DHIATENSOR

@bigsocrates: where's the fanfic? im not speculating, just going off what i've seen and heard. Jeff's garage stream a few days after the announcement made it pretty clear it took him by surprise and while he was trying to put a brave face on it, he honestly seemed hurt. also the barber analogy doesn't really work, as barbers are a general commodity used by more or less everyone, whereas this is a specific personality based community with a small and passionate audience, which will inherently see somewhat of a split now (see above in this thread, a bunch of people saying they've joined the Nextlander Patreon and are thinking of dropping GB) - so going in to direct competition for the same audience isn't quite the same as opening up another shop that can draw from a pretty much inexhaustible pool of consumers.

@bigsocrates: whichever way you slice it they left Jeff in the lurch at short notice when it's going through a transition and already low on staff, so they had to know this could well have been fatal for GB. just because they're broadly justified in a personal sense doesn't mean i can't find that distasteful. in terms of the stream, no im not expecting them to slot all their coverage around GB, but i thought the timing on Tuesday was pretty tone-deaf, as they must be aware of the tension that's still in the community, so even the appearance of wanting to split the core subscriber audience isn't a good look. im sure it was largely accidental, but still pretty thoughtless imo.

@chaser324: no conspiracy theories here. just comparing what they said in their exits to what they said on episode zero. im not alleging any secret rift, or being forced out by RV etc. as there's nothing to even suggest that. i dont think they've been intentionally dishonest about anything - but none of that translates to the whole community being obliged to blindly cheer them on.

@bigsocrates: they're welcome to do what they want. im welcome not to support it. on the way out they heavily implied that they were just generally burnt out on games coverage and were going to pastures new, then their episode zero basically said they decided to do Nextlander primarily because of the wave of support they got when announcing their exits, so to me that feels opportunistic. that they're lowest Patreon tier is more than twice as expensive as GB for really not very much isn't an attractive prospect to me either.

look, i have no ill will towards them, im glad they're still going to be around and if this means they're happier then godspeed to them, but this has honestly left a bad taste in my mouth and i dont think im the only one. also, running their day 2 stream at the same time as the Bombcast came across as thoughtless at best.

@therealturk: I thought Void Bastards was totally fine but not much beyond that. Theres really a lot of depth to the simulation but I did love the style, so hopefully its gets nominated for Best Styyyyyyle.

I think I was in the minority when I saw the TGS footage and thought "this is pretty much the game I've been waiting for someone to make". My favourite parts of Breath of the Wild were climbing some sheer rock face and having to think carefully about how to manage my stamina so I dont fall to my death. Death Strandings main loop seems to be designed around a similar feeling. I'm not traditionally a Metal Gear fan but MGSV is one of my absolute faves of this gen, so all told I think I'm going to enjoy this a lot.

I agree with the central gist of your argument - that just because we call something a game it need not necessarily be fun in the strictest sense of the word. I suppose the term "game" has stuck around because the form comes from place where things really were just games. It's only fairly recently that the medium has matured to a point that the term seems somewhat archaic. The juxtaposition between AC: Odyssey and RDR2 is useful as ostensibly they have a lot in common: 3rd person action games, with sprawling narratives set in vast environments explored on horseback.

But AC:O is very much tuned to be a fun game - and to be clear I think it succeeds - it's a frictionless experience. Whistle for your horse and it spawns just outside of our vision. Jump off a 10-storey high statue? No worries, you're fine. Little numbers fly off every hit to let you know how much damage you've just done.

RDR2 is from a completely different philosophy. Nearly every mechanic and system in the game is there to feed in to the narrative and the sense of immersion. Having to pull trigger twice on single-action revolvers and repeating rifles is purposefully awkward. The ledger is there primarily so you can see that no-one but Arthur is contributing meaningfully to the camp, to foster a sense of weary resentment and responsibility. Having to bond with a horse to increase the radius within which it will come when called and not being able to just summon a new one if it dies could be annoying to some but wonderfully grounds us in that world and makes the bond with our horse much more real. The fact that frankly the distances between everything are about 20% too long is entirely intentional. It's scale to communicate a sense of well...scale. Of isolation. Of our own smallness compared the sheer vastness of the American wilderness.

I think the difference between the two games can be boiled down to simple fact: not once in RDR2 did I get attacked by a flock of Level 45 chickens - because that would be fucking absurd.

Fairly early on I absorbed the message Rockstar were trying to communicate and instead of playing RDR2 like it was intended to be a fun game I started reading it like it was a novel and in that way it's far more successful. For those that purely want to spend their game time being entertained (which is a totally reasonable expectation) I can understand why they might bounce of RDR2. It's an exceptionally strange and brave product that no-one but Rockstar could get away with at this sort of scale. I can't really imagine a scenario where the most anticipated and successful film of the year is painfully slow, elegiac, mournful Western, but they've earned people's trust to the point where they can pull it off. It's certainly not without faults but in it's refusal to compromise it's vision RDR2 has found a place among the very best open worlds of this generation.

I only just discovered FLOP or "wiggly pong" and it's quickly become my friends go to multiplayer. It's fucking incredible. By adding spin and a flappable paddle to Pong they've accidentally made one of best tennis games ever made. Once you both get good it turns in to this frantic hypnotic duel, slamming it back and forth at absurd speeds, the physics satisfyingly hyperbolic. I owned Sportsfriends for 3 years without even knowing this thing existed!

@katiedey: Thanks anyway. Found it elsewhere. Was just being lazy!