A week before GTA VI

Saw the director's comments about additional Compilation characters possibly showing up in Revelation and my first reaction wasn't hype, it was mild dread, which surprised me honestly given how much I love this remake trilogy so far.

My concern isn't really about the characters themselves, more about scope creep. Rebirth already felt like it was juggling a LOT by the end, open world content, minigame overload, huge cast to service. Adding compilation-era characters into the mix for the finale feels like it risks diluting focus on the actual core cast's arcs right when the story needs to be tightening up, not expanding outward.

That said I trust this team more than basically any other team currently working in AAA to actually stick the landing given how well they've handled adaptation choices so far, the Zack stuff in Rebirth alone earned them a lot of goodwill from me. Just hoping "more characters" doesn't come at the expense of the emotional throughline this trilogy has built so carefully up to this point.

Anyone else cautiously optimistic/nervous about this, or am I overthinking a single interview quote at this point

Game's doing fine critically and with players from what I've seen, but the stuff coming out about the internal situation at the studio is starting to overshadow the actual launch discussion, which is a shame because I don't think people are talking about the game itself nearly as much as they should be given how solid the reviews have been.

Not going to speculate too hard on specifics since a lot of it is still secondhand and unconfirmed, but it's the classic pattern we've seen with a bunch of studios lately, a genuinely well received launch getting completely buried under "meanwhile behind the scenes" reporting. Feels like this happens with almost every mid-size studio release now, the actual game becomes secondary to the discourse about how it got made.

Curious if anyone's actually played it yet and what the tactics/strategy layer feels like, would like to actually talk about the game itself in here if people have impressions.

And there kind of is, because nobody wants to be the game that launches the same month as GTA 6 and gets its sales completely vaporized. Feels almost unprecedented how openly publishers are talking about "avoiding the blast radius" in interviews now, like it's just an accepted fact of the industry calendar at this point rather than something people are being coy about.

Kind of feels bad for anything that slips even slightly and ends up landing in that October/November dead zone by accident. Meanwhile we're all about to be buried under more AAA releases in a six week span than we usually get in six months. Anyone else feel like this September is going to break brains trying to keep up with everything dropping at once?

https://youtu.be/4HkYyN-7iyE