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Ytlaya posted:I think positive opinions on Zero Dawn (relative to FW) largely hinge on the core mystery being more interesting (which is kind of unavoidable, since you have big questions like "what's up with all these robot dinosaurs" to answer, while the sequel just had "what's up with the Mysterious Signal" - and the answer to that is about as good as it could have been, since the only alternative would have been something like aliens). I totally agree with this! I've been comparing it to The Matrix sequels. Regardless of the actual quality of those sequels, the first one built a really cool world you could easily imagine telling interesting stories in-- but they're not going to compare to finding out the answer to "what is the Matrix?" the first time. (The first game also leaned in, combining the Existential "who am I and why are things like this?" themes with the Existential "what does it mean to live and die on a civilizational level?" themes.) For Forbidden West, changing topics: I looked up weapon spoilers and did these sick, demented devs really not give us a sharpshooter bow with both advanced arrows and tear arrows? That's outright cruel. Are people just running around with two sharpshooter bows in their weapon wheel like I am, or is it a "git good" thing and people just don't bother with tear arrows anymore?
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Apr 11, 2024 14:51
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Digital Osmosis posted:I totally agree with this! I've been comparing it to The Matrix sequels. Regardless of the actual quality of those sequels, the first one built a really cool world you could easily imagine telling interesting stories in-- but they're not going to compare to finding out the answer to "what is the Matrix?" the first time. (The first game also leaned in, combining the Existential "who am I and why are things like this?" themes with the Existential "what does it mean to live and die on a civilizational level?" themes.) It's awful. In HZD it was nice and simple Green < Blue < Purple and each step was a step up. In this one you not only have to carry multiple versions of each bow if you want one with the right ammo, but you also have to upgrade them individually.
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Apr 11, 2024 14:58
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Forbidden West kind of shifted the balance of bows to three different archetypes. You have Warrior Bows, which are your rapid fire shotgun weapon designed to do high damage at close range. Then you have Hunter Bows, which are well-balanced for all kinds of roles but are the best at applying elemental effects and stripping components. Sharpshot Bows are your big nukes that you either whip out for stealth kills or to land a boom headshot on an already weakened machine. They sometimes come with tearblast arrows, but those are less precise. In Zero Dawn it was more effective to unload a triple volley of tearblast arrows to strip a machine's armor, Forbidden West would rather you use Hunter Bows with component tear % instead and use Sharpshot Bows primarily to nuke.
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Apr 11, 2024 15:20
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Ytlaya posted:As someone who had been spoiled on Zero Dawn's main plot stuff (and didn't have that mystery pushing me along as much), I think Forbidden West is generally a much more fun game. Much better side quests, combat, and more interesting/varied environments. Its open-world stuff is generally of remarkably good quality - the side quests have decent little plots and the puzzles are good. It feels like they actually filled the massive world with stuff to do that mostly doesn't feel like it's just there to fill a checklist. I agree I think the side quests are better in FW. I liked how many ended up being story chains and you got a chance to stick with the characters for a little while. That reminds me though I felt like having a base where Aloy's teammates hang out always felt out of place to me Combat I never really liked tbh. Enemies absorb much more damage, they do much more damage, they move faster and many can leap to you from really far away. I never give with needing to swap between 5 different bows for all the many elements and various draw speeds at close, medium, long range. I never really found melee to be viable even with element packs and the 300% damage valor because it still does like no damage and you get put into a like 7 second down animation at the slightest tap, and you can still get hit during it and so many machines will shoot at you during the animation timed so the projectile will hit you as soon as you get back up...and you immediately get downed again. Tbh I thought a lot of the poo poo around the world felt like checklist stuff. All the sunken caves for no reason but to collect green shards. All the firegleam barriers hiding...greenshards. All the tomb raider ruins with ornaments for the osaram guy, junk loot chests...and occasionally some green shards. All the metal flowers hiding junk loot...and green shards. And they're loving everywhere site fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Apr 11, 2024 |
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Apr 11, 2024 16:05
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The combat took forever to click for me - more than a fair share of my posts here are complaining about it - but once it clicked I got really into it. Most of my problems with Forbidden West is that it was the game that made me really not care for the, let's call it, "casual busywork" in these open world games. Collecting twigs and other nonsense like that to craft ammo, ect - I just got tired of it. It's mainly because they made a thing that was something you did to craft buff items into something you needed to do. The game did also highlights how Sony likes to hand-hold you through the entire process. The world of Horizon is so freaking amazing and creative but they don't trust you enough to want to explore it and find all manner of goodies and secrets. Top that with them finding the worst kind of half-way point of strict climbing paths vs. freeform it really feels like they wanted to create a theme park for you to go through the way they wanted instead of an world to get lost in. I could not point out the climbing handholds by any visual cues and had to turn on "always show them" so they showed up in that ugly way if you ping them with the focus. Rise of the Ronin has a lot of these problems but the way they compartmentalize their open world makes it feel less like a series of checklist things and more of a series of goals to "beat" a section of an open world. They feel like levels of a more linear game but in an open world setting. You "beat" that area of the world and get a great reward for it (also removing most of the icons). Makes me wish this would become a standard for this kind of open world game.
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Apr 11, 2024 16:27
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exquisite tea posted:Forbidden West kind of shifted the balance of bows to three different archetypes. You have Warrior Bows, which are your rapid fire shotgun weapon designed to do high damage at close range. Then you have Hunter Bows, which are well-balanced for all kinds of roles but are the best at applying elemental effects and stripping components. Sharpshot Bows are your big nukes that you either whip out for stealth kills or to land a boom headshot on an already weakened machine. They sometimes come with tearblast arrows, but those are less precise. In Zero Dawn it was more effective to unload a triple volley of tearblast arrows to strip a machine's armor, Forbidden West would rather you use Hunter Bows with component tear % instead and use Sharpshot Bows primarily to nuke. This makes a lot of sense, but what about component removal for things like upgrades, or blasting off weapons to use against the enemy machines? Do you still mostly used hunter bows built for +tear for those? I used to take Thunderjaws down in New Dawn by tearblasting their guns off, roping them down, and disc-launching them to death. Seems like I haven't found as useful a strategy in Forbidden West for them or for anything else, really. Maybe the combat hasn't fully clicked for me yet! I certainly do a lot of healing and desperate scrambles, and it feels like any big machine takes way more resources out of me than they did in the fist game.
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Apr 11, 2024 16:40
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The pro strat for wasting Thunderjaws in HFW is to expose the ice canisters under their bellies, slide underneath and ignite with frost ammo, then blow off the panels to their heart/brain and do big dino-damage with Sharpshot arrows.
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Apr 11, 2024 16:43
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quote:I think positive opinions on Zero Dawn (relative to FW) largely hinge on the core mystery being more interesting (which is kind of unavoidable, since you have big questions like "what's up with all these robot dinosaurs" to answer, while the sequel just had "what's up with the Mysterious Signal" - and the answer to that is about as good as it could have been, since the only alternative would have been something like aliens). Thinking about this some more I don't think FW actually did about as good as it could because I just never found the zeniths to be all that interesting and I think it's funny how Elizabet and Ted and people on the ZD team like Travis Tate were more fleshed out via text and audio logs and the Zeniths are just...random nobodies the game never cares about investigating. Just totally replaceable people that I never am asked to care about in any form besides, this guy has a shield I can't beat right now. You aren't learning about these people as you move through the story in any real way, besides the false ideas the Quen have for a couple of them. There's no equivalent area to GAIA Prime where you get to really hate these guys. There's just The Boss who orders The Guy Who Likes to Fight to fight you the three times you ever encounter them, and random background people who never speak. Completely underwhelming and uninteresting site fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Apr 11, 2024 |
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Apr 11, 2024 16:57
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site posted:
i think these are designed as part of the gameplay loop, where you're basically always going to have some sort of ? map icon within ~400 steps to go check out. a lot of them are kinda filler but they serve to keep up the "oh, alright, just one more thing to explore oops got myself in a big fight" exploration loop Jimbot posted:Collecting twigs and other nonsense like that to craft ammo, ect - I just got tired of it. i was against auto pickup at first, but am fully converted over to it. it's not 100% (only if your personal pouch isn't full) but it still skips the animation, so you just mash triangle a bit while running past something i do need to figure out what to do with the 3k ridge wood in my stash Qtotonibudinibudet fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Apr 11, 2024 |
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Apr 11, 2024 17:16
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Qtotonibudinibudet posted:i think these are designed as part of the gameplay loop, where you're basically always going to have some sort of ? map icon within ~400 steps to go check out. a lot of them are kinda filler but they serve to keep up the "oh, alright, just one more thing to explore oops got myself in a big fight" exploration loop yeah you go out of your way to explore and find these things because there aren't any maps you can buy to tell you what's what like in ZD, only to wind up finding 100 things you can't even access because you haven't gotten the correct tool yet through the story and it expects you to travel back to open all this stuff later to get useless junk so it won't be on your map any more. they could've at least made putting in the work the tiniest bit rewarding
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Apr 11, 2024 17:35
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exquisite tea posted:It's good for highlight reels where you see Aloy one-shot an Apex Tremortusk for 32k damage from 100 yds away but IMHO it's impractical for actually playing the campaign on Ultra when a single stray attack can kill you, most fights have multiple machines, and you probably need to tear off some of the parts for crafting beforehand. For the overkill amusement factor though, it is insanely cheap. i dont feel this, i always play on LH on UH because its so comfortable, not having to focus on maintaining the healthbar with potions and berries, and reducing exposure by killing individuals from group fights much quicker. Especially with smokebombs when i get ganged on i feel like its not an issue surviving. With the LH skills maxed, max level HP and a outfit that covers the given elemental resistance, only the strongest attacks from some apex heavyweights are capable of oneshotting (while if its an element your outfit doesnt resist then even some of the stronger apex mediumweights can oneshot). Alot of the heavyweight attacks that would oneshot on 25% HP LH would also have killed you on 700 HP in UH.
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Apr 11, 2024 17:42
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they need more metal flowers that go "surprise! it's a ravager! you have to fight them now!" and then the reward is a gold brick and some berries
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Apr 11, 2024 17:42
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Ytlaya posted:After watching a video about it, I'm curious about low-health builds. It actually sounds pretty powerful? You just have to be careful not to get hit twice within a couple seconds. Low health builds, highlight reel shenanigans aside, are actually pretty strong if you are using them correctly. It's a lot more useful in NG+ where you have a ton of stuff available to you like the legendary armor for that setup. But you can do things like one-shot many of the bosses (even in UH) and trivialize lots of the encounters. There are a few quirks you have to get used to, notably the fact that the low health ranged perk doesn't apply to every weapon. Things like blast slings and spike throwers aren't "ranged" weapons as far as that skill is concerned so the 80% damage boost doesn't apply to them, only bows and gauntlets and probably the DLC weapon but I don't know for sure. For tearblast arrows, they're poo poo in FW compared to being The poo poo in ZD. I wouldn't carry a sharpshot with that ammo type because it's just a dead slot, you're much better off with piercing ammo for humans with helmets and the advanced/legendary arrows. I've never tried the knockdown arrows but I would probably find them not very useful. A well coiled hunter bow will deal far more tear damage and can 1-2 shot remove most bits from anything in UH short of the real big apex machines. You do have to be closer, but not that much closer. As far as UH things and ways to not die, don't sleep on weapon skills. Propelled spike will decimate early machines in a single shot, triple shot elemental arrows are very useful, and don't sleep on corrosion as a status to apply to things that are weak to it, you can do some silly damage by applying corrosion and then switching to a sharpshot bow and fishing for 4-5 digit critical damage hits. Stamina potions and the stamina regen stuff comes in huge here. Also food is a big deal. The bonuses from food can push you above the limit of 4 levels to a perk that you have with outfits. Eating some evader+ food on top of an outfit boost can get you to like 8 dodges before you stumble, for instance (also Aloy can 'stumble' while dodging underwater, lol). The random poo poo to do in the wilds is nice because some of the more interactive ones (races, relics) get you relatively big rewards in the way of legendary weapons, and the rest are just targets of opportunity as you run by. There are still hidden things that aren't marked on the map like the callouts to other games and various legends for you to run across, if that's something you really want.
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Apr 11, 2024 17:51
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i have found two god of war collectables while wandering around but what are the legends
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Apr 11, 2024 18:06
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BWOM arrows are still useful, they're just dedicated "tear off this part without damaging it" and "half blind fire them into stalkers to knock off the stealth generator" some of the tiny upgrade parts also benefit from being able to just dump ammo in the general area and probably still hit it. shooting off dreadwing teeth with point damage can be annoying. ditto some of the machine parts that come in clusters, like behemoth force loaders and stormwing thrusters, it's easier to target the general area and hit several at once i like the glowblast sharpshot for its plasma anyway, and don't have forgefall (or the NG+ only bow) as an alternative yet in unrelated news, i have gotten to my least favorite activity: weapon upgrades that require apex enemy hearts, so i get to shuttle back and forth between spawn locations and a shelter at night in hopes the right variety spawn, then actually fully kill them to even see if i get the thing i need
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Apr 11, 2024 18:07
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While people are in the advice giving mood, what weapon skills are worth it? I've been triple-notching and that's about it, even other useful ones like the warrior-bow 5 shot one I often forget about. What are some of the ones people who are good at this game love?
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Apr 11, 2024 18:16
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Braced shot used to be incredibly powerful, I think it got nerfed but it’s still pretty strong
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Apr 11, 2024 18:20
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Braced Shot is pretty good set damage in early game, but Focused Shot will overtake it as it scales up better with a bunch of stuff later on
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Apr 11, 2024 18:43
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The split spike with explosive spike, sustained burst with the bolt blaster, triple and power shredder with gauntlet are all good.
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Apr 11, 2024 18:47
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Spiketrap is also great, and Spreadblast for the boltblaster (a fun shotgun alternative to sustained burst, unlike sustained burst it can also crit)
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Apr 11, 2024 18:59
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site posted:I just never found the zeniths to be all that interesting and I think it's funny how Elizabet and Ted and people on the ZD team like Travis Tate were more fleshed out via text and audio logs and the Zeniths are just...random nobodies the game never cares about investigating. In reality (?) someone who lived for 1000 years would be deeply, deeply weird. Weirder than it's possible for us to conceive. I guess they had their space magic science that kept their brains at the normal, pre-war level of weirdness? Shrug.
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Apr 11, 2024 19:08
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Zenith stuff I mean they think of themselves as gods and they want to wipe the entire earth clean again so they can make a paradise for a dozen or so people. That's pretty weird.
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Apr 11, 2024 19:10
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Sivart13 posted:I thought the Zeniths were a big missed opportunity. It's surprising to learn that there are people alive from pre-war, but after that they just act like modern jerks. The point they were trying to make was that the zeniths were completely static and had no vision beyond survival. They had 1000 years in which they could have become deeply weird but instead chose to use their resources to preserve themselves in what they felt was their ideal, ultimate form- near-future tech/finance bro egomaniacs
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Apr 11, 2024 20:06
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it takes so many shots to knock off machine weapons and then when you use them, they barely do any damage and have terrible aim
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Apr 11, 2024 20:11
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big nipples big life posted:Zenith stuff I mean they think of themselves as gods and they want to wipe the entire earth clean again so they can make a paradise for a dozen or so people. That's pretty weird. this is one of those things that i think demonstrates how little effort they gave to fleshing them out is that we are quickly told it's because of the immortality treatments but we never get to read or hear or see what those treatments were or how drastically their bodies had been changed/what kind of geoengineering would have been needed to conform to them now
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Apr 11, 2024 20:14
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site posted:this is one of those things that i think demonstrates how little effort they gave to fleshing them out is that we are quickly told it's because of the immortality treatments but we never get to read or hear or see what those treatments were or how drastically their bodies had been changed/what kind of geoengineering would have been needed to conform to them now There are a few things about the Zeniths you can see in game, like how none of them actually bleed and are instead just full of some white goop. site posted:i have found two god of war collectables while wandering around but what are the legends There's a sword in the stone hidden in no man's land, I believe, and possibly some others but that's the only one I know of for sure.
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Apr 11, 2024 20:38
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Yea I'm pretty sure the Zeniths are cyborgs or fully machine with an uploaded consciousness
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Apr 11, 2024 20:44
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exquisite tea posted:It's good for highlight reels where you see Aloy one-shot an Apex Tremortusk for 32k damage from 100 yds away but IMHO it's impractical for actually playing the campaign on Ultra when a single stray attack can kill you, most fights have multiple machines, and you probably need to tear off some of the parts for crafting beforehand. For the overkill amusement factor though, it is insanely cheap. It seems like you functionally have about the same amount of HP though, since you get something ridiculous like a 70% damage reduction below a certain threshold.
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Apr 11, 2024 21:25
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site posted:Thinking about this some more I don't think FW actually did about as good as it could because I just never found the zeniths to be all that interesting and I think it's funny how Elizabet and Ted and people on the ZD team like Travis Tate were more fleshed out via text and audio logs and the Zeniths are just...random nobodies the game never cares about investigating. Just totally replaceable people that I never am asked to care about in any form besides, this guy has a shield I can't beat right now. You aren't learning about these people as you move through the story in any real way, besides the false ideas the Quen have for a couple of them. There's no equivalent area to GAIA Prime where you get to really hate these guys. There's just The Boss who orders The Guy Who Likes to Fight to fight you the three times you ever encounter them, and random background people who never speak. Completely underwhelming and uninteresting While that's true, I never got the impression you were supposed to care about them as characters. And Ted Faro's characterization was never really interesting, because he was basically just this comically evil character without any interesting motives beyond self-enrichment (which is fine for an antagonist, but I don't think he really comes off that much better than the characters in this game). And I think this game does fine with the various side characters you encounter from the various tribes, which are really supposed to be the focus more than the Zenith people (who are deliberately characterized as these self-centered sociopaths). Like the whole point is that they're not interesting, and even the one who temporarily acts differently is just as soulless as the rest. And the actual antagonists present in the story of the original game are also very 1-dimensional, like HADES or the cultists. I found Sylens' machinations in this one to work pretty well as a plot device, since they were intertwined with the tribes and their motivations. I generally think of the stuff involving the tribes as more core to the plot in both games than the stuff about the "original humans" (who are pretty much all boring stereotypes, including Elizabet). Jimbot posted:The combat took forever to click for me - more than a fair share of my posts here are complaining about it - but once it clicked I got really into it. I never found that I needed to go out of my way to farm for ammunition materials (especially stuff like twigs). There are a few materials that you tend to run shorter on (like the echo doodads IIRC), but they're associated with ammo that you shouldn't be using a ton to begin with. The climbing is definitely really bad, though I find that easy enough to overlook. I just turn on the thing that always shows you where you can climb.
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Apr 11, 2024 21:42
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Ytlaya posted:I never found that I needed to go out of my way to farm for ammunition materials (especially stuff like twigs). There are a few materials that you tend to run shorter on (like the echo doodads IIRC), but they're associated with ammo that you shouldn't be using a ton to begin with. "shouldn't be using a ton of" excuse me it is my god-given right to approach every problem with advanced blast spikes, blastpaste costs be damned the climbing is iffy (particularly in cauldrons, or at least that one with the articulated arms you're supposed to jump between, but for some reason can't use the "jump straight back" command and where aloy interprets most stick directions as "jump to the previous handhold instead") but you don't need to do it that often outside the better-desiged set piece old world towers, and it's neat to be able to scale massive rock walls in zion and the sierras i curse it audibly when im jumping around in a fight and aloy decides to glom onto a wall and stop moving because she's in climb mode though
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Apr 11, 2024 21:56
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Qtotonibudinibudet posted:the climbing is iffy (particularly in cauldrons, or at least that one with the articulated arms you're supposed to jump between, but for some reason can't use the "jump straight back" command and where aloy interprets most stick directions as "jump to the previous handhold instead") but you don't need to do it that often outside the better-desiged set piece old world towers, and it's neat to be able to scale massive rock walls in zion and the sierras Yeah the climbing doesn't actively bother me (outside of the exact situation you describe, where I'll be mashing square to drop down, but it just drops me to the next "node" on the wall), but I can see why someone who enjoyed traversal as a mechanic* might not like it basically being reduced to whatever it is now. * though tbh I don't recall actually enjoying the traversal in Zero Dawn either. I don't think I've ever actually enjoyed climbing as a mechanic in a game, even when well implemented - it's just "a way to go up the things"
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Apr 11, 2024 23:26
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Olothreutes posted:There are a few things about the Zeniths you can see in game, like how none of them actually bleed and are instead just full of some white goop. yeah see, i know it got a little overbearing in the last couple quests but i really liked reading about stuff like in ZD. i want to know more about this instead of little teases! quote:There's a sword in the stone hidden in no man's land, I believe, and possibly some others but that's the only one I know of for sure. looked this up and i wonder what else is in there to be found Ytlaya posted:While that's true, I never got the impression you were supposed to care about them as characters. And Ted Faro's characterization was never really interesting, because he was basically just this comically evil character without any interesting motives beyond self-enrichment (which is fine for an antagonist, but I don't think he really comes off that much better than the characters in this game). And I think this game does fine with the various side characters you encounter from the various tribes, which are really supposed to be the focus more than the Zenith people (who are deliberately characterized as these self-centered sociopaths). Like the whole point is that they're not interesting, and even the one who temporarily acts differently is just as soulless as the rest. And the actual antagonists present in the story of the original game are also very 1-dimensional, like HADES or the cultists. I found Sylens' machinations in this one to work pretty well as a plot device, since they were intertwined with the tribes and their motivations. I disagree about the Ted Faro stuff, going ZD again before FW I thought intentionally making him Musk even more hilarious because reading/listening through his stuff in the last few missions it comes off exactly like the kind of poo poo drug fueled depression Elon posts nowadays in 2024, which i have to commend Guerilla on capturing that several years earlier than their inspiration's actual downfall started. For me at least it makes it more fun to hate the guy because he really does mega suck rear end in game and irl I do agree that FW does well with all the side characters and spending time there. That 89 hours I racked up definitely wasn't coming from just the main questline. Like i said earlier, one of the things I liked about the quests is that many turned out to be chains where you help them do a thing, and then run into them later with their circumstances changed because of your help. I can't say I ever felt that it was the point that the Zeniths weren't interesting though, personally. Nor Carrie-Ann Moss' character did feel like it was demonstration of that, although if you want to say the reveal of her romance with Elizabet and eventual betrayal of Aloy were obvious I can't dispute that. The game basically shouts it at you. I thought the handwavey nature of many of her answers in the dialogue at her house and then at base were rather because she was untrustworthy. While HADES is literally a computer program with no personality and calling it one dimensional is accurate, I think ZD did some work with the Shadow Carja by giving Aloy a lot of interaction with the nobles, the declared child king and smuggling him out, your interactions with Avad and Blameless Marad, and many side quests and characters both in the kingdom and outside of it that fill in life under the Mad King's rule that fleshes all that out. There's not really any of that with the Zeniths And I wish Sylens was around more in FW! Especially given real life circumstances  RIP Lance. I did find the memorial for him on the west coast overlooking san francisco, that was sweet. But like, just kinda showing back up at the finale so aloy can explain the whole puppet master thing back to him just in case the player forgot was kinda meh
site fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Apr 11, 2024 |
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Apr 11, 2024 23:28
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Olothreutes posted:There are a few things about the Zeniths you can see in game, like how none of them actually bleed and are instead just full of some white goop. I completely forgot about this, but yeah it does seem like they might have artificial bodies or something. My initial guess was simply that they figured out how to halt aging (since such a thing probably is technically possible, and definitely isn't any more sci-fi than other stuff in the Horizon games), but they obviously did something weirder to their bodies. site posted:yeah see, i know it got a little overbearing in the last couple quests but i really liked reading about stuff like in ZD. i want to know more about this instead of little teases! While Faro is definitely a Musk-like figure, I just want to mention that Musk's nature has always been pretty clear, even before the release of Zero Dawn. It just only caught on in the mainstream in the last few years (especially after the Twitter acquisition). Since at least the mid-2010s (and honestly it would have been earlier if I had paid attention before that) it's always been very obvious to me that "the emperor isn't wearing any clothes." Felt like I was going insane when mainstream publications acted like Musk was some brilliant engineer. Actually, one difference between Musk and Faro is that I think Faro is at least implied to be a skilled businessman and have some technical expertise (even if he isn't a hyper-genius like Sobeck). He could seemingly comprehend the basics of how his robots or the Zero Dawn program worked, which is why he insisted on things like the Master Override or destroyed APOLLO. Musk on the other hand is essentially just a layperson whose only technical knowledge can be summed up as "did some programming in the 90s for Zip2 (that was considered really bad code by other programmers at the time and quickly replaced)." Faro at least could comprehend when other people were competent, which is why he hired Sobeck in the first place, but I think Musk is genuinely oblivious about his own ignorance. In a world where Faro is replaced with Musk, there wouldn't even be a Zero Dawn because Musk wouldn't have even thought to contact Sobeck early into the Plague, and he probably would have blamed short-sellers for it or something. The main Zenith guy (who I don't even remember the name of, which I guess says something about the strength of his characterization lol) is obviously supposed to be a Bezos or Thiel-like figure, though I'd personally argue that real-life figures like Bezos, Thiel, Musk, etc all share attributes of both Faro and the Zenith-guy.
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Apr 12, 2024 00:01
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It's like they took all the big tech figures and melted them down into big lovely slurry then filled a bunch of molds that contain parts of each. I am of course not recommending we attempt this IRL.
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Apr 12, 2024 00:05
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Ytlaya posted:It seems like you functionally have about the same amount of HP though, since you get something ridiculous like a 70% damage reduction below a certain threshold. pretty much, its like playing with an effective health of around 560 HP with the protection a maxed low-health defense gives. even more with the added 100 HP to max health from the DLC, small price to pay for 80% more impact damage and letting auto-heal do all the healing to keep you at the desired 25% HP cut-off and saying goodbye to berries. Olothreutes posted:There are a few things about the Zeniths you can see in game, like how none of them actually bleed and are instead just full of some white goop. Verbena bleeds red though, for some reason. It did surprise me that her death didnt seem to rattle the rest of the zeniths at all. Not because they care for her but the factt that someone manage to bypass her shield should raise some concern
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Apr 12, 2024 00:34
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Falukorv posted:pretty much, its like playing with an effective health of around 560 HP with the protection a maxed low-health defense gives. even more with the added 100 HP to max health from the DLC, small price to pay for 80% more impact damage and letting auto-heal do all the healing to keep you at the desired 25% HP cut-off and saying goodbye to berries. The one thing that seems like it might bug me is the constant red halo around the screen (I'm guessing that applies below the relevant threshold? if it's only below like 15% or something it might not be so bad). That would drive me crazy, and it'd be really hard to not reflexively use berries.
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Apr 12, 2024 01:05
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Falukorv posted:Verbena bleeds red though, for some reason. It did surprise me that her death didnt seem to rattle the rest of the zeniths at all. Not because they care for her but the factt that someone manage to bypass her shield should raise some concern Maybe they didn't know? She's all alone on the mountaintop when she bites it and they are definitely the type to probably just assume she was an idiot who got herself killed. We really don't get to see their reaction to her because we don't spend a lot of time with them in general. Ytlaya posted:While that's true, I never got the impression you were supposed to care about them as characters. And Ted Faro's characterization was never really interesting, because he was basically just this comically evil character without any interesting motives beyond self-enrichment (which is fine for an antagonist, but I don't think he really comes off that much better than the characters in this game). Disagree with this, I think Faro from the first game is interesting precisely because he's not comically evil. He's just a regular idiot tech bro. He was kinda successful, got lucky and hired the right scientist who designed robots who helped save the world, let the praise go to his head, and then makes dumb decision after dumb decision based around profit like pivoting to war machines, designing them to be self-sustaining and unhackable without understanding the obvious bad idea that is, and then goes slowly insane when that accidentally dooms the world. He tries to do the right thing when it becomes clear he can't fix it himself and enlists Elizabet but he just goes slowly down the drain because he's now surrounded by people smarter than him doing better than him, and after Liz dies he drops off into delusion really fast. He destroys Apollo because his guilt over killing everyone and not wanting to be remembered as the guy who did it causes him to think the answer is giving humanity a "fresh start". He works so well as a villain because of how authentic he feels to real dipshits like Musk or Zuckerberg. He's a mediocre man who got lucky and then made very poor decisions. If he wasn't that interesting I don't think "gently caress Ted Faro" would have become such a catchphrase among the fanbase as it did. We all hate him for a reason. He's authentic and real in a very uncomfortable modern way and they achieved it with relatively limited screentime and info. One of the reasons I disliked FW was how it does make him comically evil. He goes from a realistic idiot tech bro with a massive ego who makes stupid decisions to a nutcase who is making giant gold idols of himself for his special bunker with his playboy harem while enslaving a doctor to make him immortal so he can be a new god to the next edition of humanity. Real billionaires are certainly also lunatics who might do something this bad but it felt like a dialed to 11 version from what we saw in ZD. I did at least appreciate that he got weird whereas the Zeniths never really get much characterization besides Tilda and then Londra to a lesser extent. FW felt like it took everything in a more schlocky direction overall. I think in the first game the modern world stuff is the weaker material. It's okay, but it doesn't have nearly the same power as the mystery backstory that slowly unravels. FW is kind of the reverse. The modern tribal stuff is more compelling/well done and the stuff related to the past is far less interesting since they already explained what happened.
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Apr 12, 2024 01:59
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Faro (in Zero Dawn, I agree with the criticism against his portrayal on Forbidden West) feels like a Zuckerberg or Musk. Far Zenith people feel like Thiel or that dude who's draining his son's blood and injecting it into himself.
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Apr 12, 2024 03:04
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tbh yeah building an underground apocalypse bunker where members of your harem end up mysteriously dead and you try to attain medical immortality seems pretty on par for the tech bro elites it could have only more on point if he'd done it in hawaii with a large portion of the compound dedicated to raising the perfect beef spent today's session finishing all the salvage contracts only to remember how useless the reward armor is for me, though i do wish more legendary gear was tied to quests instead of all being locked behind arena medals. probably not worth it other than collecting it so i can start working on it from the start for NG+. i kinda forgot how ridiculous the upgrade costs are for those. probably not worth it (maybe the legendary nora armor? and sorta the carja one, if only to apply the look), easier to stick with maxed out purple gear Qtotonibudinibudet fucked around with this message at 06:42 on Apr 12, 2024 |
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Apr 12, 2024 06:38
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I think my only issue with the "tech bro" concept is that it carries an implication that other rich people are somehow better, when I think the only real difference is that people like Zuckerberg or Musk are more visible and spend more effort/money on goofy stuff instead of only mundanely evil things. To Horizon's credit, it seems to support this, with the Far Zenith crew being a mix of other rich people types, including "finance guy," "literally Erik Prince," and "the daughter of some rich person." Tilda is amusingly the only one of the crew who is actually sorta a, uh, "tech-sis," since she made software that made her super rich.
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Apr 12, 2024 09:50
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