Sure, don’t update it, and it will continue to exist without further intervention from the developer. We used to get this all the time. A multiplayer mode that isn’t expected to continue to grow or maintain an active player base month after month, because that’s an absurd goal to hit that only a lucky few will ever succeed at under the best of circumstances.

Xbox doesn’t really do exclusives, but that’s worse than doing “exclusives” that end up on PC months later?

Although spin-offs and even an MMORPG then surfaced, there were hopes that a new single-player title would arrive as soon as 2027.

I think plenty of Horizon fans would be just fine if they integrated a non-live-service multiplayer mode alongside the main single player mode, but AAAs have just about forgotten how to make multiplayer modes that aren’t live service.

If it results in less or worse work getting done, we’ll either see it manifest as the customers and it will affect my future purchasing decisions with no harm to what I’ve already bought, or they’ll stop drinking the kool aid. I worked on a game project with a die-hard NFT believer, and even he eventually backed down on trying to shoehorn them into the game after it was clear they were more controversial and less productive than monetizing the game with more ordinary methods.

Yeah, you nailed it. Hitman in particular is a weird one, because you can play through every level start to finish without the online checks, but the online unlocks allow you to keep replaying them with new loadouts, starting points, targets, etc. The extra content is a major part of the appeal. Fortunately for preserving those games, the community has reverse engineered the servers, but that doesn’t make me want to reward IO Interactive with my money for making it so that I need to rely on community fixes.

You do what you want. My headache right now is that I can’t tell if any multiplayer game I buy will be playable indefinitely into the future, and this is a headache I have with both of those stores. At least I know the single player stuff on GOG will be mine with far less effort than relying on a community maintained wiki somewhere for Steam. That you can name a select few examples that were immediately caught doesn’t shake my faith in what GOG promises on the tin. CDPR is just a matter of one hand not talking to the other, not trying to sneak a fast one by people.

You’ve got instances of DRM that you can count on your fingers that have all been reverted because what was easily identifiable DRM 20 years ago is a fairly blurry line these days. My own line has had to be redrawn several times, including for Hitman, because new games keep on coming up with new ways to screw with ownership.

I don’t care much at all that they used an AI generated banner ad for a store sale, but plenty of people do, and it was predictable that they would. If they wanted to save money, it would have only cost them a single game’s revenue to find someone on Fiverr to make a similar graphic.

GOG just had an AMA and they had a cheeky answer for FF7 in particular that makes it sound like it’ll be in the next batch or that the ink is dry on the deal that will bring it to GOG.

BG2 only takes a few things from the previous game and throws out the rest. I haven’t played Dragon Age, but Mass Effect and Telltale infamously had “the choice diamond” where they respect your choices up until it has to eventually lead somewhere, so they all end up funneling back into only a few options. These are just different ways to dress up the same problem. Fallout the TV show does exactly the same thing as Fallout 2 did to Fallout 1, which is the same as your Dark Souls example: it’s set far enough in the future that you’re unlikely to run into anything contradictory.

Video games sequeling other choice-based video games run into the same issue, and you quickly forget once you’re in it that maybe you treated Shady Sands differently than the canonized decision about it. As it takes place further in the future than any of the games, it acknowledges what happened in their past, creates new events that happened since we last saw them, and also steers them in new directions, because people change, and the old leaders would have long since been replaced by new ones. That’s all just part of continuing a story. The only way to avoid having to pick a canon is to never continue it ever, but I’m happy we got this show at all.

To each their own, but I thought they completely nailed the tone, respectfully incorporated the established fiction, and even wrote some great new characters.

We’ve had a pretty good hit rate with video game adaptations lately. Fallout and Arcane are both among my favorite TV shows. I think we finally got far enough along that show runners are gamers themselves and aware of what makes these things good and what needs to change to be a good show.

Other than Jaheira, almost all of the connective tissue is found in Act 3, but that makes sense, because it takes place in the titular city. There are at least two characters in Act 3 that are not in your party that return from previous games.

Both Dauntless and Horizon are games inspired by Monster Hunter that I like more than Monster Hunter. And not only does this look worse than both of those, it’ll probably be monetized to hell.

Even after having gone through the tutorial, 2 hours is more than enough time to see the loop of Highguard several times and decide you don’t like it. 2 hours is more than enough to count as “the old college try” for any game, as it should be a goal of the designers to make your game fun and interesting right away. If I’m waiting more than how long it would take me to watch a feature length movie before I start having fun, then they screwed up.

I mean, to be clear, I never liked Overwatch. Back when it was new, my friends were so into it that playing it with them was the only way we’d spend any time together. They’re the ones who miss that launch game, lol.

I can’t say that was my experience when I played it last year, and you can see my recorded play times for the series below in this thread. In fact, I’d say I spent less time traversing empty spaces due to the game’s more relaxed rules on fast travel.

Apparently it’s doing really well in Japan and less well elsewhere, but its success in Japan was enough to more than make up for it and exceed their forecast.

This is salt in the wound for my friends who miss launch Overwatch.