Same as it ever was.
Review I watched also specifically mentioned doors. They "feel weighted" apparently.This was only to be expected. The whole idea of a 1000 worlds game with Bethesda’s not so great recent track record and general design of games that hasnt aged well, was always going to lead to something far more generic than people were expecting.
To be fair, as @b82REZ said above, if you read some of those 9/10 reviews they are actually more critical than not about the game.
Yep, though they do usually build great worlds, spreading it over 1000 planets is way too much. I think it's worse that you can't even fly to them as it's all fast travel which, as I said above, all the reviews I've read so far are very negative about.
Which is pretty much the way I'm looking at this with the last paragraph. It will be the universe and finding everything that appeals to me. Although I might be super pissed off about the space combat, I mean that isn't even hard to get right!
A strange but bold move. You want your in-depth RPG feel, you'll have "the vendor is beside the big neon sign across from the police station" instead of a dollar sign on a map.
Yeah exactly. For these big open world games you have some proper hook that keeps the gamer invested. Witcher 3 has brilliant writing. Zelda has sandbox gameplay systems. RD2 again writing and exploration. Bethesda’s older games were great for their time but I don’t think their recent games have moved ahead enough with the times. This seems like a more polished version of what they’ve done previously.
Those were some other better times where critics made more sense. Skyrim would be 84 avg if reviewed by current 'critics'.
All the reviews I've read, and unlike me traditionally I've gone through a lot, are exactly like that. Every single one has a tone of disappointment, largely to do with the space travel/traversal in general, but generally about all the gameplay elements being pretty bog standard.
In the Xbox thread Damo has posted a decent video where she talks about the space/ground traversal. It's basically all pretty static and empty. The traversal on foot stuff IS limited, but the worlds are so empty it's more a case of it not mattering because you won't want to do it rather than a problem. Which isn't a good thing in itself.
Yeah and that really reminds me of the reviews for Cyberpunk in that regard. At least this sounds like it is largely playable though.
A couple specifically say the combat is better than in Cyberpunk at least. But that's not really something to shout about. Especially as it seemingly has the same problem of awful AI which makes it all trivial.
Which modern sandboxes though? The Witcher maybe with storytelling and less rigid characters, but otherwise very similar. Rdr2 was incredible but had its flaws too (controls mainly).
Skyrim would be an 84 if released today though. When Skyrim was released I was absolutely awed by the lore and the size of the game. More so even than Oblivion or Morrowind. There were so many possibilities, they felt endless, and the game was so good to play. Morrowind and Oblivion were great but clunky. Skyrim opened with a freaking Dragon attacking a city and it looked great.
Yeah this is the review I watched. His reviews are typically on point.
Both those games have moved forward in some way or another though. Zelda definitely so. But if you look at the space aspect too, there's loads of games that by far pre-date this and do way better in the "sandbox" aspect, like the X series for example (which started early 00's iirc). If you look as the adventure building aspect, there are tons of games way better than this looks. Granted not so many on console, but they are there.
Yeah this all lines up with what I've read and think. Some odd choices going on and weirdness around NG+.
His main take away was that he couldn't wait to go back and play BG3 after writing his review.Yeah, they always have to bump up the final score. It's nothing new. There was a guy on here once who posted one of his reviews for an online mag and it was full of disappointment and then at the end it was something like 9/10. It was a good laugh for a while!
I'm reading through a number of reviews and you can literally feel the disappointment at some of the gameplay elements through the screen. All fall back to "but it's so big and set in space!". Which, tbf, is my justification for being hyped before even playing it too
To be fair, that's not any kind of decent claim
Though in seriousness, it seems that on the PC at least it's fine for a launch. On Xbox the performance and bugs are off, but not game breaking or anything. I'll be testing both this weekend.
That falls in line with what all the reviews (even the stupid 10/10 ones) are saying. Less about the bugginess, but more about the emptyness (which makes you miss a lot of the best content apparently) and the fast travel system.
What are sandbox gameplay systems? Probably going to get murdered for saying this but TOTK in particular gets a lot of leeway because of the Zelda tag for what it doesn't achieve as an exploration game, for all the good it obviously does. My experience on an emulator was filled with sections of vast emptyiness, basic NPC's and a lack of enemy variety for example but it's rarely ever spoken about in the reviews. Not denying it's a fantastic Nintendo game but it's not up there with the other open world games you mentioned for me. Particularly RDR2 and TW3.
The best games are the ones with fun traversal admittedly. Driving in GTA, swinging in Spiderman, grinding in Sunset Overdrive - even grappling in the new Halo.
You're not wrong. The exploration in TotK was rubbish for anybody who already experienced the same novelty in BotW. Critics didn't mention it at release but the fact so few are still talking about TotK speaks volumes to me.
Surely you must. There's plenty of gameplay of the player flying around in the ship taking down pirates or whatnot, so I had assumed you could at least fly around the solar system you are in. Strange.
Yep, TotK is great, but it is basically an expansion to BotW. That is why BG3 should win GOTY as we didn't get this great of a cRPG for a long time.
I've read that. A lot of hit and some miss as expected, but seemingly polished and nowhere near as buggy as expected which is a nice surprise. I'll be trying this out on the X next week, though I won't be comparing it to the PC version since it's obviously not fair.
TW3 isn't really a sandbox and RDR2 can be considering a light one but in a different way to Zelda. Zelda lives and dies on people's creativity and what you can come do with it. You are given the tools and left to get on with it, and it all works, that's real sandbox. It's like Gmod on PC, absolutely wonderful game but you'd play it and wonder what the feck it is and give up in minutes. Those games, like any genre, aren't for everyone.
Nope. Look in the Xbox thread at the video Damo posted. It's woefully static, the area above planets are basically rooms.
Admittedly I didn't read beyond the headline. I just saw the opportunity to slip you a potential banana skin and thought I can't pass that up because I might not get another chance for a while
I'm losing my life to the ship and weapon customisations. The ship stuff in particular is right up my alley, which is what makes the actual use of it disappointing
Fair enough mateAdmittedly I didn't read beyond the headline. I just saw the opportunity to slip you a potential banana skin and thought I can't pass that up because I might not get another chance for a while
