#skyrim is just one of those games that is both awful and amazing

[fleshevter]

How does your Elder Scrolls worship work? What got you into pop culture work?

i am SO glad you asked, cuz i feel like it's actually a very interesting story! at the very least, i've been through a lot of ups and downs, and definitely a lot of extremes when it comes to deity work at all, so it really excites me to talk about my journey~

it began when i realized that i believed in multiverse theory-- well, i believed in it for quite a long time. moreso it began when i realized i could utilize that belief in my craft.

now let me tell you, i have hours upon hours stacked in different elder scrolls games. i've played them since i was little and i love them. if you can't tell, i'm autizzle fo rizzle and this behemoth of a story is my special interest.

i started out trying to work with azura. i was always so amazed by how beautiful her statue was in skyrim, and when she comes to speak to you in eso through the dunmer that starts glowing with her radiance, i was in awe. "and she's one of the good daedra too!", i thought (which i now understand after years of studying to be a very flawed mindset).

but it was so strange. everything felt so empty. and there came a time where i began contemplating the darker sides of magic as a whole. life, death, beyond, the in between, all of it. nothing more than a simple interest. but all of a sudden...

a stained glass portrait i had made for azura shattered on its altar. just out of nowhere. i never saw it happen, but as far as i could tell, it didn't fall over, nor did something fall on it. just, crack. in pieces. i still hold onto the pieces, something just keeps me from getting rid of them, but...

i no longer felt emptiness in that moment, but instead felt deep rejection. it was horridly strong. it reminded me of being a kid and not getting picked for dodgeball. just this pang of extreme loneliness and rejection and sadness.

everything else in my life had begun shattering in that moment as well. a horrible breakup, i was teetering on alcoholism, among some other very bad self destructive habits that i won't go into details with. i was spiraling. both my mental and physical disabilities got really out of hand.

but then i had a very strange dream while meditating one night. i dreamed about a broken down mausoleum, and when i went inside, a swarm of rats all began climbing on top of each other to form a bigger rat, kind of like those schools of fish that cluster to make bigger fish. they didn't talk to me, but just stared at me.

fast forward. at this point, i was extremely manic, so my memories of this time are hazy. i took a trip to visit a friend of mine in another state. well, we're not just friends anymore and now i'm living with him. we're very happy. but anyway.

i started to notice... bugs. everywhere. not like an infestation in the house, but they just kinda... get in. which is very normal here. what isn't normal, however, is how relaxed they were with me. while my partner always got nervous around them, they willingly crawl into my hands so i can let them outside. which, for things like roaches and spiders, is FUCKING WEIRD (though i'm sure i don't have to mention that).

so, i picked up UESP, an elder scrolls lore wiki where you can read the various books in the game, and started digging through some daedric passages again. and i became transfixed by this specific passage...

"Khenarthi has forsaken you. But I haven't. There's a place in the Dark for all you cast off, forgotten souls." —Namiira

In Khajiiti lore, Khenarthi is a goddess who delivers souls to Azurah. I about lost my mind reading this.

Then I started reading texts like Beggar Prince, realized that Namira isn't only watered down to a goddess of secluded cannibals and that only a few people choose to worship her in that way, that Namira is focused on those who are rejected by society...

And it just clicked.

Now, any time I call to her for guidance or assistance in my magic endeavors, i find little traces of her presence, like bugs that are a little too friendly. Just recently, I had an encounter with a house spirit that was getting a little too rowdy, and I called to her to help settle his shit. And when I was calming down from the encounter, a little roach just crawled over and rested next to my foot. She really knows how to show that she's there...

So now, I show my devotion to her by studying and documenting various texts of her (both from Khajiiti culture and Reachman culture), i keep my space a little disorganized to show devotion to her, and I also like to (safely) keep jars of rot. You know... throw a fruit in a jar and watch it decay over time. (This is perfectly safe so long as the jars are sealed correctly! I make sure I do this with care, so don't worry!) And while I won't be eating people any time soon, I consume in her honor. I sure do like my food, and she seems to like that a lot.

And for once, I feel... fulfilled.

While life is excruciatingly difficult, I find comfort in The Great Darkness and I am so proud to say that Lady Namira is the one I look toward.

I am so sorry that was so long. I'm just really happy to finally be able to tell my story. :)

[glowinggator]

Doom Eternal: April O’Neil

Pairing: April O’Neil

Content Warnings: Swearing? References to Doom Eternal? It’s honestly just a lot of fluff, I love April so much <3 

Word Count: 1105

Your feet slap against the pavement as you sprint towards April’s apartment, and you’ve never been so thankful for the impromptu late-night cardio that comes with befriending mutants. Out of all the benefits to receive from making friends with giant mutant turtles, stamina wasn’t one that you were expecting. Then again...you weren’t really expecting the situation to begin with. Nevertheless, you find yourself thankful for the late-night battles in the streets, tearing through the sidewalks of New York with a speed you would have never expected yourself to meet 5 years ago. You breathe steadily as you run, taking in the smell of freshly-ground coffee beans and pumpkin spice as you do so. It’s so distinctly Autumn, and quite frankly, a wonderful step away from the usual scent of New York City. Your feet take you along the bustling streets at a breakneck pace, blending in as just another body in a sea of people. Had you been anywhere else in the world, it may have been a concerning sight. But not here. You leap up her apartment stairs two at a time, weighted backpack slapping against your lower back with a vengeance. Will you be sore tomorrow? Maybe. Do you care? Absolutely not. You take a moment to breathe as you reach her door, composing yourself and regulating your breathing before knocking. Best not to look like an idiot in front of her mom, assuming she answers the door. Once you catch your breath, you raise your fist to the door, knocking gently. 

The door whips open quickly and before you know it, you’re brought into a crushing hug. You laugh, returning the hug quickly. “Good to see you too,” you giggle. 

She pulls away from the embrace, instead choosing to hold your hands to drag you inside. “Happy Halloween month, Sunshine” she chirps, “Did you bring it? Please tell me you brought it, if you forgot it at home we’re marching right back to your place and getting it, deadass.” 

You laugh, taking one hand away from her to slip your backpack off: “Double, triple, quadruple checked to make sure I had it.” You smile even brighter as she pumps a single fist, hissing out a quiet “yes!” She pulls you quickly to her room, flopping on the bed as soon as you both enter. You kick the door shut with your foot before dashing over to her PS4 to slide in your copy of Doom Eternal. You turn to look back at her momentary, only to see her smiling straight back at you. Your heart melts as your girlfriend quietly chants “rip and tear” from her spot on the bed. Her excitement is so contagious, that you can’t help but join in with her. 

 Halloween is truly the best time of year. 

You unhook a controller from the charging stand, tossing it to her before finding your own spot on the bed. You rest your head against her headboard, opening up your arms as a mock-offering. She quickly adjusts her position, finding a spot in your arms as the game loads. Thank god you both installed it last week. You couldn’t take the disappointment, or stand seeing hers. She drops the controller in her lap momentarily, wrapping an arm around your neck to pull you into a quick kiss. You smile, leaning into it happily. Her hands and lips are warm like sunshine in midmorning: a perfect contrast to the chilly, Autumn air outside. Heaven is a place on Earth with her, you muse to yourself. Cheesy, yes, but how else could you describe it? You pull away slowly as the haunting whine of the loading screen claws its way out of the speakers. ���Happy?” you ask. 

She hums affirmatively, leaning her head on your chest. “How mad do you think Donnie would be if he knew we were playing Doom without him?” she chuckles. She quickly selects a new campaign slot, setting on the medium-difficulty “Hurt Me Plenty” mode. The TV casts a dark blue glow upon her room as it begins loading all of the necessary assets for the game. Her thumbs nervously caress and tap the buttons of the controller, eager to play. 

“I’m willing to bet, like, 50 cents that he found the cracked copy the day it released and played it without us.” 

“Oh god, yeah,” she laughs, “I completely forgot about that whole DRM situation. Imagine letting that get out, as a multimillion-dollar company with like, one of the most hyped games ever... Couldn’t be me, honestly.” 

King Novic’s voice slithers its way out of the speakers, drawing your attention to the TV. 

"Against all the evil that hell can conjure, all the wickedness that mankind can produce. We’ll send unto them... only you. Rip and Tear until it is done.”

“Holy fucking shit,” she whispers, leaning forward in her excitement. She grips the controller even tighter as the first cutscene loads, never moving her eyes away from the screen. You smile at her excitement, watching her amber eyes dart around the screen. Her eyes trace the outline of the sigil that’s been burned into the Earth, breathing a quiet sigh of awe: “Babe, “ she breathes, “look at the graphics, this is crazy! This probably looks better than like, actual satellite photos of Earth.” 

You chuckle, “You’re adorable, April.” 

She laughs, “Babe, I don’t think that’s the thing to say when I’m playing a game about murdering demons.” The screams of Earth’s last survivors ring out through her speakers, and you silently pray to the universe that her mom isn’t home right now. The introductory riff to Rip and Tear crescendos as The Slayer moves around the ship. April watches with bated breath, occasionally breathing out little sighs of amazement. You can practically see the stars twinkling in her eyes as she watches the cutscene, and her excitement warms your heart. The full force of Rip and Tear hits as The Slayer cocks his shotgun, and April’s eyes shine with unbridled enthusiasm. At this point she leans back into you, gripping the controller tightly. She swings her feet back and forth slightly, too excited to sit still. “Oh my god, this is so fucking badass,” she chimes, “I think that was the best intro scene I’ve ever seen for a game.” 

“What about Skyrim?” You jest. 

“I said best, not most memorable slash memeable,” she returns, waving one hand for emphasis, “Besides, Skyrim didn’t have the awesome metal intro, now did it?” 

 “Alright, fair enough,” you giggle, “I can’t wait to watch you Glory Kill some Revenants.” 

“You better not have played this without me!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(A/N: Look, do I have like 50 requests? Yes. Do I have like 10 different WIPS that I need to finish? Yes. Did I write this as a spur of the moment thing after listening to Doom Crossing: Eternal Horizons too many times and subsequently getting back into the Doom fandom? Yes <3 In this house we play video games and fall head over heels in love with Rise! April.) (For those of you who don't share my undying love for April...I've got a whole bunch of stuff from the turtles to post soon, dw <3 )

[timmywhisperer]

LETSA GO @miraquella15

Stendy - Stan is just SO goddamn smitten with wendy like? i know this is basically canon but just -- she’s yelling at someone?? heart eyes mf!! shes super focused on something?? just stares at her. he literally savours their every interaction n shes constantly on his mind n its just. so cute god

- Wendy is very different in terms of love, like she doesn’t constantly think about him but everything reminds her of him? theres a dog? stan has a dog!! a tree?? stans coat is brown!! she doesnt usually say anything out loud but occasionally she’ll say “oh stan had one of those” or something and bebe just rolls her eyes

Steidi - both of them are so soft and sensitive and patient by nature, so much they seem stand off-ish, waiting for the other to make a move. their relationship is super slow but once they start being affectionate its so sickly sweet its unbearable. 

- due to stan’s god awful home life, he spends a lot of time at heidi’s house - her parents have taken a liking to him, and after a while, begin to consider him part of the family. 

Creek - I know this is at least somewhat popular and a Thing already, but tweek trusts craig’s family a whole lot, finding them safer than his own parents. Tweek could show up at their door at any hour and they wouldn’t hesitate to welcome him in.

- at first, they were really different in terms of interests, but they end up crossing over as craig introduces tweek to his anime and tweek tells craig about his late night wikipedia research

                                                          ~*~

Stan - this is also super common but stan is definitely some kind of non-binary in my eyes - eventually he and shelly start to get along with each other in light of their father’s bullshit, going to each other for comfort and generally just hanging out - he’s got what i dub ‘rooftop syndrome’ where he likes to sit on roofs at night and look at the sky. usually he does this with kenny because everyone else thinks it’s boring

Wendy - wendy is one of those ppl who i don’t have a particular gender hc for - i can see her as a cis girl, nb or genderfluid. she is most definitely bisexual though - she does all the extra curriculars she can - god knows how she does it, but she’s in every club and sports team at school, AND has amazing grades - despite typically being depicted as popular, she is actually very lonely. the girls tend to go out without her, and she doesn’t like approaching anyone for their time, so she spends most of her free time inside reading or writing

Kyle - kyle is bisexual, and does have preferences but they tend to fluctuate between boys and girls - for a long time, kyle loves his parents a lot, but as time goes on he realises how toxic his dad’s apathy and his mom’s hot temper are and stops trusting them altogether - as a result of his mother’s helicopter-type parenting, he develops anxiety and panics every time something goes wrong. his friends (the ones he’s confided in) look out for him and make sure sheila does nothing too drastic, and kyle is eternally grateful for their protection -(BONUS HEADCANON: kyle totally strikes me as the type to only play female characters in games with character creation, like skyrim or fallout or gta)

Cartman - i definitely personally think cartman is gay, but i can see him being bisexual as well (w/ a preference for guys) and i like trans girl hcs too - i believe in eric’s ability to improve as a person and with enough encouragement and patience he can be convinced to go to therapy for real - he’s very involved in internet culture, liking a lot of webseries and ARGs as well as deepfried memes and webms, and such. he’ll chatter for hours and hours about stuff like the SCP wiki for those who’ll listen

[gaming-grandma]

Skyrim and Breath of the Wild: My Two Favorite Open World Games

While botw doesn’t really qualify as an RPG, it still has many elements similar to one that I feel like this comparison is fair. Even though a large gap of time, graphical style, aesthetics, music, and story splits the two in feel and theme, I still feel like both games plucked the same heartstrings for myself, albeit in different ways. This is a long, long essay type post with no pictures. I wrote this instead of doing a reading assignment, so enjoy.

Both of these games came to me at opportune times in my life. Skyrim came to me right in the middle of my ‘golden-days’ of highschool, where I had the absolute most amount of free time and no responsibilities. I delved into the game and devoured it whole, and when my brother would take it to uni with him I would spend hours into the night until 2, 3 AM pouring over the guidebook and analyzing tactics and build ideas and roleplay elements I could incorporate into it the second I got my hands on it again. I almost convinced my dad to buy me the game so I could play it while my brother was away, but for my own good and those of my grades I failed. I would play Skyrim until sunrise, and then until sunset again, and I would go on to make probably actually hundreds of characters, each with different back stories and approaches and methods of play and skills. They would all feel unique and I would treat each one like an experience and go new places, or even go to places I knew well on purpose to see if I could put new spins on it. The world was so open and ready to manipulate and bend to your will that I, the moldable teenager I was, was utterly bent on feeling every square inch of this game hundreds of times, like a baby given a new toy they have to shove in their mouth for hours. I’m not proud of the amount of time I spent on Skyrim, but I am glad I got to, and I’m proud of some of my accomplishments. I invented this method of infinite Magicka regeneration as long as you were in a circle of a certain spell by making myself a vampire Breton with 100% magicka absorb (which involved using a glitch allowing you to use the same constellation stone twice) and casting a banishment spell on myself with the perk that makes restoration affect vampires. I spent days perfecting this until the final product: I could walk into a dungeon and cast a circle of light on the floor, walk into it, and unleash untamed power and destruction and anything I wanted anywhere until the circle wore off, and I’d cast it again. When my brother walked in on my working on this his jaw kinda dropped.

 Similarly, I would go on to invent all sorts of my own clever elements to the game as I mold it to my will, like one of those shake lights you have to break in a bunch of places to get it to light up. I would play the game dry over and over. Graduation came, and I slowed down. Other things came into my life and I had other games to play, new experiences to mull over. New worlds to bend. I would always go back to Skyrim for a few days, trying to pick it up again and feel the same awe and excitement and pure wonder I did when it first came upon me, but I would eventually realize “I’ve done this exact same thing too many times now” whether it be the character, route, skills, or style, I’d done it already. To this day, it’s the only game I’ll actually pull out and play sometimes when I’m truly lost or have nothing to do or feel depressed or broken. It’ll always remind me of my youth and make me have something to look forward to again. I’ve still already done it all, but that doesn’t really matter sometimes does it? Sometimes it’s just about remembering and being a totally different and older person sitting in front of the screen that gives you the same experience and joy no matter what you’ve been through.

I don’t trust Bethesda with TES6 anymore. I don’t think it’ll work for me, and I don’t think it’ll be a great game. I’m excited for it, as I’m naturally inclined to be and I won’t shut myself up over it, but it won’t be the next Skyrim for me. It won’t make me a wide-eyed 14 year old again, nothing can do that. That doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it, I’m sure I will. But I don’t trust Bethesda’s methods as a company, and I don’t know if they’ll ever achieve what they did in my eyes when I was a kid. I’ll sit and listen to the music sometimes, and it’ll hit me in waves; the world, the awe, the excitement. The memories of coming home from big life events like finals or job interviews or trips and being able to relax and play it again. It almost sounds like an addiction at this point, and my brother would joke that I was, but it didn’t harm my social/professional life in any way, so I don’t think it was a true addiction.

Then I realize they don’t even have the same guy on music for TES6 as they did for morrowind/skyrim again and I remind myself it won’t be the one.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a gullible hope that TES6 will do all those things to me again, though. But when it comes down to it, Skyrim was the biggest and most influential game on my life as a teenager. It was just a great game. I loved it, everything about it. That’s all there is to it. It’s one of those games I wish I could erase my memory of and do all over again.

And you’re wondering why the hell this essay is titled with BOTW, and here’s the connection; the only other game I truly would like to erase my memory for and experience again is Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. But this is for a totally different reason.

BOTW came into my life at a similarly critical point of my life in young adulthood; I was at the end of my community college career, having only 2 classes for the entire semester. I had a job, but I hated it and was depressed over it. I felt like I was going nowhere fast, and BOTW came out with the switch and I decided to buy into the hype and see what it was like. BOTW is an untamed love letter to everything that made Skyrim amazing to me, and yet it was totally new and unseen and alien. It was huge in scope, the awe and wonder it hit me with was the same as when I first realized how huge the province of Skyrim truly was; this was even bigger. The immersion and aesthetics were beautiful and appealed to me in ways skyrim never did, but I still fell in love with it and played this game up and down and inside out. I just checked and it’s still my #1 most played game on the switch nearly 2 years later at 120 hours. That’s not even 1/10th of how long I played Skyrim, and yet it managed to have that insane appeal to it that drove my young eyes wide in pure thrilling excitement. The minimalist music accompanied by beautiful sounds of nature reminded me of the frozen tundra of the mountain sides watching sunrises in the Throat of the World, or exploring the sun glazed Rift. None of this was actively in my mind as I played it, but I knew that the same heartstrings that Skyrim tugged on were being tangled with by this amazing game. As a Zelda game it blew me out of the water, and if I devoured Skyrim whole, then Breath of the Wild ate ME whole, because I was not in control of this world; I was merely a spectator trying to survive and watch it for as long as I could.

My biggest gripe once I finished the game to pieces that fall was that there was “nothing to do”. “There’s nothing to do!” I whine as I sit on my 120 shrine, 600 korok seed save file that had a full inventory of every best weapon and nearly every side quest completed save file. The DLC would then come out but I never felt compelled to play it or finish it. I’m tempted to today and that’s why I’m writing this. I did everything the game had to offer, or at least I thought, as I would late learn of lots of different activities I never got to finish, but I enjoyed it and I wouldn’t trade that time for any skyrim experience.

BOTW struggles to stand up to Skyrim’s depth, but its scope is ambitious and accomplishes its own voice without relying on anything ever created besides the actual Zelda franchise characters and lore. Skyrim, on the other hand, is an achievement of a long struggle as a gaming studio, the ultimate pinnacle of what Bethesda has learned in creating open world games. BOTW is most certainly an easily accessible game, and is not nearly as dated as the launch graphics of Skyrim, but I still have to give Skyrim the title of my favorite open world game, not purely because of the nostalgia, but because of the depth and variety you could get out of multiple playthroughs. BOTW only has 1 link, and link only has so many skills. You can use them to screw with the environment and do some crazy cool stuff, but nothing will top the pure blank canvas that was a new Skyrim file in my eyes. BOTW doubtlessly takes a hard 2nd place.

[boxwars]

The Best Pc Games for Gamers

PC gamers have an entirely incredible thing going. Intriguing, trial independent games? Correct. Complex procedure recreations? Completely. The shiniest, prettiest variants of large spending console games? They get a great deal of those, as well.

Suppose you've as of late joined the positions of the PC tip top. Which games would it be advisable for you to introduce? Start with the ones in this post.

Crusader Kings III

It's elusive an all inclusive assessment in gaming, yet here's one that is about as near consistent as you can get: Crusader Kings III is superior to Crusader Kings II in fundamentally every manner. It's more amazing in scope however slighter in swell and busywork. It's simpler to get (simply ask any newcomer) and harder to put down (ask any long-lasting fan). It has a cleaner interface, more keen character models, and it's likewise massively wonderful. Beginning in the ninth century, you shepherd a dynastic line up and through the fifteenth century. To pinpoint Crusader Kings III as a technique game wouldn't be wrong, but on the other hand it's reductive: Yes, it's a procedure game, but at the same time it's part the board sim, part visual novel, and part job player. Included all together, you get one entire wonderful.

A Good Match For: History buffs. Enthusiasts of substantial technique games with not many managerial errands. Champions.

Not A Good Match For: Anyone searching for a blustery instructional exercise; however simpler to get than its archetype, Crusader Kings II is still more perplexing than most games.

Supergiant's Greek folklore themed Hades was produced in the inferno of roguelikes. That implies, in the same way as other class champions, you'll bite the dust (a great deal) as you over and again go through a layered prison loaded with randomized adversaries, gradually accumulating level-ups and gaining steady ground with each round. Be that as it may, Hades spins a tried and true recipe by wagering enormous on account. You play as Prince Zagreus, the child of the divine force of the dead. Your objective, apparently, is to get away from the hidden world—and your dad's pitiless, iron-fisted rule. On your journey, in exemplary Homerian style, you're helped by the Olympian divine beings (Zeus, Athena, Dionysus, and so forth). As you play you get the opportunity to more readily know these divinities and different individuals from the Greek mytheme. Each character has an authentic, fleshed-out relationship with Zagreus, one that pushes forward with each run. In Hades, playing doesn't simply gain you more ability focuses or better weapons. You additionally procure a ridiculously incredible story.

A Good Match For: Fans of roguelikes, activity games, isometric RPGs, dating sims, Greek folklore, and any earlier games in Supergiant's oeuvre.

Not A Good Match For: The effectively baffled. The individuals who don't care for excited, relentless activity games. Sisyphus.

Urban communities: Skylines initially dispatched in 2015 as a dynamite if marginally wonky city-manufacturer. Indeed, the traffic repairman might've been busted, yet it caught the particulars of metropolitan arranging—drafting locale, plotting plumbing, building bicycle paths, calibrating charge strategy—not at all like whatever else. In the years since, Skylines has become the best city-building game around. Patches resolved a considerable lot of the crimps. Developments presented winter climate, night-and-day advances (total with magnificent nightfalls), and enough open travel choices to make any reformist urbanist sob in bliss. Yet, the genuine development originated from the mod network. Ambitious modders based on and improved essentially every aspect of Skylines. You can download graphical update mods, custom structures, extended guides, and changed and smoothed out game frameworks. Even one consequently destroys deserted structures, adequately eliminating the most monotonous aspect of the game. The outcome is a city-building game that additionally gives you a sample of playing god.

The Sims 4

What more is there to state? It's The Sims! The fourth portion of Maxis' long-running life test system turned out in 2014 and, through an apparently relentless series of updates and fixes, has just improved as time passes. A year ago's university development, specifically, catches how and why this section constantly reverberates: This is life. It's untidy and unusual, and you have no clue about how your Sims may respond in different circumstances. However, in that too-genuine estimate of life exists boundless potential. In all of computer games, scarcely any character makers are more top to bottom. You can coordinate your characters how you need (generally), and shape their general climate how you please (for the most part). Furthermore, in a checked improvement over past passages—one that further catches the impulses of reality—your Sims can both perform multiple tasks and feel feeling.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

There's no lack of desire in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Geralt of Rivia's most recent experience is gigantic, a world you can become mixed up in for quite a long time and still have bounty to do. There's a ton for stalwart Witcher fans to appreciate, however you don't have to have played a Witcher game to appreciate the hell out of this one. While numerous games these days have rambling scenes, The Witcher 3 is completely thick. Each niche and crevice is loaded up with vital characters, astute composition, and awards for inquisitive players. The principle story is as exciting as it is sincerely depleting, and the side journeys are really worth doing. Since its delivery in 2015, The Witcher 3 has gotten a huge amount of free updates and upgrades alongside two marvelous paid developments, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine. The full experience is presently significantly greater, more extravagant, and over and above anyone's expectations.

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A Good Match For: Open-world fans, particularly the individuals who appreciated Skyrim yet were disillusioned by the battle. In The Witcher 3, battling is close to as pleasant as investigation.

Not a Good Match For: People who esteem their time and public activity, any individual who needs a game they can complete in a modest bunch of hours.

Development VI

In the a long time since Civilization V came out, we figured out how to survey it not once however twice. That is how much these games loan themselves to playing and replaying, and Civ VI is the same. The most recent section includes a great deal of groundbreaking plans to the Firaxis' time tested equation, and keeping in mind that some novel thoughts work in a way that is better than others, the entire is as regular more than the total of its parts. The mechanical changes and refinements are enveloped with an inconspicuous, table game like tasteful that is as satisfying on your 20th hour as it was on your 10th. We'll be playing this game for quite a long time.

A Good Match For: Civ fans, individuals who have never played a Civ game, essentially any individual who doesn't effectively despise Civ.

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Last Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn

In 2010, Square Enix dispatched Final Fantasy XIV Online, and it was only the most exceedingly awful—carriage, over-confounded, incomplete; a wreck. The designers went through three years remaking the game starting from the earliest stage, and the outcome is one of the best greatly multiplayer online pretending games ever constructed. It's beginning and end fans love about Final Fantasy—rich fine art, solid story, flawless music—just greater, all folded over a conventional MMO system. It's that Square Enix clean that separates it from its rivals, acquiring it a spot in this rundown.

A Good Match For: Fans of imagination pretending computer games hoping to take the greatly multiplayer risk. The first Final Fantasy XIV was a tangled wreck of clashing thoughts, when all players needed was a standard MMO game with the recognizable highlights of a Final Fantasy game. That is actually what A Realm Reborn is.

Not a Good Match For: Folks terrified of month to month memberships. In spite of the MMORPG class overall moving towards allowed to-play installment.

[gamingtipsandtrickshacks]

Bethesda Interview -- Pete Hines Talks Nintendo Switch, Single-Player Games, and Plans for E3 2018

For some time now, Pete Hines has been the face of Bethesda Softworks, one of gaming’s biggest third-party publishers. If you’ve been familiar with Bethesda in any capacity or have watched any of the company’s E3 presentations the past few years, you’ve likely been exposed to Hines and his straight-shooting, down-to-Earth attitude.

During PAX East this past weekend, we were able to set aside some time to talk to Hines at Bethesda Gameplay Day, an event that highlighted The Elder Scrolls: Online, Quake Champions, The Elder Scrolls: Legends, and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus for Nintendo Switch. We asked Pete about his early thoughts on the Switch as well as looking ahead to what Bethesda could have planned for the latter half of 2018.

Logan: You guys have been doing a few things with Switch now between Skyrim, DOOM, and Wolfenstein II. How are you viewing the console internally at this point?

Pete Hines: We love it. We’re fans of it which is why we wanted to bring those games to the platform and we don’t want those to be the only one that we bring. We’re continuing to look at it for all of the stuff we might be able to do on Switch.

L: Is it a system you can’t afford to ignore at this point since it sold over 14 million units in a year?

PH: I don’t know about “can’t”, but we don’t want to.

L: Moving forward with that device, are you looking to bring more games that you’ve already released to Switch?

PH: It’ll just depend. It’ll depend on whether or not we think the game is a good fit for the platform technically and whether we think it’s something that audience wants on Switch. In that way, it’s literally no different than any other platform that we look at or any other game that we do. Hopefully, it’ll be a mix of both. If there’s stuff that folks want us to release on Switch and it’s a good fit and it works – great. If it’s new stuff going forward that we think is a good fit and will work on Switch, then we’ll do that too.

L: Would you ever consider maybe developing a single product for the Switch similar to what Ubisoft did with Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle?

PH: I don’t know, we’ll have to see. All of that stuff always comes down to the devs’ idea and what we think is a good fit idea wise and platform wise.

L: Are you looking to simultaneously release the Switch versions of future games at the same time as their platform counterparts?

PH: That’s always our preference but in the case of Skyrim and DOOM, well, that wasn’t possible. In the case of Wolfenstein II, we needed the extra time and there was no way we were going to hold the other platforms to wait for Switch. From my perspective, any time we can bring it out on the Switch at the exact same time as the other platforms for new releases, I don’t know why we wouldn’t.

L: You’re showing a couple free-to-play games here today with The Elder Scrolls: Legends and Quake Champions. Are you thinking of bringing those to Switch?

PH:  will tell you just regardless of the fee structure or how you buy them or don’t buy them, that we are looking at all things. Anything and everything.

Now in the case of Quake Champions, that’s a game that runs at 120hz on a PC only. This isn’t a, “Why isn’t it on a Switch?” because it’s not on anything but a PC. That’s what it requires. But for literally anything else, we are considering everything. We have literally been talking to Nintendo all the time about what our plans are and what they think and what their plans are. We are leaving no stone unturned.

L: The thing I’ve been very interested in with Bethesda the past year specifically is that you’ve been so outspoken about single-player games, most notably with what you showed off at The Game Awards. How has this focus affected your business, though? We’re seeing all of these other third-party publishers starting to go to this “games as a service” model, whereas you guys continue to double down on the single-player games. Is this something that has impacted your business and will you need to reevaluate what you’re doing?

PH: I think the answer to your question is that we continue to look at games of all types. Just like we look at Switch, we look at what it is our devs want to make, what’s the kind of experience they want to provide, and what do we think is a good fit for which audience.

We’re talking about how other publishers are focusing on games as a service and we’re doing single-player. Well, except if you look behind you [motions to the demo room] and everything in there with the exception of Wolfenstein is a game as a service. The Elder Scrolls: Online has the best year its ever had last year, multiple years after its release. We do those kinds of games too, we just tend to be, I don’t know, more of a flag bearer for the single-player games because it’s something that we’re willing to do and we enjoy.

Ultimately, where that stuff goes going forward is apart of conversations with our devs and the kind of stuff that they want to make. And if that next thing is a single-player game – cool. And if it’s a co-op thing or a multiplayer thing – also cool. The last year has been a lot of primarily single-player releases but, you know, we did DOOM which had both co-op and multiplayer and we’ve done other stuff. I think it was just more the combination of the stuff that we released – Dishonored 2 into Prey into The Evil Within 2 into Wolfenstein II –juxtaposed with everyone else’s stuff which was not a ton of single-player stuff at all. A lot of it comes from that.

And the TGA’s honestly was, in part, our sort of poking fun at the whole thing. It’s slightly ridiculous because there’s nothing wrong with single-player games — they’re just fine. Fallout Shelter is a single-player game and its got a hundred-and-whatever million downloads. Single-player means an awful lot of stuff and we’re going to continue to make whatever versions of everything that we do that kind of excites us and excites our devs.

L: I think it’s easy to lose track of Fallout Shelter and even The Elder Scrolls: Online because, like you said, that game’s been out forever at this point but it still does incredibly well for you guys. Meanwhile, I just look at the short-term and your 2017 and I mean, Prey, Wolfenstein II, and The Evil Within 2, I see them come out and they don’t chart extremely high on NPD. I guess I just get a little worried for you guys because of that.

PH: I don’t think you need to worry about us. We’re doing fine. All along the way, a year ago, two years ago, five years ago, we’ve been having conversations about what the kind of games our studios are going to make and what are they going to focus on. It’s not like within the last year its given us some life-changing information. We’re constantly evolving and changing.

We didn’t use to do Switch stuff and now we did. It wasn’t because we knew how great the Switch was going to sell by the end of the year, we just thought, “That’s a really cool device and we can do the following things on it.” So yeah, to hell with it, we do it and then the Switch sells great and we look really smart. But that’s just part of our DNA. Not just to be constantly looking at what next year looks like but these things take years and years and you need to be thinking way ahead of time about what you’re going to release three years, four years, five years ahead of time.

L: So let’s look ahead then. It seems like your latter half of the year is kind of empty right now.

PH: It does seem like that.

L: Will that be changing in the next few months? Particularly in a time around June?

PH: I couldn’t give you any guesses as to what we’re going to announce and when those games will be out. But I will say, we have a lot of new stuff to talk about at E3. Whether or not folks realize it, this is the hell on Earth time for us with E3. We are in the midst of so much planning and work for all of that content but I’m really excited.

I think we have a lot of stuff that folks are going to like. To my earlier comment, it’s going to be a big mix of stuff that’s all over the place. It’s not going to be like all [one] kind of game or genre. It’s going to be a lot of stuff in a lot of different areas and hopefully, there’s something in there for everybody.

L: Can you tease if we will hear anything from Bethesda Game Studios?

PH: I cannot.

L: Of course you can’t, but I have to ask. Last thing I wanted to ask you about: Arkane has been tweeting a lot regarding Prey lately. Do you have anything to say about that? Will we be hearing from them soon?

PH: Yes, I do have something to say – that game is awesome. I actually just finished it like a week ago tomorrow. For whatever reason, it came out, E3 hell, and so I played some of it but I didn’t finish it. I realized like the other day that I never actually finished it at home. So I went through and I spent the time – I think I ended up putting in like 33-34 hours – and I played through a couple of other versions of the end because I kind of wanted to try some different things and man, that game so good. I had legitimately forgotten just how good that game was. It is criminally underrated for how good it was and granted, you look at the games of last year — Zelda, Mario, Horizon Zero Dawn. There’s a ton of stuff that’s amazing but that game is really, really, really good and didn’t get the credit.

As with a lot of stuff, we’re not a massive publisher that just churns out a ton of titles. We never have been. We really stick with our stuff after it launches, as we have with Prey.

Part of what you’ve probably noticed is that we’ve hired a new community manager, who’s been focused on Prey. She’s been awesome and has been doing a lot of fun stuff around April Fools’ and other things.

But yeah, I don’t think you’ve heard the last of Prey. I just couldn’t tell you precisely when you might hear more.

[gamingtipsandtrickshacks]

Bethesda Interview -- Pete Hines Talks Nintendo Switch, Single-Player Games, and Plans for E3 2018

For some time now, Pete Hines has been the face of Bethesda Softworks, one of gaming’s biggest third-party publishers. If you’ve been familiar with Bethesda in any capacity or have watched any of the company’s E3 presentations the past few years, you’ve likely been exposed to Hines and his straight-shooting, down-to-Earth attitude.

During PAX East this past weekend, we were able to set aside some time to talk to Hines at Bethesda Gameplay Day, an event that highlighted The Elder Scrolls: Online, Quake Champions, The Elder Scrolls: Legends, and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus for Nintendo Switch. We asked Pete about his early thoughts on the Switch as well as looking ahead to what Bethesda could have planned for the latter half of 2018.

Logan: You guys have been doing a few things with Switch now between Skyrim, DOOM, and Wolfenstein II. How are you viewing the console internally at this point?

Pete Hines: We love it. We’re fans of it which is why we wanted to bring those games to the platform and we don’t want those to be the only one that we bring. We’re continuing to look at it for all of the stuff we might be able to do on Switch.

L: Is it a system you can’t afford to ignore at this point since it sold over 14 million units in a year?

PH: I don’t know about “can’t”, but we don’t want to.

L: Moving forward with that device, are you looking to bring more games that you’ve already released to Switch?

PH: It’ll just depend. It’ll depend on whether or not we think the game is a good fit for the platform technically and whether we think it’s something that audience wants on Switch. In that way, it’s literally no different than any other platform that we look at or any other game that we do. Hopefully, it’ll be a mix of both. If there’s stuff that folks want us to release on Switch and it’s a good fit and it works – great. If it’s new stuff going forward that we think is a good fit and will work on Switch, then we’ll do that too.

L: Would you ever consider maybe developing a single product for the Switch similar to what Ubisoft did with Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle?

PH: I don’t know, we’ll have to see. All of that stuff always comes down to the devs’ idea and what we think is a good fit idea wise and platform wise.

L: Are you looking to simultaneously release the Switch versions of future games at the same time as their platform counterparts?

PH: That’s always our preference but in the case of Skyrim and DOOM, well, that wasn’t possible. In the case of Wolfenstein II, we needed the extra time and there was no way we were going to hold the other platforms to wait for Switch. From my perspective, any time we can bring it out on the Switch at the exact same time as the other platforms for new releases, I don’t know why we wouldn’t.

L: You’re showing a couple free-to-play games here today with The Elder Scrolls: Legends and Quake Champions. Are you thinking of bringing those to Switch?

PH:  will tell you just regardless of the fee structure or how you buy them or don’t buy them, that we are looking at all things. Anything and everything.

Now in the case of Quake Champions, that’s a game that runs at 120hz on a PC only. This isn’t a, “Why isn’t it on a Switch?” because it’s not on anything but a PC. That’s what it requires. But for literally anything else, we are considering everything. We have literally been talking to Nintendo all the time about what our plans are and what they think and what their plans are. We are leaving no stone unturned.

L: The thing I’ve been very interested in with Bethesda the past year specifically is that you’ve been so outspoken about single-player games, most notably with what you showed off at The Game Awards. How has this focus affected your business, though? We’re seeing all of these other third-party publishers starting to go to this “games as a service” model, whereas you guys continue to double down on the single-player games. Is this something that has impacted your business and will you need to reevaluate what you’re doing?

PH: I think the answer to your question is that we continue to look at games of all types. Just like we look at Switch, we look at what it is our devs want to make, what’s the kind of experience they want to provide, and what do we think is a good fit for which audience.

We’re talking about how other publishers are focusing on games as a service and we’re doing single-player. Well, except if you look behind you [motions to the demo room] and everything in there with the exception of Wolfenstein is a game as a service. The Elder Scrolls: Online has the best year its ever had last year, multiple years after its release. We do those kinds of games too, we just tend to be, I don’t know, more of a flag bearer for the single-player games because it’s something that we’re willing to do and we enjoy.

Ultimately, where that stuff goes going forward is apart of conversations with our devs and the kind of stuff that they want to make. And if that next thing is a single-player game – cool. And if it’s a co-op thing or a multiplayer thing – also cool. The last year has been a lot of primarily single-player releases but, you know, we did DOOM which had both co-op and multiplayer and we’ve done other stuff. I think it was just more the combination of the stuff that we released – Dishonored 2 into Prey into The Evil Within 2 into Wolfenstein II –juxtaposed with everyone else’s stuff which was not a ton of single-player stuff at all. A lot of it comes from that.

And the TGA’s honestly was, in part, our sort of poking fun at the whole thing. It’s slightly ridiculous because there’s nothing wrong with single-player games — they’re just fine. Fallout Shelter is a single-player game and its got a hundred-and-whatever million downloads. Single-player means an awful lot of stuff and we’re going to continue to make whatever versions of everything that we do that kind of excites us and excites our devs.

L: I think it’s easy to lose track of Fallout Shelter and even The Elder Scrolls: Online because, like you said, that game’s been out forever at this point but it still does incredibly well for you guys. Meanwhile, I just look at the short-term and your 2017 and I mean, Prey, Wolfenstein II, and The Evil Within 2, I see them come out and they don’t chart extremely high on NPD. I guess I just get a little worried for you guys because of that.

PH: I don’t think you need to worry about us. We’re doing fine. All along the way, a year ago, two years ago, five years ago, we’ve been having conversations about what the kind of games our studios are going to make and what are they going to focus on. It’s not like within the last year its given us some life-changing information. We’re constantly evolving and changing.

We didn’t use to do Switch stuff and now we did. It wasn’t because we knew how great the Switch was going to sell by the end of the year, we just thought, “That’s a really cool device and we can do the following things on it.” So yeah, to hell with it, we do it and then the Switch sells great and we look really smart. But that’s just part of our DNA. Not just to be constantly looking at what next year looks like but these things take years and years and you need to be thinking way ahead of time about what you’re going to release three years, four years, five years ahead of time.

L: So let’s look ahead then. It seems like your latter half of the year is kind of empty right now.

PH: It does seem like that.

L: Will that be changing in the next few months? Particularly in a time around June?

PH: I couldn’t give you any guesses as to what we’re going to announce and when those games will be out. But I will say, we have a lot of new stuff to talk about at E3. Whether or not folks realize it, this is the hell on Earth time for us with E3. We are in the midst of so much planning and work for all of that content but I’m really excited.

I think we have a lot of stuff that folks are going to like. To my earlier comment, it’s going to be a big mix of stuff that’s all over the place. It’s not going to be like all [one] kind of game or genre. It’s going to be a lot of stuff in a lot of different areas and hopefully, there’s something in there for everybody.

L: Can you tease if we will hear anything from Bethesda Game Studios?

PH: I cannot.

L: Of course you can’t, but I have to ask. Last thing I wanted to ask you about: Arkane has been tweeting a lot regarding Prey lately. Do you have anything to say about that? Will we be hearing from them soon?

PH: Yes, I do have something to say – that game is awesome. I actually just finished it like a week ago tomorrow. For whatever reason, it came out, E3 hell, and so I played some of it but I didn’t finish it. I realized like the other day that I never actually finished it at home. So I went through and I spent the time – I think I ended up putting in like 33-34 hours – and I played through a couple of other versions of the end because I kind of wanted to try some different things and man, that game so good. I had legitimately forgotten just how good that game was. It is criminally underrated for how good it was and granted, you look at the games of last year — Zelda, Mario, Horizon Zero Dawn. There’s a ton of stuff that’s amazing but that game is really, really, really good and didn’t get the credit.

As with a lot of stuff, we’re not a massive publisher that just churns out a ton of titles. We never have been. We really stick with our stuff after it launches, as we have with Prey.

Part of what you’ve probably noticed is that we’ve hired a new community manager, who’s been focused on Prey. She’s been awesome and has been doing a lot of fun stuff around April Fools’ and other things.

But yeah, I don’t think you’ve heard the last of Prey. I just couldn’t tell you precisely when you might hear more.

[gamingtipsandtrickshacks]

Bethesda Interview -- Pete Hines Talks Nintendo Switch, Single-Player Games, and Plans for E3 2018

For some time now, Pete Hines has been the face of Bethesda Softworks, one of gaming’s biggest third-party publishers. If you’ve been familiar with Bethesda in any capacity or have watched any of the company’s E3 presentations the past few years, you’ve likely been exposed to Hines and his straight-shooting, down-to-Earth attitude.

During PAX East this past weekend, we were able to set aside some time to talk to Hines at Bethesda Gameplay Day, an event that highlighted The Elder Scrolls: Online, Quake Champions, The Elder Scrolls: Legends, and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus for Nintendo Switch. We asked Pete about his early thoughts on the Switch as well as looking ahead to what Bethesda could have planned for the latter half of 2018.

Logan: You guys have been doing a few things with Switch now between Skyrim, DOOM, and Wolfenstein II. How are you viewing the console internally at this point?

Pete Hines: We love it. We’re fans of it which is why we wanted to bring those games to the platform and we don’t want those to be the only one that we bring. We’re continuing to look at it for all of the stuff we might be able to do on Switch.

L: Is it a system you can’t afford to ignore at this point since it sold over 14 million units in a year?

PH: I don’t know about “can’t”, but we don’t want to.

L: Moving forward with that device, are you looking to bring more games that you’ve already released to Switch?

PH: It’ll just depend. It’ll depend on whether or not we think the game is a good fit for the platform technically and whether we think it’s something that audience wants on Switch. In that way, it’s literally no different than any other platform that we look at or any other game that we do. Hopefully, it’ll be a mix of both. If there’s stuff that folks want us to release on Switch and it’s a good fit and it works – great. If it’s new stuff going forward that we think is a good fit and will work on Switch, then we’ll do that too.

L: Would you ever consider maybe developing a single product for the Switch similar to what Ubisoft did with Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle?

PH: I don’t know, we’ll have to see. All of that stuff always comes down to the devs’ idea and what we think is a good fit idea wise and platform wise.

L: Are you looking to simultaneously release the Switch versions of future games at the same time as their platform counterparts?

PH: That’s always our preference but in the case of Skyrim and DOOM, well, that wasn’t possible. In the case of Wolfenstein II, we needed the extra time and there was no way we were going to hold the other platforms to wait for Switch. From my perspective, any time we can bring it out on the Switch at the exact same time as the other platforms for new releases, I don’t know why we wouldn’t.

L: You’re showing a couple free-to-play games here today with The Elder Scrolls: Legends and Quake Champions. Are you thinking of bringing those to Switch?

PH:  will tell you just regardless of the fee structure or how you buy them or don’t buy them, that we are looking at all things. Anything and everything.

Now in the case of Quake Champions, that’s a game that runs at 120hz on a PC only. This isn’t a, “Why isn’t it on a Switch?” because it’s not on anything but a PC. That’s what it requires. But for literally anything else, we are considering everything. We have literally been talking to Nintendo all the time about what our plans are and what they think and what their plans are. We are leaving no stone unturned.

L: The thing I’ve been very interested in with Bethesda the past year specifically is that you’ve been so outspoken about single-player games, most notably with what you showed off at The Game Awards. How has this focus affected your business, though? We’re seeing all of these other third-party publishers starting to go to this “games as a service” model, whereas you guys continue to double down on the single-player games. Is this something that has impacted your business and will you need to reevaluate what you’re doing?

PH: I think the answer to your question is that we continue to look at games of all types. Just like we look at Switch, we look at what it is our devs want to make, what’s the kind of experience they want to provide, and what do we think is a good fit for which audience.

We’re talking about how other publishers are focusing on games as a service and we’re doing single-player. Well, except if you look behind you [motions to the demo room] and everything in there with the exception of Wolfenstein is a game as a service. The Elder Scrolls: Online has the best year its ever had last year, multiple years after its release. We do those kinds of games too, we just tend to be, I don’t know, more of a flag bearer for the single-player games because it’s something that we’re willing to do and we enjoy.

Ultimately, where that stuff goes going forward is apart of conversations with our devs and the kind of stuff that they want to make. And if that next thing is a single-player game – cool. And if it’s a co-op thing or a multiplayer thing – also cool. The last year has been a lot of primarily single-player releases but, you know, we did DOOM which had both co-op and multiplayer and we’ve done other stuff. I think it was just more the combination of the stuff that we released – Dishonored 2 into Prey into The Evil Within 2 into Wolfenstein II –juxtaposed with everyone else’s stuff which was not a ton of single-player stuff at all. A lot of it comes from that.

And the TGA’s honestly was, in part, our sort of poking fun at the whole thing. It’s slightly ridiculous because there’s nothing wrong with single-player games — they’re just fine. Fallout Shelter is a single-player game and its got a hundred-and-whatever million downloads. Single-player means an awful lot of stuff and we’re going to continue to make whatever versions of everything that we do that kind of excites us and excites our devs.

L: I think it’s easy to lose track of Fallout Shelter and even The Elder Scrolls: Online because, like you said, that game’s been out forever at this point but it still does incredibly well for you guys. Meanwhile, I just look at the short-term and your 2017 and I mean, Prey, Wolfenstein II, and The Evil Within 2, I see them come out and they don’t chart extremely high on NPD. I guess I just get a little worried for you guys because of that.

PH: I don’t think you need to worry about us. We’re doing fine. All along the way, a year ago, two years ago, five years ago, we’ve been having conversations about what the kind of games our studios are going to make and what are they going to focus on. It’s not like within the last year its given us some life-changing information. We’re constantly evolving and changing.

We didn’t use to do Switch stuff and now we did. It wasn’t because we knew how great the Switch was going to sell by the end of the year, we just thought, “That’s a really cool device and we can do the following things on it.” So yeah, to hell with it, we do it and then the Switch sells great and we look really smart. But that’s just part of our DNA. Not just to be constantly looking at what next year looks like but these things take years and years and you need to be thinking way ahead of time about what you’re going to release three years, four years, five years ahead of time.

L: So let’s look ahead then. It seems like your latter half of the year is kind of empty right now.

PH: It does seem like that.

L: Will that be changing in the next few months? Particularly in a time around June?

PH: I couldn’t give you any guesses as to what we’re going to announce and when those games will be out. But I will say, we have a lot of new stuff to talk about at E3. Whether or not folks realize it, this is the hell on Earth time for us with E3. We are in the midst of so much planning and work for all of that content but I’m really excited.

I think we have a lot of stuff that folks are going to like. To my earlier comment, it’s going to be a big mix of stuff that’s all over the place. It’s not going to be like all [one] kind of game or genre. It’s going to be a lot of stuff in a lot of different areas and hopefully, there’s something in there for everybody.

L: Can you tease if we will hear anything from Bethesda Game Studios?

PH: I cannot.

L: Of course you can’t, but I have to ask. Last thing I wanted to ask you about: Arkane has been tweeting a lot regarding Prey lately. Do you have anything to say about that? Will we be hearing from them soon?

PH: Yes, I do have something to say – that game is awesome. I actually just finished it like a week ago tomorrow. For whatever reason, it came out, E3 hell, and so I played some of it but I didn’t finish it. I realized like the other day that I never actually finished it at home. So I went through and I spent the time – I think I ended up putting in like 33-34 hours – and I played through a couple of other versions of the end because I kind of wanted to try some different things and man, that game so good. I had legitimately forgotten just how good that game was. It is criminally underrated for how good it was and granted, you look at the games of last year — Zelda, Mario, Horizon Zero Dawn. There’s a ton of stuff that’s amazing but that game is really, really, really good and didn’t get the credit.

As with a lot of stuff, we’re not a massive publisher that just churns out a ton of titles. We never have been. We really stick with our stuff after it launches, as we have with Prey.

Part of what you’ve probably noticed is that we’ve hired a new community manager, who’s been focused on Prey. She’s been awesome and has been doing a lot of fun stuff around April Fools’ and other things.

But yeah, I don’t think you’ve heard the last of Prey. I just couldn’t tell you precisely when you might hear more.

[gamingtipsandtrickshacks]

Bethesda Interview -- Pete Hines Talks Nintendo Switch, Single-Player Games, and Plans for E3 2018

For some time now, Pete Hines has been the face of Bethesda Softworks, one of gaming’s biggest third-party publishers. If you’ve been familiar with Bethesda in any capacity or have watched any of the company’s E3 presentations the past few years, you’ve likely been exposed to Hines and his straight-shooting, down-to-Earth attitude.

During PAX East this past weekend, we were able to set aside some time to talk to Hines at Bethesda Gameplay Day, an event that highlighted The Elder Scrolls: Online, Quake Champions, The Elder Scrolls: Legends, and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus for Nintendo Switch. We asked Pete about his early thoughts on the Switch as well as looking ahead to what Bethesda could have planned for the latter half of 2018.

Logan: You guys have been doing a few things with Switch now between Skyrim, DOOM, and Wolfenstein II. How are you viewing the console internally at this point?

Pete Hines: We love it. We’re fans of it which is why we wanted to bring those games to the platform and we don’t want those to be the only one that we bring. We’re continuing to look at it for all of the stuff we might be able to do on Switch.

L: Is it a system you can’t afford to ignore at this point since it sold over 14 million units in a year?

PH: I don’t know about “can’t”, but we don’t want to.

L: Moving forward with that device, are you looking to bring more games that you’ve already released to Switch?

PH: It’ll just depend. It’ll depend on whether or not we think the game is a good fit for the platform technically and whether we think it’s something that audience wants on Switch. In that way, it’s literally no different than any other platform that we look at or any other game that we do. Hopefully, it’ll be a mix of both. If there’s stuff that folks want us to release on Switch and it’s a good fit and it works – great. If it’s new stuff going forward that we think is a good fit and will work on Switch, then we’ll do that too.

L: Would you ever consider maybe developing a single product for the Switch similar to what Ubisoft did with Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle?

PH: I don’t know, we’ll have to see. All of that stuff always comes down to the devs’ idea and what we think is a good fit idea wise and platform wise.

L: Are you looking to simultaneously release the Switch versions of future games at the same time as their platform counterparts?

PH: That’s always our preference but in the case of Skyrim and DOOM, well, that wasn’t possible. In the case of Wolfenstein II, we needed the extra time and there was no way we were going to hold the other platforms to wait for Switch. From my perspective, any time we can bring it out on the Switch at the exact same time as the other platforms for new releases, I don’t know why we wouldn’t.

L: You’re showing a couple free-to-play games here today with The Elder Scrolls: Legends and Quake Champions. Are you thinking of bringing those to Switch?

PH:  will tell you just regardless of the fee structure or how you buy them or don’t buy them, that we are looking at all things. Anything and everything.

Now in the case of Quake Champions, that’s a game that runs at 120hz on a PC only. This isn’t a, “Why isn’t it on a Switch?” because it’s not on anything but a PC. That’s what it requires. But for literally anything else, we are considering everything. We have literally been talking to Nintendo all the time about what our plans are and what they think and what their plans are. We are leaving no stone unturned.

L: The thing I’ve been very interested in with Bethesda the past year specifically is that you’ve been so outspoken about single-player games, most notably with what you showed off at The Game Awards. How has this focus affected your business, though? We’re seeing all of these other third-party publishers starting to go to this “games as a service” model, whereas you guys continue to double down on the single-player games. Is this something that has impacted your business and will you need to reevaluate what you’re doing?

PH: I think the answer to your question is that we continue to look at games of all types. Just like we look at Switch, we look at what it is our devs want to make, what’s the kind of experience they want to provide, and what do we think is a good fit for which audience.

We’re talking about how other publishers are focusing on games as a service and we’re doing single-player. Well, except if you look behind you [motions to the demo room] and everything in there with the exception of Wolfenstein is a game as a service. The Elder Scrolls: Online has the best year its ever had last year, multiple years after its release. We do those kinds of games too, we just tend to be, I don’t know, more of a flag bearer for the single-player games because it’s something that we’re willing to do and we enjoy.

Ultimately, where that stuff goes going forward is apart of conversations with our devs and the kind of stuff that they want to make. And if that next thing is a single-player game – cool. And if it’s a co-op thing or a multiplayer thing – also cool. The last year has been a lot of primarily single-player releases but, you know, we did DOOM which had both co-op and multiplayer and we’ve done other stuff. I think it was just more the combination of the stuff that we released – Dishonored 2 into Prey into The Evil Within 2 into Wolfenstein II –juxtaposed with everyone else’s stuff which was not a ton of single-player stuff at all. A lot of it comes from that.

And the TGA’s honestly was, in part, our sort of poking fun at the whole thing. It’s slightly ridiculous because there’s nothing wrong with single-player games — they’re just fine. Fallout Shelter is a single-player game and its got a hundred-and-whatever million downloads. Single-player means an awful lot of stuff and we’re going to continue to make whatever versions of everything that we do that kind of excites us and excites our devs.

L: I think it’s easy to lose track of Fallout Shelter and even The Elder Scrolls: Online because, like you said, that game’s been out forever at this point but it still does incredibly well for you guys. Meanwhile, I just look at the short-term and your 2017 and I mean, Prey, Wolfenstein II, and The Evil Within 2, I see them come out and they don’t chart extremely high on NPD. I guess I just get a little worried for you guys because of that.

PH: I don’t think you need to worry about us. We’re doing fine. All along the way, a year ago, two years ago, five years ago, we’ve been having conversations about what the kind of games our studios are going to make and what are they going to focus on. It’s not like within the last year its given us some life-changing information. We’re constantly evolving and changing.

We didn’t use to do Switch stuff and now we did. It wasn’t because we knew how great the Switch was going to sell by the end of the year, we just thought, “That’s a really cool device and we can do the following things on it.” So yeah, to hell with it, we do it and then the Switch sells great and we look really smart. But that’s just part of our DNA. Not just to be constantly looking at what next year looks like but these things take years and years and you need to be thinking way ahead of time about what you’re going to release three years, four years, five years ahead of time.

L: So let’s look ahead then. It seems like your latter half of the year is kind of empty right now.

PH: It does seem like that.

L: Will that be changing in the next few months? Particularly in a time around June?

PH: I couldn’t give you any guesses as to what we’re going to announce and when those games will be out. But I will say, we have a lot of new stuff to talk about at E3. Whether or not folks realize it, this is the hell on Earth time for us with E3. We are in the midst of so much planning and work for all of that content but I’m really excited.

I think we have a lot of stuff that folks are going to like. To my earlier comment, it’s going to be a big mix of stuff that’s all over the place. It’s not going to be like all [one] kind of game or genre. It’s going to be a lot of stuff in a lot of different areas and hopefully, there’s something in there for everybody.

L: Can you tease if we will hear anything from Bethesda Game Studios?

PH: I cannot.

L: Of course you can’t, but I have to ask. Last thing I wanted to ask you about: Arkane has been tweeting a lot regarding Prey lately. Do you have anything to say about that? Will we be hearing from them soon?

PH: Yes, I do have something to say – that game is awesome. I actually just finished it like a week ago tomorrow. For whatever reason, it came out, E3 hell, and so I played some of it but I didn’t finish it. I realized like the other day that I never actually finished it at home. So I went through and I spent the time – I think I ended up putting in like 33-34 hours – and I played through a couple of other versions of the end because I kind of wanted to try some different things and man, that game so good. I had legitimately forgotten just how good that game was. It is criminally underrated for how good it was and granted, you look at the games of last year — Zelda, Mario, Horizon Zero Dawn. There’s a ton of stuff that’s amazing but that game is really, really, really good and didn’t get the credit.

As with a lot of stuff, we’re not a massive publisher that just churns out a ton of titles. We never have been. We really stick with our stuff after it launches, as we have with Prey.

Part of what you’ve probably noticed is that we’ve hired a new community manager, who’s been focused on Prey. She’s been awesome and has been doing a lot of fun stuff around April Fools’ and other things.

But yeah, I don’t think you’ve heard the last of Prey. I just couldn’t tell you precisely when you might hear more.