Future Games

[thaddeus6th]

There are a few things I've got my eyes on.

In the far future, I'd guess 3-4 years, there's Larian Studios working on Baldur's Gate 3. They did a great job with Divinity Original Sin 2 so hopes will be high. Baldur's Gate 2 is a game I've never played but I know it's got a cult following. That game, and its predecessor entry, is being released for consoles at the start of October (likewise Neverwinter Nights).

Greedfall comes out early September. The premise looks great (approximately 16th century tech with armour and basic firearms and a very cool piratey/musketeers era wardrobe). There's a focus on quests with story relevance and decisions with consequences (they've specifically said there's no fetch quest nonsense). Like The Outer Worlds, it's not trying to be Skyrim and will be around 30-40 hours long. My concern is that the dev team is small and their previous games, apparently, have had good ideas but the execution's been a bit wonky. I'll be watching the reviews with interest.

Pillars of Eternity II is pencilled in for end of the year for consoles, and whilst I'm really looking forward to it I'll believe it's out when I have it in my hands. It was originally scheduled for release last year, so...

My main game, also by Obsidian (Pillars of Eternity devs), is The Outer Worlds, out late October. Fallout in another star system, without microtransaction nonsense, what I've seen looks really intriguing and Obsidian's recent record looks rather good. I hope this lives up to expectations.

 

[WaylanderToo]

I'm not a gamer but BG:3? Sign me up now!!

 

[thaddeus6th]

Another thing, for which there's just a 4 month old launch trailer despite apparently coming out this year, is Divinity Fallen Heroes.

It's a mix of Divinity and XCOM's gameplay styles. Which sounds fantastic. But there's very little about it, beyond that initial trailer.

 

[Overread]

Tomorrow SPRYO TRILOGY REMASTERED launches on PC!
Kinda sad that its the first "play as a dragon" game on PC with a decent budget behind it; but who can say no to the original mighty hero! It's also a fully remaster so not just better graphics but a complete rebuild of the three games from the ground up. Grab yourself a controller and away you go; though its also on consoles as well (and has been for a while)

 

[thaddeus6th]

Now you mention that, it is weird there aren't more games in which you play as a dragon...

 

[Overread]

Now you mention that, it is weird there aren't more games in which you play as a dragon...

It really is! I'm only aware of a very tiny handful of such games.
Spyro
Eye of the Dragon - you play as a dragon (one of three) but its a very old game now and very dated
Drakaen series - Ancient Gates and one other game. Older console game but still good and you play as a dragon rider with parts of the game on foot and parts on dragon
Drakengard series (3 games)- same as Drakan only this one is super dark and twisted with story; though the first game has some of hte most fun air combat for a dragon
Lair for the ps3 - another dragon rider, only marred by being a launch title where sony wanted to show off motion controls in the controller so you've got all those annoying "flip your controller to turn around" things that just hamper gameplay
One or two of the Divinity games where you turn into a dragon.
Ark likely has some dragons to ride, though that's an mmo game (you can sort of play singleplayer, but the whole game is built around online play so, it will likely feel very flat and empty once you're past learning how to play and the resources/grinding elements will likely feel woefully boring and tedious)

And that's about it. There's one or two "early access" games on Steam that I'm aware of, but they are both tiny studios and never really got anywhere. It's really a crying shame that, when you look at it, Spryo isn't just a classic, its about the only game of decent design and production where you play as a dragon!
It's really odd because dragons are not unpopular and we are in a day and age where we've got engines capable of making huge areas of open world to explore; ideal for a dragon.

 

[thaddeus6th]

A day or two after complaining that Civ VI is out for Switch but not PS4/Xbox One, it got a release date for those console: 22 November.

I think that the last proper Civ game on console was II. Around 1999.

 

[Dozmonic]

That'll be because consoles are for FIFA and racing games. Proper games belong on PC ;-)

 

[thaddeus6th]

I still have Civ II. The copyright dates are 1996 and 1999.

Well, you may well be a member of the PC Master Race, but there's some lovely muck here for console gamers.

 

[Vareor]

The two games I'm most curious about are:

1. Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord which is coming out in March 2020 after being in development for millennia.
2. Laden Ring. An RPG based on Norse mythology, which George R.R. Martin and a japanese game development company are collaborating on.

 

[thaddeus6th]

What sort of RPG is Laden Ring? I've heard tiny bits about it.

With Outer Worlds and Civ VI on the way I don't want to think about other games, but if I had a blank slate then Frostpunk, out tomorrow, looks fairly interesting. City/civilisation simulator coupled with a frozen apocalyptic type world, I think.

 

[Vareor]

What sort of RPG is Laden Ring? I've heard tiny bits about it.

With Outer Worlds and Civ VI on the way I don't want to think about other games, but if I had a blank slate then Frostpunk, out tomorrow, looks fairly interesting. City/civilisation simulator coupled with a frozen apocalyptic type world, I think.

Oh my ... this is embarrassing. I misspelled the name, it's Elden Ring ...

Here is the trailer:

 

[Dozmonic]

The two games I'm most curious about are:

1. Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord which is coming out in March 2020 after being in development for millennia.

Had it on my steam wishlist since 2016 - and that was because I got fed up of manually checking for updates. It has definitely been a looooooong time coming!

 

[Vareor]

Had it on my steam wishlist since 2016 - and that was because I got fed up of manually checking for updates. It has definitely been a looooooong time coming!

To be honest, both M&B and Star Citizen have become meme material because of their overdue releases. At least the modding community of Warband has been kind enough to mellow the waiting time.

 

[Overread]

Mount and Blade 2 has at least made continual progress. It's in far better shape than, say, Duke Nukem which took years in the making and when it came it was a bit of a rush job since the original concepts had been changed and rebooted and changed over so many times before that so many of its years in development were basically lost.

It's a big thing to realise that many of the top AAA games we now play have budgets as big as Hollywood films and can take just as long to produce. Console games have it worse since they are always on a deadline before the console changes; whilst at least PC games can generally be a bit more free ,though if you wait too long the world changes and your once state of the art is then mundane.

 

[Vareor]

I've never played Duke, so it's difficult for me to relate to that, but I agree that the developers of M&B have been consistent in their efforts to make a great game. They've been updating us every week for ... one or two years? about the game's features.
Still, due to how much I liked the first game, the 7 years they've been developing Bannerlord have felt like twice as much.

Oh, and I feel like we've been derailing 's thread quite a bit. Another game I'm looking forward to, is Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2. Funny enough, it's coming out the same month M&B 2 will isolate me from the world . The developer is Paradox Interactive, so I think it's safe to expect good things.

 

[Cydramech]

My current anticipated titles would be:

• Ashes of Creation
• Biomutant
• Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories
• Fast & Furious Crossroads
• Resident Evil 3
• Sakura Wars
• Subverse
• The Ghost of Tsushima
• The Last of Us, Pt.2
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2
• Watch Dogs Legion

 

[thaddeus6th]

Just heard that The Last of Us Part 2 has been indefinitely delayed due to the only news story in town.

Right now the biggest game on my radar, given that news, is Baldur's Gate 3. It's by Larian Studios, the people who made Divinity Original Sin 2.

 

[Foxbat]

I enjoyed Baldur’s Gate 2 but could never finish it (I did finish the first BG). From what I remember, I was stuck in a battle I just couldn’t find a way of winning. Enjoyed it despite that frustration. I hope they don’t go all silly with BG3 and go first person or too graphically intensive. The original‘s strength lay in its story not in its looks. I was one of the fools that bought Masters Of Orion 3 on day one release, thinking that it would be an improvement on 1 and 2. How wrong was I?

Message to BG3 developers: more of the same please, or just **** off!

 

[.matthew.]

Well BG3 gameplay trailer did look very graphicy, with full zoom in to character dialogues to appear like cutscenes. The actual combat looked fairly polished from a graphical standpoint but not crazy or anything. I'm not sure I'm a fan of the weird half pause half realtime combat they seem to have going in it but I loved the Divinity ones so I'll probably still give it a chance.