Carzy Zarx’s PC Gaming Emporium - Catch Up on All the Latest PC Gaming Related News

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Tuesday news, part two:

Seasoned RPG devs from Obsidian and Bioware blame the temporary death of the isometric CRPG on 'vibes-based forecasting' from retailers
https://www.pcgamer.com/seasoned-rpg-devs-from-obsidian-and-bioware-blame-the-temporary-death-of-the-isometric-crpg-on-vibes-based-forecasting-from-retailers/
Game developer veterans from RPG companies like Obsidian and Bioware say that the temporary death of the CRPG in the early 2000s was down to retailer meddling, as outlined in a series of tweets made just before the holidays.

Nearly 10 years after it came out, Obsidian's isometric RPG Pillars of Eternity gets a surprise update
https://www.pcgamer.com/nearly-10-years-after-it-came-out-obsidians-isometric-rpg-pillars-of-eternity-gets-a-surprise-update/
Baldur's Gate 3 is the big, world-changing isometric party-based RPG that everyone's still talking about, but I've always felt that Pillars of Eternity is the game that really first started turning that engine over. The OG Infinity Engine vibes were strong, but it stood well on its own merits too: We called it "a deep, rich, and wonderfully written RPG that lives up to the towering legacy of the games that inspired it" in our 92% review.
That was in 2015, mind, nearly a full decade ago, which is why it comes as a little bit of a surprise that developer Obsidian has released a brand new patch for the game that's now available in the Pillars of Eternity beta branch on Steam.
>> It's a bug fixing update.

Age of Empires developer confirms the game is mostly written in low-level Assembly code because 'we could scroll the screen and fill it with sprites as fast or faster' than competitors like Starcraft 'even though we had twice as many pixels'
https://www.pcgamer.com/age-of-empires-developer-confirms-the-game-is-mostly-written-in-low-level-assembly-code-because-we-could-scroll-the-screen-and-fill-it-with-sprites-as-fast-or-faster-than-competitors-like-starcraft-even-though-we-had-twice-as-many-pixels/
Some of the greatest stories about games are simply about how developers made the thing work. Ask any developer for their favourite workarounds and you'll get a full evening's worth of entertainment about how a giant tram is actually an NPC with a hat on, or how rabbits are actually what makes Azeroth work, and so on.
This isn't quite on those lines, but a redditor recently noted that Chris Sawyer wrote Rollercoaster Tycoon 1 and 2 in Assembly language, and apparently Age of Empires was the same: "AoE is written in Assembly: is this actually TRUE?!" (...)
The question about whether Age of Empires was coded in Assembly language hit gold in the replies thanks to Matt Pritchard, one of the founding members of Ensemble Studios, who's been the coding lead on the series from the very start.

Dead by Daylight's flashlight teaser has a lot of fans convinced that Alan Wake is on the way
https://www.pcgamer.com/dead-by-daylights-flashlight-teaser-has-a-lot-of-fans-convinced-that-alan-wake-is-on-the-way/
A couple months after bringing diminutive psycho-stabber Chucky to the multiplayer survival horror game Dead by Daylight, Behaviour Interactive is teasing something new—and a lot of fans are convinced that an Alan Wake crossover is on the way.

Former Stardew Valley contributor is making a new life sim set in a city, and it's already packed with little features new to the genre
https://www.pcgamer.com/former-stardew-valley-contributor-is-making-a-new-life-sim-set-in-a-city-and-its-already-packed-with-little-features-new-to-the-genre/
(...)
As spotted by RockPaperShotgun, freelance game developer Arthur Lee (who's credited as part of the Stardew Valley team during development of the 1.5 update) is working on an untitled new life sim and sharing weekly details about development on X. Though it remains untitled at the moment, he's expecting it to involve the name "Apollo City" after the game's main setting.

Baldur's Gate 3 designer totally gets it if you were overwhelmed by the shift to the game's 3rd act, and don't worry: it'll be 'less drastic' in future games
https://www.pcgamer.com/baldurs-gate-3-designer-totally-gets-it-if-you-were-overwhelmed-by-the-shift-to-the-games-3rd-act-and-dont-worry-itll-be-less-drastic-in-future-games/
Can I make a confession? It took me about a month to get through the third act of Baldur's Gate 3. Not because it was particularly challenging or—relative to the acts that preceded it—especially long, but because the second I arrived in Rivington I felt compelled to put the game down and go do something else for a while.
I guess I wasn't alone in that feeling. In a recent chat with Gamereactor, Larian senior RPG designer Anna Guxens was asked about BG3's third act, and specifically how she felt it could be improved either now or in future games from the studio.