man who normally buys “narrative-driven, story-rich games” forced to put his money back into his wallet
Anything good you can recommend? Haven’t seen much good since Witcher 3… And before that, maybe Gothic 2 or Oblivion.
Baldurs gate 3? One of the best games I ever played.
I haven’t played it, but based on everything I’ve read about it, that alone puts the headline to shame.
This man is spitting straight fire.
Since The Witcher 3 came out, my favorite video game stories have been Disco Elysium, Cyberpunk 2077, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, Alan Wake 2, Citizen Sleeper, and Metaphor: ReFantazio. I also really liked Death Stranding, but Kojima’s not for everyone.
Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2, if you haven’t played already. Think of them as the stepping stones for BG3.
Spec Ops: The Line is a 3rd person shooter with an incredible story, I think it takes 4-6 hours to go through the campaign. Short when compared to RPGs, but worth the time. People also talk about Titanfall 2’s campaign being great, I haven’t played it yet.
Mass Effect trilogy is also very good, mainly the 2nd game. The first game is the jankiest of the bunch and the 3rd is much better after all the DLC, though I still don’t like how the optional Paragon/Renegade prompts from 2 became obligatory QTE in 3.
If you liked the story driven elements of TW3 you might like Cyberpunk 2077. Its very similar story and engine wise since they’re both made by CDPR, but obviously very different thematically. God of War is another story driven narrative driven game I enjoyed.
…Yakuza
Bros being bros forever.
Control? Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West.
Currently sucked into Kingdom Come Deliverance, which is similar to TW3 in that it’s a first person story driven game, but set in IRL 1403 Bohemia instead of the fantasy setting. Very good historical storytelling, I think.
TW3 is third person
You know, maybe i dont know enough about games as i am a casual these days, aside from baldurs gate 3 which is a fucking masterpiece, i really like the 2 (soon to be 3) star wars jedi games outcast and survivour. They are like a much easier souls mixed with the 3d prince of persia (sands of time, warrior within, two thrones) games but are very story driven. I am very excited to see what will happen in the final game in the trilogy qhen it comes out.
I’ve been playing Outer Worlds lately. It’s made by Obsidian so it’s gameplay is similar to F:NV.
I’ve been loving Metaphor recently
The new Indiana Jones game is really fun.
I’ve a love/hate relationship with Rogue Trader 40k. I fucking love it, literally everything about it, but I also hate it because it will end at some point.
thats a shitty excuse if i ever heard one
More like it’s a shitty headline. The article shows there’s a little more to it, specifically that it was going to go over budget and they hadn’t figured out what they were gonna do.
The title is a bit missleading considering that the actual article mentions a lot other problems that plagued the development.
Project 8 faced both progress and challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic made team stability difficult, but some quality improvements were achieved. However, critical issues persisted, causing delays and budget increases. The latest review revealed unresolved problems needing more time and money, along with revised sales forecasts, raising doubts about the project’s profitability.
– TLDR by Microsoft copilotWhile there’s still demand for “narrative-driven story-rich games” one should keep realistic expectations. For this genre I feel smaller scope and indie developers work much better.
Oof.
“The COVID-19 pandemic made team stability difficult,”
Makes me suspect they were woefully behind the rest of the field in development practices. My team, and many others, gained productivity when all the wasteful manager ego stroking in-person meetings stopped.
Alternately, it tells us they rely on a weird dev kit with a lot of esoteric hardware. Though I would still call that out as being super out of date. Nothing is particularly hard to emulate today, for teams that prioritize having rebuildable test environmenta.
Just wild.
Bummer about the layoffs. Probably won’t fix their agility problem, though.
I think it’s probably true though. I pitched my game to them and they graciously responded and said they are looking into publishing narrative driven games but rather mechanically complex games.
Typical infantile C-suite logic “I didn’t do X well, therefore X is impossible and no one can do X! It’s not my fault, I swear!”
Maybe the people are just out of touch? I’m sure that’s it.
No it’s the gamers who are wrong
Obviously this is just me, but here is a list of the last 5 games I purchased that were not smaller indie titles:
Stalker 2, Elden ring, remnant 2, bg3, dragon’s dogma 2
You could argue that remnant is intended for multiplayer and you could argue that maybe only bg3 and stalker and really narrative driven but the truth is, anymore I tend to buy single player and stream to my friends than I do actually play mp games. The only mp game i was tempted by was Helldivers and I was just too busy at the time.
Anything else are steam deck friendly indie games. I buy a lot of those, and bought a lot even before I had a deck.
In my anecdotal experience, when I see x game is multiplayer, or live service, or just not an experience I can enjoy on my own time I tune it out. For example, I always bought Diablo games but I don’t own 4.
I also immediately think of some other big ones that I opted out of, like Wukong. People fucking love single player games when they are good games. I think the real issue is developing a good game is hard. Developing a game with dark practices and otherwise addicting (but not necessarily fun) gameplay is a much easier way to make uninspired games made by committee.
It’s just easier to point the blame at the market than actually admit that upon self reflection you realized it is best to avoid the hard part of game development.
The Last of Us is still selling.
Which one? The original? The Remaster or the Remake? Or the 2nd or the Remaster of the 2nd?
Ah, so managerial problems again who would have thought but that’s OK we that make the things can suffer a little more
I liked Frostpunk and would have loved a story driven game in that universe.
Ok guys valid points from everyone here. But who here has bought the latest 11bit Studios games? And I’m not talking about Frostpunk 2. I’m taking about Indika, The alters (not out yet, my bad) , The Traumathurge, Creatures of Ava ,… all of these games seemed like really cool things to me, sadly I could not afford them.
The Alters isn’t out yet. Expected release Q1 2025. It’s on my wish list because I love the demo.
Indika they were just the publisher. On top of which, maybe has a story that not everyone is interested in. I watched these guys play it, https://youtu.be/MuiHtAYOqgI and while it’s creative and it’s overall a fantastic game, is not one I’m going to play myself.
The Thaumaturge, again they are just the publisher. I hadn’t even heard of this one which means as the publisher they did a terrible job marketing it.
Thank you for the correction. The alters is indeed not out yet.
In my opinion for the other I doesn’t matter whether they are just publishing or actually developing. The games are not bar but apparently don’t sell well. Maybe their not the greatest at marketing but I enjoy the vibes they are going for
jizzpunk
Did we already forget that BG3 existed like once year later…?
Cyberpunk 2077, RDR2 still wasn’t that long ago, Dragon Age Veilguard was actually a success convincing even EA, Star Wars Jedi series, the list goes on. It just has to be a good story, you can’t just slap some boring ass story in there.
Odd to say Veilguard was a success when from what I can tell, one of the few things uniting the very fractured and divided gaming community this year was that the writing in Veilguard was horrible. And you know that’s true when the various members of that community can give their own varied reasons why the writing was horrible and they would all be valid.
I only see that in some communities. Most of the people that hate on veilguard, from what I’ve seen, either haven’t played the game or are clipping parts out of context.
The complaints I’ve seen that aren’t “dur hur, binary qunari” talk about the shaky dialogue in the beginning, where things felt awkward and clunky, like a new team forming. I’ll give credence to the complaints about some depth being lost in the characters versus other games in the series, but I think those people feel that way because Inquisituon was a bloated mess (that I love) and they’ve played 1 and 2 so many times in different ways they’re meshing all the dialogue into one. Playing through veilguard a second time, and watching my partner take different choices than me, made the characters on par with Mass Effect 2 allies. Which, I’d say isn’t an accomplishment so much as a mild chastisement that it hasn’t improved since then.
I enjoyed every Dragon-age game so far and Veilguard is no exception. I think the writing is fine. Not great, but good enough. I can see why some people would complain, because it’s definitely watered down compared to DA:O. But I am still having fun almost 60 hours into the game.
Someone still took the time to downvote your opinion that it ‘was fine’. The vitriol towards any positive or neutral comment is why I think it’s a specific group of people actually complaining, a fair share with “it could have been better, and it’s not my style of rpg anymore”, and the remainder just being relatively neutral to happy that they got more dragon age.
Haven’t played, but I found this (negative) review compelling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QF-Kd2BBpx8
He did play through the whole game.
But, to drive home in case it isn’t clear, I love Dragon Age and I think this one ranks higher than Inquisition (but not trespasser DLC), on par with 2, and above 1 for me. I do not think it’s a Pinnacle of modern writing, it definitely suffered from some development struggles and that comes through in the final act as things get a little rushed and content feels more like a drip than a faucet. But then it wraps up well, or I thought it did.
It can use improvements, but I feel about it as i felt about 2 when it came out. “This is a change, and I’m not sure it’s what i wanted, but I do like the universe and the combat is a lot of fun and the characters as a whole are interesting”.
Veilguard is far from success, and it’s because it’s the worst-written DA game to date. And that is on EA. They had every chance to make it a good game (as the art book they published shows just what a good story it was shaping up to be before EA forced them to start over for a live service version) but they chose to waste everyone’s time for 10 years by changing their mind mid development multiple times, firing the veteran team members right in the middle of development…
Dragon Age Veilguard was actually a success
They finally confirmed or denied this claim?
If the leaks to be trusted, they expected to sell 10 million copies but now they’re talking about they maybe can sell 3 million copies for the lifetime of the game.
In others words, not a success, pretty bad for a IP so famous like Dragon Age
It was very telling EA announced almost right after the launch that they won’t release any DLC’s and they’re moving the team to ME5 already. If that was not the sign EA left DA:V for dead, I don’t know what was.
Back of the napkin math says they’ve already sold about 1.5M on Steam so far. A handful of sales like they one they’ve got right now should help them easily blow past 3.
Aren’t those awful numbers? Like, a big successful AAA grant does way more than 1.5mil in it’s first week. If interest was there they’d be over 3mil by now.
It’s all going to be relative to what they spent, which I don’t know. If they only spent $70M, they already made their money back. It’s looking like they’ll probably make their money back regardless, unless they spent an entire GTA6 on this thing, which I doubt. These are also only the Steam numbers that I’m calculating based on how many reviews it has; the PS5 version likely did quite well too.
I’m willing to guess up to 3m has been sold across all platforms so far, but this is a major AAA game that was being developed for a full decade, there is no way in hell they didn’t spend multiple hundreds of millions on it in total. And those are very low numbers besides. Most big titles sell more than that faster than davg has.
They sell fine. Look at BG3.
What they don’t do is make money hand over fist without the need to design more product, as happens with subscription-based, game-as-a-service multiplayer titles. Some companies don’t want to make good games. They just want to make good money.
And ignoring all the attempts at a game-as-a-service that fail
“That guy just made millions of dollars playing the lottery. We should quit our jobs and play the lottery too!”
More expensive and less profit
Like the other person pointed out with GaaS you don’t even need to finish the game before you start making money
However BG3 had a big already established IP and successful Divinity games beforehand
I will give you some advice that I was given “you need a hit before you can have a hit”
Narrative-driven games made Valve into Valve. But ok, you do you.
A better way to put it is story driven games sell. Mobile and MTX games sell better.
Mobile and MTX games
sell bettermake more moneyA small number of mobile games sell better make obscene money, the vast majority make a pittance or lose money. But corporate types cant stop salivating at the thought of being the ones to own the next candy crush, so they’d rather take a shot at that than produce something with merit that will likely make a reasonable return.
Yeah it’s depressing, I’m amazed we’re getting anything good at all by this point
It was tricky to find actual numbers so correct me if I am wrong, but if you look at the entire lifetime net profit (not revenue) of Elden Ring since it’s launch, it appears that Dragon Ball Bokken made all of Elden Ring’s profit in just 2024 alone.
When you read Bandai’s financial reports they always open with their mobile games, with From Software titles getting an “honorable mention” at the end.
Half life is far from Planescape Torment…
2d isometric vs 3d first person. One format clearly lets stories breathe better, but that doesn’t mean half life isn’t story driven.
Never said it isn’t, I said story isn’t the thing that made it and Valve popular.
I’m old enough to remember when it released, story wasn’t the focus.
I would argue the storyline was a big part of it. While barebones by today’s standards, compared to the likes of Doom, Quake or even Unreal, it was pretty amazing to have a continuous narrative throughout the game.
Halflife was 25 years ago, but ok you do you.
You didn’t have to hurt all of us olds that bad.
LOL when Halflife came out I worked at World Opponent Network - which Valve acquired a few years later, long after I was gone.
Honestly I can’t think of a recent game I enjoyed that wasn’t a narrative-driven story rich game.
They’re the only games I enjoy. And I could’ve sworn I’ve seen people all over the internet lamenting the loss of story-driven single player games in this era of GTA online. These douchebags are either salivating looking at GTA online profitability and talking bullshit or they’re so goddamn deluded with their head so far up their own ass that they can’t tell their colon from their pancreas.
On the topic, anyway: my favorite games are RDR2, Cyberpunk, and Alan Wake 2. I wasn’t always a gamer, but the graphics have gotten so good and the stories so involved (in these here specifically) that I became one later in life. But now I’ve played all three of those games to death. Do you have any recs for similar games I might enjoy? I was just looking around the PS store and felt like I was swimming through nonsense. I really wanted to play Stalker 2, but it’s not out for PS5 yet. The next game I’m eyeing is a silent Hill 2 remake. Not a big fantasy person, either. I like stories with their feet in the real world. Don’t mean to single you out to give me advice, but figured I’d ask in case you had something you really liked.
Doom eternal comes to mind
It had a bit of narrative (killing the corrupted son of the traitor out of mercy and to save the world, killing the corrupted angel like beings because they are a threat to humanity), but you’re right, what really drives you is the fun gameplay loop and the challenge of escalating difficulty.
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Really? It feels like every other AAA game is an interactive movie these days.
This was barely true like 10 years ago. Now everything is mobile games and live services.
Every yakuza game, baldurs gate, every fromsoft game, the insomniac games like spiderman, Sony stuff in general like horizon, god of war, last of us, etc, black myth wukong, the endless remake games (some of which are very solid) like ff7, silent hill 2, persona 3 reload, etc, rockstar games even (rdr2 was 2018 and gta6 is supposed to come out this year, maybe). The sea of jrpgs like shin megami tensei v vengeance, trails through daybreak, granblue fantasy, unicorn overlord, etc. And that’s literally off the top of my head
Mobile games and live services dominate for sure bc they shit money and are easy to develop but decent games still exist (though tbf a lot of them are starting to pull serious bullshit too. Love yakuza but sega locking new game+ behind a $15 dlc. First yakuza game I didnt do a new game+ run on and the lamest one to platinum because you don’t have to beat the hardest boss or run it on legendary)
Every yakuza game, baldurs gate, every fromsoft game, the insomniac games like spiderman, Sony stuff in general like horizon, god of war, last of us, etc, black myth wukong, the endless remake games (some of which are very solid) like ff7, silent hill 2, persona 3 reload, etc, rockstar games even (rdr2 was 2018 and gta6 is supposed to come out this year, maybe). The sea of jrpgs like shin megami tensei v vengeance, trails through daybreak, granblue fantasy, unicorn overlord, etc. And that’s literally off the top of my head
Question 1: And those are all “interactive movies” in your view?
If the answer is yes:
Question 2: have you played literally any of them? I don’t think all of these barring the JRPGs could be more different from each other if they tried. RDR2, Insomniac and the Yakuza games for instance are pretty good, fromsoft not so much, and none of them are alike whatsoever, one is a GTA clone with a shockingly good story that’s as always, too long, fromsoft games are definitely not GTA clones sadly nor are they linear bamham combat superhero action games like the insomniac ones or story focused ones like GoW or Horizon or the insomniac Spideys (latter are particularly awesome).
I would be extremely interested what you’d consider not interactive movies? Factorio? Dwarf Fortress? Ghosts’n’Goblins? Super R-Type for the SNES? Umihara Kawase? Ultrakill?
Only some of those are movie games, sure. I was more responding to your “everything is mobile games and live services”, which is just untrue
The only one I haven’t played yet is wukong. Also I agree the spiderman games are totally awesome. I strongly disagree about fromsoft games though, sekiro alone is amazing
But the original reply stated:
It feels like every other AAA game is an interactive movie these days.
I stated that it’s not really true
And you went off to list games that supposedly support the original point.
And I said that’s not true.
And now you agree. So why even include those games or respond at all? This comes across like when you correct chatgippity or smth 🤔
You keep going on about the original post. I was replying to you dude, who said everything is mobile games and live services. I never said all games are movie games? I just said you are wrong and not all games, AAA or otherwise, are mobile games and live services. And you are still wrong, and that’s still true
Wuuuut?
The original post had nothing to do with mobile games and service at all.
My comment said that it was not true that all games are interactive movies, and you said it was - because of the games you listed, which you then said are not interactive movies.
Are you like, lost? Downvoting me with your alts ain’t gonna reverse that brain damage my guy, blocked.
Narrative-driven, story-rich MTX and Battlepasses.
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