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Vaan and Ashe have near identical stats so yea you could roll with whomever, Ashe, Balthier and Basch was my go to squad and they cleaned house. if I'm not mistaken the entire game was meant to be Basch, Ashe, Fran and Balthier till they decided to add Vaan and the blond girl.
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Feb 1, 2015 10:27
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Been taking time off of playing MGS and went to replay Batman: Arkham City, and there was one small detail I noticed. Spoilers for a five year old game. When a healthy Joker is monologuing about how things aren't always how they appear in a video to Batman, and rants about a big twist, the person holding the camera coughs and shakes subtlety. Later on you find out the actual dying Joker was behind the camera, while Clayface was the one appearing as the healthy one. Neat little sorry thing I never noticed before.
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Feb 1, 2015 10:42
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Alteisen posted:Vaan and Ashe have near identical stats so yea you could roll with whomever, Ashe, Balthier and Basch was my go to squad and they cleaned house. the higher ups at squareenix told them they needed teenage protagonists so that the target audience had someone to relate to
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Feb 1, 2015 11:02
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umalt posted:Man, I always have a good amount of fondness for the first one; it was fun and it's whole tone was about recreating that kind of magic you feel at Disneyland as a kid without making teenage me feel like I was playing a kid's game. I never could get into the second one though, due to it's overwhelming amounts of "here's this thing we introduced in the GBA spin-off that you never played" and dumb lore. I still remember the first one pretty fondly too. I really liked traverse town for some reason. edit: Hollow Bastion on the other hand was horrible. scarycave has a new favorite as of 12:38 on Feb 1, 2015 |
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Feb 1, 2015 12:21
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LumpyGumby posted:Been taking time off of playing MGS and went to replay Batman: Arkham City, and there was one small detail I noticed. Spoilers for a five year old game. During the big fight near the middle of the game where you take on a suddenly healthy Joker, if you go into X-Ray mode, Joker has no skeleton. This is actually a callback to Arkham Asylum where you could talk to Clayface in his cell. He'd always take on the appearance of other characters to taunt you or try to trick you, but if you looked at him in X-Ray, he had no skeleton. So if you remembered that minor, missable detail from the first game, you could spoil yourself on the big twist in City in the middle of the game.
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Feb 1, 2015 13:00
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Red Bones posted:With all the characters in Kingdom Hearts being various degrees of magical soul clones of each other, the stuff Shimamura does with mixing character themes without them sounding really jumbled is really impressive. Totally agree on the combat, so many people thought II had better combat and I never understood that. Loved I's system.
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Feb 1, 2015 15:07
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Alteisen posted:Vaan and Ashe have near identical stats so yea you could roll with whomever, Ashe, Balthier and Basch was my go to squad and they cleaned house. It would've been so drat cool if the whole roster were all intelligent, worldly adults. Balthier was slick as hell--quick-witted, skilled, and capable, but still knew when he was in over his head. But nope, we gotta have some dumb naive kid run the show so he can learn valuable lessons during his quest to the end boss, like "revenge isn't the answer" and "don't charge in without thinking." Don't get me wrong, I loved Final Fantasy XII, but I keep dreaming of the game it could've been. That "learning a lesson" thing reminded me of one of the many reasons I love Xenoblade Chronicles. I'll spoiler some bits because they're going to re-relase it soon for the N3DS: The protagonist's hometown gets attacked by bad guys at the start of the game, and a close friend of his is killed. He and another friend set off on a quest for revenge. You're expecting an "adult" character to pull him aside at some point and explain that revenge isn't healthy and to let it go, but it never happens. Everybody that joins the team is pro-"gently caress those jerks over" and the attitude never changes. From start to finish, you're on a singular quest to punish those responsible. It's so goddamn 
GOTTA STAY FAI has a new favorite as of 17:21 on Feb 1, 2015 |
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Feb 1, 2015 17:18
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e: nvm
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Feb 1, 2015 17:26
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Rough Lobster posted:I think in Fable 1 you could charge up your bow to do more damage. The longer you held it the more damage it did, and there was like NO DAMAGE CAP. Also there was a spell that made your bow shoot multiple arrows. I remember casting the spell, charging the bow for like five minutes, then walking through the final door and one shotting the ultimate boss. You do end up being to clear out entire areas of Albion without so much as near the end of the game, so this is just a logical conclusion. However, you start so drat weak: my favorite little thing is in the beginning, the game lets you equip "heavy" weapons rather than outright not making them available. But since you're a puny chicken chaser, all you can manage to do is to drag the greatsword behind you and slowly swing at bandits.
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Feb 1, 2015 17:33
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GOTTA STAY FAI posted:It would've been so drat cool if the whole roster were all intelligent, worldly adults. Balthier was slick as hell--quick-witted, skilled, and capable, but still knew when he was in over his head. I always liked his arrogance and the fact that the entire game he would insist that he was the leading man. If only you actually were, Balthier 
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Feb 1, 2015 18:48
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While the game has a bunch of problems, one thing Assassin's Creed Unity does really well is hair. Especially Elise (the female lead) her hair looks like real person hair and not a weird helmet thing.
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Feb 1, 2015 20:22
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GOTTA STAY FAI posted:That "learning a lesson" thing reminded me of one of the many reasons I love Xenoblade Chronicles. In a similar vein, I liked the way Syndicate - the FPS, not the isometric - had its plot progress. All throughout the game, I was dreading what I had come to call the "Hippie Moment" - the one where someone would come up to your main character and tell him, "No, Miles Kilo, you're a Real Boy and you don't have to do what the Evil Fascist Corporation tells you anymore~" and then they'd do something to remove his awesome superpowers and it would be a thing about how Man Is Better Than This or some other stupid bullshit that isn't about a 'roided-up combat cyborg murdering his way through large cities. There's even the perfect setup for it, where you go and "deal with" the unchipped underclasses. People who took a Moral Stand to Not Wear The Tools of The Man. Nope. Never happens.
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Feb 1, 2015 20:26
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Exit Strategy posted:In a similar vein, I liked the way Syndicate - the FPS, not the isometric - had its plot progress. All throughout the game, I was dreading what I had come to call the "Hippie Moment" - the one where someone would come up to your main character and tell him, "No, Miles Kilo, you're a Real Boy and you don't have to do what the Evil Fascist Corporation tells you anymore~" and then they'd do something to remove his awesome superpowers and it would be a thing about how Man Is Better Than This or some other stupid bullshit that isn't about a 'roided-up combat cyborg murdering his way through large cities. Except it has the shocking twist where your elite jackbooted thug finds out his bosses are evil and turns on them
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Feb 1, 2015 20:30
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Len posted:Except it has the shocking twist where your elite jackbooted thug finds out his bosses are evil and turns on them Or rather he gets reprogrammed to serve a different master.
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Feb 1, 2015 21:44
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GOTTA STAY FAI posted:That "learning a lesson" thing reminded me of one of the many reasons I love Xenoblade Chronicles. I'll spoiler some bits because they're going to re-relase it soon for the N3DS: It's amazing how just having a motivation that you can emphasize with on any level works better than shifting protagonist age around and making them dumb. I've never played 12 so is Vaan supposed to be like an immigrant or something? I would assume that you'd know basic stuff about the city you live in, at the least.
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Feb 1, 2015 22:15
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I'd like to play a game where you work for The Empire or morally grey organization and you don't wind up getting betrayed by your bosses and joining the Noble Resistance/taking over for yourself. It doesn't have to be a game where you're evil, exactly - the Grey Warden in Dragon Age 1 kinda counts, since your job is to fight the Archdemon by any means necessary and the game/the Warden hierarchy never shouts at you KARMA LOST BAD ENDING, but you're also pretty much on your own the whole time. Mr House's path in New Vegas is the only one I can think of at the moment like what I'm talking about.
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Feb 1, 2015 22:18
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Byzantine posted:I'd like to play a game where you work for The Empire or morally grey organization and you don't wind up getting betrayed by your bosses and joining the Noble Resistance/taking over for yourself. I think it's kind of hosed up that New Vegas had the best story for providing you choices and letting you frame your actions in any sort of open-world RPG, and it still feels like an elaborate community mod in a lot of ways. It's surprising that Bethesda really still can't get this right at all.
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Feb 1, 2015 22:31
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GOTTA STAY FAI posted:The protagonist's hometown gets attacked by bad guys at the start of the game, and a close friend of his is killed. He and another friend set off on a quest for revenge. You're expecting an "adult" character to pull him aside at some point and explain that revenge isn't healthy and to let it go, but it never happens. Everybody that joins the team is pro-"gently caress those jerks over" and the attitude never changes. From start to finish, you're on a singular quest to punish those responsible. It's so goddamn Well, He does get over the revenge bit after his battle with Egil where he decides to spare him, at least until Dickson lives up to his name and then Zanza shows up and everyone is out for blood again.
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Feb 1, 2015 22:40
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Byzantine posted:I'd like to play a game where you work for The Empire or morally grey organization and you don't wind up getting betrayed by your bosses and joining the Noble Resistance/taking over for yourself. Only one I can think of is Republic Commando, though only barely since you're doing standard heroic stuff for the most part and only gets a sinister tinge right at the end since we already know how Episode 3 goes down.
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Feb 1, 2015 22:58
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RareAcumen posted:It's amazing how just having a motivation that you can emphasize with on any level works better than shifting protagonist age around and making them dumb. I've never played 12 so is Vaan supposed to be like an immigrant or something? I would assume that you'd know basic stuff about the city you live in, at the least. Vaan lost his brother in the war against the bad guys. Said bad guys throw a party in his hometown (which they took over) and he busts in to steal poo poo and just sort bumps into more interesting characters and what not. From what I remember anyways. edit: I don't remember if they fleshed out his character much more than that in the sequel. Hell, I don't even remember if they fleshed him out in Dissidia either. He was pretty forgettable aside from him being Captain Basch. scarycave has a new favorite as of 23:10 on Feb 1, 2015 |
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Feb 1, 2015 23:06
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Byzantine posted:I'd like to play a game where you work for The Empire or morally grey organization and you don't wind up getting betrayed by your bosses and joining the Noble Resistance/taking over for yourself. TIE Fighter. Start to end, you are an Imperial fighter pilot. Granted, you do end up doing a lot of less evil things like stopping a civil war or hunting down pirates but you also kill a ton of Rebels.
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Feb 1, 2015 23:08
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FTL is all about getting vital information about the Rebels to the Empire, then fighting the Rebel flagship. How is an empire so outgunned by the rebels when the empire is made up of about 5 times as many races, I just don't understand.
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Feb 1, 2015 23:38
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Byzantine posted:I'd like to play a game where you work for The Empire or morally grey organization and you don't wind up getting betrayed by your bosses and joining the Noble Resistance/taking over for yourself. Spec Ops?
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Feb 1, 2015 23:45
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Byzantine posted:I'd like to play a game where you work for The Empire or morally grey organization and you don't wind up getting betrayed by your bosses and joining the Noble Resistance/taking over for yourself. Expeditions: Conquistador is sort of the same - it's a flawed game, but does a really good job of showing that being a Conquistador can't lead anywhere good. You can try to minimalise the damage you cause and leave the Aztecs etc well enough alone, or you can play them against each other, manipulate, crush and subjugate them in the name of Spain and God. It'll still make you feel like poo poo sometimes (understandably) but it never stops the narrative to say BY THE WAY WE KNOW NOBODY WOULD DO THIS THESE DAYS AND IT'S OBVIOUSLY WRONG TO COMMIT GENOCIDE SO- it just lets events play out as, well, they pretty much did.
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Feb 1, 2015 23:49
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Cerberus in ME2 had a good chunk of moral ambiguity and decent characters fighting for a dirty cause. They also didn't betray you... I'm pretty sure. Even in 3 it looks more like you ended up getting out ahead despite it turning out they were all evil evil all along.
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Feb 1, 2015 23:51
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Fingerless Gloves posted:FTL is all about getting vital information about the Rebels to the Empire, then fighting the Rebel flagship. Military coup? Also, it's a federation. Tiberius Thyben has a new favorite as of 00:06 on Feb 2, 2015 |
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Feb 2, 2015 00:01
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Chinaman7000 posted:Cerberus in ME2 had a good chunk of moral ambiguity and decent characters fighting for a dirty cause. They also didn't betray you... I'm pretty sure. TIM was manipulating you all along, let you walk into a trap in the middle of the game, and then you tell them to gently caress off in the end by destroying the Collector Base and officially breaking off from them.
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Feb 2, 2015 00:05
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mysterious loyall Y posted:Expeditions: Conquistador is sort of the same - it's a flawed game, but does a really good job of showing that being a Conquistador can't lead anywhere good. You can try to minimalise the damage you cause and leave the Aztecs etc well enough alone, or you can play them against each other, manipulate, crush and subjugate them in the name of Spain and God. It'll still make you feel like poo poo sometimes (understandably) but it never stops the narrative to say BY THE WAY WE KNOW NOBODY WOULD DO THIS THESE DAYS AND IT'S OBVIOUSLY WRONG TO COMMIT GENOCIDE SO- it just lets events play out as, well, they pretty much did. Same as the Civ 5 "Conquest of the New World" Scenario. American civs want faith, Europeans score points by gold, and trade is nothing compared to what you get for razing cities. (And once you develop piracy, raiding other european civs is a lot easier than grabbing gold from across the ocean!)
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Feb 2, 2015 00:16
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In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, you are working for your corporate mastermind ultra-CEO boss who takes on fishy military contracts while yapping on about how this is just to bring in money and seriously they are far more interested in all the good they can do with that money, the whole spiel. Of course halfway through the game you realize that he is actually evil and while that is partly true, you never really stop working for him and one of the endings is explicitly doing what he wants, which is not necessarily the "wrong" choice. At no point does he betray you, he only withholds information and you can call him on his bullshit without going all "I'm going to bring your organization down in flames, gently caress you".
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Feb 2, 2015 00:38
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Simply Simon posted:In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, you are working for your corporate mastermind ultra-CEO boss who takes on fishy military contracts while yapping on about how this is just to bring in money and seriously they are far more interested in all the good they can do with that money, the whole spiel. Of course halfway through the game you realize that he is actually evil and while that is partly true, you never really stop working for him and one of the endings is explicitly doing what he wants, which is not necessarily the "wrong" choice. At no point does he betray you, he only withholds information and you can call him on his bullshit without going all "I'm going to bring your organization down in flames, gently caress you".
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Feb 2, 2015 01:00
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Fingerless Gloves posted:FTL is all about getting vital information about the Rebels to the Empire, then fighting the Rebel flagship. The Rebels are an organized uprising, against an actually fairly ramshackle federation that both isn't equipped and is barely willing to fight them. Out of all the races... -The human systems are hit the hardest by the pro-human uprising, but they do at least want to fight. -The Engi are cooperative, but conflict-averse. They supply the humans (and you), but don't want to fight themselves, and are too busy at war with the Mantis. -The Zoltan don't want the fight to happen at all, and are generally organized enough to keep it off their doorstep. They'll take part if they have to, but they don't want to. -The Mantis are at war with the Engi, which shows you how much they respect the federation and the concept of galactic peace. -The Rock aren't impressed by either side, and have enough firepower to remain neutral by way of being too difficult for either side to deal with. -If the Slugs are even part of the federation, they're keeping their head down and waiting for this all to blow over. Given how lovely their ships are, this is unsurprising. Generally speaking, though, the federation in FTL is shown to be pretty good.The enhanced edition adds some pretty shady sidequests, and you yourself can be an utter rear end in a top hat, but the federation itself seems pretty okay.
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Feb 2, 2015 01:12
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Simply Simon posted:In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, you are working for your corporate mastermind ultra-CEO boss who takes on fishy military contracts while yapping on about how this is just to bring in money and seriously they are far more interested in all the good they can do with that money, the whole spiel. Of course halfway through the game you realize that he is actually evil and while that is partly true, you never really stop working for him and one of the endings is explicitly doing what he wants, which is not necessarily the "wrong" choice. At no point does he betray you, he only withholds information and you can call him on his bullshit without going all "I'm going to bring your organization down in flames, gently caress you". I don't know, he's going up against a government that runs literal FEMA death camps and the guy that says "hey you know all that tech that could make the lives of disabled people better? gently caress them they should just suck on peg-legs because," all while rejecting crazy profits by developing a form of cybernetics that doesn't require frequent doses of evil drug X. Sure he's kind of a dick to the player, but it means humanity gets perfect no-drawbacks robolimbs and Jensen gets to be the coolest cyborg man. Sarif as the fairly decent dude up against literal caricatures is the second worst part of Deus Ex, the first being the "gently caress it I'm out" ending option edit: I guess any moral ambiguity with Sarif's disdain for consent forms is undercut by A. it means large swaths of people are no longer addicted to Neuropozyne and B. everyone else is explicitly genocidal for the compelling reasons of "ehn" and "ummm" as well as "well uhh hmmm" In line with playing for the evil/not-so-good empire, Star Wars: the Old Republic lets you play as halfway decent members of the Sith Empire. And your bosses don't always betray you! I mean, usually, but sometimes they don't, and never in a way that the Empire as a whole condones. TGLT has a new favorite as of 01:50 on Feb 2, 2015 |
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Feb 2, 2015 01:23
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Sarif did take advantage of Jensen and his combination augments/sleuth-autism but he is certainly not evil when you think about what he's up against.
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Feb 2, 2015 01:24
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Simply Simon posted:In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, you are working for your corporate mastermind ultra-CEO boss who takes on fishy military contracts while yapping on about how this is just to bring in money and seriously they are far more interested in all the good they can do with that money, the whole spiel. Of course halfway through the game you realize that he is actually evil and while that is partly true, you never really stop working for him and one of the endings is explicitly doing what he wants, which is not necessarily the "wrong" choice. At no point does he betray you, he only withholds information and you can call him on his bullshit without going all "I'm going to bring your organization down in flames, gently caress you". I don't know if I'd call Sarif evil, though he does pull some shady poo poo. One big mark in his favor is how he was contacted by either Bob Page or Morgan Everret with an invitation to join the Illuminati and he tells them to gently caress off. Also, given how his business practices compare to ones like Tai Young Medical, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
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Feb 2, 2015 01:26
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While we're on the topic of Sarif and stuff that isn't always blatantly obvious to every player, don't forget that when you're exploring one of the medical areas (I'm assuming in the first hub, given its context) you find out that the potentially life-threatening fall didn't actually screw over all of Jensen's limbs. One of the arms needed to be amputated, but Sarif gave the order to the docs (without your knowledge or consent) to go ahead and chop off the other arm and both legs as well, in addition to the other brain/skeletal/whatever stuff
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Feb 2, 2015 01:32
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Sarif's biggest flaw is that he's completely incapable of understanding people who don't want to be awesome cyborgs with punchy arms and jumpy legs. Frankly to doubt him is just being selfish. 
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Feb 2, 2015 01:36
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Sarif is actually a descendent of Kreiger from Archer, turning everyone into cyborgs is in his very genes.
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Feb 2, 2015 01:40
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Sentient Data posted:While we're on the topic of Sarif and stuff that isn't always blatantly obvious to every player, don't forget that when you're exploring one of the medical areas (I'm assuming in the first hub, given its context) you find out that the potentially life-threatening fall didn't actually screw over all of Jensen's limbs. One of the arms needed to be amputated, but Sarif gave the order to the docs (without your knowledge or consent) to go ahead and chop off the other arm and both legs as well, in addition to the other brain/skeletal/whatever stuff The parallels to Robocop and DX:HR are pretty obvious once you know to look for them. I mean fucks sake, at the police station Detroit there's a cop named Alex Murphy talking to someone about some 80's film where a guy gets turned into a cybog. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j41J_DqCd4
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Feb 2, 2015 01:41
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Tracula posted:The parallels to Robocop and DX:HR are pretty obvious once you know to look for them. I mean fucks sake, at the police station Detroit there's a cop named Alex Murphy talking to someone about some 80's film where a guy gets turned into a cybog. I hope this means there's a proto-Jensen mothballed somewhere because it got a little trigger happy at a board meeting.
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Feb 2, 2015 01:42
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Tracula posted:The parallels to Robocop and DX:HR are pretty obvious once you know to look for them. I mean fucks sake, at the police station Detroit there's a cop named Alex Murphy talking to someone about some 80's film where a guy gets turned into a cybog. If you go near those guys they even mention how they think they were just talking about you!
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Feb 2, 2015 01:43
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