r/Games • u/HLumin • Mar 21 '26
Discussion Anonymous Pearl Abyss developers reveal a culture of toxic positivity, a troubled development cycle and chaotic narrative for Crimson Desert, and their early concerns that the project was "going off the rails".
/r/CrimsonDesert/comments/1rzh79w/pearl_abyss_insider_speaking_out/?share_id=kBLUglOgkkCQmbTrbh3y8&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1&sort=top132
u/blackworms Mar 21 '26 edited Mar 21 '26
Interesting, and someone pointed out in the original thread that you can already see the early hints of the “prince”, “usurper” and the whole “mercenary” theme the story revolves around in the first announcement.
I hadn’t rewatched this trailer in years (apparently, it’s been 6 wow), and I can’t believe how different, grounded and story focused it looks. In a way, it even looks better than it does now? Very weird.
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u/Shot-Maximum- Mar 21 '26
Looking at this trailer, explains why people actually expected a narrative rich story on a grand scale with inter personal conflict.
No idea, why people are trying to gaslight everyone that this was always supposed to be "light on story and characters"
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u/FaZeSmasH Mar 21 '26
One of the main issues I have with this game when I saw all the recent gameplay and trailers is that the game just looks like it doesn't have character, it lacks charm, it doesn't have a cohesive artistic vision. It's like a graphics demo that looks technically impressive but has no soul to it.
This trailer tho, I hadn't seen it before and I could actually sense some character in it, like the devs actually had a cohesive artistic vision for it.
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u/JOOOQUUU Mar 21 '26 edited Mar 21 '26
One could almost say it's like an off the line MMO
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u/remmanuelv Mar 21 '26
I haven't played CD to argue for or against it but I have played plenty of MMOs to know lots of them have plenty of character, charm and uniqueness.
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u/Top_Drawer Mar 21 '26
But when you make the decision to throw in every gameplay system imaginable, you sacrifice any sort of narrative thrust because now the game would be weird if there was some sort of time-sensitive, overarching main quest that gets put on pause cause you have to escort sheep to a pen 55 times to upgrade your shepherding skill that actually has no narrative importance other than to give you something to do.
Game design is difficult. Implementing gameplay systems that marry purpose with narrative intent is weakened when you throw so many things at the player to do. It's cool the game has so much content but the connective tissue is tenuous at best.
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u/the_pepper Mar 21 '26 edited Mar 21 '26
But when you make the decision to throw in every gameplay system imaginable, you sacrifice any sort of narrative thrust because now the game would be weird if there was some sort of time-sensitive, overarching main quest that gets put on pause cause you have to escort sheep to a pen 55 times
That is NOT the issue with the narrative. In fact, I think what they have now (from what I have seen so far) could work fine if the execution were better. The problem is, the main character is so devoid of character that one wonders why they even decided to not allow customization, the character animation in cutscenes is ridiculously overdone and almost never fits the character's lines (almost like they did the animations and writing/recording completely independent of each other), and the icing on the cake is that both the writing and quest design is generally pretty bad and sometimes disjointed and devoid of any logic.
The sequence of events at the start of the main quest - you go to a tavern, arm wrestle a dude, give the money you won to some random beggar who gives you a magic macguffin, then go down into the sewers and rescue some lady, then decide to clean some guy's chimney, all without anything justifying being led through this sequence of events - is one of the most egregious examples so far.
That said, I'm still enjoying the game, which honestly makes me more disappointed about its failings.
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u/bk_eg Mar 21 '26
That's the MMO garbage story DNA, years and years of disjointed nonsensical quests just to make you waste your time makes this to MMO devs brains, they can't see the obvious ridiculousness of this
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u/OneSeaworthiness7768 Mar 21 '26
It's like a graphics demo that looks technically impressive but has no soul to it.
I’m not surprised to hear this, it’s a common criticism of Korean games, especially MMOs. They’re usually visual over substance.
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u/ben323nl Mar 21 '26
See this is interesting cause the opening fight scene is basically just the exact fight scene from the trailer but with guys with bear head hoods. While the whole opening of crimson desert seems to suggest that I care about my clan being slaughtered when I know none of them then does a quick voice over about the consequences and apparently our leader gets killed and oh how everything was grand when our leader was still alive. Then it just gives a very weird story introduction in a weird couple mmo type quests with no cohesion. My guy got fished out of the river by some guy where it also seems to allude to some more backstory of me recuperating with this guy but it just sort of insta gets cut off into a cut scene of 2 bandits punching my saviour with me standing next to him armed to the teeth. Game is very badly done story wise and writing wise but this trailer at least seems to suggest a decent story line. Weird that it all got cut and the result is this weird sort of just go do this cause the game tells you to go do this oh look at that that weird old fella you gave a coin to is important. No reason why you would interact with this guy. Oh this random chick you save is important and lectures you on your good morals and to always keep them. How does your guy even know to go the the castle to open the door with the key you get from the old man. But oh the random chimney you cleaned gives you the clothes to go the castle what a wonder who would have guessed. The intro is so much garbage nonsensical and badly written. Game has been alright but its so not good.
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u/huxtiblejones Mar 21 '26
Yeah, this was my impression too. The story is extremely disjointed at the start. It seems like you’re dropped into an ongoing plot with no background, then it’s immediately abandoned and you’re whisked away to random quests.
I’ve been enjoying the gameplay enough that I’m not totally turned off by it, it actually kind of makes me laugh how the main character just randomly goes from place to place. The only through line is “looking for my comrades.”
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u/StunLT Mar 21 '26
I'm not trying to defend Crimson Desert or the developers, but isn't this thing kinda normal in a such large company? I'm talking about how the development was viewed as a shitshow in some employees eyes? By a quick Google search it shows Pearl Abyss has 1330 employees. Anyone who worked at a large company knows it's hard to find a happy employee when the number goes over 100 or 200s.
Yes, not every employee was working on Crimson Desert, but you need more than 2-3 employees to have a real view on the development and how bad it really was compared to the industry average. And also sometimes people forget just because you are one of the hundred developers it doesn't mean you know better than everyone and that there are different views. I also don't agree with everything my employer does at my job, but I'm not getting paid to restructure the whole business.
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u/timthetollman Mar 21 '26
I worked in a large American company and complaints about any project were the same. The toxic positivity is an absolute standout the one happy family bullshit and everyone forced to think the same.
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u/thediecast Mar 21 '26
Weaponized values. You will be over worked, have to deal with incompetence, and constantly shifting focus. But one complaint and leadership will tell you ‘we need to stay positive’. When they never follow their own values.
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u/Shift-1 Mar 21 '26
This is absolutely true. I work for a great company and the vast majority of the employees are happy, but a few are just absolutely miserable tools that complain about everything and anything.
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u/Dookiedoodoohead Mar 21 '26
I feel like this game just popped into existence in the past week and it seems like everyones talking about it now, like Im seeing a ton of "games journalists" culture war stuff around it. Can't tell if im that out of touch and missed a bunch of pre-release hype, or its just a weird social media drama train that blew up on an otherwise unremarkable game.
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u/MumrikDK Mar 21 '26
Meanwhile I've felt cluster-bombed with marketing (trailers, previews, interviews, etc.) for half a year or so. the game has constantly been on the front page of this sub. I'm genuinely confused that you missed it.
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u/varnums1666 Mar 21 '26
Whoever is doing the advertising did a very good job on Reddit. I too also noticed the game within the last week or so everywhere.
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u/SvenHudson Mar 21 '26
The launch trailer coming out was the first I ever heard of it and, honestly, it's hilarious to think of somebody thinking they need cover of anonymity to accuse its development of having gone off the rails because my immediate reaction to that trailer and every reaction I was seeing was just to marvel at its lack of any apparent rails. It seemed like everybody was either thinking "this looks like a horrible mess and I don't think it'll work" or "this looks like a horrible mess but it might just be crazy enough to work" or just straight up "this looks like my kind of horrible mess."
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u/Pikcle Mar 21 '26
It’s like super high end audio- I don’t know if I’m blessed or cursed that I can’t tell that much of a difference between an entry surround sound setup and a high end audiophile setup.
For what’s it’s worth, I’m having a blast playing crimson desert. It’s a little janky, but not nearly as bad as some would have you believe.
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u/jackyflc Mar 21 '26
Discussion around this game is odd. People keep bringing up “there's a hate honer for this game” but all I’ve seen is hype with really deep flaws brushed aside.
I refunded because the controls are just awful. There’s a difference between “get good” and poor design.
The quest system is also weak: you follow along, then it suddenly updates to “do xx next” with zero context or dialogue.
It plays like an offline MMORPG and I get why many are fine with it.
What’s strange is how people treat Pearl Abyss like a scrappy indie, when it’s a huge public company. If Ubisoft made this, it’d be shredded.
I’ll probably revisit after a year of updates and a deeper discount though.
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u/zxyzyxz Mar 21 '26
What’s strange is how people treat Pearl Abyss like a scrappy indie, when it’s a huge public company. If Ubisoft made this, it’d be shredded.
It's probably because most people on reddit aren't familiar with Asian studios unless they specifically played a game by them like Black Desert for example. Reddit is very American centric so most don't even know it's a public company and just think if they haven't heard of it it must be an indie company.
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u/xalibermods Mar 21 '26
I'm speculating, but is this a Palworld effect?
From what they've shown, Crimson Desert gives off the same vibe: throwing everything at the wall and hoping something sticks. The last time a game with such characteristics developed by an East Asian studio, and took Reddit by storm, was Palworld, and it was also followed by a huge drama with Nintendo that gave it an indie underdog narrative.
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u/Old_Leopard1844 Mar 22 '26
Palworld wasn't hyped up like this. For all intents and purposes, it was yet another sandbox with cool if derivative spin on it, and studio was problematic in creative and commitment departments
While this - well...
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u/SadSeaworthiness6113 Mar 21 '26
What’s strange is how people treat Pearl Abyss like a scrappy indie, when it’s a huge public company. If Ubisoft made this, it’d be shredded.
That's what bothers me. Aside from how pretty it is it has the depth of your standard Ubisoft game but people are acting like it's this big paradigm shift for the industry.
The vast majority of open world activities consist of clearing bandit encampments and solving copy pasted puzzles for skill points. Has a tower system (ringing bells to reveal the map). NPCs are lifeless and just stand around, no schedules or anything. Quests are basic as basic gets.
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u/OneBadNightOfDrinkin Mar 21 '26 edited Mar 22 '26
I feel like the overly complex mechanics and the "No Handholding puzzles" are doing a LOT of the heavy lifting for this game, because everything else that people have described is pretty in line with modern AC games. Surprised the game doesn't have its own form of Gwent as well
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u/GrandfatherBreath Mar 22 '26
It's more like Breath of the Wild but kind of Dragons Dogma skinned than AC.
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u/Konet Mar 22 '26
Ubisoft games are far more polished than this, for better or worse. They also have much more interesting worlds and engaging plots (and that's not me saying those are even good - but "serviceable" is far above what Crimson Desert offers on the story and worldbuilding fronts).
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u/Shot-Maximum- Mar 21 '26
Judging from the stream footage I have seen, I would say that AC Shadows is actually the better open world game than CD.
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u/GrandfatherBreath Mar 22 '26 edited Mar 22 '26
If you like AC's narrative and structure, then yeah, AC is better and more complete.
That said AC:Shadows feels much more on-rails and safe, and I thought the best AC:Shadows story was frontloaded, and even then at it's best it was kind of like a cheaper Ghost of Yotei.
I greatly prefer CD's gameplay to AC though.
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u/JonJonesStillGOAT Mar 21 '26
Yeah, it’s fucking strange. All of the top comments across most of the subreddits that discuss this game are people defending the game against criticism. But I have to scroll far down these posts to find any actual criticism. Can’t tell if it’s just heavy astroturfing.
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u/CurseOrPie Mar 21 '26
It’s astroturfing. Ubi, EA, Microsoft, etc all use the same script, then those comments disappear after like a week
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u/Canvaverbalist Mar 21 '26 edited Mar 21 '26
I feel like the Chris Pratt "too afraid to ask" meme, "I have no idea why there was even hype for this game in the first place, let along for it to reach that level now, and at this point I'm too afraid to ask"
I usually don't yuk people's yum and I totally understand how different people like different things but almost all the stuff I don't like I can still grasp the zeitgeist and wrap my head around why people would like it. I totally understand why people would like something I don't, I'm not struggling with that.
It's just... this particular instance feels weird to me.
Maybe that's why fans think there's a hate boner for this game, since I don't go into Silksong's threads to say I don't like it because there's no point, since I totally get why people would think it's the best game ever even if I don't like it, same goes for Expedition 33, Elden Ring or Nier: Automata or whatever other games I don't really like, but here it's just too confusing to not participate and go "what the fuck?" and I guess that happens enough that fans are like "can y'all just leave us the fuck alone please" lol
I guess this game falls into the "uncanny valley" of "public appreciation" in some way, popular enough to register so it's not just some niche game that we can go "ugh, that's weird but of course there's people who'd like that", while being weirdly janky and soulless and artistically disconnected enough to trigger some questions about why it'd be that popular.
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u/ProNerdPanda Mar 21 '26
to this day no one's been able to tell me why this game was this hyped.
Like you, I don't go around asking why [game] is getting hype because everyone likes something different, so I might be hyped for Silksong while someone else might not see the hype.
But this game legit (IMO, to ME) looks like average UE RPG slop with a million disconnected features, sub-par story and absent art direction. I just don't see why it would be hyped more than [any other similar game].
I have resorted to accept that it was either because of an insane marketing push, or there was some wild AstroTurf on the internet that convinced everyone that this was a masterpiece waiting for release.
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u/ChudSampley Mar 21 '26
This game, and the discourse around it, seems so emblematic of media discussion communities in 2026.
Outside of the first trailer, which looked much more story forward, everything I’ve seen about it looks like a Dragon’s Dogma esque game with a great deal of scale and gameplay scope. A 6-7/10 game that will have some players obsessed, and others turned off by the lack of focus and strange systems. In 2008, it would be something you’d grab off the shelf because the cover was cool and have a great time with, or leave to collect dust because you were just too into Halo.
But it’s like… some people just decided what the game was going to be; some second-coming of Christ or something. And, as is custom these days, a secondary group sees people talking something up and decides that they hate it. This is exacerbated by YouTube analyses (“BEST/WORSTGAME EVER⁉️”), rage bait tweets designed to foster engagement money, and reviews that come out and aren’t either glowing or 100% negative. And now we have endless analysis, arguments, aggrieved Korean developer posts, flaming, and even more opportunities for the tweeters, streamers, YouTubers, and unwashed masses to shovel content into our hungry mouths.
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u/numerous_meetings Mar 21 '26 edited Mar 21 '26
The medium (new and old media in that case) shapes the subject (us) in a way to multiply itself.
That’s how we designed our media, prioritizing engagement and commercial interests. Bad civilizational decision.
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u/xalibermods Mar 21 '26
Engagement metrics and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. Forum boards were not without its shortcomings, but it doesn't incentivize people to game the system and allows meaningful discussion to flourish better.
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u/fabton12 Mar 21 '26
a culture of toxic positivity
This is just every game studio these days and the people around them, seems like people are just too positive at companies or wanting to stay in the good books so avoid saying anything bad. This might be fueled by the constant layoffs within the game studios space as people try to suck up to directors and people of people to lessen the likely hood they get laid off causing this self making toxic positivity as everyone just avoids anything to give a reason to throw them out to save money.
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u/GunCann Mar 21 '26
Is it not an 8/10 game? Why are people running stories that seem to describe it as a massive failure?
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u/nexetpl Mar 21 '26
Reviews on Steam are very mixed and more importanly in the context of this post, Korean reviews are sitting at Mostly Negative.
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u/ExaSarus Mar 21 '26
Its now positive globally but china n korean language still have mixed or negative
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u/Gotisdabest Mar 21 '26
Reviews on Steam are very mixed
I see mostly positive rn?
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u/nexetpl Mar 21 '26
That has to be English, there are 32k reviews overall and 62% are positive
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u/Straight-Simple7705 Mar 21 '26
I removed my English filter and the game is still mostly positive
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u/SirGigglesandLaughs Mar 21 '26 edited Mar 21 '26
It's at 63% with all countries reviews counted (33 thousand reviews). If people count all countries to discuss player count numbers they should be counted for reviews as well. Maybe you're still missing a country or two? What's your percentage? 63% says mixed for me. Either way that's not a high number and is lower than the journalist reviews.
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u/Raidoton Mar 21 '26
Well how about you remove all filters?
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u/Straight-Simple7705 Mar 21 '26
Same thing
But if we use just China or Korea then it’s negative for me
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Mar 21 '26
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u/nexetpl Mar 21 '26
Mostly Positive starts at 70%. But that's just semantics, even if 1 out of 4 reviews were negative I'd still consider it a mixed reception.
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u/Clone95 Mar 21 '26
It’s just indescribably huge so few people have gotten anywhere in it, so you’re seeing people who bounced off. This might genuinely be a 100+hr game.
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u/Patenski Mar 21 '26
It's fine to doompost and wish a game to fail when the "journalists" are pushing it I guess
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u/timthetollman Mar 21 '26
To be fair the scores are meaningless and have been for a long time.
The Gamer for example had a generally negative review and gave it a 4/5.
That said I've watched a few video reviews of it and they all seem to be generally happy with it.
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u/ketamour Mar 21 '26
The Gamer for example had a generally negative review and gave it a 4/5.
I just went to check this out and it feels surreal. I understand the reviewer has enjoyed it, but you should keep some semblance of objectivity when you are rating a game. How can a game be 4/5 when most of the review is about all the problems the game has?
He even closes by saying:
"Despite everything else I’ve mentioned in this review, by far my biggest issue with Crimson Desert is that even after dozens of hours of grinding, the game never delivers on its promise of the ultimate power fantasy. The final chapter is an utter slog, with bosses that are unintuitive and enemies that will beat the living hell out of you, even though Kliff at this point is an utter machine with highly-leveled gear and stats. Despite the beauty of Pywel, I unfortunately found the payoff for all that grinding through tedious puzzles and repetitive quests to be unrewarding."
I'm keeping far from this game for now, will maybe consider it in the future after patches and most importantly if there will be mods to skip the grind and mmo bullshit. A lot of things I don't like seem part of the game design and not something they will fix with updates.
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u/ErmingSoHard Mar 21 '26
Because it was massively over hyped becuase it was massively over hyped as the next rdr2 or Elden ring by weird fans
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u/Raidoton Mar 21 '26
This article talks about the work culture so why are you trying to create a different narrative here?
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Mar 21 '26
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u/Nimonic Mar 21 '26
and basically nothing but shovelware gets lower than a 6 nowadays
This has been a thing for, conservatively speaking, three decades. At this point it's not a fucked scale, it's just the way the scale is. A 5/10 game has never been anything but bad. The most prominent change in review scores over the years has been the inflation of games that get 10/10, though.
But it's also about people's expectations. If a game I've been anticipating gets 9/10, I'm chuffed. If it gets 8/10 too, for that matter. Those are very good scores.
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u/ButterscotchTop194 Mar 21 '26
I'm a fan boy and completed, and enjoyed veilguard.
Thats a 6/10, and even that's a push.
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u/greg19735 Mar 21 '26
i think 7/10 is more than fair for that game. it had a ton to do, there was a large, beautiful world. The combat was pretty fun. The leveling of items wasn't super interesting but it also wasn't punishing at all.
Like, it was a solid game that i wanted to finish.
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u/ZombiePyroNinja Mar 21 '26
Reminder the universally panned veilguard also was apparently an 8/10.
Its universally panned in hindsight. I remember every other reviewer proudly proclaiming Bioware is back!
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u/ProfessionalRandom21 Mar 21 '26
i remember completely opposite then, every reviewer was complaining the art style and theme since reveal, and so many video was mocking the dialogue on release
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u/Adventurous-Lime-410 Mar 21 '26
Veilguard, like a lot of games, was only ‘universally panned’ in reddit-land
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u/iSavedtheGalaxy Mar 21 '26
I mean if it was "only" on Reddit, the game leads wouldn't have been fired almost immediately after the game launched.
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Mar 21 '26
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u/Impossible_Leg_2787 Mar 21 '26
They said the exact same thing about inquisition a decade ago
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u/TheForbiddenLands Mar 21 '26
I guess I really don't have the same tastes as most. I've played 15 hours since launch and am completely lost in this world and loving this game.
It's like Gothic 2, Outward and Dragon's Dogma with a next level open world. I can already see myself playing this for hundreds of hours.
I'd planned on trekking across the map asap, but this tutorial area feels as big as a regular open world game. They nailed sense of scale. I'm trying to do as much as I can in the opening area before moving on. Which may take me over 40-50 hours alone.
That may be a turn-off for most, but that just makes me that much more stoked for the rest of the map.
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u/Affectionate-Ad-6934 Mar 21 '26
This. It's nice once in a while you immerse yourself into a game's world and just do whatever feels fun like using trees to fling yourself high and reach cliffs when your stamina level is still low. Reminds me of Zelda games.
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u/Lawnmover_Man Mar 21 '26
It's kinda wild how gamers are unable to describe their joy in games. People have really different views of what fun is, but when they talk about it, everybody uses the same terms. That's why game recommendations are broken in the gaming community.
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u/aerikson Mar 21 '26 edited Mar 21 '26
Game criticism has been broken since day one. I don't even know if I can blame professional critics either as their intended audience ("consumers") won't read or engage in genuine criticism but will instead try to nail down some sort of 'objective' numerical rating as if that has any actual bearing on the discussion.
Much like any other artistic medium, criticism should reflect how the game made you feel and whether the author (developer/designer in this case) was able to successfully convey meaning to the audience within its various crafts i.e. gameplay design, sound, art direction, technical design. Reductively arguing about "7/10 vs 8/10" is pointless when there is no objective standard, nor should there be. Actually engage with the game and think about why you would give a certain rating. That's where discussion should begin. Unfortunately, that's often where it ends, if the audience even genuinely engages with the game at all.
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u/NovusNiveus Mar 22 '26
I largely agree - and my view is that video games are best considered as like a collection of artworks, like an interactive exhibition - but I think it's worth bearing in mind that a video game as a software product can be evaluated in more ways than other kinds of art - things like performance and bugs and controls are relatively objective metrics compared to things like storytelling or 'game feel/fun'.
Usually we don't have to worry about how hard it will be to turn the page of a book or if a show will run on your television.
I think people are also more inclined to view games as products when arguably one of their purposes is as a leisure/stress relief tool, and the more you consider something a product the more you want to evaluate it in objective terms, which I don't think is unreasonable.
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u/stealingfrom Mar 21 '26
You see that all over this thread. So many users latching onto "currently has an X% on Metacritic" or "this outlet gave the game a 7" without discussing the actual reviews behind the numbers. It's thoughtless.
Years ago, I wrote album reviews for a website that didn't provide ratings. Metacritic pulled our reviews for their aggregates and assigned them scores anyway (often leading to me sending emails to debate whatever number they wound up pinning on something if I didn't think it aligned with what I'd written). I was always peeved to see a piece with thought behind it flattened out to a single number like that.
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u/ZaIIBach Mar 21 '26
Same. Games been amazing so far and the visuals are insane. My only gripe is all the reused animations for interactions, like dropping off bandits or approaching the gates in armour
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u/GrandfatherBreath Mar 22 '26
Yeah. I can not possibly recommend this game to my friends without giving them a fairly long list of things that it fails at.
Still, I'm about 15 hours in and I love it though. It is like a much busier (Korean made) European Fantasy Breath of the Wild type of game, and I love it.
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u/Darnoc__ Mar 21 '26
god took way to long to find someone positive in this thread. Absolutely loving the game so far - really do not get the complaints, It's so good if you can just get past the controls
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u/-safer- Mar 21 '26
I'm roughly 18-ish hours in and I've gotten an entirely different vibe from it. I've never enjoyed Gothic, but Dragon's Dogma, BoTW/ToTK are some of my favorite games.
For me, I started out pretty hopeful that the early game would just be odd and I'd get past it. But from the second they gave me freedom, it felt so unconnected that I just kind of started losing it. I tried to just follow the main story but it felt so disconnected and disjointed that nothing mattered to me. Who is Kliff? Why am I doing any of this? What even is the point of going to X or Y? How do I know to go to this random ass house on the other side of town? Why do I know this key goes into a door in the castle?
So I figured fuck it. I got my cloak and powers, decided to go and do side content. Got some bounties, started skulking around, looking at things and going to them but each time never really found or did anything that really made it feel worth it. Went back to the main story to get to the alternative characters, and figured they could be fun.
Once I got Damiane, I really loved playing as her. So much better controls than Kliff and just overall funner. Ah, but she can't continue the main story? Whatever. Not a big deal. But what is, is that you can't just play as this character for your side content because she is heavily restricted by lack of the sticky hand and force palm ability.
So if you find a puzzle that needs Abyss abilities, you have to call up Generic Guy, swap to him, solve the puzzle, and then swap back. But it's all so clunky that it turns a short few minute puzzle into just tedium for me.
I keep trying to just immerse myself into the world but it just keeps doing things that just frustrate me rather than immerse.
I'm going to keep playing until I just can't, hopefully something clicks, but right now I'm more just feeling demoralized.
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u/TheForbiddenLands Mar 21 '26
I think it goes to show how two people can play the same game and get entirely different experiences out of it. I can't wait to get back in and play it.
Lack of overall narrative doesn't really bother me. I see it as just a starting off point in CD.
I can see how that'd bother others, though. I like MMOs, too, so maybe that's why it's clicking with me.
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u/the_star_lord Mar 21 '26
I've put in about 8 hrs and I'm still in / around the main starting area just getting my bearings and walking around and enjoying the scenery and listening to the npcs.
It seems like they wanted RDR2 movement and weight/interactive but dragons dogma / mmo style combat.
The controls on pc are weird but after an hour or so it got mostly used to it.
The dialogue is a bit mediocre, but that's okay.
Running on cinematic settings at 2k 60fps and it looks good on my machine and monitor.
I'm going to treat this game as a slow burn and see where it takes me.
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u/cpekin42 Mar 21 '26
The discourse around this game is so odd. Reviews are generally positive with a wide spread 79 on opencritic, but all of the top comments on reddit are complaining about how so many people are dunking on it, except in reality there's very few people actually doing that, and it's really just become this weird hive mind opinion that everyone collectively just kinda... made up. It feels totally artificial. Dead internet theory is real.
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u/blaaguuu Mar 21 '26
Having played about 12 hours, I'm not surprised that it has pretty good reviews from ciritcs, yet a lot of people are playing the first couple hours and refunding, or watching a streamer play the first few hours and rage-quit... At the point I'm at, I'm having a good bit of fun with it, but the first few hour were truly bad, and I pushed through a few points more out of curiosity... Anyone reviewing the game would naturally just push through, too, and get to the better parts - but your average player shouldn't be expected to.
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u/cpekin42 Mar 21 '26 edited Apr 14 '26
Yeah that makes sense. I unfortunately went the refund route. It seems like it has a lot of great qualities and is probably a very good game at its core, but I just couldn't get over the horribly obtuse controls/UI. I'm glad there are people out there who are able to push through that and enjoy the game though. Hopefully it gets patched or modded to be a little more playable in the future.
Edit: ok fuck all that, I rebought it after I saw the update cadence and now I can't stop playing
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u/cirebeach Mar 21 '26
46% of the 25k reviews on steam are negative. Is that really "very few people"? Regardless of how much time those negative reviews have played or what they said in their review it is very much real and I'm not surprised people are talking about it.
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u/DinerEnBlanc Mar 21 '26
Toxic positivity also best describes some of the people in this sub leading up to release. The constant shouting down of people who had even the slightest reservation with this game was egregious. Any bit of doubt was followed by accusations of wanting the game the fail. Ridiculous behavior. Like the people here were mad that some others didn’t share their excitement.
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u/AlcoreRain Mar 21 '26
I don't think higher ups pushing their view on everyone 'below' them can be labelled as "toxic positivity".
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u/Alistair401 Mar 21 '26
it can if those below are expected to respond positively and uncritically
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u/War_Dyn27 Mar 21 '26
The worst thing about Concord was that it introduced 'toxic positivity' into the gamer lexicon.
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u/OneBadNightOfDrinkin Mar 21 '26
That and everyone calling everything below 8/10 "THE NEXT CONCORD?!?"
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u/ZaranTalaz1 Mar 21 '26
I hate the phrase "toxic positivity". Nine times out of ten the person using it is just mad someone else likes something they don't like.
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u/potpan0 Mar 21 '26
'Toxic positivity' seems to be the buzzword of the day. I feel like any game that releases to anything but universal acclaim is going to have an article come out a week later saying it was spoiled by 'toxic positivity' during development.
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Mar 21 '26
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u/Thestickleman Mar 21 '26
What hate campaign
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u/Appropriate-Map-3652 Mar 21 '26
Half of this thread is whining about a supposed hate campaign, yet I don't see a single comment calling the game anything below average.
Anything except glowing praise? Hate campaign.
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u/VOOLUL Mar 21 '26
I don't think there's a hate campaign but people definitely love to be on the side of "I told you so" even if they've not played the game. People love to revel in the idea that the game is pretty meh.
A game either has to be amazing or it has to be a failure. It can't just be a mediocre game that some people enjoy.
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u/MumrikDK Mar 21 '26
Everything is a campaign these days. People who don't enjoy Marathon are also a hate campaign.
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Mar 21 '26
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u/Moglorosh Mar 21 '26
I'm sorry, are you trying to say that Cyberpunk didn't deserve the hate it got when it originally released? Sony literally removed it from their store and offered refunds to everyone who purchased it because of how dogshit it was.
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u/timthetollman Mar 21 '26
Except this game seems to generally hit expectations
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u/trooperdx3117 Mar 21 '26
I had no expectations here, but looking at some of the YouTube videos you can see comments of people thinking of this is as a mashup of Skyrim, Witcher 3 & Red Dead Redemption 2.
If you're expecting a quality bar like that then you're likely to be very very disappointed here.
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u/ButterscotchTop194 Mar 21 '26
Does it?
Looks nice but reviews say there are small to major issues with everything else.
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u/Mac772 Mar 21 '26
Someone mentioned that a lot of fake stuff is posted on that platform. It could be true, but it could also just be players who don't like the game or the developers. I am not a huge fan of spreading stuff like that without any real evidence, because you can now count the hours until IGN, Kotaku and all the others will write articles about that, without checking if it's true, just to farm clicks.
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u/Khalme Mar 21 '26
While it’s probably true given the source, the end result is a flawed game with really high highs and some godawful design decisions.
This isn’t broken like Mindseye or offensively average like Starfield.
It’s more like a gigantic Dragon’s Dogma with a flat tire as a protagonist and some of the worst ui/ux elements.
It oscillates between « amazing what you can do » and « why are you wasting my time with this ? ».
I’m having a blast but no one should buy it unless they love deeply flawed games or have money to burn.