Eh, skill up had a great take on this. The thing is it's wayyyyy easier to be a small indie developer than it ever was before. Making a game (or any art) still isn't easy, it never was and never will be, but it's viable without a giant publisher in a way it just hasn't been before.

Its the AA titles that are on the most precarious footing, but I bet even those do ok. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy some AAA stuff time to time, I've got a stupid amount of hours in overwatch, but I've never once paid for a skin because... why would you?

The thing that's going to suck is losing the studios like Arkane. Their games weren't perfect but they were freaking cool, and they basically always got the raw end of the deal. Even Prey(2016), their masterpiece, is the product of corporate bullshitiery they had nothing to do with. So we're probably going to miss studios like that for a while (as they get re-tasked to fortnite/cod support teams) but "indie" stuff has already been stepping up to fill that void, and is less indie all the time.

Look at Dave the Diver. That's not exactly an indie studio. They had resources. There's going to be a gap for a bit, but there's still a demand for good games and art. Those AA breakthroughs are what people want. Again, I continue to spend dumb amounts of time on overwatch, but it's not where I spend my money. Microsoft hovelled themselves by buying all these studios and not taking the leap with supporting them. Distribution just doesn't have the value it once did. So if microsoft wants to become CandyCrush, feeding an addiction loop to grab the whales, sure, whatever, but there's plenty of bread out there for studios doing other stuff.

Also remember Horse Armor DLC for Oblivion, released by Bethesda? Considered by many to be the catalyst of this kind of BS.

Fallout 4 is like 4 different games crammed into a trench coat.

• high emotion story game. Go rescue your child!
• high action shooter. Boom! Headshot!
• stats driven RPG. That naked bandit is level 40 so you can't kill him even if you shotgun his face
• settlement management game. Build and decorate a little town! Set up trade routes!

All of these are kind of badly done, and mashing them all together didn't make something greater than the parts.

Fallout 3's world doesn't feel like Fallout but the tone of the writing comes close.

Fallout 4's tone and writing doesn't feel like Fallout, but the world does.

New Vegas is the only 3D Fallout game that feels like Fallout in both the world and the writing.

I can almost guarantee that unless Josh Sawyer and the other original talent that made 1, 2, and tactics that also worked on New Vegas are working on it, it will never feel like a true Fallout game.

The perk system was fine imo, but the fact that attributes (except for charisma) did not influence dialogue at all was extremely disappointing.

Roleplay opportunities were traded in for a better gunplay experience. It became an FPS, not an RPG.

That shit is never going away, and for one simple reason: it's incredibly profitable. By converting real money into some nebulous fun bucks that doesn't directly correlate in value, they obfuscate how much money you're actually spending and make it more likely that you'll spend more than you intend to. The same reason that casinos have no windows and pump extra oxygen into the air so you feel less tired, all so you don't realize how long you've been in there.

Still a thing on PC with Uplay and Origin stores sadly.

Right?

Bethesda just released an expansion for fallout 76. It's a game that I'm fairly fond of, considering the amount of dislike I have for fallout 4, it improved on it in every way from the worldbuilding to building to the story, I could go on, point is, I like it.

The new expansion, the first map expansion and like 20 major updates in.

The new map is quite a large region. You'd expect a few side quests to unlock these other locations. Maybe some hidden gems. Maybe some cool NPCs outside of the main "expansion" right?

Its literally: A main quest that's short (beat it in like 3 hours on the first day it dropped)

A single side quest that's more of an optional objective on the main quest

A single new event

A single new boss.

Four things they added. Two of which can only be done once (bad formula for a game designed around repeating similar tasks)

They've just straight up gotten bad. There's no love in their products anymore. It's all taking the easiest way out, lacking any amount of real creativity.

I just want them to migrate from their shitty proprietary engine, buckle down on a good story and prioritizing fun.