Videogame Discussion Thread

So far FFXV is maybe 60% fun, 30% WTF moments, and 10% tedium. I've only played two hours or so, but it's definitely growing on me. Haven't really played a FF game since XII, and even then I pretty much gave up maybe 1/3rd of the way thru cuz I loathed most of the characters. All the Lightning stuff seemed like a more interesting follow up, but there was just too much else going on for me to care about the series at that point.

I think IX was the last entry in the series I really liked, at least in terms of character design and setting, and XV is definitely the most likeable entry for me since then. Especially the battle system, as I am generally *not* a fan of turn based combat (with a few exceptions like Lunar and Suikoden).

The setting feels really cool---I like the mixture of fantasy and "everyday" looking elements---though admittedly a lot of the "wtf?" factor comes from seeing some uncanny valley looking NPCs that are just like... normal looking ppl wearing polo shirts n shit.

We'll see how it goes.


Buuuuuut in other news....



I can't help getting hyped AF seeing this. Please don't suck. Please don't suck.

Please. Don't. Suck. ;-;

 

I'm a Dark Souls fan.
I'm just impressed to see lips moving when characters talk.

 

Especially the stock main character model whose expression during the gun scene seems to constantly be "I find this hilarious."

Honestly though, all that is secondary to the gameplay. The only reason I'm remotely optimistic despite this being EA's new BioWare is that there's a return to exploration and "the unknown" as the focus of the game. Combat looks good, but really I just hope the missions are more than simply 1) walk over there, 2) scan this, 3) walk over here, 4) scan that.

Dragon Age Inquisition for instance was definitely an improvement over DA2, but the side missions were largely bland and repetitive.

 

For me, DLC is at its best when I've already enjoyed the core game, and it extends its freshness by giving me new stuff to do and explore sometime afterward. It gives me something more to look forward to, and IMO it should either a) expand on the lore of the game and / or b) offer something more challenging than the main game's content.

In which case I usually save the DLC for later on in the game anyway.

Not to harp on Dark Souls, but the way DS2 and DS3 handle DLC is ideal for me. The same could be said specifically for Mass Effect 2 as well. Because defeating the last boss in these three games I just mentioned doesn't instantly boot you into "new game +," you are still free to explore and do whatever after you've technically finished the game. This is the ideal situation to my mind for enjoying DLC, especially if it's episodic: you already have a built-up character and are familiar with the mechanics, so it can offer you a greater challenge, answer questions from the core game, and/or offer different types of experiences and environments.

Mass Effect 2 in particular was great in this sense: it was supported by BioWare for a full year after its release, and while you can definitely argue against DLC from a financial standpoint, getting to have new experiences in ME2 for an entire year after enjoying the core game was really special.

Granted, I think good DLC should also be integrated into the core game as smoothly as possible, and thus one should be able to access and enjoy it at any point mid game onward, not just at the very end. Like in Dark Souls: if there's a particular DLC item I want early on, I should be able to get it if I can navigate the challenge.

So I can see why some would want to wait for the DLC to be released before diving into a game, financial reasons aside.

 

"From Ashes" was part of the original game. It just got removed and turned into day one DLC to add incentive for getting the Collectors Edition (which basically meant you got the full game) or to make extra money as a download. It's a very skeezy business practice. Capcom does it a lot too.

While it added new lore, I'd argue that "Leviathan" honestly didn't add much to the story itself. Did I enjoy it? Yes. It was my second favorite ME3 DLC behind the goofy party one. It was pretty cool. However all it really did was take the mystery of the Reapers and answer it by introducing the mystery of the Leviathans. In other words: it didn't add much more to the story beyond saying "you know that incomprehensible cosmic boogeyman you've been wondering about this whole time? Well it was really created by this *other* incomprehensible cosmic boogeyman you'll be left wondering about!"

It just moved the goal posts back a bit and added, what, three new lines of dialog to an already unsatisfying ending? Perhaps it fleshed out the motivation behind the Reaper's creation, but their purpose had already been established---and most likely altered from the original writers' intentions---and frankly it was so unsatisfying and nonsensical, the motivation behind it couldn't really save my extreme disappointment.

Besides, the Reapers were always more menacing and effective from a narrative standpoint as an incomprehensible entity, just out of view enough to let our imaginations fill in the rest.

The only thing I wish I would have waited for were the "fixed" endings. And by fixed I mean the slightly fleshed out but still kind of lackluster endings. The endings that weren't, at least, a slap in the face to fans with writing so lazy it made a mockery of the entire franchise up to that point.

And that was a free download.

Honestly though, the fixed endings and DLC weren't enough to save ME3 for me. Even if I had played the game later on with the extra content, the core mechanics would have still utterly disappointed me: the limited dialog options, the dialed in "interactions" around the ship you get to watch instead of actively shape, the ridiculous hospital that was supposed to be the biggest in the galaxy but was the size of a walk in closet, the lackluster new characters who were introduced in other media (comics, novels) and thrown into the game haphazardly, side quests that were reduced to simply hitting a button over the right planet then going back to the Citadel, the simple substitution of one outcome for a nearly identical one regardless of our important choices in previous games, the obnoxious war assets system, reducing paragon and renegade choices to token morality options instead of keeping them different approaches with ambiguous moral implications, a much more linear mission structure, and really the entirety of the missions that took place on Earth.

In other words, very rarely does DLC make or break a game for me.

Still, I definitely understand waiting on something like Bethesda's Game of the Year editions, since Bethesda is notorious for having to fix lots of bugs anyway, and it makes more sense from a financial standpoint to get all the DLC included.

However with something like Scholar of the First Sin, so many changes were made to the core game, I'm glad to have played the original because a lot of the changes were neither better or worse... just different. And some changes were even worse IMO.

When it comes to BioWare's games though... I don't think they really do the "game of the year" thing with Mass Effect anyway? Like, even with the big trilogy set you were given some codes to download maybe half the DLC, but you were still left having to pay for the rest of it.