I definitely think it should be the furthest along in development 1st party release after Starfield and Forza Motorsport, afterall it's development began either late 2018 or early 2019 and they had in-engine footage ready for the Game Awards 2019 reveal, and Holiday 2023 is 4 years after that in-engine reveal. The only two 1st party that have been in development longer are Avowed and Fable, and Avowed got a partial reboot when the director changed from Chris Parker to Carrie Pattel, while Playground had to staff up a whole new AAA studio for Fable which slowed it up. Avowed and Fable are likely both much larger games than Hellblade 2 as well, Hellblade 2 is likely 25 hours tops (considering the first games was like 7 hours and they only increased the dev team size from 20 to 80-100 devs), Fable and Avowed are likely both 80+ hour open world RPG's. And we've heard nothing about behind the scenes development issues on Hellblade 2 either, so it does stand to reason that it would be finished before Avowed and Fable.

Yeah, there was another leaked review giving it 78/100. Negatives were graphics look dated, game was not designed with solo play in mind, and nothing innovative. 

Everything else about the game was praised. So it should still be a fun time at least. This was going to be a GP title for me anyways. 

Graphics being dated seems like such a weird thing to complain about. They act like the game looks like a PS1 or PS2 game. It looks on par with most stuff that has been released.

Sounds about right.  When has Arkane punch above their weight when it comes to graphics.  I find trying to push Unreal 4 to hard leads to more issues then it solves.  As for innovative, I consider that nothing because I do not need a game to be innovative, I want it to be fun enjoyable experience that is executed with polish.  Some of the best games I can remember are not even close to being innovative but instead just give you a lot of fun and options to enjoy yourself in a game which is way more important in my book.

I mean I can see it personally, I always thought the graphics seemed lackluster ever since the first leaked screenshot. If you compare the graphics to their last gen Dishonored 2, it especially becomes apparent how dated it looks, the more linear nature of Dishonored 2 seemed to allow them to push graphics harder than on the open world Redfall, that plus I get the feeling that Zenimax reigned in their budgets from a full AAA budget to more of a large scale AA budget after Dishonored 2 underperformed in sales, which would have also resulted in a cut to the graphics quality on Redfall (and Deathloop, which similarly looked worse than Dishonored 2, in spite of both games being built on current gen hardware as opposed to Dishonored 2 being built for PS4/XB1).

That being said, I did see a noticeable graphics improvement on the launch trailer compared to the preview build the critics got to play on the preview event, which was nice to see. Hopefully that improvement wasn't just a PC ultra settings thing and the game looks nearly as good as that launch trailer on the Series X 30 fps quality mode. If it does look about launch trailer good on the 30 fps quality mode I will be happy. 

Starfield, Hellblade II and Forza Motorsport to end the year would be strong.

Would look on paper stronger than 2021...Hopefully Belfry can make it.

Starfield, Hellblade 2, and Forza would be a fantastic way to end the year. Definitely better than 2021 IMO.

Yeah Redfall is starting to look like a high 60s - low 70s, Lol.

Goes to show that no studio is untouchable.

Feel a bit sorry for Arkane, I'm about 99% sure that Redfall was "forced" onto them by Bethesda, in fact I read an interview a few weeks ago that basically said Bethesda didn't want to do Dishonoured 3 and wanted something with more of a multiplayer focus, which created Deathloop. We also had Fallout 76 and the crappy Wolfenstein co-op spinoff.

Then I think at some point during development they tried to deviate Redfall back to a traditional Arkane single-player title, it was heavily promoted at first as a co-op focused title and then it was heavily promoted as a traditional Arkane single-player focused title, then the descriptions went from Left 4 Dead to Borderlands to FarCry, Lol. Now all the reviews so far are saying the solo is bad.

Based on a few reviews, it doesn't sound like delaying this would have changed much, it'd need a lot longer than a 6 month delay, it sounds like the game at its core is just very unfocused and doesn't know what it wants to be, an RPG, a looter shooter, an unsatisfying progression, etc. The vibe I'm getting from the leaked reviews. Some point you have to cut your losses and just move on, they were given an almost year delay already.

Arkane needs to regroup and focus on what makes them great, immersive single-player focused titles, we could have got a Prey 2 instead, Lol. Hopefully if I'm correct, Bethesda will chill now from chasing live-service, co-op focused titles, being under Xbox's safety blanket but man this is a bummer for now. This feels like the Rocksteady situation, a brilliant single-player studio being made to chase after that co-op live service cash cow.

For the people who is familiar with CMA and CAT. Lets say that MS wins on appeal and it the Acquistion goes back to the CMA. As a remedy, MS creates an independent ABK and split the company so that it operates in the UK as it does today. If the CMA decides that this is not enough because MS does not do this in the rest of the world, would MS be able to appeal that decision as well. The reason I am asking this question is because I believe we seen where the UK wants their decisions to be reflected outside of their boarders. This would appear to be a huge overreach of UK authority and grounds for ligation.

Anybody looking forward to State of Decay 3, I have hope for this franchise despite the fact the 2nd did somewhat let me down on some aspects.