Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
If you have an email ending in @hotmail.com, @live.com or @outlook.com (or any other Microsoft-related domain), please consider changing it to another email provider; Microsoft decided to instantly block the server's IP, so emails can't be sent to these addresses.
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
Comments
@Challenges: I'd wager most people simply do it to make it more... challenging (at least, that's why I do them). Besides that, sometimes restricting yourself substantially changes the way you go about strategizing and thus makes the game feel quite different (for example, in a game like Cave Story you might wonder which weapon would be practical against a boss, while if you're using only one weapon you'd instead wonder how to get the best ouf of it).
Anyhow, Touhou without dying or bombing isn't a very good example, as that's what you'd normally try to do whether you find it easy or not. Playing without focusing or for score (in games where score doesn't matter) are better examples.
I prefer his videos to most people's. :c
Actually, the video is pretty darn relevant. What he's talking about there is something similar to confirmation bias. He is saying that because you are looking for evidence to support indoctrination theory, you are going to take any weird happenings as evidence of indoctrination, as opposed to being bad writing.
He then went on to use hyperbole in talking about wooly mammoths. The point wasn't that you would actually accept wooly mammoths showing up as evidence for indoctrination theory, but in that you'd accept any sort of hallucination-y thingimabob as evidence of indoctrination theory.
? I... don't remember that. Of course, I'm seeing where that's coming from- either they deliberately released an ending which likely only maybe 1% of players would get and just plum sucked to anyone who didn't get it and robbed anyone who did get it of any sense of resolution and then just sat back and sniggered to themselves, or they deliberately released said endings in order to sell DLC later.
I'm inclined to think that they just fucked up the ending, though.
> me making videos
> not about swords
I think the combat is brilliant. Unlike most games, Dark Souls gives you extremely clear indicators when it comes to a weapon's range and the time commitment for using it. Some enemies and bosses are very tough, but the combat in Dark Souls is well-polished enough for those to be overcome with any weapon because of how fine the conveyance of information is. A lot of games fail in this regard, such as Skyrim, and its lack of polish or versatility in that area prevents combat from being anything but a collision of statblocks.
Dark Souls puts you in front of tough enemies, but it also gives you enough tools with which to take them out. Just thinking defensively, you can block, counter and dodge -- and the latter two can lead into offensive techniques. As long as you understand the timing of a weapon and the distance it covers, you're pretty much set to take on anything reasonably within your own power range.
Well, the thing is, the codex says that strange dreams and ghostly figures are signs of indoctrination. Pointing out that some of the stuff that the game tells you indicates indoctrination is happening isn't exactly reaching.
They fucked up the ending either way :P
The difference is that the ending as presented is fucked up in a manner such that it actually can't happen in the setting, while the theoretical interpretation is fucked up only in that it's poorly conveyed and doesn't have much resolution, which is something that I find more plausible based on Bioware's storytelling style.
Yeah, but various other Mass Effect materials point out that it happens differently. For example, one of the novels claims that the people are aware of the indoctrination as it happens.
Which was kind of the guy's point; we don't have enough information on indoctrination to be able to try and draw conclusions like this. We don't know what indoctrination is like, really, so trying to claim that the player was being indoctrinated because of a few pieces of evidence that fit the few pieces of information you have is kind of silly.
You really need more information on it before trying to claim that Shepard was being indoctrinated, because otherwise it's all too easy to fit small clues along the way into pretty much any theory you have.
bitch
you don't wanna hear me bitch about all the ways they fucked up the ending
The theoretical interpretation also puts a nasty spin on Bioware, though. While if the ending was just poorly-made, Bioware just fucked up, which is understandable if not forgivable, if indoctrination theory is true, then Bioware deliberately withheld a proper ending from everyone.
And I'd rather believe that Bioware simply fucked up an ending than believe that Bioware would deliberately prevent people from having any actual resolution.
but do you watch them
It is brilliant! It's just also bullshit. The two aren't exclusive at all.
I think there's something somewhere saying that it was different for different people. Still, the same work contains a thing saying "indoctrination can cause strange dreams and ghostly apparitions" and a guy seeing strange dreams and ghostly apparitions. I'm not claiming the theory is the only possibility or anything, but I don't feel like pointing that out is reading into it too much.
And that's not even getting into other stuff that supports the theory.
Or hit EA's deadline. Stuff like that happens a lot more than you'd think.
Well, I explained why it isn't bullshit. It's full of useful and obvious metrics for players to use, both in terms of visuals and sound. Metrics are the tools game designers give players for measuring the impact of their actions, such as swinging a sword or firing a gun. Recoil in a FPS is an example of a metric, as it describes how much a player will have to correct their aim after each shot or burst. For a swordy game, the metric is the animation and the sound of impact. Dark Souls has great clarity in both of those things for all of its weapons.
You might have had a tough time with the combat, but that's got less to do with the structure of combat itself and more to do with how nasty the enemies are. Enemy animations, after all, have their own metrics independent of the regular player character metrics.
And I've never watched one of those videos, somehow.
Yeah, but the guy also wasn't claiming that the theory was bunk. He merely pointed out- and I agree- that without more information, you don't really know enough to be crafting theories like that.
It's certainly a possibility, but without knowing more about it than I do now, there are more plausible explanations. For example; Bioware just plum fucked up.
I play TOR. That is one of the games hit hardest in recent times by EA pushing for an early release.
but nobody ever reads my posts on TOR so whatever
No; you explained why the combat was well-crafted. Not that it isn't bullshit.
The combat in the game is bullshit because of the way several encounters are designed. For example; fighting a skeleton on a narrow ledge literally less than a foot across. You have to lure the skeleton out by... standing still and waiting for it to spend two minutes crawling out to get to you, or else risk dying if you mis-swing.
The idea behind the encounter is good, but the way it plays out is bullshit.
do it
That's just one encounter of many, though, and some are certainly more challenging than others. Usually, though, you can lure an enemy back to more even terrain. This strategy served me well across both Demon's Souls and Dark Souls; if in doubt, fight somewhere familiar.
Well, again, they're usually pretty good about lore stuff, and the ending as presented has a lore mistake for every other line. So I'm not sure the exact way the presented ending is fucked up fits in with how I'd expect Bioware to fuck up.
Is the only reason why you can kill the skeleton :P
Honestly, I think Dark Souls is better balanced than a lot of other games. For example, I couldn't help but notice that the number of hits it took my strength-build greatsword-wielder to kill the normal enemies in the area I was supposed to be in was almost always 2 or 3. And as I said above, I don't think I die as often in Dark Souls as in, say, most FPS games.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/117483-Kingdoms-of-Amalur-2-Was-In-Pre-Production
:c
murr can you guys not do the emoticon as link thing? it's hard to notice and i was almost about to ask why you did that face
I wondered about that for a bit and then moused over it.
Fixed.
but still
:c
Yeah, but it's still bullshit. Which is what my whole complaint is saying.
Considering that I've heard that most of the writers were excluded from writing the ending, I'm not sure what to expect.
No... The skeleton is pretty easy to kill. It's just a skeleton. You can also just... sit back. For like, a whole minute or two. And let it walk off the ledge where you can kill it normally. It's just kinda... there to be annoying.
That doesn't mean the whole combat system is bullshit, though, nor the combat encounter design or enemy design. A part of Dark Souls is altering the conditions in order to force you to alter your tactics. It does this pretty much perfectly. While the combat of Dragon's Dogma, for comparison, is also pretty good, some of the encounter in the end-game content are true bullshit.
For instance, an enemy healer who summons waves of monsters while me and my pawns have to fight two large monsters at the same time. The healer floats, putting it out of range of my warrior's attacks, and my pawns aren't smart enough to focus fire on it so we can fight the big baddies unmolested.
A skeleton on a ledge is a challenge, albeit it a tedious challenge for some; the scenario I described above is mechanical torture and a severe oversight in a game that otherwise has well-designed combat and encounters.
But I didn't say that the whole combat system is bullshit, though. As a whole, the combat system is actually pretty nicely designed, and fits well with the mood of the game. (I feel it worked better in Demon's Souls, but that's beside the point.) It fits well both mechanically and narratively.
The combat as a whole isn't bullshit. It's just... got unnecessary bullshit. -flails around-
:U
The combat, not the combat. Like... the fight, not the mechanics and the stuff.
Still, situations like the one you described are the exception and subjective to a character's equipment and build. I found the Fatboy/Slim boss fight very challenging, but apparently magician characters have a very easy time with it.
Yeah, I imagine... any character with a ranged attack would be able to just pick the skeleton off from a distance.
But the fact that they placed the skeleton on a ledge you need to go through to progress is bullshit. It doesn't really serve a purpose; the best, safest, least stupid, and most overall boring method for dealing with the situation is to move close enough for it to notice you, then just wait for it to go to you in a safe zone. Except it has a tendency to get caught on the wall, so there's a lot of tedious trudging backwards and forwards so you're not fighting it on a ledge.
And it's like, well, why? What purpose does that actually serve?
But if you kill it normally, it gets back up.
Not when I played?
Maybe my copy just bugged out.
Also, I often killed it by kicking it off the edge of that ledge. With my back to the safe zone so I was safe. I always felt so vindicated.
So I finished the Rannoch plot and I'll admit that the mission does have consequences.
Just not consequences to the plot. It has consequences to the overall characters, which is pretty much what all of the choices you do create: things that affect the characters. The biggest choice in ME1 was which character you let die and while it might be engaging the plot doesn't really vary depending on who you choose. Same for ME2, where the overall plot is pretty much the same but your choices affect how many of the characters survive. Even the Paragon-Renegade dynamic is more about choosing what kind of character Shephard is than affecting the plot.
A lot of people have agreed that ME2's strongpoint was it's characters over its plot and that's very true even now, what with Cerberus the 'we-are-whatever-the-hell-the-script-needs-us-to-be' and some of the truly boneheaded moves of the council. Really, making the choices about the characters rather than the plot is the right choice.
However, that's why a unified ending still makes sense. While ME3's ending might be that bad I still object to the idea that it had to be a culmination of your choices, because any of the important ones culminated in character interactions.
It doesn't need to be a culmination of them so much as it should reflect them, rather than being completely identical regardless of everything until then.
Why? The choices are already reflected in how the people around you react and become I don't see anything wrong with an 'All roads lead to Rome' perspective.
On a side note, good lord that Tali picture. I've seen Deviantart stuff of her that looked more professional.
One of the biggest flaws with the ME3 ending is that it has no character payoff, which is really the big deal. It's not so much an ending as it is a full stop, because it doesn't comment on or revisit any of the characters -- including Shepard.