Goldkin @Goldkin@awoo.space

Anyway, I hope it works out for them. I can't complain too much about more Kirby, more Mario Kart, and the impending flood of Zonai art on FA again.

And my feel is that honestly, I and a lot of folks may just... not. And just pick at the few first party things instead.

It'll be interesting to see how successful third party does into that. I'd expect it'll fall off to other offerings, unless the system is a breakaway success for other reasons (see: one of those concepts they're trying taking off surprisingly well). Guess we'll see.

But that all said: I'm not excited to now need to go upgrade my system, buy upgrade passes for games I already own, and make awkward tradeoff decisions on upgrading now or later because of how they've chosen to monetize.

I get so much better value from playing indie publisher games on the Deck, and goddamn, that's gonna be a high cost to upgrade all of the games I do enjoy playing, as opposed to just leaving them be for now.

The Wii and 3DS eras were kind of breakaway success stories for them as a toy (more than game) company, and it's kind of hard for them to replicate that now without Iwata at the helm.

But their solution being throwing a bunch of earlier concepts out there that they want to explore more, and build on the ones that work, seems pretty reasonable to me tbh.

That said, it's fun to see the first party offerings exploring stuff we only really saw in the early or experimental release cycle of previous console generations.

Controller is a mouse? Mario paint.
Open world racing game? Man, Diddy Kong Racing was great.
Voice chat while you play with friends? The Wii had that (it worked with MH Tri!), and it wasn't bad?

Kinda hope it pans out for them tbh, because doing those well is understatedly good.

I mean, it's not for me, and that's okay. I might pick at some of the collection on offer, the first party titles are tempting eventually.

But what this says to me is I'm really glad that the Steam Deck exists. To see Nintendo basically veer in that direction demonstrates just how ahead Valve was in making that system possible, and how successful it's been.

I think the best lens for the Switch 2 direct today is this wasn't really for consumers. This is clearly part of a long, drawn-out process to make the Switch a competitor to other consoles and PC for third party publishers, and the licenses they showed today demonstrate that.

Corporate as hell, but I at least understand how they got to doing this, and it bodes well for the system. It also explains why so many of the presenters they rolled out today just looked... exhausted tbh.

Huh, they're retrying several of the ideas that went into the Wii lineup of games like game-integrated chat, and camera features brought over from their arcade lineup.

Cannot wait to figure out how to set up a Vtuber for these tbh.

Also, that DF and "cozy" can now feature in the same sentence demonstrates just how far it's come. I'm proud of them.

Found design porn on the Dwarf Fortress wiki: https://dwarffortresswiki.org/images/7/7f/Dwarf_Fortress_material_cheatsheet_by_DeXoteric.jpg

Between this and playing Vintage Story, it's been a really good time for cozy block building games.

Anyway, this is why we need more romance folks and fewer "hard scifi" writers in space fiction. They know the dish, and they know how to serve it.

And I suppose I get the appeal of "yeah, that but hundreds of planets and millions of generic people".

But my dude, if I wanted that, I could play an Elder Scrolls game.

We've seen that, it's a mile wide and an inch deep. I don't need generic dialog to make me feel like an always-needed, nigh-unstoppable superhero.

I want the dish on what the space bartender thinks about the locals. Why the drapes are red. And who got slipped a cup of piss instead of their gargle blaster for being a jerk.

I used to be a huge Star Wars nerd, and the parts that stuck the most with me weren't the movies, or the important books like Shadows of the Empire, X-Wing, or (what I read of both versions of) Thrawn.

It was a humble set of volumes that told us about who the background characters were. Like this one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_from_the_Mos_Eisley_Cantina

I think I got it then, then somehow forgot. The people are what make those worlds, and so many folks forget that.