New and tentative game announcements (V2)

All other video games not related to the main farming series - Pokemon, Stardew Valley, My Time at Portia, and other indie-developed games.
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Kikki
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That's okay; I must not be speaking well, today. I confused someone else already this morning on Fogu. I'm actually having such a confusing day that it's making me feel a bit crazy. My car is doing something bizarre, and the chiro told me something really odd, that COULD be true, but seems impossible. But if it is true, it kind of changes my life, lol, in a weird and inconvenient way. Having your reality challenged is never good for clearheadedness, imo.

I loved the FFVII Remake. I thought the original FFVII was okay, but I hated the graphics and the turn-based combat (I played it like 15-20 years after it was made, not anywhere near when it was new) and I got to part after a motorcycle race, I think it was (though I get this confused with where I gave up on Chrono Trigger, which had something to do with a street race) and we ended up in some huge grassy field with no visual features at all that I can remember, and I just didn't feel compelled to continue the original at that point. Though I'm quite sure I am mixing it up in my head with both Tales of Symphonia AND Chrono Trigger. I have vague recollections of a very metal-heavy lab and possibly ________. But it's too mixed up in my head to straighten out what came from where.

But yeah, LOVED the remake. I was so fascinated by the way Cloud seemed so...empty. Like a doll, more than a human. I hadn't actually gotten that impression in the original, to be honest, but it was blatant in the remake. I hadn't actually been spoiled on any of FFVII at that point, somehow, but someone mentioned something about _____. And then I was afraid I would regret playing, lol, since I hate _____ as a hidden plot device, it seems such a cheap way to create mystery/confusion, so I carefully looked up a few spoilers. But carefully enough that I don't actually know Cloud's full story. But it clued me in about Zack's existence, and I believe I know why Cloud's so empty in the first part, though I don't know how it came about. (I'm being vague on purpose, to avoid a need for spoiler tags.) In other words, I know what happened, but not how or why it happened.

Yes, they seem to be saying this is a remaster, not a remake, so it should be very nearly the same game as the original, just with more modern graphics. That was part of what confused me, because I'd been thinking they were bringing this out especially because of the remake, but then with no changes to it, I thought...well, maybe it's just a coincidence that they're remastering this one now and it's NOT supposed to tie directly into the main game parts.

Pfft, there's a Sephiroth fan club, is there? Or was, perhaps, if it no longer exists by the time FFVII begins. I mean, the man is undeniably spiffy. That HAIR. But while he didn't bother me in the original, he gives me the massive wiggins in the remake. The minute he appears on screen, I cringe and want to run away, lol. It's like...when I see his eyes, I'm not seeing a human inside, but a snake. (Because snakes also give me the massive wiggins, they just look so WRONG to me, their eyes and the way they move.) He's a beauty, but I don't think I could join his fan club, lol.

Anyway, I appreciate the clarification, both from Bluie and GenesisLove. For now I'm going to think of it as a simple remaster of a prequel to the original, that may or may not still tie in to the remake the way it did to the original. I'll probably wait for someone else here to play it first, though, to say if it's still relevant to the remake, or if it'd just be confusing because too much has changed, etc.
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Incoming Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Direct. I literally just said yesterday to my husband; "They probably won't do a Xenoblade 3 direct because everyone who's buying it doesn't need any more convincing", but here I am eating my words.

Honestly, kinda disappointed. Where's the usual E3 season direct with all the upcoming titles and new drops? I love tuning into those! I'm already skipping Xenoblade 3 until next year too, so I probably won't even bother watching this one.
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I AM getting it, but not gonna watch the Direct for it. I didn't see the announcement because I have Xenoblade and XC3 blocked on Twitter. (Thankfully, it works, though I had to mute News of Monolith Soft entirely because they kept circumventing my various blocks.) I went into XC1 and XCX basically knowing nothing, and those experiences were so much better than XC2. Now, that's probably because the characters and gameplay of XC2, and several recurring story pieces, really did not suit me. But hey, might as well have a stab at going in as unspoiled as possible. :)

Also haven't been watching all the videos cropping up of the new Somnium Files. I could, as I doubt they'd spoiler anything much, but nah. I think things go better if you don't start out already disliking X and Y character, and only come to dislike them after actually meeting them in the game.

I've seen a LOT of announcements, but very little that applies to me, so far this 'E3 season'. I do still think they'll do a proper 'full-fat' Direct before fall. Come fall there's no doubt gonna be a Pokemon Direct and stuff for any other major anticipated Nintendo game.
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It’s cool that Xenoblade chronicles 3 is getting a direct, however I think the timing of this direct was poor on Nintendo’s part. There has been basically no information about the main June Nintendo direct and those anticipating information on other games have been slightly disappointed. The last direct was in February and quite a few of the games announced there are going to be released soon or have already been released. I don’t mind waiting longer for a direct, but sadly some people are going to hate Xenoblade chronicles 3 for the absence of a Nintendo direct.
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+1 for not watching the Xeno direct. Nintendo is SO BAD about spoilers anymore, I've been told that they've already spoiled stuff based on the trailer that's already out by people who know Takahashi's work better than I do. And you know they'll keep doing that. So I'll wait for people who respect spoiler warnings to tell me about the game, and maybe get it for my birthday or Christmas. There's PLENTY to play until then.

Plus I don't think I can handle a 100+ hour game for a few months... My soul needs to return from the Lands Between first. :|
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I wonder if the XC3 Direct was good? Well, I'll never know! (I'm sure I won't be interested in watching it after I'm done the game, lol.)

Anyway!

I saw a newish Kickstarter for a cute grow-things-ish game, that hasn't gotten very much notice, so it so far isn't succeeding. It's not doing horribly, but at this rate might not make it to goal (though it might, since the biggest rush of backers come in the last 2-3 days when the 'campaign ending' notices go out.) Anyway, it appears to be a 'couch' co-op game with vaguely LoZ-type puzzles, with some resource gathering, with the overall goal being restoring your withering island. Sounds nice, so just give it a look. If you think it looks cool, even if you're not interested in backing (not sure if I am or not, since I'm not into co-op games, though my sister might actually play this one with me)...you can always mention it to a friend if you think they'd be more into it.

If you wanna. It's HERE to be looked at! Oh, but they're only fundraising to complete a DEMO. They want to get full backing from a publisher via a good demo, rather than via Kickstarter.

EDIT: First Ys 10 news! Extremely NOT happy to hear even the words 'Ys Soulslike'. :? Thankfully, they're not too serious about that.
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2tired2talk
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Two things, firstly a Nintendo Direct is set for tomorrow.
Secondly, Worth Life, the sidescrolling RPG from Rune Factory's creators is finally getting localized.
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Kikki
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I laughed at that announcement, lol. I kind of love when whiny, entitled fans don't get what they want. I mean, I wanted a 'full-fat' Nintendo Direct too, but I don't feel *entitled* to one, that Nintendo is somehow not living up to standard if they don't give one when I want it. I do like Partner Showcases better than Indie World, though. I keep trying indies, but you know, gotta face it...I basically don't like indies. I'm looking at my Switch library, and I have a fair few, but most of them I found boring and/or empty. Littlewood was pretty okay, Spiritfarer was good (though often not fun, even while still being a very good game) and Grow was pretty good, too. Hades was great. But Deiland and Mara weren't my thing, nor was Wandersong or Haven Park or Haven or LumbearJack, Beasts of Maravilla Island, Townscaper, Airborne Kingdom, Moon Hunters, Cattails, Islanders or Cloud Gardens. Don't know if all of those are indie or not, because...

I don't actually know what qualifies as indie. Tiny teams of one or two people, definitely. But at what point are you not really an indie dev any more? Pathea, for example...pretty sure they don't qualify as indie, as they have shareholders and actually a comparatively large dev team. But Mara, now...maybe Mara qualified? Pretty sure Deiland did (same team, just a few years earlier.) And Spiritfarer. Is it an indie? What about Hades? That wasn't their first game or even their second or third game, and their team is more than half a dozen...they're decently established, though certainly on the smaller side. So are they indie, or not? Just how small and/or new/poor/etc do you have to be, to be an indie game developer? I don't know the qualifications, but I do remember seeing a single dev complaining that the term 'indie' had grown to be too large of an umbrella term, including much larger teams with secure funding and etc. (Reminded me of the 'spoons' complaint.)

Anyway, I do try indies out often enough, and will no doubt continue to try them when they catch my eye, but most of the time I end up not enjoying them. So I'm looking forward to the Partner Showcase, though I have no idea what to expect from it. There'll be a Pokemon Direct in fall no doubt... with a few dedicated directs, and probably one next year for BotW2, Nintendo probably doesn't need to do a 'full-fat' presentation this year since they've already shown us indie stuff and now non-indie third-party stuff.

Not that I wouldn't still LIKE one.
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Whelp, good thing the direct is in the morning. I'm booked for the afternoon tomorrow. Could be some good stuff. There's a lot of AAA third parties out there to send games over. In a way this is better, so good games from other companies don't get overshadowed by Nintendo's tent pole franchises.

As to the term 'indie', I think it's become confusing largely because the technology to make games is so easy to access now. The two heftiest, most used game engines in the industry are both free to download by anyone. Quality standards are higher than they've ever been. One person can make something of AAA quality, given enough time. So I think these days when people say 'indie' they mean the way a game looks. If it looks 'cheap'. If it LOOKS like it was made by a small group.

The rest is all semantics. I feel personally that teams of 10 to 20 can be called indie, when literal hundreds of people work on AAA games. But even that's debatable, since bigger studios hire a whole bunch of people to push games out the door and then fire them when it's gone. What even is a 'team size' anymore? :? Permanent is a better measure, but most companies aren't transparent enough to really know.
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I think to me an 'indie' team is one without many connections. A team that doesn't start out knowing who to call for everything, who doesn't have financial backers or well-connected publishers lined up even before the word 'go'; the more of the work they have to do on their own, the more 'indie' they are, to me, regardless of how the game looks as a final product. Really independent, like...having few or no others to rely on, outside of their own team, which should be pretty small compared to established development companies. That's what it is to ME. If there's an actual industry standard, some kind of dividing line between indie and not-indie, I really don't know. (Just like I still don't know the diving line between niche and mainstream. I feel that Xenoblade was pretty niche when I first played it, but as of XC2, I don't think it qualifies, any more, for example. For me, the line is somewhere around a million copies sold. Less than that and you're probably still a bit niche...at least half the gamers you talk to won't have heard of it. More than that and most gamers have probably at least heard of the game, even if they haven't played it.)

Well, anyway...I have NO idea what to expect from tomorrow's Partner Showcase. I've really lost track of what's coming up, this past half year or so.
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Well, in terms of connections, that becomes sticky too. Because a lot of smaller studios are formed from devs leaving other, larger studios. Tetsuya Takahashi, for example. Xenogears was originally a pitch for Final Fantasy 7. And Monolith Soft is sort of known for the high level developers they employ, they've worked in the background on projects for Nintendo for years. They've gotten so good that Breath of the Wild was apparently built on the Xexnoblade Chronicles X engine!

And there are a lot of those these days. (Off the top of my head, Frost Giant comes to mind. They even named their studio as a riff on Blizzard.) Some smaller 2-5 person studios making their 'first game' end up being people who came out of a AAA environment.

Maybe budget is a better judge? AAA will always cost an order of magnitude more than what a 1-2 person game does.


As to the direct tomorrow, boy is chat going to be a mess. I left one stream tonight from the whining about it, but I think it could be good! ! It won't ALL be good, but there's a lot of third parties who could give us more info on something interesting. It's too soon for a Monster Hunter Stories 3 look, but maybe something on the Dragon Quest spinoff? Blanking on that. Stuff like that is what I'm expecting.
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I think my definition still works best for me, since I don't at ALL think of Monolith Software as indie; they've always seemed like one of the big guns, to me. Xenoblade was niche in the beginning, but never indie, imo, and I feel that those two things are entirely different. If a company has clout, regardless of how tiny, even just one person, they don't really fit my idea of indie at all. If they have the means to secure all the resources they need (funding, talent, etc) even if by borrowing from connections or temporary contracts, etc, I just can't think of them as indie. Makes me think of that one solo dev complaining about too many games being under the 'indie' label and garnering fan support on that alone (which also reminds me of people with chronic fatigue conditions complaining of 'spoons' being co-opted by healthy people who don't actually need the understanding created by the theory, which ends up destroying it.) Even if one person is doing it all by themselves, it's not really fair to lump one extremely experienced and well-connected person with Joe Schmo, who's best connection is his mom, who lent him $500 and maybe knows some people from an ad agency. (I don't consider Frost Giant indie, either, with their connections and investors and all.)

Guess different people have a different definition of what indie is, so it's always going to be impossible to actually corral it down to a single definition with a dividing line between 'is' and 'isn't'.

All my favourite games other than LoZ are from third-party developers, so I have no desire to listen to the whiners gripe about the Big N not catering to their whims. I tell myself that these people are just kids, and kids often don't check themselves, but they're probably not anywhere near close enough to all being youngins for me to feel better about the level of whining I've been seeing. I ALWAYS shut chat on these things, though. I can't stand the chaos and so much of it is just garbage. (Though I haven't watched during a small presentation like a streamer showing it...but I can't concentrate on the presentation and the chat at the same time anyway, so...)

9:30AM EDIT: Okay, that was an EXTREMELY interesting Direct. I don't think I could have been any more interested in a single direct without it also including a port of XCX and/or the announcement of a new Builders game.
Spoiler:
I don't know what I actually WANT, but I do know I'm at least interested in practically everything they showed. Monkey Island shocked me, though I recognized it instantly, before a word was said...I just didn't think it'd really be Monkey Island. I played every MI game on release in the 90s. My sisters and I played them to death, together. Even more interesting is...EARLY ACCESS on Switch? (Not for Monkey Island, for that Disney thing.) And a Square Enix 'harvest' game? It's, what...their take on Rune Factory? Oh, and another Doraemon SoS, hmph...still a big NO from me. Love the watercolour-esque graphics but the story and characters are so boring, I can't get into it. Taking on some Bokumono doesn't fix my lack of interest in Doraemon. But I do think it was an interesting reveal.

Really, really interesting stuff.
Last edited by Kikki on Jun 28, 2022 6:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Ultimately all indie means is independent, so it paints with a pretty broad brush. In the end, unless a studio is connected to a larger publisher, they ARE indie, no matter if they have shareholders, or 300 employees. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I'd still say the general public by and large would peg "looks cheap" as indie, though.


Somehow it didn't occur to me that the direct would just be dropped, and co-streamers would get early access to the link, because it just...would not appear on Nintendo's Youtube until 5-10 minutes after the "stream" started. Got stuck watching with some absolutely insufferable Youtuber.

TWO new farming sims?! When will we ever see that again? Harvestella has my attention, too. One of Square's smaller studios making a Rune Factory game! :lol: Love it.

My only other takeaway from the direct is... Early Access on Switch has dark implications, imo. Finished games struggle to run on Switch, what exactly are we expecting from unfinished ones?
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My thoughts from the direct:
Spoiler:
Man, all the leaks and rumors are real. Even some from ages ago ended up being true today.

- My wallet voluntarily opened when NieR Automata was shown. I've been looking for an excuse to replay this game and its just a good damn game, so yes, I will buy it for the 3rd time.

- Megaman Battle Network Legacy Collection has a lot of games from my childhood. I had a minor Megaman phase and it was all this generation. The games are legitimately fun, I just hope they have a toggle option for turning off the random battles.

- Blanc looks like it's gonna make me bawl, so I probably wont buy it lol

- ANOTHER Doraemon Story of Seasons!? How did this not get leaked???

- Dragon Quest Treasures looks like a lot of fun and is a must buy. I can see where the Dragon Quest Monster's inspiration came and then completely did a 180.

- Harvestella looks legit. It seems everyone wants a slice of the farming fantasy RPG genre these days, so I guess it's only natural a bigger company like Square Enix would give it a try eventually. It looks really similar to Tokyo RPG Factory's style, so I wonder if they're the main developers?

- Annnnnd there's the Persona games. Pack it up people, everyone should be happy now, please?
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