(But purchased by EA obviously)
- Talos Principle 2
- Expedition 33
- KCD2
- Anything by Arcane
- Anything by CDPR
- 007 Last light / Hitman
- Blue Prince
Most recently, I'm loving Order of the Sinking Star, and that's from a US team. There's hope!
- Baldur's Gate 3 (German)
- Disco Elysium (Estonian)
- Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2 (same studio as BG3)
BG3 is notable for its gigantic success. And Disco Elysium is one of the best written games ever made, and it showed that you can have a fantastic RPG with no combat system whatsoever, while still having meaningful progression.
Bruh, Larian is in Belgium
I was going to mention this game as a counter point but then realised that if I am doing that it's kind of the exception that proves the rule.
I do wonder why this is, perhaps there's more money in the US to build bigger games with bigger teams and you just get the 'too many cooks in the kitchen' syndrome.
I must admit most AAA games from the US over the last decade have been underwhelming for me.
- Alan Wake 1 & 2 - Control & Control Resonant (came out last month) - Quantum Break
They are a small studio but release fantastic works of art every time. If you haven't heard of them, you might've heard of Max Payne. It was developed by these guys.
They're lucky they were able to No Man's Sky CP2077 alongside Edgerunners being well received.
I always wonder why other games get this aspect of the marketing so wrong. Controversial take, but I think if they'd had a handful of cinematics out before release (and they hadn't gone with the atrocious sales model), Concord might have had a fighting chance. There was a lot wrong with that game, but its biggest failure was that no one loved it enough to defend it when the hatedom descended. Compare to, say, Marathon: it still may fail, in the end, but it's hung on for as long as it has because, in part, it genuinely charmed; it made an earnest attempt to get people to people to buy into the qualia of the vision of its world.
It's ironic because Hollywood is not doing too well at the moment.
I'm far less impressed with big name actors and that seems like a massive waste of money. As long as the acting is good, and the voices aren't obnoxious, I don't care who the actor is. People might see a movie just because it has an actor they like in it, but I don't think that carries over too well to games.
In one sense, that's perfectly fair. In life if you're looking at your feet or spending your time examining the walls you'd be oblivious to what's going on around you, and for non-critical things having a bunch of little moments that you can only catch if you're in (or looking at) the right place at the right time can improve replay value, but games would have to be careful to make sure that the important stuff can't be missed.
There are also a bunch of "action/adventure" mechanics that seem to be identical in a bunch of mainstream games. You have an upgrade system, so the actual gameplay of the game is bad at the start because you don't have any of the fun abilities at the start, open world mechanics, a very bland open world and the stories are very PG-13, and the characters are kind of bland in the main story. I was playing Ghosts of Tshushima, and many of the mechanics come straight from Farcry 3. I think I am not going to bother completing it. I feel like I've played this game many times before because it's so similar to other games. I would have probably got bored with it before now if it wasn't for the setting.
Generally, a lot of people are still replaying some of the greats from the late 2000s to the mid-2010s because the games weren't nearly as bland.
Most gamers would disagree with you. That's alright, art is subjective and different people are allowed to like different things. Maybe you just don't like games with a lot of story? If so there are plenty of genres that aren't story heavy like arcade games, tile-matching/match 3 games, fighting, FPS, sports, etc. Or maybe action/adventure might just not be the genre for you?
As for original mechanics there's very little out there, but that was true even in the 2000s to the mid-2010s (which would include both uncharted, and the last of us). Most games are just building off of what's been done before. You can find clever twists on old mechanics or rare combinations of them, but it's very hard to find something really different. When you do, it's hit or miss on them being worthwhile, but sometimes the novelty helps make up for the shortcomings.
> You have an upgrade system, so the actual gameplay of the game is bad at the start because you don't have any of the fun abilities at the start
Upgrade systems are supposed to provide progression. It rewards you for your progress in the game with fun abilities. It also helps keep gameplay fresh over the 25/40/60/120+ hours you play by giving you a steady stream of exciting new abilities/weapons to try out. There's often a new game+ option that lets you play the game again with all the best abilities from the start. Upgrade systems are generally a good thing! Sometimes things can go wrong though, for example one of the many problems with Marvel's Spider-Man 2 was starting your character out far too weak compared to how he was at end of the first game and the upgrades you eventually got weren't great either.
Speaking as a somewhat older gamer, if you really want variety in gameplay I'd recommend trying to branch out to new genres, indie titles, and lower budget PC games. The AAA games with huge budgets can tell a great story with amazing visuals and satisfying gameplay but they aren't going to take a lot of risks because of the amount of money on the line. That might also be why they can come off as PG-13, they want a wide audience.
I cannot point to the reasons as to why. Many of these teams are global teams - so a lot of the same problems apply: marketing costs/timelines, release-time crunch etc. The one difference I can point to is that perhaps executive payouts are not overly dependent on total shareholder returns.
Lots of non EU games fall short, including several mentioned in this thread, e.g. Anthem
Warhorse Studios is Czech; Slavs are not all alike.
The list is rather long.
(In no certain order)
- Baldur's Gate
- Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn
- Neverwinter Nights
- Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
- Star Wars: The Old Republic
- Jade Empire
- Mass Effect
- Mass Effect 2
- Mass Effect 3
- MDK2
- Dragon Age Origins
- Dragon Age II
- Dragon Age: Inquisition
And I would argue Obsidian was the better studio anyway. Besides NWN2, and moreso its fantastic expansion, Mask of the Betrayer, they also made the excellent Knights of the Old Republic 2, Fallout: New Vegas, and their own original franchises, Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2, and Tyranny.
Obsidian and Bioware both had a working relationship with Black Isle Studios.
Love them all, they did some great stuff.
There's other studios that similar to Blizzard didn't get bought out early and published multiple hit games, like Insomniac Games.
"Imagine a Blizzard that never made or never found the success they did with WoW and continued on the path of boxed releases every couple years."
I did find myself rather salty back then that it felt like Blizzard abandoned anything outside of WoW until 2010. WoW wasn't something I ever grew an interest in, yet I played an absurd amount of SC and WC3. Then SC2 was a huge miss for me, as well as every game after it.
extremely exaggerated. Recent reports said they are the top game studio at microsoft.
I didn't get into Blizzard games because they were a financial powerhouse, I got into them because they were fun as hell and the identity of Blizzard at the time gave me faith that their next release would be just as fun. That faith started deteriorating around 2005/6 for me, and was gone within a month or so of SC2 releasing. The identity of Blizzard of the 90s and early 2000s that I fell in love with was gone by 2010.
I can go into more detail about the shortcomings of all of the games from 2010 on (IMO, obviously), but the overall point is that they are fundamentally different than their older games and might as well have been from a different studio.
The "been there, done that" vibe is their pitch to the older generation who no longer cares as much about technically or ladder climbing and just wants something to do when it's cold outside
So consider backing there. There may have been 20 companies trying to make 20 games, All in startup mode.
Now two or three of those succeed ed.. which means the management and team chemistry and creativity all worked really well. And the team members will have them mistaken impression that it's that easy.
But then some people leave some people ad in the next games, sure, they may have a better foundation than some other team situations at others, but it's going to gradually regress to the mean