The article quotes Todd Howard as saying a design goal was providing the player with a feeling of being an explorer.

Yeah, I’m rather bored with the wide-but-shallow approach Bethesda games take. Tons of geography with maybe 20% filled with things of consequence. I am uninterested in collecting 42,000 wheels of cheese or finding some random space hobo on a planet.

Well, except for the fact that all four PS3 AC games are listed as “Ingame” on the RPCS3 compatability list.

Wireless. While players should be unpairing any controllers prior to their matches, sometimes they don’t and a third party can wirelessly interfere (intentionally or not) with a match.

I can’t think of any wireless sticks off the top of my head other than 8Bitdo’s offering. They’re generally not legal at tournaments.

Personally, I like just about anything from Hori. I like their Fighting Edge stick a great deal. It doesn’t seem to be in production anymore, unfortunately. I’ve since modified mine pretty extensively but I liked it a lot right out of the box.

I have a Qanba Obsidian that I use whenever I play games on my computer. Again, it’s out of production but Qanba now offers the Obsidian 2.

They’re two of my favorite sticks and I own a lot.

Seems like you’re ultimately annoyed that you can’t faceroll the game with simply bigger numbers in certain stats.

That’s not it at all. What I want is the freedom to approach the game using the mechanics of the stats, the way the game had worked for decades before. If that means “faceroll[ing] the game”, then so be it. I thought the final boss of Verdict Day (among many others across the series) was incredibly difficult but I didn’t have a problem with it because the game let me respond to that difficulty with building my mech rather than requiring me to be dexterous and having intimate knowledge of action game mechanics. AC6 just doesn’t play like the mech sim I expect the series to be. It plays like an action game and demands I master the action. It feels less MechWarrior, more Titanfall. I know that’s a reductive analogy and all three games are fairly different but hopefully my point gets across.

And you also seemingly have a hate boner for Dark Souls.

Then you’ve misread. I adore the Souls series. That doesn’t mean I want my From games to be homogenized in to it.

You’re also gonna have a pretty unsuccessful time chasing the gameplay of your childhood too. I firmly think if you got the AC you think you wanted, it wouldn’t reach those expectations at all.

I disagree. For what it’s worth, I wasn’t a child when Armored Core first released on the PSX; so, I’m not really chasing childhood nostalgia. Regardless, I thought Verdict Day was brilliant. Granted, it was ten years ago but it was nearly fifteen years after the original AC.

Soul Edge (renamed to Soul Blade on console)

AC4 was more super robot than real robot. AC5 was real robot but half-sized. AC5 also had a global multiplayer war. So, they’ve experimented with the series over the years.

That said, if you haven’t liked AC in any form it has taken, I can’t imagine you’re going to like AC6.

The thought of such a video being fifty minutes long makes me nauseous.

Yeah, it was on the Vita and PS4.

I have all of them installed on my PS5 save for Marz via the following two titles:

• Cyber Troopers Virtual-On Masterpiece 1995~2001
• A Certain Magical Virtual-On

I adore the series. Really wish it was more beloved. My local arcade had the sit-down dual cab for the original.

Well, no. I mean using other characters while one is in a conversation. During conversations, there are some buttons in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. One of those will allow you to swap to another character. You will then be able to do whatever you wish with those characters while the original character is in their conversation.

If you wish to use a different character for a conversation, you can simply start the conversation with the given character.

I adore those games, and while I think they’ve made great strides with CKIII and Vicky 3, I agree that the tutorials are severely lacking.

I politely disagree. Baldur’s Gate III teaches you absolutely nothing about its rules and systems. You are expected to discover the rules and systems on your own. Things like crowd control, the actual numerical advantages of height, and repositioning while in dialog are never explained.

It is the most frustrating aspect of Larian games, imo.

All consumers want it fast, want it cheap, want it good, want it on their machine, want it maintained in perpetuity, want it small, and want it to load quickly. Nevermind that a number of those are diametrically opposed ideals.

I’m not sure anyone is having an issue retaining employees. Top employees, perhaps, but for a lot of businesses you don’t need very many brilliant (and expensive) employees. Any competent soul will do. On that score, I can assure you that the game industry has no shortage of folks looking to get in to the industry.

I know a handful of developers (read: far too many) who have been fired for vocally disagreeing with management.

I’m not sure what you’re on about but he wasn’t complaining about Spider-Man 2. He even said if a game is 1P, then he’s fine with any settings a player wants.

His complaint was about competitive games and I think it’s a fair complaint (albeit a bit off topic) I don’t think it’s in your (or anyone else’s) purview to tell others what games are or aren’t about nor how seriously they should take their games.

We have entire competitive (and, imo, friendly) communities centered around competition and the notion that the rules are the same for everyone.

As I see it, it’s a confluence of things which have captured the zeitgeist:

• Larian D:OS games have been very well received.
• Baldur’s Gate and the Infinity Engine games are beloved.
• Final Fantasy XVI, the big JRPG for the year, is squarely an action game and some view that as off-kilter. Baldur’s Gate 3, the big CRPG for the year, is squarely an RPG.
• D&D is a big property and new D&D games often gain a fair bit of attention.
• People seem to appreciate having no in-game purchases.

These five things, in my opinion, have pushed Baldur’s Gate 3 to the front of media outlets and, in turn, to the forefront of conversations.

I’m a former game dev and I can tell you, at least from my experience, there was no golden age where developers and customers were treated fairly. It’s the primary reason why I left. Hell, I once interviewed at a place that showed off how the offices had beds in them, as if that was a selling point.

That said, I’d probably be someone who you’d consider “doesn’t care about the bad things these companies did.” I’m just too fuckin’ old to be mad about shit all of the time. If I was only going to patronize folks and companies who matched my own set of ideals and ethics, I would be more than just gameless. I would be homeless and penniless as well.

What I do is simply detach products and services from those who provide them. I can buy a thing from a person I find distasteful. I don’t have to invite them out for a drink and I certainly don’t have to avoid taking them to task for their poor or unethical behavior. Moreover, ethics and behavior are saleable. If someone comes around who offers something comparable to something from someone I find distasteful, then I can go patronize the new person instead. I have jumped ship from many service and product providers for that very reason. If you want my business, then you better ensure you’re either the only person who can provide what I want or ensure you’re the person I want to buy from.

I had such a blast with it save for that last island.