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Mazerunner posted:It's just such a strange complaint to me that a series references itself. Like I guess DS2 kind of set the tone by doing its own thing, but DS3 is very explicitly 'this is the continuation and ending of the world, and of the series' and there's nothing wrong with that? The description for Lucatiel's mask was nice epilogue to her story I thought. It's good for ds3 to have a lot of little things like that, being the final game in the series and all. Funny thing about From's cliches is that when you start spotting them, you realise each game is just a series of short stories with little actual connection to each other. People saying 'x IS x' to everything are missing the point I think.
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May 19, 2016 04:47
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New Concept Hole posted:I'm ready for a new Armored Core game filled with Souls references to accompany all the King's Field references.
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May 19, 2016 04:49
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Toady posted:The complaint isn't sequels basing themselves on prior games but an overabundance of fan service or recycled content. Where's the line, though? At what point do you stop and say, 'no this is too much, this is  fanservice and is bad now for some reason'.Most everything major isn't just 'hey here it is!' but has some sort of commentary or progression to the original. There's some stuff that, I guess, is fanservice, but again, all I can say is so what? Who gives a poo poo? How is that, actually, a bad thing? This is the third game, it's ok to draw from their big log of poo poo they've used in the past. Mirrah set looks cool, ok throw that in. Black Knights are a tough, iconic enemy, sure why not. It's not like the game's lacking in new content, and it's such a fine line between 'this is a sequel, of course we're going to have recurring elements' and 'fanservice  ' so I'm going to go on the side that's neat and fun?
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May 19, 2016 04:51
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Shumagorath posted:What's the consensus on the pyromancy change? I liked that in DS1 it was totally dependent on the flame and now I have to rethink the ninja build I was going to make when I finally pick up DS3. I've been trying to make that build every Souls game and never had the patience to be so weak in the early game. I like it personally, as well as most of the changes to magic (rings and lack of hybrid boss weapons are the exceptions). All the schools are now distinct and play differently, and encourage different stat investments and different builds. Pyro is a pretty good choice for a ninja build though because the spells are best at skirmisher range, light pure dex builds have a lot of free points, and you don't have to use sage's ring.
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May 19, 2016 04:52
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Nihilarian posted:Mecha Souls "If you don't want to be invaded, don't use PLUS  "More seriously, I want Nineball to be the new pursuer. TIA.
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May 19, 2016 05:01
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Mazerunner posted:Where's the line, though? At what point do you stop and say, 'no this is too much, this is I really can't wrap my head around this either. Look at The Elder Scrolls, another really popular medieval combat franchise. Each of those games are like 100+ years apart and take place is different areas. But obviously, because they are from the same company and exist in the same universe, they are related. A sword existing in all three of the games is not a "reference", it's just something that happens. People talking about someone throughout games is not a "fan service", it's the way history actually works. You talk about things from the past. I get that Anor Londo being in both games is off-putting to some people. But are people seriously mad that a smith character from game 1 is a corpse in game 3? Like does that upset your sensibilities? Do you think that's pandering to some strawman plebe gamer or something? Before I played any of these games I knew all about Solaire just from seeing memes, and yet the only reference to him is his armor. Not like the exact character is back doing the same things as in DS1. The whole theme of the game is cycles, why wouldn't stuff from the first game make an appearance. It's like a rock band putting out a great album, and then putting out another rock album in the same style. Of course it's going to have core similarities, it's the same band. Doesn't mean they're "pandering" to their fan base, it's just their style.
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May 19, 2016 05:02
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My Bow Only Run: 4 shots in a row 4 misses. 
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May 19, 2016 05:04
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How does the fog wall co-op bug even loving happen? If I don't get the packet that has the data of the host actively entering the door, my client just never acknowledges them entering? Shouldn't there be a constant flag where "hostInBossArena==True"? I don't get it.
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May 19, 2016 05:14
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Mazerunner posted:So do you only have one chance to fight Creighton in your world? He invaded me behind the Church bonfire, I died, and now he won't show up again. I've died to him and killed him later, the only thing I can think of is if you killed Sullyvahn he can't invade again and there's possibly something that can go wrong if you head into the dungeon because that can trigger Greirat's death It's a pity because Creighton's helmet paired with Drang armor is supremely badass
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May 19, 2016 05:23
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Tequila Sunrise posted:It's like a rock band putting out a great album, and then putting out another rock album in the same style. Of course it's going to have core similarities, it's the same band. Doesn't mean they're "pandering" to their fan base, it's just their style. To stretch your analogy, it's like a rock band putting out several acclaimed albums and then hyping up the next new album in their discography. But when it finally gets released to to the public, it turns out that the "new" album is just a bunch of Greatest Hits and alternate mixes of existing songs.
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May 19, 2016 05:23
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Toady posted:Gwyn's theme stands out. I don't remember a single other song from any of the Soulsborne games, but those opening three notes... every time. Rest of DS3 could've been 12 hours of a static image of Miyazaki flipping off the player while farts play in the background and it would still be worth it for the Soul of Cinder's second phase.
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May 19, 2016 05:31
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NGDBSS posted:To stretch your analogy, it's like a rock band putting out several acclaimed albums and then hyping up the next new album in their discography. But when it finally gets released to to the public, it turns out that the "new" album is just a bunch of Greatest Hits and alternate mixes of existing songs. But it's even more like [insert movie/book name] 2 having the same characters and locations as [insert movie/bookname] and no-one going crazy because that's completely normal and not evidence of pandering or some kind of creative laziness conspiracy.
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May 19, 2016 05:32
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If you don't like The Gutter and The Black Gulch you... well, you probably played it without the post processing mods I did cause those areas were cool as gently caress when it was as dark as it was supposed to be. You could burn those pools where the hands came out of and it lit up the area like a torch and there was no way anyone saw that unless they modded it. I didn't even think about how I was modding the game either, since everyone needed DSFix to even play DS1 on the PC, so when the same guy put out a mod for 2, of course I ran it. So many areas in 2 depended on that lighting and I have no idea how it got released as downgraded as it was. DS2 was a moody game that was supposed to use shadow and darkness to cover up assets that otherwise wouldn't look impressive. It was really cool if you made it as dark as it should've been, but unless you were a weirdo you didn't see it that way.
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May 19, 2016 05:34
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Yeah, the changes to DS2's lighting system was so sad. When you look at those early gameplay videos with the turtle knights in the darkened version of the early area, it's like... oh my god, yes, I want this so much.
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May 19, 2016 05:40
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DaS2 was released with the original lighting engine gutted because the Xbox and PS3 couldn't handle it and the game ran at an unspecified seconds per frame.
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May 19, 2016 05:41
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^^Blame that on consoles. From was hoping to have the lighting effects natively in the game, but found that the PS3 and XBox 360 couldn't handle that level of processing power without losing framerate. They reintroduced the effects in Scholar because they could get away with needing more processing power on the PS4 and XBox One.hampig posted:But it's even more like [insert movie/book name] 2 having the same characters and locations as [insert movie/bookname] and no-one going crazy because that's completely normal and not evidence of pandering or some kind of creative laziness conspiracy.
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May 19, 2016 05:46
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NGDBSS posted:One of the things that the Souls series has been lauded for is its subtle, "show don't tell" approach to storytelling. Yet the pandering in DS3 often flies in the face of that. And it's not like you have to look hard for it. One of the very first pickups in the game, your Ashen Estus Flask, is found on a corpse wearing the Elite Knight set. Alright, that's cool, you might say. But that's actually a blatant reference to DS1, when Oscar of Astora (who wore the same set) also gave you your first set of Estus Flasks while dying in nearly the same pose. Seems more like a continuation of a cycle (veteran handing down duties to novice) than pandering.
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May 19, 2016 05:48
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With regards to the Souls games' soundtracks, I've found that the quality is consistently good but most of the songs are very samey because they're usually some variation of orchestral bombast and choir chanting. They're all crafted well and sound good, it's just, that's like, 80% of the soundtrack. That's why when they find the time to do a song like Gwyn, Lord of Cinder, it really stands out because not only is it phenomenal, it's vastly different from the rest of the game. Gwyn, Vendrick, Aldia, and Gherman all have, in my opinion, the absolute best themes in their respective games because they go for music that is evocative of a specific feeling. I feel like they need to do more of that in future titles. They don't all have to be wistful and eerie piano pieces, but there needs to be some variation in there. Demon's Souls did this fairly well with some very distinctive boss tracks, but Dark in particular just kinda goes to the well for this sort of thing a lot. Probably the weakest part of the game's aesthetic design, in my opinion.
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May 19, 2016 05:51
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They split Lautrec into two different characters whose sole purpose is to be a reference to him, and both of them combined don't have as much character as Lautrec did. There's a lot of things that are justified by the world being the same, there's also things that are fine as just references. There's also a lot of shoehorned stuff that doesn't stand up on its own, adds very little to the game, and is presented in a way that makes people come up with dumb theories to connect things when they're just mindless throwbacks thrown in to make up for being too lazy to do something interesting or original. It's clear why this is the last game, and it's clear they did these things because of that. It doesn't matter because the gameplay is amazing.
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May 19, 2016 05:55
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Demon's Souls probably had the best soundtrack for actually capturing the feeling of each boss. I think Bloodborne was actually the weakest souls-like when it came to music. There were some good tracks, but a lot of them were completely interchangeable from one boss to another.bebaloorpabopalo posted:They split Lautrec into two different characters whose sole purpose is to be a reference to him, and both of them combined don't have as much character as Lautrec did. Leonhardt is the obvious Lautrec wannabe but who else is?
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May 19, 2016 05:55
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sakuraba has been phoning everything in for a long time
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May 19, 2016 05:56
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Filthy Hans posted:I've died to him and killed him later, the only thing I can think of is if you killed Sullyvahn he can't invade again and there's possibly something that can go wrong if you head into the dungeon because that can trigger Greirat's death I haven't done either of those things yet, and he just won't show up, so I have no idea. NGDBSS posted:One of the things that the Souls series has been lauded for is its subtle, "show don't tell" approach to storytelling. Yet the pandering in DS3 often flies in the face of that. And it's not like you have to look hard for it. One of the very first pickups in the game, your Ashen Estus Flask, is found on a corpse wearing the Elite Knight set. Alright, that's cool, you might say. But that's actually a blatant reference to DS1, when Oscar of Astora (who wore the same set) also gave you your first set of Estus Flasks while dying in nearly the same pose. And how is that... bad? It's a callback, yeah, but... so what? I cannot wrap my mind around the idea that this is somehow detrimental to the game. Like... what? Please, just, explain how 'pandering', how 'fanservice', actually, objectively, negatively effected your experience? And how you were able to distinguish between the bad fanservice and the good continuations that build on the lore and the world? Or at what point, numerically, it's too much? If anything the estus flask is an example of 'show, don't tell" as now things have deteriorated to the point where the mentor figure, the guy who points you on your way and gives you the flask, is already long dead before you even start. But to convey that, they actually have to make it an explicit call back to Oscar, otherwise it's meaningless. NGDBSS posted:To stretch your analogy, it's like a rock band putting out several acclaimed albums and then hyping up the next new album in their discography. But when it finally gets released to to the public, it turns out that the "new" album is just a bunch of Greatest Hits and alternate mixes of existing songs. Hardly. The music analogy is kind of bad, but one area is pulled from DS1, with massively changed context. There's a few old enemies and characters... but so what? The game is chock full of brand new areas, enemies, gear, and characters. And laffo if, in this game about getting sweet new weapons and fashions, anybody is upset that you can still use some of the old poo poo, too.
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May 19, 2016 06:01
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GulagDolls posted:sakuraba has been phoning everything in for a long time Its probably a good thing he didnt do most of the tracks in this game.
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May 19, 2016 06:03
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FutonForensic posted:How does the fog wall co-op bug even loving happen? If I don't get the packet that has the data of the host actively entering the door, my client just never acknowledges them entering? Shouldn't there be a constant flag where "hostInBossArena==True"? I don't get it. You want to know the best part? That's how Darkmoon works. The game checks every couple of seconds whether a red is present, and if not, a Darkmoon is kicked out with "Duty Fulfilled". This has been a pattern of both DS1 and 3, of the blue covenants having all the sanity checks and ironically being the hardest to get working invasions on. It's as if they considered it a cardinal sin for the invasion mechanics to accidentally let you blue invade when you shouldn't be able to, at the expense of fixing any other errors. 2 had no such issues aside from poor design of the Blue cov interaction. Darkmoon text also likes to spill out of the text boxes. It's amazing. Tallgeese fucked around with this message at 06:12 on May 19, 2016 |
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May 19, 2016 06:05
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Internet Kraken posted:Demon's Souls probably had the best soundtrack for actually capturing the feeling of each boss. I think Bloodborne was actually the weakest souls-like when it came to music. There were some good tracks, but a lot of them were completely interchangeable from one boss to another. Dark 2 definitely has the weakest music. And I don't even mean that in some kind of bandwagon Dark 2 hate, it just has a really generic soundtrack and I don't remember any of it. Bloodborne's songs are all kind of the same, lots of violin and choral stuff, but the songs are individually great.
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May 19, 2016 06:08
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztPGThfD_GY
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May 19, 2016 06:11
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Dazzling Addar posted:With regards to the Souls games' soundtracks, I've found that the quality is consistently good but most of the songs are very samey because they're usually some variation of orchestral bombast and choir chanting. I think I liked DS1's ost most. Iron Golem, Gwynevere, Gwyn, Gwyndolin, Pinwheel, Ancient Dragon, Fire Link, Sif hell even the Bell Gargoyles all sounded distinct and memorable enough to me and I could hum all those despite not having played that thing in years. I think the only themes from 3 I like as much are Aldrich and Pontiff Maybe Yhorm/SoC get a nod too.
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May 19, 2016 06:13
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After years of playing all the souls games, I finally parried a dude. I kept interrupting his fight with a purple by hitting them with great arrows and then running away with the obscuring ring on. Once he beat him I parried the host. Is the leather shield the best for parrying or is there anything better? What about the target shield, it has a much different animation.
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May 19, 2016 06:20
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For the record, Aldia's theme is my favorite piece of music in the whole series. It's a haunting piano melody, like Gwyn's theme, but there's enough... off-kilter flourishes in the song to really evoke a sense of self-made ruination. Honorable mention to King Vendrick's theme for being so beautifully eerie.
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May 19, 2016 06:23
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actionjackson posted:After years of playing all the souls games, I finally parried a dude. I kept interrupting his fight with a purple by hitting them with great arrows and then running away with the obscuring ring on. Once he beat him I parried the host. Is the leather shield the best for parrying or is there anything better? What about the target shield, it has a much different animation. The Buckler/Target Shield/Small Leather Shield, Caestus, and Parrying Dagger are the go-to implements for easy parrying. It all comes down to preference.
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May 19, 2016 06:24
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actionjackson posted:After years of playing all the souls games, I finally parried a dude. I kept interrupting his fight with a purple by hitting them with great arrows and then running away with the obscuring ring on. Once he beat him I parried the host. Is the leather shield the best for parrying or is there anything better? What about the target shield, it has a much different animation. Anything that's classed as a small shield (target, buckler, etc.) or the caestus. I'm not 100% on how they differ though. I'm also not sure how some of the weapon arts or fancy stuff like Farron's off-hand dagger compares.
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May 19, 2016 06:24
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RzA_Oomra8
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May 19, 2016 06:28
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Mazerunner posted:And how is that... bad? It's a callback, yeah, but... so what? I cannot wrap my mind around the idea that this is somehow detrimental to the game. Like... what? Please, just, explain how 'pandering', how 'fanservice', actually, objectively, negatively effected your experience? And how you were able to distinguish between the bad fanservice and the good continuations that build on the lore and the world? Or at what point, numerically, it's too much? Why do you need some kind of weird objective standard, it's clearly a subjective opinion that people just found some references too heavy-handed, and whether you disagree with them or not it is really not worth having a moral outrage over this I find references usually become overdone when they don't make any sense in the setting to me (andre just chilling out multiple eons after you first meet him with an identical appearance) and when they feel random or out of place (gargoyles showing up out of nowhere to take you to the undead settlement, which are then never seen again).
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May 19, 2016 06:30
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Tequila Sunrise posted:Haha, okay but your point in the original post was "People who didn't play DS1 are missing out because the game features lots of references that evoke emotional responses" but in this post you're saying "People who didn't play DS1 have an advantage because as a veteran player I'm wise to these tricks FROM uses". That's a wild leap to take "You aren't aware of the recycling" and interpret it as "You have an advantage over other players."
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May 19, 2016 06:31
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Digirat posted:Why do you need some kind of weird objective standard, it's clearly a subjective opinion that people just found some references too heavy-handed, and whether you disagree with them or not it is really not worth having a moral outrage over this Because people are presenting it as an objective flaw? I mean, not to be all 'no u', but honestly it's the folks getting worked up about pandering/fanservice/whatever who are having the moral outrage, imo. There are some that do seem strange- the gargoyles, like you said. Andre, maybe. But it does make sense for the setting, considering it's been pointed out multiple times that time and space are hosed, and that people are literally rising from their graves. But, I dunno. Agree to disagree, sure. e; not related, really, but I'm just going to put forth this dumb theory that connects dots that were never meant to be connected- Anor Londo and Lothric Castle switched places. Kind of. Sort of. Maybe? Anor Londo cathedral looks like it's been torn away from where it should be, while Lothric castle is displaced (the high walls appeared suddenly). Basically I'm thinking that the big mountain plateau that Lothric is on, was the one that Anor Londo was on, but at some point the wibbly wobblyness of the world put the plateau underneath Lothric, and put Anor Londo next to Irithyll. The gargoyles then are where they're 'supposed' to be. Or not? It's a dumb theory. Mazerunner fucked around with this message at 06:40 on May 19, 2016 |
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May 19, 2016 06:35
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Fume Knight's theme is better. Dazzling Addar posted:For the record, Aldia's theme is my favorite piece of music in the whole series. It's a haunting piano melody, like Gwyn's theme, but there's enough... off-kilter flourishes in the song to really evoke a sense of self-made ruination. Honorable mention to King Vendrick's theme for being so beautifully eerie. Meeting Vendrick is such a great moment and the music really helps with it. You finally find the guy you spent the whole game looking for and he's another braindead hollow. You're left feeling so empty.
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May 19, 2016 06:42
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RyokoTK posted:Bloodborne's songs are all kind of the same, lots of violin and choral stuff, but the songs are individually great. Yeah definitely. It's hard picking a favorite from Bloodborne. Gerhman, Gascoigne, The One Reborn, Ludwig, etc, etc, etc all own bones even if they don't distinguish themselves from the rest of the ost. I think the only DS2 track I liked as much was Duke's Dear Freja though Vendrick and Aldia both get nods. Majula, however, was top notch hub music.
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May 19, 2016 06:43
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Whenever I'm reading a book if I read something that looks like an allusion to classic literature I just scream "PANDERING" and throw the book across the room Did these same people upset about "fanservice" in Dark Souls 3 get upset as kids when Megaman games were full of references to earlier Megaman games? I can just see some 10 year-old finding a Dr Light hologram in Megaman X3 and shouting "THE DEVS ARE JUST PANDERING TO ME WITH ALL OF THIS FANSERVICE" and then throwing their controller at the TV
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May 19, 2016 06:49
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They took it TOO FAR this time with the needless pandering and callbacks in my sacred Dark Souls. The series simply doesn't do that. *ignores that half of Dark Souls 1 was just retreading Demon's Souls with entire bosses and characters practically copy and pasted*
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May 19, 2016 06:52
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Tequila Sunrise posted:I really can't wrap my head around this either. Look at The Elder Scrolls, another really popular medieval combat franchise. Each of those games are like 100+ years apart and take place is different areas. But obviously, because they are from the same company and exist in the same universe, they are related. A sword existing in all three of the games is not a "reference", it's just something that happens. People talking about someone throughout games is not a "fan service", it's the way history actually works. You talk about things from the past. Has the argument already devolved to "getting mad"? We've even got people putting scare quotes around "fanservice" as if the game isn't full of it. This isn't about the continuation of a story. It's the formulaic recycling. How many times are we going to play through Boletarian Palace, Poison Swamp, Catacombs, and the Nexus? Siegmeyer is pasted in with a different name because he was a meme. The bat wing demons show up for some reason. Even Yuria is back. From made a safe, conservative farewell that many have compared to a greatest hits album. That's fine, but there's nothing new here. Now, look at this prerelease screenshot:  That's wildly different from anything we've seen before--a surreal apocalypse that depicts the end of the cycles and the series as a whole. hampig posted:But it's even more like [insert movie/book name] 2 having the same characters and locations as [insert movie/bookname] and no-one going crazy because that's completely normal and not evidence of pandering or some kind of creative laziness conspiracy. 
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May 19, 2016 06:54
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