In this thought-provoking opinion piece, EALA's Borut Pfeifer examines games from Blacksite: Area 51 through David Jaffe's canceled Heartland and indie oddity You Have To Burn The Rope to ask... can a game ever truly be 'subversive'?
A gameplay demo of the cancelled Portal prequel F-Stop using recreated assets features no portals, and a unique camera that duplicates items.
From GamesReviews:"Portal with RTX is a fresh look for the 2007 classic. But it's not easy to run, and the results may not impress everybody."
Portal RTX may look like a quant remaster, but that couldn't be further from the truth. It's one of the most demanding games available today.
And in a bad way! This is not where gaming should be going. We should focus more on better physics, AI, more meaningful writing, substance in storytelling and overall art over reflections and lighting effects. But hey, you've got billion dollar companies trying to sell you stuff, so I guess you have to make a whole ecosystem around ray tracing because people make a living out of it on youtube. Talk about losing touch with reality and taking eye off the ball. Advancing gaming as a whole my ass!
On the topic mentioned that games try and give you moral choices to make ala Bioshock. I don't believe most gamers make game related choices based on moral or ethical beliefs. Games are still pretty primitive in this respect. Most game related decisions are made on how it affects gameplay. If I kill the little sisters does that affect the outcome of the game, does it limit what I get to experience in the game, does it lead me to new avenues in the game? In that respect it's hard to make a game subversive without overtly spelling it out for the player.
Maybe years down the road games will grow to allow more moral choices to affect the player that mimic real world and allow that suspension of disbelief.