No kidding. From the article,

So far, it’s a pretty looking game. The trouble is finding things to do in it.

That was the end of the quest. All setup, no punchline.

There was no one to thank me. All I had was a little more loot. Where’s my impact on the world?

If these quotes ring true in the final game, that’s a hard pass. I want RPGs, action-oriented or not, to allow me to play a role. A million games can make fantasy look pretty, Obsidian needs to make it interesting.

Absolutely. I haven’t been following this game and I’d be thrilled if it was solid at launch, but we gotta keep CS:2 in mind.

A good man, this Ape.

I should play Skyrim again.

The issues sound patchable to a layman like myself. Embrace patient gaming and enjoy in a month or so.

True other games have had that, but it really wasn’t a goal for Elden Ring and I don’t think it really hinders it. The immersion into a real world was clearly a tentpole design decision for Rockstar in RDR2, but not Fromsoft. Which is fine for you to miss in Elden Ring, I just think we gotta manage expectations sometimes where not every game can have every thing.

I’m glad they’re showing more extended sections of gameplay. I was worried after the last few trailers featured mainly quick cuts between cutscenes and seemingly canned animations. This is shaping up to be promising despite the somewhat worrisome delays.

I just felt like I ran out of things to do and there was no point to keep playing.

To each their own of course, but it sounds like you basically just “beat” the game, in the same way someone beats Animal Crossing. You just stop playing eventually. I don’t see that as a negative if you enjoyed that time.

It’s an incredible game, a love letter to all the best aspects of the Harvest Moon series. My only real gripe is the NPC characters can feel a little stale and robotic after a while, but during a first playthrough they are all full of life.

Maybe! I don’t think there’s a right answer until hindsight shows us how the game does. I can also imagine it has a lot to do with what the folks holding the money think will sell better, a sequel to a poorly received game, or a (potentially) lower risk remake?

The Bioware we knew and loved has been gone a long time. DA2 was hardly Bioware, let alone Inquisition.

To me it’s kinda the perfect game to remake (hopefully it IS remade and not just rereleased) because it had a lot of potential that it just did not live up to. A graphics and content pack would not improve the game much at all, because the let down was the gameplay and mechanics. If they can re-tool that, they may have a solid game here.

Congrats to Billy Basso and to Bigmode for the positive reviews! Always good to see a new IP, studio, and even publisher come out the gate strong.

I think it’s just a matter of trends and design theory. For a long time you couldn’t escape the orange/blue combo like in the Battlefield series artwork. Plus I don’t think all these titles really released at the “same” time.

It’s definitely not made to be Dark Souls/Nioh/Sekiro in terms of combat, it’s closer to being Assassins Creed or Far Cry, though much more grounded and a little more thoughtful than those two. For me, the combat was not the thing keeping me interested, and that’s fine. I was more than happy to just travel from POI to POI since the world was so beautiful, and the little samurai challenges were neat (bamboo cutting for example) and the duels were super cool and cinematic, even if the combat wasn’t particularly deep.

Feudal Japan, supposedly.

It’s a game. Stop manufacturing issues.

What about this indicates AAA? Planned size of 100 employees, no projects announced yet, no mention of funding. Only thing I see is “cutting-edge” which could necessitate larger amounts of funding to develop, but that’s highly speculative and depends on the direction. I imagine after their Rocksteady experience, the people hired on from that company were looking for something different, not another “AAA” studio with shareholder oversight.

I wish that they would (could?) incorporate some gameplay clips along with their talking points. Sometimes I feel it’s hard to understand the complaint without a direct visual, but I know that opens up a can of worms regarding copyright and monetization.

If by inventory Tetris you mean something like RE4’s attaché case system, then no there’s no reorganizing like that - it’s closer to the Witcher 3’s system, with a big grid of square images for each item and a section to the left depicting the character and where equipment can be slotted in. It’s all just a bit cumbersome - item images are small and sometimes fairly generic, sorting options are few, juggling which characters are holding what, characters’ inventories that are back at camp can’t be accessed unless you go back and switch them into your party (AFAIK), which involves telling one character to stay behind, confirming with them, going over to the new character, asking them to join, THEN accessing their inventory.