@PrpleTrtleBuBum: I agree - there is the excuse factor. What really troubles me is delay after delay and still no further along in bugfixes. So yes, while there is the observation that games are more complex. I do agree that they have skimped on testing.
It's like they build games for 2025, but still test as if it were 2005.
Keep in mind, it's 3 games getting patched together, so it's not that bad. Also didn't Call of Duty and DOOM get like 40/60+ GB patches? So, this is nothing.
Also, I'm surprised there are some people still complaining about day 0 patching as if it were a bad thing? I mean from the time a developer submits their game for review and the day the game shows up on the storefront - it's like 3 months. In that time are they just sitting, twiddling their thumbs? No! Developers have found a way to work on the game more and do more bug fixing during that time. It's free real estate.
That said, games do seem to release with far more bugs these days, don't they? I think it has to do with the complexities of the tools and game engines. Older games may have had less bugs, but they were limited in scope. We have physics, mocap, terrain, mesh culling, asset streaming, and a whole host of dynamic systems coming together than we've had in the past. The interplay of these systems affect a lot more "unknown unknowns" than what developers have had to deal with in the past.
Take the classic Skyrim "giant smash player sending them flying" bug. If the developers had known exactly how the physics system interplays with terrain collision and inverse kinematics, they could have prevented that. But that's just it - Skyrim and many more games since then have been built with middleware, or third party systems. Think of really old games, it's likely the developers coded everything from the physics engine to the sound subsystems, by hand, by themselves, and everything in between. They used to have far more control and native knowledge of every facet of code they wrote.
These days, debugging is less logical and more 'whack a mole', because it's impossible to handle the zillions of integration tests between different third party systems.
I think a true stealth game genre is kinda dead. I would love to see a remake of Splinter Cell 1, though. But I don't want them to do the 'reimagined' as a stealth action RPG... Like why can't they just remake the original gameplay loop? I'd play that; and if it's a faithful remake there wouldn't be fan blowback, I think fans will like that.
@bort118: Both Jedi: Fallen Order and Outer Worlds have crashed on QR :/
How is outriders solo? Is it pretty good solo? I am interested in playing it to scratch that Mass Effect itch, but I prefer narrative games to multiplayer.
One thing I hated about quick resume, unless they fixed it, is games like Skyrim will continue to track hours played while the game is paused in the background. Very quickly I reach nearly a hundred hours on a character. I've gotten into the habit of quitting the game to title. Then, there are games that if I leave in quick resume even on the title screen for a few days, I come back to it completely bugged for a minute until it either sorts itself out or crashes, or I force quit it.
The issue here, is I don't think these are things Microsoft can fix; it's up to the game developers. For instance, it's up to Bethesda to turn of game time tracking when a game is paused in the quick resume queue. But I haven't seen that yet, and so my save files would grow and grow in hours played. It's not a super important statistic, but I like to know how long I've played a character or game and it just muddies it up. Why have time tracking if it's only going to be inaccurate, anyways?
I admire this kind of world building. It's what makes a franchise great. LOTR's story took place over a year or so, but it's history spanned millennia. Same goes for the elder scrolls games, and Forgotten Realms, and yes, Mass Effect. It's amazing.
Also, I hadn't realized until now, that because of the Rachni, the Relay 314 incident kinda made humans the new Rachni. Fortunately we presented more sentient (turns out Rachni Queens can communicate).
Also, I appreciate the fact Salarians age faster than Humans, which means the council understands short lived species better. Had all the council members been ultra-long lived species, they would have treated us more like bugs or ants than as equals.
And I really dig the story about how humans left nukes remaining in Turian space, these kinds of layers add tension and intrigue to what could've been a very hollow history. This is what makes Mass Effect the best game franchises I've ever played. Oh and the whole genophage thing and the Geth uprising. Every species is mired in struggle; but are united in that regard. It's too good. The writing is too good.
The music is also perfect. That droning mystery which captures the haunting mystique of the cosmos. It's breathtaking.
Edit: Which makes it a huge shame they throw all that away in the end. And don't even mention Andomeda. The day-by-day of Andromeda's story, while not bad, didn't have any depth to it without those bits of world building the trilogy received, it's history seemed hollow. Big companies care more about the bottom dollar and eschew the passion of crafting worlds to instead focus on gameplay, multiplayer, and other crap. Like Anthem though, it just becomes, well, 'hollow'.
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