Community MetaSteam | June 2023 - halfway through the year

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LEANIJA

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May 5, 2019
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I do also hope that Embracer makes it through this. While I heavily dislike all the gobbling-up of studios they did, that's precisely why it would be a horror scenario if they went bust. So many jobs would be in limbo, and so many IPs as well. Not a good scenario.
Maybe next time don't buy every studio in existence, Lars!



Anyway, more news from them

 

CommodoreKong

Mercenary in the Badlands
Jun 15, 2019
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I do also hope that Embracer makes it through this. While I heavily dislike all the gobbling-up of studios they did, that's precisely why it would be a horror scenario if they went bust. So many jobs would be in limbo, and so many IPs as well. Not a good scenario.
Maybe next time don't buy every studio in existence, Lars!



Anyway, more news from them

I for one can't wait for a bunch of low quality LotR games and other media adaptions..
 

manchego obfuscator

MetaMember
Jan 23, 2020
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I'm honestly surprised it took Embracer this long to announce a massive scaling back of their company. Of course it was always coming.
I hope we eventually find out what that $2 billion deal that fell through would have been, since that failure seems to have been the impetus for the current restructuring and cost-cutting, but yeah, this was inevitable. There were a couple years when Embracer seemed to be putting out a press release every few months announcing another five or six studios they'd acquired, and that was never going to be sustainable.

Supraland is good.
 

Pommes

Hey you! Have a nice day!
Jun 4, 2019
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It will be interesting to see if the vastness of Starfield will lead to a new "Leave the hinterlands" phenomenon :thinking-face:
 
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yuraya

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May 4, 2019
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It will be interesting to see if the vastness of Starfield will lead to a new "Leave the hinterlands" phenomenon :thinking-face:
I would guess at least 50% of the people who play the game will never finish the main quest. There is too much shit to do so people will get caught up with all the outpost building and resource gathering. They were preaching "freedom" quite a lot in the direct. Also gonna be interesting to see what the starting planet will be. If the game doesn't hold your hand in anyway then I expect people to just never follow any path and spend way too much time on any given planet. Its gonna be like Skyrim you just wonder off into any direction and keep walking until you find some town with dozens of quests. With this its gonna be you getting into your ship and flying off into some random solar system that is very far from the main quest line lol. Some of your companions seem to be part of the constellation group tho so they are probably there to bother you and remind you about the main questline.
 

Readher

Resident Cynic
Jun 23, 2020
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A brand new challenge unrelated to “Persona” or “Megaten”
about starting from zero
25 years ago, ATLUS began crafting their first RPG. Speaking of RPGs at the time — their stories were based around a so-called “fantasy” world.
At the time, such a foundation was mainstream. As a way of “countering” that “mainstream” foundation, we released the “Megami Tensei” series.
And after that, we branched off the series; releasing the spin-off that would become known as “Persona.”
With each series, each and every single project to date, and each generation; I have crafted my projects as games that are a counter to the norm.
Now, in continuation to these projects created by ATLUS, comes forth a new one. What is the next concept to tackle and address in RPGs? To challenge the norms naturally consumed by gamers for decades.
I think that this, in particular, is a challenge to the genre. The challenge is about to begin right now. And I would like you to stand with me as we start the challenge—as we start from zero.


It's so tiresome... So many devs are completely creatively bankrupt that it's really hard to be excited for anything.
 

Mivey

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Sep 20, 2018
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I would guess at least 50% of the people who play the game will never finish the main quest.
50% would be pretty normal. If you look at Steam achievement stats, you see that almost always there's less than 50% who get the achievements for playing through the campaign at least once.
So if Starfield is more extreme about this, you'd expect it to drop to 30% completion rate or less.
It's so tiresome... So many devs are completely creatively bankrupt that it's really hard to be excited for anything.
Well, the UI looks the same, but I think the developers are talking about things like the story, plot, characters and other things you don't see in screenshots. It is pretty clear that they are otherwise clearly making use of a similar visual language as Persona 5, if taken to an extreme.
 

Readher

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50% would be pretty normal. If you look at Steam reviews, you see that almost always there's less than 50% who get the achievements for playing through the campaign at least once.
So if Starfield is more extreme about this, you'd expect it to drop to 30% completion rate or less.

Well, the UI looks the same, but I think the developers are talking about things like the story, plot, characters and other things you don't see in screenshots. It is pretty clear that they are otherwise clearly making use of a similar visual language as Persona 5, if taken to an extreme.
The gameplay systems are pretty mych the exact same as in various Megaten titles and sorry if I don't believe that Atlus story and characters will be anything revolutionary. Their characters have been walking anime tropes for decades with a few exceptions in the darker SMT and similar titles, but this is clearly much closer to Persona which is generic power of friendship stuff and cardboard cutout characters. What they're doing won't be even revolutionary as far as Atlus goes, never mind gaming as a whole. They're just out of touch and completely stagnant. And then comes the issue of presentation:


Just... no. It's 2023, and you're not an indie developer nor making a Switch exclusive. Sorry, but this is unacceptable for a full priced title. Maybe that's what Hashino was talking about when it comes to challenging the norms. A game like this possibly launching at $70 would certainly be a first.
 

C-Dub

Makoto Niijima Fan Club President
Dec 23, 2018
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It's so tiresome... So many devs are completely creatively bankrupt that it's really hard to be excited for anything.
Not sure what you were expecting, but this looks much better than I thought it would when I heard it'd be a fantasy game. Quite frankly, it looks nothing like anything done in the traditional fantasy genre before, which is awesome.

Honestly, putting screenshots of it next to screenshots from the developer's previous game is really a lazy and rather pointless comparison. I'd be more critical if someone else was cribbing their hard work like this, but considering they've made successively brilliant games, them bringing their flair and style to the fantasy genre is quite welcome.
 

Readher

Resident Cynic
Jun 23, 2020
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Not sure what you were expecting, but this looks much better than I thought it would when I heard it'd be a fantasy game. Quite frankly, it looks nothing like anything done in the traditional fantasy genre before, which is awesome.

Honestly, putting screenshots of it next to screenshots from the developer's previous game is really a lazy and rather pointless comparison. I'd be more critical if someone else was cribbing their hard work like this, but considering they've made successively brilliant games, them bringing their flair and style to the fantasy genre is quite welcome.
If there's anything I've learned from consuming Japanese media over the years, it's that they'll come up with the most unique and exciting settings and then waste them on generic story and one-dimensional walking tropes of characters.
 
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Pommes

Hey you! Have a nice day!
Jun 4, 2019
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Streams....
  • Xbox Extended (in ~ 45 minutes)
  • Dames 4 Games
  • Black Voices in Gaming

 
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Eila

Junior Member
Jan 21, 2019
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There's a decent fan translation of AAI2, yep. That's the only game that hasn't been localised yet, the first one got a limited Western released.
Hopefully there's a chance that Capcom brings those two back as well. Hardly a bigger risk than TGAA was
I'm not so sure it would be so easy, those games use a lot of low res sprites, they cannot just easily upscale them, the games would need to be completely redrawn, I think. Like The World Ends With You..
 

Mivey

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Sep 20, 2018
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I'm not so sure it would be so easy, those games use a lot of low res sprites, they cannot just easily upscale them, the games would need to be completely redrawn, I think. Like The World Ends With You..
Honestly, no. AAI has some amazing pixel graphics. No need for any high res version of those. Offer some proper CRT shaders, and then just some options on scaling, from simple to 1:1, and it would look amazing. Besides, the small fan base isn't going to care either way, so it would be a huge waste of work to create ugly redrawn versions of those.
 
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Mivey

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The gameplay systems are pretty mych the exact same as in various Megaten titles and sorry if I don't believe that Atlus story and characters will be anything revolutionary. Their characters have been walking anime tropes for decades with a few exceptions in the darker SMT and similar titles, but this is clearly much closer to Persona which is generic power of friendship stuff and cardboard cutout characters. What they're doing won't be even revolutionary as far as Atlus goes, never mind gaming as a whole. They're just out of touch and completely stagnant. And then comes the issue of presentation:


Just... no. It's 2023, and you're not an indie developer nor making a Switch exclusive. Sorry, but this is unacceptable for a full priced title. Maybe that's what Hashino was talking about when it comes to challenging the norms. A game like this possibly launching at $70 would certainly be a first.
I don't really have much of a stake in this, and haven't played much of SMT yet, so assuming this drops on Steam, it will be a pretty fresh experience for me.
Agree with you about the UI though, that's a bit messy.
 

Hektor

Autobahnraser
Nov 1, 2018
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I don't really have much of a stake in this, and haven't played much of SMT yet, so assuming this drops on Steam, it will be a pretty fresh experience for me.
Agree with you about the UI though, that's a bit messy.
Going by the trailer, this is really more of a persona game in a fantasy setting, rather than a more traditional SMT title.
The stat system, the social links, and the calendar based structure are all persona trademarks.

If there's anything I've learned from consuming Japanese media over the years, it's that they'll come up with the most unique and exciting settings and then waste them on generic story and one-dimensional walking tropes of characters.
But that's just pop-fiction tho.
Almost all of it is like that, be it japanese or western.
 
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「Echo」

竜の魔女。
Nov 1, 2018
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Mt. Whatever
Wait, the next Tomb Raider is coming from Amazon? I guess I missed that news... Expectations lowered a bit. Amazon still doesn't have a good game to their name imo. :weary-face:

Also, probably an unpopular opinion but I hope they continue with nu-Lara. I don't want another series reboot just yet.
=====

Triangle Strategy got a pretty cool new update.

 

Sobatronix

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Mar 9, 2021
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I tried TLOU on Steam Deck and was really surprised it even held 30 fps in the Financial Plaza which is one of the most demanding areas in the game. You get about 2 hours of battery life. They also added cute little details like the game having proper Steam Deck controller button prompts (Instead of just Xbox controller prompts) and instead of saying "Quit to desktop" it says "Quit to library", pretty small details that I can appreciate, and adds to the experience IMO.
 

Dragon1893

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Apr 17, 2019
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I was expecting Metaphor to be a much bigger departure from their usual style and I'm convinced that that was the plan initially, but as development evolved they ended up going back into their comfort zone.

The gameplay systems are pretty mych the exact same as in various Megaten titles and sorry if I don't believe that Atlus story and characters will be anything revolutionary. Their characters have been walking anime tropes for decades with a few exceptions in the darker SMT and similar titles, but this is clearly much closer to Persona which is generic power of friendship stuff and cardboard cutout characters. What they're doing won't be even revolutionary as far as Atlus goes, never mind gaming as a whole. They're just out of touch and completely stagnant. And then comes the issue of presentation:


Just... no. It's 2023, and you're not an indie developer nor making a Switch exclusive. Sorry, but this is unacceptable for a full priced title. Maybe that's what Hashino was talking about when it comes to challenging the norms. A game like this possibly launching at $70 would certainly be a first.
Unacceptable? Really? Even ignoring the fact that the game looks pretty decent, since when is that the only metric that defines if a game is worth full price? Sorry but that last sentence is just hilarious. You've never seen a worse looking full price game? Ok then.

On a different note, Star wars Outlaws was a pleasant surprise, looking forward to that one.
 
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Paul

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Jan 26, 2019
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I tried TLOU on Steam Deck and was really surprised it even held 30 fps in the Financial Plaza which is one of the most demanding areas in the game. You get about 2 hours of battery life. They also added cute little details like the game having proper Steam Deck controller button prompts (Instead of just Xbox controller prompts) and instead of saying "Quit to desktop" it says "Quit to library", pretty small details that I can appreciate, and adds to the experience IMO.
That's actually super awesome.

Still, TLOU is the kind of game I really prefer to play on TV.
 

Dragon1893

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Apr 17, 2019
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I'm still not used to seeing P4G in HD (bought it to support it at launch but haven't played much of it), the IQ on the VITA was so friggin' bad.
Speaking of which, the wait for SMTV is driving me crazy, can't wait to replay it with decent IQ and performance.
 

Readher

Resident Cynic
Jun 23, 2020
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You've never seen a worse looking full price game?
I don't think so, no. Compared to what games look like nowadays, those blurry textures are abhorrent. Some of the character models and textures are also very low quality (the pink-skinned girl). P3RE looks miles better in comparison, even if it's rather simplistic graphically as well.
 
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