We both sound pretty similar actually. At this moment Bioware, Square-Enix, and Naughty Dog would probably be my top developers. I think Square-Enix's past appeals to me slightly more than the present and Bioware's present appeals slightly more than their past to me, but overall those are my big studios.
With exception given that Square's past appeals to me
considerably more, we're pretty much even here. My two favorite video games are still Final Fantasy VII and Xenogears; FFIX, FF Tactics and FFX are all fairly close to the top. Square hasn't put anything out since 2002 that I love so much as those titles, but I still play their games, and for the most part I still enjoy them.
I suppose it depends how far back we're going with the BioWare sentiment, too. I got in with ME1, so I played KOTOR and Jade Empire many years later. I still haven't played the Baldur's Gate games, either, and I hear really good stuff about BG2 in particular. But Mass Effect and Dragon Age are wonderful franchises through and through.
Personally I hope both Bioware and Square-Enix learn similar lessons. Cut out a large chunk of the fetch quests and/or world design and put that into as much focused quests as they can with that budget.
Have we seen any "prominent" developers learn that lesson since the open world craze exploded post-Skyrim? I want both studios to do exactly as you've described, but I worry that financial forecasts with all these companies are increasingly skewed toward suggesting to the folks in charge that bigger and more padded open worlds are the way to go.
Inquisition was amazing to me but I feel like if it cut like 30% of the fetch and added even 2 or 3 more focused quests it would be fucking perfect.
Yeah, pretty much. I have a couple of other big problems with it, but mostly it's just that I'm a fan of the cinematic camera angles during conversation in earlier BioWare titles and I wish that Inquisition didn't scale that back so much. Many of the most important scenes still get that treatment, plus a not-inconsiderable number of "lesser" moments, but so many NPCs just
never zoom in, and many companion sequences don't, either, and for me personally that nukes something special.
But I still
quite like the game, especially post-Trespasser. A couple more focused quests would make it aces.
What I also find really odd is that I feel like the Duscae demo almost got it right more than the game. The behemoth quest was cut down for the game, and that made it so much worse and so much more forgettable and I can't understand why they would do that. I had hopes for quests to be pretty similar to that and they just aren't.
Yeah, there's nothing quite like Episode Duscae's Deadeye hunt. I think, perhaps, the constant feedback loop Tabata's team engaged in might be to blame here. There was some vocal "ugh, follow the tracks is so played-out" sentiment leveled at that aspect when the "provide your feedback!" stuff came out. I guess they thought that meant to just scale everything back and never do that.
