i'm always like 5 seconds away from never playing another new video game ever again. they're just getting more and more shitty. it's not even nostalgia talking because i can go back and play old games i've never played before and find them way more fun than the new slop that comes out. even if it is extremely refined slop, there's still something missing. even something like baldur's gate 3 which was by all accounts an amazing game did absolutely nothing to hook me beyond the 4 hours i played.

half life, FEAR, and portal are games i have played within the last couple of years i hadn't before. they are absolute gems that are still better than the vast majority of shit that's come out in the past decade.

@beardalaxy
Yes, it is sad, but games are no longer made for people like you. But that's not such a big deal once you get over the initial shock.

The industry is huge, and you have literally decades worth of back log anyway. And you're working now, so you won't be binching games that way anymore anyway.

Although, there is one advice I can give. Learn to play the games for everything they offer. Go on a side quest here and there, and try to not be satisfied with just "good enough". Once you do that, the hours for some games might unironically explode all of a sudden.

@LukeAlmighty @beardalaxy It is a problem if you wanna play multiplayer games or, even worse, MMORPGs. I've come to realize the success of Skyrim is one of the worst things that ever happened to the gaming industry. That game's success sent a message to all developers that they can neuter, water down, and rip the soul out of a game and people will still buy it because the previous game in the series was amazing.

@Nesano @beardalaxy
You mean, that you can create a breathing open world full of characters living their individual lives with their individual problems, and if you add a propper modding tools, this combination makes a perfect platform for individualized experience?

@Nesano @beardalaxy
Yes, Skyrim is mechanically broken, but mods can fix mechanics.

The world of Skyrim though is a deeply intimite dark fantasy. It has a ton of hidden depth, that
a proper game can be build around.

That is why I was insanely disappointed with Fallout 4 and didn't even bother checking out stardield. Because not even Bethesda has the common sense to look, what is it they actually did create.

@LukeAlmighty @Nesano Skyrim is actually really good somewhere deep down, but there are a lot of problems with it for sure, from the mechanics to the story itself. Bethesda's lore is all over the fucking place and that game is no exception. Mods help you get immersed more for sure, and there is a wealth of lore and things like that which are really interesting to explore. The game is still, functionally, not really that great though, and the fact that they have been parading it around for over a decade in the state that it is in really does say something about the common consumer and the general gaming industry.

@beardalaxy @Nesano
> the fact that they have been parading it around for over a decade in the state that it is in really does say something about the common consumer

Counter argument:

@LukeAlmighty @Nesano mods don't mean as much when they update the game to allow for new, subpar, paid mods to be purchased with a shitty monetization scheme and that breaks all current existing mods for everyone. just saying.

none of what mods actually provide is bethesda's doing. if anything, it has made their games worse. i mean, it got to the point where modders don't even want to do shit with starfield and nobody is playing that. i do think skyrim is probably peak bethesda, but it is also what led to their downfall.

@beardalaxy @Nesano
BECAUSE STARFIELD IS A DEAD WORLD!!!

At that point, it's easier to make the game from the base up. Why are you ignoring the point of what bethesda did provide?

@LukeAlmighty @Nesano bro i'm not saying it is a horrid game like starfield is. i'm saying they put out a heavily flawed game that could only be salvaged with mods, barely fixed any of it, and then kept re-releasing it over and over again without really fixing any of the core issues and people just kept buying it more and more, and that led to what qualities they did have as a game studio becoming diminished, which led to something like starfield coming out.

@beardalaxy @Nesano
Of course they couldn't just fix it. Fixing the base game would destroy the game's ecosystem.