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I remember when Proton launched it was like magic playing games like Doom and Nier Automata straight from the Linux Steam client with excellent performance. I do not miss the days of having the Windows version of Steam installed separately.
Are we watching a "changing of the guard" where the studios that used to bring out the hits are dying, shedding their talent and new indie projects are blooming in the fallout? I remember Bioward being a fantastic studio during the Mass Effect (and prior) years. They're a shell of their former selves now. I see this happening with Bethesda now too, although Starfield is not that bad. It's just nowhere near as epic and fun as Skyrim was. Then you have studios like CDPR that seemed poised to take the crown with CP2077, and although it's a great game, they certainly fumbled hard at launch. It's an interesting time in the game industry.
Hey pro tip, if a game isn't nearly as epic and fun as one that was released like 12 years ago, then its OK to call it a bad game. Cuz that's certainly not good
To be honest, I think if I were to go back and try Skyrim now, I'd probably feel pretty similarly about it as to how I do about Starfield. I still enjoy gaming, but it doesn't enthrall me quite the same as it used to. Part of adulthood I suppose.
I would say the same, but only because the standards of current Gen games has definitely gone up since then. There just weren't games like Elden Ring and TotK around when Skyrim was released
Should I give TotK another chance? I just find the building mechanic very tedious, even with Autobuild. Is the storyline really worth it? I've gotten as far as beating the first four temples, if that helps.
It's not about the storyline at all. If you don't enjoy the mechanics, you won't enjoy the game. I'm in the same boat - I'd really like to like it, but I play games mainly to tell a story, BOTW and TOTK don't deliver on that front.
I liked BotW, I just can't get into TotK. It's like they took an okay thing, and heard all the complaints about that, then turned those into features. I wish I hadn't downloaded it, at least if I'd gotten a physical copy I could get some money back.
Try playing Yakuza
Indie Devs haven't even begun to fully leverage all the new tools offered by recent Blender / Unreal / Godot.
And AAA studios are too big to leverage them effectively.
I think we're going to see continuing leaps forward in workflow and tools, allowing smaller teams to make whatever they want at any scale. We're kind of already there honestly, it just about applying it all meaningfully.
I've recently picked up CP2077 again and let me tell you the experience is night and day. The gameplay is actually fun now and the story is also enjoyable since they got rid of the game breaking bugs. While the current version does not excuse the extremely subpar launch version I don't think CD Projekt Red deserves a spot on your list.
A company that definitely fits your criteria is Blizzard. All the people I know that worked there quit and a lot of them told me about a huge brain drain that was happening which judging by what we know about the code of Diablo 4 sounds reasonable. At this point the company only exists because of nostalgia and even the gamer dads are getting more and more frustrated with them.
I still have faith in CDPR, they had one excellent game, one that they fucked up a bit and few relatively unknown but overall good games.
You know, I really do too. I actually had a lot of fun with CP2077 when it came out, but had to quit on the last 1/3 of the game because of a permanent sound glitch. I am very excited to jump back in.