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Lord Hydronium posted:Shellsnappers are the ones that've been the bane of my existence (and the thing that finally drove me to drop "Damage to Aloy" down to Hard). Most other machines I've figured out the best way to take them down relatively quickly, but those drat turtles are always a slog. Targeting the shell clamps to knock off the shell is the way I've been doing it, and the way I think it's supposed to be done, but even that takes forever. And elemental attacks like acid are nice, but the drat thing just burrows to remove them. Meanwhile it's spitting ice attacks that make the battlefield harder to dodge on, burrowing around so it's either almost out of range or right next to me, and before I dropped the difficulty down, always at risk of a one hit kill if I slipped up for a second. I don't think I've fought one without it taking at least ten minutes, using up all my health items, and leaving me at the verge of death even when I do beat it. Thunderjaws and Stormbirds are a cakewalk in comparison. When I fought the first one I thought "aha, the perfect moment to use my Shredder Gauntlet's tear ammo!" and proceeded to shoot the clamps a bunch, which did jack poo poo (I broke a couple, but in the end it went down from raw damage long before I could get its shell off). I don't get why the tear ammo from a weapon literally called "Shredder Gauntlet" is so underwhelming at what should presumably be its main purpose.
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Mar 2, 2022 20:03
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Ytlaya posted:When I fought the first one I thought "aha, the perfect moment to use my Shredder Gauntlet's tear ammo!" and proceeded to shoot the clamps a bunch, which did jack poo poo (I broke a couple, but in the end it went down from raw damage long before I could get its shell off). I don't get why the tear ammo from a weapon literally called "Shredder Gauntlet" is so underwhelming at what should presumably be its main purpose. Shredder was never all that good at killing turtles.
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Mar 2, 2022 20:44
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Lobok posted:Shredder was never all that good at killing turtles. 
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Mar 2, 2022 20:53
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This is a good article that misunderstands Aloy. It contains story spoilers, so read at your own peril (it also has a spoiler warning in it). Also late game spoilers overall: Aloy being short with the overzealous isn't some crass intolerance. She's always respectful of people's beliefs. Jeff G at Giantbomb called her that annoying militant atheist who wants everyone to know they're atheist. I'd like to see the game they played because I just don't how anyone can see her in this way. Yeah, she's short with people and has a bit of a savior complex that she grows out of but until those beliefs get in the way of people's safety or progress to something better she's cordial, if brief, with the more spiritual people she meets. I just don't get this idea that she's some raging rear end in a top hat to every person she meets who expresses a belief different than her own. She's flawed but not an rear end in a top hat. Only time she's outright a shithead is towards Beta. I feel like a lot of people in games media or play games in general just don't like or accept characters with flaws. They have these really strong reactions to them. It's just that you can't like Aloy for being this way, she's the worst ever! And the game she's in is BAD!!!
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Mar 2, 2022 21:12
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aloy explicitly calls out the priesthood in the opening valley, before other characters really start to lay into her for her attitude, and combined with her exasperated aloofness everywhere else it doesn’t make a great impression this has been a problem ever since the first game. the civilizations of Horizon are ridiculous, and made moreso because aloy never really buys into them between her exile from the Nora and growing up with the internet clipped to her ear. she’s at best helping out the people of her world while remaining indifferent to their (ridiculous) cultures, at worst constantly rolling her eyes and scoffing at them, and her distance also distances the player
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Mar 2, 2022 21:26
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I skimmed the article because I don't want to be spoiled but it didn't seem like it touched on a major point and that's authority or power structures. How much of Aloy's frustration is purely scoffing at someone else's beliefs and how much of it is her disgust and horror at seeing beliefs and traditions that hold people back or outright endanger them? Beliefs and traditions wielded by leaders?
Lobok fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Mar 2, 2022 |
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Mar 2, 2022 22:16
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My experience in this game has involved a combination of getting pinballed by multiple machines, boring climbing bullshit and a plot that involves being stonewalled by absolutely everybody and everything that could possibly get in my way and I can't get enough of it. mid game spoilers/speculation Beta is basically me upon being exposed to this culture. "You were supposed to be further along than this. We are ALL hosed. Far Zenith is just HFW's answer to the Enclave isn't it? Me upon learning that there are a bunch of 1,000 year old rich assholes kicking around: Ted Faro is one of them isn't he. If he is I don't even want to kill him. I want him to be trapped existing in this lovely world he created with his own hubris where everybody knows he's responsible for 2 apocalypses and fled the consequences of his own actions and hates him accordingly. Don't actually answer this please.
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Mar 2, 2022 22:27
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I did some quests and got a really good sharpshot bow that upgraded to level 3. I just went ahead and upgraded all the gear because no telling when I'mma get more or better gear.
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Mar 2, 2022 22:37
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I did some quests and got a really good sharpshot bow that upgraded to level 3. I just went ahead and upgraded all the gear because no telling when I'mma get more or better gear. edit: The spike thrower is indeed awesome. Used it to kill some widemaws. Hollismason fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Mar 2, 2022 |
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Mar 2, 2022 22:48
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Hollismason posted:I did some quests and got a really good sharpshot bow that upgraded to level 3. I just went ahead and upgraded all the gear because no telling when I'mma get more or better gear. Hollismason posted:I did some quests and got a really good sharpshot bow that upgraded to level 3. I just went ahead and upgraded all the gear because no telling when I'mma get more or better gear. I’m seeing double! Four Aloys!
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Mar 2, 2022 22:57
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Okay, so, that's basically a wrap for me. I have done everything except literally the Platinum because the one rebel camp is unrecoverably glitched. I'll probably come back for it when there's a patch because I hate leaving Platinums ungotten (there is something wrong with my brain). Overall I've got to say that I did not like the game, mostly for weird, floaty reasons that boil down to it maybe not being for me but me being inexorably drawn to it despite this? I don't know (see previous parenthetical). This is going to be a very long post. Given that I've already provided an overall conclusion, please consider just skipping it if you don't want to read a lot of complaining. But also, consider that there's a reason I played through the whole thing, and took the time to write this... thing. Most of all I must stress that I do not think less of anyone who likes the game for the exact reasons I'm about to vent my displeasure about. I just want to talk about interesting stuff. Unfortunately I am drawn to this thing I didn't like very much because I find my dislike of it fascinating (I must once again direct you to the second-previous parenthetical). That's just overall, though. There was quite a lot of stuff in the game that I did like, a lot, although most of those things aren't that interesting to talk about. Things like, my god everything is pretty? The contrast is still a little fucky (Zero Dawn was one of the spearheads of what seem to have become the New Game Look everyone wants to have these days, which is characterised primarily by ridiculous overcontrast to make people notice their HDR TVs), but it's part of this push for this hyper-surreal style that's just primary colours exploding off the screen and shoryukening your eyeballs every second of every minute of the thing, and, well, it's not boring. Lots of stuff to gawk at. The artifacting problems in 60fps mode are a shame but even then, it's still a treat. Also I lowkey love how they've basically written some of the elements of overly showy video game world aesthetics into the setting a little bit, although I'm not sure if that's deliberate (If I were a lead writer, I would have had Tilda make some throwaway remark about how as an art lover she can appreciate a good sunset but they used to be a lot more subdued and maybe Aether might have been gone a little overboard or something, just to make sure everyone knew it was deliberate). Also, the amount of reactive dialogue is frankly astonishing, like, it's not just that stuff in the main plot can acknowledge the status of sidequests, that's not impressive anymore, it's that seemingly every major sidequest (and main quest) seems to acknowledge seemingly every other sidequest so as you go around doing everyone's homework you can literally watch Aloy's rep growing in real time. That's really neat, I thought. Also, I cannot get enough of first party developers finally understanding that you should not require players to X every Y to get the Platinum Trophy. Frankly I think they should literally open the game with a dialogue box that says "you will not be required to track down every single X and Y for the Plat" or something. Every year we get an inch closer to my impossible dream of developers understanding that Trophies have always been bullshit and should be designed against instead of around. Okay, so. Thesis statement: PlayStation Studios generally (as a matter of global direction, if not down to every level at every studio) is very good at making games, like, at the craft, of producing assets, directing cutscenes, wrangling engines, etc, but absolutely godawful at designing them. Minute by minute, Forbidden West is a treat. Second by second, it is an ordeal. Consider: the resource bloat. Holy gently caress. You can't take a few steps anywhere without being bombarded by stuff just lying around. Absolutely everything you do comes out of some kind of resource cost, and those resources need to be getting replenished, so there is stuff everywhere. I don't know if it's actually gotten worse since Zero Dawn or if it just feels like it because Forbidden West is just that much bigger, but it's ironically like there was just this system-designing subordinate AI that became self aware one day and went insane. It takes over everything. Like, just consider, what if they Simply Didn't? Just consider your basic arrows. What if instead of having to be gathering wood constantly and pausing every minute to craft another batch of arrows, what if you Simply Didn't, and just had infinite basic arrows, like Atreus does? Would that be silly? Would that be sillier than being able to craft a twelve-pack of arrows mid-jump? Would it be sillier than being able to carry 200 units of ridge-wood in your pocket? Would it be sillier than having a limit to how much wood you could carry but there being dimensional pockets all over the world you could retrieve wood from and also teleport any excess you find straight to? Because let me tell you, both sides of this seem pretty silly, but only one requires me to constantly be pausing during combat, and then also constantly be pausing during exploration because it takes a hot second to collect everything. By all means we need some way of limiting the Really Good Stuff (ability to use Powershots to materialise 18 + 5 Advanced Throwing Spikes on command notwithstanding), but you might as well just say, look, you get infinite basic arrows and this many special things and that many bombs or whatever every time you hit a stash. Or something. But no, that wouldn't be a System. So, we've got to be crafting, which means we've got to have materials, which means we've got to have resource gathering, which means resource gathering has to result from other systems, which means resources have to be everywhere, all the time. Like- -okay, consider Naughty Dog. You know what those guys are like about realism. These are the people who pioneered the procedurally IK'd animations for Nate Drake walking past different things and leaning on each one differently, and Ellie's dynamic breath-driven walking cycle. Think about that stuff, and think about why, in both of The Lasts of Us, you can hold a button to make your protag wave their arms around like an idiot and hoover up any pickups within a radius. Think about why Naughty loving Dog would do such a thing. Don't think too hard though; it's because they know what you know, that clicking on five things loving sucks. See also, Zelda BotW making all pickups instant unless they're either major items or your first time finding something. God, BotW. I have some sympathy for Zero Dawn being spectacularly punked by BotW releasing the same week. A game that goes all in on conventional open-world winding up having to go against a game that made such a point of overturning the conventional open-world table and reminding everyone what they actually want out of games in the first place. Everyone laughs about how now Forbidden West is having the same thing happen with Elden Ring, but honestly, it's still being punked by BotW, only it's now being punked from five years in the past instead of a week into the future, and this time they were supposed to have spent five years learning the lessons. Anyway. You ever think about how weird it is that in a game that's notionally all in on crafting cool ammo mid-battle, you're still arbitrarily restricted to certain ammo types on certain weapons? Like, what is the point of having ten different versions of the same basic hunter bow that all use slightly different elemental ammo? Would it not be more in keeping with the spirit of the game to let me carry around some of each of the different ammo types and use them all on the same bow? Well, no, because the spirit of the game is not any one system, it's having the most systems, and doing that would mean we couldn't have a million billion different weapons to choose between and juggle upgrades for. We have to have More Systems. Crafting Systems for ammo for the Weapon Systems that feed the Upgrade Systems that rely on the Other Systems, like- -do you ever think about how wildlife exists in both Horizon games for the sole purpose of providing a System whose sole purpose is to upgrade your carrying capacity for stuff? Like, there's all these animals running around in defined zones with procedural spawning and behaviour patterns and loot tables, and it's all largely pointless? Like, for the sake of there being another goddamn System in the game, they made it so that upgrading your trap pouch requires the loving wishbone of a duck, because since there's a wildlife system in the game it needs to have a purpose, and this is apparently a more acceptable compromise than having the wildlife be largely extraneous, even if it's still broadly useful-ish for meat. Hell, food in Forbidden West is notably a whole second purpose for wildlife, almost, because it's itself pretty forgettable but also only relies on very common drops, and basic meat was one of those items I seemed to just accidentally wind up with 500 of in the dimensional pocket. Like, they did all of this, all of this poo poo, to the point where there are no vendors in the world who just carry stuff that you can buy with money, so they could fulfil this on-high directive to have Systems in the game. Nobody actually wants to farm ducks, just like nobody wants to have to stroll around a battlefield for a minute after beating any slightly large machine to pick up all the bits of it that you chipped off. Okay, the machine combat is pretty great overall, but that's overall. Like the rest of the game it's a grand spectacle and has an impressive amount going on, but it feels weirdly bad to actually do. Part of this is because Aloy's movement isn't very good and a lot of machines have stupid big splash attacks with hitboxes that are the opposite of intuitive and range that's too big, and part of it is because there's no lock-on so it's trivially easy for enemies to fight the player instead of fighting Aloy, and also part of it is that the camera likes to bump up against stuff so if you try shooting something from the Stealth Grass you might find the grass blocks the camera, and part of it is a million and one smaller oversights like how throwing a spike propels you forward a couple steps but unlike melee attacking (most of the time) this can propel you over an edge. That's a lot of complaints, but at the end of the day, the machine combat is probably the only part of any of the Horizon games other than the main plot that stands completely on its own as something that's just a good idea executed very well and elevated to new heights by the technical capabilities of modern game consoles, so you can fight these enormous complex freak beast contraptions made out of a gazillion smaller parts that you can individually shoot and break for various tactical effects. On the one hand, sometimes a few fights you get into while out and about seem to just take too long, but on the other hand, when you actually seek these encounters out they're always a thrill, always a slight improvisation even when you plan things out, never quite the same, certainly never boring, and it just always feels really good to break off a Thunderjaw's big gun and shoot him with it? If it's not the systems, it's the constant, cloying, authorship of everything you do in the game. Like, consider the Tallnecks. It used to be that you could just stroll up to a Tallneck, find a high point near its route, climb up there, and jump onto it, and get your map data. Now, every Tallneck is part of an authored sidequest. This change is "good", apparently, it seems to have drawn consistent praise. This baffles me. I hate it! It's like... the more they try to go out of their way to make these things unique, the less congruous it feels, like, there's always a little divine providence in games where everything's set up to be solvable, but having a Tallneck just be wandering around and you can get up on it however you want is organic, while the situations we now have are just openly, like, praise be to game designer for there happening to be these Oseram ballistae just lying around and pre-loaded with anchor bolts. It's like, from the very conception of the Ubisoft Tower concept, the point of these things has always been that when you go to a new place you don't get stuck in to the first interesting thing after the border, you make a beeline for something in the middle of it, pass a lot of interesting terrain, then go and get your map. They are not and have never been in and of themselves content, they are a literal and figurative waypoint on the path to content. The fact that they weren't content was part of what made the overall experience enjoyable. Now they're this big imposition in the way of whatever you were hoping to do in a region in the first place. I don't understand how they took a look at the gameplay systems they had designed - with open-world exploration, free-ish climbing, a grappling hook and a hang-glider, and decided that landing on a roving high point needed to be something you solve a puzzle in the environment to accomplish. Stuff like the Stand of the Sentinels Tallneck about works because the quest chain begins and ends with just climbing stuff to get high enough, even if it is a little contrived. In fact, the Survey Drones are basically the same as how Tallnecks used to be, except they're completely superfluous and exist only to give you wallpaper for one room which doesn't even stick. But stuff like having to spin a satellite dish around is just, nope, that whole setpiece falls right back into the "oh come on" zone. And this extends to the individually crafted environments, too. All of them - maybe less so the main plot stuff, but certainly all of the cauldrons, all of the relic ruins, the environments around the Tallnecks, basically anywhere there was a puzzle in the environment. I hate them all. I hate the contrivance of it. It's like- Okay, back up a second before I get to this one. It's been a lot of complaining so far so let's stop and praise something for a minute. The standout star of both Horizon games is the setting. It is immediately and powerfully compelling. The whole reason Zero Dawn worked in the first place is because it dumps you in this instantly fascinating place - like, whoa, we've got tribes and ancient civilisations, but also giant robot animals? It's a setting and a premise that grabs your attention and makes you ask "what's the deal?" and, wouldn't you know it, the main plot happens to be exactly finding out what the deal with the setting is, and while the stuff happening in the setting is not wholly boring, it's pointedly and deliberately secondary to the story of the setting itself, and the reason we are exploring it at all is to figure the deal out. It's neat. It is video games as gently caress. It is the kind of narrative perfectly suited to video games. It ruled unbelievably to slowly piece together the relation of this setting to our history, of the vibe to the real events, of the people to ourselves, and of the people's conception to the truth. It made every moment laden with meaning, because the nature of the setting is that it was populated by people who weren't so much born ignorant as born made ignorant, so every truth they latch onto became a commentary on human nature and on history, because the inhabitants of the setting are deriving their own meaning from our world at the same time as we are deriving our own meaning from theirs. Games are loving art! If it sounds like I forced myself through a game I don't seem to like very much and have mostly complaints about, this is why; it's just, the whole idea of this thing is so loving cool, I wanted so bad to like it, and I did like Zero Dawn an enormous amount even despite the things about it I disliked because as a whole it brought everything together and sold it to me, and it managed to stay just about enough out of its own way that as a long-form experience (see also: games being like movies but including all the stuff that movies would cut into montages) it holds up, and most pertinently though it too was laden down in a lot of contemporary cruft (like its inexplicable loot boxes) for the most part it kept the contrivance levels within tolerance. The bottom line is that they made me give a poo poo. They took the poo poo they made me give and knocked it out of the loving park. Alright, so, as I was saying, the puzzle environments are so openly contrived that I was basically sick of each one within a minute of entering. The main offenders here are the relic ruins, which ask us to accept that these thousand year old heaps have deteriorated into these perfectly designed puzzle rooms with a single big shiny stored behind the single remaining miraculously functional security system. Like, look, I'm sorry, I don't know exactly where my boundary is for accepting this poo poo but this is on the wrong side of it. All I can think about during these bits is how transparently the game is trying to stall me with content, like, the illusion just shatters and suddenly I'm just here to check off a box on a list and I need to get through this place and be done with it, rather than exploring something cool. The bottom line is that they utterly failed to make me give a poo poo about any of these overdesigned underjustified places. Just a complete hard poo poo-vacuum. In fact, I think every time Forbidden West sets out to give us something to do, it shows its entire rear end. All of the activities are garbage. The ruins are garbage. The Tallnecks are garbage. The Cauldrons are garbage - though maybe a little less so because them being inhospitable factory hellpits designed by a rampant AI dials the contrivance of their puzzle-dungeon-like linearity back down to within acceptable range, but within the context of Forbidden West, they are as bad as anything else. Machine Strike is garbage. The racing is garbage. Why is there a board game and a racing game in the game? Rhetorical question; they're in the game for More Content, because there needed to be Things To Do. The Hunting Ground challenges are awful, in that they're either entirely superfluous or actively contrary to how you'd play - the standout for me was the one where you have to freeze a Tremortusk and break its tusks off, because there is absolutely no reason to freeze a Tremortusk in order to break its tusks off (you can just shoot them with regular arrows, or any weapon that's made to break things), not least because it is enormously difficult to freeze a Tremortusk in the first place (because they're resistant to frost, so you have to get them Drenched first, so we're now using two elemental states for something you can accomplish with blunt force). The Fight Pits are merely bad, though the bosses there are garbage. The Arena is also pretty superfluous, although it's nice as a way to just quickly have a fight with a machine of your choice (if your choice is one of a limited set), but the final challenge in each set is a nice little case study in why you shouldn't really require specific things of the player in a game whose primary draw is that you can play it however you like, like, if your central thrust is that you offer the player a choice of styles for their comfort, you should not ever demand they play in a particular style. But at the same time, even with the defined options you're given, what these fights wind up actually teaching you is that you can use broadly the same tactics with any set of weapons as long as they have coverage of certain damage types, which is therefore why most of the weapon variety in the game is superfluous.). The vista points, jesus christ, I've never seen this concept executed worse. Once again I cite Breath of the Wild showing everyone what it takes to do this right; you need a world designed around visual memorability, you need distinctive photos packed with telling details (there was like one bad photo challenge in BotW, it was a forest, you can probably remember it). Forbidden West attempts to provide an interesting twist in that the photos are now a thousand years old and the subjects are crumbling ruins, but for the most part, the images it gives you are distorted and useless and trying to solve them fairly, by comparing them to the environment around you, is often futile even if you recognise the subject. Instead, you have to either wait for Aloy to divine some more detail on her own ("this looks like it's near a river!" how can you possibly have guessed that) or channel the instincts developed from decades of playing video games and instead of looking for the subject, look for a conspicuously game-designed path leading from the starting point to a prominent lookout point. The big saving grace of almost all of these is that they're completely ignorable even if you suffer as I do from the compulsion to unlock trophies. (I will grant a solitary exception to the one Cauldron that had a Tallneck in it, because that was an actual inspired, creative variation, and, more importantly, it sold you on the coincidence by giving you the overrides straight away and then giving you the Tallneck afterwards, which makes the whole affair feel like an organic confluence of two parts of the world rather than another in a series of tedious contrivances borne of the same minds producing more Content for the mill) I want to labour the Machine Strike point a bit more. Of all the "activities" in the game, it is the most egregious. Something that all the others have in common is that however much I dislike them conceptually they are still made up of the same fundamental building blocks as the rest of the game and executed under its systems. The Hunting Trials are bullshit but you complete that bullshit in the same way you complete fights that aren't bullshit (in fact, the whole reason I think they are bullshit in the first place is because they revolve around things you can do in normal combat, but shouldn't). Machine Strike is a complete outlier. It could be patched out of the game tomorrow and nobody would even notice. It is never mentioned in dialogue save for like one notable one where it is mentioned that Tenakth developed it as a pastime because it complemented martial training with tactics. Other than that, and the piece salesmen, and one designated friend, you do not, that I recall, meet a single NPC who isn't literally named "Machine Strike Player" who ever mentions the game. Final Fantasy IX's Tetra Master was more established in the setting than Machine Strike is. Also, the game itself is garbage. Well, okay, it's passable, but completely uninspired, and more importantly, boring. You can tell it's boring because the only real differentiator between the different NPC skill levels is that the more advanced they are, the more defensively they'll play and the less likely they'll be to send a big number piece after your small number bait. Essentially, the game is won in single, big, risky plays, usually involving overcharge, that would leave you hosed if they didn't work, so the best players need to be baited continuously before they finally stop moving their small numbers of powerful pieces back constantly (often in circles, potentially) and actually commit to something. This means the best approach is usually four or five cheap pieces so you can actually close in on them and control some space. I used the same set (two Scrappers, two Lancehorns, two Burrowers, all of which are in the starter set) for every player and after checking a list I think I only missed one. But also, being down to a single, powerful piece is also kinda busted, because you can move it twice, which massively expands its threat range. So it's kind of all over the place conceptually, but also its presentation is quite bad, a lot of important details are swept away into the Glossary to be forgotten about when they finally come up again, you can't actually see stats of pieces you're buying, you should be able to undo moves during your turn, and, for gently caress's sake, there is no justification for making me beat someone three times with slightly different sets each time. They refer to this as "beating them on all their boards", and I guess we're just not supposed to question a) how come we don't get to own boards, b) why they refer to "three boards" when it's the same board each time and what they're actually changing is the set, or c) why despite games being rendered in the open world complete with lighting, ambient sound and arm rendering, the boards shown on the tables in the open world c') are not the same as the board we play on and c'') are impossible, because they're not symmetrical as all actual game boards are. The platforming is bad. It feels bad to do. It's nice that they tried to veer away from the relentlessly linear paths used to climb stuff in the first game and to be a few notches towards AssCreed, but mostly what they've managed to do is demonstrate why the linear system was a good fit in the first place - because the open controls here gently caress up. A lot. Half the time Aloy just falls off things, or when you want to leap forward off a ledge she does a pathetic little hop for no reason, or you have to fight to get a handhold to register, or just straight up lose track of where you're going. Did anyone notice that even though Handholds Always Visible is an accessibility toggle, if you start climbing in any sequence of decent length having recently done a Focus pulse, the handholds remain visible until you stand on solid ground anyway? It's because if they didn't, you'd just be mashing that pulse button anyway, because the flip side of the new system is that you now can't tell at a glance anymore what the path up any given area is (unless it's in a Cauldron, which tends to have ledges neon-lit as an aesthetic). It's like, they know (or they've learned) that there's a reason you don't just put realistic stuff in games, you need to communicate a ton of abstract stuff to the player, and the job of a game designer is, as ever, to sell absurdity and make it seem natural, so all they've actually ended up doing is offloading the yellow paint to a different interface. And I mean, it's not a bad choice necessarily, but good lord some of the climbs are susceptible to "now what" syndrome and some of them feel like you're glitching your way up a thing (and not in a good way). (Also, on the subject of continuous Focus pulsing, it is a bit silly that we still don't have a distinct icon for health grass, especially now that there are a ton of other useless grasses to confuse them with) In fact the game is covered in as much jank as there is cruft. Most of the jank is interface-level stuff that's basically just a curiosity more than it is actively detrimental to the experience, and even when you're talking about Sony Money it still feels a tiny bit mean to complain about how every time you do any quest that changes your equipment (so, any pit fight, any race, any arena capstone), it actually removes and re-adds stuff to your inventory, so any quests (or, more importantly, jobs) that require items will all pop up on the side. Did you know you can't cancel jobs from the main menu, by the way? If you created a job to buy a weapon, you can only cancel it at the merchant you created it at. Some of the jank is a mite more substantive, like, we're still on this fast travel kit nonsense, and yeah you can actively travel for free from campfires, but it's a dedicated interaction at the campfire, so especially now that we're in PS5 town and loading screens are goddamn near instantaneous, it actually does feel really bad to have to walk a hundred paces to a campfire, so we still burn the kits anyway. You should just be able to freely fast travel from anywhere in a town. Also, you can fast travel to the Base from anywhere for free? What's with that. I mean I appreciate it but it doesn't make any sense. The towns are absolutely beautiful and their integration into ruined structures is inspired. Unfortunately, towns tend to be vertically layered and this completely defeats the game's waypoint system, so the last few paces of turning in quests or finding particular shops or basically anything that requires you to navigate a town is an enormous pain. The nav system you're given is extremely not 3D aware. I like that there's an option toggle to give you something resembling a path guidance but both options frequently fall short and with how the game handles guidance sometimes it's extremely unhelpful (The game plots a path along roads etc, and shows you a floating marker for the next segment of road. This is nice, but it also disables the compass marker that points directly to the objective, and sometimes you'll want that, and you don't want to have to duck into a menu to get it.). I found, as a compromise, the best approach was to have quest markers set to free explore and flag markers set to detailed guidance. The actual side quests are really good! This is because they tend to lean into scenario writing and combat more than activity design, so they only really go wrong when you get one that sends you into a puzzle dungeon or platforming run, which they usually don't. That increased cutscene budget pays off here, obviously, but mostly these things are serving the setting. I found that frequently I didn't particularly care about sorting out everybody's problems, but the true value of these things is that they're all neck deep in the ideals of the societies that have cropped up in this world in which ignorance was forced on them, which means that, yep, it's automatic poo poo-giving. These societies are all based around the meaning they read into the remnants of the old world; the Utaru found their meaning in agriculture and worshipped the Zero Dawn machines that tended their land out of gratitude, the Tenakth found it in war, worshipping the soldiers whose propaganda they discovered, and the Quen found it in knowledge and worshipped the old ones themselves. Accordingly, each has a central tension; the Utaru are fatalistic and will too easily accept their deaths as part of a grand cycle, the Tenakth had no appreciation of peace, having warred first with themselves and later and justifiably against the Sundom, and the Quen miss the context of the data they seek and think it will simply tell them meaning. Aloy steps into these worlds not as the bringer of greater truth exactly, but as someone who does know the true context of the things these people draw meaning from. So while she gets a Designated Companion from each tribe to hang out with who all do their share of exposition, we also just spend a bunch of time hanging out with the various randos and finding out what they make of stuff of which they can't ever have been expected to know the truth about. So gradually we see the Utaru becoming more decisive, the Tenakth more diplomatic, and the Quen more nuanced. These are admittedly more vibes than they are beats; the actual quests you do in the name of getting this exposition are kinda average, frequently tedious, rarely particularly novel, although sometimes fun. In my estimation they usually manage to get away with it, because I wound up giving a poo poo more often than not. The weird thing is that the sidequests all seem to be in disagreement about exactly what tone to take regarding Aloy knowing the truth about the world and everyone she meets not. Sometimes she's compassionate and understanding and sometimes she's just "look whatever, you're wrong about everything, but tell me where to go and I'll fix it" about stuff. I don't know if we're supposed to read it as a flaw or not, because nobody - not any of the friends we make along the way, or any of the sidequest characters - ever calls her on it, and in the opening she's very memorably (and, in that case, correctly) completely dismissive of the Sun Priest going to the Embassy, and that vibe kinda sticks. I don't think it's intentional. But at the same time, maybe it not being intentional is worse? I don't know. Okay, story bit. Commence blackout. It feels a little strange that they've turned the buckwild-ness up to 11 for this outing. I don't know, it's pretty clear they had a trilogy sketched out from the start, but the only really borderline-magical thing the first game had was the single entity that was GAIA, and even then basically just that it was a strong AI with a conscience and a ton of automation and a thousand years to work. The main thrust of the thing was simply the most basic and most reliably to instantly make a scenario interesting; have it go wrong and dump the player in the aftermath to figure out what happened. Forbidden West takes a different direction, by which I mean, it's Literally Mass Effect 2. I'm 75% serious. Mass Effect did a ton of table setting and in its ending sets you up as not a legendary hero but simply a capable soldier with a unique insight into the world and a very conveniently plot-malleable authority to investigate it, and then Mass Effect 2 did a hard swerve into you being, and I quote, "a hero, a bloody icon", set you up against an incomprehensible new foe with a startling background, and tasked you with assembling a crew of weirdos from the sketchier half of the galaxy for a suicide mission. Forbidden West cribs openly and gleefully from this playbook. I loving hate Mass Effect 2. I... kinda love Forbidden West's impression of Mass Effect 2, though? Probably a key differentiator is that Forbidden West doesn't throw out the themes and directions (and several established plot and character beats) from its prequel, and hasn't undergone a complete change of ownership and leadership in the interim. Forbidden West takes all the insane swerves and just, it sells them, so now we've got millennia-old invincible precursors loving around and being terrifyingly powerful, but also spending most of the game just looming out of frame until they're needed, Aloy venturing forth into a new environment where people know of her and can freely decide according to the plot's whims whether they accept her or not, and an interesting collection of allies plucked from the various societies we'll encounter, hanging out in our cool base and interacting and sometimes offering us loyalty missions, and it... works. It offers us the same kind of "what's the deal" hooks, but more of them, and faster. It starts out with Sylens, and Aloy chasing after him, because he's clearly holding out. It honestly lags a lot at the beginning, because it throws you into the Daunt, and then the region immediately beyond it, and you spend almost all of that time being beaten over the head with the new tribes and their interactions and trying to set up the entirety of the Tenakth and also Regalla, it's a lot, and it's sluggish. But then, well, you stroll into the Proving Lab, literally delete HADES, and then these loving people show up, and, well, yeah, what is their loving deal? I was pretty much all in on the main plot at this point. Things get a little weird after this though. After engaging in a lot more tribal politics, we get access to the Base, and we finally reboot Gaia, and somehow she can recall a lot of information that I feel like maybe she shouldn't? Like, even accounting for scanning stuff from Aloy's focus, I remember it being kinda jarring that she said "oh I thought about how HADES said the signal lasted 17 years and cross-referenced that against my astronomy database", like, why does she have an astronomy database, isn't that an APOLLO thing? It's also not really clear why she has so many memories about Elizabet, since this wasn't the GAIA all those things happened to and Aloy doesn't know any of it either, but I guess this stuff isn't really, like, dire plotholes, it just feels like if there were explanations for it they should have been given somewhere, I don't know. But in either case, GAIA drops all the bombs, our antagonist crew becomes more interesting than ever, and it quickly becomes clear that there are like four different antagonist factions who all seem to be at cross-purposes, and that's interesting as gently caress. It's a shame that the ensuing quest to round up some sub-AIs isn't more directly interesting and mostly is just a vehicle to explore more of the present-day setting. I would have liked AETHER, POSEIDON and DEMETER to have been more... present? Like, when you find MINERVA, it's clearly in a state, and tries weakly to protect itself, but we at least actually get a sense of what it's doing, even if it's just a slight one and even if all it's doing is being computer-depressed, which is understandable, because MINERVA had a single function which has now been served, and now it's just sitting there contemplating the void. That's something. HEPHAESTUS is a busy boy and HADES was very active in its time. We got to see a little from ELEUTHIA in Zero Dawn, although at the time it was running normally and wasn't self-aware. So at this point, I was hoping that given that we had ostensibly set out to fix the Blight and the storms and other such things, that we would be engaging with the malfunctioning AIs responsible for them, and have to subdue or convince them somehow to leave their newfound fiefdoms, relinquish their autonomy, and come home. Instead, you just have to solve a bunch of problems to get to their doors. And I mean, it's cool and all to connect the Tenakth with the goddamn US military, and to swim around a buried Vegas, and to just hang out with Alva (the thing that most cemented the Mass Effect comparison in my mind is that Alva is basically a speedrun of Liara's arc across that trilogy, where she's obsessed with the precursors and we get to watch in realtime as she finds out they were pretty hosed up and their meddling shaped the world) and hear her casually drop that she recognises Aloy as Elizabet. But then you meet the AIs and they're just like, "guess I'll die" and that's that. Oh, and, right, you go on a little errand and rescue Beta, another rich vein of deal-whattening. Beta hammers home like three different themes just by existing; a general refutation of genetic destiny (kinda important, because the first game kinda fell into this trap of having this subtext where Aloy was just super-special awesome because of her genes, even though that wasn't really supposed to be the case), the extent to which the Zeniths consider everyone and everything disposable (since them being that way is how they became Zeniths in the first place), and a hard counter to Aloy's insistent independence. I feel like Aloy's writing in respect of Beta (where she actually comes out and says she doesn't understand her deal) is a little bit forced, like, I could buy her frustration maybe but it feels wrong for her to not understand at all why Beta is the way she is. So then we actually get to visit Thebes. This was kind of a rollercoaster for me. I know you're obviously supposed to find Ceo completely offputting from minute one, but I literally started thinking "major Faro vibes from this guy", so imagine my laughter when he started making out like he was literally a clone of Ted, and me having to remember "but of course he's not, because he would've been able to open the door". I am, in general, a huge fan of how they managed to make Ted Faro even more pathetic than he already was in Zero Dawn, first with his scheme to put killswitches in everyone's brains, and then trying to make himself immortal, and then with the last group of people he hadn't had killed for questioning him deciding to literally kill themselves rather than continue to hang out with him, and of course by finally being turned into a hell lump and spending a thousand years alone in misery before being killed offscreen by some idiot who thought he didn't live up to the legendary reputation he established for himself by deleting APOLLO. I am a little conflicted about not getting to kick him in the nuts, in character as Elizabet Sobeck. I thought he deserved that, but also he didn't deserve the importance of that. I just know that I was nodding along in the Zero Dawn thread with others clamoring that Guerilla should, must, somehow contrive a scenario in which Aloy is able to kick Ted Faro in the nuts, because, all together now, gently caress Ted Faro. But more than that, I adore Bohai turning around and instantly refuting that Ceo died nobly. I love that the Quen always end up not being quite as delusional as they seem to be at times. For all the drama resulting from it, I thought the Gemini mission was pretty dull. The mission itself was a lot of nothing, and I don't like to lean on "predictable" as a criticism, but the fact remains that I went into it thinking "well let's go do the suicide mission, and see who lives". I was also a tiny bit "let's see how we're going to lose GAIA to the Zeniths" but to be frank there was no mystery about that; the problem with the Zeniths as a threat is that all they have to do is show up, they have no grand scheme, no foreshadowed plot twist to taunt you for not having spotted, the whole tension is "I hope they don't notice us!" and, whoops, they noticed us. Amusingly, I found Tilda's mansion while out exploring at some point, and on entering, Aloy said something like "I'm sure Tilda won't mind if I poke around a bit more". Fortunately I did not manage to connect this with Beta's chats or with the one log from the opening of the game, and instead thought she was some sidequest NPC I'd forgotten about. But, oops. Anyway, it was also pretty predictable that the only thing that had been established as being possibly able to help us fight the Zeniths would help us fight the Zeniths, and a turn at that exact point would be the only possible way for Gemini to not be game over. So, the only real surprise was that Varl died, and, I don't know, it was very sad and everything, but mostly because we got to listen to everyone being sad about him, he didn't accomplish anything doing it, we didn't need any further reason to hate Erik after his single brief prior scene established that he was a piece of poo poo, losing GAIA and Beta is already a pretty crushing defeat for the gang, like... I just feel the plot would barely have changed if he had lived. It was pretty interesting to then get to pick Tilda's brain for half an hour, because as usual the backstory is the most immediately compelling part of any of these games. But mostly what I thought about talking to her was that, it's been most of the runtime of the game and we've not heard a single thing from Sylens or Regalla, who are supposed to be major players. Regalla is, we learn, about to make her big play, and suddenly I'm thinking about Mass Effect again, and how Regalla and Sylens are basically doing the Illusive Man's part in 3, not by being scheming traitors per se, although they are, but because they've got this immensely powerful army lurking just offscreen all the time and yet every time we engage with Regalla we see her get completely chumped; turned back at the Embassy, repulsed at the Kulrut, and optionally with all her camps wiped out. It feels fitting for Sylens to disappear from proceedings even though that's a shame for the viewer, because it's in his nature to scheme from the shadows. But Regalla is just hopeless as a villainous presence, so it feels completely unearned when she shows up with this huge army to assault a base we've already seen her fail to assault before. It honestly feels further absurd when Aloy just literally swoops in and singlehandedly turns the whole thing off. Then we get very weird boss fight where we effortlessly beat Regalla and then she beats us in a cutscene, multiple times, although we do get to win in the end, so that's something. I don't know how I feel about the ensuing arc in which she resolves to die in Aloy's service. I loved the final mission as a narrative beat, even though it was pretty boring to actually play through. I love that Aloy is smart enough to perceive that Tilda has an agenda, I love that it manages to deliver a twist about the Zeniths' true motivations that doesn't redeem them in the slightest, I love that everyone gets a special role and Erend's is just "carry the brick". I wish we could have gotten a more interactive take on the big epic Spectre v Thunderjaw showdown, like, having to sneak through the battlefield MGS4 style while poo poo goes bananas all around us, but I'll settle for the handful of bespoke cutscenes we got showing the machines going to town. But mostly? I love that after all this setup and Ted Faro loving the world over and the Zeniths running away and then running back and all the literal world-ending stakes we've endured, we've landed ourselves in a situation where we're about to be invaded by the rampaging ghost of capitalism, a literal manifestation of the combined apocalyptic hubris of the billionaire class. Of course they had to contrive a situation where HEPHAESTUS got free, otherwise there'd be no trademark machines for Horizon 3, but, man, I have got to see how they deliver on this premise, and how that Vast Silver thing that's conspicuously mentioned twice will factor in. See how this works? I already give a poo poo about Horizon 3. In the end, I've arrived at the incredibly ironic conclusion that Forbidden West needed to have had more stuff in it to really sing. Basically, I think we needed to see a lot more from Regalla, a little more from Sylens, have more excuses to check in with the Zeniths, and so on. Maybe even, somehow, some more exposure of Sylens' interrogation of HADES, like, gradually piecing together more and more of what he learned, of course never in full until it's too late, just to give the really cool stuff a little more time, y'know? Especially if we could've cut one or two entire activity categories to make room for all this new content. Basically, the conclusion I'm at is that there's one basic interactive building block of this game that works, and fortunately, it's the combat, so the thing is, that as much as I hate - and I do hate - all of this secondary bullshit bloat, as long as they keep that up, and as long as they don't drop the plot ball, it's still worth it, it's just, by god, I do hate a lot of the things in this game for how compelling I find it (I refer you a final time to the very first parenthetical). I will not hold it against Horizon 3 for not fixing all of these flaws because it's clear that Guerilla and PS Studios generally are committed to these design ideals even though I wish they weren't and think they're stupid ideals, and if there's a turnaround, it's going to be next gen, not next game. Also I'm hype to find out what incredible game will completely overshadow Horizon 3's launch in 2027. Probably Half-Life 3 at this rate. PS: If you actually read all this, I hope it was enjoyable. PPS: Some day I will make an enormous video essay titled "Against Sony-ness", but I'll probably die doing that, and also it'll have to wait until at least after my first enormous video essay, currently in scripting, which will basically just be a "genius and here's why"-style thing about a game I love.
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Mar 2, 2022 23:29
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Weird. Spike Thrower is indeed awesome and powerful. Doing like 100 damage now. I guess I wasn't paying attention to the 2ndary explosion. Feeling pretty good right now level 15 but I've got Fire , Electricity, Acid , and Freeze elemental types. EDIT: Oh I've also got Braced Shot now with my Sharpshooter bow. Hahaha Holy poo poo Braced shot is a loving insane beast of a special skill. I think I could take on a thunderjaw. I'mma try and kill one. Hollismason fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Mar 3, 2022 |
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Mar 2, 2022 23:30
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The third pit is hot loving garbage
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Mar 3, 2022 01:01
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It's... the pits.
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Mar 3, 2022 01:03
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Braced shot is great. Not sure which is more fun, one shotting a machine by hitting it in a weak point with one, or just exploding rebels from a sniper position.
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Mar 3, 2022 01:09
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How do you add more explosives to braced shot? I hold down the trigger but it doesn't put more explosives on it? Like 1 time it did like 150 damage and another time it did 500! damage , not quite sure if it was a weak point that I hit or what. Also how do I get more Machine Muscle? Their required for Sharpshooter arrows.
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Mar 3, 2022 01:16
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Hollismason posted:
Kill more machines. Also supply caches
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Mar 3, 2022 01:24
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Hollismason posted:I did some quests and got a really good sharpshot bow that upgraded to level 3. I just went ahead and upgraded all the gear because no telling when I'mma get more or better gear. Ya if you have the pieces for a upgrade it most often means you have a location in the world where you can farm it incase you need it later. Just upgrade your main weapons. I never had any issues and I upgrade everything. Neddy Seagoon posted:Anyone got any tips on putting down a Slitherfang more easily? I can contend with most of the nastier robots okay, but I just can't get the hang of fighting those drat colossal snakes. Hmm I intrigued on traps. But I have literally 0 skills in it and I hate the idea of trying to get another additional amount of resources for crafting them. I did use traps a lot in Horizon one, I would set up the fights and use the sniper bow to kite them over traps. I do wonder are traps blast radius big enough to say pop off canisters on bigger robots backs or you would only be able to hit weakpoints under them? If it hits their whole body than its broken I might try it. I am probably gonna put some pts in because I already got all the pts I wanted in the other trees. I started putting some points in machinist just for fun but because the mounts do crazy dmg to mid sized machines even when you put 0 pts in it.
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Mar 3, 2022 01:32
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I disagree.
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Mar 3, 2022 02:06
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No, but in all seriousness, a lot of the stuff you're saying makes sense in terms of how bloated this game can feel. I'm sorry the bad seems to have outweighed the good for you, though, because while I agree about the item systems and loot pickups (and even to some degree about the "authored" Tallnecks and Relic Ruins), I thought all the good (plot, characters, voice acting, combat, graphics) heavily outweighed it, like eating a good lobster but having to crack the meat out of the shell. I wondered if I was the only one who thought the environmental puzzles can get a bit grating, though. I typically enjoyed the first fifteen minutes of puzzling my way around a cauldron, but once you get to the third Figure Out How To Climb To The Place puzzle it gets a little stale. But then, at the same time, the game is pretty good about breaking up the sequences before there's too much monotony -- by the time I was getting pissed off of environment puzzling, it was typically time for a combat encounter, and by the time I felt I'd killed a bunch of robots, it was time for some talky stuff, then by the time it got old it was time to run around the gorgeous landscape.
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Mar 3, 2022 02:15
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I think there were too many of those kinds of puzzles in the game too. Tallnecks, relics, drone data. It's just about puzzling your way up this structure and it just repeated too many times. If it was limited to say, Tallnecks and relics then it'd be fine. But having it for most of the collections was tiring.
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Mar 3, 2022 02:49
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Finished the hunting grounds and arena, I had the most trouble with the shredder because gently caress that weapon no matter how close or far I was it'd just arc back in another direction and the final arena respectively (because of that goddamn scorcher constantly rocket boosting into me) Got these arena medal bows and I actually like that they need a bunch of high tier monster parts to upgrade, I feel less bad spending my good explosive weapons farming for them when its not a bunch of mid-tier stuff (though I do I have a very spike thrower fully upgraded doing 420 explosive damage per spike, definitely worth farming all those clamberjaw asses). The shard cost is getting pretty out of hand though
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Mar 3, 2022 02:55
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I've just gotten to unlocking the Sunwing and taking flight and Forbidden West definitely has had a problem of exceeding its scope. The bloat's not just there, it's there at the deficit of stuff that time and effort could've been better spent on. The Ted Faro bit in Thebes, for example. Two of the "Special Equipment" unlocks also really aren't more than glorified keys, which is a real disappointment. I'm honestly a little  on the Pullcaster too. Catapulting yourself up to high places and across gaps ASAP is really good, don't get me wrong, but literally every other aspect of it was done better 15+ years ago ( ) with the grapple in Tomb Raider: Legends. Especially the bits wanting you to yank something about with it, simply by being able to slack the rope, readjust, and pull again. The controls on it feel a little fiddly too for something that's designed for 3D platforming puzzles. You typically want something quick and responsive, and just having to Hold L2, Tap Triangle to ready the pullcaster for use feels a little hacky when they could've just gone Hold L2, Tap Triangle to Launch. I feel it also could've added an extra dimension in combat, as a means to yank off Canisters from machines or something. Or maybe getting on top of them Dragon Dogma-style to beat the poo poo out of the Big machines?The Tallstriders all being planned-out sidequest vignettes is also a valid complaint, given If you somehow haven't done them all by endgame, several are invalidated by just unlocking the Sunwing. The Fast Travel kits should've just been gone. They're cheap and easy to make, so why bother at all? Guerilla Games have to know that everyone bee-lined for the Golden Fast Travel Pack in the first game ASAP considering it's not in this game, and just removing that is not the solution they should've gone with. Greenshine is an utter loving slog of a collectable, because it's somehow everywhere and nowhere at the same time, with no way to detect it and a whole bunch of my preferred weapons stuck on needing one of THREE specific flavours of it. What they should've done at the very least is make it a single currency and merely find different quantities of it (eg; A Greenshine Chunk gives 5 pieces). Jimbot posted:I think there were too many of those kinds of puzzles in the game too. Tallnecks, relics, drone data. It's just about puzzling your way up this structure and it just repeated too many times. If it was limited to say, Tallnecks and relics then it'd be fine. But having it for most of the collections was tiring. Drone Data's an interesting idea at least, the problem with it is You don't get to leave the virtual wallpaper set up, it defaults back to off as soon as you do ANYTHING in GAIA's dome. It'd feel a much better reward if it perpetuated through chats with her and just stayed when you visited or left the room. Some of the scenery options just plain suck too, because why would you want to stare at a colossal rusted wall and gate? Also the Desert one doesn't do what it REALLY should and update to include the Hidden Ember lightshow.
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Mar 3, 2022 02:58
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Neddy Seagoon posted:Drone Data's an interesting idea at least, the problem with it is… This annoyed me so much the first thing I did when I got back to base after finishing this mission was look at the drone footage and it didn’t update. I’ve been blaming a lot of this sort of stuff that seems like it might be taxing on the system on the fact that it’s still a PS4 game and it might crash those older systems.
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Mar 3, 2022 03:05
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DC Murderverse posted:This annoyed me so much the first thing I did when I got back to base after finishing this mission was look at the drone footage and it didn’t update. I’ve been blaming a lot of this sort of stuff that seems like it might be taxing on the system on the fact that it’s still a PS4 game and it might crash those older systems. Not really; The holograms, to my eye at least, are mostly flat surfaces and relatively-simple shapes with a transparent "hologram" illuminated shader. Plus the room itself seems to be isolated so it can load those in without anything else sitting on the system (that little connecting corridor with two doors is a hold point to load/unload memory if I ever saw one.
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Mar 3, 2022 03:18
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Okay so I found a survey drone uh what do I do with it?
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Mar 3, 2022 03:23
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Hmm, I thought to myself after getting the Cradle of Echoes quest. I want to go see what it's about, but maybe I'll do another cauldron first...lol, no, I'm locked out of literally everything, then immediately teleported to the site of the coordinates.  I don't really mind, it's just funny considering how non-railroady the rest of the game is.
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Mar 3, 2022 03:30
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Is there only one cauldron in No Man's Land Area? It says Level 18 , I'm level 16 , should I attempt it?
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Mar 3, 2022 03:36
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Hollismason posted:Okay so I found a survey drone uh what do I do with it? wait until you hit a certain point in the story where you find out what to do with it Hollismason posted:Is there only one cauldron in No Man's Land Area? It says Level 18 , I'm level 16 , should I attempt it? level recommendations are kinda fungible in Horizon, the only thing you gain by leveling up is two or three skill points and 10 HP. You can be wildly underleveled for stuff but if you gear, skills, and fighting ability (as in, how good you yourself are at the game) are good enough then it really doesn't matter unless something does enough damage to literally oneshot you
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Mar 3, 2022 03:40
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Hollismason posted:Is there only one cauldron in No Man's Land Area? It says Level 18 , I'm level 16 , should I attempt it? Yeah you should, it’s not d&d where a couple of levels matter for being able to complete it.
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Mar 3, 2022 03:42
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IcePhoenix posted:wait until you hit a certain point in the story where you find out what to do with it My worry is that'll I'll start it and then be unable to finish it , its called Cauldron Mu . I played HZD so I kind of know what to expect but I don't wanna go into it and then get stuck being unable to continue.
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Mar 3, 2022 03:43
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Phenotype posted:I wondered if I was the only one who thought the environmental puzzles can get a bit grating, though. I typically enjoyed the first fifteen minutes of puzzling my way around a cauldron, but once you get to the third Figure Out How To Climb To The Place puzzle it gets a little stale. But then, at the same time, the game is pretty good about breaking up the sequences before there's too much monotony -- by the time I was getting pissed off of environment puzzling, it was typically time for a combat encounter, and by the time I felt I'd killed a bunch of robots, it was time for some talky stuff, then by the time it got old it was time to run around the gorgeous landscape. One example is climbing the vent blades in the caludrons because of the slow rear end swinging about animations after every blade. The dragged out animations is what makes me frustrated a lot of the times overall, looting would be nowhere near as bad if you just instantly picked them up.
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Mar 3, 2022 04:08
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Hollismason posted:My worry is that'll I'll start it and then be unable to finish it , its called Cauldron Mu . I played HZD so I kind of know what to expect but I don't wanna go into it and then get stuck being unable to continue.
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Mar 3, 2022 04:17
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Croccers posted:The issue I'm finding with the enviro puzzles is either the stupid loving Hookshot grates really don't stand out so it's easy to miss them, but the biggest thing is All. The. loving. Slow. Animations. Yeah, the Pullcaster targets are utterly awful visual design. They blend in way too well with the levels, and I've had several puzzles turn into headscratchers just because the drat things don't even show up well with the Focus and they're relatively-tiny targets. Pinging them with the Focus should highlight them better at the very least.
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Mar 3, 2022 04:19
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I would say up to level 25-30 you should be fine for most missions if you're stocked up, it's the ones higher than that where you're almost guaranteed to fight one of the top robots.
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Mar 3, 2022 04:21
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Hollismason posted:My worry is that'll I'll start it and then be unable to finish it , its called Cauldron Mu . I played HZD so I kind of know what to expect but I don't wanna go into it and then get stuck being unable to continue. Someone already mentioned this but yeah just make a save at a nearby campfire (all cauldrons have one really close iirc) and reload from there if it's too much for you. That one isn't too bad though you should probably be fine.
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Mar 3, 2022 04:27
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IcePhoenix posted:Someone already mentioned this but yeah just make a save at a nearby campfire (all cauldrons have one really close iirc) and reload from there if it's too much for you. That one isn't too bad though you should probably be fine. Cool , yea I'll go ahead and do that and try it out.
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Mar 3, 2022 04:29
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The leader of the (spoilers if you’ve not gone all the way west yet) Quen being called Ceo took me a second but is pretty good.
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Mar 3, 2022 04:32
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Joey Freshwater posted:The leader of the (spoilers if you’ve not gone all the way west yet) Quen being called Ceo took me a second but is pretty good. They also have a Board of Overseers.
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Mar 3, 2022 04:35
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| # ? Jun 3, 2024 17:24 |
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I don't know if this changes later in the game but early-mid Aloy's friends are the biggest piles of useless crap. They are useless in gameplay and the narrative.
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Mar 3, 2022 04:39
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