Expectations
Sat, Mar. 21st, 2026 22:26![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thatzetaOver the years, I've witnessed plenty of fallout following game releases, caused by overhype and fans overblowing their expectations. The most infamous examples, of course, being No Man's Sky and to a degree Cyberpunk 2077 (but that one was also really buggy on some hardware, I got away lucky). And then there's also Kingdom Hearts 3 (which also suffered from having been announced way too early).
Personally, I've stopped paying too much attention to games before their release. I loosely keep track of them (like release dates for example) and maybe watching one or two trailers. But I won't go into deep dives to try and overanalyse every screenshot and every trailer prior to release. It just sets up too many expectations that might potentially be disappointed. If I don't know too much about the game, I can still be pleasantly surprised.
Case in point: Redfall. Right after release, I streamed it through the Gamespass, but I was forced to play with ping-delay on controller and with German language setting, so I eventually dropped it. Now the game got really awful reviews and it's still considered to be kinda bad. But I properly bought it on Steam this week and started playing it and honestly, it's fine. It has a nice visual vibe and the gameplay is okay, too. It might have also suffered the case of being too overhyped (as an Arkane studios game) as well as some behind-the-scenes nonsense to result in the fallout.
I'm having a good time though so... that's all that matters to me.
Personally, I've stopped paying too much attention to games before their release. I loosely keep track of them (like release dates for example) and maybe watching one or two trailers. But I won't go into deep dives to try and overanalyse every screenshot and every trailer prior to release. It just sets up too many expectations that might potentially be disappointed. If I don't know too much about the game, I can still be pleasantly surprised.
Case in point: Redfall. Right after release, I streamed it through the Gamespass, but I was forced to play with ping-delay on controller and with German language setting, so I eventually dropped it. Now the game got really awful reviews and it's still considered to be kinda bad. But I properly bought it on Steam this week and started playing it and honestly, it's fine. It has a nice visual vibe and the gameplay is okay, too. It might have also suffered the case of being too overhyped (as an Arkane studios game) as well as some behind-the-scenes nonsense to result in the fallout.
I'm having a good time though so... that's all that matters to me.
