Why do you think that is? What would you consider a European masterpiece? And what would you consider something that falls short from outside Europe?

▲ the__alchemist 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

European masterpieces, recentish:

  - Talos Principle 2
  - Expedition 33
  - KCD2
  - Anything by Arcane
  - Anything by CDPR
  - 007 Last light / Hitman
  - Blue Prince

This is subject to taste, but the games I've been personally enjoying the most are almost all European. US games are comparatively mediocre. I don't have an explanation; only this observation. I was startled when noticing it.

Most recently, I'm loving Order of the Sinking Star, and that's from a US team. There's hope!

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tsimionescu 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You're forgetting a few major ones:

- Baldur's Gate 3 (German)

- Disco Elysium (Estonian)

- Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2 (same studio as BG3)

BG3 is notable for its gigantic success. And Disco Elysium is one of the best written games ever made, and it showed that you can have a fantastic RPG with no combat system whatsoever, while still having meaningful progression.

	▲	SSLy 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> - Baldur's Gate 3 (German) Bruh, Larian is in Belgium

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mrcsharp an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

To add to this list, Remedy Entertainment. They don't miss.

- Alan Wake 1 & 2 - Control & Control Resonant (came out last month) - Quantum Break

They are a small studio but release fantastic works of art every time. If you haven't heard of them, you might've heard of Max Payne. It was developed by these guys.

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flumpcakes 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Order of the Sinking Star

I was going to mention this game as a counter point but then realised that if I am doing that it's kind of the exception that proves the rule.

I do wonder why this is, perhaps there's more money in the US to build bigger games with bigger teams and you just get the 'too many cooks in the kitchen' syndrome.

I must admit most AAA games from the US over the last decade have been underwhelming for me.

	▲	chainingsolid 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		To be fair Order of the Sinking Star is by Jhonthon Blow + (who ever he employed). So if we rephraze it from US to US AAA studios, it still works.

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kridsdale1 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Baldurs Gate 3 was made in Europe!

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ZekeSulastin 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Anything by CDPR

They're lucky they were able to No Man's Sky CP2077 alongside Edgerunners being well received.

	▲	underlipton 7 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Edgerunners saved CP2077 the way the Pokemon anime built the franchise in the US: it took a game that could be quite esoteric in its appeal and sold everybody on the world and the stories that could be told in it. Oh, and built a richer and more focused musical identity. I always wonder why other games get this aspect of the marketing so wrong. Controversial take, but I think if they'd had a handful of cinematics out before release (and they hadn't gone with the atrocious sales model), Concord might have had a fighting chance. There was a lot wrong with that game, but its biggest failure was that no one loved it enough to defend it when the hatedom descended. Compare to, say, Marathon: it still may fail, in the end, but it's hung on for as long as it did because, in part, it genuinely charmed; it made an earnest attempt to get people to people to buy into the qualia of the vision of its world.

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AlexandrB 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The US gaming industry has serious Hollywood envy. There's a constant push to make games "cinematic" and put big name actors in leading roles. This not only bloats budgets but results in barely-interactive monstrosities where gameplay is just a bridge between long, non-interactive cutscenes.

It's ironic because Hollywood is not doing too well at the moment.

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autoexec 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I like "cinematic" games, and have never had a problem with long cutscenes as long as they told a good story. Games are a great medium for storytelling and cutscenes are better than delivering plot strictly by having players hunt for thousands of short snippets of text.

I'm far less impressed with big name actors and that seems like a massive waste of money. As long as the acting is good, and the voices aren't obnoxious, I don't care who the actor is. People might see a movie just because it has an actor they like in it, but I don't think that carries over too well to games.

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AlexandrB 4 hours ago | parent [-]

It's definitely a balancing act. There are some great cinematic games (Last of Us), but it's also easy to put all the focus on the cinematic aspects and have a bunch of mediocre gameplay as filler in between. I don't understand why more games didn't go the Half Life 2 route and have the conversation/cinematic play out around you without taking control away completely.

	▲	autoexec 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		That really is a good way to handle it, although it does open the door to miss certain things if players don't do what's expected. For example, in the opening chapter for the last of us you can miss the news report on the TV and the stuff going on outside through the windows before Joel comes in. More than once in games I've only been clued into the fact that I missed a jump scare by a sudden musical sting. In one sense, that's perfectly fair. In life if you're looking at your feet or spending your time examining the walls you'd be oblivious to what's going on around you, and for non-critical things having a bunch of little moments that you can only catch if you're in (or looking at) the right place at the right time can improve replay value, but games would have to be careful to make sure that the important stuff can't be missed.
	▲	IslandRebel an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Last of US I replayed about 5 years ago on the PS4, and it isn't a good game. I recently revisited Uncharted (Last of Us is just Uncharted with a more serious tone), and they are not good games. I think casual audiences like them because of the heavy story element, but they are quite tiresome to play. Naughty Dog excels at presentation, but the gameplay is just not there. There are also a bunch of "action/adventure" mechanics that seem to be identical in a bunch of mainstream games. You have an upgrade system, so the actual gameplay of the game is bad at the start because you don't have any of the fun abilities at the start, open world mechanics, a very bland open world and the stories are very PG-13, and the characters are kind of bland in the main story. I was playing Ghosts of Tshushima, and many of the mechanics come straight from Farcry 3. I think I am not going to bother completing it. I feel like I've played this game many times before because it's so similar to other games. I would have probably got bored with it before now if it wasn't for the setting. Generally, a lot of people are still replaying some of the greats from the late 2000s to the mid-2010s because the games weren't nearly as bland.

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Barrin92 31 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

also people shouldn't sleep on Housemarque. Both Returnal and Saros were fantastic. Don't want to spoil Returnal but the narrative and symbolism that tie the game together if you go through everything after you've finished it and have a grasp of the story is incredible. And the gameplay is extremely fun.

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IslandRebel 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think many of these games you've listed are a 7/10. A lot of games I am playing are either years old now or I am going back to older consoles (via emulation normally) and the classic games on them.

▲ rossvor 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If we are sticking to the CRPG theme. Then the Witcher 3 and Divinity: OG 2, BG3 and Disco Elysium would be the obvious choices. If you told me in beginning of 2010s all of the future hits in this genre will come out outside of US and Bioware/Obsidian will fade away, I would be quite surprised (but maybe shouldn't have, considering their owners and financial situations)

▲ charm137 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

As many have mentioned, BG3, CDPR's Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 franchise, Remedy's Control / Alan Wake franchise (both original IPs) to name just a few. DICE (within EA) comes from Sweden and it's responsible for EA's core Frostbite engine alongside its Battlefield franchise.

I cannot point to the reasons as to why. Many of these teams are global teams - so a lot of the same problems apply: marketing costs/timelines, release-time crunch etc. The one difference I can point to is that perhaps executive payouts are not overly dependent on total shareholder returns.

▲ mcmcmc 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The Kingdom Come: Deliverance games from Warhorse Studios and the Witcher franchise from CD Projekt Red (both Polish) are excellent and have won a ton of awards

Lots of non EU games fall short, including several mentioned in this thread, e.g. Anthem

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antiframe 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> The Kingdom Come: Deliverance games from Warhorse Studios and the Witcher franchise from CD Projekt Red (both Polish)

Warhorse Studios is Czech; Slavs are not all alike.

	▲	mcmcmc an hour ago \| parent [-]
		My mistake, I misremembered. Unfortunately can’t edit.

▲ 4dregress 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The Witcher 3, Any GTA game

▲ santoshalper 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

CDPR is probably the flagship studio in Europe. Interestingly, they are probably the modern studio that most resembles Bioware in the 2000's.

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AdrianB1 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Unfortunately CDPR is showing some signs of Bioware-ing. As much as I liked Cyberpunk 2077, it was visibly "less than" Witcher 3 in too many ways. This is a sign of decline.

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Hamuko 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not really sure if they're comparable to a Bioware since CD Projekt Red the studio is basically the one and the same as CD Projekt the publisher. They also own GOG.com. They're probably more comparable to a Valve, with game development, game publishing and game distribution under a single roof.

	▲	SSLy 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		CDPR has looong been separated from the publisher arm, and recently from the GOG one. Probably for the best for CDPR.

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izacus 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Warhorse studios as well. Rebel Wolves. Machine Games. IO interactive.

The list is rather long.

▲ Henchman21 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Valheim, Enshrouded. Each sit at the peak of the genre, IMO.