I was thinking about how I remember Maxis fondly, and I got to wondering what other people’s experiences were like!
Is your favorite still around? Are they still the same, or did they “change directions under new management?”
sierra ❤️
also bill pogue
Haha, that’s exactly the kind of game I want to make but with graphics and a little less dry. Didn’t even know about that one. Also I should probably actually figure out how to start that once I’m settled in here. It’s amazing how much planning and thought goes into getting one truck across the country. It’s like Oregon trail but you die of stupidity, yours or others, rather than dysentery.
Sierra entertainment! I was a big fan of the kings quest games, and Sierra online was my first experience with online gaming.
I was super into Sierra as a publisher. They seemed to back some of the highest quality games no one knew about. Ground Control, Gunman Chronicles, Homeworld, Aliens vs Predators 2, Empire Earth, Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza, and of course Half-Life. They published some quality games.
Don’t forget the SWAT series. Really loved the third game and always played the ‘Children of Terrone’ map on lan parties
The SWAT series was amazing but now I just look back at it as copaganda.
Sierra On-Line
King’s Quest is still one of my favorite series ever and the one they put out a few years ago was a great retelling. I cried at the end.
That’s how I feel about Cyan and their Myst series!
Squaresoft, Bioware, and Bethesda are three companies whose logos I once considered a seal of quality. None of the three really exist anymore, although there are new much larger companies using their names.
Bethesda game studios is the same studio as always, just under Microsoft
Blizzard and Westwood studios. It’s unfortunate what happened to them.
Neversoft. THPS2 had a banger soundtrack.
Blizzard. Without Activision.
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Also Blood and No One Lives Forever.
Valve.
Not new management, but they definitely changed direction. From Portal 2 to Half-Life Alyx was a dark age of live service titles and hardware. Fortunately, it seems like they’re finally getting back to their old selves?
Alyx was supposedly their re-entry into releasing games (hopeful that HLX is good), the Steam Deck caused them to go back and fix several of their titles (plus do the huge Half-Life update we just got), and while they’re not exactly making their games as open as they used to, they’re letting the community handle things like TF2 events and L4D2 patches.
So, I dunno, cautiously optimistic for their future. At least as long as Gabe is running the company.
Maxis was the one that came to mind for me, too! I played everything of theirs that I could get my hands on. Still playing The Sims after all these years!
PopTop. Railroad Tycoon 2&3 and Tropico 1&2. They got bought by 2K, which eventually killed the studio. The Railroad Tycoon series is dead. Tropico is still around, but I’m not excited about the latest interation. Some of the guys tried to kickstart a new Railroad Tycoon but it didn’t fund. Phil Steinmeyer was an underrated developer, though I believe he’s retired today.
It’s too bad it worked out that way. I think they could have been on the level with Paradox as far as strategy games are concerned, but focusing more on economic games, city builders, and the like. On Steinmeyer’s blog he said he didn’t think there was demand for heavier games anymore about mid 00s. That might have been true then, but so many games out now prove that wrong.
I just looked at my Steam stats today and 52% is RT3. There may be plenty of games that surpass it in visuals, but game mechanics are a different story, and without a stock market I don’t see much of a point.
I played Tropico 3-5, but gave up after they refused to give us highways and overpasses.
The 3 Bs, baby. Blizzard, Bioware, and Bethesda.
Blizzards dead to me, Bioware fell off after dragon age 1, and Bethesda refuses to take its limiters off anymore (no drugs)
I’m enjoying heavily-modded DA:I, but I do feel like DA1 had some better writing and direction.
Any recommendations for mods? I’m putting together a new build for it ahead of my semi-annual replay of the trilogy
Yeah, definitely!
I’ll skip the skins, because I assume you’ll want to pick your own that fit your tastes, but you can find all of these at NexusMods. Some of my favorites are:
- Speed Launch
- 60 fps in cutscenes
- No fall damage
- Infinite Respec Amulet
- Party At The Winter Palace
- Shorter War Table Missions (75%)
- Party Banter Time (5-10min)
- All Bard songs for CC Music
- Stay still in CC - Natural Edition
- Face Ash Begone
- Bugs Be Gone
- Skills Enhanced by NinjaReborn
- Inventory Capacity
You’ll also need Frosty Mod Manager to set all those up (they seem to work for me in the order I listed) and Frosty Fix.
- Set up the mods and load order in FrostyMM, and close.
- Launch Frosty Fix.
- Choose the profile/pack you want.
- Mash go.
- FrostyMM should open back up.
- Open the pack you created.
- The game should launch automatically with the mods correctly enabled.
All these mods feel “vanilla-ish” and shouldn’t spoil the original experience to any significant degree.
The only thing I can remember from inquisition is trudging through some high level desert looking for high level rocks (which very blatantly cut their drop rate from earlier zones) so that I could make an armor and weapon that still sucked and looked like pajamas.
also that the party loves to litter
Interplay’s Black Isle Studios, now Obsidian.
Origin “We create worlds”. They definitely did with the Wing Commander series. Played a lot of WC 3, 4 as well as Privateer.
I don’t think anyone mentioned Lionhead Studios. Black and White was fun. Sadly it’s in copyright limbo if I’m not mistaken.
Also played a lot of Civilization 1 from Microprose back in the day.
Westwood Studios, Sierra Online
