ButIShootFromThere

Yeah, that was an awesome moment after so many tries. Also, his expert use of binoculars was hilarious.

@nakattack: Thanks

Cockadoodle Duders, Up Up Dawn Dawn, East Infection.

Yeah, I think the strength of the first act and general mystery of the story made me overlook a lot of flaws in the game the first time around. I tried to go back for another play-through, but I couldn't manage more than a few hours before the gameplay just forced me to quit. I agree the combat is lacking a planning aspect. Everything you need to win any fight is always right there in the arena, so there's never really a long term tension or weight to the decisions you make in combat. Also, because of the 2 weapon limit, I found myself making weapon upgrade decisions based on what I thought I would find more of rather than what I really wanted to use. The problem is only amplified by the redundancy in weapon designs. Most of the later weapons felt like half baked alt-fires of the existing ones. I understand it makes sense in terms of the Vox Populi narrative, but it still isn't worth the detriment to gameplay in my opinion. They should have just cut the arsenal in half and made more varied upgrades for them instead.

@randiolo: @hunter5024: Thanks.

And now to commemorate Alex's valiant Punch-Out!! run...

Thank you so much for doing this. I look forward to the summer jams version as well.

@laivasse: I agree with everything you said. I enjoy the tough moral situations, but only when the writing is fair in conveying what my choices actually are and in making sure those choices aren't neglecting common sense dialogue options. Like you said, I didn't understand Vince would be shooting somebody's foot off, and I definitely didn't think I was leaving him for dead after. And I wanted to put up more of a fight against killing Stephanie, but for some reason we're driven to a binary decision with common sense dialogue options (like demanding to hear her side of the story) unrepresented. There was plenty of time in that situation to have a discussion with the group, it's not like we were being chased by walkers.

Also the ending was weird for me because the way everyone was talking in my group, it seemed like all but Russell were planning on leaving for the new settlement, but for some reason only Bonnie and Shel actually did.

And one more minor gripe. I don't go for achievements at all in any games, but that rock-paper-scissor one kinda bugged me. Every other achievement so far has been only for chapter completions. I kind of got the impression that was a conscious decision to prevent achievements from influencing people's choices or making them feel like they did something wrong. Maybe it's stupid, but I don't think it's entirely trivial in a game like this.

@hunkulese: Well, it's clear where we differ now. I think even if people live in a shitty Comstock-dimension, they have a right to exist. We live in a shitty Hitler-dimension, but I don't want anyone deleting me. If I was deleted and a parallel version of me existed somewhere, I wouldn't say "I" still exist. Elizabeth would be snuffing out unique individuals, and it would be a monstrously wrong thing to do, in my opinion.

I was thinking our pendant-wearing Elizabeth could exist between realities like the Luteces, thus her continued existence wouldn't be incompatible with her deleting realities. I guess I just don't see why the writers would chose to make a point of it that she isn't at the final baptism when the other Elizabeths disappear unless they were implying that she could still exist. I'm not really married to the idea or anything. Her sacrificing herself makes sense too.

To answer your final question, no, it isn't a valiant sacrifice for reasons I've already mentioned. The suffering of some doesn't justify the deletion of others. Uniqueness of parallel individuals and all that. We're just kind of repeating ourselves at this point. Agree to disagree maybe?

@hunkulese: Well, in the context of the game's multiverse, I would definitely look at your example as eliminating all those realities. That was the point of my WW2 analogy in the original post. Parallel versions of people have an equal right to exist but they aren't identical. In other words me and Hitler-free-universe me are completely separate people. Hitler-free me's existence -- whether he's happier than me or not-- doesn't help this-world me in the slightest. I'm not sure what you mean by "direct result". The Columbia-dimensions versions of everyone would not exist anymore because Comstock and Columbia would not exist. Elizabeth isn't improving their lives in any way. She's deleting them and creating parallel versions of them in a reality where Comstock drowned. I don't know why she would assume the Comstock-free versions of everyone would be happier anyway, but that's beside the point.

Also, I don't think our Elizabeth(the one with the pendant) actually sacrifices herself since she doesn't enter the final lighthouse, but that's really beside the point as well. The damage would be done regardless.