Hopefully, we'll get Hexen 2 and Heretic 2 before we get a Q3 remaster, and possibly other games as well. RTCW? Not that I don't have fond memories of Q3, but it strikes me as the single most unexciting game of this catalogue to do such a re-release of.

To break it down a bit... For any of the singleplayer games we get a nice new sp campaign extension, new enemies, thus far remixed music, just cool stuff all around. For Quake 3 we'd possibly get some consolidation in terms of the additional maps available in the console ports, models, some entirely new maps perhaps, and maybe some of those consoles modes, which aren't a massive improvement over the OG sp mode from the PC... and with some basic modern functionality and accessibility options that's kind of the extent of what you can do. Better bots? From what I recall Q3 bots were basically about superhuman aim and UT bots seemed more human, more pleasant in gameplay, so in a way we might be talking about nerfing the Q3 bots for a more natural experience. Doesn't seem like a good idea if you're largely targeting the hardcore Q3 players, and if you're not then... who's this game for? It doesn't strike me as a great gamepad game, either, so new player influx will more likely than not be minimal. I'm just not sure how to make it a decent package with broadish appeal, save for bundling Q3 with Q4, and that's two different engines to work with for a single release, so maybe not the greatest idea from a project management point of view.

Then again, if Night Dive has ideas to make a Q3 remaster exciting for the crowd outside of people who both still play Q3 AND cannot stand Quake Live... sure, bring it on.

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Stardock seems to have issues with making their games not just functional, but also interesting to play. Back in the GalCiv2 days this wasn't much of a problem with very little competition on the market, but now, with forever games like Stellaris and a slew of acclaimed indies... I'm amazed they're making their money back and have marketing budget to spare with how they design these. The major change from 3 to 4 seems to be cutting the game up more than before, and spreading base game development across multiple paid dlcs. So, an industry standard, but this isn't a product people seem to value enough to accept getting fleeced by the publisher more so than before. Also, that Epic cash injection that launched the game into complete obscurity that persisted for a year. Probably not helpful in the long run, but I can also see how they may have needed it to make the budget work.

And then there's things like people seemingly only covering GalCiv4 on YouTube when they're paid to do so...

The AI race generator was an interesting idea on paper, but the execution was just about on par with the rest of the game, so a bit underwhelming.

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I was there, 3000 years ago...

...which is why I'll be waiting for proper reviews. And I don't mean the "Let's Have A Look At The New Patch" YouTube payola coverage kind like they're doing with GalCiv4, either.

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Yeah, they're always aligned. Until they aren't. Not wishing this upon the devs, but I do despise corpospeak.

Also, countdown started on key people leaving. The ones excited about this, presumably.

This industry makes you really bitter, I find.

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Amazing. I wonder if this now really is the final final update ^^

I was about to say that in view of the 300 devs just laid off there... perhaps, but it turns out that's "just" 7% so who knows.

https://www.techinasia.com/news/sg-based-game-studio-virtuos-cuts-7-of-workforce [External Link]

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That old title was impossible to remember for me, and I spent months to years trying. Every couple of months I thought to look at the news, or catch up on the progress, and every time I had to track the game down in proper sleuth fashion, because I just could not make it stick to my brain. I couldn't find the damn thing in my wishlist, is how bad it was - the effect it had was actually remarkable.

That said, the new title is incredibly generic. I would never advise this normally, but these devs should outsource the title and pick some decent proposal. They clearly are... having some issues with naming things. Hey, I can relate, but I'm not selling anything.

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It's possible that they dock it and use the keyboard and mouse to play it or create key mappings using the trackpads and every button on the Steam Deck like some people do for RTS and FPS games.

I played BG3 on the Steam Deck. Start to finish and handheld. Both UIs have their problems, it's one of the weaker parts of the game, but you're getting far less UI clutter with a controller, and otherwise the game does not suffer at all either way. I normally prefer keyboard and mouse, but for BG3 I found the gamepad a perfectly pleasant way to play, in some ways more so than the K+M setup when I tried that to see how it felt. Even the many skill wheels you get with a gamepad weren't bad in terms of navigating them since you get used to how skills are organised etc. The alternative is just a wall of icons, so... not really any better?

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"We'll keep things the same and maybe fix some bugs, but not all of those bugs that we may end up fixing will be fixed at release. $30, please."

Let's wait and see. I'm guessing this will get panned just because of the pricing. It's high for what's essentially a patch to get the games to... function properly and without workarounds.

- Price similar to the Anniversary edition [External Link] or lower (looking at Anniversary edition, that is actually a definitive edition, so I'm not sure why we need another one)

That was just them making a big announcement and renaming the old game. They made it seem like there has been some development done (an account system and some extras was what they advertised, I think), but I never saw any of that actually... work. This kind of seems like it was supposed to be what they're releasing in August, but they failed implementing it back then? If Relic explained it I haven't seen it. Really bizarre.

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From what I know the guy that leads the project lives on a boat, so there might be a semi-decent basis to argue this is actually international waters rather than the US. You could also try to convince him to sail out a bit further just in case.

Sorry, couldn't help myself given that bit of trivia :)

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Private servers exist for MMOs for which no source code has been released to the public. What this tells me is that there absolutely is a way to do this in a reasonable fashion. And yes, it will require a degree of effort on the part of the publishers and developers - that's the point. Put some effort into not killing those games once you're done with them, please. Thank you.

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