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Episode 8 (Polsy): Mandatory consumerism -- The subtle approach -- A complete waste of time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td0QpNlHN6s&hd=1 Taking any excuse to ride around on a motorcycle instead of advancing the plot, but all things must end.
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Dec 14, 2014 09:16
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| # ? May 4, 2024 02:22 |
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It's rather curious that the past couple years have produced more than a few games (the Thief remake, Watch_Dogs, Titanfall, Bioshock Infinite...) that I'd be very interested in hearing the backround of development on, since the final product seems so obviously muddy and meddled with. It could be just me, but the concept art behind Watch_Dogs seems absolutely like it was going in a different direction than what we ended up with. A lot of the pieces on Aiden give him this angry scowl that looks more at home on any pre-IV GTA character than Aiden "I Love My Family" Pierce, which tends to inform me that he was supposed to be a much more clear-cut anti-hero (especially since the creative director FRIGGIN' COMPARES HIM TO WALTER WHITE) but sadly, It'll be years before we get the details of the game's original vision, if ever  .
Lady Naga fucked around with this message at 09:26 on Dec 14, 2014 |
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Dec 14, 2014 09:21
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I swear I remember some early version of the game had Aiden as one of the very guys who developed ctOS which would handily explain his ability to use all its exploits from a friggin' smartphone. Who was also specifically out to dismantle the company using his creation to enforce a police state. ...sounds a lot nicer than a dude just trying to get revenge for crap that's his own fault, huh? EDIT: actually, wait a minute, renegade from the company out to dismantle it? They just transplanted the hero's story onto T-Bone! No WONDER T-Bone's better put-together than Aiden! Speedball fucked around with this message at 09:27 on Dec 14, 2014 |
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Dec 14, 2014 09:24
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That makes a lot of sense, although even Ray doesn't actually end up going after Blume. They're just.. left for a sequel, presumably, along with the whole dedsec thing.
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Dec 14, 2014 09:48
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Famous communist slob Slavoj Zizek has a bit about a Starbucks promotion informing consumers that a particular drink's cost is inflated because, of its profits, 25 cents go to feeding starving African orphans, 25 cents go to funding the more expensive but more easily recycled paper the cup is made of, etc. That way, the coffee is an all-in-one pleasure and redemption package; you are made aware of and simultaneously forgiven for the various complex externalities involved in being a modern consumer. You don't actually have to worry about lending monetary support to an exploitative system - it's all taken care of for you, automatically! I think Watch_Dogs works the same way. It so relentlessly follows the wreak terrible act of revenge -> get yelled at about it by another character -> wreak terrible act of revenge cycle because, in a perverse way, that actually heightens the thrill of playing pretend you're an unstoppable psychopath. The game does all the moralizing for you, so you can insanely brutally, murder 9,001 people while secure in the knowledge that you know this is wrong and are definitely being very mature and self-critical about it, np.
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Dec 14, 2014 10:22
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Speaking of dates, I'd like to again recommend banana's blind Dark Souls LP even though practically every actual person in existence with access to video capture software has a Dark Souls LP, because not only is it fantastic and complete, but as you can see on the site it's something like 104 updates in 30 days.
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Dec 14, 2014 10:27
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But if they made T-Bone the protagonist, they'd have an interesting protagonist, and I think Ubisoft is allergic to things like that. And yeah, I actually agree with Bunnyhop (And by the way, if anyone reading the thread is interested in long form videos on gaming, definitely check him out, he doesn't really do reviews so much as looks back on games occasionally, and essays on gaming. His videos on the Ghost Recon series and Dragoncon are really good). I actually wrote an essay it annoyed me so much. It's pretty obvious Ubisoft forced it's "Ubisoft Game" trademarks onto it in some cases. And I'd hardly call much of Watch Dogs as having ludonarrative elements. There's actually a lot of ludonarrative dissonance (When the gameplay doesn't match up with the story), which is what I think you were going for in the latest update.
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Dec 14, 2014 11:06
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Elmepo posted:And I'd hardly call much of Watch Dogs as having ludonarrative elements. There's actually a lot of ludonarrative dissonance (When the gameplay doesn't match up with the story), which is what I think you were going for in the latest update. Just so - in the moment, the mission is portrayed as critical, worth fighting for, and it's exactly the standard gameplay template as most levels in the game. Then the moment it's over, you're reminded that it was a bad idea and amounted to nothing, and you go on with your previously agreed course of action. All I can do is jump over a sign about it. (also: thanks, Crion! there are certainly a glut of Dark Souls runs, which is why I didn't put mine on SA- the game really lends itself to exploration and televisable payoff).
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Dec 14, 2014 11:33
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I highly recommend Gul Banana's Dark Souls videos because it's a sensible Australian man attempting to make sense of the setting and story. My god, there's even a part where he makes a flowchart.
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Dec 14, 2014 12:31
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Gul Banana posted:Just so - in the moment, the mission is portrayed as critical, worth fighting for, and it's exactly the standard gameplay template as most levels in the game. Then the moment it's over, you're reminded that it was a bad idea and amounted to nothing, and you go on with your previously agreed course of action. Yeah, the worst part about it is that it's almost entirely unnecessary. Take Racine. You don't have to have Damien know that you're going to go after him, just make Racine a dead end (After all, there's no obvious leads that it was Racine himself) or you accidentally kill him, and can't get any information from him, or any of the other options available to the developers. Instead it's just, as you said, ruined by Damien calling up and revealing he knew all along.
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Dec 14, 2014 13:33
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illrepute posted:I highly recommend Gul Banana's Dark Souls videos because it's a sensible Australian man attempting to make sense of the setting and story. My god, there's even a part where he makes a flowchart. I can't find it anywhere,can someone link it please?
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Dec 14, 2014 23:10
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VolticSurge posted:I can't find it anywhere,can someone link it please? They're on his Youtube profile.
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Dec 14, 2014 23:16
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OK,thanks!
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Dec 15, 2014 02:14
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That LP was actually for a small group of friends, so it had its own site- http://dslp.forthehor.de/ Meanwhile, time to ramp up the fetch quests. Episode 9 (Polsy): 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. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eo-JkM8rkyw&hd=1
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Dec 15, 2014 06:37
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Drowning bikes? You monster! I find myself wondering about the psychology of someone who wires a heap of plastic explosive to the (bathroom door?) of their hotel room and puts the detonator on their keychain. It seems like a risky way to live. Then again, Aiden doesn't really have a psychology, does he? He's more of a chimera, a heap of fragments of personality welded together in order to hit whatever note Ubi wanted in any given moment, with no thought whatsoever to any internal consistency.
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Dec 15, 2014 14:41
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IIRC the men who attack Aiden's hotel are supposed to be fixers hired by Blume. And the video is very much in the Viceroy HQ. Iraq has it on his server along with the rest of his blackmail material. Aiden takes all of it and then does something incredibly stupid with it. And Clara is Quebecois. Which is Canadian French, you can tell because she uses swears like "tabarnac" (which is really minor. Come on Ubi, add a "calice" in there somewhere or something). What's a Quebecois girl doing as a hacker in Chicago in the first place? Search me.
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Dec 15, 2014 20:04
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Gul Banana posted:That LP was actually for a small group of friends, so it had its own site- http://dslp.forthehor.de/ That intro made my laugh out loud irl.
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Dec 16, 2014 01:37
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SSNeoman posted:And Clara is Quebecois. Which is Canadian French, you can tell because she uses swears like "tabarnac" (which is really minor. Come on Ubi, add a "calice" in there somewhere or something). What's a Quebecois girl doing as a hacker in Chicago in the first place? Search me. IIRC, if you profile her in the early mission when you're looking for a way into the Bunker, it says she's in the country on a long-since-expired student visa.
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Dec 16, 2014 02:06
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SSNeoman posted:And Clara is Quebecois. Which is Canadian French, you can tell because she uses swears like "tabarnac" (which is really minor. Come on Ubi, add a "calice" in there somewhere or something). What's a Quebecois girl doing as a hacker in Chicago in the first place? Search me. Hey, good catch! Someone should have pointed that out earlier... David Corbett, on the first page posted:Edit 2: Clara is clearly meant to be French-Canadian - most likely Québecois. By the way, she totally drops out a few câlisses earlier. Québecois profanity is fascinating - you can really see why the terms blasphemies or profanities are used.
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Dec 16, 2014 03:16
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You know if this game was a deconstruction of revenge like Spec Ops was it'd be great, but instead it's stumbling around trying to make one point while actually making another. It's weird. Games by gigantic committee are weird. See also: Resident Evil 6.
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Dec 16, 2014 05:36
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Yall are probably right about Clara, but oddly, her actual backstory is that she's from France proper..
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Dec 16, 2014 06:21
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Needing to get the remote for that bridge makes no sense. He can hack everything he looks at and the island can't possibly be more than a quarter of a kilometer away. Swim or get a rowboat or something! Hell you could make it on an inner tube.
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Dec 16, 2014 06:48
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Maybe he didn't want to risk ruining his phone?
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Dec 16, 2014 07:40
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Episode 10 (Polsy): Jumping puzzles - Ancient fortress of the lost civilisation -- Inconsistently racialised violence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUrHYPXZ_90&hd=1 I'll go swimming next episode to find out whether it's the phone thing. Bunker island has a bunch of totally intact, fuelled vehicles on it, you'll notice, so maybe it's only Aiden that has a problem getting there?
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Dec 16, 2014 16:07
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Even more insulting is getting a Batman Cave in no way enhances your gameplay. There's no purchaseable upgrades for the base to give it more screens, a couch and a stripper pole in the corner, it doesn't enable any special abilities, generate special vehicles or gather rare resources for you. It doesn't help you spy on NPCs around the city any better than you already do. I'm not even sure it actually turns out to be very neccessary to the plot.
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Dec 16, 2014 18:01
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There is literally a speedboat at a dock in the cutscene at 2:37 when you trigger the bridge. I actually wonder what happens if you sail to the bunker before you get the bridge remote. Also, I've lived near Pittsburgh, which is filled with out of commission steel plants. they've become rusted out, abandoned hunks of riverside land in the decades since the steel boom. I can imagine Blume buying a long-abandoned facility for their secret bunker and letting the outside still look like hell to maintain a cover. Doesn't explain the pristine, working vehicles, though.
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Dec 16, 2014 18:28
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Okay, have I been having a quiet stroke for the last couple of days, resulting in constant deja vu only for this LP, or could I have actually wached the recent episodes earlier?
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Dec 16, 2014 19:18
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Ughh, "hacking" those generators. "I need to hack the Hurrr banner."  Great gods alive, Aiden really is a full-on retard.
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Dec 16, 2014 19:22
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A guy with magic powers who can just wish at machines to make them do his bidding would be less dumb. Actually that would be pretty amazing. A guy with magic powers messing up an information society.
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Dec 16, 2014 20:02
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Speedball posted:Actually that would be pretty amazing. A guy with magic powers messing up an information society. Yeah. It would actually explain all the in-game nonsense like seeing through walls, having navpoints, and so on, too. Dude's just that psychic.
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Dec 16, 2014 20:10
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supermikhail posted:Okay, have I been having a quiet stroke for the last couple of days, resulting in constant deja vu only for this LP, or could I have actually wached the recent episodes earlier? Sure you weren't just watching the OTHER Watch_Dogs LP that this one just caught up to?
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Dec 16, 2014 20:50
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The thing is, I seem to remember the OP's commentary, not the events in the game, or rather, I also remember the particular timing of the events in the game, like the turning of the bridge at the start of the last episode. 
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Dec 17, 2014 04:01
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Speedball posted:Even more insulting is getting a Batman Cave in no way enhances your gameplay. There's no purchaseable upgrades for the base to give it more screens, a couch and a stripper pole in the corner, it doesn't enable any special abilities, generate special vehicles or gather rare resources for you. It doesn't help you spy on NPCs around the city any better than you already do. I'm not even sure it actually turns out to be very neccessary to the plot. It literally gets abandoned just after the main story. Might as well have been a mcguffin rather than a wizard tower.
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Dec 17, 2014 10:29
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supermikhail: maybe i'm just very unoriginal?
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Dec 17, 2014 10:29
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Ederick posted:There is literally a speedboat at a dock in the cutscene at 2:37 when you trigger the bridge. I actually wonder what happens if you sail to the bunker before you get the bridge remote. Also, I've lived near Pittsburgh, which is filled with out of commission steel plants. they've become rusted out, abandoned hunks of riverside land in the decades since the steel boom. I can imagine Blume buying a long-abandoned facility for their secret bunker and letting the outside still look like hell to maintain a cover. Doesn't explain the pristine, working vehicles, though. Oh poo poo, this could explain everything. I spent much of the game convinced that you couldn't hijack/ride boats.. I tried a couple of times and it just didn't work out. Then (in my first playthrough), I got to a later mission where they give you a boat, and was like, whoa. But what if the game just inexplicably prevents you from using boats *until you've got the bunker*? I'll test out a boat next video.
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Dec 17, 2014 10:33
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Weren't you using boats a few videos ago?
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Dec 17, 2014 11:02
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Was I? If so, time to back up saves and make a new profile. I NEED to discover just how useless this bridge quest was.
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Dec 17, 2014 12:04
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I mean, plotwise I bet nothing would happen if you just sailed over, but yeah, you totally used boats to escape dudes at least once.
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Dec 17, 2014 12:27
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So this LP has led to me starting your Dark Souls 2 LP, GB. Forgive me, but I'm about 6 eps in, and have to ask... what the HELL is it with those pigs?? Man, are they ever weird and pissed off. (If anyone is curious, it can be found here. Good stuff.)
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Dec 17, 2014 14:27
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| # ? May 4, 2024 02:22 |
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I gotta say, this is definitely one of the best LPs I've ever seen. I really like how you provide sort of a 'second playthrough' perspective on the plot.
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Dec 17, 2014 16:24
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