I mean, I don't know what to tell you, after Fallout 76 and Starfield I'd say expectations are well and truly tempered.
I don't want to appear dismissive, the bar for triple A RPGs is insane, but it's been long enough that I think meeting the scope of the few good Bethesda ones that everyone remembers would very much satisfy people, at least if they looked good and played well, which would be a Bethesda first.
"Normal" is very much not the word I'd use.
I'd say it's a psychological horror thing with a side of body horror. It doesn't focus more on combat than Eternal Darkness does, honestly, and it's certainly a lot more straight-up gory and gross. But it's definitely not a B-movie riff in the vein of Resident Evil, at least narratively, it just mostly plays like it.
The new remake is coming soon. People are a bit worried about execution on that, but if they don't botch it may be a good place to start with it.
Admittedly it's WAY easier to operate a motor boat than a sail boat, so depending on how you like to recreationally bleed your unlimited money I can see reasons for that choice.
But I fully agree that we've had renewable energy-based ships with unlimited range for millenia. The claim that "The aim was to demonstrate that zero-emission sea travel [is possible today]" broke my brain a little.
I know this became a bit of a cult classic, but I played it at the time (still have my original copy) and I'm a lot more lukewarm on it.
It does have some neat ideas on paper, but most of the sanity gimmicks are pretty flat and both the story and the visuals at the time weren't spectacular in a world where people had played Silent Hill 2 the previous year. The anthology setting at least keeps the narrative episodic and self-contained enough to avoid it dragging too much, because the constantly monologuing protagonists would not be able to carry a full game without some variation.
It's not terrible. As a spiritual successor to Alone in the Dark you could do worse (and we all have since), but it's a bit of a curio, not a timeless classic. Good to check out, but I wouldn't feel too guilty if you don't click with it after getting through the prologue and the first episode, because that's how it keeps going until the end.
Oh, and it IS covered by Retroachievements.org's fancy new Dolphin support, so if you want to check it out or revisit it on emulation that's a fun twist.
Honestly, I can only speak for myself, but 7R felt actively bad to play to me. Them trying to split the difference between a turn based RPG and an action game just made everything feel weird and slow, the way animation priority works on it is super unsatisfying and I really don't click with how a lot of it is paced. Plus it's been ages since anyone made a proper spectacle-focused turn-based RPG, and this was a missed opportunity, honestly. Persona looks stylish and great, but it's not going for the same thing.
That, as a result, made me not want to jump into the sequel, because I never finished the original and people were telling me they play the same.
XVI is a bit of a different beast, I just wasn't in a hurry to play it because... yay another action RPG form Square that probably doesn't play great, but I did want to check it out, so I waited for the PC port that just came out and got that. Still haven't gotten into it. I hope it's good. It seems to be doing fine on Steam, but it also looks extremely expensive to make, so if they say it didn't work I believe them, I suppose.
So the gimmick in the 7 remakes is that they aren't a remake at all, they are a weird alternate reality spin-off thing that revisits the same characters and locations. I mean, mild spoilers for a four year old game you haven't played at least partially because you didn't know this.
The way they presented this was very weird and they tried to split the difference between still saying it's all a remake but then hinting at it not being a remake sometimes slightly.
My biggest problem with these is that combat feels laggy and weird and I would much prefer a proper turn based RPG in the first place, but seeing the comments here is a bit of an eye opener about how it was all perceived.
"If they haven't" makes me thing you aren't considering it particularly hard, since 7R has been out for a good while on PC and XVI just came out.
If anything this thread tells me Square maybe isn't great at marketing, or at least at making games that seem appealing to people not keeping tabs on gaming news proactively.
Right, but now you're giving me arguments for using original hardware, not for modifying it.
See, that's the part that loses me. I use original hardware all the time, I have tons of original hardware and software for a whole bunch of platforms, including ones that are trivial to run in cycle-accurate emulators and FPGA reproductions. All good there. I even have some flashcarts and softmods to allow cross-region usage or to consolidate libraries. No problem with that.
But that is based on using the original hardware, unmodified. Once you start gutting it for mods then you're working against your argument that complexities and sublteties of original hardware are important. I mean, yeah, I do care to at least have a way to go back to sanity check the sublte ways in which original hardware parses the code in a rom. But for that same reason I want to see how the default composite or RF signal subtly interacts with that output and with a period-accurate CRT display. I want to hear the CD spinning when it's supposed to spin and the original loading times.
To be clear, I think this is just a case mod, but I'm talking about the modding scene more generally. I don't see why you would think "total accuracy" is important in the interaction between the CPU, VDUs and RAM but not on the I/O. Wouldn't the CD drive and the video signal be part of "total accuracy"? Wouldn't the form factor of the shell and the controllers be a part of that accurate experience as well? If you push me I'd even say I consider a MiSTer FPGA solution with a correct analogue out signal and an original controller feeding into a CRT is far more accurate to the original NES than the original Analogue NT that was made from gutted NES parts, or even than an original console pushed through an HDMI scaler or mod.
I guess there is no accounting for taste, but I do struggle to follow the logic where running the original CPU and video chips on completely different I/O is justified by trying to maximize for accuracy.
Okay, but you can do that with a softmod or a flash cart on the Saturn, too. You don't need to rip out its guts to transplant them to a different case. Even if you had a Saturn with a faulty drive you can add a ODE solution without having to sacrifice the original form factor.
Plus, yeah, Saturn emulation is harder and less accurate than other systems, but we're pretty much there these days for most of the stuff you want to play. You can do all sorts of cool cases and consolized devices to play old games these days, why break apart an original Saturn for that?
Let me agree with you explicitly on loving the return to a sane power configuration here. I was watching Hardware Unboxed's retest of this after the patches and it takes almost fifteen minutes of them reiterating that the 9700X and the 14700K are tied for performance and price before they even mention the bombshell that the 9700X is doing that with about half the wattage.
The fact that we keep pushing reviews and benchmarks focused strictly on pedal-to-the-metal overclocked performance and nothing else is such a disgrace. I made the mistake to buy into a 13700K and I have it under lower than out of box power limits manually both to prevent longevity issues and because this damn computer is more effective as a hair dryer than anything else.
We don't mention it much because Intel was in the process of catching on actual fire at the same time, but the way this generation has been marketed, presented to reviewers, supported and eventually reviewed has been a massive trainwreck, considering the performance of the actual product.
Okay, people will likely bash me for this hot take, and if this is for you feel free to enjoy it, but...
...why do this instead of using a FPGA or emulation-based solution?
If you don't want to run original media or don't want to output original video out signals, why bother to use original hardware at all? I can see it as a way to upcycle heavily damaged Saturn units, but there aren't that many of these in the wild in the first place, why dismantle an existing piece to make what is effectively a completely different product? I don't see the point.
Hah. Your bar for "super rich" and mine may be in different places.
And you're preaching to the choir, I'd much rather sail myself. But nerding out about the specifics aside, it's very weird to leave it out of the renewable-powered sea travel conversation the way these guys are doing.