Hey, so I'm looking for more comfy Nintendo (or maybe retro stuff in general?) focused youtubers like Scott the Woz or Nitro Rad or even AVGN to leave on in the background. In general I'd prefer people talking about games or gaming trends or whatever over just playing them...I don't think I really have much interest in let's plays or highlight reels anymore.

It can be full-on silly AVGN stuff or super dry Gaming Historian stuff, I love it all, though my ideal is somewhere in-between. Of course, I'd also like for them not to be terrible human beings, so no jontron or anyone like that please. Thanks!

These are large acquisitions, but Embracer Group already owns a lot:

The Group has an extensive catalogue of over 200 owned franchises, such as Saints Row, Goat Simulator, Dead Island, Darksiders, Metro, MX vs ATV, Kingdoms of Amalur, TimeSplitters, Satisfactory, Wreckfest, Insurgency and World War Z amongst many others.

With its head office based in Karlstad, Sweden, Embracer Group has a global presence through its six operative groups: THQ Nordic GmbH, Koch Media GmbH/Deep Silver, Coffee Stain AB, Amplifier Game Invest, Saber Interactive and DECA Games. The Group has 57 internal game development studios and is engaging more than 5,500 employees and contracted employers in more than 40 countries.

Articles about each of the new acquisitions on GamesIndustry.biz:

• Gearbox: Gearbox Entertainment joins Embracer Group in $1.3b deal
• Aspyr: Embracer Group acquires Aspyr Media for $100m
• Easybrain: Embracer Group merges with Easybrain in $640m deal

Unlike the current tendency, unless I'm playing with my real-life friends, I don't care for multiplayer in shooters. I'm usually surrounded by highly skilled players that seemingly dedicate their lives to becoming experts in that game. I don't wanna become actually skilled, I wanna play in my own way and feel I am skilled in face of limited AI. You know, fantasy!

Most franchises are leaning towards multiplayer, and my playstyle is quickly becoming old fashioned. I recently purchased the Xbox Series S and would love suggestions of great shooters with a focus on offline missions. Especially historical shooters (like WWI and WWII), but not limited to it.

Thanks!

"Wrong" here can be intentional or unintentional. Maybe you completely missed that a character had a certain ability and got through the entire game without knowing there was so much more you could be doing! Instead, maybe you specifically challenged yourself to get through the game without using that ability, seeing if you were up to the challenge! Maybe you activated cheats to cruise through on easy mode, or maybe you accidentally activated a cheat and had no idea that the game wasn't supposed to be that easy (ask me about my FF7 playthrough).

"Wrong" can also be however you decide to interpret it: counter to the developer's intentions, exploiting the game engine, uncovering a loophole in the game's systems, pursuing your own goals instead of the game's goals, etc. It's not meant to be a moralistic judgment by any means (play any game however you want!) but more just an identifier that you went against the game's standard norms and expectations.

Tell us what you did "wrong", why you did it that way, and what the outcomes were. Did it make the game more fun or exciting? Did it ruin the game for you?

I keep seeing a lot of complaints surrounding Cyberpunk 2077 that it's not a particularly good RPG, because the story is pretty linear and the player choice doesn't really amount to much. I'm not yet done with the game so I don't know how accurate that assessment is. But either way, with my limited knowledge of programming and game design, I assume that doing this sort of thing well is a significant technical challenge.
What are some games that rise to this challenge and make the most of player choice and branching story?

I recently played through 2013's Tomb Raider and it was a delight -- a wonderful reboot that modernized a series whose originals I loved but that are quite dated by today's standards.

In the game, Lara, the main character, is in peril constantly, and she is driven into worse and worse situations in an effort to save her crewmates and friend. The narrative of the game demands immediate action -- any dawdling risks all of the characters' lives.

Of course, we know that games' timelines aren't necessarily time-driven but character-driven, so it is trivial for Lara to stop at any point in the game and not advance the story. The killers who are prepared to murder your friends will patiently wait around as long as necessary. Furthermore, the game gives you plenty of reason to do so! There are collectibles to find and story and lore bits scattered about the levels that you have to go out of your way to encounter. Finding these gets you more XP and resources which unlock skills and weapons that make the game easier. The game lets you fast travel back and forth to different areas as needed, and I spent a good amount of time at the story's height of tension not resolving that tension by advancing to the climax but by ignoring it and scouring the island for all the things I missed instead.

I use Tomb Raider as an example here, but I'm sure you can think of plenty of other examples where the game directly incentivize actions that outright subvert its story. What I find interesting is that, on paper, I should care about this discrepancy, but in practice I really don't. In fact it's customary for me to do this in nearly every game I play, as I find that I like "checklisting" and cleaning things up rather than advancing the plot (of course -- do I actually like that, or do I merely like that I get rewards for doing so?).

I don't have a singular question to ask but instead have some jumping off points for discussion:

• Is this undermining of narrative tension an actual issue, or is it just part of the suspension of disbelief embedded into the medium of gaming?
• Have you felt that particular games were made worse due to this issue? If so, why? If not, why not?
• What games are counterexamples -- games whose narrative tension is not undercut by their gameplay? What makes them work? Does that aspect benefit the game, or would the game be roughly the same (or better) without it?
• If you consider this an issue, does the "responsibility" for it lie with the developer of the game for incentivizing gameplay counter to narrative, or does the "responsibility" lie with the player for ruining their enjoyment of the narrative by pursuing other goals?

Also, don't feel limited by these questions or my choice of game and feel free to address anything else relevant to this idea that you feel is important or relevant.