I think in that particular case its more of an issue of grabbing a "lorefag" type of creative. All they care about is flash and mimicking what good content (fantasy books) looks like superficially (self-fellating lore), without caring about anything of substance (the characters, story, writing). Seems to me like Brutal Legend was all about coming up with the artsy cool idea first and the gameplay being the afterthought. I agree with your post though.
Probably why they really downplayed the RTS stuff in the marketing. If you watched some trailers and played the demo you'd think you were buying a heavy metal hack and slash game so after the first few hours when the rest of the game becomes mostly RTS battles I could see people not being thrilled. It's a real damned if you do damned if you don't sort of thing.
I think Obsidian was at their best when someone on the outside was cracking the whip and telling them to git it dun or else... Their contract work like KOTOR2 and New Vegas was really good despite all the pressure and short dev cycle, but that also meant that they knew what budget they had in both time and money and was forced to allocate their resources accordingly. Alpha Protocol was neat but the beatings should have begun on day one, not year three, they were allowed to faff around for far too long.
Because it's not about the money or liking the craft, it's about sending a message.
Make a dwarf wrestler with superhuman strength and you'll see how it breaks down quickly
I know it's unbalanced but I just find that it's extremely fun and makes each individual encounter a blast. I once played as a demigod superhuman strenght elephant man once and put all of my starting skill points into wrestler, striker, kicker, fighter and dodger.
People really like this theory but I don't think it's true. Dungeon Siege III, Stick of Truth, and the Neverwinter Nights 2 OC were contract work with publisher oversight and they all kinda sucked.
the only mmorpg besides eve that I ever invested any time in was specifically anti-grind. Guild wars 1, the original. While you didn't have to grind for progression, you could grind for rare skin drops on weapons and armor but it wasn't really a grind as the content was challenging, and if you were able to solo it you could charge people. One of the most underrated mmorpgs. No subscription fee, no cash shop. no micro transactions, no grinding, you bought the game and the expansions which were 30usd a piece, or after a few years get the whole game for 60 bucks and play forever. It's still up and while not super active there's still a player base. You could pick up the game day 1 and play end game PvP. People had to invent ways to hardcore grind for progression like making "pre-searing" characters which was basically trying to max level your character by only playing the tutorial section. Anyway, sadly games like this are unicorns, and in modern times extinct.
Grinding is a waste of time and not fun by definition. When it isn't, people just call it "playing the game".
Some of it was a bit over the top and cringe. Like that one mission where some old guy asks you to find his stuff in an abandoned house and it turns out he was a slave owner or something so you scream at him about being an evil
Not quite. They were more story focused with the PS3 era. It arguably went downhill after the Future saga because Sony wanted more R&Cs after A Crack in Time and Insomniac wanted to "experiment."
I was going to do that, but you cannot even see your character outside of death. So, what's the point?
