regmcfly wrote:

Genuine, non trolling question, as I've only just caught up with this thread - do Microsoft have any big games from their own studios coming this year? Or is it going to be yo let's pay to get this shit on GP day one.

The latter is absolutely fine with me.

Nothing announced, Forza Motorsport rumoured, possibly some other surprises at the showcase next month, perhaps?

Yossarian wrote:

regmcfly wrote:

Genuine, non trolling question, as I've only just caught up with this thread - do Microsoft have any big games from their own studios coming this year? Or is it going to be yo let's pay to get this shit on GP day one.

The latter is absolutely fine with me.

Nothing announced, Forza Motorsport rumoured, possibly some other surprises at the showcase next month, perhaps?

The Activision merger is still too nascent and incomplete to go COD. Would they have the stones to ask EA if Sports FC goes day one Gamepass? Otherwise they're a bit rooked come this Christmas for compelling reasons for new adopters.

Alternatively, time to go rummaging through the back catalogue and get remastering....

There’s still e3. I can imagine Microsoft doing some sort of CoD sop.

Lads, the new fifa later this year from EA will still be Fifa 23. EAFC is gonna be next year's.

Ooooo ass.

Yeah I know, I know. Just never thought we'd see a STALKER 2, and it has probably been my most anticipated title since announced.

top tip for lowering expectations: take the r out the title. now it sound like some gammon town in the home counties.

Microsoft make a ton of money through game sales, both their own and others made on their platform. It doesn’t seem likely to me that they’re looking to cut that off any time soon.

That's your major talking point from the reveal, is it?

It does feel like this game has somehow garnered unwarranted hype. It looked okay, but not like it was in anyway special or different. I didn’t see it and immediately say “wow, I have to play this”. It was more “they made a Fallout in space, and dropped some Destiny and No Man’s Sky in there too”. It was weird one to finish the show on, but that comes back to my comment about unwarranted hype.

Paul the sparky wrote:

That's your major talking point from the reveal, is it?

Er.. I didn’t watch the reveal Paul.

It’s just a new story Paul.

Anyhoo... here are my hot takeaways from the gameplay reveal:

The 'facial tech' behind the NPC's grimaces is still risible. That first female NPC the player talks to in particular was on a par with dialogue encounters...in Oblivion. And depressingly NPCs looked like the very worse that Mass Effect Andromeda gave birth to. My face is tired indeed.

Gunfights / combat looked pretty underwhelming too. But that's typical of all Bethesda releases, so no change there then either. Curiously, in-flight space combat looked better than the footsoldier stuff, like something out of The Expanse, almost.

Now onto the good stuff: settlement building makes a return. Now although I had a mixed experience with the latter in Fallout 4 (it was always a fiddly experience, like trying to play snooker with a length of rope) the settlement system never got true credit for what it actually achieved - which was connecting the player to the world like no other RPG had done before. Need to build a hut to store your loot? - go and kill these bandits over there then and scrap their weapons and armour for vital building materials. Or delve deep into those ruins to extract scrap and ancient artifacts needed to to build that power generator you need. It was a brilliant way to get the player invested in the world around him, it was just sloppily implemented.

It was only fiddly because it lacked a bird's eye view mode when building stuff - but they've implemented that in Starfield and and that's a dream come true! And just like FO4's settlement building, it will no doubt be entirely optional.

I take Todd's promise of 1000 explorable planets with a a hefty slice of moon cheese. I've no doubt the majority of them will be nondescript balls of ice or identical gas giants - but there was a pleasing amount of biomes on display. If they can balance these procedurally generated rocks with enough handcrafted areas then it could be a galaxy worth exploring.

Cohh is a don

Dark Soldier wrote:

Cohh is a don

Yeah, he’s a cool guy. Had to stop the vid when he started arguing that Bethesda games are buggy because they’re ambitious and “shoot for the moon” though - that’s demonstrably not true.