> definitely won’t be preordering anything like this until I see more definitive reviews.
There’s almost zero reason the preorder games nowadays. That’s been the case since the move to digital, or even since the move from cartridge-based media to disk-based media (when supply became a non-issue).
They try to introduce DLC incentives, but those are almost always not enough, if you’re on the fence. I’ve only preordered if I already know I’m going to get it anyway (which is very rare).
> They try to introduce DLC incentives, but those are almost always not enough
Honestly, I ultimately always feel a bit cheated when I buy a game at launch because whatever bullshit day one DLC they give us is nothing compared to what I'd get if I'd waited a few years and picked up the "ultimate edition" or whatever that will include even more content and be mostly patched up so it's a less frustrating experience too and often the superior edition sells for less than the price at release.
It's like companies just punish people who give them their money as quickly as possible. Considering the backlog of games I've already got it's smart to wait, but there are a couple franchises where really don't want to even when I know I'll probably end up regretting it.
> There’s almost zero reason the preorder games nowadays.
I would agree with you on this for AAA titles, but not for early access/indie titles. Though these games tend to cost much less so it’s worth a gamble and it’s nice to support indie devs. I’ve gotten so much ROI from buying Minecraft when the alpha was released for €9.95.
And then there is Kickstarter/other platforms. Most of the games I backed were released and some were amazing (Rimworld) but there has been some stinkers (Star Citizen, Shroud of the Avatar).
I would separate pre-order from early-access. With early access content is available and can be reviewed, and you can then decide if what's available is already worth it to you.
And kickstarter is funding, the game will probably not happen without it.
Compare to like the pre-order for Diablo 4, I believe you had like 2 days of closed limited beta test and could play 3 days before general release and that's it. Absolutly not worth buying before review imo.
Hopefully everyone has learned their lesson and won't be pre-ordering this thing or expecting it to work or deliver on what was promised at launch. However good the game looks, we should expect its release to be a disaster that hopefully improves after a year or so of patches.
Honestly, things would probably be a lot better for everybody if people held off on pre-orders and considered waiting for a few updates before buying even when there hasn't been a massive controversy with the developer's past releases.
I am also cautiously optimistic as well. Though part of me wants to back/preorder this game because they eventually did make good on their promises and kept on releasing new updates for free instead of new DLC. They really did a good job of reversing course.
That's because they've hardly changed anything from the previous game in order to make this, which will be obvious to anybody who has played NMS much. I appreciate the effort they've put into improving the game over a decade but I'm really not sure anybody wants to play the same game but basically on a smaller scale and with what appears to be the same limitations and visual style. I hope for their sake that I'm wrong.
I’m curious to see what Hello Games does with this, but the trailer feels mostly like NMS with a different skin.
It seems odd to try to build an RPG in a procedural world. It’s hard to build an immersive world, when it wasn’t hand crafted to fit the story.
NMS was ambitious, and it’s definitely come a long way from when it started, but it still lacks the depth of a hand crafted story and world. But it’s a sandbox game from the ground up — a sandbox RPG seems like it would just result in a fairly flat experience.
Compared to, for example, Nier Automata or the Horizon franchise, where it’s clear what went into developing both the story and world.
Who said this would be an RPG? To me it looks like a fantasy survival sandbox game along similar lines of Terraria or Valheim. Those tend to focus more on action and exploration of dangerous environments, and that creates a very compelling experience.
> it brings the depth of a role playing game to the freedom of a survival sandbox
I guess you could argue it doesn’t directly state that it’s an RPG, but even claiming it has the depth of one seems to suggest a deep story that I’m arguing is typically hard to achieve with a procedural world.
I would argue Terraria’s depth is in its crafting mechanics and variety of loot, but not its story. I’ve not played Valheim, but have heard it compared to a 3D Terraria.
In many cases RPG is used to mean "character classes, skill trees, and/or skill progression" as opposed to "your character is mostly always the same but with different weapons"
(e.g. in terraria you can get very different characters depending on how you play, but the difference is mostly due to swappable equipment)
My interpretation of how the term is used is that the requirement is to have the ability to experience radically different gameplay based on how you play and your choices.
For example Undertale goes 100% on "the story evolves around you even if your character essentially is always the same" but also a game that goes "experience tha same story with different mechanics and playstyles" would be an RPG
Historically yes, but LLMs could be the differentiator here in developing ad-hoc stories that fit the players development so far. That tech was not available for NMS.
Random flavorful LLM stories that doesn't fit in the world will feel even worse than the bland auto generated quests we currently have. Bad writing is far worse than no writing.
You would need to interface it with the environments etc, so that the LLM has something to work with. I could see LLMs generating good quests when each character has as much data as in Dwarf Fortress for example, but then you would need to do the work to add all of that.
Loosely structured or sandboxy rpgs are viable and my favorite kind actually. Kenshi is a great example. Dwarf fortress and its clones also, though character churn in classic df defocuses individual characters and you always end up role playing as the colony itself.
Besides the issue of whether it really will be an RPG, procedural generation has a long history in RPGs -- the Elder Scrolls series traditionally had procedurally generated dungeons. And of course many people's first exposure to procedural generation is playing Rogue or the many games inspired by it ("roguelikes").
I mention it in another comment, but I think it depends on your definition of RPG. I think of RPGs as games that are RPGs first: JRPGs and Western RPGs (Elder Scrolls, Baldur’s Gate, etc.) with rich stories.
I don’t really think of roguelikes as RPGs. But again, the definition will always be argued, and not trying to push my definition on others.
My main point is that, to me, RPG often implies a rich story, and I think a generated world (including those in roguelikes) has a tough time matching the richness of the stories in hand-crafted RPGs.
From my PoV I find roguelikes to be a stronger form of roleplaying and immersion; the difference is in where the roleplaying occurs — in the play itself. I’ve never found navigating limited narrative trees to be nearly as involved; you’re just going through someone else’s story.
The same occurs playing tabletop as well. When the DM comes out with his whole big narrative and players with complex backstories, versus a vague broadly defined setting that is forced to dynamically adapt to player actions, the latter always forges a stronger bond with the character being played.
Though the risk with the game in question is that NMS is/was exactly not a dynamically adapting setting; when they said random generation they meant it, and with no internal consistency between various systems you end up with… random shit happening for random reasons and no actionable or narrative control over any of it.
Dwarf fortress is really probably the ideal in terms of procgen producing not just serviceable RPG narratives, but actually interesting ones
This is solvable with current technology (well at least the components to make this a reality already exists). Combine procedural generation with generative AI. Imagine endless landscapes that are totally original and not samey.
Not sure how many others share this opinion, but I don't find the idea of "infinite" gameplay compelling currently. Generative AI is perhaps the next evolution of it, sure. But I play games for the crafted experiences that usually have a compelling endpoint.
As soon as I see a mechanic that is infinite by nature, e.g. a "radiant quests", repeatable randomised dungeons, infinite upgrade trees, etc, I lose interest.
If I wanted indefinite novelty I'd go back out into the real world?
The exception is roguelite games which have this concept baked into the design from the start. But things like Tiny Tina's Wonderlands' Chaos Dungeon, God of War's Niflheim (or Ragnarok's newly announced Valhalla), no thanks.
>As soon as I see a mechanic that is infinite by nature, e.g. a "radiant quests", repeatable randomised dungeons, infinite upgrade trees, etc, I lose interest.
Of course. I lose interest too because the quests are samey. Instead I have to rely on the endless procedurally generated content from humans to keep me satiated.
If a game generated content from AI then the content can potentially be diverse enough to keep my interest for much loonger. Perhaps the AI can generate content that 100% matches human output.
For example, say I'm playing a game like No man sky. With AI One of the worlds that no man sky generates is basically an entire world with the detail and gameplay of Red Dead Redemption. Randomly generated. Of course this is the ultimate goal. The short term goal is we can generated worlds where each world has landscapes that look hand crafted similar to what we see in Zelda BOTW or red dead.
That's what I'm talking about. Not the procedural sameness we see today.
Generative AI is already producing pictures with enough novelty to be comparable to regular art. The next step is video. Then movies. And the step after that is entire gaming experiences.
I agree, the AI angle has promise. I think what I'm getting at is that once I get a sense of "infinite" in a game it starts to feel very pointless to me.
I suppose I'll see if that changes in a few years once AI-driven game content becomes more prevalent.
The way other games solved that is by having less random generation, trim down on samey or bad content and make a focused 50-100 hour playthrough that is really excellent.
If they took NMS and took all the best parts and crafted a more grounded fantasy survival game out of that it could be really awesome.
For what it’s worth, Hello Games spent so much time fixing the game that people bought a billboard saying Thank You outside their office years later. The game still gets regular content updates, for free 7 years later and is now one of the better console VR games out there. In terms of long term support and content updates the amount of companies providing free content for games 7 years after release is extremely low.
I think the release history warrants waiting until after the initial release to make a purchase decision (as people should with any game), but if it demonstrates the level of quality and polish I have come to expect from HG after patches I’ll have no problem forking money over for this.
NMS is a fun game with some flawed design elements. I hope that the designers address those in what looks to be a spiritual successor to NMS. If it’s just more of the shallow procedural saminess that indunated the first game it will probably be a pass from me though, I could just play NMS for that
I bought it later and it was a good value they really did a lot with it. Honestly if they just did some better writing on the scripted stuff it could have been quite a bit better even if they changed nothing about how anything actually played
Yeah, the campaign that they patched in was enjoyable, given that I’m a goal oriented player I really would have liked them to flesh that out more. I think there’s real potential if they hired a proper script writer
I just went over a list of "upcoming RPGs 2024". For my POV, all of them look the same and this is without dismissing the quality of graphics, gameplay possibilities, art ect. It might because I'm a gamer who puts a lot (too much) emphasis on story and how unique it is. I miss games being more "punk", having humor, being serious, being less serious, angering moms without being perverse...
The trailer is a deliberate choice of the authors on what content to put in order to sell the game and present "the idea of the game". Not only that, but a lot of trailers are in form of a presentation with audio or text (more common) by the authors, where they deliberately emphasize what they think are strong points of the game. So in fact trailers, even very short ones, can tell a lot more than it's immediately obvious.
Could a 1m30 trailer of your favorite book be made in a way that conveyed that it's well written? There's style and world building, small aspects of which can be conveyed in small formats, but there's drama composition and significant aspects of style and world that cannot be compressed into a format so small. I think almost all high capital "artistic" projects are conservative in their design, so as to be a safe investment, which basically means having a trailer that will sell. The question being asked, I think, is "if a given element of the production can't make it into the trailer, does it even have a return on investment?".
I think we strayed away from my original comment and criticism, which was more aimed at lack of uniqueness of the games on the list, as judged from the trailers, than the quality. Additionally I'd like to point out that I read descriptions of every game on the list besides watching a trailer.
Of course, here I'm opening myself for a valid criticism which might be constructed as "even if a game uses elements of previously told stories and settings, it might do a different spin or do it on a such a new level of excellence (story wise) that it becomes incomparable with previous attempts".
You could also point out that trailer can be manipulated in such a way by a talented director, that would make the game appear new and unique.
Exactly. That game has raised by expectation on what a game could be in this day and age. This is coming from a huge fan of Fallout I,II, NV, Planescape Torment, old adventure games ect.
I wonder if it is physically possible, nowadays, to just quietly launch a game without building up the necessary hype beforehand. In Hello Game's case, the community is so burned by the company that they are immediately distrustful when they announce something new (see the other comments, for example). What would have happened if they had just put it on the steam store? "Here's what we made, see for yourself if it's good".
Use the money saved from minimal marketing to build a better game. Heck, they'd get a lot of viral marketing for free anyway from the media companies falling over themselves to cover the surprising game release.
> What would have happened if they had just put it on the steam store?
It was once tried out by Edmund McMillen (of Supermeat boy and Binding of Isaac fame), who have basically dumped "The End is Nigh" on Steam with little to no promotion. From what he said later, it was a mistake, and the sales numbers were basically disappointing.
But is that not then just a true reflection of the games popularity? By removing excessive marketing you filter out the people that only bought the game because of FOMO?
Give the game chance to breathe, spread by word or mouth, and maybe after relase have targeted marketing campaigns. This way you avoid self-sustaining hype growth, and your consumers are less disappointed.
I know nothing of marketing and/or buyer preference/behaviour.
Apex Legends from Respawn/EA was basically launched like that. It had a reveal stream, where they announced the game going live, and released it immediately, along with all the promotional material and content creator collabs. It's massively successful so it worked out.
I will forever remember Fallout 4 and the ludicrous amount of hype around that game because it was announced at E3 in June and released in September. These 3 year hype cycles are just plain silly (and expensive).
But stealth launch with no marketing whatsoever very rarely pans out.
I dunno man, Starfield is _exceedingly_ bland and samey when you venture off the quest rails.
Every encounter, point of interest, building, outpost or whatever feels like it was put there by an algorithm with very little concern for why something might be where it is.
Skyrim is my game of the decade because every little detail in the game feels like it has purpose. Every ruin has a history. Every house a story. Every path, sign, bandit camp and animal den has a purpose. The world feels lived in, and it makes you not want to use fast travel.
Maybe the magic recipe is procedural/llm generation, which is then crafted and moulded by people into something amazing.
I would be cool with some mix between Monster Hunter World and No Man's Sky. The creatures in NMS were interesting being randomly generated, they were always pretty cool, and I could friend them and such to follow me around if I wanted to. The new Monster Hunter Wild was cool as it seemed focused on riding things, which seemed about the same for this - sign me up.
I'd be down to fly a dragon like a space ship from NMS too. Hopefully they blend some of MHW with melee beyond pew pew. Sadly EA/Koei totally botched Wild Hearts as a Monster Hunter in the mean time, so this could be cool.
all these fantasy genre games are becoming so boring, I wish someone developed some real RTS, Turn-base, etc strategy games, or at least explore new types of gaming dynamics.
Late to the party, but I’ve been playing ‘For The King’ a bit recently, it’s a rogue-like, turn-based, table-top strategy with nice cartoony graphics and a fun gameplay and unlocks loop.
My big complaint with NMS was that it does some things SO WELL that I want to play it despite all of the things it does so poorly. The player combat feels awful and clunky, but ship combat is amazingly fun and exciting! Exploring is great, but having to constantly find the same resources over and over in order to get off the fucking planet, or have a massive stockpile, is really boring. I also don't like being forced to build bases, like if I wanted to accomplish something by shooting and making money, I would rather do that than play a half baked survival crafting game.
I really wish that a game would come out that mixes all of the space and exploration of NMS but with the polish of a rockstar game like RDR, with the immersion of being a space explorer. I want fun combat with cover mechanics, I want trade and crime with NPCs, I want story (even if it is procedural), I want all of these things that NMS doesn't have. I look forward to this game because presumably they will have to focus on player combat and immersion more simply because there isn't a ton of space combat or similar. It looks a lot more "grounded", both literally and metaphorically, than NMS
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 112 ms ] threadBut man, I remember the No Man’s Sky announcement trailer and then the initial state of the game afterward.
It took a lonnnnnng time to restore trust.
I am cautiously optimistic but definitely won’t be preordering anything like this until I see more definitive reviews.
There’s almost zero reason the preorder games nowadays. That’s been the case since the move to digital, or even since the move from cartridge-based media to disk-based media (when supply became a non-issue).
They try to introduce DLC incentives, but those are almost always not enough, if you’re on the fence. I’ve only preordered if I already know I’m going to get it anyway (which is very rare).
Honestly, I ultimately always feel a bit cheated when I buy a game at launch because whatever bullshit day one DLC they give us is nothing compared to what I'd get if I'd waited a few years and picked up the "ultimate edition" or whatever that will include even more content and be mostly patched up so it's a less frustrating experience too and often the superior edition sells for less than the price at release.
It's like companies just punish people who give them their money as quickly as possible. Considering the backlog of games I've already got it's smart to wait, but there are a couple franchises where really don't want to even when I know I'll probably end up regretting it.
I would agree with you on this for AAA titles, but not for early access/indie titles. Though these games tend to cost much less so it’s worth a gamble and it’s nice to support indie devs. I’ve gotten so much ROI from buying Minecraft when the alpha was released for €9.95.
And then there is Kickstarter/other platforms. Most of the games I backed were released and some were amazing (Rimworld) but there has been some stinkers (Star Citizen, Shroud of the Avatar).
And kickstarter is funding, the game will probably not happen without it.
Compare to like the pre-order for Diablo 4, I believe you had like 2 days of closed limited beta test and could play 3 days before general release and that's it. Absolutly not worth buying before review imo.
Honestly, things would probably be a lot better for everybody if people held off on pre-orders and considered waiting for a few updates before buying even when there hasn't been a massive controversy with the developer's past releases.
Isn't that perfect though? Lets them focus more on a denser more focused experience. Lots of people would love that.
Games like valheim aren't popular because they have great graphics or endless content, it is because they have a tight and fun gameplay progression.
It seems odd to try to build an RPG in a procedural world. It’s hard to build an immersive world, when it wasn’t hand crafted to fit the story.
NMS was ambitious, and it’s definitely come a long way from when it started, but it still lacks the depth of a hand crafted story and world. But it’s a sandbox game from the ground up — a sandbox RPG seems like it would just result in a fairly flat experience.
Compared to, for example, Nier Automata or the Horizon franchise, where it’s clear what went into developing both the story and world.
The page from the link says:
> it brings the depth of a role playing game to the freedom of a survival sandbox
I guess you could argue it doesn’t directly state that it’s an RPG, but even claiming it has the depth of one seems to suggest a deep story that I’m arguing is typically hard to achieve with a procedural world.
I would argue Terraria’s depth is in its crafting mechanics and variety of loot, but not its story. I’ve not played Valheim, but have heard it compared to a 3D Terraria.
(e.g. in terraria you can get very different characters depending on how you play, but the difference is mostly due to swappable equipment)
Personally, I think it’s a combination of the things you list, plus a deep story.
Without a deep story, I think you’re just left with a sandbox adventure/survival/simulation game.
I would not consider Terraria an RPG. But others might.
For example Undertale goes 100% on "the story evolves around you even if your character essentially is always the same" but also a game that goes "experience tha same story with different mechanics and playstyles" would be an RPG
You would need to interface it with the environments etc, so that the LLM has something to work with. I could see LLMs generating good quests when each character has as much data as in Dwarf Fortress for example, but then you would need to do the work to add all of that.
cough caves of qud cough
The entire genre of roguelikes is a counterexample
I don’t really think of roguelikes as RPGs. But again, the definition will always be argued, and not trying to push my definition on others.
My main point is that, to me, RPG often implies a rich story, and I think a generated world (including those in roguelikes) has a tough time matching the richness of the stories in hand-crafted RPGs.
The same occurs playing tabletop as well. When the DM comes out with his whole big narrative and players with complex backstories, versus a vague broadly defined setting that is forced to dynamically adapt to player actions, the latter always forges a stronger bond with the character being played.
Though the risk with the game in question is that NMS is/was exactly not a dynamically adapting setting; when they said random generation they meant it, and with no internal consistency between various systems you end up with… random shit happening for random reasons and no actionable or narrative control over any of it.
Dwarf fortress is really probably the ideal in terms of procgen producing not just serviceable RPG narratives, but actually interesting ones
No man’s sky has its problems, players complain about grinding or that despite procedural generation things get boring.
To consider a new game, I’d love to hear how they’re going to approach these aspects. For all I know right now, this could have been no man’s sky dlc.
As soon as I see a mechanic that is infinite by nature, e.g. a "radiant quests", repeatable randomised dungeons, infinite upgrade trees, etc, I lose interest.
If I wanted indefinite novelty I'd go back out into the real world?
The exception is roguelite games which have this concept baked into the design from the start. But things like Tiny Tina's Wonderlands' Chaos Dungeon, God of War's Niflheim (or Ragnarok's newly announced Valhalla), no thanks.
Of course. I lose interest too because the quests are samey. Instead I have to rely on the endless procedurally generated content from humans to keep me satiated.
If a game generated content from AI then the content can potentially be diverse enough to keep my interest for much loonger. Perhaps the AI can generate content that 100% matches human output.
For example, say I'm playing a game like No man sky. With AI One of the worlds that no man sky generates is basically an entire world with the detail and gameplay of Red Dead Redemption. Randomly generated. Of course this is the ultimate goal. The short term goal is we can generated worlds where each world has landscapes that look hand crafted similar to what we see in Zelda BOTW or red dead.
That's what I'm talking about. Not the procedural sameness we see today.
Generative AI is already producing pictures with enough novelty to be comparable to regular art. The next step is video. Then movies. And the step after that is entire gaming experiences.
I suppose I'll see if that changes in a few years once AI-driven game content becomes more prevalent.
What I what is varied gameplay, with meaningful choices and significant player progression.
E.g. other open world fantasy games have skills, spells, character classes, different but balanced builds, etc.
The components exist already. I'm just saying let's start with langscapes. Because right now even procedurally generated landscapes are sort of samey.
If they took NMS and took all the best parts and crafted a more grounded fantasy survival game out of that it could be really awesome.
Light no fire? Its the least you could do after burning us like that.
https://youtu.be/A8P2CZg3sJQ?feature=shared
I think the release history warrants waiting until after the initial release to make a purchase decision (as people should with any game), but if it demonstrates the level of quality and polish I have come to expect from HG after patches I’ll have no problem forking money over for this.
NMS is a fun game with some flawed design elements. I hope that the designers address those in what looks to be a spiritual successor to NMS. If it’s just more of the shallow procedural saminess that indunated the first game it will probably be a pass from me though, I could just play NMS for that
Of course, here I'm opening myself for a valid criticism which might be constructed as "even if a game uses elements of previously told stories and settings, it might do a different spin or do it on a such a new level of excellence (story wise) that it becomes incomparable with previous attempts".
You could also point out that trailer can be manipulated in such a way by a talented director, that would make the game appear new and unique.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/976620/Enderal_Forgotten_...
Use the money saved from minimal marketing to build a better game. Heck, they'd get a lot of viral marketing for free anyway from the media companies falling over themselves to cover the surprising game release.
I think that’s the problem - marketing a game is relatively cheap.
That's easy: it would sell less.
> Heck, they'd get a lot of viral marketing for free anyway from the media companies falling over themselves to cover the surprising game release.
This went famously well for the Saturn.
It was once tried out by Edmund McMillen (of Supermeat boy and Binding of Isaac fame), who have basically dumped "The End is Nigh" on Steam with little to no promotion. From what he said later, it was a mistake, and the sales numbers were basically disappointing.
Give the game chance to breathe, spread by word or mouth, and maybe after relase have targeted marketing campaigns. This way you avoid self-sustaining hype growth, and your consumers are less disappointed.
I know nothing of marketing and/or buyer preference/behaviour.
But stealth launch with no marketing whatsoever very rarely pans out.
Every encounter, point of interest, building, outpost or whatever feels like it was put there by an algorithm with very little concern for why something might be where it is.
Skyrim is my game of the decade because every little detail in the game feels like it has purpose. Every ruin has a history. Every house a story. Every path, sign, bandit camp and animal den has a purpose. The world feels lived in, and it makes you not want to use fast travel.
Maybe the magic recipe is procedural/llm generation, which is then crafted and moulded by people into something amazing.
I'd be down to fly a dragon like a space ship from NMS too. Hopefully they blend some of MHW with melee beyond pew pew. Sadly EA/Koei totally botched Wild Hearts as a Monster Hunter in the mean time, so this could be cool.
I don't know what to make of this.
I really wish that a game would come out that mixes all of the space and exploration of NMS but with the polish of a rockstar game like RDR, with the immersion of being a space explorer. I want fun combat with cover mechanics, I want trade and crime with NPCs, I want story (even if it is procedural), I want all of these things that NMS doesn't have. I look forward to this game because presumably they will have to focus on player combat and immersion more simply because there isn't a ton of space combat or similar. It looks a lot more "grounded", both literally and metaphorically, than NMS