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Tenebrais posted:The eastern zone looks to me like some sort of pumping station in the old world. Lots of pipes and pumps and vents for this purple flame. The stoat guys seem to have built themselves a temple on top of it before the frogs invaded. I presume the plants are plants that adapted to the volatile chemicals the station continues to be pumping. I think this is my favorite explanation so far, incorporating as it does both the Mysterious Precursors (assuming the stoats didn't have the titans), the stoats, and the amphibian bandits.
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Jul 24, 2016 02:54
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Since all the art and architecture in the eastern area is clearly of the Otterdogs (stoats), and because of Things we'll see later, my interpretation was that the four areas were each home to an individual nation, and eventually all four were unified with the big fancy city in the middle being the new capital. I agree on the east supplying fuel and power to the rest of the empire, but then when technomagical chernobyl happened, things splintered apart again. Without the rest of the empire to protect them, the Otterdogs were overwhelmed by Hun Frogs, who were either an underclass that rose up, or invaders out of the east. At least, that's what i got out of 3 panels of story,a boss's design, and some architecture 
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Jul 24, 2016 20:22
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So, because there isn't dialogue in this game, the story has to be told by the settings (and, to a limited extent, characters). In service of discovering what happened, what went wrong, and what we're after, I'm thinking of doing some more in-depth looks of the various areas after we're finished with them. Here's the first one:  I'd love to hear if there's a particular detail that stood out to you, or if you have a different theory. My take on the Eastern area deviates from the story idea you can find on the wiki. Basically, They think that the stoats (otters, to them) were running the land peacefully, and the invading lizards and toads disrupted the natural order in search of the flame. I'm not so sure. Because the invaders don't seem to have any real significant level of tech, I think it's safe to assume that anything we see is the result of the stoat's engineering. That includes bodies burned in the great glass lanterns, and a seemingly placid temple storing basically a huge munitions factory. I think the stoats were the isolated and fearful people mentioned in the obelisks, and gave into their temptation to try to arm themselves by creating plasma with the flame, which they distilled from some quirk of the local water and plant life. Their civilization may have been smashed in the great conflict involving the titans, or they may have been overrun by the amphibian bandits, but the bandits are just there for plunder. No need to spoiler any competing theories you might have, I just didn't want to reveal details about the video in the same post as the link to the video itself! Chris Zabriske - Divider Dexter Britain - Seeing the Future Chris Zabriske - Readers, Do You Read? Silence is Sexy - Holiday Instrumental Edit: This is ALSO the first peek you'll get at me using grenades and the shotgun. Spoiler: I take back every bad thing I ever said about the shotgun. Bacter fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Jul 27, 2016 |
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Jul 27, 2016 17:26
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So the PS4 version dropped and I snapped it up mostly because of the first few videos in this LP. Anything I should know going in?
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Jul 27, 2016 17:56
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Well, it's pretty certain that the Otterstoats were living in the complex (whatever it's producing), but I'm not so sure they were actively making stuff with said complex; I suspect that the entire sequence of events with the amphibians breaking in to the complex and wrecking up the place is probably quite recent--within a range of a few hours to a couple days prior to you showing up. If that's the case then either the algae and plants grow with incredible rapidity, or that the place was already heavily overgrown, which would imply disuse, or at least a lack of proper maintenance. It seems plausible that the facility might be largely, if not entirely, autonomous, which means the people dwelling in the temple area above might be in a position to benefit from it's production without having any clue what it's doing. That being said, we've every reason to believe that the Otterstoats created the facility, and that the amphibious bandits are there simply for loot. In regards to the boss, well, presumably he's the bandit leader, but who knows?
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Jul 27, 2016 19:11
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Fedule posted:So the PS4 version dropped and I snapped it up mostly because of the first few videos in this LP. Don't rush through the game. Take your time to plan your moves carefully and to be accustomed to the enemies and try to admire your surroundings. Also south is the best. Go there first.
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Jul 27, 2016 19:14
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Fedule posted:So the PS4 version dropped and I snapped it up mostly because of the first few videos in this LP. Keep eyes peeled for upgrades, especially at first. The last few upgrades won't matter as much as the first few will - get chain dash, and PROBABLY a grenade first two.
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Jul 27, 2016 21:55
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MShadowy posted:That being said, we've every reason to believe that the Otterstoats created the facility, and that the amphibious bandits are there simply for loot. In regards to the boss, well, presumably he's the bandit leader, but who knows? The boss is a curious case. It's infested with plant life and growing those explosive plants inside it. Perhaps it was trying to empower itself with the plasma and, well, succeeded. It doesn't look healthy but it also doesn't look like it's unduly suffering for its condition. The first thing we see it do is eat a stoat, which is probably something the other frog bandits are engaged in too? If they're skinning them, it's likely they're cannibals. I'm not sure it's necessarily in charge of the bandits, but it's clearly the biggest and scariest so I'm not sure there's much distinction there.
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Jul 27, 2016 22:01
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Bacter posted:Keep eyes peeled for upgrades, especially at first. The last few upgrades won't matter as much as the first few will - get chain dash, and PROBABLY a grenade first two. I dunno, chain dash is less useful to survivability than the bullet deflection sword skill. Ranged folks can really irk you until you learn the dash timing and distance. Ymmv of course
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Jul 27, 2016 22:43
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I've got chain dash, a grenade and more ammo for the shotgun holy gently caress I love the shotgun. Thoughts: On reflection, the chain dash is bad. Like, the actual mechanics of the thing are bad. It is a fight to get it to work and messing it up infuriates you and teaches you nothing. It is the opposite of video games. It doesn't seem to have combat applications (yet), so right now it's only good for the most infuriating platform runs I've yet seen, or dashing around in a circle for several real life minutes for some reason. Navigation is a pain. The map looks like it should be straightforward but is often misleading, not least because there is an icon that looks like it's showing your location but actually just shows where you'll respawn if you die (which might be where you entered the room, or it might not be). It doesn't seem to do anything useful like mark doors you haven't opened or stuff you haven't picked up, and it looks like it's filling up with modules I have picked up, which is, like, the opposite of what it should be doing. Please tell me that at some point I will be able to see stuff on the map. Does the dash have I-frames? I can't quite tell. It seems like it shouldn't but sometimes I seem to dash into bullets and not take damage? I don't have any dash upgrades besides chain. The actual moment-to-moment playable part of the game is pretty great and that and the atmosphere is why I'm here, so this is going to be one of those games where I complain a lot but only out of ~love~.
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Jul 27, 2016 23:05
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MShadowy posted:
I agree that the stoats created the facility, but I don't think its the current ones that did so. The refugees we see don't seem particularly advanced, and most of their fresh corpses that we see seem to be above ground. So I think the timeline goes: stoat ancestors refine fungus/algae into fuel->refinery/factory is buitl->giant robot war/calamity/apocalypse---->survivors repopulate surface area but don't bother with the factory for a variety of possible reasons ->amphibians invade for resources, pelts, etc. --events of Hyper Light Drifter.
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Jul 27, 2016 23:23
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Fedule posted:Does the dash have I-frames? I can't quite tell. It seems like it shouldn't but sometimes I seem to dash into bullets and not take damage? I don't have any dash upgrades besides chain. Yeah, that's an upgrade.
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Jul 27, 2016 23:25
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Fedule posted:
Last I knew Kotaku or something posted:Heart Machine, the developer behind Hyper Light Drifter, took the comments personally, and issued an update on April 15 called “The Invincibility Patch” with a brief note about the “significant amount of changes to make you feel like a more badass drifter than ever before.” As far as the chain dash goes, I admit it might have mostly been good for my preferred style my first playthrough - which was to basically go berzerker and almost never use ranged weapons. Which is dumb. I think I said earlier, I never EVER used the shotgun in my first playthrough, and my GOODNESS is it good. So i just used it to get distance from big AOE attacks, or, for instance, to get a comfortable distance from the big plants when they charged. Bacter fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Jul 27, 2016 |
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Jul 27, 2016 23:29
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The thing I still find weird about that is, I could swear in demos I played before release, the dash had i-frames. Not through the whole dash, but there was a portion where you wouldn't get hit if an attack crossed your dash, just at the start of it. I'm not sure if my memory was bad or if they took it out later, only to re-add it; if it's the latter I'm at a loss as to why, even that tiny bit of leeway makes combat much smoother.
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Jul 28, 2016 02:43
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Oh, an LP of this game, lovely. I still haven't finished it, so this will motivate me to get it done.Tenebrais posted:The boss is a curious case. It's infested with plant life and growing those explosive plants inside it. Perhaps it was trying to empower itself with the plasma and, well, succeeded. It doesn't look healthy but it also doesn't look like it's unduly suffering for its condition. The first thing we see it do is eat a stoat, which is probably something the other frog bandits are engaged in too? If they're skinning them, it's likely they're cannibals. The boss also appears to have an injured eye, and the plant growth makes me think it's been there awhile. Wonder if it attacked the facility initially, was injured and went into hibernation.
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Jul 28, 2016 06:22
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Fedule posted:It doesn't seem to have combat applications The combat application of the chain dash, such as it is, isn't so much in the actual chaining as it is in the removal of the cooldown between dashes. You're never going to need to chain three or more dashes in a fight- the arenas just aren't that big. Sometimes, though, you'll find yourself in a position where just the one dash isn't quite enough to get you clear. Goggle Fox posted:The thing I still find weird about that is, I could swear in demos I played before release, the dash had i-frames. Not through the whole dash, but there was a portion where you wouldn't get hit if an attack crossed your dash, just at the start of it. I'm not sure if my memory was bad or if they took it out later, only to re-add it; if it's the latter I'm at a loss as to why, even that tiny bit of leeway makes combat much smoother. They re-added it because people complained, I'm almost certain. To be honest, though, I think it was a mistake. The game's combat mechanics all work together to punish you for acting hastily or without thought, and the lack of iframes played into that. Without iframes, you need the understand the situation well enough to say with certainty when you need to get out of dodge, what areas are safe to dash to and whether or not you have a clear path to get there. With iframes, you can be more cavalier with all of that. It's not a huge change, it's not like the dash is end-to-end iframes now, I just don't think it was a necessary edition. Call me a purist, I guess. Or a masochist I think I'm going to withhold comment on the plot/lore until we've been through all of the areas. Especially south.
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Jul 28, 2016 14:27
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The credits rolled and I still have thoughts. Obviously many of them are going to wait until later in this thread, but for the time being; Oh my god the shotgun. I thought I appreciated it before I had every other weapon in the game. I really tried them all. I gave them all a fair shake. But no. It always came back to the shotgun. Only the last, greatest, most secretest gun in the game comes close to making a more compelling case for combat applications, and even then. A properly done shotgun should always be the best weapon in a videogame with mostly conventional guns (and even in some with unconventional guns) and Hyper Light Drifter certainly delivers on this requirement. I have now fully solidified my belief that the map is garbage. It is liquid rear end. Related; Even by the usual standards of games that make you do this kind of thing, gently caress hunting down the one last whatever. Especially keys. The monoliths weren't so bad because at least they are all uniquely tracked in-game so when you finally break down and look at a map to find the one of sixteen of the things you couldn't find because it's in a marked-in-a-heretofore-unknown way secret passage in a pitch-black room you can easily tell which one it is. Gearbits are annoying but unless you're really serious about trophies you only need to find 160 of the 186 of them in the game (it strikes me as odd that you end up with two bits left over) (I Platinum'd Final Fantasy XIII but I will not Platinum Hyper Light Drifter, and Gearbits isn't even why). But double-secret gently caress looking for keys. It has been a solidly held belief of mine that all games that will eventually hold you to finding all of some hidden thing should eventually start offering concessions so that players aren't faced with rechecking the entire map for something they may have missed. HLD doesn't even offer a collectible counter per area. Having a trophy for finishing the game without dying is baffling. Dying already constitutes checkpoint reloading in HLD, so this proves absolutely nothing about players except their ability to back out to the main menu in order to savescum. I don't understand how devs keep on doing dumb trophy stuff like this after the things have been around for ten years. The enemy type balancing in this game is goddamn near perfect. Every area has a nifty little ecosystem of small, medium and large enemies, any of which are trivial to fight one-on-one and all of which combo with all others in interesting ways in clusterfuck melees. Only the poo poo-tier swarm enemies feel weak and that's only when you disregard the swarm; anyone else will gently caress you up in seconds if you take your eye off the ball. The best part is none of the enemies from any area are completely incompatible, balance wise, with any other enemy, as one certain part of the game demonstrates. The only enemy I don't really like is the giant bug things from East. Their charge attacks seem really inconsistent in range, and it's bullshit that when they teleport in they can come out charging before their sprite even appears. I don't understand why there aren't I-frames when you take damage. There are situations in which taking a single hit basically means death. A few areas put you in a literal Sonic 1 Spikes situation. What a horrifyingly bad design choice. Having to dash 800 times in a row is one of the single dumbest challenges I've ever seen in a videogame. The chain dash has no real utility beyond the second or so dash. The dash chamber is the only place in the entire game where you even can do more than twenty without resting; what is the point of proving you can do this? That entire room should have been removed from the game and the costume put somewhere else. I don't see what everyone found so hard about the Soccer Goblin 
Fedule fucked around with this message at 02:08 on Aug 5, 2016 |
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Aug 5, 2016 02:06
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Bacter posted:Last I knew Those changes were backed out the following Monday. http://steamcommunity.com/games/257850/announcements/detail/594848777641334709 quote:2) The most recent patch from Friday has been polarizing; many have expressed concern that particular tweaks make the experience less challenging, almost too easy. After a fair amount of consideration and consultation, we agree, and thus have readjusted: The update also had this gem quote:There has been suggestion of adding an "easy mode" for players. There is an ongoing and lengthy internal discussion about this. I won't rule it out as a possibility: being inclusive to more players who want to experience the world we have created seems to be a positive thing, while still maintaining the intended challenge for those who want the achievements. If it did happen, just like all of our other decisions, it's something we would implement with ample, careful consideration, particularity on its necessity and place in our game. As far as I know they never bothered putting in a difficulty mode which would solve this problem, but it was these two updates that made me realize that the designer really didn't put that much thought into this. Games have had difficulties for 30 years, they've had a "won on unpossible mode" achievement ever since achievements were introduced, how the gently caress do you not think about this while developing a videogame, or think about it afterwards when you are getting clear feedback that different people want different difficulties. Maybe I'm just mad because I'm a babby and found losing health while falling off invisible ledges while trying to explore the world, forcing me to go health kit farming, boring as hell and not why I backed the game.
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Aug 5, 2016 03:26
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You guys are forgetting there's a market for capital H Hard Games - apparently this is the hill they want to die on, fun and accessibility be damned. Don't get me wrong, I love the game and was able to get through it with some stubbornness but every changelog smacks of kowtowing to prideful nerds.
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Aug 5, 2016 05:17
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I only just started playing this game myself and good lord it's hard, but also so stylish and cool. The planet is weird; it seems to be in ruins but what's left is full of technology so advanced it looks like magic. The screen getting all static-y whenever the Drifter gets sick also makes me wonder that we aren't in some sort of digital reality like in Transistor. The giants we saw in a vision in the beginning reminded me a lot of the bio-technical giant superweapons in Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind too. So I guess what I'm saying is I LOVE the style, even if I suck at playing it.
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Aug 5, 2016 08:36
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Skippy Granola posted:You guys are forgetting there's a market for capital H Hard Games - apparently this is the hill they want to die on, fun and accessibility be damned. Forcing the user to go health kit farming doesn't introduce difficulty, it introduces tedium and padding. Even From Software got rid of that in the first Dark Souls game. But hey, new changes in the beta: http://steamcommunity.com/games/257850/announcements/detail/582473634333669418 quote:Changelog: I wonder how long until nerd rage gets them to backout i-frames.
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Aug 5, 2016 14:28
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Tbf they brought it back in the second and also in bloodborne but that's beside the point. I take your meaning. What I meant to say is there's a subset of gamer who takes any quality of life improvement as mollycoddling. Not that hard games can't also mitigate tedium. Unlike Furi. Bacter if you like hard games, try the boring loving slog that is Furi
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Aug 5, 2016 15:28
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I watched some gameplay of Furi and it looked interesting, what makes it bad?
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Aug 5, 2016 16:19
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Everything is a mattress of HP, there are no lulls, and it over stays its welcome. It gets tiresome really quick
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Aug 5, 2016 17:16
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> You are in TOWN. > Exits are N,S,E,W > Go E > You've already been E, Dummy! > Go S > What, do you want to DIE? > Go W > I'm too afraid of the boss there > Fine, Go N. > I'm sorry, can you rephrase? I don't know what "Fine, Go N" means >  > Go N 
Bacter fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Aug 6, 2016 |
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Aug 6, 2016 21:14
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Response time!monster on a stick posted:As far as I know they never bothered putting in a difficulty mode which would solve this problem, but it was these two updates that made me realize that the designer really didn't put that much thought into this. Games have had difficulties for 30 years, they've had a "won on unpossible mode" achievement ever since achievements were introduced, how the gently caress do you not think about this while developing a videogame, or think about it afterwards when you are getting clear feedback that different people want different difficulties. Maybe I'm just mad because I'm a babby and found losing health while falling off invisible ledges while trying to explore the world, forcing me to go health kit farming, boring as hell and not why I backed the game. I do wonder if this is problems with balance. I guess you could give more health / make enemies do less damage, but honestly, if you're bad at movement, 10 extra hits wouldn't really get you THAT much farther. Fedule posted:Oh my god the shotgun. I thought I appreciated it before I had every other weapon in the game. I really tried them all. I gave them all a fair shake. But no. It always came back to the shotgun. Only the last, greatest, most secretest gun in the game comes close to making a more compelling case for combat applications, and even then. A properly done shotgun should always be the best weapon in a videogame with mostly conventional guns (and even in some with unconventional guns) and Hyper Light Drifter certainly delivers on this requirement. Not using the shotgun is becoming my obvious blind spot on my first runs. But hey: even with crippling myself, I still beat the game! Fedule posted:Even by the usual standards of games that make you do this kind of thing, honk hunting down the one last whatever. Especially keys. PREACH. Honestly, the only sensible way to do it is to play through once, just playing for fun, then play through again using a guide for getting everything. Note I didn't say the only FUN way, the only SENSIBLE way. Fedule posted:Having a trophy for finishing the game without dying is baffling. Dying already constitutes checkpoint reloading in HLD, so this proves absolutely nothing about players except their ability to back out to the main menu in order to savescum. I don't understand how devs keep on doing dumb trophy stuff like this after the things have been around for ten years. Deadbolt actually got this one right, their award is for not dying OR quitting a level ever. And guess what, when implemented correctly, this kind of achievement is still just condensed awful. It at least makes more sense in deadbolt, a game that should take under an hour for a real power player, but in a multi-hour affair like HLD, it's just... what? Fedule posted:The enemy type balancing in this game is goddamn near perfect. Every area has a nifty little ecosystem of small, medium and large enemies, any of which are trivial to fight one-on-one and all of which combo with all others in interesting ways in clusterfuck melees. Only the poo poo-tier swarm enemies feel weak and that's only when you disregard the swarm; anyone else will gently caress you up in seconds if you take your eye off the ball. The best part is none of the enemies from any area are completely incompatible, balance wise, with any other enemy, as one certain part of the game demonstrates. Fedule posted:I don't understand why there aren't I-frames when you take damage. There are situations in which taking a single hit basically means death. A few areas put you in a literal Sonic 1 Spikes situation. What a horrifyingly bad design choice. This is my big disagreement with the GIT GOOD HAR HAR HAR HAR HARDCORE folks. If you really wanted that, you could make a one-hit kill. If there's no way to get out, it's just a one-hit kill plus added frustration. Fedule posted:Having to dash 800 times in a row is one of the single dumbest challenges I've ever seen in a videogame. The chain dash has no real utility beyond the second or so dash. The dash chamber is the only place in the entire game where you even can do more than twenty without resting; what is the point of proving you can do this? That entire room should have been removed from the game and the costume put somewhere else. I'll be honest, if it wasn't for the fact that the Snake Eater remix made it funny for me, there was no way that video was going to get posted. And that was me doing it perfectly, on the like second try. Just try doing that challenge, and failing at 742 or something. It's so dumb. Fedule posted:I don't see what everyone found so hard about the Soccer Goblin Then I GUARANTEE you it got nerfed or something. I... I hope so. Bacter fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Aug 6, 2016 |
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Aug 6, 2016 21:23
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I wonder why those dogs are there. And what they are exactly. Your commentary desynced around 12 minutes in.
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Aug 6, 2016 22:51
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If i recall, you can actually shoot the swooping bird enemies out of the air with (some?) guns.
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Aug 7, 2016 02:23
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Two little secrets you missed (spoilered in case it was intentional). 
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Aug 7, 2016 08:21
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Man, there are even really obviously little secret icons by those. No, skipping secrets is basically never intentional. Thanks!
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Aug 7, 2016 16:00
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I'll be recording the next bit soon, but I've got enough deuces for a new THING of our choice! And I say "our" choice, since I'll let you all decide. I'm feeling pretty good about my chances with what I've got, so every new addition is gravy from here on out. That being the case, instead of showing you all the upgrades and making you pick, let's go this way: Who deserves our money the most? 
Bacter fucked around with this message at 04:01 on Aug 12, 2016 |
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Aug 12, 2016 03:17
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Got to go with penguin.
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Aug 12, 2016 03:31
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As much as I want sensei to notice us, I gotta go with the gunmage. Make the shotgun shotgreat. Plus I like the dumb feather in his cap.
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Aug 12, 2016 04:06
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He looks so pleased with himself about that feather!
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Aug 12, 2016 04:22
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Give it to gunmage and let's boost the shotgun. Since apparently that's something I didn't do on my play through.
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Aug 12, 2016 04:48
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Sensei, because the slash+dash attack is really fantastic up north and out west (The dash+slash also owns and is good, and I really appreciate the game making both appreciably different)
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Aug 12, 2016 05:14
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Sensei Reenact the end of every samurai movie!
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Aug 12, 2016 05:43
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Gunmage because I'm tired as gently caress and he's the only one whose facial features didn't take half a second to click in my exhausted brain.
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Aug 12, 2016 05:46
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Sensei. Get your Iai strike on.
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Aug 12, 2016 06:04
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| # ? Apr 30, 2024 20:48 |
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Aug 12, 2016 07:59
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