crossbit

Featuring Dave and Bancho...

I suppose a tie-in with the Gunsmith would have been a bit too on-the-nose, true.

Sounds like standard Rockstar at this point, unfortunately. Milking money out of the multiplayer is and has been their main priority for years.

"key figures at the studio have revealed"

...But they said all of this 3 weeks ago ahead of the trailers/showcase, in their own Bioware blog post, which you reported on at the time. This is about as far from a reveal as you can get.

"but not the open world experience"

Personally I'd almost be happier if the game wasn't open world, and was more of a refined largely-linear adventure, if it meant that the reportedly lacklustre elements (and visibly, as far as the gunplay in the gameplay trailer goes) in the missions could be given the extra care and focus that would really sell the space scoundrel fantasy.

But given that they're not doing that, if they're going to keep leading with the tagline and gameplay focus (of debatable accuracy, if you include MMOs) of this being the "first ever open world Star Wars game", choosing to forego the open world side in favour of some decidedly average linear gameplay in the first showing was definitely a bit of an own goal.

"heavy emphasis on stealth, and while it stuck with that formula for many games"

To be fair, that "emphasis on stealth" in the pre-RPG games was more a case of just "many stealth-forced missions that fail on detection".

But yeah, while Naoe looks fun and seems to have a lot of tools up her sleeve for both sides, Yasuke looks rather dull and like little more than a reskin of Eivor-minus-stealth. And so far seems to talk far too much in fluent Cliché. I expect, like Jacob before him, I would relegate him to "only played if/when the game makes it mandatory".

On the art style, it was quite jarring for me going from that initial scene of Varric and Harding and they look pretty much as they should, instantly recognisable... and then the other characters are shown with the more cartoonish facial features and just, what?

And yep, if this is that what they meant by the change in title better representing the focus that they wanted on the party... they were better off sticking to Dreadwolf, in both title and concept. (I do like the variety in the team and their roles though, all sark aside, so hopefully there'll be more of a Dragon Age feeling when they show us actual gameplay)

Disingenuous and hypocrytical. Phil, Phil never changes.

@Bez87 It definitely feels like a pretty firm response to the (accurate) "Xbox have no good games anymore" of recent years. Along with the buying in of third-party, multiplatform reveals/trailers - even if they refuse to allow "PS5" to appear at the end of the trailer - Microsoft have put both the State of Play and SGF to shame so far. Microsoft learned from it, Sony evidently didn't and fell into the same trap.

Will be interesting to see in the coming days/weeks, once their initial PR "play it on gamepass" push fades, which of their titles will be coming our way.

The biggest problem with the show was the same that's plagued the industry (and others) more and over the last few years; leaking culture.

The main would-be-surprise announcements - LEGO Horizons and Civ VII - along with some of the "meh" ones like New World Console, weren't a surprise at all. Civ VII had its lengthy cinematic which was clearly designed to build a growing thought of "Is it...? Oh, yes, it is!", but instead you knew 5 seconds in that it was the reveal that leaked the day before.

There's a drought of major titles right now for sure, and the AAA side of the industry - spending more and more on inflated game budgets in pursuit of the next super-profitable blockbuster, just to collapse and destroy countless studios and projects - takes full blame for that.

But christ alive, the leaking of so many intended surprises among what remains really strips so much of the fun out of these kinds of things.

They managed to make the State of Play look good.

Or at the very least, more respectful of our time.

"Please wrap it up, we don't get paid for speeches."

Dreadwolf was a better, more fluid subtitle. Veilguard wouldn't have been too bad. But "Dragon Age: The Veilguard" really doesn't flow.

Minor gripe aside though, it'll be good to finally see something. While the IGN interview makes it sound like it's going further past Inquisition into a Mass Effect-but-fantasy gameplay style, where I would've preferred a return to something closer to Origins, if the time they've spent on it has been well used hopefully we'll have something neat to look forward to.

Just, please, don't pad the game with as much timewasting open-ish-world padding as Inquisition, or fluff it entirely as with every Bioware project since.

For people interested in it, it sounds like a good move. A high base price for a live service game that wants you to keep spending is always a bad look, so, fair play to them.

Though given that I only like live service done well, and loathe PvP-only games, I'd still rather spend that £35 on a complete, one-and-done singleplayer game on sale.

....Ah. Well.

Count one more who thought this looked like it had a lot of potential, a varied and distinct group of playable characters, a distant tugging nostalgia at the back of the mind, the feeling that we don't see very many games of this style with more than one or two main, fully playable characters nowadays.

All that promise and potential in the trailer, for it to be a live service gacha. Urgh.

Welp, that's it then, my final results are in and Monster Hunter was the sole saving grace of the lineup.

My heart lept when I realised it was clearly Dynasty Warriors at play in what looks to be a solid engine and fluid motion. Maybe they could finally redeem themselves for the mess of DW9 after such a long wait.

Then my heart started to sink wondering "okay this new character looks fun to play despite his boring visual design, but when are they going to show someone else?"

And then they dropped the tale of the nameless protaganist and "Origins", the most trite of subtitles, and I simultaneously lost both hope and interest.

I honestly would have preferred a game more like their cinematic - a singleplayer game focusing on a lively, crew of space outlaws - infinitely more than what Concord actually is.

As it was, giving is an "in-engine cinematic" that will neither be featured in the game itself nor represents the experience in any meaningful way was one hell of a bum note to start on.

Sounds good to me. Hopefully it means that more of the known issues that have been tacked on to the patch notes for months can finally be addressed, and mean that fewer issues will slip through the cracks on new content/patches (new weapons like the Tenderiser releasing with intended stats, not having things like the visible red collision meshes on the horde maps or the "cloaked ships" accidentally creep into the live build, etc).

"We're not trying to be difficult", the PR guy says, while trying to avoid answering the question so desperately as to effectively answer it between the lines - it's not "yes, the studios are still running", but they don't want to say no.

If the studios aren't already shut down, they're either in the process of liquidation or only still "exist" on a techincality.

Ah yes, that "tremendous response" that made it one of the fastest half-price sales that I've ever seen from a Ubi title on PSN.

I watched a short stream of it on release, and couldn't justify trying it when I could get the same kicks from Black Flag, without any other players trying to grief me. If it hadn't spent so long in development, maybe the result wouldn't feel so stale, but who knows.

Alas, the annoying ones among them have since started up a fresh batch of "negative sentiment" to complain about the contents of the warbond.

And thus balance has been restored and the great wheel spins once more, that we may suffer yet another article about them before long.

No.

The guy said it himself; for what he did right under his employer's nose, he had it coming. Whether you agree with what he did or not, actions like that have consequences and you don't just get to carry on from what must have been a major breach of contract. If not several.

And the increasingly obnoxious, ego-inflated vocal minority in the HD2 community is definitely getting old. I'll stick to avoiding the cesspits of Reddit, Discord and the Steam forums - the normal folk who simply play the game are much more tolerable (380mm Barrages notwithstanding).

"Our teams have listened to the community, have learned valuable lessons, and are driving to the future"

If it were that simple, BF2042 would have retained the many lessons learnt from prior Battlefield (and Battlefront) games and not been a worthless, trend-chasing flop.

Suffice to say, I won't be holding my breath.

7.5

The gameplay, particularly combat is fun, and I didn't find the voice acting as bad as many reviewers suggested (it's pretty average, and still miles ahead of truly awful ones coughXenobladeChronicles2).

The downsides are some of the puzzle-platform sections, the otherwise-fun combat becoming very samey towards the end of the game (scattered boss fights really becoming the only highlight), and the previously serviceable story falling off a cliff in the final stretch - from late datalog entries including revelations from dialogue that were not, in fact, revealed (despite them being quite obvious by that point) and the more interesting sidequest subplots just fizzling out without any sense of resolution.

As much as I'd love this, I'm long past the point of paying full launch price for Ubisoft games.

As an amalgamation of the some of the worst industry trends, I can't fully support them - if you launch a game at a high price point, then throw in a bunch of immersion-breaking, tacky cosmetic items and a "premium currency", I'm only ever going to buy it a high reduction - if you add extra paid seasonal/battlepass BS to abuse FOMO, expect me to pay even less; I remember when I only encountered that nonsense in FtP MMOs run by South Korean publishers and that's where it should have stayed, it has no place in full price games. Diablo IV's current sale price, for example, is finally at a point where it's somewhat tempting - where if they hadn't included all the predatory monetisation, I wouod have bought it day one.

@KundaliniRising333 To each their own indeed, but as a fan of the original (and I know, that inevitably gives me a heavy bias) I don't see the "virtually unchanged" part. I get your issues with some of the jank - I had to laugh at the Warrior half-floating on the Ogre's head with the mounted attacks - but as far as I've seen there a lot of changes. Far from "the same game as 2013" (which I still play from time to time), I see what seems to be the same core gameplay and aesthetic with a lot of adjustments, upgrades and QoL changes, which is exactly what I want from a sequel.

...Though I do hope we can properly make the pawns shut up this time, and that is surely wishful thinking.

But yeah, I can't fault your caution. "If in doubt, wait and see" is never a bad policy.

Sorcerer in full plate armour? Interesting, I wonder if that means the class restrictions on gear (outside of weapons) have been loosened and there's now more freedom to play around with equipment.

Also I was wondering what their class ability would be and, well, that seems solid.

The main thing I want to see more (or more explanation) of before release is Pawn Inclinations, or the seeming lack of them and how that's been reworked. From the glimpses we've had of the status screens they don't seem to exist in the same way, with just one slot and no sign of the old names, so I'm hoping they're just something that you can set and keep now. The old way of having pawns picking up your behaviour over time instead of acting how you wanted them to act - and needing to go out of your way to maintain or retrain them - could be tiresome, and one of the few gripes that I had with the pawn system.

If it's well-implemented, I could definitely see it being my preferred choice - it would need to strike a good balance and progression.

If it allows you to tackle all available side content without massively outlevelling the story or vice-versa (something that a lot of jrpgs have struggled with once they transitioned from unmarked, entirely missable sidequests that primarily rewarded you with storylines and unique items to lists of Objectives that mainly bloat your EXP bar), while not tilting the scales against the player in the process, then I'm all for it.

If they don't get it right... well, I'm glad that it'll be a difficulty setting/option and not a mandatory feature.