|
Regarding that "scandal" Polygon whined about with sneaking up on the wife, I remember wondering if they thought it would have been better to use the brand button instead of attack and have Talion grab his wife's face and scream "I
|
#
?
Mar 24, 2015 04:55
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 21, 2024 04:49 |
|
|
Lazyfire posted:Shield captains that can block a vault and also don't get Wraith Stunned can be hard. When they are combat masters who also have an immunity to projectiles you may as well run away for a while. The game is amazing at coming up with combinations like that towards the end. Yeah there's a like pseudo DLC quest I ran into in my first 1-2 hours of playing which was a Vault immune Shield captain who just shows up and that spoiled me on the game for a whole day.
|
|
#
?
Mar 24, 2015 05:12
|
|
|
I just picked up this game in the last week. One of my favorite things is that the Captains are out and about in the open world. I would be putzing around in the game, just killing random orcs. See some lone orc hanging out by the fire, jump on him, and then I'm shocked when he blocks it and throws me off. He was a captain I had no intel on. It's little things like that which make the game really fun. The only down side so far is the inability to auto-restart missions sometimes. Horrible choice.
|
|
#
?
Mar 24, 2015 05:33
|
|
|
syzpid posted:I just picked up this game in the last week. One of my favorite things is that the Captains are out and about in the open world. I would be putzing around in the game, just killing random orcs. See some lone orc hanging out by the fire, jump on him, and then I'm shocked when he blocks it and throws me off. He was a captain I had no intel on. It's little things like that which make the game really fun. Of course, there's the other version I experienced, where the "random orc" I shanked to get out of my way one time turned out to be a Captain with a vulnerability to stealth kills. I started laughing when I got the name crossing off on my screen.
|
|
#
?
Mar 24, 2015 06:13
|
|
|
syzpid posted:I just picked up this game in the last week. One of my favorite things is that the Captains are out and about in the open world. I would be putzing around in the game, just killing random orcs. See some lone orc hanging out by the fire, jump on him, and then I'm shocked when he blocks it and throws me off. He was a captain I had no intel on. It's little things like that which make the game really fun. There's a trait that captains can get that allows them to just randomly show up at any point in time when you're in combat and low on health. I had three of them train in on me one after another while I was trying to take out a completely unrelated general halfway across the map. It was pretty hilarious just due to the absurdity.
|
|
#
?
Mar 24, 2015 06:58
|
|
|
Kurieg posted:There's a trait that captains can get that allows them to just randomly show up at any point in time when you're in combat and low on health. Yeahhhhh, that one can get hilarious AND frustrating. Depending on the time. I remember the time I went after a Warlord with 2 Captain Bodyguard in a Stronghold. Did you know that trait doesn't get replaced when a Captain gets promoted to Warlord? Let's just say I ended up playing Hide and Seek with 5 Captains and 3 Warlords.
|
|
#
?
Mar 24, 2015 07:05
|
|
|
MadDogMike posted:Of course, there's the other version I experienced, where the "random orc" I shanked to get out of my way one time turned out to be a Captain with a vulnerability to stealth kills. I started laughing when I got the name crossing off on my screen. This literally happens in the middle of the second video. Because that second episode is so long I'm probably going to provide an annotation to the end of the episode where I cover our current captain layout so people can start suggesting ideas for who to help and who to eliminate.
|
|
#
?
Mar 24, 2015 09:10
|
|
|
It looks like Direct2Drive has the game on sale for $33 right now and it still sells for about $50, so it's a pretty decent deal if you were on the fence about the game.
|
|
#
?
Mar 24, 2015 22:46
|
|
|
I'm bored, lets have a TOLKIEN HISTORY LESSON! The Kingdom of Gondor  Gondor's history dates back to near the end of the second age when the Númenóreans established a number of colonies along the south coast of Middle-Earth. All you really need to know about Númenor right now is that they hosed up and the survivors ended up taking permanent refuge in these colonies. Their leaders were Isildur and Anárion, whose dad, Elendil, ended up landing further north. The brothers took control of these colonies and established Gondor as an actual kingdom. Their dad did the same thing in the north, establishing the kingdom of Arnor and eventually became the high-king of both nations. For the next 100 years or so things went more-or-less ok, but then Sauron go back Elendil and his Elf buddies get together and decide to do something about that Sauron problem. Elendil and his Elf buddies lay siege to Mordor. Rocks fall, Anárion dies. Sauron gets tag-teamed by pretty much everyone, kills Elendil and his Elf buddies, then gets some fingers cut off and "dies". Anyway after all that went down, Isildur was left as more-or-less the main heir of everything. There were other claimants to the throne however, and so he left control of Gondor in the hands of Anárion's son before headed north to Arnor along with his three oldest sons.  It uh... It didn't end well. Rise and Fall For the next 1500 years Gondor steadily expanded it's borders. At the hight of it's power it controlled pretty much everything from the north borders of Rohan all the way down to Umbar in the south. The kingdoms wealth and power was so great that they pretty much considered themselves invincible, which is right around the point when things started going downhill. You see, one of the kings of Gondor ended up falling in love with a woman from what would eventually become modern Rohan. Under any other circumstances this wouldn't have been a problem, but the hardline Númenóreans weren't too happy about their bloodline getting "diluted". When his son took the throne, these hardliners promptly declared open rebellion and this led to the Kin-Strife, in which a whole ton of people got killed and Umbar declared independence from Gondor. Coincedentially, the guy who led the rebels was named Castamir. I think they ended up writing a song about him.  Anyway just as Gondor was starting to recover from the Kin-Strife, they got hit by the All throughout this period, Gondor's noble bloodlines had been steadily dying out. This included the king's bloodline, which eventually failed completely, leaving Gondor a kingdom without a king. The stewards took over and essentially became monarch's in all but name, but they always refused the title of king, instead swearing an oath to only rule until the king "returned". This became something of a running theme with Gondor, always pining for the glory days of old when the king still ruled, their armies were strong, and their lifespans lasted for longer than a century. The Kings of Gondor Gondor had a lot of rulers of varying relevance to the plot. Here's a list of some of the more notable ones (re: the ones that got more than one line in the appendices): Elendil -See above. Ruled as High-King of both Arnor and Gondor, died at the hands of Sauron, had a really nice sword. Anárion -First king of Gondor, co-ruler with Isildur, died because someone threw a rock at him, no really. Isildur -See above, co-ruler with Anárion, later sole ruler, eventually went north to take over Arnor. Unfortunately magic rings don't make you bullet/arrow proof. The Four Ship-Kings (Tarannon Falastur, Eärnil I, Ciryandil, Hyarmendacil I) -Four kings of Gondor who greatly expanded the kingdom's territory though exploration and military conquest. Most ended up dying/getting hosed over by Umbar until Hyarmendacil I annexed it completely. Under their rule, Gondor reached the apex of it's power. Valacar -The guy who ended up marrying the Rhovanion woman, leading to major civil strife. Eldacar -Valacar's son, half Rhovanion which didn't go over well with the purists. Ended up getting deposed and sent into exile before taking over again a few years later. Castamir -His rain was brief and terrible. Eärnur -Who's main contributions to Gondor included getting double-dog-dared into fighting the Witch-King one-one-one and leaving stweardship of the throne to a guy called Mardil before getting his dumb rear end killed by a Ringwraith. Last king of Gondor for about 1000 years. Anyways I think that'll wrap for today's history lesson. Bonus points to anyone who can tell me where the original capitol of Gondor was located! I'm pretty much going off memory and whatever I can find on Wikipedia so if I missed anything important or mixed up the facts feel free to correct me! Edit:VVV Give the man a prize! MechanicalTomPetty fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Mar 25, 2015 |
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 00:40
|
|
|
I'll take those points! The original capital of Gondor was Osgiliath, the river-spanning city which is only seen as a war-shredded rubble ruin in the books/movies.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 00:47
|
|
|
Mzbundifund posted:I'll take those points! The original capital of Gondor was Osgiliath, the river-spanning city which is only seen as a war-shredded rubble ruin in the books/movies. If that was one of the core cities, why was it abandoned?
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 00:55
|
|
|
whowhatwhere posted:If that was one of the core cities, why was it abandoned? Kin-Strife hosed it up, Great Plague killed pretty much everyone and then it was left to rot until the orcs finished off whoever was left.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 01:10
|
|
|
LOTR lore always interests me, but for gently caress's sake I cannot read the Simillarion. I hope you talk about dragons, despite them never showing up in the game, and how Smaug was extremely small and weak by dragon standards. The only reason he was even a threat was because Third Age humans were also much smaller and weaker than their ancestors.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 01:30
|
|
|
kalonZombie posted:LOTR lore always interests me, but for gently caress's sake I cannot read the Simillarion. I had an audio version of the Simillarion, and it was great for my hour plus trips on mass transit. It had a tendency to put me to sleep, but I listened to it so many times that I eventually pieced together the whole story. Basically it's a great way to get to sleep, and sometimes an interesting story.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 01:43
|
|
|
Pro-tip: read everything involving Feanor and his direct relatives. The rest is about half genealogies and a quarter bad romance, but that stuff is insanely metal.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 02:19
|
|
|
I'm all for the Middle Earth history stuff, by the way, so feel free to keep going about relevant topics people like me who only saw the movies would have no idea about. Just don't be this guy while you do it (Spoilers in the link) One thing that needs to be talked about is the weirdness around this game's title. It's officially "Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor" which you would think is a weird move because the Lord of the Rings title is way better known and the game very clearly draws a ton of visual influence from the film trilogy. The game takes place between the Hobbit and the start of Fellowship of the Ring, so neither film series or book would be a great identifier. According to a Monolith employee (more spoilers) the game identifies as "Middle-Earth" because it wants to get some daylight between it and the films. Despite this, Monolith had some pretty deep conversations with Peter Jackson's Weta Workshop to get the "feel" of the movies down. If I had to guess, I think WB was trying to distance itself from the Peter Jackson films considering the backlash of the Hobbit becoming a 9 hour long trilogy despite being based on a book that Amazon tells me takes 322 pages on the Kindle, so like maybe ten pages of actual rear end paper. People are also getting tired of the Lord of the Rings poo poo after a decade of it being around. We've had the chance to explore Middle Earth in two movie tie-in games, War in the North, The Third Age, that game Pandemic made that was Star Wars Battlefront but in Lord of the Rings, two Battle for Middle Earth games and a bunch of stuff I'm forgetting that was not worth remembering. If you were launching a new franchise in the Lord of the Rings universe would you want to tie in heavily with the movies like all those titles and be rejected out of hand for being "another" LoTR game? Probably not. Doesn't stop Gollum from showing up, though.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 02:50
|
|
|
Battle for Middle Earth 1 and 2 and the Expansions was also a thing. The third age was Hilarious. You are Gandalf's B team on a quest to catch up to the Fellowship. And then you poke Sauron in the eye as the last boss (literally... you're on top of the tower stabbing his glowing fiery iris)
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 03:52
|
|
|
Lazyfire posted:One thing that needs to be talked about is the weirdness around this game's title. It's officially "Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor" which you would think is a weird move because the Lord of the Rings title is way better known and the game very clearly draws a ton of visual influence from the film trilogy. The game takes place between the Hobbit and the start of Fellowship of the Ring, so neither film series or book would be a great identifier. According to a Monolith employee (more spoilers) the game identifies as "Middle-Earth" because it wants to get some daylight between it and the films. Despite this, Monolith had some pretty deep conversations with Peter Jackson's Weta Workshop to get the "feel" of the movies down. If I had to guess, I think WB was trying to distance itself from the Peter Jackson films considering the backlash of the Hobbit becoming a 9 hour long trilogy despite being based on a book that Amazon tells me takes 322 pages on the Kindle, so like maybe ten pages of actual rear end paper. People are also getting tired of the Lord of the Rings poo poo after a decade of it being around. We've had the chance to explore Middle Earth in two movie tie-in games, War in the North, The Third Age, that game Pandemic made that was Star Wars Battlefront but in Lord of the Rings, two Battle for Middle Earth games and a bunch of stuff I'm forgetting that was not worth remembering. If you were launching a new franchise in the Lord of the Rings universe would you want to tie in heavily with the movies like all those titles and be rejected out of hand for being "another" LoTR game? Probably not. Doesn't stop Gollum from showing up, though. Without spoiling too much, I will say that Monolith does a good job of not aping too much from the movies. Like the aesthetic is clearly there, but at the same time you can tell they've at least glanced at the Silmarillion. There's quite a few references to stuff that happened in Akallabeth for example. There seems to have been a conscious effort to blend elements of the books and the movies together while still leaving enough room to do it's own thing. Overall I think the end result looks pretty good, even if the writing sometimes leaves something to be desired. A good example of this would be the Rangers of the Black Gate themselves (that is, the guys Talion was working with until an army of Orcs got shoved up their collective asses). Gondor did "set a watch upon" Mordor after the War of the Last Alliance, and they did loose control of the Black Gate... about a thousand years before the book even began. The Orcs quite literally walked into Mordor. So in short, Talions entire existence is half made-up bullshit and half slightly-less-made-up bullshit. That's going to be a bit of a running theme throughout the game. More importantly, who loving cares. It's a video game, and a really good one at that. If I wanted a good video game plot, I'd fire up Mask of the Betrayer again. I don't exacly expect quality writing from the guys who brought us F.E.A.R. Edit: Calax posted:Battle for Middle Earth 1 and 2 and the Expansions was also a thing. BFME was great because it let you just straight-up play as Sauron. You got to systematically crush the last rays of hope out of Middle-Earth one mission at a time! There was a whole mission dedicated to sacking the poo poo out of Edoras. I don't think you even really fought anyone, you just had to burn every building on the map. And I really hope someone LP's Third Age one day because man, if you think this game gets silly with the lore... MechanicalTomPetty fucked around with this message at 04:11 on Mar 25, 2015 |
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 04:03
|
|
|
As a protagonist, Talion is pretty uninteresting. He's a generic gruff man out to avenge his family. The wraith's voice acting isn't bad though, and salvages a lot of the mediocre plot. I suppose Talion is believable as far as Middle-Earth Lore is concerned, but the game knows it's not canon so it's most fun to just watch where the madness goes. What the game is GREAT at is Orc Politics Simulator 2014, and it actually gets the prime goal of the open-world game format correct, which is to make running around the open-world the main attraction.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 04:32
|
|
|
Baker does a pretty good job as Talion, all things considered. It wasn't until a line later in the game where he screams something that I was actually able to tell it was him. Willingham and Baily are a lot more obvious with their voices but they're also in the game for a much shorter time frame.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 05:28
|
|
|
kalonZombie posted:LOTR lore always interests me, but for gently caress's sake I cannot read the Simillarion. http://www.sauronsblog.com/ is always a good read, although I think he stopped updating around the time the rings of power were forged.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 05:41
|
|
|
I absolutely loved playing this game, and wasted so many hours just playing with the nemesis system. It really says something about a game when you can start it up with the full intention of progressing the story, and instead just end up playing Orc Politics simulator for 3 hours, yet still feel just as satisfied with the session.Lazyfire posted:Until the thread decides on how to deal with a particular Captain I'll keep them alive if I can. You can't really take one off the board for good unless you cut off their head or burn them to death or something. Lazyfire posted:Shield captains that can block a vault and also don't get Wraith Stunned can be hard. When they are combat masters who also have an immunity to projectiles you may as well run away for a while. The game is amazing at coming up with combinations like that towards the end. I have some very vivid memories of captains like this, but that's one of the wonderful things about the game, especially when you've been playing so long that you can pretty much walk into any pack of orcs as the physical incarnation of violent death. There's always ways to kill them (those specific shield captains that you reference can be made far easier by wraith charging them to break the shield and abusing flurry mechanics, or just jumping on the largest monster in the wilds, and running it over to eat them up) you just have to get creative sometimes. MoadDib fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Mar 25, 2015 |
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 17:00
|
|
|
Kurieg posted:Baker does a pretty good job as Talion, all things considered. It wasn't until a line later in the game where he screams something that I was actually able to tell it was him. Man, that guy's voice is magic. He seriously has the most range of any voice actor I know of. I've put dozens of hours into this game and didn't recognize.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 17:06
|
|
|
From my limited understanding of Tolkien, Shadow of Mordor's treatment of canon is basically a shrug. It's built as an awesome game first and something that neatly slots into the history of Middle Earth second.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 17:52
|
|
|
Everything I've heard about the Nemesis System and all basically says to me that's where their real effort went and where they intended the real 'story' to be. A stabbing eye level Orc Crusader Kings as the weird deathless outsider who meddles. I'm down for that.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 18:00
|
|
|
The problem with story in a game like Shadow of Mordor is that you already know how the main story goes. Frodo does a thing with a thing, Aragorn gets a new hat, and all the elves go away. So you're always going to be the guy who is running around and not killing Sauron, which means whatever you are doing is going to feel kind of unimportant, since the audience knows the main conflict is going to be resolved without you being a factor at all. That said, I think the story gets a little too harshly criticized. Talion isn't exactly the Third Street Saints boss, but what do you want from him? Motherfucker is in the middle of Mordor. There's not a lot else to do there but kill orcs.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 18:15
|
|
|
I'm not upset at all about it. On the contrary, I appreciate that Talion doesn't let his personal drama get in the way of my desire to stab many many orcs.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 20:37
|
|
|
This looks to be an interesting game. There is one thing I'm wondering: can you control a warchief?
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 20:45
|
|
|
I... I might need to buy this. I never even heard of it. And you're mixing the stealth and open world of Assassin's Creed with the combat of the Arkham games? gently caress yes! Between this and the Alien: Isolation LP, I've got some more games to buy and play.Gothsheep posted:The problem with story in a game like Shadow of Mordor is that you already know how the main story goes. Frodo does a thing with a thing, Aragorn gets a new hat, and all the elves go away. So you're always going to be the guy who is running around and not killing Sauron, which means whatever you are doing is going to feel kind of unimportant, since the audience knows the main conflict is going to be resolved without you being a factor at all. I once played in a LotR PnP RPG ( how many acronyms can I fit into one sentence?), where we explored Moria, and ended up driving the Balrog back into the pits so that it stayed there until Gandalf could kick its shadow-and-flame rear end straight to whatever passes for an afterlife for evil Mayar (I think that's the term?). It made us feel good about the fact that we made a difference, even though we knew we wouldn't deal the final blow, and even though we all died horribly (Balrogs have a tendency to do that to people).Mzbundifund posted:[...]the game knows it's not canon[...] I really appreciate this. The whole concept really feels like something really cool for a fantasy setting, but something completely out of place for LotR. A human stuck between life and death, channeling the amnesiac ghost of an elf to obtain crazy-rear end magic powers that are ridiculously flashy compared to every other piece of magic in the franchise, would work wonderfully in another setting. It just... doesn't fit the setting it's licensed for. This isn't actually me trying to bash the game, it looks really good, I'm just glad it lets itself play creative liberties in general, rather than trying to fit that one weird thing in with an otherwise "canonical" story. Edit: After looking some stuff up, it looks like the PS3 version (the version I'd need to get) has some terrible reviews. Anyone have experience with that version? azren fucked around with this message at 21:24 on Mar 25, 2015 |
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 21:21
|
|
|
azren posted:Edit: After looking some stuff up, it looks like the PS3 version (the version I'd need to get) has some terrible reviews. Anyone have experience with that version? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92WhvpMzkGY (some early mission spoilers in video if you care about that sort of thing) I can't believe they even released that. Holy gently caress. DMorbid fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Mar 25, 2015 |
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 21:39
|
|
|
Doc Morbid posted:Do NOT buy the PS3 version. The whole nemesis/ork politics system has been gutted, and the game runs like absolute poo poo. I'm talking 10-20 fps, with drops to even lower frame rates when there's things happening. Get a current gen console or half-decent PC (this apparently runs okay on any PC that was built in the last five years).  I've been playing it on the PS4 and I'm constantly surprised at how good it looks. How is that even the same game?
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 21:50
|
|
|
Ten-year-old hardware with piddly amounts of RAM will do that, along with an  port job. Gotta squeeze every last drop of blood from that last-gen stone, you know.The 360 version is slightly better in that the frame rates aren't quite as horrible, but it's still a crippled port and should be avoided.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 21:56
|
|
|
Mraagvpeine posted:This looks to be an interesting game. There is one thing I'm wondering: can you control a warchief? Eventually, you can brand one, giving you the ability to order him around to take out other chiefs or fight captains you don't control.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 22:29
|
|
|
Which leads me to wonder if you could just brand ALL of the Orc Captains and become the shadow ruler of Mordor?
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 22:45
|
|
|
Keeshhound posted:Which leads me to wonder if you could just brand ALL of the Orc Captains and become the shadow ruler of Mordor? Yes, but then the game gets really boring actually.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 22:49
|
|
|
Keeshhound posted:Which leads me to wonder if you could just brand ALL of the Orc Captains and become the shadow ruler of Mordor? Literally a thing you can do. However, as a rule of thumb for the LP, I won't be doing this as it would take a ton of the excitement out of the game. Anyway, here's the first "Short" video of the thread. I'll try to do these as often as I have footage to use of unique or weird stuff happening. This time around I toss orcs into fire for fun and profit.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 22:49
|
|
|
Little known fact: orcs are 5% kerosene by mass.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 22:51
|
|
|
And that's not even the best thing you can do with fires.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 22:53
|
|
|
As much poo poo as Lazyfire gives the Wraith skill tree, there is one VERY IMPORTANT SKILL in it involving fire. I would even call it one of the best skills in the game. But I'm sure he'll show that off. (hell he already tried to once)
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 23:42
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 21, 2024 04:49 |
|
|
kalonZombie posted:As much poo poo as Lazyfire gives the Wraith skill tree, there is one VERY IMPORTANT SKILL in it involving fire. I would even call it one of the best skills in the game.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 23:46
|
|