Interesting games coming in 2019

There are a couple of games of interest to me coming up in 2019, or at least expected in 2019 with one affirmed for it.  They are both retro-future types of games, meaning that while they have a high-tech feel to them, they both look like games that are styled on past works.

The first is from Obsidian which has been purchased or at least co-opted by Microsoft, but the game they are bringing out is via Take Two, a division of Rockstar Games: The Outer Worlds.  This game has much of the creative talent from the original Fallout games and Fallout: New Vegas who are bringing that early 20th century vibe to the new frontier at the edge of the galaxy where colony ships can go missing and terraforming planets sometimes just doesn't work out as expected.  From what has been seen from the trailer and early game play the entire situation has that Fallout style vibe to it, but is its own creature that is not Open World but, instead, a staged world that opens up as missions are completed and the story progresses.  In gaming parlance this is a AA title that will concentrate more on story and less on wandering around in a vast and relatively empty world.  There will be stats, skills and perk equivalents along with specialized drawbacks that will also offer a new perk opportunity, so if you take on a few vulnerabilities then some of the other things your Player Character does have a chance at a slight boost.  This is very much like the concept of traits implemented in earlier versions of Fallout, and give a chance to craft your character the way you want them to be.

The other game expected in 2019 is Cyberpunk 2077 from CD Projekt Red, the makers of The Witcher game franchise.  In development, off and on, since 2013 this game will feature a relatively Open World setting that has the player create some thumbnail backstory for their character and then decide how to play on their own from that.  It does have a male and female voiced protagonist, so dialogue may be a bit on the thin side (save for massive cut scenes), although the promise is to make all dialogue meaningful and not just black and white decisions.  What the player decides to do and how they do it is something they can decide on their own, and while there are arch-type character 'classes' the player is not stuck with any single 'class' but can pick and choose skills and enhancements to suit how they would like to play the game.  It is expected that the loving craft applied to The Witcher 3 will be applied to Cyberpunk 2077 so that it has a 'polished' feel to it.  CDPR hit far above their weight class with The Witcher 3 and has bulked up its staff since then, which can be a good and a bad thing.  Bethesda Game Studios has a far, far larger staff than it had for Fallout 4 which, itself, was a larger staff than used for Skyrim, and that was larger than the staff for Fallout 3...and so on all the way back to the early days of The Elder Scrolls Arena.  Larger staff allows for a lot to be done, yes, but without a good and tight game design plus amble QA, the general feel of the games is that they lack the focus of their earlier products with tiny design teams.  The job of CDPR is to harness that focus demonstrated in The Witcher 3 and apply it to Cyberpunk 2077 and keep the game quality high even when they are working their staff for ridiculous hours for months or even years.  It is easy to criticize the work practices, but much harder to denigrate the final product which is a game that sticks to its vision and attempts to give a well rounded feel to the entire game world.

As with all games from design studios, the proof is in the final product and past work is no indicator of future game quality.  The Outer Worlds may turn out to be a one-off if it doesn't do well or if Microsoft decides that style of game just doesn't fit what it wants from its console line-up.  Obsidian didn't have the vast resources of Microsoft at the start of the project, and is being completed before changes to their workforce are fully in place, so The Outer Worlds will rely heavily on the game designers and the narrative they are giving to players plus the innovations that their artists can give to the world to bring it alive.

Other items of note are mods to prior games in the Fallout franchise.

Fallout: New California is out for download now and uses the Fallout: New Vegas game engine to present its contents.  This is 100% newly made content by fans and volunteers who have been at this since circa 2013.  Unlike CDPR these people did not create a new game engine, but utilized what was available to fans of the series.  What is given then is a true expansion mod that is the size of some DLCs, and has multiple branches to its story to tell about what was going on in New California before Fallout: New Vegas.  Expect rough edges based on the long in the tooth game engine, plus the voice acting may not be up to professional standards.  This is a labor of love with a central vision for a story that will drive the narrative forward.  Yet these are gamers and so they will also have to take into account the fact that most Fallout players will just turn off their quest log and freelance their travels.

Fallout Miami is expected any day now and promises a whole new area to explore with new factions, Vaults and the look at the beachfront wasteland.  All the trailers look very enticing.  Again this is fan made and created content so the rough edges will be expected.  Yet if there is a good focus on narrative and giving the player agency to do what they want, then they will have dealt far more than what Bethesda can gin up to their games.  You won't be chasing after a family member, but given the chance to explore, interact and figure out just what is going on in the Miami area.

Fallout: Frontier.  This is done on the Fallout: New Vegas game engine and features a plot revolving around the areas north of the NCR and heading into the Portland and Seattle area.  There will be vehicles that the player can drive, large battles that should (hopefully) not crash the game (though this is FNV, after all), plus bring back Caesar's Legion which is trying to hone in on this area to cut off the NCR to the north.  The concentration seems to be about what happened in the region and what the aim of the various factions are.  As trailers included space stations and vehicles flying out from them, the expectations for this mod are very, very high.  This team also started circa 2013 and appear to have no coordination with the New California group (at least for narrative), but only time will tell if that is actually the case.  In the snowy lands featuring fortified sites and volcanoes, this promises to be a stark difference to other Fallout mod entries.

Fallout 4: New Vegas will be remaking all of New Vegas in the Fallout 4 game engine, bring back the old skill, stats and perk system, and use a similar system that A Tale of Two Wastelands uses to move content from a legitimate copy of Fallout: New Vegas to their mod.  Since FNV is dirt cheap these days, there is no excuse not to have a copy.  They should be able to improve on some aspects of the original game, but only for things like storage of materials and such.  This should not become a base building sim or spend much time on that sort of crafting (at least for base game content...post-game, who knows?).  Fallout: New Vegas remastered in the Fallout 4 game engine promises fewer crashes, better rendering and, hopefully, fewer invisible walls and terrain glitches.  Please?  In any event this will hopefully drop in 2019.

Other large scale DLC sized mods that might drop are:

- Fallout Cascadia built on the Fallout 4 game engine as a new land.  It will re-introduce the old skill, stat and perk system that the FO4NV team is working on.  Not much is known about their level of cooperation with Fallout: Frontier, so expect it to not jibe with that mod and offer its own take on the region.

- Fallout Hell is set to take place in Philadelphia, and not much has been seen beyond a few trailers for it, and some of the work being done on armor and weapons.  Not really expected for 2019, but one can hope.

Some individual modders have attempted to start a salvage project of various parts of Fallout 4, but those are scatter-shot and based on time available to the individual modder.  What they can do is bonus off the work done for FO4NV if there is a desire to bring back the old skill system and, possibly, even the old Hardcore Mode which is leaps and bounds far better than the 'survival' system Bethesda made.  Obsidian made that for a storycentric game that wasn't a base building sim, so it is better suited to that.  Hopefully that system can be fully implemented in the FO4 game engine and then used for other mods.  I do like Horizon mod for Fallout 4, mind you, and gives a good feel to some of what the PC would have to do to survive not being savvy to the wasteland but having a good pre-war technical background required for the protagonist.  Now if only something about the main story could be done to make the world reasonable.

Beyond those projects there will assuredly be new content for Paradox games like Crusader Kings 2 and Stellaris.  They seem to have the ability to build upon what they have put out and then put a new spin on the game that changes everything, yet leaves the basic game mechanics intact.  A few other game development studios could take a hint from that, but that means not looking to the immediate big bucks but for a continued revenue stream that isn't about chiseling money out of players for cosmetic items and 'game play enhancements' that only offer to cut down the grind that was originally put in to dissuade people from going through it so they would buy the grind reduction packages.  Maybe concentrating on good game design and mechanics and offering new, innovative and even game changing offerings might be examined as a possibility in the future.  You know: put some work into game design and get a bit away from next month's bottom line?

One can hope, of course. Hope is many things, but it is not a strategy.

Buy wisely.  Support projects that you want to see come to fruition.  If you have any skills and expertise to offer and the time to do so, then go for it.  The future of gaming is slipping away from the big AAA companies that are learning to abuse their customers and then wondering why their new offerings aren't doing so well.  Your time and love for games will matter, even if it is just to offer constructive criticism or insight to those doing hard work.  Don't just tell of the problem, but see if you can offer a different way that things might be done.  Getting info on the problem out is necessary, but if you want better games then offering valuable insight is required.  The large studios seem to want to implode and won't listen to outsiders about how to not do that.  Don't waste your time and energy on them, but do spend it wisely for those doing projects that you want to see come to fruition.  Your time is actually more valuable than money.  Spend that wisely, as well.  The future of games and gaming is in your hands, not that of the big companies that seem determined to find new paths to fail.  How about supporting those seeking new paths to succeed, instead?