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Amazing writeup, thank you for sharing. May Lieutenant Supreme Commander of the Galaxy finally be at peace with herself
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Jun 27, 2022 22:24
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Just watched a bit of a longplay of this game, and given how every male character has spoken to her so far, I really can't blame her for being pissed off all the time.
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Jun 28, 2022 00:12
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Traffic department was an insane game and I just couldn't stop playing to see how ridiculous it would get next.
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Jul 2, 2022 17:17
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I need to check that one. I'm pretty sure that I've played the shareware version in the ... early 90s? The dialog cutscenes and the few gameplay minutes I've seen with the overhead sci fi city streets, all that tickles some deep memory in my brain. It's a really weird feeling. So, thank you for digging that one up.
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Jul 4, 2022 08:57
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This is a post about a great game that no one played, on a great system that no one played. This is a post about Soul Sacrifice for the PlayStation Vita. Soul Sacrifice was the brainchild of Keiji Inafune of Megaman fame, and was originally published by Capcom for the Vita in 2013; a year later, a greatly improved and expanded version of the game called Soul Sacrifice Delta was released. Delta contained all of the original game’s content, as well as a crapload of all new content, mechanical tweaks, and more. I’ll be referring exclusively to Delta throughout this post. Soul Sacrifice is, at its core, a game of the “hunting” genre established by Monster Hunter, and expanded and imitated by games like Toukiden, Dauntless, God Eater, and others (for some reason, the Vita seems to have had a shitload of games of this genre, including the also excellent Freedom Wars which probably deserves its own post). Unlike most of these games, however, which took very strong cues from Monster Hunter and its equipment/weapon based grinding, Soul Sacrifice does away with physical equipment and attacks entirely. Instead of weapons, players use magical spells (each character has six spell slots which they can fill with whichever of the games hundreds of spells they choose); instead of armor, players carve magical sigils into their right arms, which become increasingly corrupted and strange looking the more powerful a sorcerer gets.  Soul Sacrifice has some of the most byzantine, grotesque and yet awesome aesthetic design of any game I’ve played. When Elden Ring recently came out, certain aspects of its decaying fantasy world reminded me strongly of Soul Sacrifice. Everything in Soul Sacrifice’s bizarre fantasy/fairy tale world feels twisted and disgusting in its own particular way. Animals and humans who have succumbed to various forms of corruption (greed, envy, etc) turn into bloated monsters, the dispatching of which falls to our player character sorcerers; who themselves must also worry about becoming too corrupt and turning into fiends. Soul Sacrifice’s story is told through narrated, vaguely animated cutscenes that remind me in some ways of Lost Odyssey’s Thousand Years of Dreams. The player character starts the game as a captive of a powerful sorcerer named Magusar, whose only cellmate is a talkative, flesh-bound book named Librom. Through interacting with Librom, the player character relives the travels and deeds of Magusar in an attempt to eventually destroy him and his crushing grip on reality. The various tales you work through are surprisingly interesting and occasionally touching, especially for a hunting game.  one of the things I really like about SS is the fact that you can make your PC look as grotesque/ethereal as any of the fiends Soul Sacrifice’s story, mechanics and aesthetics were all pretty singular and made the game unique; but where the game really excelled was in its four player coop gameplay. Not only did the game feature certain spells that played well off each other (for instance, you could turn yourself into a boulder, and your buddy could turn his arm into a giant stone fist and then punch your boulder rear end, sending you careening across the ground into a boss and doing significant damage), but with regards to death as well. Killing enemies gives you the option to either sacrifice their soul, which replenishes spell charges (instead of MP any given spell has a set number of charges), while saving their soul will heal you. This mechanic extends to co op as well; when your friends die in multiplayer, you can, of course, resurrect them at the cost of a portion of your health; however, you can also choose to sacrifice them, which will permanently kill them while unleashing a super powerful spell that can bind or damage bosses in ways normal magic cannot. Dead players continue to exist in a given mission as ghosts, and are able to use certain weak magic spells pulled from the environment as well as buff players/ debuff enemies by tapping them on the touchscreen. Ghosts also can see the health of a boss at all times, which is not possible for living players. In addition to sacrificing other players, each player also has a “black rite” spell which they can use only once per mission, is super powerful, and leaves the sorcerer with an extreme debuff after it is used. A good example of one of these black rites is Excalibur, in which the sorcerer pulls out their own spine and entrails through their mouth to use as an incredibly powerful sword until they die from the trauma a short time later.    There’s so much poo poo I haven’t even touched on about Soul Sacrifice that is awesome, like the character customization, the faction allegiances and mechanical chages that go with them, riding the teapot through Alice’s Infinite Dungeon, the tie in with Arthurian legends, not to mention the wide variety of creative magic spells available to players. It's a game that is unlike anything that has become before or since, and I desperately wish it would get the kind of rerelease on home consoles that it deserves.   this aesthetic remind you of any recent, massively successful rpgs? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhQCAQZSs14 free hubcaps fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Jul 4, 2022 |
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Jul 4, 2022 19:38
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gonna take a post I made about the music(which had since been ruined by the youtube links breaking) and add to it, but one of my favorite games of all time was Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinistrals for the SNES.    A classic JRPG, it is the prequel to Lufia 1. In fact, this game has already been spoiled for you if you played Lufia 1, because in an interesting version of Abilitease, the game opens with you controlling an endgame party of Maxim, Selan, Guy, and Artea, fully kitted out and ready to fight the final boss. You take them through the last dungeon and go up against The Sinistrals, and after that battle, it fast forwards 100 years to the intro of the main characters of Lufia 1. It's a really neat idea and I don't know how many other game had done that at the time. Lufia 2 takes place at the beginning of Maxim and Selan's journey. It improves immensely on Lufia 1's fairly archaic JRPG qualities, such as how in Lufia 1 you would swing at the empty spot an enemy was if another party member killed it while you had other attacks queued up, that sort of thing. all that was fixed for Lufia 2. The graphics were greatly improved, the interface was better, it introduced pokemon-like sidekicks you could evolve by feeding them items, there was a lot to it. Dungeons were packed full of decent puzzles, and in a great change from many other JRPGs, random encounters(besides on the overworld) were replaced by visible monsters on the map that moved in specific ways depending on the monsters and thus could be avoided or manipulated to get sneak attacks on if you know how they worked. The story was solid, didn't necessarily break the mold for the most part, but it definitely had some twists and nice touches that made it stand out from the rest of the crowd, to get on a level somewhere between your Breath of Fires and Secret of Manas, and your FF6es and Chrono Triggers. And then there was the music. lord, the Lufia 2 soundtrack. Lufia 2's soundtrack is really really good. gently caress it, I'm doing it. let's go through a bunch of the whole drat game's music. Spoilers ahead I guess for a like 30 year old game when you start on your journey, this serene track plays, ushering you into your destiny with hope yet a teensy weensy bit of forboding tone to it step out into the overworld, and this adventurous but determined theme sets you off into unknown dangers just a real goddamn good cave theme oh poo poo, you've encounted some mosquitoes/angry frogs/featureless slimes, time to FIGHT! yo, you gettin' misty-eyed too? oh poo poo, Lord Mosquiton/King  /Slime With A Face attacks! BOSS BATTLE!!!your future is dark and ominous. and so is this prophetic music. XkyRauh posted:"What's up dudes, it's the Castle song--This is the Castle song! (doo-doodoo, doo-doo, doo-doodoo, doo-doo) Well, oh my god, it's the Castle song! Stupid and boring and really long. Oh my god, it's the Castle song, THIS IS THE CASTLE SONG!" ((Lufia 2's soundtrack kicks rear end.)) then you enter a dungeon, and start to waltz an even bigger dungeon in a tower deserves an even bigger theme not sure what other jrpgs have you get married and have a kid in the middle of your adventure but lufia sure did with Maxim and Selan getting married and having a quiet reprieve for a time. but enough about that, let's get on a boat in the boat town! FORGET BOATS, the real meat of the game's music begins here! GRIT YOUR TEETH IN DETERMINATION, YOU'RE GONNA SAVE THE WORLD! THERE'S NO TURNING BACK NOW! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWyYj3MXOrY&t=302s "It's so dark..." "I feel the energy." "Evil energy. Watch out, it's pretty strong!" "Selan, cast the spell, Light." "Alright." *a formerly black screen lights up* one of my favorite themes in all gaming, The Last Duel is by itself an excellent theme, but with context it's even better. You are the destined heroes who will defeat the Sinistrals. You've flown your airship and crash landed on the floating Doom Island, there's no escaping, they've blocked all magic with a barrier, Selan and Artea, the two magic users of the party who can use Teleport, can't get you out of there. The only way out, is through. The airship wrecked, you're in pitch darkness and silence. The above lines are spoken(because the translation was...rushed, as many games of the time were), the screen lights up to reveal the entrance of the Fortress of Doom, and this theme begins playing. It's slow but grand, and then the second part kicks in. Then the rising climax finishes it off. This IS the march towards the final battle. This IS the theme of saving the world. You are in a majestic marble fortress with godlike beings you must stop at its peak, and you've got to fight your way through countless enemies to get there. Despite the sound being midi, the music conveys all of this emotion with an incredible composition. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8SKdTNk6Dk&hd=1 You've arrived at the top. You approach the central podium, where Daos, the leader of the Sinistrals, stands. He declares his evils are commanded by a higher power, basically says "BUT ENOUGH TALK, HAVE AT YOU!", and to battle for the fate of the world you go!  , leading in to the Sinistrals Battle Theme, one of my all-time favorite final boss themes. It's energetic, frenetic, and just a drat rocking theme. To me, it may not hit the highs of Dancing Mad or One-Winged Angel, but it's certainly just a rung below them.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=px1Cheh-77s Daos is defeated, but before falling, he and the other Sinistrals attempt one last ditch pyrrhic effort to take you down with them. They are foiled, but at great cost. Guy and Artea blasted back across the bridge from the Sinistral's throne, Guy gravely wounded. Selan, her brain fried by the magic feedback, unresponsive on the throne side of the bridge. Maxim, staggered by her side. Suddenly, the bridge collapses, the whole island is breaking apart without the Sinistrals to hold it together. With his dying words, Daos crows that he's going to bring the whole flying island down on top of the town where Maxim and Selan's child is, as one final gently caress you, with his dissipating power. The bridge has totally collapsed. Artea, preparing escape teleportation magic on the far side, says he can't get Maxim and Selan in the field with him and Guy to escape. Maxim, knowing he has to stop the island's descent onto land, tells him to get the hell out with Guy while he can. With them gone, and Selan dead next to him, he has no way to escape now. But Erim, the Sinistral of Death, in an uncharacteristic act, provides him with an out: destroy the magic stones supporting the island, and it will fall out of control into the ocean. But time is of the essence. Maxim must once again be THE SAVIOR OF THOSE ON EARTH: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTYLYTtOvK8 Using his very life essence to destroy the stones, Maxim collapses and dies on the island as it descends towards the sea, their child and the city saved. His and Selan's spirits rise from their bodies and return back to their home, to bid a final farewell to their child before passing on. The credits play to a montage of the spirits making their way back, other characters reacting to the news of the Sinistral's defeat, and eventually, to the beginning of Lufia 1...To The Future. Lufia 2 was such an insanely good JRPG for the time. It's easily up there with Chrono Trigger and FF6 in the pantheon of all-time greats, and in my opinion while it might not have as many outright bangers as the aforementioned two, the soundtrack highs absolutely knock it out of the park. The story was pretty standard JRPG fare in a lot of ways with some smart twists on the formula, but the entire finale was grim as gently caress, and I'm sure there are others but it was the only one I can think of at the time that had the main characters die, pretty horribly, in the final battle or right afterwards. Selan and Maxim were great characters with voices of their own and to see them struck down like that was a big bummer, even if I knew all of it was going to happen due to the aforementioned entire prologue of Lufia 1 being you playing as these characters after the airship crash up to the final battle. Hell, in Lufia 1 you go and meet Guy, still alive after 100 years, still sad he couldn't save Maxim and Selan, and then he just straight up carks it from getting so emotional when he's like 120 years old. And after all that about the soundtrack and story, there's so much more to the game. See, there's a little minigame on an island, called The Ancient Cave. The Ancient Cave is a 99-floor roguelite dungeon where you start on floor 1 at level 1 with no equipment, spells, or items(unless you've found unique items in Blue Chests that can be brought back into the dungeon later) and have to make your way all the way to floor 99, whereupon you encounter a final boss, a massive Jelly that you have only 3 turns to kill before it flees, giving you no reward. Until then you must somehow survive against many, many enemies that can easily kill even well-equipped parties in a single round if you're not careful. It is absolutely one of the best roguelites ever made, despite the many bugs it has, those have somehow wound up making it even better and more challenging, and it's loving baffling that this side game in Lufia 2 has never been reimagined into a full game by ANYONE to this day, it'd be incredible. People still run tournaments of it because it's such an incredibly well designed(if crazy unforgiving) roguelite. The Ancient Cave is such a good game, that IT ALONE would be worth the purchase of Lufia 2. Well, not at current Ebay prices, I guess. well thanks for reading my ramblings(if you did) about a game and its music that I liked a lot
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Jul 5, 2022 01:35
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Lufia 2's Ancient Cave is the only good roguelike dungeon crawl.
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Jul 5, 2022 02:07
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The Ancient Cave is drat near bloody impossible on an actual SNES because clearing it takes a good 20 hours minimum and there is no way to save. Don't ask me about the power flicker that took my SNES out when I was on L85. It was 25 years ago and it still makes me twitch every time it crosses my mind. With save states the Ancient Cave is still maybe the best roguelike in existence. Awesome writeup CI, I agree 100% with it. The story is formulaic almost to the point of parody: it's nothing but a chain of one-off fetch quests from beginning to end. But one thing Lufia II (and Lufia I, actually) was really unprecedentedly great at was the interplay between your party members and the depth and relatability the script gives them. Tia is a great character. Dekar is a great character. They're all great.
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Jul 5, 2022 02:55
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you're not supposed to go through the ancient cave entirely initially, you should do like the speedrunners do and go through as much as you can in a couple hours. then take whatever blue chest items you have, use a providence to get out, and go back in again slightly stronger.
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Jul 5, 2022 04:00
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The ending of Lufia 2 still brings a tear to my eye. I will always be fond of Lufia 1 for that reason, even if Lufia 1 is dated as hell.
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Jul 5, 2022 19:05
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The most recent game of the Lufia series is 'Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals' which happens to be a Lufia 2 ''remake'' into a rather different action RPG with many story elements changed. I've been wondering how it compares for a while, but not quite enough to try it.
Wulf fucked around with this message at 02:41 on Jul 6, 2022 |
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Jul 6, 2022 02:14
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yeah, I never bothered with it either. though I did check out the OST and some of the covers are exceptionally good. I do hear the DS game is a decent reimagining though. The Overworld Theme is very well done. one of the town themes is wonderfully upbeat and cheery. The Prophet's Theme went from a beautiful, ominous track even as a midi, to something that sounds like a climactic dramatic theme from Chrono Trigger. It's a huge step up. Battle Theme 1 sounds like something you could have a character action game fight with. or maybe a Persona game battle theme. Battle Theme 2 which kicks off with a lot of a dude just going ham on that sax  the only one I think they kind of drop the ball on is Battle Against The Sinistrals. Don't get me wrong, I think it sounds OKAY, but it's not leagues above the original like a proper arrangement of the final boss theme should be. The Three Sister's Towers also feels a little weak. Something about the central instruments sound...distant in this and the Sinistrals battle theme to me? Am I the only one hearing that? Like it's a bit weaker than it feels like it should be for the primary instrument compared to the background ones. but I'll tell ya, if ever they had a theme they had a LEGAL REQUIREMENT to get right, it was The Last Duel. And boy, they fuckin' NAILED IT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYE9buVw3kM&hd=1 if anything, the increase in dramatic epic scale of The Last Duel's orchestral version just starkly shows how short the original is. And while I don't fault them at all for not breaking the mold on such a classic, it would be interesting to see someone try as a bonus track or something.
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Jul 6, 2022 06:27
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The music is fantastic but since it's an action RPG it plays very differently. The story elements are also abridged and while each character plays and looks very different, in the end, you end up just using Maxim. It DOES have a New Game+ and spoilers surround it, so I won't go into it.
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Jul 6, 2022 14:49
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free hubcaps posted:This is a post about a great game that no one played, on a great system that no one played. This is a post about Soul Sacrifice for the PlayStation Vita. It's odd, I was just thinking about this the other day and how it deserved another shot. I played this quite a few times on my lunch when I was working at a remote site and had nobody to talk to and enjoyed it. It was a really interesting game and I never even played the Delta version (in fact, I went looking for it after reading your post and it appears totally unavailable despite only being 8 years old). I also never played it multi-player but it sounds really good! Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Jul 6, 2022 |
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Jul 6, 2022 16:46
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Captain Invictus posted:Battle Theme 2 which kicks off with a lot of a dude just going ham on that sax i'm just being pedantic but that's a trumpet not a sax in the song
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Jul 7, 2022 00:46
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Wasn't that the game where some random fantasy king suddenly pulled a tank out of his rear end? [Edit in hindsight: It was a JRPG in the 90s, of course there's a random fantasy king suddenly pulling a tank out of his rear end] Wipfmetz fucked around with this message at 10:20 on Jul 7, 2022 |
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Jul 7, 2022 06:47
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Berty and Bart were the real MVPs
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Jul 7, 2022 15:43
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Wulf posted:The most recent game of the Lufia series is 'Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals' which happens to be a Lufia 2 ''remake'' into a rather different action RPG with many story elements changed. I've been wondering how it compares for a while, but not quite enough to try it. I played Curse of the Sinistrals on an emulator a couple of years after it came out. I thought it was quite charming, worth finishing even though I only finish about a third of the RPGs I play. I only had very vague memories of the original games, but the basic combat mechanics were fun, the characters were distinct different voices and I quite liked a few of them, and the villains were satisfying to oppose. Story didn't do anything to transcend your usual shonen fantasy fare, but I'd happily replay it. Almost as good a time as Ys Origins, with the caveat that you're still going to be dealing with some early 3D action RPG jank.
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Jul 9, 2022 19:36
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Saints Row 2 The mid-2000s were rife with games that were, for all intents and purposes, Grand Theft Auto clones. Grand Theft Auto 3 had been a revolution, and both Vice City and San Andreas expanded on the formula and made Rockstar Games ridiculous amounts of money. It left to a slew of clones, some of which were terrible attempts to cash in on the hype (Driv3r), some of which actually did interesting things with the genre of sandbox crime games (Sleeping Dogs), but none of which could truly touch the commercial success of the Rockstar games. One of the most downright generic of these games was Saints Row, in 2006. It ticks off pretty much every GTA-clone box - Basic character customization, an escalating police response to your criminal shenanigans, radio stations divided by genre, colourful wacky characters and a storyline that involves a lowly street thug slowly criming his way up to being king of the underworld. That's not to say that the game didn't have a few improvements on the formula. Mainly, the fact that you're going after three gangs at once means that you've got three separate storylines to play through in any order you wish, giving you more freedom to progress through the game's story. The game was a reasonable commercial success for publisher THQ and developer Volition, so the fact that it got a sequel was hardly shocking. Saints Row 2 is unique in the sandbox crime genre, in that it seems to understand the kind of people who play these games better than any other game in this category. First of all, and most importantly, the game is designed to take all the different ways players approach a sandbox crime game, and reward them for doing it, with what the game labels as 'Diversions'. A good example of this is the vehicle surfing minigame. There's nothing in the game to indicate that this is a thing. However, the first time you climb onto a moving vehicle, you get a prompt to start the Vehicle Surfing diversion. If you do, you get a balance meter, and the goal becomes to stay on the vehicle for as long as possible. Stay on long enough, and you're rewarded with a traffic cone you can wear on your head. There are dozens of things that the game keeps track of like this. Usually the rewards are small and cosmetic. But the developers seem to have taken any random time wasting that a player might engage in in a game like this, and then added a way to keep score and earn rewards. Walk out of your apartment wearing nothing but a long trench coat? Congratulations, you've just found the Flashing minigame. Go back in, ditch the coat and go out fully naked? Surprise, there's also a Streaking minigame. Slightly more involved than the Diversions are the Activities. These are present in Saints Row, but the sequel vastly expands on them. Anything from bringing down property prices by hosing down neighbourhoods with septic tanks to protecting your drug dealers with a fully armed attack helicopter. The rewards for these are more impactful, with several unlocking hidden weapons, and unlimited ammo for certain weapon types. The amount of customization in the game is actually bugfuck insane, to the point where it had to be dialled back in sequels. Not just the protagonist's body, with everything, including the protagonist's gender, done by sliders, but also the clothing, with hundreds of items available, in multiple layers, and with the player able to adjust the colours on pretty much everything. Nothing about this clothing is in any way restricted either. If you want to roleplay a serious looking crime lord in a pinstriped three piece suit who secretly gets off on wearing nipple tassels under the dress shirt, then the only question the game asks is what colour you'd like those nipple tassels to be. Vehicle customization is similarly absurd, with pretty much every car, plane, motorcycle helicopter and boat in the game having dozens of options for body mods, and a paint system where individual parts of the vehicle can be painted in separate colours. Even the novelty vehicles, like scooters and quad bikes, have this wide range of customization. The world design is important too. One of the main criticisms levied against Grand Theft Auto 4, the latest GTA game on the shelves alongside Saints Row 2, was the general brown dourness of the city. The Xbox 360/PS3 generation in general had a push towards 'realism' - with a general interpretation in the game industry that this realism means that everything is brown and gritty. Stillwater, compared to GTA 4's Liberty City, is bright and colourful. The physics engine matches. If you hit someone with your car at full speed, rather than having them roll limply over your vehicle, they launch off into low orbit. It makes the simple pleasure of navigating your car into a busy shopping mall to plough through crowds of pedestrians all the more cathartic. Likewise, if you decide to speed up a car jacking by standing in the middle of the road and shooting the driver of the first car that stops in front of you in the head through the windshield, the body of the driver will flop around as you race towards wherever you're going next. The environment is also highly destructible, which ties into one of the aforementioned Activities. The plot itself is simple and straightforward. At the end of Saints Row, your character got blown up. At the start of Saints Row 2, you wake up in the prison clinic, promptly escape with the help of an admirer, and then bust out one of your former gang members who is on trial. From there, it plays out much like the prequel, in that three new visually and thematically distinct gangs have taken over the city, and need to be wiped out. The entirety of the city is unlocked right from the start, leaving you free to go anywhere and do anything without having to sit through ten hours of grand drama reflecting on the inherent moral conflict of the life of crime. Now, Saints Row 2 is by no means a flawless game. The game is buggy as all hell, with the unpatched PC version especially being basically unplayable, even in 2022. It's far more enamoured with the characters that carry over from Saints Row, especially Johnny Gat, than it should be. And those two or three moments where it does try to create high drama are incredibly jarring, especially since in those big cutscenes full of pathos, there's a high chance your player character will be standing around wearing a floral print dress and a sheep's mascot head. But honestly, the story isn't what you're there for. You do these open world sandbox crime games to see what kind of crazy poo poo you can do, and Saints Row 2 knows this better than any other game. Skios fucked around with this message at 12:59 on Jul 13, 2022 |
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Jul 13, 2022 12:57
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theshim posted:On a slightly related note I want to talk about Freespace and Freespace 2. I absolutely agree with you. To this day, this remains the best 1st person starfighter game ever made with Tie Fighter coming in at a very close 2nd. This is the classic example of a game that is more than the sum of its serviceable parts. No individual part of the game was particularly novel or executed beyond what many other games of the genre had done, but everything in both games pulled together in the same direction making it a memorable experience. The control scheme was pretty much identical in terms of feel to earlier predecessors in the genre like Wing Commander or Tie Fighter but each type of craft from the speedy interceptor, the agile fighter, the heavily armed gunship and the lumbering bomber handled just differently enough and packed enough different weaponry that they felt very distinct despite the fact they really only were differentiated by turn rate, hit points, speed and acceleration. The missions script and pacing were perfect with the player joining fictional in-universe squadrons in which you flew one particular craft through a series of missions to get a feel for the ship before shipping you off to the next squadron and the next craft that handled differently with different weapons and different mission objectives. A big part of the reason why this game got its cult following imo was that the non gameplay elements worked in harmony with the gameplay experience to craft a memorable experience where the player felt like they were legitimately just another random fighter jock dude in a future militaristic war in space. The main storyline for both games were broken up in to chapters where the player received Hollywood-style military briefings first from an Admiral type describing the overall military situation to the fleet (to the extent you were privy to as said lowly fighter jock) and then to an immediate superior officer who commanded your unit for individual mission briefings. This created a cohesion in the storyline which made the missions more than just a series of 'fly here, shoot this, defend that' experiences linked together. Each time you went out there, you knew the objective and why it was important thanks to the Admiral who set the table for you and the stakes involved and what the next step was should you succeed. The stakes and why you were out there were clearly communicated and it went a long way to making the setting feel real and your tasks in game had consequences despite the fact that everything was just a series of missions markers and simple power point type presentations. The voice acting for almost the entire cast was excellent. Everyone clearly understood how to sell emotion, tension, and relief in a voice-over-only role. Salvatore "Robert" Loggia (of Scarface and Independence Day fame) voiced the commanding Admiral in Freespace 2 and treated the material with gravitas and made it feel like a real conflict with real stakes. The music was also fantastic selling the player the various moods of urgency, desperation, and triumph against a superior and implacable enemy of a mysterious nature. The writing wasn't War and Peace but never did it feel cliched in tone or theme. The briefings were always delivered in professional Hollywood-esque military style of serious tone with bland language and the plot never felt contrived. While there was plenty of technobabble it never overshadowed the plot (think the best episodes of Star Trek TNG). Finally, the graphics while not breathtaking by any means always managed to sell you on the scale of the battles involved. Freespace 2 in particular made flying around capital warships feel dangerous and with a sense of scale that the Xwing/Tie fighter series lacked. The sound design of weapons had umph to it whether it was you dishing out the damage or whether some AI bastard was lighting you up as you tried to make a torpedo run. All in all, there is a good reason why it remains one of the all time bests in any discussion of GOAT "space-sim" games. Linked below are the briefing videos for both games. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ue5ta702JmI&t=152s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBHWS1fdQ3c
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Jul 15, 2022 05:48
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<Opens thread> <Sees Deus Ex> "Ah, yes. Gooood." <Sees Pirates Gold!> "Yeeesssss! GOOOOD!" <Sees XCOM: Enemy Unknown> "YEEESSSS!! BRILLIANT!!" <Sees the Marathon Series> "THIS THREAD!! I LOVE THIS THREAAADDDD!!!!" - - - <Doesn't see WoW> "gently caress this thread." Ameliorative writeups incoming.
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Jul 15, 2022 13:44
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world of warcraft is not very good. this is coming from someone who played it from vanilla to cataclysm, across 5 or 6 different classes to max level at the time. I have not heard charitable things about recent expansions either. it was conceptually incredible when it came out, but the luster wore off quickly, and if you didn't have a party to do stuff with, you were severely limited in things you could do. it was enjoyable as a community experience but the game itself was middling at best on its own, most of the entertainment was from exploiting the game to gently caress around with other players, like when we kited flight masters to the bottom of the lake in mount hyjal for multiple hours, until an admin teleported in, killed us and the npc so it would reset, then left. then they fixed it so the flight masters couldn't leave a certain area. also customer service for the game was catastrophically terrible. I swore off it and blizzard products after my account got compromised during my time away from it, then when I got it reinstated, rather than restore anything they gave me 25,000 gold and restored like two things(the legendaries I had, sulfuras and thunderfury) and basically said "there you go, have fun" and ended the conversation. I did almost everything in WoW during those eras, from molten core to OG naxxramas to most of icecrown, and I don't really look back on it all fondly. now Planetside, that was an MMO. hell of a game. never been another one like it. Captain Invictus fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Jul 15, 2022 |
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Jul 15, 2022 21:02
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Captain Invictus posted:world of warcraft is not very good. I think I probably agree with this bit. A huge part of its appeal was the shared social experience. My experience levelling to 60 in Classic was an exercise in the most exquisite nostalgia, everything reminded me of the great times I’d had 15 years previously, and all the people who weren’t there with me. The actual gameplay is really not very good.
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Jul 15, 2022 21:37
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Be that as it may that doesn't make their experiences with that game invalid. This is the thread for people to celebrate their favorites, after all.
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Jul 15, 2022 22:15
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Yeah, if a game is somebody's favorite because playing with their friends was the best ever, then it's still their favorite. Let's keep this thread positive, please 
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Jul 15, 2022 23:56
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The best thing about WoW, to me, was its world. It was so vibrantly colored and expansive, and it had this hand-crafted story book quality to it that I haven't seen replicated anywhere else before or since. Simply working your way through that world and exploring it for the first time, especially sneaking around through the higher leveled areas for the first time while you were grossly underleveled for them, was an incredible experience. Even just going off and setting challenges for yourself like "how far away from the intended play area can I get?" and finding all those half-finished out of bounds areas where zones collided and there were obvious developer artist brush strokes on the ground was awesome. Just off the top of my head, once I circled around the snowy mountains just off the dwarf starting area / Dun Morogh and found another snow area the size of an entire zone that was entirely unused. Another time I almost made it across the entire Ashenvale zone without touching the ground by walking and jumping around on the high branches of the trees there. This was before the Cataclysm expansion that allowed player flight in that zone, too. Once I even downloaded and ran a WoW server on my PC, just to connect my own client software to it, and used GM commands to basically make myself invincible and able to output enough damage to kill any boss in a few seconds, and explored all the content I hadn't been able to see at that point like a bunch of high level dungeons and raids. It was great. Honestly, if WoW was ever released as a single player game where you could party with (or PVP against) competent player character AI, and progress through all the expansions from vanilla to current, and with a minimized grind, it would be an incredible single player experience I think. GreatGreen fucked around with this message at 06:54 on Nov 9, 2022 |
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Jul 16, 2022 00:23
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For sure exploring WoW, especially in its early days, was a blast. I remember me and my bestie playing and finding some weird cave on the southern coast of Silithus, south of AQ and facing the sea. Just a campfire in there and nothing else that I can recall, no clue what purpose was served, but it felt like we'd found something mysterious and by extension cool and interesting.
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Jul 16, 2022 01:25
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I feel like what I consider to be "Classic WoW" (Vanilla/TBC/Wrath) falls in a very specific space inbetween the really old, classic, grindfest MMOs, and modern ones that are full of cutscenes and teleporters to every location. It offers juuuust enough grinding without going overboard. Juuuust enough ways to fast travel without feeling like you're losing the sense of having to traverse a huge world. Because of this, while I have played multiple MMOs both before and after WoW, it continues to scratch an itch that no other MMO quite does for me. Almost two decades have gone by since 2004 but sometimes I'll still install a private server (or resub for Classic, these days) and make a new character and go out and spend hours just killing poo poo in the Barrens or whatever. You know, the "kill ten zebras, then ten raptors" quests and all. It's relaxing in a way that few other video games are for me, and as silly as it sounds, still one of my favorite experiences. It feels like the video game version of going home and chilling with the bros. And one of the bros is Mankrik's wife.
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Jul 16, 2022 01:52
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theshim posted:On a slightly related note I want to talk about Freespace and Freespace 2. MikeC posted:I absolutely agree with you. To this day, this remains the best 1st person starfighter game ever made with Tie Fighter coming in at a very close 2nd. But man I can't tell you how many times I played thought that game, went back and played the original + expansions, downloaded mods and played again, went back years later to download and play the "modder made", uhh, version of the game or something? Can't recall exactly but I remember not being able to play it on "modern" equipment at the time or something. Just to give it another play though for nostalgias sake, might even be worth it again. Idk with how much time has passed...maybe I should leave it for nostalgia, hah. Rakeris fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Jul 16, 2022 |
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Jul 16, 2022 04:39
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While the poly count of Freespace 2 looks a bit blocky nowadays, the art direction is still spot on. Those big ships still look good, and the beam duels between them are awesome in the literal sense. I think also it's one of the best uses of an unknowable threat in games, outside of explicate Lovecraftian games. The Vasudans have an alien morality and psychology, but we are still able to understand their motivations and minds to the extent that they and humans are able to form a close alliance. The Shivans by contrast are something beyond alien. Military motivations get assigned to them, but they seem to be busy with their own project. The Santhanas is interpreted as a warship, but the fleet is primarily interested in creating an artificial supernova. And when that happens many of them are destroyed, but a few jump away to *somewhere*. The only man mad enough to achieve communication is kidnapped by them and never seen again, everyone else is attacked on sight. At the end of the game the Admiral speculates that they are trapped here from a fundamentally different universe, unable to fully understand our home and desperately trying to return to their own. Despite their nature, they are ultimately similar to the human cut off from Earth and struggling to make do in a new environment. Naturally the lack of clear answers caused a lot of frustration among the gamer psychographic who absolutely have to have a definitive answer, but it added an air of mystery and horror, which is a perfect spice for when you are along in a tiny spaceship in unknown reaches of pitch black space.
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Jul 16, 2022 10:04
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Hmm, I was wondering if I ought to save my GOTY 2021Thread write-up for FFXIV in this thread for posterity. It was a bit of a long one. E: Jerusalem posted:The answer is ALWAYS Yeah, alright. Also it's been a half a year, more content was released, the base game experience had a rather dramatic overhaul, and I feel more comfortable adding more commentary to it now that some time has passed. Runa fucked around with this message at 12:26 on Jul 16, 2022 |
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Jul 16, 2022 10:12
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Runa posted:Hmm, I was wondering if I ought to save my GOTY 2021Thread write-up for FFXIV in this thread for posterity. It was a bit of a long one. The answer is ALWAYS 
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Jul 16, 2022 10:18
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quote:For context, as mentioned above the original version of this post was written for the 2021 GOTY Thread on Dec. 31. While the post itself functioned as a vote for the Endwalker expansion in that thread, proper, it also serves as a retrospective on my feelings about the game as a whole. A slightly updated version of that post is presented here because, if there were any place on these forums for an extended write-up of a game from a place of fondness, it would be this thread.  FFXIV Endwalker Walking alone unto journey's end, the burden weighing heavy.  Before 2019, my relationship with FFXIV was decidedly more mixed. I played this game because my friends did, even though I didn't really stick around much between major expansion releases. I had limited experience with other MMOs. Their stories were perfunctory at best and while I understood this to be standard for the genre, they still left me with not much to emotionally latch onto. Oftentimes you were just another random adventurer (or setting-appropriate analog thereof) and if grander designs were in motion you only played a bit part. While a number of older-school MMO players preferred things this way, to feel as though a wider world were going on around them while they were merely a part of that world, this narrative approach left me cold. In Final Fantasy 14, however, I was presented with the opportunity to take up the role of the Warrior of Light (or WoL for short), a recurring title with no small amount of symbolic cachet within the Final Fantasy franchise as a whole. And I wouldn’t have taken this shot had Naoki Yoshida (Yoshi-P) not somehow pulled off a miracle and salvaged one of the most notorious failures in gaming history. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  A Realm Reborn, while an impressive technical feat on the development side, was merely "good for an MMO" rather than genuinely good. The story was less personal, more generic. For the most part fine, if standard fantasy fare, though not without its problems. If the ARR story had a theme it wasn't one that was distinct enough to note. There were genuinely interesting moments, sure. Almost all of them surrounding the early game's major threats, magically summoned deiform constructs called Primals. The most urgent threat facing the realm, a single Primal is capable of corrupting the minds, and eventually bodies, of any souls unfortunate enough to draw near in a process called tempering. Right from the start the WoL is introduced as one of the chosen champions of the goddess Hydaelyn. And you are charged with protecting the world from an unnamed threat. They are eventually named soon enough, though. And they are the Ascians, devotees to the sundered god Zodiark, split into fourteen pieces by Hydaelyn's power. They seek to bring forth Calamities in order to reawaken their god and to bring forth what they maintain to be the true world. This is all established as far back as ARR, though what these motivations actually mean, and the mechanics of what they're actually doing, aren't made clear until much, much, much later. You can be forgiven for assuming it's all a bunch of cryptic folderol. I certainly did at the time. However, chosen by a goddess or not, every hero has to start somewhere. They first make their name as one of those adventurers with an uncommon, but not unheard of, resistance to a Primal's corruptive influence. This is understood to be part of Hydaelyn's blessing though why her chosen have this resistance is left a mystery. Shortly thereafter they are recruited by a fellowship of scholars and adventurers dedicated to defending Eorzea from the Primal threat, the Scions of the Seventh Dawn. Or Scions for short. They quickly find distinction among even this group by defeating many of these threats, most notably an invasion force sent by the mighty Garlean Empire, thereby becoming Eorzea's preeminent godslayer by the end of ARR's main storyline. But yes, dramatic fights aside, significant portions of the ARR story, before the patch content, were simply, well boring. Not just a matter of having lower stakes with less personal investment in events, chunks of the story were deliberately and blatantly put in to waste time. Unfortunately, those chunks of story also provide just enough worldbuilding and context that they couldn't simply be removed. And the main antagonists lurking in the background, the Ascians, were utterly uncharismatic. Cryptic black-robed masked men and women, they were like Kingdom Hearts rejects who were ashamed to show their faces. There were hints of personality and charm in the story, if you cared to look, but it was the ARR patch content (patches 2.1-2.55) that took the pieces provided by the base game and started to build towards something special. Something that set its sight on loftier goals. quote:Note: Since the time of the original post, the devs dramatically revamped the ARR main scenario questline even further by expanding their NPC dungeon party system, now called Duty Support, to cover the story-required dungeons and trials in this content range. This means that players are now capable of soloing all content from the start of ARR to the finale of 2.0. Furthermore, the 2.0 campaign finale dungeons were also entirely revamped, making them a more streamlined experience to actually play, while introducing more interesting mechanics to fights and pacing them so that they feel suitably climactic. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  The first expansion, Heavensward, was the release that first earned FFXIV its acclaim not just for the circumstances of its revival but on its own merit as a game and story. On the broad scale HW's plot centers around a thousand-year war between the alpine country of Ishgard and the dragons of Nidhogg's Horde. Though the story itself was concerned with how prejudice, societal injustice, and vengeance feed into each other and perpetuate a vicious cycle. Well-trod territory, to be sure. But it's told effectively through not just the main storyline but the sidequests as well, including a number of class-specific questlines. As the WoL discovers the facts behind the events which predicated this war and the truths underpinning the whole of Ishgardian society, they are aided by companions and confidants with differing backgrounds and beliefs whose character development forms the story's emotional core. The story of Ishgard matters because the people of Ishgard matter and the characters put a human face to their tragedies and triumphs. When the WoL and their allies work to challenge the social injustices in Ishgard, to strive to build a better future for a people once bereft, when you actually change the status quo for the better, in an MMO no less, you feel it. And near the end, something happened. Through most of the game up to that point, whenever the player is given the opportunity to make a dialogue choice for the WoL, the choices given are usually blandly inoffensive. Generic "you're a hero" fare. In the wake of a tragic event in late Heavensward, the player is given another opportunity to respond in dialogue. And one of the options was noticeable in that it was surprisingly intense. Not particularly notable in a vacuum, but taken in the context of prior opportunities for characterization, it stands out. From that point on, the WoL slowly but surely, over the course of many years of expansions, grows to become not just a blank slate avatar but a character in their own right. A character who, while mostly unspoken, begins to develop an implicit personality through their expressions and the tone of their dialogue choices. And whose personal story develops through the various class quests they can pursue, as told most powerfully through the Dark Knight questline. The Scions, too, start to develop into a role beyond simply being colleagues, advisors, and questgivers. Their designs become more distinctive and they're given more characterization. They don't go so far as to steal your spotlight but as characters they become more comfortable fitting into the role of your direct supporting cast. After the villain of Heavensward is defeated, as he lays dying on the floor, he looks up in horror at the Warrior of Light and asks, "Who are you? What are you?!" Normally, when a villain says this it is a purely empowering moment for the hero as the villain cannot fathom how the hero can accomplish the things they've done. But something about the presentation of this scene, how ominous the Warrior of Light looks, and how genuinely terrified the villain was, sat uneasily with the players. These were words that would linger for years, inspiring speculation as to what he actually meant. What did he see, as the light faded from his eyes? A question worth asking. The story of Heavensward affected so many players that, for a large part of the playerbase, Ishgard felt like home. Which makes the fact that nobody can buy a house there pretty funny, to be honest. Next year that will change with one of Endwalker's patches. Until then, there's always the Firmament. quote:Since the time of the original post, the player housing district in Ishgard, the Empyreum, was opened to the public. As Ishgardian real estate is in rather high demand among players, and the chance to buy a plot of land is determined by a lottery system, for many, they still can't buy a house there. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  Stormblood, the second expansion, is interesting. In terms of gameplay it was clearly superior to both the base game and the prior expansion. Here, the devs really started to get a feel for how they wanted the game to play and both of the later expansions iterate on the design principles that StB established. To this day, I genuinely feel that Stormblood's Alliance Raid series is some of the best 24-player content I've played. Unfortunately it's paired with some of the worst story a raid questline has ever offered. As far as the main storyline was concerned, reception was more mixed than it was with Heavensward. In terms of pacing, it's gutted by having two distinct major story arcs with their own tones and climaxes, one interrupting the other and playing out in full before returning to the first. In terms of core characters, the writers try to do something similar to HW's companion characters though they're limited by the fact that these characters don't have the same tension in their dynamic and thus room for interpersonal growth. Frankly, the two primary companions who follow you throughout StB are fundamentally very similar characters--brave, outgoing fighters who wear their hearts on their sleeves. While they have their charming moments there's just less character work being done when they're on screen. The main antagonist, Zenos, was as divisive as the story itself. He starts off aloof and uninterested, and thus uninteresting, before the WoL's ability to stand up to him in a fight inspires the most excitement he's had in his entire life. Shallow but straightforward, he had both fans and detractors. Thematically, Stormblood was more grounded than Heavensward but no less ambitious. A tale of revolution and the effects of colonialism on occupied peoples, Stormblood was stark, nuanced, and dreadfully realistic. The story shows what happens to people raised in a society that teaches them their race, and the cultures of their parents and grandparents, are inferior to those of their abusers. How monsters are made by internalized hatred and a desperate desire to earn a better place for themselves and their families. But, well. You can't go through four entire zone arcs hammering the same relentless message of how hopeless things are without the player starting to get emotionally exhausted. One zone, the Azim Steppe, became my favorite of the expansion by virtue of being a palate cleanser from the heavy tone and subject matter of preceding zones. It's an introduction to a Mongolia-inspired culture that treats its source inspiration with genuine affection, with a story filled with larger-than-life characters and refreshingly enthusiastic competition. In other fantasy works the Mongols are usually the primary inspiration for a faceless marauding horde, if not outright monsters entirely. Here, the Xaela of the Azim Steppe are treated as people with a charming culture and longstanding martial traditions that would probably be some cause for concern if the result weren't so drat fun. In terms of story momentum, the Azim Steppe is also the point where Stormblood's theme of revolution begins to look like it's finally within reach. It's where things start to feel like they're turning around. Also the scenery and music are pleasant, too.  But as Stormblood wrapped up, and a final confrontation with the Garlean Empire seemed imminent, the story took a surprising turn. After cooling on StB, I was unsure of what to make of this new direction, to be honest. Going into Shadowbringers, my expectations were low. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  And when I played it, I fell in love with this game for the first time. The music was incredible, the world vibrant and haunting, the characters endearing, and the story a triumph. It's very difficult to talk about Shadowbringers without spoiling things. Even the premise itself is a surprise. With an unexpectedly fresh setting and a hard reset on the narrative momentum, Shadowbringers has to work hard to make the player care. And in its first zone arcs it spares no effort to establish the stakes. The player bears witness to the injustice, tragedy, and suffering plaguing their dying and broken land. And it gives you the opportunity to do something about it. The results are dramatic, breathtaking, and extremely effective at making you feel like a hero. The trajectory of the first arc establishes the basic structure for what follows, both in each individual zone arc as well as the expansion at large. Though it must be noted the first two thirds of Shadowbringers are very deliberately paced. While other expansions focused on pushing forward with constant forward momentum, each zone arc in Shadowbringers is treated as its own story with its own distinct take on the expac's themes and tone, and structurally there was a clear intermission between each arc. Some players disliked that, and felt that the story only really kicks into gear in the final act. I understand those criticisms, but I cannot agree with them. I came to become deeply familiar with the lands and their people and only cared more and more strongly about them as time went on. And every return to the Crystarium--the WoL's home for the duration of the expac--gave me valuable time to decompress and process the emotional rollercoasters the story insisted on putting me through. And most importantly, gave characters the opportunity to be people. The Scions receive a good deal of character development here, just in time for the player to finally be able to bring them into dungeons as actual party members. After years of being a more distant supporting cast, in Shadowbringers they together with the WoL feel like a cohesive team. Which is good, because the bonds between these characters, including the WoL, are what gives the story of Shadowbringers its strength. Thematically, it's about love and sacrifice. From individual zone arcs to the motivations of both your allies and your antagonists, every major plot throughline illustrates and reinforces these themes. Shadowbringers does not ask how much would you be willing to sacrifice for those you love. The answer to that question is treated almost as a given as heroic characters are constantly shown to be willing to sacrifice themselves while villainous characters are all too ready to force others to make those sacrifices for them. Instead, Shadowbringers presents you with the costs of these sacrifices both of the self and others. It asks of the selfish to consider the lives of those they mean to sacrifice to be of equal worth to those loved ones they've lost. It asks of the selfless to value their own lives as much as those loved ones they hope to save. And it asks the Warrior of Light to carry a special burden. To truly become the protagonist of the story. Even as the plot grows in scope to the scale of worldwide threats, even as the curtains are pulled back and the man behind the man is revealed, Shadowbringers focuses first and foremost on characters. As the scope increases the context becomes more intimate, more emotional. For the Warrior of Light, Shadowbringers is their darkest hour and most personal triumph. It's a brave decision for an MMO narrative to take the player avatar, especially one that began as an entity with as little narrative presence as possible, and build them into a character in their own right. By giving that avatar a range of personality that exists within the narrative, however limited, that avatar becomes constrained by new limits that would otherwise not be present. This sacrifices the freedom of imagination and pure player-driven roleplaying in order to allow this avatar to exist as a character in a written narrative. And we are richer for it, because this allows the Warrior of Light to become a character for the player to grow invested in. This approach has not gone without some pushback. More than a few times you may find people posting online about how the WoL's personality, personal attachments, and even priorities, do not match how they imagine their self-insert character to be. This is a fascinating problem to have. Contrast this with SWTOR which wrote its player avatars to be characters from the start. And voiced, too. Though that approach also has its limits, especially when it effectively meant they had to write eight different main storylines in parallel. But a story with a villain is only as good as that villain and FFXIV had for years been saddled with carrying the burden of being driven by the actions of the then-maligned, once-forgettable Ascians. Shadowbringers, in focusing on characters first and foremost, did the same with these black-robed blackguards and humanized them. They became tragic, even sympathetic. And it was thanks in no small part due to the lead writer, Natsuko Ishikawa, giving us the greatest and most compelling villain in the entire history of Final Fantasy, Emet-Selch.  (I will note here that Ishikawa also wrote the Dark Knight questline, the Crystal Tower quests, and the Far East half of Stormblood. She'd cut her teeth telling emotionally charged stories with charismatic and compelling characters, including the WoL themselves. In retrospect, had I learned who she was and that she had been selected to be Shadowbringers' main writer ahead of time, perhaps my expectations would not have been so low.) Among the greatest of the Ascians, Emet-Selch is a sneering, tired, depressed old rear end in a top hat who had been working in the background of the story under other aliases, one of which was actually known to the player before this point. Here in Shadowbringers he steps out into the spotlight and he milks it for all its worth. This slouchy, greasy rat man inveigles his way into the story in charmingly catty fashion and steals every scene he's in. And most refreshingly, and surprisingly, he's upfront and honest. Disarmingly so. Worryingly so. He's incredibly frank about what he and the Ascians are doing and he's even willing to entertain the idea of trying to recruit the WoL and the Scions to do it, though the likelihood of them agreeing is infinitesimally faint. More so than any other Ascian, he takes a genuine interest in the Warrior of Light. It's clear he sees something in them that the other Ascians didn't and that makes his involvement in these events deeply personal to him. (While I will not go into detail or explain more than the broad strokes, just talking about the thematics of the final confrontation at the end of 5.0 veers close enough to actual spoilers that I felt it was appropriate to provide spoiler tags as a courtesy. Whether or not you choose to read this following passage, be reassured that you have my thanks for reading this far regardless of your choice.)  Emet-Selch is the one who draws back the curtains and finally explains, in full, who the Ascians are and what it is they are actually fighting for. They were victims and now perpetrators of an incredibly profound tragedy on a grand scale. And when presented with what the Ascians, what Emet-Selch, had lost, and the burdens they carried, I felt that loss keenly. I was heartbroken, not just to be presented with this tragic tale, but to finally understand what Zodiark fought for and what it truly meant when Hydaelyn sundered him. But allowing Emet to succeed in his goals was unacceptable, however much I understood why he fought. A victory for the Ascians would mean the end of everything, everyone, the Warrior of Light held dear. The Warrior of Light had to keep fighting. I had to keep fighting. And when it looked like Emet was about to win, and all hope was lost, we got a little push. A gentle shove in the right direction to turn the tables and take one final stand. We could prove to him, here and now, that the Warrior of Light was not just some broken shattered thing. That they could challenge Emet-Selch not just as a trumped up mortal pawn but as a peer and fellow champion. As someone who he could respect, however much he denied it. Someone whose existence, and by proxy the lives of those they fought for, was of equal value to his and those he had lost. The finale of 5.0 was the first time I'd actually cheered and shouted at the climax of a story. It's deeply rousing, spectacular, and heartfelt. Every little bit of presentation lands perfectly and by the end it was the most satisfying conclusion to a Final Fantasy I had ever played. The follow-up story, from the Eden raid questline to the MSQ patch quests from 5.1 to 5.3, had a lot of expectations to live up to. But they met them with great aplomb. The 5.3 trial is still an utter delight to play and the patch as a whole was a fantastic send-off to an amazing story. A heartwarming coda that brought me to tears multiple times. And the Eden raids left things on a highly optimistic note, even showing the opportunity of redemption for an Ascian, and helping them find a place in this world, with people who love and care for them. A deeply satisfying conclusion in its own right, Shadowbringers still laid down the foundations for what was to come. It paved the way for us to walk to the End. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  This is the hardest part to talk about because everything is a spoiler. The devs made sure to meet the expectations players had, both in terms of quality as well as content, and then continued far past those limits. Even the narrative structure of the expansion pack is a spoiler, A Realm Reborn, and even 1.0, had a particular theme song. Composed by Nobuo Uematsu, whose legacy Masayoshi Soken carries forth to this day, its lyrics ask a question common to the human experience. Why do we continue to live, and why must we fight on, if to live is to know suffering? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39j5v8jlndM This song not only sets the stage for A Realm Reborn, but it also encapsulates the story of FFXIV as a whole, as it stands. It is the theme of the saga of Hydaelyn and Zodiark, of which Endwalker is the final episode. Both Endwalker and this song pose the same questions on a philosophical level, and, indeed, provide their Answers. Going into the final expansion, the Warrior of Light knows who they are. The player knows. The only thing to do is to go forth and make things right. Right? Well. Endwalker has the unenviable position of being the sequel to a wildly, fervently beloved chapter in a long-running series. Everyone going in had their doubts, especially about the villains that dominated much of the promotional material. Emet-Selch is an extremely tough act to follow and, even in the best of times, Endwalker's villain hadn't really wowed the audience. But it works! Powerfully so. As a conclusion to the FFXIV story it succeeds and leaves room for new stories to be told. It's satisfying, and moving, and brings a strong sense of closure and resolution. Thematically, well, EW opens with its themes right when you load up the game. The instant you hit the title screen you're presented with a voice softly singing, "Tales of loss, and fire, and faith." The opening zone acts spur you on to adventure, a relatively breezy aperitif for the largest expansion pack by sheer volume of content. While mysteries emerge, and dramatic reveals are made, Endwalker begins with an air of excitement. We're about to reach the end, it seems to say, we're going to cancel the apocalypse! But make no mistake, Endwalker is not afraid to lay on the heaviest of drama and most painful of tragedies. Because the core theme, spoken right from the start, is the question of suffering. We're made to bear witness to countless tragedies, many preventable, if not for all too-realistic human flaws and prejudices, but many that are not. Tragedies that people are forced to endure regardless of anyone's best efforts because this mortal world is not a kind and perfect place. When the tragedies compound on each other it's all the heroes can do to take what small victories they can, to save those who are willing to listen and to place their trust in them. Nowhere is this most clear than in Garlemald. Before Shadowbringers, and before Stormblood, players would often discuss what would the story look like should the war finally move away from defending Eorzea and its allies and towards the Garlean Imperial homeland. People were genuinely worried about what things would look like should Eorzea become the conqueror and Garlemald the conquered. No surprise, then, that this was an ever-present worry among Garlemald's citizenry, too. The entire Garlemald zone arc is a study in the effects of war, not just occupation, and generations of propaganda on an otherwise innocent population. Instead of an army of conquest, Eorzea and its allies send its best on a mission of mercy. They make an honest show of good faith to save the civilians of an embattled country faced with the prelude to the apocalypse. One that nearly backfires in spite of their best efforts, as the world is never quite so simple. Pride and patriotism nearly doom a dying people. But the heroes never stop trying. The world is a place of suffering, but they believe they can build a better one and will not give up on it. It's a powerful story arc, with a resolution that brings a lot of closure to the story of the Garlean Empire. It could've been a rather fitting ending in its own right if not for the fact that the story was still in its first act. Like in Shadowbringers, the writers have learned their lessons from Stormblood. Rather than compounding tragedy after tragedy, Endwalker gives the player time to digest the story they've experienced, to recover from any hits they might've taken. And, importantly, to remind them of the beauty and wonder of the world, and what it is they're fighting for. Heavy story arcs are given time to wind up and land harder while lighter story arcs give time to provide important information and context. And this also allows the characters time to breathe as well and, once more, be people. To be fair, it is not subtle in expressing its themes. Large portions are clearly informed by Buddhist philosophy, which should come as no surprise considering that the story is greatly concerned with suffering and what best to do about it. Faith is a major part, not just in terms of religion and spirituality, but faith in people. One of the most compelling, and controversial, character arcs in the story is predicated on one particular character’s faith. Not just in mankind as a whole, but in one brave hero with whom they could entrust a light into the future. The story goes big, and I mean really big. Cosmic, even, though always grounded in an emotional context the reader can still connect to. It’s endearingly self-indulgent, relentlessly powerful, and a musical delight. Its story and characters inspire fierce discussion, philosophical and otherwise. It swings for the fences and knocks the ball out of the park. But it's the quiet moments, those scenes where the bulk of the character work is done, that lend it the emotional core that makes that cosmic story feel like it matters. This, as it turns out, is something that's rather tricky to do, to write a story of grand scope but intimate stakes. But Endwalker treads that line, even if at times the sheer bleakness of some parts threatens to overwhelm the player with despair fatigue. But behind it all, there is a warmth and earnestness that radiates throughout. From parents helping their late daughter's boyfriend grieve their mutual loss and reconnect, to friends quietly taking the time to have a late dinner and enjoy the simple pleasures of eating a hamburger with people who you care for, and who care for you. Endwalker is a story about people facing overwhelmingly profound tragedy and despair and not just surviving, but working to make their lives whole again, and to do the same for others. In the original version of this post above, I mentioned that, thematically, the story mostly dealt with suffering. But that's only part of the equation. Suffering lies at the core of the questions it asks, but the answers are where the real heart of the theme lies. It's a story about healing. And it’s easily my second favorite Final Fantasy. After Shadowbringers. 
Runa fucked around with this message at 12:37 on Jul 16, 2022 |
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Jul 16, 2022 10:45
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Shine posted:Yeah, if a game is somebody's favorite because playing with their friends was the best ever, then it's still their favorite. Let's keep this thread positive, please Apologies, to clarify I have around 12,000 hours in WoW and loved every minute (even the ragequit annoying ones are amusing now). Not trying to bring the thread down!
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Jul 16, 2022 13:01
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WoW: Legion was really good, best expansion next to Mists of Pandaria and Wrath. But to add content I will post about the current/latest Hitman games. The World of Assassination trilogy.
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Jul 16, 2022 13:22
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Captain Invictus posted:world of warcraft is not very good. The classic 1500 hours played negative steam review
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Jul 18, 2022 13:26
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I’ve never looked at my /played in WoW but if it were only 1500 hours I’d consider that to be a triumphant success.
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Jul 18, 2022 13:29
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Can someone who’s played them all do a Yakuza post? I just finished Yakuza 0 and I’m stunned. The plot was pretty drat good, and the acting was GOAT. They put a lot of blood, sweat and tears in there to make such an accurate representation of some very difficult social situations in Japan. If no one steps up for that, I’ll eventually do it for 0. From what I’ve heard that’s arguably the best; at least in the running. After The War posted:My wife and I literally just finished 6 this weekend, and we've played through the entire canon series up to that point (1 and 2 were the original PS2 versions, not Kiwami). I'd be honored to take the Kiryu Saga on for you, just give me some time to process it. Bless you kind goon! Take your time. What a great coincidence. I envy your ability to make it through the whole Kiryu saga. I picked up 0 on a whim because I’m on leave and fell in love. Unfortunately, I’m not going to have free time like this again until I retire so I’ll probably fast forward to 6 and just play his swan song. Fly Ricky fucked around with this message at 14:04 on Jul 18, 2022 |
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Jul 18, 2022 13:30
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My wife and I literally just finished 6 this weekend, and we've played through the entire canon series up to that point (1 and 2 were the original PS2 versions, not Kiwami). I'd be honored to take the Kiryu Saga on for you, just give me some time to process it.
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Jul 18, 2022 13:51
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