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Do they ever explain why these high security experiment facilities have the MurderDeath gas around?
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Nov 21, 2016 22:28
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 02:59 |
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Tin Tim posted:Do they ever explain why these high security experiment facilities have the MurderDeath gas around? Haha. It's CoD, what do you think?
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Nov 22, 2016 03:33
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Tin Tim posted:Do they ever explain why these high security experiment facilities have the MurderDeath gas around? Because it's ostensibly a Black Ops game, and needs a connection to the other two games without actually referencing the multiple choice ending of the last one.
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Nov 22, 2016 09:52
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 Sorry for the ad, I can't do anything about it considering the game decides to use a popular song in the last moments. So yeah, that's the end of BLOPS III. Try to use spoiler tags for the next couple days like I ask so people can get a chance to watch it, I'll be making a post that explains it all shortly. Plus a Dead Ops Arcade video, because why not? I thought the game acquitted itself well in the final moments, especially considering that most everything up to the end of the game was sort of...meh when it came to story and pacing and everything. I thought the ending in terms of gameplay also left a bit to be desired considering it was seriously not that impressive in terms of fighting, there wasn't a boss or anything, or really many major threats at the end, just a bunch of guys that are easily dispatched. We'll get into all that stuff in the post about the end of the game, though.
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Nov 23, 2016 02:22
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Wow, that looks dull to play through. They couldn't even throw in some big robots or cool platformer-y sections for you to deal with?
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Nov 23, 2016 03:30
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So... nothing past the intro mission and before the final cutscene real then? Or something-something the Player's conciousness wound up inside the real Taylor at some point? I guess I'll wait for explanation because I'm terrible at following these sorts of things.
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Nov 23, 2016 06:06
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I'm thinking the first mission is 'real,' you get the DNI and every mission after that is an approximation of Taylor and Hendricks' previous mission except for the last mission, which is where everything gets messed up since it turns out that something went wrong during the operation to implant your DNI and your dying.
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Nov 23, 2016 15:33
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megane posted:Wow, that looks dull to play through. They couldn't even throw in some big robots or cool platformer-y sections for you to deal with? Listen only to the sound of Lazyfire's voice. Let your mind relax. Let your thoughts drift. Let the dull memories fade. Also, the Spike Launcher here is a lot neater than in Killzone.
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Nov 23, 2016 15:50
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Blind Sally posted:Listen only to the sound of Lazyfire's voice. Let your mind relax. Let your thoughts drift. Let the dull memories fade. Imagine yourself in a Canadian minefield
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Nov 24, 2016 05:03
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I think the problems with BLOPS 3 (and the BLOPS series in general) is that the writers have cool and interesting ideas for a story, but don't have the skill to really bring it out in the game; whether it's the Manchurian Candidate poo poo from the first one, over-reliance on technology and Western influence in the world in the Cold War causing the West problems down the road in BLOPS 2, and technology, mortality, and sentience mixed with a dying dream (maybe?) here in BLOPS3. But all three have fumbled in execution: BLOPS 1 has plot holes, BLOPS 2 was way too topical, and BLOPS 3 just dumps most of it's story near the end and doesn't even explicitly say what happened to you!
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Nov 24, 2016 10:50
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Thank you a lot for showing us the campaign, Lazyfire! Also no idea what the whole player character/ Taylor deal is from just watching the campaign - which says a lot about the story design.
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Nov 24, 2016 20:31
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Yeah, that ending twist probably makes sense when you take in the entirety of the game, but feels weak from an "unresearched" viewing. One reason, I think: the story relies too heavily on the twist being surprising enough to shake the player, when what happened was me just shrugging. BLOPS 1, although flawed and with a predictable twist, uses the twist better. The game knew (I say "the game" instead of "the writers" because the actual writers may not have been conscious of this fact) that the twist worked better as an advancement of the plot. Gary Oldman's dead; you're crazy; let's move on to the next act. While this game adopts the stance that the twist ending should've shocked you and garnered some deep revelation that probably does make sense but, I'm guessing, doesn't really impact the story.
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Nov 25, 2016 20:57
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Oh, I hope you are ready for this. In this post I'm going to explain just what the hell happened at the end of the campaign, and I'm not using spoiler tags because it's my thread and someone already loving ruined it on like page two: So if you already don't recall, in the very last video some random gendarme is all like "what's your name?" which is a weird thing to ask as a first question when someone walks out of a building with a head wound. Anyway, the character we've been playing as all game says:  Which is kind of a mindfuck, right? well, not really. The game has been telegraphing that things aren't quite what they seem since the beginning, mostly through the scrolling text that's appeared before every level. For example, here's the text from the very first level, Black Ops: quote:AAR INCOMING. WA FOB SAFHOUSE-CHE. REPORT DESIGNATION: CO Juliet-Tango. Secondary: Sierra-Delta. LNO WASF: Juliet-Hotel WASF. AFTER ACTION MISSION REPORT: Classified WACF. SOCWA-C Eyes Only. Encryption: #1-8-9-2-TANGO-1-0-2. OPERATIONAL PROTOCOL: Search & Rescue. Target Secured. Mission Status: CLOSED. As the bolded portion of the text indicates, the "Player" character that we controlled all through the game has been dead this entire time. If you want to read the full set of mission text feel free to do so, posting it here would make a big post overly huge. The gist of it, though, is that Taylor and Hendricks had to track down a different team of their friends before Taylor was given the ol' Robocop treatment. The campaign is sort of an origin story on how Taylor ended up with his robot limbs as the "real world" events largely followed the events in the campaign with a different cast of characters. So why did the Player and Hendricks have to relive the past in the first place? The explanation for all this is Corvus. Corvus had lain dormant in the DNI software for years until the Player began to die. Their pain and suffering somehow re-awoke him and caused him to spread to Taylor, Hall, Maretti and Hendricks. Why the campaign happens the way it does is really not explained too well. The major theory I've seen is that Corvus was trying to save the Player, or at least their consciousness. I don't really buy that for what we saw Corvus do at the end of the game. I think that Corvus wanted to discover his purpose all along but in his awoken state couldn't just access information from DNIs. Instead he pulled the relevant players; Hall, Maretti, Diaz, Taylor and Hendricks into a simulation and made the Player part of it to try and figure out where he came from and what the Frozen Forest was. This effort lead to the relation that there was one person who could answer everything: Sebastian Kruger. If Corvus could interface with him he, as the last surviving member of Corvus' namesake project, could explain where he came from and what he was meant to do. The reason I think Corvus couldn't just access any memories he wanted to was because Kruger was there when the Player got outfitted with a DNI:  And that's Kane and a frozen forest with a raven in the background on the wall. Yeah, the game isn't subtle in retrospect. Actually, it isn't at all loving subtitle considering the scarf Kane leaves in the hospital room before we assault Zurich is the one Taylor is wearing in the first episode:   "BUT WAIT!" You yell to no one in particular because anyone with sense has run far, far away while you read all of this out loud. "What about Hendricks going crazy and all that stuff at the end?" Good question. After we defeated Taylor's Mothership he knifed out his DNI like a hardcore motherfucker (despite having robot arms that could have probably done the job cleaner), and then Hendricks shot him. In essence he had been removed from the simulation before he could be fully corrupted by Corvus, either when he removed his DNI or when Hendricks shot him. In doing so he stuck around in Corvus' collected memories as the Taylor we fight alongside in the last mission; someone able to rage against the machine alongside us. However, in pulling himself out of the simulation Taylor also ended up giving up his control of his own body. Meanwhile, Hendricks had been fully corrupted and was basically a Corvus avatar for the last level. The Player controls Taylor in the real world for the last mission until the DNI purge has completed as the DNI is so integral to who Taylor is that it can override his own memories. Once the Swiss guy asks us who we are the Purge has finished and Taylor no longer has to deal with the influence of the Player, his former squad or Corvus, he's just Taylor again. So how crazy is all that? It's pretty bonkers.
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Nov 26, 2016 02:32
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That was an incredibly hamfisted "it was all just a dream!" story. I think I'd need to watch all that one more time to put the pieces together and see what you're talking about, but seriously, would you want to sit though that all over again after just finishing it? They should really just stick to their pulpy political thriller plot lines...
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Nov 26, 2016 03:28
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No, you guys have got it all wrong. The explaination is simple - Nanomachines __________________________ ______________________________ _________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ _____________________________ ________________________ __________________ ________________________________ ________________________________________ ______________________ __________________________________________________ ______________________________
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Nov 26, 2016 03:30
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Lazyfire posted:So how crazy is all that? It's pretty bonkers. I was expecting something like that, unfortunately. I knew a Call of Duty game with the option for a female protagonist and a queer romantic relationship was too much to hope for.
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Nov 26, 2016 03:42
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Psychotic Weasel posted:but seriously, would you want to sit though that all over again after just finishing it? Homie, I played this twice all the way through. And did a couple missions over a few times. This is a weird question to ask me.
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Nov 26, 2016 04:04
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Good to see they learned from Black Ops II when they blatantly gave away in the very first mission that the speaker you couldn't even loving understand over the lovely 80s radio was Kravchenko because they couldn't be assed to make an "unidentified" name to attribute a single line of dialogue to.
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Nov 26, 2016 04:52
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IMHO the player's consciousness was transferred to Taylor's DNI during the operation to save their life, the real player we played as in the first mission then died on the operating table, and the player had a Corvus-influenced fever dream until the last level, reliving remixed versions of Taylor's previous missions in life (as recounted by the pre-mission texts). In the last mission Corvus' infection becomes critical and leads Taylor to Zurich. Taylor is actually the one to put a gun in his mouth but you perceive it as your own action in the same way you experienced yourself in Taylor's past missions. You're both merged into Corvus' dream world in his DNI after that happens. Taylor holds off Corvus while you take over his body in the real world to purge the system of Corvus. Since Taylor's consciousness still exists in his brain and you and Corvus only exist in the DNI, the last thing you do before you're deleted and return the body to Taylor is to identify yourself as him to the soldier at the end. 
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Nov 26, 2016 05:15
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This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!
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So when the "player" was in the hospital bed before the start of Zurich, that was the real world? Everything before that, except for the very first mission and probably the training with Taylor and his team, was the "dream" as created by Corvus?
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Nov 26, 2016 06:18
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Kibayasu posted:So when the "player" was in the hospital bed before the start of Zurich, that was the real world? Everything before that, except for the very first mission and probably the training with Taylor and his team, was the "dream" as created by Corvus? If Corvus is even real, and it's not just the project name being put into a bizarre brain-death fever dream caused by a DNI backup mixed with Taylor's memories bleeding over.
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Nov 26, 2016 07:12
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Kibayasu posted:So when the "player" was in the hospital bed before the start of Zurich, that was the real world? Everything before that, except for the very first mission and probably the training with Taylor and his team, was the "dream" as created by Corvus? The scene with Kane in the hospital right before the last mission was still part of Taylor's dream. He had mentioned that he and Rachel didn't work out as a couple and that scene where she left the scarf is their breakup right before Taylor got his DNI and robot limbs after being hosed up by the Mothership. The only missions where you play as the Player in the real world are the opening mission and the last mission, everything else is a simulation or a retread of Taylor's memories.
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Nov 26, 2016 16:24
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So... how much of what happened in the last level really happened? Did Kane really die? When did Hendricks really get infected if his infection came later than Taylor and the others? Was Hendricks actually there in Zurich, or did we imagine him as an embodiment of Corvus's actions as he stomped through Zurich? marshmallow creep fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Nov 27, 2016 |
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Nov 27, 2016 19:10
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They designed the set-pieces for the missions first then tried to crowbar a story that would fit them, didn't they?
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Nov 27, 2016 19:10
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"Uh, it was all a dream!" is a classic asspull when the story wouldn't work otherwise, yeah. Why even have this twist? How does this improve the game or the story other than to say "What a twist!?" marshmallow creep fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Nov 27, 2016 |
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Nov 27, 2016 19:13
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I'm confused. In general I'll be honest but just to try and clear one point up, if you only play the player in the first and last mission, are we counting the last mission as from Zurich or the frozen forest? I presume it's the latter and that the first mission is the player as a live person and the last mission is as a digital construct?
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Nov 27, 2016 20:04
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Well technically the last minute or two of the last mission is real. The frozen forest and (IMO) everything in the last level up to putting the gun in your mouth was just a twisted digital reflection of what Taylor was doing in the real world, kinda like how most the missions were remixed memories of missions Taylor had been on IRL. If the vast majority of the game was just a computerized dream then who knows what the actual timeline between the real you dying in mission #1 and the battle in Zurich actually is. Your presence in Taylor's DNI awakening Corvus could've made him go to Zurich the very next day or lain dormant for years as you and it slowed dreamt your way into self-awareness. What I'm saying is, this is what happens when you don't defrag your hard drives regularly.
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Nov 27, 2016 20:22
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also way back at the very start of this thread I sent Lazyfire a PM asking about how to best make a Suffer With Me build, because if there's one thing he and I understand, it's that I will never, ever, ever be forgiven for that Chicom/Executioner loadout.quote:of course considering the game, I'd want to name it Suffer With Taylor, but enormous spoilers seems somewhat rude What could've been, what could've been... 
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Nov 27, 2016 23:25
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I'm not even convinced the last level happened. The entire thing could just be the player having a dying dream caused by linking with Taylor's DNI. Corvus may well have never existed and is just a figment of the player's mind collapsing.
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Nov 27, 2016 23:33
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You were a bland, gruff-voiced, white male FPS protagonist all along.
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Nov 27, 2016 23:36
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Teledahn posted:They designed the set-pieces for the missions first then tried to crowbar a story that would fit them, didn't they? Certainly seems that way. Thanks for the LP, Lazyfire.
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Nov 27, 2016 23:48
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megane posted:You were a bland, gruff-voiced, white male FPS protagonist all along. But in the body of a bland, jennifer hale-voiced, white female FPS protagonist! #incrementalism #imwithher
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Nov 28, 2016 00:07
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I have to admit I was kind of intrigued by the make your own character aspects of it, which makes this ending just that much more disappointing. I knew something was weird when we were suddenly romantically linked with Kane, but I thought it was just abrupt because they were barrelling to the finish line and were trying to raise the stakes.
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Nov 28, 2016 02:06
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Teledahn posted:They designed the set-pieces for the missions first then tried to crowbar a story that would fit them, didn't they? That's literally what Respawn did for Titanfall 2, and Titanfall 2 loving owns, so that's not an excuse 
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Nov 28, 2016 03:14
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marshmallow creep posted:I have to admit I was kind of intrigued by the make your own character aspects of it, which makes this ending just that much more disappointing. I knew something was weird when we were suddenly romantically linked with Kane, but I thought it was just abrupt because they were barrelling to the finish line and were trying to raise the stakes. I was all confused when you got to pick a character at the start as well. Then it turns out that you were just a blank slate anyway. When I first beat the game and experienced the "Taylor" answer at the end I went looking for explanations of what the hell had happened and there were a lot of uneducated guesses out there at the time. I think my favorite was that the entire campaign wasn't Taylor's memories being rehashed, but an Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge style dying dream of the Player character. It would make far more sense on almost every level to just have it be that instead of what it was. You could also basically say nothing really happened in the BLOPS III world and start from scratch in the next game. I do get the feeling, however, that Black Ops as a CoD franchise is kind of over. At this point all of the CoD games are set in the future with almost identical player abilities and controls and it doesn't really fit well into Black Ops's themes and history very well. Infinity Ward made a brand new CoD branch to incorporate those ideas (because no one liked Ghosts), Advanced Warfare is its own thing that more or less kicked this off, and that leaves Black Ops as the odd man out; a legacy CoD franchise when the other titles have moved on. I'll be interested to see how Treyarch approaches the next game, whether they double down on the boost jumping and powersliding or if they just go off and do something really different. History suggests they'll follow whatever the trend is in CoD instead of making it themselves.
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Nov 28, 2016 03:24
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My dream CoD game is one that starts in WW2 and continues into the Cold War, Modern Warfare, and Future Warfare with some overarching narrative connecting all those time frames. Like, you play as a Special Forces Person doing Black Ops stuff in WW2 against some Nazi Task Force that survives the war and continues to operate in the shadows. And in each of the time periods you play at the Descendants of the WW2 person. And multiplayer is a poo poo storm where you can use any gun from the M1 Garand to the Man O War.
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Nov 28, 2016 04:16
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CoD The Crimean War. Beat Battlefield 1 at its own game.
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Nov 28, 2016 04:44
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"Its not all a dream! Its not all a dream!" I say as I transform into a corncob.SgtSteel91 posted:My dream CoD game is one that starts in WW2 and continues into the Cold War, Modern Warfare, and Future Warfare with some overarching narrative connecting all those time frames. So like an expanded version of blops II?
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Nov 28, 2016 05:48
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 Hey, look, the Dead Ops Arcade II video I promised back at the start of the LP. And just two weeks after the LP proper finished! I touch on it in the video, but life is a bit more hectic right now due to a number of factors and so I had to just about plan out when to record this as I may have around 30 minutes during the week to play games as of late. I really like twin stick shooters and Dead Ops Arcade II is a pretty solid one all things told. It's a shame it's hidden away in the extras menu along with the Free Running mode and the Nightmares campaign re-imagining (it's just the normal levels with zombies and a different storyline). When I did the first Black Ops the Dead Ops Arcade video was something of a wind down from the rest of the LP and gave me a chance to explain what happened and why, so I thought it could serve the same purpose with this LP. Too bad my thoughts are disjointed as hell (and I did that commentary after the fact instead of live which helped keep things coherent). I guess the basics are that BLOPS III is a pretty decent title even if I'm not in love with Future COD and that it did a pretty decent job of giving the players choices despite ripping the multiple endings idea out after the last game left them unable to really continue the story. One thing I didn't mention was how appreciative I was that they removed the Commander missions from this game. They were a nice idea in BLOPS II, but the execution was so bad that getting the best ending was something of a struggle because of them. Also Battlefield 1. Something soon on that front (haha, because WWI).
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Dec 10, 2016 03:24
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