Really frustrating to see online commenters speaking in favor of the acquisition (and prior MS buy ups) just because they are already locked into the Xbox ecosystem and they want games on Game Pass. Never mind that it’s objectively anti-consumer/anti-competitive and arguably bad for the industry broadly, it benefits a very specific subset of consumers so it must be good and the FTC / Sony are just haters. Complete lack of critical thinking.
I’ve heard some industry people aren’t pleased about these kind of late cycle whole-studio acquisitions either…think for example about Starfield devs who have already done the bulk of the work on their game and then have to A) shelve whatever work was done on PS versions B) throw their work onto a subscription model instead of pure sales while C) having to immediately generate profit to justify the purchase of Bethesda/Zenimax that they didn’t have any say in. Turning more and more studios into line items in a mega corp budget sheet.
Grim.
This conversation always felt so disingenuous to me. The game clearly has elements that we’re left open with the potential of exploring the further. The lost and destroyed crystals, missing Leviathan, ambiguous ending elements… If you go to the far north of Sanbreque and look up the coast you can also see some weird growth on the landmass that you cannot reach. They put tons of empty slots in the game then were like “We don’t plan to fill these in.” Uh huh.