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VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE
Aug 1, 2004

whoa, what just happened here?







College Slice

Sab669 posted:

Certain dudes I just found it nearly impossible to ever target the canisters. Like the Bellowbacks feel like they almost never expose them, and then pulling up your Focus UI making them glow often times makes it harder to figure out where things actually are too.

I was definitely getting better by the end, but wished I got the Triple Arrow much much sooner. Triple Tear just fucks things up.

Hardpointing the back and the chest on the bellowbacks is good enough that I never bothered with the butt canisters except for the hunting grounds trial. I think the underbelly caninster robots are meant for slide kills? But I haven't really practiced those.

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Deformed Church
May 12, 2012

5'5", IQ 81


You can also get the undersides from stealth, or if they're shocked, or chilled, or tied down, or fighting an overridden robot.

pmchem
Jan 22, 2010


dragonshardz posted:

This is by design.

yeah, ugh. I guess in most RPGs I'm used to a power progression where my character or his/her weapons starts getting buff, and I can just roll over old enemies with a few attacks. This doesn't appear to be that type of game, at least not yet. I can quickly dispatch some enemies by going for weakpoints as people discussed, but if there are a lot of enemies I'm faced with either a dodge-fest brawl or just taking a whole lot of time to deal with the AI one-by-one as designed.

I may drop the difficulty to normal and just turn it back up if normal feels too boring. Hard isn't really "hard", it's just, more tedious. Still an enjoyable game.

VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE
Aug 1, 2004

whoa, what just happened here?







College Slice

pmchem posted:

yeah, ugh. I guess in most RPGs I'm used to a power progression where my character or his/her weapons starts getting buff, and I can just roll over old enemies with a few attacks. This doesn't appear to be that type of game, at least not yet. I can quickly dispatch some enemies by going for weakpoints as people discussed, but if there are a lot of enemies I'm faced with either a dodge-fest brawl or just taking a whole lot of time to deal with the AI one-by-one as designed.

I may drop the difficulty to normal and just turn it back up if normal feels too boring. Hard isn't really "hard", it's just, more tedious. Still an enjoyable game.

Yeah, it's not a RPG, more an action adventure. The progression is in learning to do all the things to make a kill easier/faster by instinct.

Sab669
Sep 24, 2009

I bigly underutilized Slide Slowmo and Jump Slowmo. But those bellowbacks, even when I'd knock them over with my electric trip caster I couldn't seem to get LOS to the canister, their legs would be in the way.

But yea, just using the Hard point triple shot into their mouth / back pouches did they job well enough.

Sab669
Sep 24, 2009

These Demonic nerds in the Frozen Wilds feel like they would be tough if triple arrows didn't feel so OP :v: and abusing +Stealth gear seems to make it really easy to cheese any Weak To Fire monster, just pop into LOS and light them up and hide and repeat. And the flow puzzle was cool :)

Starting the game off wasting my first 9 skill points on Summon Mount definitely gimped me early on.

Lechtansi
Mar 23, 2004

Item Get
just to reiterate, there are no DPS checks in the game. The better weapons do not have higher numbers, just more options (tbf there are a few skill points that give higher numbers like triple arrow, but those are rare). The improvement in this game is better understanding the bots behavior and weakpoints.

Air Skwirl
May 13, 2007

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.

Lechtansi posted:

just to reiterate, there are no DPS checks in the game. The better weapons do not have higher numbers, just more options (tbf there are a few skill points that give higher numbers like triple arrow, but those are rare). The improvement in this game is better understanding the bots behavior and weakpoints.

That does make rushing for triple arrows that much more important.

Sivart13
May 18, 2003
I have neglected to come up with a clever title

Skwirl posted:

That does make rushing for triple arrows that much more important.
I beat the game without ever firing a triple arrow, though I was playing on normal and cheesed out any sufficiently irritating enemy with the ropecaster.

Sab669
Sep 24, 2009

I've never given that thing a chance :shrug:

Air Skwirl
May 13, 2007

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.
I mostly use the ropecaster to then hack and have a friend for the battle.

exquisite tea
Apr 21, 2007

Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."


The Ropecaster is the most OP weapon in the game.

The Lone Badger
Sep 24, 2007

exquisite tea posted:

The Ropecaster is the most OP weapon in the game.

The basic ropecaster is pretty poo poo. The Lodge Ropecaster with tear mods is OP.

exquisite tea
Apr 21, 2007

Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."


You want to use max Handling mods in a Ropecaster so that it turns into a wire spitting chaingun.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


Higher level ropecasters also have ropes that are harder to break, which I believe is the only category of weapon that improves in stats as you upgrade, rather than just unlocking new ammo types. (I guess Hunting Lodge and DLC weapons do this too, but they're special cases.)

The Lone Badger
Sep 24, 2007

Higher rarity weapons have more mod slots, which functionally equates to higher stats.

Inspector Gesicht
Oct 26, 2012

500 Zeus a body.


Given how half=baked the economy is there's no reason not to bee-line to the Shadow Weapons as soon as possible.

exquisite tea
Apr 21, 2007

Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."


Higher tier weapons do have slightly better stats, but you already have access to the best possible gear outside the DLC area within the first 1/3rd of the game. This is a good thing imho since the role of stats in this game is much less important than having the right strategy. I've gone through the game several times now on a fresh Ultra-Hard save and even the elite machines can be beaten with blue tier weapons if you know how to take them down.

Hemish
Jan 25, 2005

I played this on PS4 back in the day and loved it. I was waiting to get a RTX 3080 to replay this along with other games but I'm in Canada and it's pretty much impossible to get a 3080... I had 2 weeks off so I said screw it, I'll replay it at 1080p via Moonlight streaming on the TV. I used a controller so that with being old mean I was pretty poo poo at aiming. Does it feel like cheating playing this with a mouse?

It's such a great game and I really enjoyed the story and data points. I usually ignore most data points in games but I couldn't get enough in this one. Even replaying it again after 3 years. I played it on Normal for 57 hours and completed everything (I may have missed a few sidequests I couldn't find). I ended up level 60 way before the end of the game. I really enjoyed the DLC too. I'm tempted to do a NG+ now that this thread told me that a lot of voice data points had additional text... I always listened to them right then and there so I didn't look at them from the menu. Feel like I may have missed a lot of stuff.

I respect the other posters who don't like the story or those who say the combat is not good even though those are my 2 favorite things in this game. I don't understand how you can not like them compared to all the poo poo games out there or the uninspired stuff but I respect your opinions. Maybe I didn't read enough sci-fi but the story felt mind blowing with twists that went in different directions that I was imagining. It boggles my mind when someone play this kind of game and beeline the story main quests. It feels like someone playing a First Person Shooter but trying not to shoot anyone! As long as you get enjoyment out of it, I guess that's what matters.

I also really like that we didn't get any romantic stuff... It would have felt forced I think. Aloy was an Outcast and is now on a mission and she really doesn't have the time to bother figuring out that poo poo. Unless I'm wrong, it was funny how a lot of NPC seemed to have the hots for her and she would be ignorant or play dumb since there was no time for that.

Reading this thread made me realize than even if I felt like a badass sometimes, I was dumb and the 4 weapon wheels mean I barely touched some weapons. Like I didn't use the elemental bow or bombs to freeze machines because I thought the brittle thing (this thread said x3 damage while frozen) would only affect a monster weak to ice and not everything... I mostly used the hunter bow, ropecaster to immobilize a machine when in a group fight, sharpshooter bow (stopped using tearblast arrows when I got hardpoints and multishots) and the last wheel slot was something else special for hunter lodges, special tools for a specific fight, something to experiment, etc...

One moment that stood up for me was when Sobeck is like "Ted, you created robots that self reproduce and feed on biomass!" in Ted's office. My mind silently completed with "Have you SEEN a movie, before?"

Also, gently caress Ted.

Admiral Ray
May 17, 2014

Proud Musk and Dogecoin fanboy

pmchem posted:

yeah, ugh. I guess in most RPGs I'm used to a power progression where my character or his/her weapons starts getting buff, and I can just roll over old enemies with a few attacks. This doesn't appear to be that type of game, at least not yet. I can quickly dispatch some enemies by going for weakpoints as people discussed, but if there are a lot of enemies I'm faced with either a dodge-fest brawl or just taking a whole lot of time to deal with the AI one-by-one as designed.

I may drop the difficulty to normal and just turn it back up if normal feels too boring. Hard isn't really "hard", it's just, more tedious. Still an enjoyable game.

If you have The Frozen Wilds the weapons you get there are the pimp rear end powerups you are thinking of. Getting the Banuk Bows made me feel like a demigod when I went back to fighting in the non-DLC zones, even against my most hated enemy: the robot moles.

Edit: Also, yeah, switch it up on the weapons. As an example, I tended to use the blast sling against things like the Stalkers (invisible panther robots) when they got up close because it was way easier to aim because it always hits for a set amount of damage that ignores armor. If I had a big enemy I knew was gonna follow me through a narrow area, the trip caster was ideal, especially once I had the perk for picking traps back up.

I didn't use the rope caster much until later in the game, in particular until I had to kill a loving Stormbird as part of a quest and gently caress fighting fair against one of them, but it was supremely useful to tie down a few enemies so I could focus on one at a time.

Overall though, the combat is meant to be a dodge-fest brawl, cheesetastic time sink (I cleared the corrupted zone that has two corrupted moles by standing across the river where they couldn't go, but would still get aggroed by me shooting them with 1000 arrows), or a carefully planned one-on-one fight.

Admiral Ray fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Dec 31, 2020

Sab669
Sep 24, 2009

Hemish posted:

Does it feel like cheating playing this with a mouse?

I respect the other posters who don't like the story or those who say the combat is not good even though those are my 2 favorite things in this game. I don't understand how you can not like them compared to all the poo poo games out there or the uninspired stuff but I respect your opinions. Maybe I didn't read enough sci-fi but the story felt mind blowing with twists that went in different directions that I was imagining. It boggles my mind when someone play this kind of game and beeline the story main quests. It feels like someone playing a First Person Shooter but trying not to shoot anyone! As long as you get enjoyment out of it, I guess that's what matters.

I also really like that we didn't get any romantic stuff... It would have felt forced I think. Aloy was an Outcast and is now on a mission and she really doesn't have the time to bother figuring out that poo poo

Mouse is always better, but I feel like the console's aim assist would've made Jump Slow-Mo / Sliding Slow-Mo viable instead of an, "Oh yea that's a thing isn't it"

The plot twist wass cool, but this game's attempt at exploring the "nature reclaiming the world" trope just wasn't my vibe. I wanna actually go to a crumbled city that's all overgrown, not just delve half a dozen snowy Fallout bunkers. Can't imagine thinking the combat isn't good in this game. It was so enjoyable. Shooting off parts and "min-maxing" different elemental arrows and your gear loadout to get a good elemental spread is cool and fun. Good enough that I did do some side quests just because the game is actually fun to play, but yea I normally rush the main story because I'm just not interested in turning a game into a 100+ hour thing.

Agreed on no romance being a plus, but I didn't even think of it until you said it. I really have no interest in player romances in video games, and find them usually Not Good in any movie that isn't an outright romance movie. Books and TV where you have more time to explore inner monologues and or character interactions they're usually fine, but that's about it.

Hemish
Jan 25, 2005

Admiral Ray posted:

If you have The Frozen Wilds the weapons you get there are the pimp rear end powerups you are thinking of. Getting the Banuk Bows made me feel like a demigod when I went back to fighting in the non-DLC zones, even against my most hated enemy: the robot moles.

I kept using those bows but it turns out I did the DLC with only 2 main missions to go so I didn't use them much outside of the DLC. Since I suck at aiming, most often than not I launched my arrows before the bow was fully drawn (the DLC bows seem to do more damage when you're fully drawn compared to the base game bows where it only affects accuracy). If I ever do a NG+ with those weapons, maybe I'll go back to the normal Shadow Hunter bow but keep the Banuk for the sharpshooter...

I just realised that the Banuk bow would maybe be better with Handling mods so I could draw them faster and use the fully drawn damage bonus.... instead of putting 3 damage mods in the Banuk Hunter...

Hmm... I love figuring stuff out once my 60h playthrough is done. I suck.

Air Skwirl
May 13, 2007

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.

Hemish posted:

I'm tempted to do a NG+ now that this thread told me that a lot of voice data points had additional text... I always listened to them right then and there so I didn't look at them from the menu. Feel like I may have missed a lot of stuff.

I think the only audio data points with extra text are those viewpoint collectibles where you see a small picture of the old world. But, yeah like 90% of the story behind those are in the extra text. You could just load up your last save and read them.

Admiral Ray
May 17, 2014

Proud Musk and Dogecoin fanboy

Hemish posted:

I kept using those bows but it turns out I did the DLC with only 2 main missions to go so I didn't use them much outside of the DLC. Since I suck at aiming, most often than not I launched my arrows before the bow was fully drawn (the DLC bows seem to do more damage when you're fully drawn compared to the base game bows where it only affects accuracy). If I ever do a NG+ with those weapons, maybe I'll go back to the normal Shadow Hunter bow but keep the Banuk for the sharpshooter...

I just realised that the Banuk bow would maybe be better with Handling mods so I could draw them faster and use the fully drawn damage bonus.... instead of putting 3 damage mods in the Banuk Hunter...

Hmm... I love figuring stuff out once my 60h playthrough is done. I suck.

Yeah, once the Banuk bows are fully drawn you get this little visual effect near the arrowhead and they do like 3 times as much damage. The sharpshooter one is great for that since you are probably not shooting it quickly anyway, but honestly the most important one is the War Bow. The elemental effects are similarly boosted, so you can corrupt a machine in a single 3 arrow volley or freeze them in two volleys. Corrupting machines was always the funniest thing to me, even better than overriding them.

Hemish
Jan 25, 2005

Sab669 posted:

Mouse is always better, but I feel like the console's aim assist would've made Jump Slow-Mo / Sliding Slow-Mo viable instead of an, "Oh yea that's a thing isn't it"

The plot twist wass cool, but this game's attempt at exploring the "nature reclaiming the world" trope just wasn't my vibe. I wanna actually go to a crumbled city that's all overgrown, not just delve half a dozen snowy Fallout bunkers. Can't imagine thinking the combat isn't good in this game. It was so enjoyable. Shooting off parts and "min-maxing" different elemental arrows and your gear loadout to get a good elemental spread is cool and fun. Good enough that I did do some side quests just because the game is actually fun to play, but yea I normally rush the main story because I'm just not interested in turning a game into a 100+ hour thing.

Agreed on no romance being a plus, but I didn't even think of it until you said it. I really have no interest in player romances in video games, and find them usually Not Good in any movie that isn't an outright romance movie. Books and TV where you have more time to explore inner monologues and or character interactions they're usually fine, but that's about it.

Hey man, I'm really glad one of my favorite games made you do some side quests since you usually don't!

I get your point, though. I mean Steam tells me I have 784 games and I have 162 games in my Played category so I usually don't like to do the collection of items and such to pad games. I'll usually do all the side missions, though. Horizon Zero Dawn making me do all the collection is a testament to the game because it made me spend more time in the game and in the lore. Making me do it twice since I played it years ago on the PS4 is unheard of. I just started Assassin's Creed Odyssey and I'm pretty sure I'll ignore a lot of stuff in this one because Ubisoft stuff is always fun at the beginning but it's so easy t o get open world fatigue.

Now that you said it, an open city ruin to explore would have been cool (not just as cosmetic stuff like a few places in the game). But it's been 1000 years since the apocalypse, we're stretching the believable idea that those bunker ruins are still 1% operational for us to recover knowledge (even if you think sci-fi future stuff). How could city stuff still be there to poke around like in The last of Us after a 1000 years exposed to the elements?.

exquisite tea
Apr 21, 2007

Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."


If humans disappeared off the face of the earth tomorrow most remnants of our civilization would be overtaken in decades, not centuries, so the game is already taking some artistic liberties with the ruins they display.

Admiral Ray
May 17, 2014

Proud Musk and Dogecoin fanboy

exquisite tea posted:

If humans disappeared off the face of the earth tomorrow most remnants of our civilization would be overtaken in decades, not centuries, so the game is already taking some artistic liberties with the ruins they display.

Chernobyl hasn't been completely taken over by plants and nobody tends to it. i don't buy that places like NYC or whatever would be totally overgrown. concrete and steel lasts a long long time.

the biggest liberty they take, imo, is all the stalactite and stalagmite growth in the bunkers and poo poo.

Hemish
Jan 25, 2005

Admiral Ray posted:

Yeah, once the Banuk bows are fully drawn you get this little visual effect near the arrowhead and they do like 3 times as much damage. The sharpshooter one is great for that since you are probably not shooting it quickly anyway, but honestly the most important one is the War Bow. The elemental effects are similarly boosted, so you can corrupt a machine in a single 3 arrow volley or freeze them in two volleys. Corrupting machines was always the funniest thing to me, even better than overriding them.

Yeah, I feel I played bad without using the elements as much. This thread made me realize the reasons why I never used it. Like I explained, I thought the stun/frozen effects would only happen when the machine was weak to the element so feeling like I'd always swap weapons in the wheels felt tiresome so I didn't. I also always used the Focus to highlight the weak points so I never noticed that the blow up canisters were wrapped under armor so I always felt the fire arrows useless when trying to blow up Blaze canisters so I didn't bother with similar other tricks with ice and electricity. I played with a controller and I didn't remember the slow down jump/slide thing while aiming for the whole game.

It's so easy to play "wrong"... well not wrong, I still had fun but most of you would probably bash your faces on your desks if you could have seen me play.

I was not completely useless, I did figure out tricks but I feel like I missed a bunch of important ones. Nothing made me happier than a Ravager coming in to deliver a free heavy weapon to destroy the group attacking me. Or stripping a machine of its weapons and then it kinds of retreats, almost acting scared because they don't have long range stuff, charge attacks, etc... The DLC Hunting lodge was a bit hard until I remembered the Blast Sling I ignored the whole game... It obliterated the Scorchers in the first arena, the Bellowbacks were easy as usual (3 hardpoints at a time to explode the back pouch then the gullet and they'd almost be dead) which is where I saved most of my time for the last arena. Using hardpoints to strip a Thunderjaw of the 3 weapons on its back and each sides of its head is so satisfying. It's so funny that it did the same thing as 3 years ago where you start the game and it's hard to predict the machine's movement and Watchers jumping all over the place was hard to read...and I'm like... wow I'll suck so much at this game and without becoming a god like some of you did, I felt better about my skills as I went along until I had to kill loving Rockbreakers or the Scorchers in the DLC where I panic and can't do poo poo so I cheated by using the Ancient Armory armor (I don't like the glowing effect so I only used a few times).

I can't remember for the life of me what I did 3 years ago... I remember the hunter bow and ropecaster a lot but can't remember if I used traps or elements then.

VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE
Aug 1, 2004

whoa, what just happened here?







College Slice

Admiral Ray posted:

Chernobyl hasn't been completely taken over by plants and nobody tends to it. i don't buy that places like NYC or whatever would be totally overgrown. concrete and steel lasts a long long time.

the biggest liberty they take, imo, is all the stalactite and stalagmite growth in the bunkers and poo poo.

How I understood them is that they're not cavern stalactites, more like 1000 years of rust.

Mr. Funny Pants
Apr 9, 2001

exquisite tea posted:

If humans disappeared off the face of the earth tomorrow most remnants of our civilization would be overtaken in decades, not centuries, so the game is already taking some artistic liberties with the ruins they display.

The rusted out cars are my pick for most ridiculous. Those would have been powder centuries before the game.

Admiral Ray posted:

Chernobyl hasn't been completely taken over by plants and nobody tends to it. i don't buy that places like NYC or whatever would be totally overgrown. concrete and steel lasts a long long time.

Concrete and steel buildings last if they are maintained. Once windows get broken and water gets into concrete and steel buildings, the countdown to complete collapse is on.

pmchem
Jan 22, 2010


just got the ancient armor and used it in a brawl. it's uh,

:staredog:

Kibayasu
Mar 28, 2010

Admiral Ray posted:

Chernobyl hasn't been completely taken over by plants and nobody tends to it. i don't buy that places like NYC or whatever would be totally overgrown. concrete and steel lasts a long long time.

the biggest liberty they take, imo, is all the stalactite and stalagmite growth in the bunkers and poo poo.

Apparently if water starts running through concrete you can get some really fast stalactite-like growth under certain conditions. So while there likely wouldn’t be as many as there are in the game and it seems probably not shaped like natural cave growths it isn’t completely made up https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calthemite

Admiral Ray
May 17, 2014

Proud Musk and Dogecoin fanboy

Kibayasu posted:

Apparently if water starts running through concrete you can get some really fast stalactite-like growth under certain conditions. So while there likely wouldn’t be as many as there are in the game and it seems probably not shaped like natural cave growths it isn’t completely made up https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calthemite

That's a good point, I didn't know about that at all. Added to the head canon!

Tunzie
Aug 9, 2008
I picked this game up during the Christmas sale and just got done today getting through the main story. Hoo boy, was this a great game to play.

Some random highlights:

- Killing robots was a lot of fun in the end. Took a while for me to get good at it, but I could absoloutely feel how I was getting better skilled and better geared at it, and by the end those early robots were dying a lot easier than they were hours before.

- I swear, it became a running gag how often when doing sidequests, the NPC I'm trying to find or save would have some final words and then die. It was surprising at first, and kind of nice in a way that you don't always entirely succeed, but it did become amusing when it kept happening.

- When I first passed through Daytower, I saw a Stormbird being attacked on the path I was taking to my quest objective, and some NPCs it aggro'd on to. 'Oh ho,' I thought, 'a setpiece fight to kick off this new neat-looking desert area with!', and rode in to begin combat - and then promptly get oneshot. I was a slow learner, and I gave it another half-dozen attempts before deciding this fight was beyond me for now and no, I was not meant to do this just yet. Coming back much later and loving up that Stormbird's day with better gear and more practice was extremely satisfying.

- The whole story of the game was really affecting. I will admit to some weepiness at times - Gaia's sacrifice, Sobeck's sacrifice. I'm a sucker for stories where a desperate defense tries to stave off defeat long enough for some kind of crazy effort to ameliorate the loss is pulled off, and I fell for this one. I'll also admit to some incandescent fury at how Ted hosed everything up not once, but twice. God forbid the world be saved with someone else's idea without one final twist from him to salve his guilt and pride over it all.

- Endgame stuff. OH MY loving GOD, gently caress TED. FUUUUCK TED!!!! Part of me hopes he's been downloading himself into a succession of clones over in his deluxe apocalypse pyramid for the last thousand years just so I can go hit his vital components with tear arrows until he's dead from it. And Sylens! Clearly he never learnt the lesson of that final voiceover from Sobeck, because he's the poster child for knowledge without compassion or wisdom, and now he has an evil lamp. Yeah, that's not gonna cause problems.

- Sequel stuff. I'm really interested in what happened with the other subordinate functions of Gaia - Hades and Hephaestus obviously formed the greatest threats due to their nature, and it looks like Forbidden West might touch on Aether and Demeter, with the storms and all? I'm intrigued by what the source of the original message that screwed up the functions could be. Hopefully we'll find out more.

10/10 amazing game, hope the sequel comes to PC. No question I'll pick it up if it does.

exquisite tea
Apr 21, 2007

Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."


If you still need more Horizon Zero Dawn in your life, Random Side Quest has a lot of very well-researched lore and analysis videos with many of the speculative questions you're asking right now. Mega spoilers to anyone who hasn't finished the story yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqB6KYMmCJw

Hemish
Jan 25, 2005

I watched some of his videos since Horizon Zero Dawn killed my computer. I did a "speedrun" on NG+ Ultra Hard last weekend to see if I could get the last achievements to 100% it on Steam (I never do that) and I managed it last Sunday.

Yesterday, I was working from home (I RDP from my personal computer to my work laptop to get to use my 3 big monitors) and it just died suddenly. I'm sending my motherboard under warranty for repairs.

So Horizon killed my PC or coaxed my PC to finish my second run before dying. I think Aloy overrode my PC.

Falukorv
Jun 23, 2013

A funny little mouse!
The scene with the biggest emotional impact for me is (story spoilers)

General Herres speech in the reception area at the zero dawn facility explaining how the apocalypse can’t be stopped.

And perhaps an underrated one since it is only a voice log is the candidate who freaks out about the project being unrealistic and calling Sobek a dangerous fantasist. Picturing myself in that situation I think it would be my reaction too. And if you don’t believe in it and aren’t willing to work tirelessly for it (with good reason) you get euthanised after essentially being kidnapped, instead of dying where you please.

Do I remember that right? Do alpha candidates who refuse to work get euthanised or not?

Hemish
Jan 25, 2005

Falukorv posted:

The scene with the biggest emotional impact for me is (story spoilers)

General Herres speech in the reception area at the zero dawn facility explaining how the apocalypse can’t be stopped.

And perhaps an underrated one since it is only a voice log is the candidate who freaks out about the project being unrealistic and calling Sobek a dangerous fantasist. Picturing myself in that situation I think it would be my reaction too. And if you don’t believe in it and aren’t willing to work tirelessly for it (with good reason) you get euthanised after essentially being kidnapped, instead of dying where you please.

Do I remember that right? Do alpha candidates who refuse to work get euthanised or not?


If I remember right, the choices were to work for the project, basically be in prison until you die or euthanasia.

Taear
Nov 26, 2004

Ask me about the shitty opinions I have about Paradox games!
I just finished the game. I enjoyed the story a lot - even if it was a bit predictable (not zero dawn itself, that felt really fresh) it was a lot of fun and I liked the way it was told. I also like both Lance Reddick and Ashly Burch so it's cool to hear them acting with each other for a lot of the game. At first I was doing every sidequest and even gathering all the flowers and mugs and stuff but when I handed the mugs in and saw what I got I stopped bothering - it just didn't feel worth the effort.
I did think it was weird that the failure of the Odyssey seemed to only be in a throwaway thing and not in her diaries. I wonder if they maybe thought they were going to use it later and changed their minds?

Also a story spoiler vaguely but also a question:
At the end of the game the king of Meridian apologised for his behaviour after I'd rescued him. But he didn't do anything, he just talked about people and that was it. Was he meant to have hit on me or something? It was weird.

I had it on normal until I got to Meridian about 18 hours in. I fought the robot mole and died three times with it close to death and just thought "gently caress this" and put it on story mode. Fights just felt like they took too long all the time (even with weak points) and having to re-craft my arrows all the time was tedious as poo poo for me. I also CONTINUALLY release right click to fire, doing nothing. After ten or so hours of that I was so loving angry at the combat system.
On story you can pretty much melee every enemy to death and that was a lot more fun.

I only had one crash - a fight against two Sawbacks quite early in the game crashed constantly, no idea why. Never happened again, but that fight sucked.

The machines looked so cool and I enjoyed finding new ones. A bit less enamoured with ones that were just "the same design, but bigger" but the crocodiles and the massive birds were awe inspiring the first few times.

The only big bits I hated were the totally anemic loot system where every merchant basically has the same items, the leveling system and not being able to save on demand. After about level 10 I just stopped caring about my skills and would build up huge amounts of points before I spent them because they just seemed so useless. Triple arrow, Tinker and the mount calling were all handy but nothing too exciting. Felt a bit like someone had told them they had to have it in there but they didn't actually want it.
I often couldn't work out where to go and would fall off stuff, or miscalculate and get killed so repeating little bits of the game time and time again because it doesn't let you save was p.annoying.

Taear fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Jan 15, 2021

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Sivart13
May 18, 2003
I have neglected to come up with a clever title

Hemish posted:

If I remember right, the choices were to work for the project, basically be in prison until you die or euthanasia.
This is one of the things I find least realistic about the story given the current political environment. If it was on our world the whole Zero Dawn project manifesto would be leaked before a shovel hit the ground. The amount of people who would have to keep this all secret is just too drat high.

I don't mind, it just goes to show how audacious a goal it would be to do something like that. Which further drives home Elizabet's exceptional vision and Ted's exceptional fuckupery.

Taear posted:

Also a story spoiler vaguely but also a question:
At the end of the game the king of Meridian apologised for his behaviour after I'd rescued him.
At least in my playthrough, he jumps very quickly from "thanks for saving the town and avenging my dead girlfriend" to "hey, wanna be my new sun-queen?"

There might be a different variant of this scene for some people? I'm not sure if any Ersa-related quests are optional or can be out of order, or if any earlier choice emotions have any impact.

Sivart13 fucked around with this message at 08:56 on Jan 15, 2021

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