|
After two years in Early Access, Not For Broadcast has finally been completed! Amazingly for a FMV game, it's good! With actually funny comedy that can make the swerve to seriousness when it needs to. https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/256870480/movie480_vp9.webm You are the broadcast editor for the National Nightly News, editing live with multiple camera feeds to provide the news for the nation (of not-Britain). Aside from keeping the camera on who is talking, you are responsible for bleeping out swearing, avoiding signal interference, choosing how to frame stories, choosing the advertising, and whatever other problems might plague the editing studio. Of course there are repercussions to your skills and choices, not just in your paycheck, but in the public perceptions of individuals, political parties, and corporations. In between editing sessions there is a light text CYOA storyline, as you are called upon to make choices regarding events surrounding your family. Essentially this is a game in the mold of Papers, Please. You have an immediate job to do that requires quite a bit of plate-spinning, and occasionally there are decisions you can make that have wider repercussions. If you are curious but unsure: there is a demo on Steam that is the first chapter of the game. NFB is available on Steam, GOG, and Epic, with 25% off on both Steam and Epic until Friday. https://i.imgur.com/9yGiAbs.mp4 https://i.imgur.com/hRxiMur.mp4 https://i.imgur.com/R4wni96.mp4 https://i.imgur.com/yg7m6Nv.mp4 The game is surprisingly more complex than you would expect from a FMV game, with numerous changes throughout the episodes resulting from your choices. The entire trajectory of celebrities and companies are dictated by how you choose to portray them. Even some of the decisions made in the CYOA sections outside the editing studio come back to reflect in your broadcasts. There are 14 different endings based on the major decisions you make and countless variations along the way. The developers have been quite thoughtful. You can adjust the difficulty of the different gameplay systems, or even disable individual systems entirely, if they are giving you problems. So the difficulty is completely customizable. Likewise, all the footage you have seen is saved, as well as your finished broadcast as a viewer would have seen it, to review at your leisure. Though it takes multiple playthroughs to unlock all the available footage, as parts do change based on your decisions. Before I forget, NFB also has the Guinness World Record for Most FMV footage with just under 43 hours of video. I'll leave you with my favorite sequence, though you might want to save it for yourself if you haven't played the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ad7shDt6Bro
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2022 09:43
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 19, 2024 20:32 |
|
|
Holy poo poo. Yeah, I gotta try this. Wow.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2022 14:11
|
|
|
I went through watching a playthrough. It's legitimately really good.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2022 14:43
|
|
|
Went ahead and bought this because it looks like it would be a fun game to play over the weekend.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2022 16:54
|
|
|
I absolutely adore this game. Best FMV game/concept ever, by a large margin imo. I'm taking my time with it, just doing a chapter or two once or twice a week, because I like it so much I want to savor it. Once I get to the end I'm super curious to compare notes on what happens in the ending and how it differs from other people. Sportsboard might be my absolute favorite of the joking segments so far, I had a great time editing the championship and was actually laughing out loud. That and the rap song against Advance were really fun for me so far. As far as the political stuff, one thing I like is how morally ambiguous it makes it. Really they do a great job at making you question Advance and what they're up to but also hate the opposition as well. Basically everyone is just terrible lol
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2022 18:40
|
|
|
I have this from some humble or fanatical bundle I guess, I think I got it during early access but haven't tried it out yet. It looks incredible, definitely going to check it out when I get back home next week.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2022 19:10
|
|
|
Rebel Blob posted:I'll leave you with my favorite sequence, though you might want to save it for yourself if you haven't played the game:  enough to remember when FMV games were all the rage and almost universally terrible).
|
|
#
?
Feb 2, 2022 02:56
|
|
|
This is a lot more compelling than I expected! Windows only so I'm taking a pass for a while yet, but I'm glad I clicked on this. I was expecting an ironic shitpost, to be totally honest. Is there a good clip you can post that isn't like The Best Part that I might not want to spoil? Just like a 6 on the 0-10 scale, something representative and interesting but that I definitely wouldn't regret having spoiled?
|
|
#
?
Feb 2, 2022 03:31
|
|
|
It's great but multiple playthroughs seem to be exhausting. Going through the same sequences multiple times gets boring fast.
|
|
#
?
Feb 2, 2022 05:32
|
|
|
Akratic Method posted:Is there a good clip you can post that isn't like The Best Part that I might not want to spoil? Just like a 6 on the 0-10 scale, something representative and interesting but that I definitely wouldn't regret having spoiled? I've timestamped the video to a certain bit, but if you have 50 minutes to spare the whole thing is a self-contained storyline. It doesn't touch at all on the plot of the main game, just has some character connections. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmJImZPtlQ4&t=533s For something shorter from the main game, there is also Sportsboard! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqceZ_v4PF8
|
|
#
?
Feb 2, 2022 05:45
|
|
|
I don't particularly think the video I'm going to link is a spoiler...by any means, its just sort of what kind of stuff you'll regularly encounter in the game. Its just bizarre and funny and a little sads. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtGy5ig2wQw
|
|
#
?
Feb 2, 2022 05:55
|
|
|
ymgve posted:It's great but multiple playthroughs seem to be exhausting. Going through the same sequences multiple times gets boring fast. I haven't quite finished yet but I'm definitely going to give it a go with fully different choices. I do agree that of course it gets boring (I've restarted segments probably too often to get that A+ rating). But optimally I'd like to do a full disrupt playthrough and a full advance bootlicker playthrough and see how each goes. So far I've been kind of going in between, playing it how I think is best and not censoring for advance or fully disfavoring them. But as things go on you feel compelled to start going one way or another. The most genius part is how it's so easy to hate both sides so it's really hard to kind of find your moral center. do not click the spoilers below if you haven't played all the way through I just got to Jeremy Donaldson's epic meltdown. Holy poo poo. You kind of knew it was coming but I definitely did not expect something that dramatic, and you almost grow to love the guy as he's the one featured most and you can just see his frustration constantly growing with the endless banality and censorship. That was fucken awesome though. I loved that and I can't imagine what happens next Also gotta share some crazy neil https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEvBO90l2mY
|
|
#
?
Feb 2, 2022 05:58
|
|
|
Hell yes thank you for making a thread, can’t wait to discuss as soon as I finish
|
|
#
?
Feb 3, 2022 03:44
|
|
|
Just finished this and drat, it's great. Every time the fluff bits would start to wear on me it would hit me with an excellent sequence which would pull me right back in. Favorite bits (Major spoilers): Jeremy Donaldson's meltdown and subsequent suicide by cop Megan's foster daughter's monologue and her generations slang All of the music bits were amazing (Mr. Bear is still stuck in my loving head Jesus) The final climax with the women confronting the prime minister was amazing. Edit: Ending spoiler: Oh holy poo poo Jeremy Donaldson can survive until the end of the game and confront the Prime Minister Talorat fucked around with this message at 05:46 on Feb 4, 2022 |
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2022 05:35
|
|
|
Talorat posted:Edit: This is the ending I got. There are fourteen or so in total, all depending on who lives and dies, whether you chose to play certain tapes or not, whether you helped or hindered Disrupt, and so on. The ending I got did seem to have a certain feeling of "true ending" to me, if a game like this can be said to have one. Talorat posted:All of the music bits were amazing (Mr. Bear is still stuck in my loving head Jesus) The entire Lockdown chapter is amazing. My favorite part is how people keep getting Jeremy's name wrong, and the subtitles update to match whatever someone last called him, until he finally corrects them and insists his name is Jeffrey Donnington. All the musical numbers throughout are surprisingly good for being simultaneously terrible. Did you know there are three separate versions of Mr. Bear?
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2022 09:02
|
|
|
What controls if Jeremy Donaldson dies or not, is it whether you play the tape? Or cut to the ads before they shoot him?
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2022 19:59
|
|
|
Talorat posted:What controls if Jeremy Donaldson dies or not, is it whether you play the tape? Or cut to the ads before they shoot him? Talorat posted:Megan's foster daughter's monologue and her generations slang I think it's Alan James who says that Peter Clement was the moral heart of Advance, the terrible decisions all seem to come from Julia Salisbury and things really go to hell after he dies. Talorat posted:All of the music bits were amazing (Mr. Bear is still stuck in my loving head Jesus Hyper Crab Tank posted:The ending I got did seem to have a certain feeling of "true ending" to me, if a game like this can be said to have one. Also, props to Jeremy's actor for putting up with such awful haircuts. Rebel Blob fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Feb 4, 2022 |
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2022 20:04
|
|
|
Talorat posted:Jeremy Donaldson's meltdown and subsequent suicide by cop Mine was different than both of yours, probably based on the choices I made during that segment. In mine Donaldson killed himself with the pistol literally an instant after I cut to commercial lol Also why are you calling them Ascent, they are called Advance. I imagine that's just a typo, right? If it's spoilers just don't respond to me.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2022 20:08
|
|
|
Unsurprisingly, this game's blooper reels are great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kI7cBFCOJHY
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2022 20:12
|
|
|
Play posted:Also why are you calling them Ascent, they are called Advance. I imagine that's just a typo, right? If it's spoilers just don't respond to me. Talorat posted:Unsurprisingly, this game's blooper reels are great: Rebel Blob fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Feb 4, 2022 |
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2022 20:13
|
|
|
Rebel Blob posted:There is also some foreshadowing the anti-breeding song is promoted before the sterility crisis is in full swing. Another bit of subtle foreshadowing is the day before, in the red carpet report, you find out The Medicated was stopped from publication shortly after it was shown on NNN and subsequently recut and re-dubbed into The Automated. Why? Because if you remember from the first trailer, The Medicated was a story about what is implied to be a worldwide sterility crisis. Advance didn't want that in the cinemas, which also clarifies that they were planning on forcefully sterilizing people from the get-go. Additionally, I can't believe Alan James was right about almost everything. They really were poisoning the food. They really were killing people's parents and turning children against you. It's really a "stopped clock is right twice a day" scenario, but still.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2022 20:32
|
|
|
I had no idea this game was in EA. The answer to the thread title is yes, if a bit obtuse on mechanics at times. Trying to work a news broadcast around someone who is completely losing it at an interview is hilarious.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2022 21:08
|
|
|
Pretty enjoyable game overall. Of course it could be because I didn't go back and rewatch every tidbits of the studio recording to get complete perspective on everything, but I find some of the emotional/moral choices don't land well. I find Disrupt pretty unsympathetic. I kept trying to give them air time to learn their message but they never moved beyond the extremely generic "government control bad" angle. I completely gave up on them when they have me play what's supposedly their big manifesto to have the people rise up tape. Instead what I got was a confession from the working class person saying she's sorry she voted Advance because she was jealous of rich people's wealth??? JESUS CHRIST. At this point I had to completely reinterpret the tone of the game to be an absurdist take on socialism and I dunno, liberalism or rich people control the world in a cabalism, depending on how charitable you want to be. Also Disrupt's leader/spokesperson turned out to be an Alex Jones type. How the hell is anyone suppose to take Disrupt seriously after that? Even Jeremy's shaken at the reveal when he realized he just threw away his life for not-Alex Jones. The game had section where you are suppose to control the narrative by playing different take from the various happenings. Except the player is not given information on what's actually happening. I don't know if the policy I am showing in good or bad light is actually working well or not (even though the player character should have an idea). I was also poor as dirt (so poor I had to euthanize my mum), but the game showed that I had my own car, two-story house, nice fenced yard with automatic sprinkler (I guess that's under my wife's name? but somehow we refuse to downsize because?? Also euthanasia is involuntary even if it's not explicitly stated??). Overall I find the scenario of the family survival mini-game/vignette to be pretty ridiculous and didn't work as well as something like in Paper, Please. pedro0930 fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Feb 4, 2022 |
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2022 21:12
|
|
|
i was gonna slam buy this but lmao it's a 50 gig install i'm assuming one must download every FMV file at once, with no option to play/download only one chapter at a time oh well one day i'll get around to buying a external hard drive for my cheapo laptop lmao anyone recommend one? is there even such a thing as a cheap USB external drive that isn't too slow to play games
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2022 21:20
|
|
|
I never thought about it before but is this game basically just a few hours of barely compressed video? That is a gigantic install
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2022 21:24
|
|
|
pedro0930 posted:Pretty enjoyable game overall. Of course it could be because I didn't go back and rewatch every tidbits of the studio recording to get complete perspective on everything, but I find some of the emotional/moral choices don't land well. I get your complaints, I actually like it though because it really keeps you unsure where to go, keeps it ambiguous. Both sides seem incredibly dumb, and poo poo. There's Advance, taking from the rich but also doing other ominous stuff, there's disrupt, led by an Alex Jones analogue, and then there's some rich twats. So it's hard to know where to put your sympathies which I found intriguing. precision posted:i was gonna slam buy this but lmao it's a 50 gig install Any external SSD would probably be fine. Would just take some time to load the level at the start, but I'm playing on an internal HDD and it works fine. An external SSD connecting through USB, especially the latest kind of USB, would be totally fine. I've got like almost 20 TBs total on my desktop pc but I'm a weirdo. They're not super expensive either, like here's 2 TB for 60 bucks https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Port...la-496797558692
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2022 21:33
|
|
|
Part of the reason why the politics are what they are is probably that, well, unless you want to get into a quagmire and spend countless hours on it you can't actually do anything like real life. It's a comedy game, it's satire, so it's exaggerated and parodical - though strangely, I find Alan James has some of the more gripping speeches after he publicly reveals himself to be the face of Disrupt. He seems to mellow out on the conspiracy a lot, possibly because he had an offscreen "oh poo poo, this is happening for real" moment. But a lot of what you see on screen is just a caricature of childish, posh rich people whining about not owning five ponies and thirteen mansions, rather than more reasonable complaints. It's still kind of there in a way though... the euthanasia centers are real and become increasingly less voluntary as time goes on, the youth organization becomes more and more... you know. It's just that almost nobody actually voices these concerns (except, on occasion, Alan James, oddly enough). Even Jeremy is mostly (though rightly) concerned with censorship and the increasing banality of what's on TV as Advance tightens the thumbscrews. Out of curiosity, which ending did you get?
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2022 21:45
|
|
|
CuddleCryptid posted:I never thought about it before but is this game basically just a few hours of barely compressed video? That is a gigantic install i'm guessing it's 43 hours + not actually "badly compressed"... probably just looks that way haha edit: oh yeah and thanks that Seagate SSD looks like just the thing... heck yeah
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2022 21:46
|
|
|
Play posted:I get your complaints, I actually like it though because it really keeps you unsure where to go, keeps it ambiguous. Both sides seem incredibly dumb, and poo poo. There's Advance, taking from the rich but also doing other ominous stuff, there's disrupt, led by an Alex Jones analogue, and then there's some rich twats. So it's hard to know where to put your sympathies which I found intriguing. Yeah notably Julia makes some truly horrific choices and represses democracy, but it's not because she thirsts for power necessarily, she really is a true believer in the And yeah it's over 50 hours of footage, if any game deserves it's install footprint it's this one.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2022 21:48
|
|
|
precision posted:i'm guessing it's 43 hours + not actually "badly compressed"... probably just looks that way haha
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2022 21:59
|
|
|
I do this job IRL sometimes and now I'm buying a video game about doing it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2022 22:04
|
|
|
I got the Brighter Future ending where Jeremy and Alan both died, play the Boseman tape. I feel Advance is portrayed as hyper-competent if anything and the developer had to throw some random absurd evil at them to balance it out. For example, I kept waiting for the food distribution center to become Soviet style shortage, but nope, it just seems to work pretty well. Even Jeremy had to give Advance credit for solving homelessness. Advance had popular support the entire time (probably depends on player action), and especially the younger generation all support Advance whether it's because they are all brainwashed or actually hugely benefited from their policy and social program. They turned around the 20 weeks war and brought the international coalition to its knees. (Yes, they nuked tens of millions, but the entire premise is already ridiculous when Advance got sanctioned by the international community for trying to tax rich people. I feel this has to be interpret as Advance somehow lied to the whole country about the reason for sanction). Then Advance had to go forced euthanasia because of...reason?? I feel there's better angle to play up here, for example, Advance becomes an imperial power what with reducing the whole coalition to numbered territories. Like I said, I kept giving Disrupt air time, but they weren't able to show anything concrete, anything beyond conspiracy like some secret government lab got shut down....and...that's all they got. They don't know what research they were doing, it just must be badddd. (And I only read this, but turned out Disrupt is just a puppet of literal international cabal of capitalist if you went their route). They had nothing until the ex machina tape with the accidental sterilization coverup. pedro0930 fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Feb 4, 2022 |
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2022 22:51
|
|
|
I'm not sure what's in that ending exactly - the one I got was Accord. Spoilers for that ending: Jeremy and Alan both live, and crash the studio on the final day and confront the prime minister with lab results showing chemicals and bacteria in all the food handed out by the food service centers are causing the sterility. The prime minister initially tries to say it was an accident, but she also tries to pass it off as a good thing, so just how accidental it really was is mildly ambiguous. It's strongly implied that mass sterilization is what the secret government labs were researching. It's also revealed (if you choose to play a certain tape Jeremy brings in here) that Disrupt are secretly organized by some old money people, including one of the foreign leaders from earlier. I found this part in particular to be kind of... cartoonish? I really feel there has to be a better way to show the downsides of Disrupt, but there you go. In the ending I got (show the tape, censor nothing, neither Advance nor Disrupt), the citizenry throw up their hands, decide both Advance and Disrupt are liars and vote for a third party instead. As you say, part of the premise is pretty ridiculous. I don't know if it's a concession to only being able to do so much, or wanting to keep it a bit fantastical, or what. I think if the game has an overarching point it's not so much about either of the two sides as it is about (spoilered just in case, I guess) taking away people's access to uncensored information about the world and the right to choose their future for themselves, rather than having either Big Brother or a cabal of oligarchs keeping them in the darkness and deciding for them what should be done.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2022 23:15
|
|
|
They definitely could have made some different choices as to how each side were portrayed, they left a lot unsaid and said stuff that probably didn't need to be. But I think this amount of discussion also proves that they did a pretty drat good job in terms of making us think about it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2022 23:50
|
|
|
It's definitely not as smart as say, Disco Elysium, in how it portrays different political ideologies, but it's smart enough to be interesting and that's not bad for a video game. I tried to play Road 96 few months ago and boy if you think this game's view of politics is trite or reductivist try giving that one a spin.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2022 00:13
|
|
|
I think the mass sterilization was an accident, and the government labs were trying to fix it. Mass sterilization doesn't really fit into the goals of a "socialist dictatorship" since it requires a steady stream of new workers to tax as older workers die/retire.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2022 22:02
|
|
|
ymgve posted:I think the mass sterilization was an accident, and the government labs were trying to fix it. Mass sterilization doesn't really fit into the goals of a "socialist dictatorship" since it requires a steady stream of new workers to tax as older workers die/retire. I'm not sure this is a difference between endings or not, but in the Accord ending the prime minister very explicitly says that they wanted to shrink the population because there aren't enough resources to go around for everyone. She then says she wanted it to be "opt-in", but that due to an accident it wasn't... but shortly thereafter she defends what she did anyway, saying "no one would have chosen it willingly" or something to that effect, which makes the "accidental" part sound like another excuse to me. Hyper Crab Tank fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Feb 5, 2022 |
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2022 23:33
|
|
|
Hyper Crab Tank posted:I'm not sure this is a difference between endings or not, but in the Accord ending the prime minister very explicitly says that they wanted to shrink the population because there aren't enough resources to go around for everyone. She then says she wanted it to be "opt-in", but that due to an accident it wasn't... but shortly thereafter she defends what she did anyway, saying "no one would have chosen it willingly" or something to that effect, which makes the "accidental" part sound like another excuse to me. Oh, I never got that ending, I just got the one where she's outed for ordering the kill on her co-president (or whatever his title was). Infertility was only ever blamed on radioactive fallout.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2022 23:48
|
|
|
Not mentioned yet this this thread, but I appreciate that both you and your partner have gender neutral names and are only referred to with they/them pronouns
Talorat fucked around with this message at 19:13 on Feb 6, 2022 |
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2022 07:13
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 19, 2024 20:32 |
|
|
I don't know, I appreciate the intent, but I'm not sure it worked. The names are fine, but there were far too many times when I had trouble following the text because literally everyone was referred to as "them", including in some situations where there were groups involved. It's just not natural English. Only slightly related, but having two family members named Chris and Charlie didn't help matters.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2022 09:14
|
|