Quoting: Lakorta

Quoting: BeamboomWhat's the goal, what will drive us forth?

Giving the setting, most likely steam :P

Pffffft :D

Quoting: NezchanSet in the steampunk era, you take on an expedition to a forsaken island that you once called home. But sudden eruptions triggered by mechanical beings turned the wondrous place into an apocalyptic wasteland. In order to survive the island’s natural elements, you have to outsmart these creatures and capture one of their drillships. Use their own technology against them as you upgrade the machinery and reclaim your homeland.

It gives us at least a backdrop. And hopes of an actual storyline. Also, we saw a glimpse of a shooting scene. Still, what does it imply? How will the gameplay be? Primarily a shooter? Or traps? Stealth? What purpose will the base have? Why is it mobile, is that a game play element? Do we *have* to move? Are there a danger related to being stationary? Will there be horde attacks on the base? Are there dungeons? Quests? Will there be friendly NPCs? I mean, all that stuff that tells us the actual game at play.

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Impressive base, but we really do need to see a bit more of the actual gaqmeplay. What's the enemies, what's the danger? What's the goal, what will drive ur forth?

Also, coop mode (who is confirmed), how will that work, what can we expect from that?

That said, I'm totally excited for this release. We just need a bit more meat on the bones here.

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Quoting: BTREIt's a direct sequel. So if you care about the lore and story, I'd say start with the first.

I'm definitely in it for the lore and story. Thanks!

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Insurgency: Sandstorm is probably my anticipated title this year, and I dare hope the System Shock reboot can turn out fine. We all know by now that We Happy Few didn't end up being a great game despite the promising concept and visuals, but I still hope it might be good enough for me to spend cash on. I'll need to read the reviews real good before making a decision.

Other than that, I really hope there's some good open world RPG style games in store for us that we don't know about yet. Hellpoint looks cool on paper, but there's something about that trailer that tells me this is another "could have been" title if the budget had allowed it. It just looks so... Cheap.

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@BTRE:
Regarding Pillars, should I play the first before starting the second? I got both in my library but haven't started on either yet. And your comment about the sequel being better made me wonder if I should just jump straight onto that one?

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This is the dev that was "open" for Linux support after release, right? Let's hope that openness is still there also after Steam Play...

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Quoting: SalvatosI hold the view that nobody will jump to Linux because of gaming even if games run at parity with Windows, and even if they somehow ran better I think the gains would be marginal.

I 100% agree with you, Salvatos.

Quoting: SalvatosThat being the case, I feel that it's not necessary to try and beat Microsoft as a gaming platform, but rather to emulate the Windows gaming experience the best we can so that people who want to use Linux for other reasons can get their fix to a satisfying level.

It's a constructive perspective. Still... I hate sitting here as a third class citizen.

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Quoting: EikeI had never played any Tomb Raider before and was suprised how much fun I had when playing the reboot. Give it a try...

I should, I will.

Quoting: EikeAbout the indies, I wonder what you're into if you didn't find any gems there.

I guess it boils down to production quality. I want voice actors, for starters. Proper animations. Proper graphics. Modern gameplay. Large worlds. Exciting locations. A virtual world to dive into and get lost. Not a coin-up arcade experience from the past.

Indie games (please allow me to paint with broad brushes now) are too "retro"/low budget. Pages upon pages of text to read, isometric view, turn based mechanics, or simple 2D gameplay... I mean, it's like entering a time machine and jump back two decades. I was a gamer back then too. I'm old. So it holds no "novelty" value for me to return to status quo anno 1998.

That's not to say that I don't enjoy any of that. They are nice, typically for short sessions, just to play around for a while. But they do bore me fast. It's not what I'm after as a gamer.

Quoting: EikeI guess it's mostly about how you you feel about Proton. If you like it (or have great hopes in it raising the Linux player numbers), it probably was a very interesting year. If not... not so much.

Maybe that's where we'll end up. Emulation. But that is a loss. Emulation/bridging/compatibility layering/call it what you want always comes with a cost, compared to properly coded and compiled binaries for our platform. It just does.

And nobody will jump to Linux for gaming just because we can emulate Windows. That's just simply not gonna happen.

It's a loss for Linux as a gaming platform if we not even just have to live with ports from other platforms, but even binaries for other platforms.

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Quoting: liamdaweI imagine the people disappointed this year will continue to be until Linux really gains some actual traction.

This is probably very right.

But if I at least get one major game to enjoy I feel the year had something in store for me. Like, 2017 gave us Xcom 2, who were in every way as great as the first and one of my absolute favs on Linux. And let's not forget that 2017 kicked off with Hitman pretty early on, another really great game.

This year... No titles that really tickles my preferences. Sure, Tomb Raider is a very beautiful game and I feel bad for not being more excited about it. I bought it, of course, but have yet top play it... I've also purchased a stack of small indies that was fun for a handful of hours, but nothing I couldn't live without, to put it like that.

So actually, yeah when I think about it, this year does indeed feel like another step down, from a very subjective point of view. Overall 2018 feels more empty!

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Quoting: Alm888Yes, we should forget those Linux-supporting indies. After all, they are just a bunch of losers.

I was expecting a reply like that. But really, no need to be snarky. You might enjoy the small releases as much as you want, and I will not ridicule you for that, but the legitimacy of a platform as a gaming platform rests on not only what big titles are available, but also how well they run on the platform.
I guess most who's been around for a while remember how much flak Sony received when the developers struggled with their PS3 architecture.
And in the question of platform legitimacy the indies are simply put irrelevant. They do not hold the same significance, they barely hold any weight.

And I want to see Linux enter the big scene, not a side room.

Quoting: liamdaweI am genuinely curious, what about 2017 was bigger and better for you?

Totally legit question. And I do believe I voiced my similar concerns around this time of year last year too :)
But without refreshing my memory on the releases of 2017, last year we could at least hope it was just a dip. So from that perspective this year is even worse in that it indicates it is a steady trend.

Quoting: GuestLinux is not alone in this. PC is losing ground as part of a much wider trend.

In sheer numbers that's true, but really. There are plenty - PLENTY - of the big franchises also coming to Windows. If not on the same date as the consoles then at least later. We don't need to start listing? Fallout, Far Cry, Just Because, Dragon Age, Battlefield, Assassins Creed, GTA, Call Of Duty, Fortnite, Mass Effect, and so forth. We could continue for a really long time.

Quoting: SalvatosI'm just theorizing, but maybe this makes more sense than what we had been seeing. We got some of the biggest games before we had the market share to justify it. How many companies would port their games to a console that has a 1% market share? Isn't it pretty amazing that Linux got that treatment in the first place? Something like Steam Play can help us grow our market share demonstrably and feels less like putting the cart before the horse, in a way.

I think you are much right in this perspective. It was an "overheated" state back around the time when the news broke about the "Steam Machine" and all that. I guess we all still remember the "coming to Linux" announcements with a WALL of big titles.

So yeah, the fall back to reality was a bit tough to swallow for me. I guess that's the way to put it.

But as of right now, my main concern isn't really the number of big games released, but rather that it all hangs on one line: Feral. They are all we got left, to put it a bit simple. And they seem to have their regular 2-3 publishers as sources for their games.
And if they drop us? Who else can we turn to? It's that vulnerability that really really bothers me.

(Yes - there are a few others worth mentioning. And thank the gaming gods for them. But in volume they don't represent much).

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