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Lazyfire posted:I think they were trying to convey that Salter has more loyalty to Reyes than anything else but won't come out and say it. Or maybe the writing and pacing of the game is bad. Not sure. It's both. The problem is that it comes across as Reyes yelling at Salter about leaving him behind when we just saw 20 minutes ago that she will do exactly that if needed.
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Sep 10, 2017 15:14
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This feels like an episode where someone needs to be written out of a show in a hurry--they want out of their contract or pissed off a producer--or they simply did missions out of order and realized they had painted themselves into a corner where Omar wasn't in later missions anymore and they needed to get rid of him.
marshmallow creep fucked around with this message at 02:37 on Sep 12, 2017 |
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Sep 12, 2017 01:32
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 Despite what I go on to say in this video, or at least try to explain, we're going to finish TF2 in the next video. This is one of those games that is pretty short, but they pack so goddamn many great sequences in it that it feels far longer than it is. The segment that leads off the next video, for example, I could have sworn that was 20 minutes long on its own it made such a huge impression on me the first time I played the game, but then it turned out to be like five at the most. Just really well done all around. What wasn't well done was my handling of the action in this video. I think I accrued more combat deaths here than in the rest of the game combined because I started off trying stupid poo poo (like rodeoing enemy titans in an area filled with them) and then just played poorly for the remainder of the video. I could have cut stuff, but I thought it was more entertaining to see what doesn't work in the game than to see me figure it out after multiple times smashing my face into the wall that is the end game enemy allotment. You'll notice there are just a ton of enemies being thrown at you at this stage of the game, both infantry and Titan. There are only three types of infantry by this point in the game: Basic, Shield and Robot, but you can see how Respawn spreads them out and mixes them up to make things interesting. You can also see someone no scope me with the double take because I think I'm invincible against the Basic enemies at this point. The fact is that enemies hit pretty hard in this game and can sabotage your health if you make a couple bad moves. It's something that I mentioned in passing during the factory levels, but need to point at here. A single melee will take most of your health, and they'll always follow it up with a shot or two. Grenades are dangerous and enemies can take you down in a couple shots if you don't make it to cover and reset your health fast enough. All that means even at this point in the game the infantryman you killed hundreds of through the game is still a hazard and not a speedbump. Titans, too, are stacked this way. The Brutes that you've been killing since you could fight titans are still here and still capable of ruining your chassis if you aren't careful. The big danger here is Scorch, though. The quarters are tight and the area of effect cannon can absolutely wreck your health if you aren't paying attention to if you are on fire or not. Oh, and throws and using ships as wall run sources. This level is pretty cool. Fedule posted:I'm just... not entirely sure what was even the point of this mission, other than saving the workers, which, y'know, okay, but, narratively? What did this mission change, besides an obligatory CoD tragic death? We showed up, went "oh poo poo this asteroid is outta control", every single living soul around immediately knew that SetDef was behind it, but then we magically intuit that there are survivors and therefore go and poke around anyway. I guess the whole thing isn't *that* much dumber than the whole part where our PC the ship's captain, is regularly sent into The poo poo, but hey. I get the sense that some people spent a lot of time developing this whole spinning asteroid level before any thought was given to how it would fit in, and ultimately it was included because of the sunk cost. The "point" of why that whole mission happened is going to come up in the next video, but it is kind of lovely in terms of why. I mean, good plot movement and a good way to give the characters a reason to want to do their next dumb move, but the explanation for why SDF did what they did is just stupid and the game invalidates it in like ten seconds.
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Sep 12, 2017 02:15
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These two missions are probably my favorites from the campaign. That initial Titanfall really makes me miss the 1st person cockpit entry animations.
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Sep 12, 2017 04:17
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Man Titanfall 2 is a great game. Pretty, fast paced, giant robots fighting one another, and crazy poo poo like time travel, being thrown like a fastball by your giant robot, and you get to make friends with your giant robot! It knows it's a crazy game and doesn't try to hide it. By comparison, Infinite Warfare is bland and stale. Sure, it's got great set pieces, but it relies too heavily on them to keep the players invested and honestly I genuinely believe that Kit Harrington would make an excellent villain--the shortfalls of his character come from the cardboard writing the development team handed him.
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Sep 12, 2017 04:55
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Man, that episode was kind of painful to watch.
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Sep 12, 2017 05:19
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Argas posted:Man, that episode was kind of painful to watch. I promise the next one is better. I can't explain why I did this poorly here, probably because I was a bit out of practice.
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Sep 12, 2017 13:05
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Lazyfire posted:I promise the next one is better. I can't explain why I did this poorly here, probably because I was a bit out of practice. Anyone that played this knows which one I'm talking about. 
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Sep 12, 2017 13:31
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 I'm warning you upfront that this video becomes "backstory mania" about halfway through, so after the side mission featured here you can safely turn off if you are just in for the story. There isn't much to say because this is 1) a side mission video and 2) a video where we listen to a bunch of audio logs. But at the same time it is worth mentioning that if you watch the other side mission videos you notice that Omar is oddly absent from all of them. That's because he's the only preordained character death up to this point in the game and so instead of working around that with the three year development cycle Infinity Ward had they decided instead to just not include the character in any of the side stuff at all. Can I just say that the characterization in this game blows? I feel like no one following this LP is going to be offended there , but yeah, it is bad. Nothing gets conveyed in the game itself, you have to go make an effort to listen to audio logs and to further audio logs at the end credits to get a sense that the various members of the crew have personalities. The problem is that in the game itself you get maybe ten to fifteen seconds with a character between missions, so while the cast of the game is large, the impact they have on the player is minimal. This is a pretty heavy contrast to other games in the franchise where the cast is kept small even if the plot has a grand scope so you can establish opinions on everyone you encounter. Not so much here, where a character may have a couple lines in the entire game, yet you are expected to care for them by the end.
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Sep 14, 2017 02:40
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White Coke posted:Anyone else wonder what BT would look like in 2B's dress? White Coke posted:I haven't been able to find any art of 2BT yet, I just wanted to see if I was alone or not.
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Sep 15, 2017 01:30
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It's beautiful.
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Sep 15, 2017 01:34
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Nora "The nuclear option with a ponytail" Salter becomes even more likeable by the video
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Sep 15, 2017 02:07
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Should I be concerned about the fact that I think BT makes that look work? Or is it just me?
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Sep 15, 2017 02:19
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Dr. Snark posted:Should I be concerned about the fact that I think BT makes that look work? Or is it just me? Anyone who says otherwise is lying.
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Sep 15, 2017 05:19
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 That's going to do it for Titanfall 2 single player. What a way to end the game, though. I absolutely love the auto targeting pistol section that kicks off the level, and new BT loving wrecks poo poo up to a boss fight that you don't really expect, but is great all the same. Oh, and they worked in nuclear core at the end, so you have to love that. During the credit sequence while I was trying to fill in space I kept trying to think of some valid gripes for the game and there really aren't any besides the length. I feel like if they gave you a few more levels that would have gone away. It's kind of amazing that this game had a good campaign, let alone a really, really good one. I don't know if I would call it like, the best action FPS campaign last year even (DOOM came out the same year, after all), but man, this could have turned out really bad when you think about it. I can think of a few games where the developer just took the multiplayer concepts and wrapped a story around it: Battlefield 2: Modern Combat is one, though no one played it. Splash Damage released both BRINK and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. Frontlines: Fuels of War from the people who would go on to bring you Homefront. There are more I can't remember right now. I think after the sort of poor attempt at bringing a narrative into a multiplayer mode and calling that the Story that Respawn pulled in TF1 people had reason to be wary with what they would try here. Thankfully, they went all out and produced something with similarities to the multiplayer, but never keeping some sort of weird orthodoxy to the objectives or modes you find there. Not surprisingly, it reminds me a lot of how CoD games work where we know you are here for the multiplayer, but there's an at-the-least-serviceable single player option. I picked up listening to podcasts again recently and the episode of Giant Bombcast I was listening to had Jeff say that IW was his favorite CoD campaign. That has nothing to do with the above wall of text, but I find it funny that I think IW ENDS really strongly but the campaign is kind of weak compared to some of the others in the series. He then goes on to praise TF2 as having an awesome campaign if that makes things better.
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Sep 16, 2017 01:40
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BT was a good robro.
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Sep 16, 2017 14:14
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I like that they end a fantastic game, fun all the way through, with an interesting credits sequence that actually made me watch it rather than being something I'd open my phone to avoid, like most. I think companies are starting to realise that a black screen (or one occasionally interspersed with a highly-detailed video) aren't really very good at getting the watcher to see your employees' names. I also very much appreciate that they were pretty restrained with the length, so that the dioramas don't become too tiresome by the end of it. Here's hoping the game is successful enough to keep Respawn up and running.
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Sep 16, 2017 14:47
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Titanfall 2's credit sequence reminds me a lot of Modern Warfare 2's, where they basically just did a slo-mo walk through the Museum bonus level to ogle at character models.
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Sep 16, 2017 16:32
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TF 2 was an amazing game to watch! Thanks for showing it to us ina a Let's play! 
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Sep 16, 2017 21:01
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I honestly didn't even knew that there was a SP campaign for TF since I kinda just linked it to the multiplayer stuff that was shown during the promo phase of the first game. And while I liked the titans and the gameplay I just wasn't big on MP shooters anymore so I just left it at that and didn't pay much attention to it. But man...this game was loving great from start to finish and I hope there'll be another one in the future! Thx for showing it off, dudeMA-Horus posted:BT was a good robro.
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Sep 16, 2017 23:56
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MA-Horus posted:BT is a good robro. Fixed it for you  And yeah, here's to hoping TF2 did well enough for at least a sequel.
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Sep 17, 2017 00:52
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Blisk  Best use of the character, considering Titanfall 1. Well done all around, really. When Cooper pulled out that smart pistol, ^Nalesh posted:Nora "The nuclear option with a ponytail" Salter becomes even more likeable by the video it's sort of winning by default, but yes, she's probably the best character IW has to offer. I know some people would counter with Ethan but uh excuse me, BT shows us all how robot buddy is done properly so he's DQed. Then again characters in CoD are frequently a joke of a concept. It'd help if CoD protagonists weren't quite so blank-slate after their (optional) one early defining character moment so they could, I dunno, be a better foil for the others. It'd help Reyes in particular if he'd stop with the torrent of meaningless Space Acronyms and Space Words, but that's true of everyone. Salter works but she'd work better if Reyes were a useful foil instead of nothing. Psion fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Sep 17, 2017 |
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Sep 17, 2017 01:46
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Glenn Steinbaum did a real good Optimus Pride voice for BT. Titanfall II is a good game, thanks for playing it for us all.
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Sep 17, 2017 02:01
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If there's a single complaint I have about the closing sequences of TF2 it's that the confirmed continued canonical existence of the Smart Pistol kinda requires us to address the question of why this weapon hasn't rendered obsolete all other weapons, in all environments, for all purposes, ever. This is a weapon that exists, and yet isn't used in 99.9% of the situations it would excel at, which is to say, all situations? I know it's videogames and you can't have the best toys forever but normally they at least go to the bother of having a justification for why you can't use this stuff all the time, and as far as I can tell there is none for the Smart Pistol. BT died as he lived; thinking utterly like a machine and somehow managing to come across as sentimental. Uphold the mission. Protect the Pilot. I kinda loving love TF2 for having the courage to not address at all the issue of the extent of BT's sapience. Everything he says is plausibly the output of an extremely efficient but completely conventional computer; the references to statistics and quantifiable factors, the rigid approach to language, the total lack of humour. His actions suggest sentimentality on his part, and yet are wholly consistent with a strict and programmed set of parameters. Obviously he is protective of Cooper, because, duh, protect the Pilot. Possibly he didn't need to step in to insist he remain assigned to Cooper and that was sentiment, but he has data to back it up, so we can read that either way. Notably, he also tells no lies, but rather at the time of his planned self sacrifice is economical with the truth and responds to questions simply with "Trust me". In the end, he upheld the mission and protected the Pilot, but if it came down to it, which would he have sacrificed for the other? The game seems to suggest with equal weight that BT only thought to save Cooper in the closing seconds of his existence, with the sudden unscrambling of the protect the Pilot protocol, and that BT premeditated that manoeuvre when he was making garbled comments about throws. TF2 is absolutely fastidious about not expositing about the state of AI, and, possibly ironically, possibly accidentally, is all the better an example of AI in fiction for it. I guarantee you that E3N's tragic sacrifice scene would involve him telling Reyes that he has learned about friendship or brotherhood or love or some such from him.
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Sep 17, 2017 04:42
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So did they kill like a 10 billion people when they exploded that planet or did they explain earlier that no one lives on that extremely habitable planet?
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Sep 17, 2017 08:42
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Bip Roberts posted:So did they kill like a 10 billion people when they exploded that planet or did they explain earlier that no one lives on that extremely habitable planet? Don't worry, they were all Evil South African Mercenaries.
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Sep 17, 2017 09:33
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White Coke posted:Don't worry, they were all Evil South African Mercenaries. You mean the Evil Corperation That Was Printing Houses and Neighborhoods From The Planet's Resources. The mercs were just there to do a job. Fedule posted:I know it's videogames and you can't have the best toys forever but normally they at least go to the bother of having a justification for why you can't use this stuff all the time, and as far as I can tell there is none for the Smart Pistol. Shield guy did not seem to give much ado about it's headshot capabilities until Lazyfire got behind him. So that's one situation. Also there was a distinct lack of robots who probably also wouldn't care too much about their heads getting shot off (except they would in this game.) Also also there were no guys wearing full face/neck armor that might have saved them from getting headshot. Finally it probably only works with pilots (since the HUD lights up to indicate targets) and if they're in a situation where they need to open up the SEKT kit that means that something's gone horribly wrong with their Giant Robot Of Destruction.
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Sep 17, 2017 09:59
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And hey, maybe in this weird future it's actually more expensive to make head-seeking auto bullets than it is to make giant robots and gravity defying super suits so they cut costs by only making them available to certain personnel?
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Sep 17, 2017 15:03
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All of that is fair enough for reasons implied but it still doesn't explain why the people who do have these extraordinary weapons don't use them basically all the time.
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Sep 17, 2017 15:23
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Fedule posted:BT died as he lived; thinking utterly like a machine and somehow managing to come across as sentimental. Uphold the mission. Protect the Pilot. I kinda loving love TF2 for having the courage to not address at all the issue of the extent of BT's sapience. Everything he says is plausibly the output of an extremely efficient but completely conventional computer; the references to statistics and quantifiable factors, the rigid approach to language, the total lack of humour. His actions suggest sentimentality on his part, and yet are wholly consistent with a strict and programmed set of parameters. Obviously he is protective of Cooper, because, duh, protect the Pilot. Possibly he didn't need to step in to insist he remain assigned to Cooper and that was sentiment, but he has data to back it up, so we can read that either way. Notably, he also tells no lies, but rather at the time of his planned self sacrifice is economical with the truth and responds to questions simply with "Trust me". In the end, he upheld the mission and protected the Pilot, but if it came down to it, which would he have sacrificed for the other? The game seems to suggest with equal weight that BT only thought to save Cooper in the closing seconds of his existence, with the sudden unscrambling of the protect the Pilot protocol, and that BT premeditated that manoeuvre when he was making garbled comments about throws. TF2 is absolutely fastidious about not expositing about the state of AI, and, possibly ironically, possibly accidentally, is all the better an example of AI in fiction for it. Perhaps I'm just ridiculously sheltered and it's more common than I thought, but this is exactly why BT stood out to me as a character. Pretty much every other "smart" (in the sense of intelligence, not sapience) robot/AI character I can think of in fiction might as well be a human in a funny costume who uses big words and quotes numbers a lot. As you said, BT's thought processes and manner are recognisably mechanical. In retrospect the ambiguity about the state of AI is quite a nice touch, since it lets you decide for yourself if he is in fact sapient (somehow I feel that it'd be all the more interesting if he wasn't). Also am I the only one who found the little fist clench BT did every time he was about to chuck Cooper weirdly charming? It was like he was going, "Let's do this." e: To engage in a bit of hyperbole, Titanfall 2 made me care far more about a dumb giant robot and his relationship with his squishy human pilot than pretty much any other media I can think of. So props to the writers I guess! Soup Inspector fucked around with this message at 16:03 on Sep 17, 2017 |
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Sep 17, 2017 15:59
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Fedule posted:All of that is fair enough for reasons implied but it still doesn't explain why the people who do have these extraordinary weapons don't use them basically all the time. I assume either ammo limitations or the fact that it is a fairly short range weapon. In game, it takes 3 lock-ons to kill a pilot, 2 lock-ons to kill a spectre, and 1 lock-on to kill grunts. Enemy pilots get notified on their HUD when someone is attempting to lock on to them (I assume their tech can detect w/e signals the gun uses). Cloaking tech used to slow the gun's ability to acquire lock-ons. However, a recent patch made it so that the smart pistol could not lock onto cloaked targets at all. Lock-ons with break when line of sight to the target is lost, even for a moment. Even simple things like antennas or smoke will break the lock-on (in more gameplay terms: anything with collision or smoke). Against regular grunts, combined with a pilot's mobility, the smart pistol is absolutely deadly. When facing other pilots the smart pistol is still a viable weapon but not overwhelming so.
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Sep 17, 2017 16:41
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My rationalisation for the smart pistol is that it networks to the AI core from the titan which does the aim processing. Possibly that's not consistent with the first game, but hey.
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Sep 17, 2017 17:35
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Fangz posted:My rationalisation for the smart pistol is that it networks to the AI core from the titan which does the aim processing. Possibly that's not consistent with the first game, but hey. The problem with this is that after BT's core was put in you can still implicitly use the gun (even though there are no targets for you to use against in that segment )
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Sep 17, 2017 21:33
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Fedule posted:All of that is fair enough for reasons implied but it still doesn't explain why the people who do have these extraordinary weapons don't use them basically all the time. The smart pistol in TF2's multiplayer is a boost item rather than a standard weapon like the first game's version, and only comes with a single clip besides. That suggests it is REALLY rare compared to most guns, and doesn't have a lot of ammo available, both of which make sense considering the game takes place in a frontier area that's now cut off from easy access to Earth. Add in the countermeasures people mentioned and it makes sense the existing weapons and ammo are used exceedingly sparingly when used at all. Hell, according to the wiki the gun's manufacturer has the same name as the guy Cooper inherited BT from, so it's possible he only had one for his SERE kit by pulling a few family strings. (Of course the real reason it's rare is it being considered OP in the first game (funny how a weapon that doesn't require aiming in a FPS gets that rep) and the game developers not wanting to repeat that, but it's not like there aren't plenty of logical in-universe explanations too.)
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Sep 17, 2017 22:34
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Fedule posted:All of that is fair enough for reasons implied but it still doesn't explain why the people who do have these extraordinary weapons don't use them basically all the time. Sounds like someone didn't play Titanfall 1 ... because we did. joke (not really a joke) aside, the version shown here is monstrously more powerful than the TF1 multiplayer version, so it really skews the perception. In that, the lock ons were slow enough and enemy pilots required three locks to kill that simple ttk meant a good shooter could simply mow down the smartpistol holder while it was still locking on.
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Sep 17, 2017 22:38
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I'm guessing it's a "It's gonna get jammed to poo poo if we use it often" kinda deal like most high tech weapons.
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Sep 17, 2017 23:34
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Nalesh posted:I'm guessing it's a "It's gonna get jammed to poo poo if we use it often" kinda deal like most high tech weapons. Cloaking makes locks take twice as long (and they take a long time against pilots to begin with) so, yeah, jammed. small touch - the Smartpistol in 1 was manufactured by Lastimosa Armory.
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Sep 18, 2017 04:11
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Along with the ideas that everyone else has come up with, I think that you could also argue that the pistol requires a pilot's neural link to work properly. The link could work as either as an electronic safety measure, and/or as part of the actual operation of the weapon. The pilot mentally identifies who to shoot at through link while the weapon itself works out how to get the bullets to hit the desired target. A pilot would probably need to do some additional training to be allowed or be trusted enough to use a Smart Pistol, as it seems like it could very easily kill your own people if something goes horribly wrong, like a FOF error making your buddies fair game. In Cooper's case, the Smart Pistol training was probably included with the rest of the under the table training he received from his mentor before the start of the game. Nerdy theorizing aside, I really love your coverage of both of these games, Lazyfire. Keep up the good work!
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Sep 18, 2017 05:34
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 Let me start off by saying I didn't think the Smart Pistol would inspiring a whole conversation besides how cool the section you use it in is. We're at the point of no return in IW now, which is probably where the game is the strongest. There are some game franchises that lend themselves to more open playstyles and mission structure and I don't think anyone has made a case for CoD being one of those franchises. CoD seems to work best in the sorts of conditions people love to criticize the games for using endlessly. Narrow streets/paths built on fast action that lead to more open set piece battles that funnel you back into narrow streets/paths; the more direct control the developers have over what the player can do at any given time means they can focus the experience much better than they can when it's "fly out to this thing and shoot at this ship for the fifth time." in the end it may not look much different, you could think of space battles as the big open area setpieces if you wanted to make that case, but I think something gets lost when flying simply because the mechanics there are built around specific techniques: locking on to enemy fighters and popping flares when needed. So long as you can aim better than a Polygon editor when the locks are on screen you are not going to have many issues. In the more traditional "boots on the ground" sections of CoD there are more chances to surprise you with enemy placement, more reliance on skill and positioning and reactions/decision making and so it feels like you aren't just along for the ride the way the space flight missions can at times. This mission also gets a bit of a boost because it's something of a callback to CoD4 in that you are chasing down an enemy character through mostly empty streets as poo poo goes bad all around you. I don't expect this was supposed to be a direct homage to that mission, but it is one of the points I completely forgot to make during the video itself so I'm mentioning it now. Unlike in that mission you can't fail here if the subject gets too far out ahead of you.
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Sep 19, 2017 01:56
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Wow - there's kinda a lot to dissect there but I like how you ran through the corridors of that church using that weird detachable gun thing. All guns akimbo, blasting your way through it like BJ Blazkowicz. It does make me wonder what the hell the plan was here, though. That Martian dude apparently had to gut himself and survive long enough to break the transponder himself, you'd think they'd have a better way to deal with that with less chance of failure... You'd also think that the SDF wouldn't immediately warp in on top of the city, knowing that Reyes and his ship is still flying around out there loving things up and maybe thinking that they were going to fly face first into a trap. Then you have the city of Geneva still completely overrun with enemies while the military (which now consists of anyone on your ship and a single admiral holding down the fort on Earth) are apparently powerless to secure the very guns their survival depends on. Why didn't the SDF just blow the things up and radio the fleet to come in and get them days ago? IW, why don't you even try to make sense!? Psychotic Weasel fucked around with this message at 03:07 on Sep 19, 2017 |
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Sep 19, 2017 02:34
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