General gaming discussion

Some people are talking about it 😎

@ThePhantomPain You don't need to worry about that with Outer Wilds - your knowledge and in-game encyclopedia persist, and that's all you need. Other than a last, end-game puzzle (which simply requires a couple of things to be done in order) there's no need to pick up specific objects every time and lug them around or anything like that. The timing of certain things is important, but there are big generous windows in terms of allowing you to sort them out. There's very little repetition. Still the perfect time loop game.

@Retr0gamer @Mr Crispy It's not just the hacky writing of 12 Minutes' ending that's bad, although it is a howler. It's the execution. The designer suddenly asks you to completely reinterpret everything that came before in a way that makes everything extra confusing and nonsensical. There's no lead-up to it, no carefully crafted hints that this is where the story is going - just a whole load of bullshit that comes out of nowhere, and stuck together with no sense of flow or artistry.

Not that the game was particularly great even before the ending arrived, but it knocked a mediocre game down to a bad game.

My work here is done.

Between 12 Minutes and Marquette, it also seems Annapurna - a publisher I have a lot of time for, though I think their recent output has been of very mixed quality - is willing to throw money towards getting big acting names on board to elevate some of the weaker writing in their games. A cheeky little marketing trick. Bizarrely, you wouldn’t even know it’s Ridley and McAvoy in 12 Minutes if you didn’t know it was them.

Artful Escape, Solar Ash and Neon White do look cool (and of course Outer Wilds DLC), so hopefully 2021 will deliver one of the straight-up AI bangers akin to the glory days of Outer Wilds and Sayonara Wild Hearts. I’ve liked a few of their recent games (having played almost all of them) but usually with some significant caveat. If Found… was the last ‘oh this is really cool’ one.

For sure. They definitely had a really remarkably strong track record at first which I think has faded a little bit - none of their 2020-21 games (except for GoaT Kentucky Route Zero, which was around long before AI) really have been creative, critical and commercial hits in the same way as some of those earlier titles. 12 Minutes got a lot of attention, but mostly for the wrong reasons. There was a certain curatorial edge to Annapurna's publisher choices that isn't quite as sharp these days.

But fully agree that I'd rather they're out there, releasing interesting games even if some of them don't hit. Also think they have a promising slate for the rest of this year, and then some really neat looking stuff like Stray, Skin Deep, Storyteller and the new Davey Wreden / Karla Zimonja & Jessica Mak games further ahead.