Is it May 12th yet?

January 3, 2023 6:58 AM

All the new video games launching in 2023 [Polygon] “Already we can count more than 100 major video game releases expected in 2023, from highly anticipated RPGs like Starfield and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, to new, mainline entries in series like Final Fantasy and Street Fighter, and the long-awaited return of franchises like Diablo and Pikmin. While video game release dates are constantly in flux, Polygon’s guide to the video games coming out in 2023 will be regularly updated with new games, new release dates, and games’ inevitable delays. Here’s a look at what the year has in store for upcoming games.”
posted by Fizz (73 comments total)

I pray that someone will let me know when/if it becomes morally OK for me to give money to Blizzard again. Diablo 3 is pretty much played out for me but 4 looks SO GOOOOOoooood *sob*
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 7:29 AM on January 3, 2023

I’m really hoping the updated Dead Space delivers. Finally pushed myself to finish the original on my PS3 in November, and it was still terrifying and very good.

Here is a list of the most anticipated. I know it’s hard with so many gaming studios delivering duds, so I am now waiting for the games to actually debut before buying.

The new Zelda arriving makes me want to finally get Breath of the Wild complete. I didn’t like it initially at all, but only played for a bit. Everyone seems to love it, though. Any thoughts on BOTW?
posted by glaucon at 7:34 AM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

I am absolutely struggling to find anything to get excited about. Is there nothing like Mass Effect / Dragon Age any more? Does no one build story-dense ARPGs with companions any more? Where's the fucking banter? The "now kiss" shipping?
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:34 AM on January 3, 2023 [10 favorites]

Other than the obvious (omg Zelda is all I need, honestly), I hope that Jedi: Survivor will come to EA Play / Game Pass sooner rather than later. I really enjoyed Fallen Order (although I will admit -- I didn't actually finish it. I got super frustrated at the final boss fight and just never came back to it. Still, the rest was really great!) and I'd love to spend some more time in that world.

I'm also a trekkie, so ... anyone have a read on whether the Telltale-like Trek game will be any good?
posted by uncleozzy at 7:41 AM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

The ones I'm looking forward to this year are Eiyuden Chronicles and the Suikoden I & II remasters. Other than that, I think I'm going to spend my gaming time this year going back to play older games that I missed the first time around. Oh...and also trying to pick up any new achievements that they might develop for "Vampire Survivors".
posted by Ipsifendus at 7:45 AM on January 3, 2023

Skull And Bones ?

Believe it when I see it.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 7:46 AM on January 3, 2023

seanmpuckett, I'm hoping that Baldur's Gate 3 is that for us.

Forspoken has looked interesting, but I bounced off of AAA so hard last year I'm going to wait on it. (I've also just recently gotten super super into Prey, 4-5 years late, so not really looking for a new big game right now) I might have to get Starfield the week it comes out, though.

Most of what I'm really jonesing for are small queer indie titles, so fingers crossed on those.

If Hades II enters public EA I'll probably just do that forever too.

I wish there were links to ANYTHING in this article. What the hell, Polygon, this is a website, on the actual whole-ass internet, come the fuck on.

As a treat, here's the Exoprimal trailer if you haven't seen it.
posted by curious nu at 7:47 AM on January 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

seanmpuckett & Curious Nu I'm excited for Baldur's Gate 3 in August. I've been in the EA (very extended EA) for a while. NPCs feel complicated, good banter, and there are often many different ways to resolve any particular thing. The rules are based on D&D 5e and I think they implement it very well.

Plus, even though they don't say so on that list, it is also running on Macs (both Intel and apple silicon natively). When they do the patches Macs are usually several weeks behind but happy to be able to have something so top shelf on my primary computer. I've put in nearly 200 hours (yikes!) just playing and replaying the first act and it has gotten better every patch.
posted by Wink Ricketts at 7:52 AM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'm really looking forward to Starfield despite knowing how broken it will be on launch. And I really hope the Expanse Telltale game and the new back-to-basics Assassins Creed are good. But the big one for me is going to be Armored Core 6.

I am absolutely struggling to find anything to get excited about. Is there nothing like Mass Effect / Dragon Age any more? Does no one build story-dense ARPGs with companions any more? Where's the fucking banter? The "now kiss" shipping?

Midnight Suns from Firaxis is a Marvel licensed turn based strategy game that between missions fills the "walk around and banter with your teammates" hole that Bioware had mastered.

The ones I'm looking forward to this year are Eiyuden Chronicles and the Suikoden I & II remasters. Other than that, I think I'm going to spend my gaming time this year going back to play older games that I missed the first time around.

Check out Chained Echoes - a 16-bit style RPG that is getting great reviews and is very much in the vein of early Suikoden games or Secrets of Mana.
posted by thecjm at 7:55 AM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

Aww geez, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is Windows/Switch now? I was really looking forwards to it.
posted by egypturnash at 8:02 AM on January 3, 2023

It's remarkable how many early access and "will be broken at launch" games we're talking about. Sometimes I appreciate the dynamic but mostly I'd rather just have a complete product that works as planned when I buy it. Pretty sure Nintendo will do well by me here with the new Zelda game.
posted by Nelson at 8:02 AM on January 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

Kerbal 2 has a big space-boots to fill, but it is easily my most anticipated. (In the meantime, I get my rocket fix with simple rockets 2, which just released a career mode, and is in many ways far less simple than Kerbal)
posted by surlyben at 8:06 AM on January 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

I backed the System Shock Remake on Kickstarter and I'm hoping it makes its ship date. System Shock 2 is one of my favorite games, but I've never gotten very far in the original due to its clunky interface. It'll be nice to finally play through and get the full story of SHODAN's origin.
posted by SansPoint at 8:09 AM on January 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

My 2022 GOTY list was basically narrative indies (Citizen Sleeper and Teenage Exocolonist obliterated the competition) + HZD (2017), so I have no idea what to expect from 2023.
posted by simmering octagon at 8:25 AM on January 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

I'm hoping that Tears of the Kingdom manages to capture me in the same as BotW did - I did every temple, I did all the DLC, it was a joy and a thing of wonder at every step. Horizon Zero Dawn was the same, I think I basically finished off all the side quests and thoroughly immersed myself in the world before doing the final quest, while I'm sort of rushing my way through Forbidden West because ech, c'mon people, help yourselves a bit, wouldja? I've got bigger problems than recalling some soldiers in an outpost.
posted by Kyol at 8:26 AM on January 3, 2023

Tried the Forsaken demo on PS5. I was looking forward to the game, but the demo was just terrible. This may be because the demo dumped me in the middle of the game with a bunch of abilities that I didn't really understand and a bunch of enemies that were equally as puzzling. But it felt jagged and choppy on top of all that. An action game like Forspoken needs to feel smooth. It's a wait and see.

Quite a few games I'm looking forward to this year. Thanks for the link. But yeah, it's annoying that the list itself doesn't contain links.
posted by SoberHighland at 8:27 AM on January 3, 2023

Check out Chained Echoes

Way ahead of you! It's what I'm playing currently, and it's delicious.
posted by Ipsifendus at 8:44 AM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

Good to know what I might be playing come 2024 or 2025.
posted by wierdo at 8:48 AM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

Is there nothing like Mass Effect / Dragon Age any more?

Dragon Age: Dreadwolf is in alpha and while a release date hasn't been announced yet, most people think it will be out at the end of the year.
posted by Jacqueline at 8:49 AM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

I see Silksong is on the list, and in the first half too. Will be very pleasantly surprised if this turns out to be the case.
posted by ockmockbock at 8:56 AM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

Is there nothing like Mass Effect / Dragon Age any more?

The company that made those games was BioWare. I understand that BioWare still exists, but none of the key members of the company are a part of it these days. BioWare released Mass Effect: Andromeda to terrible reviews (I never played it) and then infamously had the Anthem disaster blow up in their faces. BioWare basically doesn't exist anymore, at least the BioWare that made the games you mentioned.

(I played Anthem and enjoyed it to an extent — when it worked. Um, at least for the first 30 levels. Um, and except for the story, the characters and the hub/home-base city. Google the story behind the Anthem debacle if you're interested. I think it's probably one of the worst and wildest stories about video game production ever.)
posted by SoberHighland at 9:04 AM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 comes out Dec 31 2023

let the Zone take me if I'm lying
posted by glonous keming at 9:05 AM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

I wish there were links to ANYTHING in this article. What the hell, Polygon, this is a website, on the actual whole-ass internet, come the fuck on.

Seriously. They don't even link to their own pretty extensive pre-release coverage of a lot of these titles.

I'm looking forward to Baldur's Gate, and I imagine Backpack Hero will be getting a release this year (but you should all totally play the Early Access version, it's awesome). Keeping my eye on Homeworld 3 and the Telltale Expanse game, too. But I just built a fast new PC so I'll probably be spending most of my time playing games from the past several years that I missed out on because they never got a Mac release - currently Control, then Elden Ring.
posted by whir at 9:11 AM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'm keeping a close eye on the Street Fighter 6 character customization mode. If it can do everything I want it to do, I don't think I'll have a choice but to buy a PS5.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:15 AM on January 3, 2023

My son and I bounced off Zelda BOTW so hard because of the weapons-breaking-every-2-minutes mechanic. It looks pretty, but man it was so frustrating. I hope the new one does away with that.
posted by Fleebnork at 9:22 AM on January 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

Fleebnork, I wouldn't count on that. I have a feeling it's going to be the same thing in the sequel. And while I can empathize with people who dislike that game mechanic, I honestly feel like weapon durability makes the game better.

Changing up weapons and types of weapons brings so much variety and chaos into my playthrough and I love that. There's always SOMETHING around that you can use and even when there isn't, you still have options with your bomb powers.

But yeah, it's definitely not everyone's cup of tea.
posted by Fizz at 9:37 AM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

Yeah, that turned me off hard in the first couple of hours, but it eventually felt like a non-issue after I kept playing because most of the game was so delightful. I never really enjoyed the crafting / cooking mechanic, though, which thankfully was only semi-necessary.
posted by uncleozzy at 9:39 AM on January 3, 2023

I never really enjoyed the crafting / cooking mechanic, though, which thankfully was only semi-necessary.

Wow, we're on opposite ends of the spectrum. I LOVE the cooking in BotW. Also, a great way to generate rupees. There are specific recipe requirements that will give you better buffs, but that stuff is buried and requires some teasing out through NPCs and notes left in the oddest places. Could have been telegraphed better, but I feel you on that.

My main thing with the Tears of the Kingdom sequel is whether we'll have TWO open-ended open-world areas, one being in the sky, the other being everything underneath like the first game. That would be a lot to populate and manage.

Mind you, this might depend on the time period this game is set in, which isn't too clear. Hmm..
posted by Fizz at 9:44 AM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

For me it was the balance between the durability mechanic and the bag size mechanic. I ended up spending a bit of time knocking out Korok seeds to make my bags big enough that I always had something fun to play with. And eventually you get the master sword, which is good enough even depowered that ... eh it sort of stopped being an issue for me?

But, to be fair, I was also playing with amiibo cards, so I had a bunch of new weapons most days, no matter what. And I can completely understand how annoying it is in the beginning.
posted by Kyol at 9:46 AM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

What I wanted was a better mechanic for the goofy utility shit, like the leaves and the weapons you bought from Kilton. So much variety there, but only so many bag slots!
posted by Kyol at 9:50 AM on January 3, 2023

I'd like to see a Dragon's Dogma 2.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:52 AM on January 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

I see Silksong is on the list, and in the first half too. Will be very pleasantly surprised if this turns out to be the case.

I am glad they are giving it the time it deserves! I don't see Crowsworn on the list, so it may come out before the game kickstarted by people who couldn't wait for more Hollow Knight. Check out the video for Crowsworn.

Everspace 2

Everspace One was a roguelite space shooter, every stage a procedurally generated asteroid field with a planet and starfield backdrop. So you would always see something new and it was so gorgeous. You know when you're playing Minecraft and the algorithm spits out something wonderful? Everspace would do that.

They're not doing that for the sequel! Or, maybe they are? I hope there's some mode where you can fly through a gate and end up in random space. Please do that.

Otherwise it's looking like Diablo in space. This is the game that might finally make me buy a HOTAS and VR headset. Looking very good!

Actual Diablo - not that excited about. They have clearly chosen money-making over game-making. I can't get excited about some pricks turning my childhood favorite into a fucking casino. Boooooo.

Starfield. Ok, Everspace 2 will have better space dogfights. This won't even be close. On the ground, it will be an FPS. I've been done with FPS for about a decade now. It's just boring. It makes me feel like an ape that has to tap the green triangle on the screen for a treat in some horrible lab. It won't even be a good FPS, because they have to overlay RPG elements on it, which never work (mass effect, fallout).

So Everspace 2 and Silksong are my circle the date on the calender and take the week off games. Diablo - I'll wait for reviews, but it's likely going to be a stark cash-grab, which is a shame. Starfield - just give me the RPG part, shooting stuff is boring.
posted by adept256 at 9:57 AM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

Is there nothing like Mass Effect / Dragon Age any more?

After 2015, the industry universally decided those type of games (my favorite type) didn't make enough money and everything became a live service or a Souls-like.

Since then, western RPGs have mostly been top-down, low-budget Baldurs Gate-style throwbacks. And some of those are great, but the only game since ~2016 to scratch that "ambitious AAA story-driven immersive ARPG" itch for me was Cyberpunk 2077, which was too ambitious at launch and finally delivered as of v1.5. I highly recommend CP77 if you have a current-gen console, btw.

A string of high-profile live-service failures may be leading to a return to this game style: Starfield and Dragon Age 4 are coming at some point.

As for the 2023 release list, I'm looking forward to finally playing Persona 4 but that's a remaster of an old game. I'm curious about Telltale's Expanse and Wolf Among Us 2. I'm sure Spider-Man 2 will be tightly designed even if Marvel burnout has set in (and assuming I can ever get a PS5). Beyond those, there are only the less-heralded games that will take me by surprise.
posted by frogstar42 at 10:01 AM on January 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

Breath of the Wild has so many interesting Youtube videos about it that Tears of the Kingdom will be a sensation for content creators, so long as Nintendo doesn't mess it up.
posted by JHarris at 10:18 AM on January 3, 2023

Exactly one title on this list for the Oculus Quest, the somewhat mind-boggling VR remake of the classic game "adventure" AKA Colossal Cave remade by King's Quest creator Roberta Williams.
posted by 3j0hn at 10:19 AM on January 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

I remain disappointed in computing power. Both too little, and too much.

Too little: The Switch is an awesome, accessible console, and I love the low power draw and the portability. But it sucks that so many games have such high base requirements that they run choppy or not at all on the platform. (Points to Nintendo for always using lower powered hardware though, because the constraints inherent in the platform seem to really encourage 1st party game designers to get creative rather than rely on flashy graphics to draw in players). I really wish Nintendo would drop a Switch 2.0 with a beefier base hardware configuration.

Too much: I'm typing this on an MacBook Pro, with an insanely fast M1 Pro processor, loads of RAM, and ridiculous performance. And yet, NO ONE TARGETS THIS PLATFORM FOR 1A GAMES. Why? Because "gamers don't use Macs" so no one develops games for Macs. No one ports games over. No one even considers it. And it ticks me off, because I'm not going to buy a Windows box just to be able to play specific games. I really wish game studios would start putting some effort into platform parity.
posted by caution live frogs at 10:23 AM on January 3, 2023 [8 favorites]

Forget new games, I just want EA to fix the damn Titanfall 2 multiplayer servers. They've been jacked up for over a year and half -- supposedly due to "hackers" -- making online play extremely sporadic and sometimes totally impossible.
posted by Saxon Kane at 10:30 AM on January 3, 2023

@Saxon Kane - look at Project Northstar, I believe that's where TF2 multiplayer has largely moved. (the hacking thing was weird & wild, as it turned out to be a project to get the hacker hired on, so they could either convince them to revive the F2P Titanfall Online spinoff or exfiltrate the code for it)
posted by CrystalDave at 11:02 AM on January 3, 2023

Too much: I'm typing this on an MacBook Pro, with an insanely fast M1 Pro processor, loads of RAM, and ridiculous performance. And yet, NO ONE TARGETS THIS PLATFORM FOR 1A GAMES. Why? Because "gamers don't use Macs" so no one develops games for Macs. No one ports games over. No one even considers it.

Plenty of games "consider it" and a fair number of top titles get ported over. You can play Total War: Warhammer 2 on Mac. You can play the entire recent Tomb Raider trilogy on Mac. You can play Rocket League and Alien Isolation and the Borderlands trilogy and Minecraft on Mac. You can play Planet Coaster and Hitman and Disco Elysium on Mac, all of which were day one simo-releases with PC. And of course, if you want indie games, most of them get ported over to Mac quickly or almost immediately: Celeste, Stardew Valley, Hades, Cuphead, Among Us, Super Meat Boy, and so on and so forth.

Almost inevitably, these ports are barely profitable, although less graphically-intensive indie games that don't need extensive recoding to deal with the Mac's proprietary GPUs tend to do better overall. But, as a rule, it doesn't matter if the port is same-day debut with PC or if it's six months later - the ports basically break even and that's about it.

Remember: Macs account for about 13-15% of computers worldwide. In the US, their best market by far for desktop/laptop computing, they account for 16%. The majority of those Macs aren't powerhouse M1s Macbook Pros, either - they're Macbook Airs or Mac Minis or even iMacs, which are significantly less powerful for gaming purposes and often even lack distinct GPUs.

It's simply a matter of numbers. There simply aren't enough gamers using Macs who want to use Macs as their primary game device to make Mac gaming development anything more than a marketing ploy to make studios look like they care about Mac gamers - in fact, the data shows that Mac owners who play video games typically use a different machine as their primary gaming platform, usually a console of some type. (The fact that Mac owners tend to be affluent enough to afford multiple bits of expensive tech only serves to emphasize this trend.)
posted by mightygodking at 11:04 AM on January 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

no one develops games for Macs. No one ports games over

I feel your pain, having been on a Mac for most of the last 10-odd years and being a person who enjoys games. The thing is, it's only going to get worse in the future. Apple made a deliberate choice that led to this situation by pushing their Metal API in place of Vulkan. Whatever technical merits Metal might have, the only existing games that used it were iPad / iPhone games, and the obvious financial motivation is that Apple can then push iOS games onto the Mac and retain their 30% Apple Store vig on every purchase and transaction. The transition to a new CPU architecture didn't help matters, either.

As a Mac gamer you can look forward to a bunch of ported iOS games, along with the occasional 3-year-old AAA port from Feral Interactive, or you can use a cloud streaming platform or Parallels. I tried everything, just about, and then just got a PC (I had other reasons for switching to the PC, but the ability to play current games was a factor).

/rant
posted by whir at 11:08 AM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

This time last year I was only half-jokingly telling my wife that I may end up buying an Xbox to play Starfield over the summer because my family was going to be out of the country so I'd have a lot more free time to play. No such summer plans this year so it doesn't really matter to me when it comes out because I won't be playing it. Probably all for the best so that enough kinks will get worked out so that the game will be playable by the time I get to play it.

I probably should pre-order the new Zelda game because my son will be all over that, he still fires up the WiiU to play the same BOTW file he's been on since he was 4, and it'll be years before it goes on sale so there's really no point waiting as I'll be getting it eventually.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:15 AM on January 3, 2023

Grunt. I own Playstation devices because I also own Macs. Agreed that it sucks. On the other hand, consoles are really great in that you can always be sure that if a game says it will run on your box, it will run on your box. Single targeting is marvellous. Platform exclusives, however, can eat my entire ass.
posted by seanmpuckett at 11:34 AM on January 3, 2023

Single targeting is marvellous. Platform exclusives, however, can eat my entire ass.

I think the industry is starting to finally understand how STUPID this is. Sony at least is starting to push for PC ports of their so called "exclusives" and we're seeing a lot of games that are now just "timed-exclusives" for a few months and then it opens up to other platforms once that initial time has passed.

It's never made sense to me, all that money on the table, just sitting there. Like more people playing your shit on whatever platform is good, no? But I'm not fancy CEO Mr. Game Decider, so what the fuck do I know.
posted by Fizz at 11:39 AM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

It looks like the gaming world has decided to bucket VR with mobile games as "unserious" gaming, which is a shame, because there is just so much crazy experimentation going on in the VR world.
posted by phooky at 11:39 AM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

I switched back from MacOS to Windows in part because of gaming. (Also because of Unix. Windows is a much better Unix Linux than MacOS.) But there really are companies that port games to Macs. Aspyr and Feral Interactive are the two big ones. As everyone said, it's a market share problem. Also a bit hardware; the GPUs in many Macs are not gaming friendly. Anyway all desktop computer gaming is a dwindling niche compared to consoles and mobile.

What surprises me is that all this work Valve has poured into making Linux a viable gaming platform via Proton is really working! The Steam Deck is enormously popular with the people who have one. No idea what the market share is though, other than small. Still, single-handedly saying "fuck it, we'll port all the games ourselves" is pretty amazing.

Shame about the Oculus Quest. I have one and it's really neat hardware. Don't love VR. But the catalog is in such weird shape. Everyone loves Beat Saber! And then, um... yeah.
posted by Nelson at 11:43 AM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

I was kind of wondering whether I would forgive Blizzard enough to get Diablo 4. But I recently got into Soulstone Survivors (as well as Vampire Survivors) and for now, it's checking the boxes for me for a different flavor of bash-ridiculous-numbers-of-fantasy-monsters-with-over-the-top-FX game. Whether I'll still feel that way by summer remains to be seen.

The game I really want is still a Hellgate: London remake but as a solid, actually finished and polished single player game, instead of rushed out the door and then turned into an awful F2P multiplayer thing that survived for a few months before getting shut down.

Pretty much all I'm looking forward to is indie innovation, and whatever Codemasters does with the WRC license.
posted by Foosnark at 11:44 AM on January 3, 2023

I love gaming. Right now I have a PS5. I used to have a PS4 Pro, a Switch (gave it away, I disliked it), before that an Xbox 360, various PCs and Macs on which I played games, and before those a Colecovision, an Intellivision and a Commodore 64. Hell, we started back in the '70s with an Odyssey.

Maybe because I am an Old, but I have zero desire to strap on goggles and headphones which cut me off from the room I'm in while playing games. I'm sure some of the VR stuff is amazing, but I have no interest in it at all. At least with any of the current tech I've seen. Perhaps someday they'll have it better stripped down to allow some real-world awareness while in VR. I might be interested then. Meanwhile, I've been hearing about the VR wave that's justabouttotakeover like all the Virtual Reality gloves and goggles since the bloody 1990s.
posted by SoberHighland at 11:46 AM on January 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

Octopath Traveller 2 is a surprise. I thought that was a semi-famous dud, but maybe only in my circles? Never looked into the actual sales.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 11:52 AM on January 3, 2023

I had a dream last week of an idea for the next Zelda. Basically Breath of the Wild inverted. Instead of an open world where you occasionally go into shrines to solve puzzles the main world is one giant puzzle and going into shrines is a temporary respite from constant puzzle solving where you can just run around and do whatever. I have no idea if and how that could really work but in dream world it was pretty sweet.
posted by downtohisturtles at 12:19 PM on January 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

I'm really looking forward to Starfield despite knowing how broken it will be on launch.

My XBox Series X and I are ready. I just hope, though, that Bethesda got the writers from, say, Elder Scrolls Online and not Skyrim or Fallout 4.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 12:56 PM on January 3, 2023

I just hope, though, that Bethesda got the writers from, say, Elder Scrolls Online and not Skyrim or Fallout 4.

Hard disagree. The Bethesda jank is what I'm here for. And I want Starfield to lean in.
posted by Fizz at 1:13 PM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

The most important announcement ISN'T in the TBA Q1 section that should be. Party Animals! Party Animals!
Yes, Party Animals!

There was ONE extremely legendary playtest that turned into a viral sensation back in 2021 and OMG - it is finally coming!
posted by Nanukthedog at 1:57 PM on January 3, 2023

I don't mind some jank, but I would like a story that makes some actual narrative sense unlike, say, Skyrim's Thieves Guild storyline.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 1:58 PM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

Star Trek 25th Anniversary and its sequel are still some of my favorite games because you had to solve the missions “the Starfleet way”. The missions would let you do things like shoot first and ask questions later, but then the admiral would chew you out and court martial you if you did it again. You really had to think What Would Spock Do?

I want that, but as a Jedi, during the middle-end of the Old Republic. Like, give me a lightsaber, but judge me on being a keeper of the peace (not a soldier).
posted by BeeDo at 2:35 PM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

Apparently they're not even pretending any more to be making Vampire: The Masquerade 2: Bloodlines 2: More Colons and Beyond Good & Evil 2.

I kinda hope Starfield is good. I tend not to finish Bethesda games, but that's OK: their forte is the level 1 to 20 experience when the world is big and scary.
posted by zompist at 4:10 PM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

Octopath Traveller 2 is a surprise. I thought that was a semi-famous dud, but maybe only in my circles? Never looked into the actual sales.

I think it was mostly hurt by the hype before its release, but the game isn't bad, almost everything about it was good to great except the story and the lack of interaction between the characters, and both things seem to be improved in the sequel according to the trailer.
posted by simmering octagon at 4:11 PM on January 3, 2023

Mac gamers, I'm with you. Funnily enough in the late 90's early 2ks, several awesome games were ported to the Mac by non industry folk, I suspect, for giggles. So I was able to play things like Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Halo, and Resident Evil, on my Mac. I swear I didn't find these on file sharing sites. Only a bad person would do that.
Now I have an xbox (previous gen) and a steam deck. OMG, that steam deck was so worth the money! I just started playing Horizon Zero Dawn, It's pretty good, and about as recent as I ever get (well except for Borderlands games) because I generally refuse to pay premium prices. So, yes, I still play Halo, Resident Evil, and Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Well after all, I'm old.
posted by evilDoug at 5:56 PM on January 3, 2023

Ctrl-F for 'Silksong', finds it, prepares to write off the first few months of the year.

Hope the h/w requirements are modest, 'Hollowknight' played pretty well on my old Linux laptop - it was simply gorgeous to just wander round and explore.
posted by phigmov at 6:11 PM on January 3, 2023

It looks like the gaming world has decided to bucket VR with mobile games as "unserious" gaming

Isn't it the opposite? VR is "too serious." You can't play Half-Life: Alyx unless you can afford basically a new console that plays fewer games than all the others AND a powerful gaming PC to make it work. (AND a place to set it all up where you have room to move around and enough privacy to not feel foolish)
posted by straight at 6:34 PM on January 3, 2023

Of course, Macs also had an excellent platform-exclusive FPS back in the day, created by a studio whose commitment to keep evolving better and better Mac-only games never wavered. Also, I have been frozen in a cryonics chamber since 1999, so I may not be up on all the latest gaming news.
posted by mittens at 6:58 PM on January 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

The only game on that list that I'm really looking forward to is Armored Core VI [awesome trailer on youtube]. Knowing the history of AC games it will probably be a mixture of forwards, backwards and sideways steps from the previous ones but there's still hope that they'll find a way to distill out the best parts of AC4/4A and V/VD and blend them into something truly great.

Although this part of the trailer makes me wonder. Is that robot wearing a Death Stranding porter backpack? Is this going to be the next strand-type game?
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 7:24 PM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

I loved Star Trek 25th Anniversary! I played that many times. I also love all the Escape Velocity games, I actually played EV: Nova one more time because the pandemic started. I wish there were more games like that.
posted by polymodus at 10:25 PM on January 3, 2023

Is there nothing like Mass Effect / Dragon Age any more? Does no one build story-dense ARPGs with companions any more? Where's the fucking banter? The "now kiss" shipping?

BioWare was the only one doing big-budget story-dense games, and the problem with them is that you can't make the story all that responsive because asset creation is incredibly expensive. The category's been cut in half: story-dense has gone denser and more reactive, with games like Disco Elysium, Citizen Sleeper, Norco, and also Divinity: Original Sin 2, which is highly reactive in terms of mechanics and makes the story suit. The ARPG stuff has migrated into the standard AAA melange, inspired by The Witcher 3. Games with romance options are much more likely to fully embrace visual novel conventions - Hades is a visual novel/roguelike, and the Fire Emblem series has been a popular visual novel/strategic RPG series.
posted by Merus at 1:14 AM on January 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

And it ticks me off, because I'm not going to buy a Windows box just to be able to play specific games.

I understand, I really do. I've been in the Apple ecosystem since 1990.

Around 2013, I finally decided to just build a PC with the help of a buddy of mine. There are even very reasonable prebuilt PC options if you don't want to build your own. You can stretch the life of a gaming PC by replacing the graphics card after a few years, since the GPU does most of the heavy lifting with games.

Now, I'm able to enjoy the games I want, and still use my Apple stuff for everything else. If you really enjoy gaming and can afford to do so, I recommend it.
posted by Fleebnork at 4:45 AM on January 4, 2023

I'm typing this on an MacBook Pro, with an insanely fast M1 Pro processor, loads of RAM, and ridiculous performance. And yet, NO ONE TARGETS THIS PLATFORM FOR 1A GAMES. Why? Because "gamers don't use Macs" so no one develops games for Macs. No one ports games over. No one even considers it.

Your MacBook has all that fancy hardware but doesn't have the OS support (both in terms of low level API's and in terms of institutional support) for gaming that windows does. Microsoft actively encourages game developers while Apple mostly ignores them.
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 10:59 AM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

Fleebnork: "Around 2013, I finally decided to just build a PC with the help of a buddy of mine. There are even very reasonable prebuilt PC options if you don't want to build your own. "

Technically I do have a gaming PC in the house - dual SSDs, 16 gb RAM and an... i5? i7? I dunno, some Intel chip. It's an older model, but it runs fine. It has what was a relatively beefy graphics card when it was first acquired, but right now it runs Debian headless as a Minecraft server. I don't think it would run well at all if I tried to throw Windows on it, as it's like 10 year old hardware? But as a server it works great.
posted by caution live frogs at 11:04 AM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

Any thoughts on BOTW?
What I loved about BOTW and hope to see more of in the sequel is a huge open world to explore, and the fact that I could run in any direction. Sure I eventually learned that some places are safer than others but that was far preferable to the games where you are on metaphorical rails. The weapon durability wasn't an issue for me. It encouraged variety and there were many alternative ways to defeat enemies without using weapons. In general, I was always gaining weapons faster than I could use them.
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 11:25 AM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

I liked the weapon degradation in BotW because it was a pretty good solution to the loot problem. What do the monsters drop and what do you put in the chests that the player will care about once they've got the best sword, the best shield, and the best bow? Almost everything you find is just trash to sell to a vendor.

But if your weapons break regularly, finding new ones will keep being rewarding, and you have an incentive to keep playing with all kinds of weapons instead of always only ever using the one best weapon you've got.
posted by straight at 1:41 AM on January 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

eeeehhh that would annoy me. i much rather find a fighting style that works for me and then perfect it than have to fuck about with "all kinds of weapons." a thing i like about horizon and elden ring is no breakage, and a tacit encouragement to "find your own fighting style" and "if what you're doing isn't working for you, try something else."
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:27 AM on January 5, 2023

The combat in BOTW is so easy, though, that even though I did bristle at the weapon breakage at the outset, I really didn't care about it later on. It meant that I could mostly use the Master Sword and fill in the gaps with odds and ends that I found lying around, some of which were fun and powerful.

But yeah, generally-speaking, it's not a mechanic I really care for.
posted by uncleozzy at 6:38 AM on January 5, 2023

Yeah, the thing that got me is that I would end up going through my entire bag of really nice weapons taking down a Lynel, knowing that people managed to kill them with like 4 hits if they _did_ it right, which I never got the hang of. But that said, I did fine on Hinoxes and Taluses, but Lynels were just the monster I never really got any good at.
posted by Kyol at 6:51 AM on January 5, 2023

But that's how it gets me past the hoarding in most RPGs where I finish the game with hundreds of unused potions. It's more fun to use those weapons than carry around a bag full of cool things you never use.

You get at least one good weapon when you defeat a Lynell. What were you saving the other ones for if not to kill Lynells?
posted by straight at 10:58 AM on January 5, 2023

In BOTW you don't really have to change your play style if you don't want to. You can stock up on swords for example and use them until they're all gone and then go and kill monsters to get more swords. That being said certain weapons will likely do better against certain enemies so you likely get used to using the different weapons anyways. I'll very often hold onto wands because they are cool even if they aren't particularly good at defeating enemies because I have enough space in my weapons inventory for them.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 3:19 PM on January 5, 2023