Video Game General

[anthony]

So gamers appear to be chimping out over Dragon's Dogma 2. I've been looking around on /v/ and there seems to be a rather coordinated effort to lie about the game and spam the same few specific gamerbabbles at anybody who says otherwise. "sloppa", "piggy", "you like getting assfucked huh?", etc. As Pigsaw has said here or somewhere, the language brings to mind fat people fucking. These people are revolting.

And anyway, like the andy and leyley thing I do think some people just go berserk at normal or cool things existing. I couldn't get into Dragon's Dogma 1 but this game looks fine to me. Steam Reviews are also terrible, but that's the typical day 1 American thing of having a heart attack because DRM exists and being surprised that a Japanese PC port needs refinement.

Also you can pay for things in game. The game is single player but people are still calling this "pay to win". Sure, but nobody can explain what's wrong with that. Also you can't start a new game because files are serverbound. That strikes me as weird, but whatever. You can apparently redesign your character once you hit a certain point in the game, like Elden Ring, but there's a coordinated effort to tell as many people that this is impossible to sour feelings at launch. As far as I can tell anyway. Maybe it's true. But I doubt it.

This strikes me as more of the palworld shit. People addicted to COMMUNITY wars on the internet who don't actually like anything.

I'll ask some japanese people if there's even been a blip of controversy over there. I imagine not.

[Guest]

The chimpout seems to be over poor PC performance and the inclusion of undisclosed microtransactions, with the latter being more of a principled objection. Both of these objections are justifiable in my mind.

[anthony]

The chimpout seems to be over poor PC performance and the inclusion of undisclosed microtransactions, with the latter being more of a principled objection. Both of these objections are justifiable in my mind.

>poor PC performance
People who buy and install INSTANTLY rather than waiting 30 minutes to read into this are actually excited to participate in DISCOURSE and represent a COMMUNITY. They are not here for the game. So I hope they get scalped by a pack of feral niggers.

And as for undisclosed microtransactions, what is the principle behind the objection? It's just taken as axiomatically bad because gamers are fucking retarded animals.

[Ichor_Juice]

I’ve been hearing a lot of bitching over the very limited fast travel system and the requirement for an internet connection to play (considering that half of the game is the social pawn system this is entirely necessary) which leads me to believe most of the retards who bought Dragons Dogma Two didn’t play the first game, where this was also the case. Also likely that most of these guys didn’t buy either and just wanted to complain. I did want to do a personal critique on Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen considering that the sequel is now in the spotlight. No screenshots this time since all of them are in a hard drive three hundred miles away.

My main gripe with the first game is that an integral system, the pawns that serve under you, is pretty dreadful to deal with. If you pay attention to what melee pawns are doing, they awkwardly shuffle around and attack space at random in a way that makes them look delirious and lost. Most of the pawns don’t know how to properly position themselves, so you often have mage pawns walking up to a giant snake and getting promptly eaten.  You could change the behaviors of pawns through an interview to curve some of these worst tendencies, but for a bad reason using the commands that cause your pawns to move away from or attack the enemy also changes these behaviors, and using these commands is unavoidable when playing the Dark Arisen expansion. What you end up doing is spamming the run-away command on all of your pawns so they don’t all get one shot by Death [who is the worst element in the entire game single biggest deal breaker that made me stop playing legitimately the only guy with no interesting interaction you can’t grab onto him or do anything you just kite him with arrows and avoid his two extremely avoidable attacks which your pawns will fail to do EVERY SINGLE TIME HE SHOWS UP] and as a consequence all of your pawns will behave like pussies and not attack anything head-on. You even have an attribute that allows you to remove your pawns in exchange for a statistical boost, as if the devs lack confidence in pawn behavior, although perhaps this is also a concession to all the faggots whining about the online features (I do hope that they deprive all players of this option in the sequel out of spite). Being a man of good character and never wanting to deprive myself of the intended experience, I never bothered with this option regardless of the very tempting circumstance that would otherwise justify it IE the second time you enter the Fallen City to fight the Daimon where the entire place is filled with 50 Minotaurs that rape all of your poor defenseless pawns before your eyes like the most depraved Japanese doujin you have ever witnessed. Legitimately don’t know how this area passed play testing; the pawns absolutely cannot figure out how to handle the situation AT ALL. Excuse me if this sounds like a rant on 'game balance', but what I want to demonstrate is this implementation creates dissonance between what the developers want to portray vs. what you have to actually deal with. Handling pawns feels like 'tard wrangling and mars the greater intent of portraying a trustworthy fate-bound band slaying mythical creatures in traditional romantic fashion. 

All complaints aside, there is a very good reason why I stuck around regardless of imperfections. The monster interaction in the game is absolutely the defining element. There is impassioned intent to maximize the fidelity between you and the countless variety of Hellenic myth ready and willing to bite down on your head.



The unfortunately fetishistic wording of the video title actually works out, considering that we are dealing with Japanese object fetishism at its finest. The enemy physically interacts with the player as much as the player interacts with the enemy, and the player has a lot of interesting ways to interact with said enemy. The idea of turning Shadow of Colossus into a full blown action RPG was brilliant, and Capcom spared no expense at realizing it. Every enemy (except Death) has meaningful interaction with the player. Harpies and Griffins can grab you and drop you from 50 feet in the air. The player can also grab either of them as well, and attempt to ground them by stabbing them in flight. The devs were very conscious at making damage very locational in order to make grappling with enemies + shooting at them much more engaging. You can poke out the Cyclops’s eye to weaken it, and sometimes the Cyclopes come clad in armor that can be knocked off piece by piece in order to provide locations to attack, such as striking off a gauntlet or the helmet or a shin guard. Each section of the Chimera is its own individual entity, and each can be killed off separate of the greater beast in order to disable certain attacks. The Golem’s mineral body is indestructible, and you have to destroy all the fetishes applied throughout the creature’s body in order to kill it. You can cut off each head of a hydra, and any pawn which was getting swallowed by that head will be freed so long as he or she hasn't been digested first. You can cauterize the wounds in order to stop the heads from growing back as well. As a matter of fact, there is a lot of interaction with different magic attacks for each enemy, promoting further experimentation to find previously unknown interactions. Cool thing about this is that, once those interactions are discovered, your pawn will reveal these weaknesses to other players that hire them. Ogres behave more aggressively against the player party for each woman present. You can also cut of the eyes of the beholder to weaken it as well (kind of weird that there is a D&D creature in this game since most of the other greater bosses are based off of Greek Myth and the whole experience felt like a journey through Sicily but whatever).

As you can see in the video above, the enemies can treat you with similar abuse. It would be far more enjoyable to get attacked by them, but most of the QTEs to break free of these attacks are near perfect and often require pawn assistance (attacking the enemy so that they break hold of you) for success and well, the pawns don’t help much in this regard either. It is very frustrating to visibly see yourself get eaten alive by a hydra while your clueless warrior is hobbling about getting walloped by the other heads at every step. Nonetheless, the way you can deal with these creatures is legitimately exciting and effectively makes you never want to play a mage, which is the role pawns tend to be most useful in anyway so it works out. I say all of this in the hope that they steal the behavior trees from Halo CE and hard port them into the sequel so that I don’t get one shot by the chest mimics (which, now that I recall them, is also something with absolutely no interesting interaction whatsoever. That whole dark arisen expansion is kind of a headache because of the presence of Death+mimics tbh) because anyone that might be able to help otherwise lacks the mental capacity to.

I also wanted to note the developer intent to “to emulate Western RPGs including Fallout 3, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Fable II.” (quote stolen wholesale from Wikipedia because the source is in Japanese). Forget about Todd Howard’s escapades in making a shitty boneheaded Tolkien bootleg and a first person interpretation to an isometric game, I just wanted to comment on how this game does everything Peter Molyneux wanted to do with Fable II (and also do it better). I mean this in the sense of having a multi-staged world where player choices can change opportunities and interaction with fellow characters. Dragon’s Dogma is more focused on interpersonal relations between the player and a specific set of characters, who each have arcs that span through the multiple stages of the game that have multiple outcomes/can ignored for other opportunities much like in a visual novel, although each arc is obviously not as exhaustive and lengthy as they would have been in a VN. The very nature of the plot provides an opportunity to reset the game and retry as your pawn, which gives you an opportunity to explore other choices and missed quests in a way that Fable simply didn’t permit naturally. If you wanted to do this in Fable you had to make a new game, and you were otherwise left with a static end experience where the few significant choices that were actually available are totally cemented. The events feel far more impactful to the world than they ever did in Fable II. In Fable II, Bowerstone never changes in any notable fashion outside of actions related to the game introduction, regardless of the fact that the plot occurs over the span of decades. The final stage of Dragon’s Dogma punches a giant hole through the main city of Gran Soren, providing a huge optional dungeon that you can explore before your reset. During the same stage, the greater world space also gets repopulated with extremely dangerous enemies, including some that weren’t present for the entirety of the experience beforehand. There is a sense of impact and movement that I did not experience when I was playing Fable II, although I never played the first Fable so maybe I’ll have more to say if I did so.

My final comment on Dragon’s Dogma is based on the element it regrettably inherits from way too many games following similar traditions. Mainly the obsessive collection of easter egg items in order to improve equipment. I very much hate this element from most games dubbed by the mean masses as ‘action RPGs’ or ‘looter shooters’ (looter shooter specifically defined as any game where you shoot people and the feeling of shooting sucks and the whole fucking goddamn game also sucks e.g. Borderlands). Forcing the person trying to enjoy the experience to demean himself to retarded gambling as an obstacle between him and good material sucks. Amongst a million other things, this is what made me truly despise Destiny and realize horribly that all the talent in Bungie was gone at a youthful age. This game does it poorly as well. Finding dumbass flowers and relying on monster drop chances ties into a lot of the side quests not related to those character quests and the main plot, and it just makes them a general pain that you would rather avoid than experience. Of the very, very, very little I can credit Oblivion with doing well, besides the interesting character scheduling system, it is precisely that all of the little side missions you pick up along your journey specifically avoids this kind of tedium. Neurotically searching for stray four-leaf clovers from rare sources is also necessary for upgrading equipment. This might be palatable for Monster Hunter, where you get immediately thrown into smaller combat spaces, but in this case you have to run around huge spaces of land in order to find weirdly specific objects. It ends up just being an roadblock to overcome in order to get to the parts of Dragon’s Dogma that are interesting, the plot and enemy interaction.

Regardless of these inconveniences, I would still recommend Dragon's Dogma to others. There is enough in the actual action and interaction with creatures that can compel a person to play amidst the rough patches. The whole world space is beautiful, and has a variety of locales which are marvelous to look upon. The whole soundtrack is remarkable as well, and I’ll be providing the tracks that I found most notable below.
 

[anthony]

You know I never actually properly played Dragon's Dogma 1. And now you've made me want to. Good job. My computer would surely explode trying to run 2, so that can wait.

[synesth]

In Destiny recently the complaints have been much about "micro-transactions" but I think this is just how a stupid mass of people have found a way to put their frustration to words. They feel scammed - but not because of the possibility of skins. Rather it is the lack of story, which leaves one with a feeling of "Is this it? Is there no more to this?" Playing Destiny 2 today is essentially playing a worse, ad-filled version of Destiny 1 - it is fundamentally dead, the story is over and has been for the years. The aesthetic is growing tired, the same enemies have been killed for years, and the only good thing - the music composers and people behind Forsaken - have been fired. The original campaign (purged from the game btw) Forsaken and Season of Arrivals showed the game's potential as a true successor to Halo, combining fantastic music with a compelling story, customizing gear and a special aesthetic of lonely space and destroyed planets. And why does it not do the same today? Because Bungie tried to listen, and instead of understanding the purpose and reason behind complaints, doubled down on customizing gear in complicated autistic systems and shifting the focus from making the loot and gear work forward in a unified story to making the story work towards the gear. Everything is character building and that's the purpose. It is a glorified cookie clicker. Then why did people keep playing? These problems have been present since the start of the game, because the success of the game relies on getting you captured in the story. What kept me and many others keeping an eye on this game was the few glimmers of hope and story. The music. Many of the old weapons. It was in those days fun game. Players came for the campaigns, the few kept playing because it was a fun game - but now none of it is fun anymore. The DLC's are still horrible, Bungie tries to milk you of money every second possible, PVP is insufferable and PVE is nothing but what you have already played in the DLC repackaged and spoonfed back to you.

They turned Halo into cookie clicker and fired Marty. Marathon will be pure shit and I predict yet another variant of Valorant/Overwatch polished garbage. I honestly feel disappointment, because this could have been, really, one of the best games of all time.

I listen and yearn:

[synesth]

I hope to be proven wrong about Marathon though, I've heard rumors that the good devs moved on to it from D2.

[anthony]

Didn't they try to make Marathon an 'Extraction Shooter', and now they're trying again as a more conventional Overwatch type thing? Doesn't sound encouraging at all. Sounds like they have an army of people making stuff with no unifying idea or thing they want to do.

https://www.ign.com/articles/bungie-shak...e-director

Yeah this sounds quite bad. Leadership changes too. Bungie are almost becoming 343 Studios.

Speaking of, it took Joseph Staten to unfuck 343 enough to finish a game. Have you heard what he's up to now? He's been hired by Netflix to lead the creation of a new IP for them in video games.

[Guest]

Our friend Ptolemy is back. I left him another comment.



I've been thinking in general about gamergate. Tweeting a bit, and used this comment section to draft some thoughts. The gist of my thinking is that Western AAA is just a pointless industry which never developed consciousness of itself as a potential artform. It falls so easily into corruption because it has no healthy growth within itself to provide a meaningful drive that would be hard to subvert. Ties into what I said under his last video. 

Now do I reply to his other commenters and harrass him on twitter too...?

 it disturbs me for the qoute in the video "you can't be racist towards white people" propaganda. These dudes get so tiring to discuss anything with on social media because they're drones I've almost just given up. I'm going to watch the video and thanks for poasting by the way.

[Unformed Golem]

I played The Citadel.  I am sold on the sequel, which will probably eclipse it Road Warrior style.





I liked that it avoided the "puzzle" aspect of lots of Doom wads (with which I am admittedly not very familiar at all), in favor of relatively straightforward shootouts in service of its story.

Citadel reminded me most of E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy, with its weird story elliptically explained in ESLisms (although EYE had far more story text).  Citadel was shorter and much less confusing -- there was no point at which I simply had no idea what to do next as was the case a few times in EYE-DC.  I am now following Beyond Citadel on Steam and eagerly await CitadelDev's next release.

[Guest]

Might be a little late or something but I just watched the Anthony video about gun fetishism in the East and I've got to say, holy kino. I've literally stopped watch jootube in the last few years because you never know the horrid libtardery or low iq Quarteringism that is going to spew from the diseased retard mouths of the vidya game video essayist, but with this one it was just a comfy analysis through and through. It's very rare for me to watch a jewtube video these days and cling to every word, but I pretty much did for this one. 
Watched it while sitting in my blanket and sipping on a cup of Winthropian Hot Cocococo as well heheheh.

[Teer]

At the risk of repeating what might have already been said about The Citadel, I remember when the game first came out it was so different than all the other "Boomer Shooters" that was flooding steam at the time from its aesthetic and the lack of gay one-liners. It had issues of stuttering and crashing every few hours, but the game impressed me when it came to the violence. Because of those crashing issues I never finished it. Seems like the dev fixed it? If so, I'll give it another go.

[anthony]

At the risk of repeating what might have already been said about The Citadel, I remember when the game first came out it was so different than all the other "Boomer Shooters" that was flooding steam at the time from its aesthetic and the lack of gay one-liners. It had issues of stuttering and crashing every few hours, but the game impressed me when it came to the violence. Because of those crashing issues I never finished it. Seems like the dev fixed it? If so, I'll give it another go.

It doesn't run great. It's fundamentally awkward in a few ways still and may crash on you. The developer has gotten much better since then, but all of that experience is going into Beyond Citadel, which handles much better from what we've seen so far.

The Citadel is a very short game. I recommend playing it through. It will probably feel unplayable after Beyond Citadel so now is the time. And there's enough novel stuff to keep it interesting to the end if you ask me.

And since the subject at hand is "Boomer Shooters", I'll link the RPGcodex thread I'm posting in since a lot of thoughts on the subject come out there. Some of which people here may have seen before. Might be worth reading the OP too if you're interested since I am replying to him. I enjoy posting on RPGcodex. I don't find anybody there interesting, but they're a good backboard. Responsive and confident in their own (wrong) beliefs.

[Handi]

I'll link the RPGcodex thread I'm posting in since a lot of thoughts on the subject come out there.

You have watched too many 10 hour youtube essays and can't get to the point or really make a point.

God bless your persistence in expressing your ideas to people who are totally uncomprehending, Anthony. If I were in your shoes the chunderheaded irony of this remark would have driven me to a locked-in state of permanent autism.

[Uguroza]

You know I never actually properly played Dragon's Dogma 1. And now you've made me want to. Good job. My computer would surely explode trying to run 2, so that can wait.

The first Dragon's Dogma was still an experience worth playing. The second game seems like a cluster fuck of issues.


They also had unique classes that I don't think they included in DD2, which angers me.



Dragon's Dogma Online was a continuation of the story from 1. Making it more of an actual Dragon's Dogma 2 that was japan only.

Dragon's Dogma 2 may be a continuation of the series, but I don't think it is a continuation of the first game as much as just a remake or reboot.

[anthony]

You know I never actually properly played Dragon's Dogma 1. And now you've made me want to. Good job. My computer would surely explode trying to run 2, so that can wait.

Dragon's Dogma Online was a continuation of the story from 1. Making it more of an actual Dragon's Dogma 2 that was japan only.

Dragon's Dogma 2 may be a continuation of the series, but I don't think it is a continuation of the first game as much as just a remake or reboot.

Japan only games are a great idea. Look at all of the bullshit with Dragon's Dogma 2. They should more often ask themselves if the Shartmerican audience is worth the trouble.

[Guest]

I'll link the RPGcodex thread I'm posting in since a lot of thoughts on the subject come out there.

You have watched too many 10 hour youtube essays and can't get to the point or really make a point.

God bless your persistence in expressing your ideas to people who are totally uncomprehending, Anthony. If I were in your shoes the chunderheaded irony of this remark would have driven me to a locked-in state of permanent autism.

>You waffle on saying absolutely nothing child. You have watched too many 10 hour youtube essays and can't get to the point or really make a point. And the ones you do are easily dismantled with even basic knowledge of the game. You're worse than Evangelion fans and they're an exceptional bunch of autists.
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[Guest]

I'll link the RPGcodex thread I'm posting in since a lot of thoughts on the subject come out there.

You have watched too many 10 hour youtube essays and can't get to the point or really make a point.

God bless your persistence in expressing your ideas to people who are totally uncomprehending, Anthony. If I were in your shoes the chunderheaded irony of this remark would have driven me to a locked-in state of permanent autism.

>You waffle on saying absolutely nothing child. You have watched too many 10 hour youtube essays and can't get to the point or really make a point. And the ones you do are easily dismantled with even basic knowledge of the game. You're worse than Evangelion fans and they're an exceptional bunch of autists.
NiggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerNiggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerNiggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerNiggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerNiggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerNiggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerNiggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerNiggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerNiggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerNiggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerNiggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerNiggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerNiggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerNiggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerNiggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerNiggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerNiggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerNiggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerNiggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerNiggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerNiggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerNiggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerNiggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerNiggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerNiggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerNiggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerNiggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerNiggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerNiggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerNiggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggernigger

dayumm dis younfag mohfugga child ahh nigga be WAFFLIN AWN mang sheeeeeeittt yalls like dem autists lmao im wun o dem oldfags on fohchann


(This is seriously how every 4mex oldtroon behaves. Go on an board now, what the fuck happened after 2020 on that website bros?)

[Guest]

I got to the area with the chimera in BOF3 and I see why this game is so loved. I'm planning on finishing this game when I possibly can but I've only made it to the haunted mansion iirc.

[Teer]

Been noticing a few "Gamergate 2" personalities on youtube and twitter promote gacha games, particularly Nikke. Besides the obvious, what sort of appeal do you think gacha games have that make them successful?