It's annoying because that might have been a game worth trying for me because it ticks the right sort of boxes RPG with companions/storytelling etc. but I was seeing warning signs with how generic all the characters looked. There's barely any character design put into anything these days and the rest just seemed to be a bunch of generated mountainous terrain and vegetation that I could see as per usual for every fucking open world title AAA studios like to poop out now.
God Damnit. I'm in the same boat, this game could have really ticked that RPG itch I've got right now. The parts I've seen so far are trash. I don't think the intro had a single white male, this can kinda be excused due to lore but we all know why this is a thing
Funny you bought up the environment, everything is woodland or some cave. Cool. I'm not going to spend 70 bucks on this.
The parts I've seen so far are trash. I don't think the intro had a single white male
This intro? It doesn't look as ethnically homogenous as a medieval European setting should, especially in regards to the knight class. That said, if they don't look majority Mediterranean by candle light, you might want to adjust your gamma settings. The originals art direction was also washed out/generic. I resorted to installing an ENB within the opening hour. Fun game, though.
The upshot is fairly extensive modding tools are already out. Given that they're CC based, redoing NPCs should just be a matter of config editing. I'll wait for the performance patches to come out, and Denuvo to be removed.
Big developers simply aren't making games for people like you and me, I'm more of a city builder and FPS guy as well. I especially like RPGs and City builders because they are very good genres to chill to and FPS' are for when I want a challenge. Instead it's nothing but generic ubisoft style open worlds and simulators with 1000's of cosmetic DLCs being churned out over the course of a few months.
Hell sometimes I'll even get into a top down or puzzle game if I'm in the mood but I've not seen a good one of those for decades because it requires some decent design to be entertaining and devs don't bother with any of that anymore and rely on procedural generation too much.
I've just retreated to my decades old backlog of vidya I need to play through. Running through original Ff7 on an emulator right now. Graphics are outdated but I've already gotten used to it as I fall into the plot
That does remind me of how I'd once calculated out how much time it might take for me to redo all the NPC visuals in Skyrim (like custom design every named NPC's face). The number of hours it would take unless I really optimized a speedy approach was pretty insane. (Something like weeks if I didn't want to go at an extremely grueling pace)
Not that this is a solid defense for these studios that have hundreds of employees available, it's just something I thought was kind of startling and eye opening.
As for terrain, I don't mind if they use generation tools for that at all. I've played around with some and the results can be pretty fucking cool if you know what you're doing. But you have to put a fair bit of planning and deliberation into the process, otherwise it absolutely will look pretty bland and generic.
Yeah I probably need to preface a lot, generation tools are not bad by themselves hell I use them to a degree albeit sparingly. It's mostly stuff like procedural materials that I use that method for because it does the job so well. You're right that when it comes to a game as big scale as Skyrim it is justifiable to a degree.
However even with the generation there are ways you can design the game to make it interesting. You pointed out exactly what's wrong with these titles and many of them are simply low effort asset flips at best and they really are. It's gotten so bad now that I actually recognise and can point out to people the different assets the studios have likely used. There are youtubers online for example that can spot an indie asset flip a mile off and they pinpoint the exact Unreal 5 asset they downloaded or bought online which they're trying to claim is their own work.
It's sheer laziness, I've seen modders do far better jobs with outdated and buggy crap like the GECK. The cheek of them to not only claim the games are 'their' work ( when really it's not ) and charge $50+ for the privilege of playing is ridiculous. Even when the game isn't outright asset flipping if you look closely you can see often that they're shifting about internal 3D assets amongst themselves and re-using them. Nothing wrong with that practice by itself, because what's the point in re-modelling a crowbar for the 50th time? However that's all they ever do now they don't make anything new.
This sort of thing as well is why I'm not threatened in the least by AI being shoved into everything because it's just going to expose these lazy cash grab artists for what they are and make more uniquely designed games stand out.
In my previous comment I wasn't referring to asset flips so much as what I'd describe as a fairly lazy execution of height-map and terrain generator tools like World Creator. Assuming Capcom used something close to that kind of method
The tools can provide some incredible results but only if the developer knows how to plan ahead, utilize the results, scale it properly, and flesh out the details once it's shipped over to the actual engine/game.
The last step though is where I often see what I think you're describing, a half-assed use of mediocre assets that look rather out of place and repetitive. Another issue I've sometimes found is where they generate these large scaping landscapes but they don't put a lot of thought into planning ahead for unique and detailed locales (and factoring that into the geological design of the terrain). And this is of course not factoring in voxel terrain generation... which is a whole other ballgame.
One other thing with the asset flipping though is how the most frequently flipped assets are some of the cheapest you can find on a marketplace. Which is funny/sad in a way because there are artists/asset makers who put out some really stellar quality work, yet you'd be hard pressed to actually find it in many games because those artists aren't spitting out easily rehashed work that can be tossed into every which game.
It's annoying because that might have been a game worth trying for me because it ticks the right sort of boxes RPG with companions/storytelling etc. but I was seeing warning signs with how generic all the characters looked. There's barely any character design put into anything these days and the rest just seemed to be a bunch of generated mountainous terrain and vegetation that I could see as per usual for every fucking open world title AAA studios like to poop out now.
God Damnit. I'm in the same boat, this game could have really ticked that RPG itch I've got right now. The parts I've seen so far are trash. I don't think the intro had a single white male, this can kinda be excused due to lore but we all know why this is a thing
Funny you bought up the environment, everything is woodland or some cave. Cool. I'm not going to spend 70 bucks on this.
This intro? It doesn't look as ethnically homogenous as a medieval European setting should, especially in regards to the knight class. That said, if they don't look majority Mediterranean by candle light, you might want to adjust your gamma settings. The originals art direction was also washed out/generic. I resorted to installing an ENB within the opening hour. Fun game, though.
The upshot is fairly extensive modding tools are already out. Given that they're CC based, redoing NPCs should just be a matter of config editing. I'll wait for the performance patches to come out, and Denuvo to be removed.
Big developers simply aren't making games for people like you and me, I'm more of a city builder and FPS guy as well. I especially like RPGs and City builders because they are very good genres to chill to and FPS' are for when I want a challenge. Instead it's nothing but generic ubisoft style open worlds and simulators with 1000's of cosmetic DLCs being churned out over the course of a few months.
Hell sometimes I'll even get into a top down or puzzle game if I'm in the mood but I've not seen a good one of those for decades because it requires some decent design to be entertaining and devs don't bother with any of that anymore and rely on procedural generation too much.
I've just retreated to my decades old backlog of vidya I need to play through. Running through original Ff7 on an emulator right now. Graphics are outdated but I've already gotten used to it as I fall into the plot
That does remind me of how I'd once calculated out how much time it might take for me to redo all the NPC visuals in Skyrim (like custom design every named NPC's face). The number of hours it would take unless I really optimized a speedy approach was pretty insane. (Something like weeks if I didn't want to go at an extremely grueling pace)
Not that this is a solid defense for these studios that have hundreds of employees available, it's just something I thought was kind of startling and eye opening.
As for terrain, I don't mind if they use generation tools for that at all. I've played around with some and the results can be pretty fucking cool if you know what you're doing. But you have to put a fair bit of planning and deliberation into the process, otherwise it absolutely will look pretty bland and generic.
Yeah I probably need to preface a lot, generation tools are not bad by themselves hell I use them to a degree albeit sparingly. It's mostly stuff like procedural materials that I use that method for because it does the job so well. You're right that when it comes to a game as big scale as Skyrim it is justifiable to a degree.
However even with the generation there are ways you can design the game to make it interesting. You pointed out exactly what's wrong with these titles and many of them are simply low effort asset flips at best and they really are. It's gotten so bad now that I actually recognise and can point out to people the different assets the studios have likely used. There are youtubers online for example that can spot an indie asset flip a mile off and they pinpoint the exact Unreal 5 asset they downloaded or bought online which they're trying to claim is their own work.
It's sheer laziness, I've seen modders do far better jobs with outdated and buggy crap like the GECK. The cheek of them to not only claim the games are 'their' work ( when really it's not ) and charge $50+ for the privilege of playing is ridiculous. Even when the game isn't outright asset flipping if you look closely you can see often that they're shifting about internal 3D assets amongst themselves and re-using them. Nothing wrong with that practice by itself, because what's the point in re-modelling a crowbar for the 50th time? However that's all they ever do now they don't make anything new.
This sort of thing as well is why I'm not threatened in the least by AI being shoved into everything because it's just going to expose these lazy cash grab artists for what they are and make more uniquely designed games stand out.
In my previous comment I wasn't referring to asset flips so much as what I'd describe as a fairly lazy execution of height-map and terrain generator tools like World Creator. Assuming Capcom used something close to that kind of method
The tools can provide some incredible results but only if the developer knows how to plan ahead, utilize the results, scale it properly, and flesh out the details once it's shipped over to the actual engine/game.
The last step though is where I often see what I think you're describing, a half-assed use of mediocre assets that look rather out of place and repetitive. Another issue I've sometimes found is where they generate these large scaping landscapes but they don't put a lot of thought into planning ahead for unique and detailed locales (and factoring that into the geological design of the terrain). And this is of course not factoring in voxel terrain generation... which is a whole other ballgame.
One other thing with the asset flipping though is how the most frequently flipped assets are some of the cheapest you can find on a marketplace. Which is funny/sad in a way because there are artists/asset makers who put out some really stellar quality work, yet you'd be hard pressed to actually find it in many games because those artists aren't spitting out easily rehashed work that can be tossed into every which game.
tbf dd was more 'grounded' than most jp fantasy games. But dd2 also ran ike shit, which is stupid since the pc port for the first was decent.