Laura Fryer gives a fairly scathing review of HR’s encroachment and obvious power grab to be less “day to day” and more to (verbatim) be “at the same level or above the CEO”.
Video goes into how HR makes toxic work environments that demonize ever speaking out or questioning anything, and the toxic positivity that holds games back.
From HR -> “People and Culture” -> “Chief Disruptors”
Production quality is the death of high-choice RPGs. When a game has two artists pumping out dozens of assets a day and every choice just changes some text and objects around, you can afford to give the player a ton of choice. Even the early DA games were on the tail end of that, with all the dialogue voiced, requiring recording and implementation cost for every line.
These days, big games are expected to have not just voiced dialogue but to have choreographed cutscenes. Making your animators spend a week on a cutscene 5% of players will see is viewed as a waste of money, so you cut the decision branch that leads to it.
There was a period in the late 90s to early 2000s where you could make an RPG that was top-5 in every way. That will never happen again.
Ok