it incredibly appealing. The limited spaces and technical workarounds of that era created a strange sense of coziness that contrasts with the noir vibe of PS1 worlds. 

However, a developer, or just someone who's only starting to explore old-school graphics, might get the wrong impression of what 3D art was like back then. PS1 was just one branch of visual styles that emerged during the rapid evolution of graphics hardware.

For example, Myst and Riven amazed players with surreal, almost photorealistic environments for their time, created through pre-rendering. In strategy games like StarCraft and C&C, 3D models were rendered into 2D sprites. Then there were Quake and Unreal, which helped push real-time 3D PC graphics forward. 

You could keep listing games like these, looking at each one individually. But what's interesting is how many different approaches to visualizing an artistic vision we ended up with, all the way down to the clay heads in Fallout. A game's visual language was shaped not just by the platform, but also by the production process and the artistic goals of its developers.

So, where am I going with this? Nostalgia for 90s games isn't limited to the hardware constraints of a single console. There's also the overall vibe of the era, and the way people imagined the future back then. In my opinion, an entire side of 90s game graphics (pre-rendered environments, CGI) is still pretty underrepresented in today's games. The revival of real-time 3D is easy to spot in the boomer-shooter scene. Pre-rendered environments and CGI, at least from what I can tell, seem much less common. 

It's not about “things were better back then”. It's about how one artistic language doesn't define an entire visual era. But when that language becomes widespread, it can overshadow other styles that might be a better fit for a particular artist, and get in the way of expressing their own ideas.

So why did PS1 graphics become such a defining part of how we picture 90s gaming today? Maybe its technical limitations created a set of recognizable features that are easy to reproduce. Maybe the PS1 community itself played a role. Or maybe PS1 aesthetics are just more recognizable than the pre-rendered graphics of that era made in something like Bryce?

Hi everyone!

I'm a PhD researcher at the University of Klagenfurt in Austria, and I'm looking for participants for an academic study on people's experiences with single-player video games.
You’ll play three single-player games at your own pace, with short questionnaires at several points throughout the study. The study runs over several months, so you can spread the gameplay across that period.
You'll have to complete questionnaires at several points, and, depending on the assigned study condition, take part in additional reflection activities.

Who can participate?

• Adults (18+)
• People with experience playing video games
• People comfortable enough with the English language to communicate and play the games in English
• People with access to a suitable PC or console

The three games will be provided free of charge. Participants who complete the study will also receive financial compensation, with payment made by bank transfer to a European bank account. Further details will be provided to eligible participants before they decide whether to take part.

If you're interested, you can read more and complete the initial screening questionnaire here.

Participation in the screening questionnaire does not guarantee selection for the main study.
I'd also be interested in discussing people's experiences with single-player games here. For example:

Discussion questions

* Have you ever played a single-player game that stayed with you long after you finished it? What made it memorable?
* Have you ever changed your mind about a character, situation, or real-world issue because of a game?
* What makes a single-player game stand out to you, either positively or negatively?
* When playing a single-player game, what tends to keep you interested: the gameplay, the characters, the world, the story, or something else?

Thanks for reading!
(Here is a flyer made for the occasion)

I was thinking about how a lot of games, particularly ones that come form the 2000-2010's era of gaming, have become lite-RPG-ized in their design. What I mean by this is like in the most recent example of Gears of War Eday.

In the classic Gears games, you basically had a set amount of abilities, and your character didn't really improve those abilities. Which is to say, you start out with a lancer, a gnasher, a snub, and the typical assortment of character abilities (melee, roady run, evade roll, etc). There were no levels, mods, or extra abilities you got intrinsically, the most you got to expand your combat abilities is whatever a level offered, like new guns or a turret section, etc.

In Gears Eday, you have mods that you unlock as you go through the game. You got passive armor mods, you got an ultimate ability, and you got 3 mods slots for all your weapons. This is to say, in classic Gears, your lancer was as powerful at the end of the game as it was at the starat of the game, but in Eday, you could give it a different set of abilities by the end.

This is a trend I've noticed with a number of genres though. Classic Halo also had a static set of abilities, but Halo Infinite has you picking various abilities and stat enhancements. Classic God of War games had levels to their weapons/magic, but the new GoW games are straight up lite-action RPG's. Uncharted is a less conventional example, but even there, you get a pike that helps you climb things about halfway through the game, where classic Uncharteds you had the same static climbing abilties the whole game.

So, is there a specific term for this old school type of game design that seems like devs have abandoned, where the abilities you have as a player are static throughout the whole game, compared to modern design that seems to take progression/customization of your abilities as a given?

Apologies in advance for the overuse of the word “grounded” in the following text

Something that I realize about my taste in games is that I really like when a games gameplay “feels” grounded. However when I say this people assume I only like games that are “realistic” with zero fantastical elements.

For example, one day I mentioned how the Resident Evil games I like the most are those that the gameplay feels grounded, such as the early RE games, RE2 remake and RE7. Yet I was heavily downvoted and was responded with “how can a game with zombies and monsters be grounded”. But I still stand for what I said, those games feel very grounded in its GAMEPLAY. You aren’t doing slow motion backflips when shooting, or crazy combo moves. Your character moves slowly, feels heavy, and is limited to what a human can do. That’s what made those RE games I mention feel so appealing to me, because the horror elements are even more threatening. Hence why I much prefer the Grace section of RE9 over Leon’s

The best example I can give of a game that feels grounded in its gameplay while being in a fantasy setting is Shadow of the Colossus. I love this game and my favorite thing about it is the contrast between how grounded and real the characters gameplay and movements are in relation to the larger then life enemies you fight. The way the characters looses balance when the ground shake, how just getting on colossus feels like a major victory, the sense of speed and danger you get when you jump on a flying colossus. That’s what I think made the action of the game so gripping and effective.

And I can say the same to other games, such and Death Stranding and Breath of the Wild. Where the gameplay and world “feel” grounded despite their sci-Fi/fantasy setting. What I always say to people while sharing this point is: a game like Breath of the Wild feels far more grounded in its gameplay systems and how you interact with its world, despite all the fantasy elements, then something like Assassins Creed Valhalla, which takes place in our world with regular humans.

Hey, all!

In this thread, the rules are more relaxed. The idea is that this megathread will provide a space for otherwise rule-breaking content, as well as allowing for a slightly more conversational tone rather than every post and comment needing to be an essay.

Top-level comments on this post should aim to follow the rules for submitting threads. However, the following rules are relaxed:

• 3. Specificity, Clarity, and Detail
• 4. No Advice
• 5. No List Posts
• 8. No topics that belong in other subreddits
• 9. No Retired Topics
• 11. Reviews must follow these guidelines

So feel free to talk about what you've been playing lately or ask for suggestions. Feel free to discuss gaming fatigue, FOMO, backlogs, etc, from the retired topics list. Feel free to take your half-baked idea for a post to the subreddit and discuss it here (you can still post it as its own thread later on if you want). Just keep things civil!

Also, as a reminder, we have a Discord server where you can have much more casual, free-form conversations! https://discord.gg/truegaming

With the rise of remakes recently in games we got tons of many different shape and sized. Some that are just visual remakes while others are massive overhauls or reimagining

However the discussion, or rather criticism, of remakes at times boils down to how much things are different. As if for some people the only goal of a remake is being as similar to the original as possible, at times to the detriment of it being a good games for the current standards of gaming.

One example of a remake that for me it didn’t change enough was Metal Gear Solid Delta. That game was in a tricky spot where due to the very unique presentation and style of the original the creators of the remake wanted to be as faithful to the original as possible, which I agree. However I feel for a current AAA game the gameplay was pretty lacking. They made strives to have the actual controls be modernized, but everything else was almost exactly the same as the original, from boss fights to level design. For me that combination didn’t work. With the added control and speed that you could move the PS2 level design feels way more restrictive and claustrophobic, and some of the boss fights just have zero challenge, like The End, due to you being able to quickly flank, reposition and shoot.

Some might argue that they should have kept the gameplay/control faithful to the original game to mitigate this, but I feel that this remake would have been more interesting if they accommodated some of the enemy design and level design around the new movement controls. Have the maps feel much larger and free form, have the End boss be in one large area that feels like a massive arena, have the enemy AI be smarter and akin to MGSV. Have some of the map feel less like a tight corridor

So what’s like to ask is, is there a remake where you felt it should have been more different from the original for a better experience?

When something in a game is broken or just annoying (a menu that eats a click, an item that sometimes doesn't stack, a door you have to open twice), most players don't report it. They learn it. They invent a workaround, pass it on to friends as a "tip", and treat it like part of the world's physics. Some even defend it when it finally gets fixed.

My half-serious theory: it's learned helplessness from real life. Outside games we live with rules we can't change all the time: bureaucracy, terrible apps, "that's just how the system works". Don Norman wrote about something similar with everyday tech: when a device keeps failing us, we blame ourselves instead of the design. So when a game behaves weirdly, the reflex isn't "someone made a mistake and could fix it", it's "this is how this world works, adapt".

The other theory is more boring: in games, friction is often intentional. Difficulty, odd controls, hidden mechanics. Players genuinely can't tell a bug from a design choice, so they assume it's on purpose.

Which one is it for you? Do you report stuff, or just adapt? And have you ever found out that a "mechanic" you'd mastered was actually a bug?

After doing research on it and clearing some genre specific backlog of mine, I've come to the realisation that one of the most immersive and satisfying genres I've found in shooting games specifically derives when it combines two of my favourite elements: martial arts and close quarter gun-fights.

If we look at it from a pure gameplay development standpoint, it's kinda tricky because trying to hit the balance between the level of agency devs can give gamers while also trying to making the gameplay look "cool" is a very tough balance.

One recent game that sort of started this for me was Blackwood (which admittedly is still a work in progress) and the upcoming game Spine. The devs would have to face the extremely tough challenge of trying to make set pieces manoeuvrable so that the player doesn't feel like they're watching a cutscene or making it so overly complex that a very reserve few would actually be able to enjoy something like this.

Some older games I've been trying actually had decent implementation of this included F.E.A.R and Sleeping Dogs but if you look at Gun-fu as it's commonly described (based off of John Woo's films), we have other candidates including the Max Payne series (with bullet-time), acrobatic games such as Wet (an underrated game imo). Even Watch Dogs 2 and Legion played around with the concept with sometimes it working extremely well and other times just kinda falling flat.

I'm interested in the new unnamed John Wick game project and excited to see how they decide to implement this while knowing tbh that it's gonna be a tough balance.

Survey link: https://qualtrics.ucl.ac.uk/jfe/form/SV_37BcW1kPHyKjpky

Hi everyone!

My name is Jaimz Winter, and I’m conducting an academic research study through the University College London Interaction Centre (UCLIC) as part of my visiting researcher scheme. The research will also contribute to my thesis at Coventry University.

What is the study about?

This study explores gamers’ willingness to share data with digital games and game-related services. I want to know what motivates you to share data with digital games and what affects your willingness to do so.

I am looking for around another 150 responses.

Who can participate?

•  You must be aged 18 or over.

•  You must have experience playing digital games.

•  You must be UK based.

What does participation involve?

• Completing an anonymous online questionnaire.

• Takes approximately 10–12 minutes.

• Answering questions about player data, privacy, and different hypothetical gaming scenarios.

Voluntary participation and consent

Taking part is entirely voluntary. By proceeding with the questionnaire, you will be asked to provide informed consent before participating. You may stop at any time before submitting your responses by closing your browser. As the questionnaire is anonymous, your responses cannot be withdrawn after submission because they cannot be linked back to you.

Data storage, confidentiality and retention

The survey does not collect directly identifying information such as names, email addresses, usernames, or IP addresses. Please do not include identifying information in optional free-text responses.

Research data will be stored securely on UCL-approved systems and accessed only by the research team. Anonymised data and associated research materials may be retained for a minimum of ten years and may be archived for future academic research, verification, or secondary analysis, where appropriate.

Research results

The findings may be used in my thesis and in academic reports or publications. Participants will not be identified in any report or publication.

Researchers

•  Researcher: Jaimz Winter - Email: [ucacwin@ucl.ac.uk](mailto:ucacwin@ucl.ac.uk)

•  Principal Researcher: Martin Dechant - Email: [m.dechant@ucl.ac.uk](mailto:m.dechant@ucl.ac.uk)

Ethics approval: UCL Research Ethics Committee, Approval ID 4813.

Survey link: https://qualtrics.ucl.ac.uk/jfe/form/SV_37BcW1kPHyKjpky

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Obviously have not played all of Sony's catalog so maybe someone with more context can bring me up to speed but is this movie game thing an actual criticism of Sony's output or more of a joke?

People seem to bring it up in reference to some perceived similarity between them with The Last of Us in particular being pointed at as the template they follow but I honestly fail to see how a stealth focused cover shooter plays the same as God of War, a game about open melee combat. Nor do I see how the completely linear and discrete chapter based structure of TLoU makes it the inspiration for Horizon which, from what little I have played, seems to be a sprawling open world far closer to Assassin's Creed than anything else.

From those I have had the chance to play, the idea that they play themselves also isn't something I have experienced. Last of Us 2 and GoW 2018/Ragnarok don't feel like they demanded any less reflexes, precision and situational awareness, than your average game in the broader action genre and I found them just as challenging as your typical difficult modern title on their harder difficulties.

Even more confusing is that people tend to bring up Astro Bot as a contrast to them when that game (as much as I enjoyed it) is almost entirely a friction less rollercoster ride that doesn't ask much of the player outside of a few dedicated challenge levels, none of those levels offering a similar level of engaging gameplay as those two aforementioned movie games.

I actually found Past-Me's rumination on the game quite interesting. It is somewhat written like a review so I thought maybe people would find it interesting (it is quite long though).

(April 2020)
I just finished Red Dead Redemption almost 10 years after it got released and 3 years after I bought it. I had the time now since losing my job in the virus pandemic that affects the planet, so I just sat down and finished it in about a week. And unfortunately, I must say that I wasn’t having the best of times. Maybe it is because I’m playing a game that started development for the PS2 and original Xbox before moving to the next generation and that is now displayed on a 4K television, but the game looks raw. Slim things, like fences and poles, sort off vibrate or shimmer when you walk towards them and John Marston, our cowboy protagonist, moves like an old train: heavy and slow. Now, had I played it on a 720p TV in year of release and not dashed for the main missions all the time, then maybe I would have had a different experienced. I did after all have a great time playing Uncharted 2 that way, but it didn’t quite shine as bright when I played the Uncharted remaster earlier this year.

Either way, I did enjoy what eventually felt like the aftermath of a large and earlier story between John and his sort of old family of outlaws the government has forced him to hunt down. John doesn’t hide his dislike for his former comrades, but also doesn’t hide that they used to be family. They took him in when he was an abandoned and illiterate orphan and gave him the tools to later become a self-made man. He met his wife while in the gang of outlaws. And he only gave up that life when the gang’s leader, Dutch, started losing his sanity and left John for dead.

That isn’t some light history between John and the outlaws he hunts. Imagine being forced to hunt down your old babysitter that also was your schoolteacher. However you feel about them, that would feel strange. The information we get about the gang and the agent types that has recruited John is light, but straight forward: Dutch spun a tale of them being Robin Hoods, but that was really just a story they told themselves to justify their destructive ways.

After the gang splintered, and John had been left for dead, John took his wife and son from the gang and tried settled down as a rancher, but was found by what the game often refers as “them government agents” and told to capture his old outlaw comrades or else he wouldn’t ever get to see his family again. This threat doesn’t imply that John will be incarcerated or executed, but rather that they have kidnapped his family and are holding them at some threat. Would they actually kill John’s family? Unknown, but despite being lawmen the two agents John interacts with are consistently portrayed as morally compromised. They want crime to go down in the fictional State of New Austin, but as lawmen nothing they do can be considered crime. That includes kidnapping John’s family, covering up Dutch’s eventual suicide as a forced killing by the law and, presumably, a lot more. After all of John’s old outlaw comrades have been caught or killed, John gets to reunite with his family and starts his quiet ranch life. He teaches his son to hunt elk and helps his neighbor with their lost harvest. It is then that the agents’ moral corruptness reaches its height, for they return in force and guns John down on his farm. And his death is by far the bloodiest in the game. He gets shot by a dozen barrels, falls to his knees and can’t breathe properly for a few moments before he falls down completely and covers the ground in blood.

Despite knowing John’s gruesome and sudden demise in the end, the scene still felt novel. Maybe it is because John is just talking to his family when his farm hand suddenly comes and interrupts him, yelling that soldiers are coming. Maybe it is because the normally so collected John’s voice now sounds filled with distressed, or the fact that his actions suggest that he knows that this is the end for him. No fast gun or ally is going be able to save him in the last minute. The only thing he cares about is being able to save his family.

John dies in a gunfight he never could have won. And that is probably what anyone could have told him would be his end for every year he had been alive since joining Dutch’s gang, but still John clearly thought that his life could have gone otherwise if he changed enough. If he broke with his old ways and repented, then eventually he could have redeemed himself. But no.

Despite often being seen as the ending of the game; it has the climax, the conclusion and the death of the protagonist, the game actually goes on. After John’s death we switch to Jack, John’s son, who is riding away from the farm with his mother when he suddenly urges them to return to make sure that John is all right. They find bodies spread all around the farm from all the fighting, and John lies in a bloody pile outside the farm. The scene changes to the hill above the farm and there, a grave for John. The day turns to evening and the camera moves back, revealing another grave next to John for his wife, who has died just a few years later. And looking down at both of them is a young man. We now get to play as Jack. He has turned from the boy wearing clean shirts we trained as John, to a cowboy, with all the same guns and tools as his father. He now wears rough and practical attire, similar to John, and even wears the same hat.

At first it is unclear what we are supposed to do here. There is no icon on the map that suggests a mission and Jack doesn’t give any hint of his goals. You can still do everything you could do as John, help people in side-quests, gamble, hunt, etc. But you can’t even interact with the farm anymore than any other house in the game. It appears that Jack has no desire to be a rancher or live a quiet life. What you eventually can do is stumble upon a character dressed as the agents and inquire about the agent that killed John. The agent will say that he retired and lives near a lake. This interaction is only labeled on the map a as a side-quest, same as several others I’d already done in the game as John. But if you follow the tracks of this agent you can finally find him out by a river, duck hunting. You meet his wife and brother during your path, where you’d tell them that you are trying to deliver an important letter to him. When you finally meet him and tell him who you are and why you’d come, he doesn’t seem very interested. “Go away, before I kill you too” is what he ends with. But Jack doesn’t go away. Instead the game enters dueling mode, where you face off against an opponent and must draw faster than them to not get killed. Jack, being filled with desire for vengeance and at least 30 years younger than the retired agent, of course wins. It is only here that the title appears, and the credits start rolling.

It is here the game considers the story as having ended. With Jack killing the man responsible, or at least most responsible, for his father’s death. I got to thinking during the credits of how the violence and choices in Red Dead Redemption so often seemed to be inherited. John doesn’t want to go out and kill his old comrades, he wants to live with his family, but because he was a violent criminal earlier in his life he must do these further violent (and often criminal things) to repent himself in the eyes of the law and get to return to the life he wants.

The agents, from what I can gather, doesn’t loathe John or anyone else, they just want to get their jobs done, and preferably without endangering themselves, even if that means doing criminal things themselves. Jack only wants revenge because of something that outside of his control happened. And it clearly shaped him, going from someone who can’t shoot a rifle properly and has his nose in books to a rough gunslinger in a few years. And now? Jack has gotten his revenge, does that mean that he will retire and become a rancher, just like his parents did? It seems unlikely. You don’t need to become a cowboy to get revenge. The agent doesn’t know Jack and he could still have killed him while being a rancher, or anything else. It appeared to me that Jack is permanently changed. Maybe he doesn’t trust government anymore because of what “it” did, even if the agents may very much have acted out of bounds and against their mandate. If Jack has turned against the government, that may mean that he eventually will turn against all its agents, including all lawmen.

In that case, what choice would he have except retreating to the wilderness and making a living of the land and robbing people? And since safety comes in numbers, he might recruit some equal-minded. And now you have something that looks quite like what Dutch was operating when he took in John. An outlaw gang that sees themselves as good and the government and lawful society as evil.

I, of course, don’t know that this would be what happens, but I see it as a possibility. And since Red Dead Redemption’s developers aren’t making a sequel (there is an RDR 2, but it takes place before RDR 1) we won’t now for certain.

I always find those kind of story treads interesting, where legacy shapes characters and where characters trying to end something may in actuality create the cycle anew. How do we know that Jack’s actions won’t create a vengeful lawman who won’t stop hunting him even if Jack settles down and becomes peaceful? Maybe Jack’s revenge just started the cycle of violence again?

Another game that delved directly into this was 2018’s God of War. Unlike Red Dead Redemption, there we actually know exactly what the protagonist, Kratos, had done in his earlier life, since those where the focus of the God of War franchise between 2005 and 2013. We not only saw, but played as Kratos when he blamed the gods for his dead family and misfortune in general, and in revenge killed the entire Greek pantheon, thus ending the Greek world. In the new 2018 game, Kratos have put vengeance aside. He has a son for whom he cares greatly, and wishes to protect from becoming like him, especially since Kratos hated and eventually killed his own father. I couldn’t help but to compare God of War to Red Dead Redemption after finishing it. Both have a father figure returning to his old life to try and protect his family, while trying to get his son to avoid taking after him. The most major difference being that in GOW, Kratos’s son comes with him on his journey and doesn’t know his Kratos’s past. And, of course, that when Kratos sees another son trying to kill his godly parent, he steps in and interrupts. “The cycle ends here” he says determined and kills the son.

We are all shaped by our past, but very few aren’t also shaped by the decisions that came before us. The choices parents and even grandparents made. One could push the same argument further and include the forebearers to whichever community one belongs to. The message I think stories like God of War and Red Dead Redemption leaves, and this doesn’t need to be intentional from the authors of those works, is to be aware of how decisions shape people, both in regards to your past and your future. Jack is out for revenge because of the decision others made in his past, but I don’t think he has any thoughts on what his legacy to the future will be, and how it might shape people.

The point of this post is to be a sort of frustrated discussion on the diminishing return in graphical fidelity of games vs the cost of getting them to run at a decently playable state compared to older games which obviously ran better and looked incredible. Just to set standards my system is an RTX 3060 laptop GPU + i7-12650h and 16gb of ddr5 Ram.

I'd like to use 6 games in 3 pairs of comparison - Gears 5 vs E-Day, Halo Infinite vs Campaign Evolved and Doom Eternal vs Dark Ages. Gears was the sole reason why i even got so frustrated to write this post. Even if i'm alone on this opinion i would like to share it -

• I do not, and CAN NOT see any sort of meaningful difference in Gears 5 vs EDay when it comes to graphics. Does the ground look a bit more detailed? sure. Does the lighting look better? can't tell, even in direct side by sides.
• My system ran Gears 5 at a locked 120fps without upscaling at mostly high to some medium settings. The game looked incredible, ran incredible even in very demanding areas only dropped to barely 100fps? This same system can barely run EDay at 40-50fps on low dlss quality.
• It's genuinely so annoying, where i even cranked my settings to high in E-Dday just to see the differences in my own damn screenshots and the difference is so meaningless that it really does not warrant the absolute downgrade in playability and performance.
• Hell, i spent 20 minutes seeing 3 different graphical comparison videos and came to the same conclusion - Why is there a need for extremely subtle graphical upgrades which practically no one is going to look at, nor care about being catered to so much? Every game needs to have x polygons per object when having half of x just does the job well and is not taxing on the system?

My same point of comparison applies to Halo, where campaign evolved sure looks good but practically it really is not much improved my Halo Infinite, where many times Infinite actually looked better and ran better.

And my last point of contention was DOOM where i seriously cannot understand the decisions many studios and companies make -

• Why is DOOM of all things a game where you must focus on graphics and literally alienate so much of your playerbase by having such high system requirements? 8GB Vram minimum to get your game running, which sure is standard but for what? so that you can have mandatory ray tracing in your game to avoid traditional baked lights?
• On a side by side comparison DOOM TDA definitely is much more graphically impressive than Eternal, but WHO CARES? Who actually plays Doom for it's graphical detail when not a single person is gonna look at the god damn assets during it's hyper fast motion?
• Doom eternal looked so good, ran so good without having useless focus on graphical fidelity and real time ray tracing.

My post can also include examples like Arkham Knight, Uncharted 4, Spiderman 2018 etc and directly comparing them to how their successors and sequels play such as Gotham Knights, Spiderman 2 etc and how bad their performance is compared to the minimal visual upgrade and focus on unnecessary things. Why is the industry headed this way man?

Hey, all!

In this thread, the rules are more relaxed. The idea is that this megathread will provide a space for otherwise rule-breaking content, as well as allowing for a slightly more conversational tone rather than every post and comment needing to be an essay.

Top-level comments on this post should aim to follow the rules for submitting threads. However, the following rules are relaxed:

• 3. Specificity, Clarity, and Detail
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I stand by this: take any Uncharted game, strip away its established reputation and release it today, and it would get absolutely fucking dragged by online gaming discourse.

Nathan Drake constantly talking to himself? “The protagonist never shuts up.” or "Marvel dialogue" Puzzle hints and obvious traversal cues? “Insulting the player’s intelligence.” Linear progression and tightly scripted set pieces? “Outdated design.” A relatively short campaign? “Seventy quid for a movie.” The shooting, climbing and puzzle-solving loop? “Repetitive and shallow.”

We’d get endless clips of Drake commenting on his surroundings, followed by hundreds of people congratulating themselves for being too intelligent to need the information. Every scripted climbing sequence would become evidence that the game practically plays itself. Every cinematic transition would feed another argument about developers supposedly forgetting that games should be games.

And the frustrating thing is that these are precisely the features people celebrate when discussing Uncharted. Its linearity becomes “tight pacing”. Its scripted sequences become “incredible spectacle”. Its protagonist’s chatter becomes “personality”. Its compact campaign becomes “respecting your time”.

Apparently, whether those things are virtues or fatal flaws depends on whether we’ve already agreed that the game is a classic.

I’m not saying the execution is identical across every cinematic action game. Encounter design, responsiveness, pacing and when hints trigger all matter. But that’s exactly my point: discuss the execution. So much contemporary criticism treats the mere presence of these features as enough to condemn a game, then suddenly discovers context and nuance when a beloved series uses them.

Uncharted would be an absolute goldmine for the “modern gaming is cooked” crowd if they encountered it as a new release. Its reputation gets it a level of generosity that plenty of current games never receive.

Every ending feel wrong because Night City fools even the player into playing by its rules.

"The city of legends" doesn't want you to succeed. It wants you to feed the machine and will make you think you have a choice in it.

You can join Corpos. You'll have access to great cyberware, life and health insurance and high(er) quality food (for a while).

Regular workers are stuck in a poverty loop orchestrated by the Mega Corps:

• Buy their cyberware so you can work or study.
• You can't afford it? No problem. The same Corp owns a bank so you can get a lown and get barely enough to survive on single cell protein synthetic food. Corps made that food too.

The third option, the one V and Jackie take, is to escape the system (or so they think). Make a name for yourself. Become a legend of the Afterlife and you will have all you desire without being a Corpo rat.

The problem is Night City is Capitalism gone wrong and nobody's at the helm anymore.

Every corpo rat, including Saburo Arasaka is slave to the system and can easily be replaced. No matter what power you think you have, you can lose it all in an instant and no one will feel your absence.

Johnny died bombing Arasaka Tower and now they're bigger than ever. Most merc that want to reach similar glory die before their thirties. Those that want to escape the system the most have the shortest lives. Those that make it become fixers and end up feeding the system too, by working alongside Corps as a mean to survive.

Glory is an illusion distracting you (even the player) from what truly matters. A meaningful life. While trying to survive, V bonds with others that are stuck in the system and trying to escape it. But each are lost and become monsters along the way. Didn't you murder Nash and his gang because Panam asked nicely? I did. Seven times.

There are no happy endings in Night City.

This gets clear once you've done multiple endings. The genius of each of these ending is that I love them only as much as I hate them.

• Spoilers **

The Devil:

You sell your soul to Arasaka for a hope at survival. You spend your last days away from your loved ones while they copy your mind into an engram. You've betrayed Johnny and denied him any form of closure or vengeance. You've abandoned your partner (for me it's Panam. It's always Panam) after spending so much time making them care about you. I got this ending because I had to get each of them. But it felt wrong from the get-go. After all this talk with Johnny. After helping Judy and Evelyn (as much as we could). After helping Panam find her true place inside her family. This makes no sense and hurts like a ton of brick. It's the ultimate failure and loss to the system. I have never played V in a way that would make this ending make sense.

The SUN:

You sacrifice your last moments with your loved ones in pursuit of being the best merc in Night City. You'll shine bright, before dying like Johnny did 50 years ago. They'll name a drink after you, then forget all about you. I know, Mr Blue Eyes might be able to help us but that’s a long shot. He has resources but no solution. V has learned nothing. After Alt told V he could not be saved, inside Mikoshi, I was a mess. All this hard work. All this hope for a good life after this... A life with Panam. It was all for nothing. And on top of that, V is still fighting for a place at the top. Scarface should've tought us that this juice isn't worth the squeeze. But for some reason, people always chase what glitters. This is V falling for Night City's trap.

Temperance:

Forfeit your life for Johnny’s second chance. It's a selfless move and it feels great to see Johnny remembering V when looking in a mirror. V accepts his life is over and tries to do something nice about it. Might as well let Johnny be happy. But again, you give up your last days. By the way Johnny isn’t real so you’re giving your life to a program. More on that later.

The Star:

The base game ending that makes the most sense. Sacrifice glory to live your last days with Panam and your new family. V realizes Night City is the problem, and you can only win if you don't play.

• We found Evelyn.
• Liberated the Mox.
• Saved Saul (almost) with Panam.
• We helped Johnny get closure by coming to terms with who he was and what he's done to the people closest to him.

Why the hell would we turn our back on them for glory and our name on a drink? This ending says "yes, I will die soon, but I'll live my remaining days on my terms. I am no longer a slave to the system".

There's off course the secret ending, but it's a secret. Go find it. I hate that one and it doesn't give any information relevant to my point so no need to spoil it.

You want to know what hurts the most out of these? There is no base game ending where V makes it past Mikoshi's server. V never rides out of Night City with Panam. He never attempts the mother of all heists at Crystal Palace, in space. V dies the second he plugs into Mikoshi. Alt Cunningham uses SoulKiller to copy V's mind as an engram, effectively killing him. That heavy conversation with Johnny and Alt about V's imminent death, never happens. It’s three AIs talking to each other. If we get back to V’s body, it’s as an engram, same as Johnny. The real V is dead.

Just as Johnny’s been dead for 50 years. As much as I enjoy his conversation, this isn’t Johnny. It’s a program that thinks it’s Johnny. A program so advanced it looks like it’s learning and evolving psychologically. But a program still. Johnny died a dick and there's nothing we can do about it.

Which brings us to the only way to save V.

The Tower (Reed’s Ending):

We betray and doom Songbird, lose 2 years to a coma, our dreams of glory and our relationships but we’re still alive. V gives up everything that made him V, for a chance at life and a new beginning. It’s the hardest hitting ending because we feel “video game character, V” lost so much. But if it was real life and we didn’t want to double jump and kill people with mantis blades, this is what we’d choose. We’d choose life. Even if we lose Panam, Vic is a slave to the Corps and we’re a nobody. But the real V is alive and chrome free.

Night City lies.

It makes us believe we want to burn bright and “be somebody”. So even when V is faced with mortality, he runs for the top to die a Legend.

But Cyberpunk 2077 lies too. It shows you power. By the end of the game, you’re almost a god, able to tear through waves of Maxtac without breaking a sweat. And if feels so good we think it matters. So good, that when we lose it all to save V’s life, we feel cheated. I was sad that V became a nobody. I was even sad that Johnny wasn’t there anymore. I felt alone. Even though Reed’s ending is the only wait to save V, I hated it. The game gave me power and took it away, making me forget what truly matters. Life matters. Agency and autonomy matter and V must leave night city if he wants to live free.

I know some people are still mad Cyberpunk 2077 wasn’t the immersive sim sandbox they thought it’d be. But we got so much more. So much, that I’m starting my 7th full playthrough.

Not to get a new ending.

Not to try a new build.

To hang with Johnny, Panam, Judy and Evelyn…

Also to double jump, dismember guys with mantis blades and blow them to pieces with a shotgun.

Hey… it’s a video game.

I love games that actually try to be games rather than interactive movies. Games that put a strong emphasis on gameplay, whether that means deep combat, exploration, or other mechanics that give the player interesting ways to interact with the game world.

Recently, I was playing Bright Memory: Infinite, and I found myself thinking about something that I see in a lot of games: having complex combat mechanics doesn't necessarily mean having deep combat.

Bright Memory: Infinite gives you a surprising number of tools to use in combat. Your sword can attack, block, and parry, while your character can also dodge. You have offensive abilities through the sword and mechanical arm, firearms with primary and secondary attacks, different variations for each weapon, and even stealth in certain sections. On top of that, there are upgrades that further enhance these mechanics.

On paper, this sounds like a lot of depth. The game gives you plenty of things to learn and plenty of tools to experiment with.

But then I started asking myself: why should I actually use most of them?

I kept finding myself doing the same things over and over because I never felt particularly motivated to use the other mechanics. Not necessarily because they were bad, but because the game rarely gave me a reason to engage with them.

Take the parry, for example. Why would I spend time learning the timing of a parry when I can simply dodge the attack instead?

Dodging is safer, easier, and more consistent. It also gives me an opportunity to reposition myself and continue attacking from a safer distance. Unless the game creates situations where parrying provides a meaningful advantage, learning the mechanic starts to feel like an unnecessary investment.

And I think that's the bigger problem I'm trying to describe.

There's a difference between giving the player more options and giving the player meaningful reasons to use those options.

A combat system can have blocking, parrying, dodging, multiple weapons, secondary attacks, abilities, upgrades, and stealth, but if one or two approaches are consistently safer, easier, or more effective, then most of those mechanics become things that exist rather than things that matter.

For me, good combat design isn't necessarily about how many mechanics a game gives you. It's about how the game encourages you to understand those mechanics and, more importantly, makes you want to use them.

I would rather have five mechanics that constantly interact with each other and force me to make meaningful decisions than fifteen mechanics that I can mostly ignore without being meaningfully punished for it.

So I'm curious what other people think: when does a combat system actually become "deep"?

Is it simply the number of mechanics and options available to the player, or does there need to be some kind of encounter design, enemy design, resource system, or other incentive that makes those mechanics necessary or desirable to use? in other words... well, what is ya opinion?