Couchpotato's Random RPG News

The celebrated RPG classic comes west for the first time! Developed by industry veterans including the legendary developer Akitoshi Kawazu, Romancing SaGa™ 3 was originally released in Japan in 1995. This HD remaster of the legendary RPG masterpiece introduces optimized graphics, a new dungeon to explore, new scenarios and a new game+ function. Select one of the 8 unique protagonists and embark on an epic adventure defined by your own choices!

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The ongoing popularity of the indie scene, at least on the PC, has over the course of the last decade bestowed upon us the gift (or curse) of hundreds upon hundreds, if not thousands of pixel art games. For some it’s a cheap way to make a game out without having to have any talent in graphics design; for some it’s a conscious design choice, and for others still pixel art is the best thing since sliced bread. More often than not, games that utilize this style get labelled or self-label as ‘retro.’ Is that really fair?

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As of October 2019 Austin-based production studio Catnip Games has acquired the operating assets of Portalarium, Inc. primary of which is Shroud of the Avatar.

Commenting about the acquisition, Richard Garriott noted “We’re immensely grateful to the community who has built this game with us. The community’s support and participation remains strong and growing, and Starr and I plan to continue being involved in the community and within the game.”

Starr Long, the executive producer of Shroud of the Avatar, also commented on the acquisition; noting that “Chris has successfully led the design and the team for many years, he is an all-star A player.”

Chris Spears added that “The development team remains with the project, and we plan to continue with the established patterns of regular releases, frequent live broadcasts, community events, release parties, and a development cadence focused on both constantly improving the core game, while also working towards Episode 2.”

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In this video, we take a look at exploration on the Geoscape, Phoenix Point's strategic layer. We see how players can proactively discover mission-sites and story events.

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Charismatic individualist Tobias West leads New Jericho, a group dedicated to eradicating the alien threat and restoring the Earth to exclusive human control. New Jericho maintains the world's most advanced technology and has a vast arsenal of powerful weapons that the Phoenix Project can access -- if they agree to an alliance. However, accepting New Jericho's philosophy may mean rejecting a deeper understanding of the alien threat.

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Picking up immediately after the events of "Call of the Tenebrae", you and your companions are stunned when the mythical, long lost Elves suddenly resurface on a remote island! But surprise quickly turns to alarm as the Elves reemergence brings a secret from the past with sinister echoes of the Tenebrae Order’s ancient evil! Now, with evil bearing down on the land and the unity of the races broken, the Shattered Embrace may spell doom for all of Antaloor!

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BriefDArt said:

Seems he thinks good reviews should translate to copies sold.

These games have a small audience compared to, say, Outer Worlds - which is very heavily inspired by a game that had a dozen million copies shipped within 24 hours.

Can that audience grow? I'm sure it could - but I'd say there's a pretty rigid cap that is extremely hard to exceed if you make throwback games.

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Daniel Ahmad, video game industry analyst with a solid track record when it comes to insider information, has revealed a few of the big bombs Microsoft is planning to drop later today on the X019 Inside Xbox episode.

We’ll be seeing one new IP from both Obsidian, and Rare unveiled on Inside Xbox. He also believes that Ninja Theory’s Bleeding Edge will get a release date. Update: Bleeding Edge’s release date has leaked.

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joxer said:

A new game from Obsidian announcement in cca 6 hours from now - VG247

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Couchpotato said:

Probably another Windows Store exclusive game.

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joxer said:

Sadly it's worse than that. It's mmo.

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Two Worlds II: Shattered Embrace DLC Release Date Announced

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joxer said:

Sadly it's worse than that. It's mmo.

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Zloth said:

I demand a federal investigation! It was crazy enough to see the first DLC come out. A second??? Is this some weird money laundering scheme??

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"Everyone here loves RPGs, but we're all gamers and we try everything. And survival games started to resonate a lot more in the industry, and people were playing them and really enjoying it. And we wanted to kind of explore it: This is kind of a genre that would be interesting to dabble in, and maybe we can find a way to make something that had Obsidian DNA mixed with the survival game. We knew that if we wanted to have a smaller team and do more experimental stuff, that this fit very well with that."

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Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami, Yakuza Kiwami 2, originally console exclusives on PS4, are heading to Xbox One.
All three will be available on the Microsoft Store and with Xbox Game Pass for console and Xbox Game Pass for PC (beta) in early 2020.
While all titles are available on PC, this will be the first time the series will be made available on an Xbox console.

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This past week saw a slew of financial reports from companies. In particular, Take-Two Interactive noted that both Borderlands 3 and The Outer Worlds performed well. Borderlands 3 sold 5 million copies in its first week post launch, which is up 50 percent from Borderlands 2. Additionally, Take-Two said The Outer Worlds was a critical and commercial success, exceeding sales expectations.
In other great news for single player games, Capcom said that Resident Evil 2 Remake, Devil May Cry 5, and Monster Hunter World have sold incredibly well and the company is looking to revive its old IP. Publisher Focus Home Interactive also stated that Greedfall and A Plague Tale: Innocence drove tremendous growth. These reports show that single-player experiences are vital to the industry.

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THQ Nordic changed its name to Embracer Group in August this year, presumably to create distance between itself and subsidiary publishing label THQ Nordic.
In the three months ended September 30, 2019, Embracer Group's games division earned SEK 816 million (€76.3 million), up 117% over the previous year. The games division -- which includes the labels Deep Silver, THQ Nordic and Coffee Stain -- was buoyed by the launch of Wreckfest and the strong performance of its catalogue titles.
Embracer's various companies have 86 games in development, 49 of which have not been announced at this time. In the quarter ending on December 31, 2019, the key releases will be Shenmue III (Deep Silver) and Darksiders Genesis (THQ Nordic).

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For those of you who weren't able to join us in Funkhaus, Berlin for PDXCON 2019 we've put together a little something, sharing some highlights of the talks and presentations from the Bloodlines 2 team.

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Drithius said:

Sigh. That survival game from Obsidian. Doesn't bode well for Microsoft's direction. At all.

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If you decide to play Disco Elysium, chances are it will resonate with you unlike any video game that came before it. And if not, at the very least you'll be getting a great hard-boiled mystery powered by a unique role playing system. Sure, some things could have been done better and there's plenty of room for nitpicking, but at the end of the day, Disco Elysium is a fantastic game and a once in a lifetime experience that sets a new bar for video game writing. And as a result, I can't recommend it enough.

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Recent silence and a couple of high-profile departures from BioWare have led fans and pundits to speculate that the studio has abandoned its most recent game, Anthem, but the opposite is true. For the last few months, BioWare and parent company EA have been planning an overhaul of the online shooter, according to three people familiar with those plans. Some call it “Anthem 2.0” or “Anthem Next.”

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I visited Obsidian Entertainment a couple of weeks ago for the reveal of the studio's first game for new owner Microsoft. If you remember, The Outer Worlds was published by Private Division, Take-Two's label for partnering with independent studios (Obsidian was independent when the deal was made). This was, then, a significant moment.

The game itself was a bit of an anti-climax - Grounded, a small-team survival game with a Honey I Shrunk the Kids hook - but I still got an opportunity to nose around the studio and see what changed post-acquisition and since I visited in August 2017.

The answer, in a nutshell, is "not a lot", which is encouraging. Obsidian still resides in the same office block in the eerily perfect city of Irvine, California, and still occupies the same amount of office space. It's still a bit tatty, which I like, and the only real sign there's now Microsoft money behind the studio is a pile of boxes with computers and monitors in them.

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