Video game thread

@Azure Fang  
Thanks. It’s very possible that I would have missed that. The starting area didn’t seem like it was changing any so it’s likely that I would have just forgotten about it after a while.

@Officer Hotpants  
Once you beat the “final temple” (not the end of the game, but the end of the “MMO” as it were), Rhombus Square gets a lot bigger; you get to go through the southern gate of the portal hub, and there’s a lot there.

I know most of you KIDS aren’t going to care, because you KIDS aren’t used to playing REAL GAMES that don’t involve achievements, loot boxes, and marvel superhero skins, but I gotta vent, because this is a big one for me. The legend, the king, the ARPGs of ARPGs is returning in glorious 1080p and with quality of life updates. Twenty years in the making, ladies and gentlemen, I give you: DIABLO II: RESURRECTED!
 
I coomed a lil when I first saw it.

@Humble Oriathan  
After their Warcraft 3: Reforged debacle, I’m not sure. It’s wait and see for me.

@Humble Oriathan  
I… want to be excited–I’ve been praying for GOG to nab D2 for ages and was talking about it with someone just last night–but I just can’t be. I just KNOW they’re going to fuck it up somehow. Remove content, add bad new NPCs, shift the locations of things, change VAs, add some kind of bullshit always-on DRM…
 
The new look already has me hesitant. Hopefully that’s optional.

@ANoobis  
@Officer Hotpants  
Oh ya, I definitely wouldn’t recommend preordering it now with how much of a dumpster fire Forged was. We especially have every right to be skeptical after the reveal of Diablo Immortal, proving that they know next to nothing about what their fanbase wants or what made the original Diablo games fun. I’m hopeful, though. I think Mr. llama got to play the game a little bit himself at Blizcon, and he says the alpha stage of it is good, so that’s a little reassuring. He’s a speedrunner who holds most of the world records for speedrunning Diablo II all the time, so I trust his word. He’s not one to sellout and praise a game just for money. If you’re interested, you can sign up for a chance to play the alpha version of the game yourself in the near future.

@Officer Hotpants  
Bottom of the order page in the fine print already hints at always-online DRM and the Battle.net launcher being a hard requirement.
 

 
Whatever the case, hard pass for me even though D2 was one of my all-time favorite games. Vowed a long time ago they’ll not get another cent from me, not even if they tempted me with proper remasters of Diablo + Hellfire + Cut Content and Warcraft 2 + Dark Portal.

@Humble Oriathan  
I mean, the Diablo Immortal is actually aimed at a fanbase.  
5% (at the time) of their market, to be specific - the Chinese love mobile games. It’s just that everyone else doesn’t.  
Yes, they literally fucked up their everything for the sake of 1/20th of their market. Don’t let chinks on your board of directors, people.
 
@Azure Fang  
It might be the requirement for multiplayer. Very low chance, especially given reFucked and diablo 3, but still.  
Also, yarr it. When injustice becomes law…

@Barhandar  
Those damn commies. Why can’t they just make their own shitty clone like they do with every other game and leave our american made inventions alone?

@Humble Oriathan  
i dunno, ask tencent

@Azure Fang  
Then I am thoroughly uninterested. Fuck Blizzard.

Meanwhile, another of the industry zombies is shitting out more lazy ports of their prestigious catalogue, yet I can’t help but wishlist it because some small sliver of hope remains that they won’t do to it what they did to the ports of Final Fantasy VI and VIII. The same vain sliver of hope that yearns for the day Konami releases the Suikoden franchise from it’s Pachinko Machine hell.

@Azure Fang  
Can’t you just emulate it?

Let’s take this to the other thread.

@Barhandar  
You can, but emulated copies don’t have the dummied out PocketStation game (in terms of LoM), nor do they have Steamworks features that Square Enix tend to fully embrace.
 
You could use a similar argument with the previously mentioned Diablo II remaster: the old version works perfectly well on modern systems after a compatibility pass, and the only thing you miss out on is battle.net-served multiplayer (direct IP still works and can be modded to have b.net features).
 
It’s more the fact that SE is extremely lazy with their ports, and then pop a surprised pikachu face when people complain. Not unlike Blizzard, that.

I just started playing Bowser’s Fury. I’m only a short way into it, but I’m liking the open-world aspect. And I love the atmosphere. The fact that Bowser is a constant presence on the map really sells it. I’m invested in the scenario they’ve presented.
 
I never had a Wii U, either, so I never got to play 3D World. Right out the gate, I’m finding the cat theme very charming.

@Azure Fang  
I saw that earlier and was wondering how it was different at all, to justify that new game price tag. It doesn’t really look like it’s changed from what I remember.
 
What did they do to the FF titles?

@Barhandar  
I’ve been thinking. Diablo, the IP, is in a really bad spot. This remake had better be good, or that’s probably it for the series. And since it’s modern Blizzard, the chances of it just being good are shaky.
 
They could slap some dystopian DRM on it where you only lease the game for full price and are subject to arbitrary service termination. They could fill it to Hell and back with microtransactions. The finished product could even install a Chinese crypto miner on your machine. It wouldn’t matter, if it doesn’t sell well, the conclusion reached at Blizzard HQ will be “Traditional Diablo doesn’t sell” and it’ll just be mobas and mobiles and gachas from then on.

@ANoobis  
Yea. They’ll never take the blame and instead insist that the type of game at fault. It’s why there’s so little horror games from big studios. They can’t nickle and dime people with MTXs and other shit without breaking the gameplay entirely. And since they can’t make 20x the money they actually need, they’ll never make another one. So much of the art of making games has been lost.
 
I’m just gonna stop trying to spilt the threads.

@Officer Hotpants  
Final Fantasy VIII was relatively simple in its laziness. They took the original backgrounds and zoom-stretched them to meet modern resolutions, while replacing actor sprites with either Dissidia NT models or new redraws, then added some censorship to spots that never needed it; this was extremely apparent in some scenes where some “NPCs” were actually part of the background, and thus became pixelated blobs in the so-called “remaster”. The funny part is, the original FF8 PC release from decades ago actually looks better than the port and has more content than the port as it has the PocketStation game that was removed from the Steam release but is present in the original PS1/PC (even in Western copies - I broke my imported PocketStation playing that stupid game on PS1).
 
Final Fantasy VI… OK, disclaimer here, I’m of the opinion that Final Fantasy VI is the greatest mainline Final Fantasy and Kefka Palazzo is one of, if not the, greatest villains of all time, so yes I am biased, but at least I have historical backing to my bias considering it is rated among the greatest games of all time across multiple sources and multiple years; also, you probably know by now, but I get ranty about things I’m passionate about, so buckle up.
 
That out of the way, the “remaster” is a “disaster”. The port was originally launched on mobile with a softening, faux-3D filter that destroyed the beautiful original spritework, the UI was compressed with the supposed intent of ease of use on mobile but simply added a new layer of complexity when selecting commands, the story was re-localized for some reason that stripped away a significant portion of the charm of the game by making it feel darker than it needed to be (see Ted Woosley#At Square for context, and that’s saying something for a story as dark as FF6), and, once again, they censored things that didn’t need to be moreso than the original. So, after a startlingly bad release on mobile, SE decides “eh, good enough for PC” and just pushes the same port to Steam and completely ignores the launch outcry, to the point that then head of the “Final Fantasy Committee” Yoshinori Kitase couldn’t comprehend that people didn’t like the port’s graphics, and then did nothing about it after being informed in an interview, and still greenlit the Steam push. About the only things going for the Steam FF6 release are that it uses the GBA extended content and there’s a passionate modder following that has restored a near-perfect recreation of the original spritework (as well as other options for those that actually prefer the new look) via the Atma Weapon Multimod.

Looks like Blizzard already removed the original Diablo 2 from their store. So much for that. Guess I’ll have to hope I can find my old CD keys someday.
 
@Azure Fang  
I will never understand the drive to change & censor a supposed rerelease. It’s not really a rerelease at that point. Also the fact that content that was fine 20 years ago needs to be censored today is fucking sad when you remember that this was the time when you couldn’t call someone a bastard or acknowledge that bars serve beer.

@ANoobis  
And that’ll result in Blizzard losing their non-chinese market. Especially since there’s competition in singleplayer hack n slashes in, for example, Grim Dawn.

@Barhandar  
You mean the real Diablo 3?

@Officer Hotpants  
I have never played Diablo so I don’t know how Titan Quest With Hellfire Zombies compares to it.

@Barhandar  
Titan Quest not so well. I’m not sure how to describe it but there’s a satisfying feeling to Diablo that’s missing from TQ. GD nailed it, though.