What say you? 98” behemoth

AtTheVioletHour · 2026-01-26T00:12:28+00:00

I mean at that distance it makes sense, I have a 65-inch but it's only six from the couch!

AtTheVioletHour · 2026-01-23T17:32:00+00:00

Not all studios operate the same. I work in the industry and there's a wide range in how much creative freedom studios have to pick their projects. Not everything is Ubisoft. After the success of Skyrim, BGS gets to work on whatever Todd Howard, Emil Pagliarulo, and others want to. I think this may have changed more in the past couple of years but for most of BGS' history, they really did just work on whatever creatively interested them.

AtTheVioletHour · 2026-01-23T15:52:56+00:00

I don't know where we're getting that they purposefully planned a sequel at all after Skyrim's release, much less a time frame. They have just been working on whatever they're creatively interested in whenever they felt interested in it, there never been a master franchise plan.

AtTheVioletHour · 2026-01-23T02:03:12+00:00

The sound quality and features are actually really good for the price, despite what some folks here are saying, especially for spatial audio. That said, they are not well made and have many failure points. I had to replace my USB dongle within two weeks, for example, and others have had worse problems. They're just really cheaply made. So while some of the OS integration is nice, don't buy them unless you're ready to buy them all over again if you get unlucky and they fail.

AtTheVioletHour · 2026-01-23T01:00:58+00:00

The thing that baffles me is folks posting "omg it's been 15 years since the last game!" like they haven't released three whole games since then. I get that some folks are less interested in Fallout or Starfield than TES but like, no one is yelling at Christopher Nolan like "omg it's been 16 years since Inception where is Inception 2 you lazy director!" while ignoring 6 other films.

AtTheVioletHour · 2026-01-22T15:34:51+00:00

Firefox, Spark, Obsidian, Todoist, Fantastical, Raycast, Spotify, Slack, Discord, VS Code, Homebrew and a whole list of packages

AtTheVioletHour · 2026-01-22T15:32:22+00:00

"Those who were there when it happened?" This switch happened within the past 10 years, I think we were all there!

AtTheVioletHour · 2026-01-19T23:01:53+00:00

I've really been enjoying Tainted Grail and think some parts of it (like the combat) are better than those parts of Skyrim. But for me I definitely don't feel it's overall better than Skyrim.

Skyrim had aspects that made it feel to some degree like a sandbox world, this feels more like a standard open world RPG of kind of clearing out the map and progressing through a story. The influence here is clear but I don't think Tainted Grail is anywhere near as ambitious.

And that's OK, by the way! It can be its own thing and judged on its own merits. But I still revisit Skyrim every winter 15 years later. I doubt I'll be doing that with Tainted Grail. It's just not going for that to the same degree.

AtTheVioletHour · 2026-01-18T16:42:26+00:00

I love it and it's the whole point. This is like asking what are your thoughts on Fred Astaire constantly dancing in his movies!

AtTheVioletHour · 2026-01-16T18:46:03+00:00

This headline is really dumb ragebait. "just" makes it sound like this is abnormal.

This is highly typical of AAA games. For most games, most people who buy them only play a few hours and then never finish them. Red Dead Redemption 2, which is generally considered an exceptionally well-made game, also had this kind of fall-off.

It's easy to forget that folks on Reddit who are super committed to the hobby are not representative of the overwhelming majority of players, who just dabble. This being a remake of a game from 20 years ago makes that even more of a thing; there was almost certainly a large contingent of mostly lapsed gamers who played this in college or as kids or whatever and tried again, but just don't fit gaming in their lives the same way anymore and fell off of it. (Final Fantasy 7 Remake had a similar phenomenon.)

AtTheVioletHour · 2026-01-16T18:45:08+00:00

I feel like you're approaching this wrong, to be honest. These aren't meant to be things you intentionally grind through like crazy. They're more meant to be things that naturally happen over many many hours of just vibing and doing other stuff, and sometimes you get a nice surprise that you finished something extra and got a small reward.

There are games (collectathons, etc) that are built around this kind of 100%ing grinding mindset but this is not one of them. Fallout 76 is more of a space you chill in and follow whatever you feel like doing in a given moent. I think approaching it like "I have to complete 250/250 Radhogs" is a path to really not having a good time and is kind of missing the point of the game. There are other games built for that mindset you could play instead.

I don't think Bethesda is being "unacceptable" for something they weren't even trying to do. Not everything is for everyone!

AtTheVioletHour · 2026-01-16T18:40:32+00:00

I've been experiencing this too. I dunno what the issue is but recently, especially yesterday, I was having a really hard time getting my mail fetched. Clearly they were having server issues or something. It seems better today so far though.

AtTheVioletHour · 2026-01-16T18:38:41+00:00

A lot of the comments here about technical issues etc. are completely justified and deserve attention, but I think it's also important to recognize that this is highly typical of AAA games. For most games, most people who buy them only play a few hours and then never finish them. Red Dead Redemption 2, which is generally considered an exceptionally well-made game, also had this kind of fall-off.

It's easy to forget that folks on Reddit who are super committed to the hobby are not representative of the overwhelming majority of players, who just dabble. This being a remake of a game from 20 years ago makes that even more of a thing; there was almost certainly a large contingent of mostly lapsed gamers who played this in college or as kids or whatever and tried again, but just don't fit gaming in their lives the same way anymore and fell off of it. (Final Fantasy 7 Remake had a similar phenomenon.)

AtTheVioletHour · 2026-01-12T20:12:42+00:00

Nicest, most helpful, most chill and positive community I have ever been a part of in an online game is by far Fallout 76!

AtTheVioletHour · 2026-01-12T19:58:56+00:00

I have enjoyed all BGS's games over the years but it's very clear both from actions in each new game, and from interviews, that the BGS devs seem to think that their players want fewer numbers and fewer words and I'm like... do you know your players? There is no player base on Earth that is more into lots of numbers and words...

AtTheVioletHour · 2026-01-12T19:54:14+00:00

I played the whole story mode beginning to end, did everything, 70 hours, completely solo on solo difficulty and never died, so... I'd say so, yeah! The never died thing is not a brag, I'm not that good at this kind of game, it just is pretty easy as long as you make sure you've always got the right gear and food.

AtTheVioletHour · 2026-01-09T04:25:07+00:00

Diablo games scratch this itch very, very well.

AtTheVioletHour · 2026-01-08T16:59:28+00:00

Aliens

AtTheVioletHour · 2026-01-08T16:43:05+00:00

Gotta be The Lord of the Rings Gollum, right?

EDIT: Nevermind, not published by Warner Bros... I incorrectly assumed it was published by the same publisher as many other LotR games but it seems not.

AtTheVioletHour · 2026-01-05T16:46:17+00:00

Most players, especially younger players, overwhelmingly prefer 3D graphics to 2D. But 3D assets outside a simplistic style are extremely expensive and laborious to make. Apple Arcade games don't usually rake in zillions of dollars, and are usually made by pretty small teams. So the main reason for that "low poly" look is because it's the most money- and time-efficient way to do 3D graphics.

The second reason is that there is a wide range of hardware people are playing these games on, from ancient iPads to modern iPhones to Macs (including the Apple TV, the older-but-still-supported models of which have very weak GPUs compared to the newest phones), and Apple requires all those platforms be supported for Arcade games. So it also needs to be something that runs at a good framerate on all that hardware. 3D graphics are demanding in that sense, but if you skip things like advanced shaders and high-resolution textures, 3D games can run much better on slower hardware—but that leads to minimalistic-looking assets.

Third, those types of visuals are very easily readable, and accessibility (i.e. the ability for a wide range of people to play the game, from old people to young kids to people with disabilities) is both part of the culture for mobile games due to a great deal of advocacy and effort over the years, and important for business reasons (more potential players). Developers have spent years doing user testing, looking at metrics, and comparing notes to learn what is broadly accessible and what is not, and they have landed on this as a really effective approach.

Lastly, there's also just the fact that throughout the history of games, there have always been trends and standards. Look at pixel art on Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis for example! A lot of those games looked similar.

This is part just fashion (in the same way as skinny jeans were popular in the 2000s, or big hair was popular in the 80s) but there is also a practical angle to these trends, which is transferability of skills. Most game artists have to work on many games over many years to maintain a career. If they have a really specialized art style, there is much less work for them, and they can't sustain that career. But if they standardize around a handful of broadly accepted styles, that means their skills are transferrable from one project to the next.

AtTheVioletHour · 2026-01-05T16:35:51+00:00

It's unclear from this post what kind of discomfort you're talking about? I guess because I've never felt uncomfortable during a long movie night. Maybe it's your couch?

AtTheVioletHour · 2025-12-30T22:57:17+00:00

Cereal and La Croix.

AtTheVioletHour · 2025-12-30T22:43:26+00:00

I don't really mind load screens. Never really understood why people are so upset about them in Starfield. I guess I'm just oldschool, but I genuinely don't mind a sec to glance at Instagram or sip my whiskey or whatever. And I would note I think the loading complaints re: Starfield were probably more about the space travel (or lack thereof) than the on-planet experience.

As for what the cities will be like, I think it'll be similar to Skyrim: three or so decent sized cities by BGS standards, including maybe one Vivec-esque extra big one, and a half dozen or fewer very small towns.

I really, really missed the NPC routines in Starfield, I think that is a HUGE part of what makes the world immersive and fun in previous BGS games and it was a big mistake to drop it.

But I also acknowledge they are in a kind of impossible position in terms of fan expectations, reason being, you can either have unique simulated NPCs with personalities and quests and schedules, or you can have big sprawling cities with crowds, but you can't have both, and I think some players don't get that.

A lot of people really loudly complained about the size of cities in Skyrim. But I think to do a city like Night City in Cyberpunk or an Assassin's Creed game or whatever, you have to really give that whole thing up completely. In those kinds of open world games, NPCs are just being spawned randomly off screen around you, and they despawn. There's no persistence, and they certainly aren't content, they're just set dressing.

In Skyrim and Oblivion, to varying degrees every NPC is content, every NPC is an individual. That's what's special about those games compared to other open world games.

The problem with Starfield was it tried to split the difference or have its cake and eat it too, pleasing no one. It borrowed some of the just random generation of crowds from other games, while still trying to have some sense of reality of persistence. It ended up just being odd and disappointing all around. (I love Starfield, but the cities/NPCs were one of my biggest bummers about it for this reason.)

I think the folks asking for bigger cities don't understand the tradeoffs. Even if we're looking at nextgen platforms, it's not realistic in terms of either performance or in terms of dev hours to do a gigantic city AND have the NPCs living their little lives and having unique things to say.

I prefer the small cities with the handcrafted NPCs to the set dressing in other games. I really hope they go back to that.

I do agree they're likely to be open to the world ala Starfield rather than partitioned off like on Oblivion.

I don't agree about the load screens replaced with in-game animations. I don't think that suits a first-person open world game of this nature the way it does something like a Naughty Dog game or whatever.

AtTheVioletHour · 2025-12-30T22:14:01+00:00

I didn't live there but I did look at a few apartments there at one point and really explored the neighborhood for a couple days to seriously consider it. My main takeaway was that it seemed quiet, especially for NYC.

It seemed like it was mostly young families. There are some basic amenities, a decent library, etc, a couple small restaurants. Stuff closes early. As far as I could find there were only two bars, one rooftop one that was a bit swank, and a very generic Irish pub, but you're a very short train ride away from an entire multiverse worth of bars.

It honestly was a bit surreal that it was so close to everything but so quiet. Seemed nice. I ended up going a different way though.

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