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 Ubisoft games, right? You've got a map with a lot of icons on it. The controls are very consistent, and you can climb on stuff. It's a pretty good formula. Watch_Dogs promised to shake that up by bringing out emergent modern-world gameplay, in a near-future Chicago where everything is computers. Announced in 2012 with an impressive gameplay demo, it was clear that this was going to be their next big franchise - huge ambitions, huge expectations, huge budget. Hacking and driving and shooting a gun at the same time was going to be the next-gen Thing. By October 2013 it became apparent that there were problems. The game was delayed for six months because - according to Ubisoft! - it just wasn't fun. A complex open world relies on a lot of systems all coming together and interacting, and all of the promised innovations - "profiling" of your fellow citizens, environment manipulation, augmented reality - these hinged on that interconnected core. It's rare that a large publisher will slip a heavily-marketed game past the holiday period, so the delay was almost a sign of goodwill - Ubisoft wanted to get this one right, to polish it to a memetic level of glisten. So did it work? Yes, and also, no. There was a brief furore at the game's release about a 'graphical downgrade', since it didn't live up to the E3 demos, but it still looks good. Chicago is rendered as a very pretty city, more colourful than most GTA imitators, and the presentation is as smooth as the controls. Many or most of those systems did come together after all; you have options for how to play and they're generally fun to engage with. Even the obligatory spread of minigames is entertaining. Unfortunately, the game's premise is total dogshit focused on the world's most sullen rear end in a top hat. I finished Watch_Dogs and I could not believe my eyes/brain. I'd just come from playing Dark Souls, which made the transition extra-jarring; shoothacking phoneguns was fun enough, but the story managed to be infuriating at every turn, constantly asking me to sympathise with insane assholes and do nothing but create problems, fail, or create problems by failing. None of the thematic premises delivered, the protagonist wanted to be Batman, and half the game was about voyeurism. The ostensible good guys, the actual 'watchdogs', got a one line mention at the very end when the protagonist decided not to join them due to being too much of a dickhead. Aiden Pearce  I hated Aiden Pearce so much that I immediately began replaying the game to record this hate. He's a violent petty criminal who makes a living picking digital pockets. Jerked loose from this life when, spoilers, his niece dies, he spends a year and a videogame going on a crusade of vengeance which is all about him - destroying the rest of his family in the process. He can't interact with anyone without violence, and takes out his rage on Chicago by beating people up for crimes he guesses they're about to commit and watching domestic scenes through hidden cameras. At every stage, saner people beg Aiden to turn from his destructive quest; they die off one by one and he ends by killing a helpless old man (also monstrous; most people in the story are monstrous). 'The vigilante known as the Fox' then details his plans to become a superhero in the sequel. Aiden's powers are sweet freaking motorcycles, the ability to 'hack' objects by pressing X, and ultraviolence. He escalates his way through, say, 30 hours of gameplay, alternating between techno-stealth and cover shooting. You can level up, which is enjoyable because the numbers get higher. All this is in service of VERY lovely writing and a lot of frankly unnecessary edgy stuff. I particularly refuse to think about the sheer time it would have taken to craft each of the long, individualised voyeurism cutscenes, of which there are ~30 rendered in engine and somewhat more wireframed. People talk about the Profiler as potentially offensive but it didn't even register compared to the main thrust of this game. Please enjoy this. People should see what was wrought. LP Notes - I won't be presenting the plot in an ordered, spoiler-free way - having finished the game once, I want to use knowledge of its later parts to show off just why the earlier ones are so irritating. - Parts of the gameplay *are* fun; it's an open-world game with repeating minigames, so a 100% would take forever, but I'll show off all the mission types. - The audio quality on the first two (already recorded) episodes could be better. I've switched to a new setup now which seems to be an improvement - if you make it to episode 3, please let me know whether that helps. Videos Episode 1: Premises -- Tutorials -- Relative psychopathy -- Stealth. Episode 2: The vigilante -- Family and ego. Episode 3: Unlocking areas -- Asymmetric multiplayer -- Lucky Quinn and a demonstration of hypocrisy. Episode 4: Bad boys -- Action at a distance -- Damien returns to show us how it's done. Episode 5: Memories of an idiot monster -- Jordi persuades us to kill 50 people -- The Rube Goldberg machine for silencing witnesses. Episode 6: Grim reality of the prison-industrial complex -- It is better to kill any number of police officers than let one guilty man die -- Public transport. Episode 7: Dubstep -- Privacy invasion -- Home invasion -- When it is or is not appropriate to ride a motorcycle. Episode 8: Mandatory consumerism -- The subtle approach -- A complete waste of time. Episode 9: Attack of nobody in particular -- Distrust -- Doing a car chase in order to attend a poker game in order to mug an old man in order to hack a bridge in order to break into a base in order to get internet access in order to trace an IP address in order to find the second hacker in order to save Nicole. Episode 10: Jumping puzzles - Ancient fortress of the lost civilisation -- Inconsistently racialised violence. Episode 11: Ignoring sidequests -- The Clara Lille appreciation society -- A long tour through what white people think a ghetto is like -- How to drive a car in videogames. Episode 12: Bedbug, the character with more than one trait -- Improvised explosive devices -- Becoming that which we hate. Episode 13: Jumping -- bouncing -- leaping -- flouncing. Episode 14: Old school gangsters and thoroughly modern grime -- Batman as a pejorative -- Killing Nicholas Crispin. Episode 15: Sex and violence. Episode 16: Eliminate all enemies -- Eliminate all enemies -- Eliminate all enemies -- My destiny is to kill. Episode 17: Bed_Bugs -- Instead of escort quests we have voyeur quests -- The unauthorised streets. Ubisoft games, right? You've got a map with a lot of icons on it. The controls are very consistent, and you can climb on stuff. It's a pretty good formula. Watch_Dogs promised to shake that up by bringing out emergent modern-world gameplay, in a near-future Chicago where everything is computers. Announced in 2012 with an impressive gameplay demo, it was clear that this was going to be their next big franchise - huge ambitions, huge expectations, huge budget. Hacking and driving and shooting a gun at the same time was going to be the next-gen Thing. By October 2013 it became apparent that there were problems. The game was delayed for six months because - according to Ubisoft! - it just wasn't fun. A complex open world relies on a lot of systems all coming together and interacting, and all of the promised innovations - "profiling" of your fellow citizens, environment manipulation, augmented reality - these hinged on that interconnected core. It's rare that a large publisher will slip a heavily-marketed game past the holiday period, so the delay was almost a sign of goodwill - Ubisoft wanted to get this one right, to polish it to a memetic level of glisten. So did it work? Yes, and also, no. There was a brief furore at the game's release about a 'graphical downgrade', since it didn't live up to the E3 demos, but it still looks good. Chicago is rendered as a very pretty city, more colourful than most GTA imitators, and the presentation is as smooth as the controls. Many or most of those systems did come together after all; you have options for how to play and they're generally fun to engage with. Even the obligatory spread of minigames is entertaining. Unfortunately, the game's premise is total dogshit focused on the world's most sullen rear end in a top hat. I finished Watch_Dogs and I could not believe my eyes/brain. I'd just come from playing Dark Souls, which made the transition extra-jarring; shoothacking phoneguns was fun enough, but the story managed to be infuriating at every turn, constantly asking me to sympathise with insane assholes and do nothing but create problems, fail, or create problems by failing. None of the thematic premises delivered, the protagonist wanted to be Batman, and half the game was about voyeurism. The ostensible good guys, the actual 'watchdogs', got a one line mention at the very end when the protagonist decided not to join them due to being too much of a dickhead. Aiden Pearce I hated Aiden Pearce so much that I immediately began replaying the game to record this hate. He's a violent petty criminal who makes a living picking digital pockets. Jerked loose from this life when, spoilers, his niece dies, he spends a year and a videogame going on a crusade of vengeance which is all about him - destroying the rest of his family in the process. He can't interact with anyone without violence, and takes out his rage on Chicago by beating people up for crimes he guesses they're about to commit and watching domestic scenes through hidden cameras. At every stage, saner people beg Aiden to turn from his destructive quest; they die off one by one and he ends by killing a helpless old man (also monstrous; most people in the story are monstrous). 'The vigilante known as the Fox' then details his plans to become a superhero in the sequel. Aiden's powers are sweet freaking motorcycles, the ability to 'hack' objects by pressing X, and ultraviolence. He escalates his way through, say, 30 hours of gameplay, alternating between techno-stealth and cover shooting. You can level up, which is enjoyable because the numbers get higher. All this is in service of VERY lovely writing and a lot of frankly unnecessary edgy stuff. I particularly refuse to think about the sheer time it would have taken to craft each of the long, individualised voyeurism cutscenes, of which there are ~30 rendered in engine and somewhat more wireframed. People talk about the Profiler as potentially offensive but it didn't even register compared to the main thrust of this game. Please enjoy this. People should see what was wrought. LP Notes - I won't be presenting the plot in an ordered, spoiler-free way - having finished the game once, I want to use knowledge of its later parts to show off just why the earlier ones are so irritating. - Parts of the gameplay *are* fun; it's an open-world game with repeating minigames, so a 100% would take forever, but I'll show off all the mission types. - The audio quality on the first two (already recorded) episodes could be better. I've switched to a new setup now which seems to be an improvement - if you make it to episode 3, please let me know whether that helps. Videos Episode 1: Premises -- Tutorials -- Relative psychopathy -- Stealth. Episode 2: The vigilante -- Family and ego. Episode 3: Unlocking areas -- Asymmetric multiplayer -- Lucky Quinn and a demonstration of hypocrisy. Episode 4: Bad boys -- Action at a distance -- Damien returns to show us how it's done. Episode 5: Memories of an idiot monster -- Jordi persuades us to kill 50 people -- The Rube Goldberg machine for silencing witnesses. Episode 6: Grim reality of the prison-industrial complex -- It is better to kill any number of police officers than let one guilty man die -- Public transport. Episode 7: Dubstep -- Privacy invasion -- Home invasion -- When it is or is not appropriate to ride a motorcycle. Episode 8: Mandatory consumerism -- The subtle approach -- A complete waste of time. Episode 9: Attack of nobody in particular -- Distrust -- Doing a car chase in order to attend a poker game in order to mug an old man in order to hack a bridge in order to break into a base in order to get internet access in order to trace an IP address in order to find the second hacker in order to save Nicole. Episode 10: Jumping puzzles - Ancient fortress of the lost civilisation -- Inconsistently racialised violence. Episode 11: Ignoring sidequests -- The Clara Lille appreciation society -- A long tour through what white people think a ghetto is like -- How to drive a car in videogames. Episode 12: Bedbug, the character with more than one trait -- Improvised explosive devices -- Becoming that which we hate. Episode 13: Jumping -- bouncing -- leaping -- flouncing. Episode 14: Old school gangsters and thoroughly modern grime -- Batman as a pejorative -- Killing Nicholas Crispin. Episode 15: Sex and violence. Episode 16: Eliminate all enemies -- Eliminate all enemies -- Eliminate all enemies -- My destiny is to kill. Episode 17: Bed_Bugs -- Instead of escort quests we have voyeur quests -- The unauthorised streets. Episode 18: Stack depth increase -- "Fixers" -- The persistence of memory. Gul Banana fucked around with this message at 19:48 on Feb 6, 2015 |
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Dec 8, 2014 07:09
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Episode 1 (Polsy): Premises -- Tutorials -- Relative psychopathy -- Stealth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRBaFRvD3AQ&hd=1 Starting off on a low point. Actually, the tutorial works fine as a tutorial, but when replaying the start here a lot of Problems were fresh in my mind so I was loudly annoyed (but not loudly enough; see above re: audio). The third-person stealth works quite well. Baseball is a great backdrop to start but unfortunately it never comes up again 
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Dec 8, 2014 07:09
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Episode 2 (Polsy): The vigilante -- Family and ego. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym4BmCS-354&hd=1 Meet the family! they have issues This is the other immediately-recorded video and hopefully it serves to show the start of why this story motivates people to yell about it. They put quite a bit of effort into having a story there, not just action - every bit of it was misdirected. Audio quality should improve after this, apart from Aiden's voice of course.
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Dec 8, 2014 07:20
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It's a little pathetic and a little infuriating that the game expects me to think this protagonist is cool. I know he and the rest of the plot were no doubt designed by committee with more graphs than original ideas, but Jesus, man. How could you think invading people's privacy and beating the poo poo out of them because they might commit crimes is anything but the logical extension of my worst political nightmares? Plus also he's smug. 
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Dec 8, 2014 09:06
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I was really disappointed in WD. I was very much looking forward to it since the first demo in 2012 because I have a huge hardon for cyberpunk games. However the awful writing, the crappy driving, the fact hacking was just context sensitive "Press Q to do something" and nothing more, and mostly that the majority of the game was a crappy 3rd person cover based shooter; all came together to make me really despise it. Hats off to you if you are prepared to play through it a second time Gul Banana because I got about halfway through the first and uninstalled.
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Dec 8, 2014 09:45
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I don't dislike this game as much as some, but even still it's pretty clear that they didn't have many ideas outside the ones shown in the original E3 trailer.
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Dec 8, 2014 09:56
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FisheyStix posted:It's a little pathetic and a little infuriating that the game expects me to think this protagonist is cool. I know he and the rest of the plot were no doubt designed by committee with more graphs than original ideas, but Jesus, man. How could you think invading people's privacy and beating the poo poo out of them because they might commit crimes is anything but the logical extension of my worst political nightmares? The worst part about them trying to sell you on Aiden being cool and edgy is you get an actually interesting and actually funny character to immediately compare him to in the form of Jordi Chin.
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Dec 8, 2014 10:16
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I gave this game a lot of rope because I am a diehard Person of Interest fan. Incidentally, if you think this game's conceit is cool, check out that show. It starts of questionably but then it kicks it into high loving gear. Right. Watch_Dogs. I played and beat this game, got Aiden to the max level and beat all of the remotely interesting missions (I ended up ignoring those junction puzzle which are nothing but collectathons). The game really falls apart in the later half. Like the story is bad, but at least the game's good. The game's final few acts did not even have that going for them. There are some really neat mechanics, the hacking is neat enough, some of the weapons are really fun, the online tailing is extremely fun and a good source of paranoia for the players. It's just a shame that the rest of the game is lackluster. FisheyStix posted:It's a little pathetic and a little infuriating that the game expects me to think this protagonist is cool. I know he and the rest of the plot were no doubt designed by committee with more graphs than original ideas, but Jesus, man. How could you think invading people's privacy and beating the poo poo out of them because they might commit crimes is anything but the logical extension of my worst political nightmares? He's not invading anyone's privacy when he does that. The creators of ctOS are. The game explicitly states that they are Very Bad, are compiling all the footage they get and are experimenting with mind control/suggestion (which is cooler than it sounds and much more subtle and interesting than you'd expect. Naturally it gets next to no development). Aiden is merely hacking into ctOS and using it to save people. Now the privacy invasions? That's just Aiden being a dick.
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Dec 8, 2014 10:33
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Awesome let's play, thank you. You already pointed so many more things that I did not notice through my playthrough. e: The only thing about the LP is that your voice is maybe a bit too quiet for some parts of the game, especially cutscenes. And the music in the cars is also a bit too loud for your voice. Michaellaneous fucked around with this message at 13:16 on Dec 8, 2014 |
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Dec 8, 2014 12:55
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FisheyStix posted:Plus also he's smug. tlarn posted:The worst part about them trying to sell you on Aiden being cool and edgy is you get an actually interesting and actually funny character to immediately compare him to in the form of Jordi Chin. Michaellaneous posted:e: The only thing about the LP is that your voice is maybe a bit too quiet for some parts of the game, especially cutscenes.
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Dec 8, 2014 15:35
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Yeah, like I said in the other thread, a lot of the reason Jordi comes off better is because Jordi doesn't bullshit about being a dark, tortured hero. He's just this playful rear end in a top hat criminal who takes the time to enjoy his work and has a creative streak, which is a bit one-note but at least it's fun and not so hypocritical.
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Dec 8, 2014 15:39
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Episode 3 (Polsy): Unlocking areas -- Asymmetric multiplayer -- Lucky Quinn and a demonstration of hypocrisy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYFVSpyn2i4&hd=1 Dang, I was a bit po-faced in this one. But you've got your game mechanics explanations, your flimsy justifications, some pretty fun hacking stuff. I just hope 'historia000' is a bot.
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Dec 8, 2014 15:40
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Gridlocked posted:I was really disappointed in WD. I was very much looking forward to it since the first demo in 2012 because I have a huge hardon for cyberpunk games. However the awful writing, the crappy driving, the fact hacking was just context sensitive "Press Q to do something" and nothing more, and mostly that the majority of the game was a crappy 3rd person cover based shooter; all came together to make me really despise it. Honestly I'm surprised Ubisoft got this game floating at all. The original concept was ridiculously expansive and had a lot of moving parts, there were a lot of places to get tripped up, IMO they were too focused on trying to make an ~epic~ game than something actually workable. I was betting the game would come out mediocre, I guess I... won...?  It's good to see studios reach for the stars, and it's a shame they barely got off the ground with this one, but I guess it saves me the trouble of dicking with uPlay.
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Dec 8, 2014 16:56
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Gul Banana posted:Episode 3 (Polsy): Unlocking areas -- Asymmetric multiplayer -- Lucky Quinn and a demonstration of hypocrisy. I really never understood why Aiden never pieced together that it was Quinn who was behind everything. I don't think they ever reveal that it is, he just magically makes the connection. I didn't feel bad about killing him though. He was a dick and the mission pissed me off to no end up to that point. And yeah, Aiden is a loving hypocrite because he is a fixer. He totally does fixer things, he worked as a fixer when he was partnered with Damian and he even takes contracts like a loving fixer. I can't agree with you about him doing this on the part of morality because morality feels like a vestigial mechanic in this game. The game never goes into detail about the crimes he stops, just that "he's the Vigilante". So yeah. He is not a fixer just because. Makes him sleep better at night or something. I get that he was supposed to have had a change of heart after his niece's death, but you never feel it. This is in contrast to the DLC main character who actually DOES feel guilt for his actions and is trying to atone. Gul Banana posted:Dang, I was a bit po-faced in this one. But you've got your game mechanics explanations, your flimsy justifications, some pretty fun hacking stuff. I just hope 'historia000' is a bot. Nah, it's just when people are tense they miss obvious poo poo. I remember I missed a particularly obvious player who sat in a car for five minutes while I ransacked a nearby mall. Plus you were high up in a truck, and since Gamers Never Look Up, he didn't see you. Not that you can look up in W_D  I'm still impressed with the hacking matches, they manage to be genuinely tense.
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Dec 8, 2014 22:18
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I am really looking forward to this LP. I've only seen awful reviews and footage of this game, but I've never plumbed the depths myself. I'm looking forward to it! Also, I think it came from Feminist Frequency, but she talked about how the Precog crime stuff was... awful. You know a crime is going to happen, but you don't get rewarded for preventing it. You only get a reward for letting it happen and murdering them criminal after. Aiden is just an awful vigiliante taken to the complete extreme. He doesn't care about crime, he just wants to hurt people.
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Dec 9, 2014 00:27
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Brainbread posted:Also, I think it came from Feminist Frequency, but she talked about how the Precog crime stuff was... awful. You know a crime is going to happen, but you don't get rewarded for preventing it. You only get a reward for letting it happen and murdering them criminal after. Aiden is just an awful vigiliante taken to the complete extreme. He doesn't care about crime, he just wants to hurt people. You can actually prevent the crime in progress you just have a very small windows of opportunity, which I assume is where the challenge is, and you get rewarded for doing it non-lethally and during this small window.
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Dec 9, 2014 00:33
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So what I'm getting out of this discussion is Watch Dogs 2 should be about hunting down and killing Aiden? Because I only played this game far enough to meet the family and I would be totally cool with dropping this guy from orbit.
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Dec 9, 2014 02:02
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Brainbread posted:Also, I think it came from Feminist Frequency, but she talked about how the Precog crime stuff was... awful. You know a crime is going to happen, but you don't get rewarded for preventing it. You only get a reward for letting it happen and murdering them criminal after. Aiden is just an awful vigiliante taken to the complete extreme. He doesn't care about crime, he just wants to hurt people. Then apparently the people playing the game missed the loud beeping your cellphone makes when it's time to prevent the crime. And closed their profiler which flashes red when crime probability hits 90% (why would you close the profiler...ever?). And missed the on-screen instruction "CRIME IN PROGRESS MOVE TO INTERCEPT". Also you are rewarded for dealing with the criminal non-lethally in the form of extra exp and karm-sorry "protector points". Killing them rewards you, but not as much. And again, the game makes a point that ctOS is run by Bad People. Like not misguided, I mean actively villainous. I really don't understand how the gently caress people miss this point. One of the bad points of the story IMO is how loving stupid and straightforwardly evil Blume's boss is (Blume is the company that makes ctOS). She makes really stupid deals with dangerous psychopaths, she hires fixers to get rid of people, her system barely even functions and yet she rakes in the cash, I could go on. She's not a complex character, she's a caricature of a software giant CEO crossed with Snidely Whiplash. But since people somehow miss even this simple point I guess I can't blame Ubisoft for writing her the way they did. You do sorta bring up a point in that the game never fully explores the theme of surveillance, which is a bad thing. It's too focused on the characters own petty struggles to focus on the major problems that exist in the setting. It's an interesting discussion, but the game forgets all about it. Like most other themes in the game, Person of Interest does this much, much better. You are right that Aiden does not care about crime. The crime prevention system never surfaces in the story again.
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Dec 9, 2014 02:21
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Gridlocked posted:You can actually prevent the crime in progress you just have a very small windows of opportunity, which I assume is where the challenge is, and you get rewarded for doing it non-lethally and during this small window. It's understandable how people reach the conclusion that it can't be done, though, the game is kind of unintuitive when it comes to providing a cue. In the context of the scene, you're just sitting there waiting for a little bar to fill up so the profiler can tell you that the criminal is acting. The problem is, the suspect and the victim stand there like zombies waiting for the time to run out, by the time you get a visual/audio cue the crime is actually being done. For the sake of gameplay you kind of have to ignore this context to be able to act quickly enough, and just assume that you're going to run up and hit the suspect as soon as you're allowed to, regardless of whether the profiler is warning you or not. When you consider that Aiden has no problems attacking other criminals preemptively, it just makes it harder to suspend disbelief for the purposes of the story. It's a good example of how the execution of a game's design can confuse the perception of what it's trying to show you.
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Dec 9, 2014 02:27
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Vandemar posted:It's understandable how people reach the conclusion that it can't be done, though, the game is kind of unintuitive when it comes to providing a cue. In the context of the scene, you're just sitting there waiting for a little bar to fill up so the profiler can tell you that the criminal is acting. The problem is, the suspect and the victim stand there like zombies waiting for the time to run out, by the time you get a visual/audio cue the crime is actually being done. For the sake of gameplay you kind of have to ignore this context to be able to act quickly enough, and just assume that you're going to run up and hit the suspect as soon as you're allowed to, regardless of whether the profiler is warning you or not. When you consider that Aiden has no problems attacking other criminals preemptively, it just makes it harder to suspend disbelief for the purposes of the story. SSNeoman posted:Then apparently the people playing the game missed the loud beeping your cellphone makes when it's time to prevent the crime. And closed their profiler which flashes red when crime probability hits 90% (why would you close the profiler...ever?). And missed the on-screen instruction "CRIME IN PROGRESS MOVE TO INTERCEPT". Sorry. I derped a lot! Here is what I was referring to. It was a long time since I saw the video. So, the part I was mis-remembering was this: You can intervene when it gives you the 10 second window, or you can wait and murder the person (both giving rewards), but just meandering up and scaring off the person, like she mentioned, just sort of ends it. The idea being that actually preventing the crime, even if just being present, isn't worth as much as waiting for it to happen and murdering someone. Sort of a, "someone is about to get mugged! I should make sure they don't" isn't rewarded, compared to "I'll wait for him to try and grab the purse and then beat him senseless with a baton, or shoot him". I dunno. It falls a lot into Aiden not actually caring about stopping crime, but just about hurting people (with a veneer of justification).
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Dec 9, 2014 03:13
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Brainbread posted:It falls a lot into Aiden not actually caring about stopping crime, but just about hurting people (with a veneer of justification). No it really falls to lovely design for the Crime In Progress missions in general. Just another example of why Watch_Dogs didn't live up to my hyped up expectations.
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Dec 9, 2014 04:46
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Brainbread posted:Sorry. I derped a lot! Here is what I was referring to. It was a long time since I saw the video. Nah, no problem. I was harsh in my post too. Though that video is right, it's weird how she would bring up the crime stop missions about female objectification. Watch_Dogs treats women badly in general, with the exception of Blume's boss, so this kind of seems like a side detail to me. I don't disagree with the points she brings up, that women are shown to be victims who are unable to defend themselves, but I'd argue that a lot of what she says about that section stems from bad game design. If you could use your profiler to pick out the attacker in a crowd and then confront them there, without having the woman be threatened with certain death in the process, we'd avoid this whole issue altogether.
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Dec 9, 2014 05:32
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http://playthroughline.com/scripts/watch_dogs/ I feel like this is a very nice...write-together of the story line, in a humorous fashion.
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Dec 9, 2014 05:36
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SSNeoman posted:Nah, no problem. I was harsh in my post too. No worries. It was part of a larger series on how women are used as background decorations in games in general, not just an issue in Watch_Dogs.
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Dec 9, 2014 05:39
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that script posted:ELEVEN MONTHS LATER, AIDEN has finally managed to LOG BACK INTO UPLAY startlingly realistic. Having done a number of the precrime missions, it is definitely harder to actually prevent the crime - you only have a small window after you hit Probability 100%, and you have to have found the right place to lurk to make that timing. This would be fine, if there was any kind of extra reward - but you're judged purely on whether and how you deal with the criminal, not the victim...
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Dec 9, 2014 05:42
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Thank you for freeing me from this curse.
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Dec 9, 2014 05:45
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Freeing..? *hacks you, pinpointing post history in a series of wireframed zooms* Oh geez, I had no idea someone else was doing this game. Well, I'm going to continue, since as I mentioned in the Sandcastle I started recording it for a couple of friends who don't post - sorry about the overlap.
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Dec 9, 2014 06:01
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Gul Banana posted:Freeing..? *hacks you, pinpointing post history in a series of wireframed zooms* It's alright. There's no rule against two people doing the same game. Neither me nor Heave really care all that much.
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Dec 9, 2014 06:09
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Episode 4 (Polsy, Veoh): Bad boys -- Action at a distance -- Damien returns to show us how it's done. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXQUuQK5Vi0&hd=1 Here is that continuation, feat. explosive barrels. The polish delay they went through left cracks... convoluted as the plot is (you'll see later we go on an unending series of fetch quests) it was clearly worse, once; this scene with Badboy is where we were 'meant' to gain hacking powers. It's also ridiculous with comic-book machismo, holy poo poo; no wonder they need to follow it up by introducing Damien, the only bigger rear end in a top hat in the city. Gul Banana fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Dec 9, 2014 |
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Dec 9, 2014 06:09
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Yeah, no the more people sharing the suffering that is Watch_Underscore_Dogs the better. So Kalon isn't free from the witch's curse yet. He hasn't even seen the really lovely and uncomfortable parts of Watch________Dogs yet.
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Dec 9, 2014 06:16
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I have to say - I haven't seen a game this new yet, and it really looks remarkable. Clearly they're making things look better and better every time. Kind of impressed. Though, yes, it does seem more than just a little bit inconsistent that you just finished murdering a group of private security brutally and in cold blood, but then won't kill the nastiest loving mob boss in Chicago because, apparently, it is bad karma. (Struggles with anxiety? Blow the fucker away. Murdering people since before you were born? Nah, won't touch that one.) The PvP hacking was definitely some of the funniest LPing I've seen in quite some time. It was great to see that guy get so close and then choke at the last second. Edit: Wow, this dialogue is terrible. Edit 2: Clara is clearly meant to be French-Canadian - most likely Québecois. David Corbett fucked around with this message at 06:35 on Dec 9, 2014 |
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Dec 9, 2014 06:18
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Slow down there buddy. You are going pretty fast with this LP, make sure to not burn yourself out.
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Dec 9, 2014 07:05
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"I need to buy a gun to go on a rampage" is literally the reason why there are background checks and waiting periods for weapons.
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Dec 9, 2014 07:26
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Michaellaneous posted:Slow down there buddy. You are going pretty fast with this LP, make sure to not burn yourself out. Thank you, but I'll be fine - I've LPed things before, so I saw how the cycle of excitement->effort->ending can be, and I've got a nice low-effort process now which basically just lets me play a bit every day and record as I go. (The downside of that is, if I have something like an audio issue, I can't easily fix it in the existing video - but I think the free time benefits are worth it). I'm more worried about playing & therefore posting stuff too fast to be watchable!
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Dec 9, 2014 09:09
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Brainbread posted:"I need to buy a gun to go on a rampage" is literally the reason why there are background checks and waiting periods for weapons. Honestly that is one of the things I cannot be too angry about in the game. This is more for gameplay reasons than the concept of the gameworld. There are things far worse than this in the game. Gul Banana posted:Thank you, but I'll be fine - I've LPed things before, so I saw how the cycle of excitement->effort->ending can be, and I've got a nice low-effort process now which basically just lets me play a bit every day and record as I go. (The downside of that is, if I have something like an audio issue, I can't easily fix it in the existing video - but I think the free time benefits are worth it). I'm more worried about playing & therefore posting stuff too fast to be watchable! Okay, seems fine. So far the pace is quite nice, if you can keep up with it. I'll make sure to watch the DaS LP as well since I enjoy your voice.
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Dec 9, 2014 09:36
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Y'know, I'm going to say that, in the abstract, there's some interesting mileage to be gotten from the idea that how the people in-game react to your actions isn't inexorably tied to some omniscient karma meter. In other words, I sort of like the idea that you, the protagonist, may know that you're stopping a violent crime in progress thanks to your magic surveillance powers but to the average bystander it looks like you came out of nowhere and straight-up crippled someone, and that this might be a thing you have to deal with either by simply not giving a gently caress and letting the media and police brand you a dangerous vigilante at best or by trying to find ways to prevent crimes in ways that either don't expose you to media scrutiny or resolve them in ways that don't make you look like a dangerous or unstable lunatic. A really good game could even take a stab at forcing the player to consider whether it might be better, safer, easier, whatever to let a crime play out, knowing they while they could intervene it might have serious repercussions if they do. Like, Person of Interest always gets namedropped whenever Watch_Dogs comes up and that's a central premise which underlines that show, that the protagonists have a source of prescient and infallible accuracy which gives them the means to intervene in violent crimes that are about to happen but they have no official backing or sanction whatsoever. You, the viewer, know that what they're doing is a good and helpful thing, but to the average person on the streets of televisual NYC, John Reese is a stone cold motherfucker in a suit who shows up out of nowhere and kneecaps a bunch of guys. I'm not saying that Watch_Dogs handles this concept at all well, mind you. I'm just saying that it could be done and it could be more interesting than every NPC in the world automatically having an inherent knowledge of all your good deeds the moment after you do them.
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Dec 9, 2014 10:41
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Just a heads-up, video 4 is not available.
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Dec 9, 2014 12:56
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Great effort so far, Can't wait for the next update. And yeah, I'm gonna add my voice to the crowd about how terrible Watch_Dogs is. The best example is the ending, where Aiden gives a speech about redemption and setting himself up to be a hero, completely forgetting that Yesterday your sister (who you literally just forced to uproot her and her son's entire life to move to another town because of your own stupidity) begged you to stop your crusade because it will get her killed, or make you the reason both of her kids are dead, not just one. The thing that annoys me the most is that it had so much potential. I honestly think that if Ubisoft hadn't shoved it's dumbass "Ubisoft Game" stuff into the game, it would have been exponentially better (Probably still overall a bad game, but not as bad as it is). I mean, thinking of the times when I had the most fun playing the game, it was when the play area was in an enclosed space, see Defending T-Bone and the jail scene. Level designers could actually give you fun and interesting combinations to use your various hacks. Also, while easily 90 percent of the story is just terrible, some of the audio logs were pretty interesting. Maurice's actually made the character somewhat interesting and not as one dimensional as the actual story makes him out to be.
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Dec 9, 2014 15:20
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botany posted:Just a heads-up, video 4 is not available. do either of these links work for you? http://youtu.be/HXQUuQK5Vi0 http://polsy.org.uk/play/yt/?vurl=http%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2FHXQUuQK5Vi0
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Dec 9, 2014 15:27
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Gul Banana posted:do either of these links work for you? Nope, neither.
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Dec 9, 2014 17:06
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