You get it. I agree with all of your complaints (but another unpopular opinion, I didn’t mind Sera we got lol)

Inquisition is actually my least favourite in the series, and I hate the pivot to hyperfocus on the “super special elves” and getting the most out of the story ONLY if you play a specific type of elf. I’m also not absolutely gaga for Varric (I like him, I just don’t think he should be everywhere). I felt really fatigued by the end of the game tbh.

I hope Dreadwolf gives you at least a little bit of what you crave, soldier 🫡

For what it’s worth, Dragon Age as a fandom has some of the nicest, least gatekeepy gamers I’ve ever interacted with. I feel really bad y’all are stuck under EA’s thumb.

I agree with you, same thing happened with Last of Us 2. Valid criticism was drowned out and to this day if you say you disliked any aspect of the game you have to give a disclaimer that it isn’t because there were gay/trans people in the game.

I think DA2 knew what it wanted to be, EA just decided to not let Bioware have the time or manpower to do it.

I personally think that it still has the best overarching story, environ and atmosphere in the series so far, and (controversial opinion) I LIKED that I played as Hawke. The Warden and the Inquisitor are the typical “thrown into a world changing even they have tenuous connections to”, and feel a degree removed from anything but the main event sometimes.

But Hawke? They are in the thick of it. Does not matter what class Hawke is, my guy/girl is going through it at every (repeated dungeon) stage of the game. I honestly felt more for Hawke in my playthrough of DA2 than my personal avatars in Origin and Inquisition. Kirkwall sucks soooo bad, man.

By then, real reviews will make themselves known.

This is the way. There are corpo/early access reviewers who are giving it 10/10s, and I’m also seeing morons screeching about review-boming it because of the DEI/Woke Agenda™️ and that you can make a non-binary player character. It’s gonna be a shitshow on release.

Feel bad for the Dragon Age fans, they’ve been waiting for this for ages.

-puts on tinfoil hat- Is this why we’re suddenly getting so many remasters/remakes?

-takes off hat- No, it’s probably because the corporate gaming industry is creatively bankrupt and want to cash in on nostalgia with minimal risk. But remakes/remasters probably strengthen the “market harm” portion of their argument.

I actually have MS Seattle HQ address as my Xbox address lol

I’m so confused, this game has 94% on metacritic and a “very positive” reception on Steam (91% with 4 000+ reviews). This headline is clickbait as hell, and the comments here are assuming Metaphor: Refantazio got mixed reviews/flamed on socials when it didn’t.

The article is just reporting a discussion Katsura Hashino had with Toyama (the creator of Silent Hill) on their views on fan feedback.

This is why I don’t care to read Eurogamer articles (and also their cookie preferences with 600+ partners, wtf).

(Also, both Refantazio and the Silent Hill 2 remake are pretty good. Can’t believe I have to praise Konami in 2024 🤮)

Meanwhile I’ve been getting assblasted with ads for it on every whitelisted app/site. I knew this game existed since it was announced in 2016, I am an avid SMT/Persona player. Why tf am I getting the ads?

Marketing team fucked something up in the targeting.

Wym “just as”, those sponsored links for Firefox have been around for a while, haven’t they? I definitely remember turning that setting off a while ago.

I have no doubt there is at least one small, enthusiastic group in Tokyo dedicated to building/promoting miniPCs lol. That city has a niche for EVERYTHING that has penetrated Japanese social consciousness.

Net cafes are already a thing there, but personal gaming at home has always been dominated by the portable market or consoles, partially because Japanese companies are the ones making 2/3 of them, but also because the majority of the “gaming” demographic are younger people who live in small studio apartments in Tokyo, and would opt to have a TV with cable television and consoles in their living rooms.

With streaming becoming a big thing, at home media centres are slowly shifting to personal laptops (especially during the pandemic). I have maybe seen two actual gaming PC towers when I lived there (because again, you can go to a net cafe/PC bang for that), but a lot of the gamers I knew were slowly shifting to modest gaming laptops for their at home setups.

Baldur’s Gate MOBA you say…

Even Haru’s billionaire ass can’t afford all these subscriptions 😭

It’s much cheaper for you to buy a disk PS5 and install an M.2SSD yourself (up to 8TB), it’s incredibly easy, and Sony has a page/videos on how to do it yourself.

I’ve seen disk PS5 go on sale as low as $400USD at big box retailers, presumably to make shelf space for the pros. The used marketplace is there as well.

SHOW ME THE CHAMPION OF LIIIIIGHT

Come to the ARAM/TFT retirement home, it’s where the chill people are.

I mean, it’s South Korea, where 30% of their GDP is Samsung and Hyundai, and an additional 50% is other assorted chaebols. Corporate greed is assumed to be the ONLY interest.

I don’t think people realize how huge it is that Lies of P, a single player soulslike with no microtranaactions, came from a Korean developer. The Korean gaming industry does not think games like this can actually succeed because of the gaming culture there. Round8 deserves a lot of praise for what a huge undertaking Lies of P probably was behind the scenes.

Shounen Jump is a great example. It works, it’s readers find value in it enough to pay for subscriptions, and it clearly has some sort of profitability. A great model of what other manga magazines could do, but they refuse because most of them are run by dinosaurs and would rather cry “piracy is ruining our profits wah” when they DON’T EVEN HAVE A PRODUCT in the market to profit from!

Sorry Japan, manga piracy/scanlations until I die. There are so many niche authors/manga that never get officially translated to any other language because your industry thinks everyone just wants to read shounen and only the top 1% of shoujo/seinen/josei. Don’t even get me started on BL/GL.

Meanwhile some fucking random scanlation team does a better job of translating and making a chapter of Rose of Versailles more accessible to modern audiences than the entire Japanese manga publishing apparatus ever will.