Jim DiGriz posted:

The Ling-Shan incident was actually orchestrated by CryNet, in an attempt to have to Nanosuits (developed by hacking alien tech discovered by the company) experience the original Ceph habitat, and to collect information on them. Only Prophet knew this though. By the time C2 started Prophet has learned that one of the main alien sites is under Manhattan, and this is why he came back. He was however too sick and tired to go on, this is why he put Alcatraz, the only (barely) surviving marine he found into the suit. He's not dead though, the suit used Alcatraz's remaining body and mind and fused with it while slowly restoring Prophet's consciousness into the new occupant.

It's a weird story, and not without its gaps and retcons, but I'm forgiving because C2 is my ultimate favorite FPS. I like plenty other games, but nothing comes even close to its experience. Many say it's a corridor shooter, but it's not fair - every encounter you have can be approached several radically different ways. I've played through it once without using the cloak, and one could probably sneak most of the game as well. I've never had another game with that kind of freedom to adapt to situations.

Sorry for the derail, they aren't really small things, I just love that game so much.

Big Grunty Secret posted:

IIRC during development the BF3 team didn't have neat animations for falling and mantling objects until someone pointed out the leftover Mirror's Edge resources they had lying around (both being games)

Inzombiac posted:

That and I think it's a good hint that most, if not all, of the the Geth were much more civilized than the first game gave them credit. They were and invading force of robot men so it was easy for the "higher" species to strip them of their, I guess, humanity.

Alouicious posted:

do basically everything right in Mass Effect 2, and destroy the Geth Heretics in Legion's loyalty mission instead of rewriting them

Son of Thunderbeast posted:

Oh man

And yeah I'm grabbing all the DLCs for my second run-through. I like to play a game vanilla on my first runthrough, then get the DLCs for the second go-around. Really looking forward to the extended cut features!

Leper Residue posted:

One of my favorite things in the game is when you're at the dam and you have to raise these gates to cross over the dam. You get the first one and then she gets the second one and when you cross over she holds her hand up for a high five. Press triangle, you high five, and she goes 'yeah, teamwork!' in such a satisfied voice.

It's so

Alouicious posted:

goons punching way above their weight class

Calaveron posted:

Y'know, after stuff like Blood Dragon, Drive, and stuff, it's made me wonder why they haven't done an open-world game with an 80's aesthetic. Just letterman jackets and pastel neon lights and soundtrack done by the likes of Timecop1983 or Kavinsky.

...of SCIENCE! posted:

I loved how Saints Row handled it from 2 on where levels have distinct checkpoints and when you die you can immediately resume from said checkpoints without having to travel back to the mission marker and start the whole thing all over again having lost all the weapons you earned until that point.

What's even funnier is that during the development of GTA IV they were aware of complaints of having to do that bit of tedium every time you failed a mission, and their response was to keep all those systems intact but make it so that now when you replayed missions they used differtent dialogue takes so it would be slightly less mind-numbing

Mister Adequate posted:

So I'm playing GTA V. I switched to Trevor and get him in his truck, yelling at some cyclists. Twenty minutes later, whilst getting a haircut, he starts up yelling again. It is the funniest thing in the game.

e: he keeps doing it

Alhazred posted:

-Franklin ironing his clothes.
-Franklin playing with his dog.
-Franklin smoking a joint.

Rampant Dwickery posted:

I could listen to Nightmare's voice all day in Dragon Age: Inquisition. Or Corypheus'. Really, the VA work for both characters is top notch.

Rupert Buttermilk posted:

I gotta wonder what sound engine they're using, does anyone know? Is it custom, or middleware like Wwise? I've wondered how they keep track of EVERYTHING audio-related, like how all of the music tracks will sort of 'keep playing' the background. Switching away from Radio Ga-ga (why would you?!) for 10 seconds and going back, you'll be 10 seconds later in the song. I've worked in FMOD a bit, and I know that keeping track of all of those radio stations, constantly, is quite the process.

EDIT: vvv Good

Lunchmeat Larry posted:

It's not great, but it isn't any worse than Oblivion or Skyrim's to be honest. It gets the job done and lets you do fun stuff with spells, and if you're not playing a mage what are you even doing

Lunchmeat Larry posted:

Would you rather "hit" and get audio/visual feedback but deal no damage?

Big Grunty Secret posted:

In Far Cry: Blood Dragon, the menu has a user manual for gameplay tips. Here's the story page:

Spalec posted:

The PS4 controller light shines in the colour of the paint you're currently spraying too, which is neat.

Speaking of other cool things the PS4 controller light bar does, in GTA5 when you have a wanted level it flashes red and blue rapidly.

And in Peggle 2 when you get Extreme Fever it flashes through all the colours rapidly.

BUBBA GAY DUDLEY posted:

CJacobs posted:

Max Payne 3's file structure counts as a little thing if you're a big ol nerd who likes to see game infrastructure trainwrecks. That game is almost 30 gb large because there are separate copies of every texture and model file for every map it's in- every gun, every ground texture, every random trash model of a traffic cone. Everything that appears more than once has an exact copy stored in the .rpf file for the relevant chapter. There are 13 models of Max, which pull from a resevoir of almost 40 different head and arm textures, like 30 different clothing textures, and so on and so on. The fmv cutscenes and audio files are all completely uncompressed. There's an unholy amount of stuff that is completely unused because it was either cut or phased out in development but still required for the game to run. It is just a wonderful piece of madness to behold. It's really a wonder that game even runs at all, let alone as well as it does.

John Pastor posted:

And yet, their loads are hilariously long and buried in unskippable cutscenes.

I would say that their optimization theories are mildly flawed.