For me, Half-Life and Half-Life 2 modding was the golden age of FPS gaming. The life of a single game purchase was extended well beyond any expectations because of the creativity of the modders.
Unfortunately, mods like Counterstrike, Day of Defeat, and many others are getting developed and released as "Full games" now, to the detriment of the gamer and the industry.
Now we're in the age of relatively easy to use game engines, where anyone can develop and release a game, but there are so many games flooding the market that you look at and think "Why would you release this?". In the past, I truly believe these types of games would have been relegated to the modding scene and filtered properly through the communities to gain popularity naturally and organically rather than getting huge marketing budgets pushing us to buy the next big thing or FOMO.
Agreed with what you're saying about blizzard, but I don't regret buying D4. I enjoyed the story and playing through the classes. The thing that's missing is the replayability. The seasons don't do it for me and the gear is too incremental - there's never the "holy shit it finally dropped" moment.
Skyrim is a great game.... for its time. Todd Howard is the blight on the games industry for putting so many resources toward so many Skyrim remasters/re-releases/money grabs. Even if he outsourced all that work, those are dev houses he could have spent their time helping Bethesda actually fill their huge open worlds and perhaps get the same feeling of "every decision actually matters" that Larion did.
I'm usually the same way with open world games like The Witcher, GTA, RDR, etc, but BG3 puts the story enough on the rails to keep me focused while still letting me make critical choices and enough freedom to explore so it feels amazing when I find little secrets or Easter eggs.
My buddy has played through it twice with 40 hour runs each.
I'm still on my first playthrough at about 70 hours and close to wrapping up act 3.
Half-Life has been completely rebuilt so you can play the entire game backwards (www.pcgamesn.com)
Rockstar Plans to Announce Much Anticipated ‘Grand Theft Auto VI’ (www.bloomberg.com)
18+ Rockstar plans to announce Grand Theft Auto VI as early as this week and will release a trailer in December, sources tell Bloomberg News. (www.bloomberg.com)
Title and link taken from reddit. (Don’t kill me I don’t have a Reddit account anymore)...
Diablo IV's first expansion will introduce a brand-new class in late 2024 (www.engadget.com)
Ex-Skyrim Developer Explains the Key Difference Between Bethesda Games and Baldur’s Gate 3 | IGN (www.ign.com)
Baldur's Gate 3 - Hotfix #9 Now Live (store.steampowered.com)
Fallout TV series "sneak peek" leaks online following Gamescom Starfield presentation (www.eurogamer.net)