I'm excited as Hell for Gears 4 purely because of my love for the franchise in general... but a lot of the ''new'' aspects to the game are looking to basically be a minor spin on old concepts. Main protagonist is the son of the previous protagonist; the new ''swarm'' enemy faction greatly resemble the Locust before them and even use the Hammerburst; the non-COG people of Sera, dubbed 'Outsiders', are essentially the next-generation Stranded from previous Gears games. Nonetheless, more Gears in general sounds good to me, as it's still top dog when it comes to cover-based third-person shooting.
I am really happy to see them consistently reiterating their desire to build on a horror aesthetic, though. It's not going to be scary in the slightest of course, but if they can recapture the dark and moody atmosphere of the original then I'm all for it.
Incoming 500+ comments! Probably. I guess this is different since it's a new IP as opposed to being a sequel to an already established series, so there's less chance for the requisite rage.
@slag: Cheers! And though while 6 dollars seems cheap on the surface, that's still 6 dollars that would be better put towards literally anything else. You could burn 6 one dollar bills and the weirdly hypnotic joy of watching it sizzle away would make for a better use of the money.
My childhood adventure series was Broken Sword 1 & 2, of which I played on the PS1. Even back then could I recognise how ludicrously long the loading times were...
No mention of an end game? What do you do when you reach the cap and finish the story? Are there strikes and/or raids? The problem I got with these games is that I need something to work towards, just collecting and seeing numbers go up doesn't do it for me. From what I have gathered the end game is just collecting better gear in the darkzone, but to what end?
The End Game as of now is replaying previous missions on an extra hard difficulty setting and scouring the dark zone. Raids (called 'Incursions' I believe) are on their way via a free update.
All of the official marketing surrounding Incursions have never once equated them to "raids." That's something a lot in the community kind of cooked up on their own. Incursions are going to be new end-game content but I wouldn't go into them expecting a "traditional MMO-like" raid experience, because neither Ubisoft nor Massive ever called them that themselves. I can see a lot of people potentially being upset with Ubisoft/Massive if Incursions aren't what they cooked up in their own minds as being.
I mean, since you could almost consider the DZ Landmarks and contaminated zones as the 'dungeons' of the game, Incursions being what the closest The Division will see to a Raid isn't unreasonable I don't think. It won't be the scale of an MMO raid, certainly not, but nothing in The Division really matches the breadth of an MMO anywhoo.
Calling it a Raid in casual conversation is perhaps overselling it, though. But it seemed like the easiest go-to term.
No mention of an end game? What do you do when you reach the cap and finish the story? Are there strikes and/or raids? The problem I got with these games is that I need something to work towards, just collecting and seeing numbers go up doesn't do it for me. From what I have gathered the end game is just collecting better gear in the darkzone, but to what end?
The End Game as of now is replaying previous missions on an extra hard difficulty setting and scouring the dark zone. Raids (called 'Incursions' I believe) are on their way via a free update.
I've actually played The Division completely solo (besides grouping up with randoms for main missions) and have still greatly enjoyed my time with it. Even the Dark Zone has had its thrills despite playing on my own. Hell if anything exploring the DZ on your own assuredly adds to the tension. Though end game DZ is real brutal since all enemies match your level, meaning that trying to survive on your own is now a bit too overwhelming for my liking unfortunately. RIP Easy Abandoned Gas Station dungeon.
The story does indeed have what can be summarised as a non-ending, however... The game even kind of acknowledges this as Faye Lau rattles off a bunch of loose ends with its post-game pep talk! I otherwise think the story is surprisingly engaging, or I should say rather the stories you encounter throughout the city via the echos and phone calls and such. Some really fantastic voice acting throughout when it comes to that stuff.
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