Pixeldemon

At this point the design and tech for the game already exists, so switching studios is probably not a big deal if the creative direction is good.

Doesn't this game have a season pass?

I played through the whole game on Hard, but I considered dropping it down to Normal a few times. I think the damage model made me play really conservatively, which is probably less fun than going wild with all the powers.

Still I enjoyed the challenge, but if I play again, it will probably be on Normal.

No one saw this coming. But in all seriousness, they need someone who acknowledges they have a serious public image problem and will take authentic steps to repair their brand.

My review solution would be to penalize every game that gets shoe-horned into an always-online model when the gameplay experience either doesn't require it or is diminished by it. So yeah, Diablo 3 and Simcity would take a major hit simply for the inconvenience is causes players, even if their servers worked perfectly from day one. Obviously MMOs and pure multiplayer games would be exempted from this, since online is core to their functionality.

For me, Alex recently went from being "the poor guy who's stuck reviewing B-tier games" to one of the more promising and interesting writers in the gaming press. Nice work.

I also appreciate this article for the preemptive "expectation management" it does. I would rather look forward to excellence within an established framework than something that is nebulously "revolutionary". Granted, my expectations are still extremely high, but they feel more grounded now. It's a fantasy action-adventure video game with a very interesting setting and well above average writing and thematic exploration. Sort of like Bioshock.

I would like to know too. There is almost no community buzz about this game despite the fact that it looks very promising. Also, Crysis 2 was great despite being much maligned by people who wanted more Crysis 1.

Total speculation here, but I'm really getting the impression that Epic, as we know it, is effectively finished as a creative production company. They sold a huge chunk of their company to a Chinese firm, and then a significant portion of their talent jumped ship.

Fortnight is still in development, and sounds highly promising, but this may end up being free-to-play ala TF2. If true, this will mean maintaining a dedicated support team rather than shifting people over to new development.

Gears of War Judgement will wear the Epic brand, but it is a People Can Fly studio developed game (albeit with significant Epic oversight).

Unreal Engine/UDK may be Epic's primary contribution to gaming in the coming years.

Or maybe this is completely wrong, and they will be announcing a new multi-title triple-A franchise at E3. In any case, Epic is looking like a very different company today than it was a year ago.

Best case scenario:

Just played through Witcher 2 for the second time. What an incredible accomplishment that game is. In terms of visuals, narrative, and themes, it is way ahead of its time. This is no "chosen one" story, the morality of the game is extremely grey and full of compromises. Not only that, the choices you make drastically impact both the story and the gameplay.

For example, a major decision you make at the end of chapter one majorly alters the story, location and quests of chapter two, and changes the story, quests and context of chapter 3.

Witcher 2 had a good amount of "free roam", but fell short of being an "open world". I can't wait to see what they do with Witcher 3 in a fully open world.