Afael

Perhaps the oddest thing with all the endings for me ended up being that Panam ending is most hopeful and given alternatives is probably considered the "good" ending? But its also the ending that gets the most people killed and potentially puts everyone involved on Arasakas kill list at some point in the future.

The suicide ending does have a pretty strong line about V's life not being worth more than Rogues or any of the nomads and in some ways that ending, along with solo mission (which honestly should have been the default choice along with Arasaka) makes most sense.

As for being doomed in 6 months, tbh, how long would V have lived otherwise? Even if chip could have been removed with zero consequences by Alt, V raised too much shit in NC to not get killed. There is something telling that all of NC's "legendary" merks are either dead or sold out to corps.

I wanna shout out East Anglia plotline - its maybe the most "complete" feeling story out of the ones I played that lands just about everything it sets up.

The city "pledges" have been very disappointing so far. They are almost the same with slightly different characters and feel like AC1 or something - kill target A, kill target B, get info to kill target C.

@humanity I had the same issue, its so incredibly dumb that the first instance of Hold doesn't support the feature and locks the game up. And yeah, that movie should've been skippable.

@mikewhy Once you get to England the game does get better imo. Norway suffers from everything being either at a bottom of a giant mountain, or at the top of a giant mountain. And getting there in the snow is a drag. England is a lot more open and going places doesn't feel anywhere near as bad since there is a lot more to look at than just snow and mountains.

On the subject of the game itself, its really surprising how much AC swiveled into Witcher direction. There are quests and areas in this that wouldn't feel too out of place in W3. I know it causes some divide on "This isn't AC", but frankly we know what that AC looks like. They've made like 12 of those. Granted, if they make 12 of these, it'd get just as stale so here's hoping they keep improving.

I like a lot of what they did with the world and the little dots. There is a Mystery type (well, 2 actually) that are straight up insane boss fights. And just walking into one thinking it'll be a "Hurr durr help a dude out", only to get blasted was probably my fav experience of the game so far. And I will SUPER SECOND the advice to upgrade the Seers hut asap - its nutty that "thing" is in the game.

My only complaints so far are with controls occasionally feeling finicky - the LB/L1 being both a parry and a left hand attack leads to some oopsies, and Eivor still suffers from classic AC issue of "Oh god please just jump on that thing".

After a disastrous Watch Dogs Legion, Valhalla is a surprise hit for me. Sucks that a lot of people who worked on it did so in awful conditions though.

I kind of get them announcing that its happening now (realistically it was probably always going to happen once Andromeda's heat died down), but don't they have another big RPG they haven't even shown yet with Dragon Age?

I don't trust modern Bioware to do well by either of them after the decade they've had. And given the direction videogames are going, by the time it releases - could be pretty yikes. Hopefully Im way wrong though.

I would somewhat disagree with the sentiment of no open worlds or big locations - those are fine and scale has a distinct value of its own. As long as they arent' forced to fill the map with random garbage ala AC games, and just let the place be, I could see a lot of value in traversing the worlds. Mobility and combat were the only good parts about Andromeda, so I'd want to see them pushed further. Maybe steal some Anthem tech.

As for the story - who knows. Part of me wants them to just cut RPG stuff out entirely - in the end, its so meaningless and makes any story they tell weaker. I'd much rather have Spiderman/GodOfWar/Yakuza style classic narrative with stronger writing overall. Set it right after humanity first encounters the rest of the Galaxy and look at the fallout it would cause.

If anything, maybe just use Mass Effect name to try and do something really experimental tech wise - Watch Dogs Legion just tried and failed, but I applaud the attempt. The only way those things happen in AAA space is if its tied to a big brand.

@humanity: Oh god yeah, I remember the 2012/2013 E3 and the graphics presentation, only for the game to not look like it. It was mostly lighting and reflections, along with weather effects. It was more or less the first BIG "downgrade scandal", as the then-next-gen rolled out.

I'd argue that Watch Dogs 2 was still very focused, in some ways a more than the first game. Watch Dogs 1 felt like a cheap gritty crime TV show to me and was almost completely devoid of anything to like. Hacking and city interactions were neat, but beyond that - yikes. 2 is not quite as narrow, but it did manage to capture a lot of youth culture at the time. The scope was broadened, but the I don't know if I'd call it unfocused for it. Might just be semantics though.

I'd agree with Legion being almost clueless. It felt like a great base idea that was then lost in the Ubi's open world formula and a need for it to still be a AAA marquee release.

Im in the same boat with Valhalla - I liked Origins and Odyssey a lot (the latter mostly just being a podcast game), but everything they've shown of it looks kinda dreadful. I got Uplay+ to check out Legion and it'll persist enough for me to play Valhalla, but Im not holding my breath for it.

After playing for a bit I totally agree with sentiment here and Austins review. They were both sooo close to what is maybe a real gamechanger for the genre, yet so frustratingly far away.

There is a much better game in there somewhere, where the map was smaller, there were fewer characters with dramatically different perks and more social interactions. Instead you more or less just pick a shell whose aesthetics you like. And if you don't roleplay to a degree, the system frankly might as well not be there at all.

On a more general topic, the voice acting is kinda hilariously bad? Especially when you recruit people to dedsec - they are lifeless muppets shouting at each other, their voices intensity and pitch never changing. Also, I find this version of London to be extremely bland. I don't really know what changed since really, Watch Dogs 1 and 2 had similar cities, but something here feels like Im not in this space at all.

Its semi-surprising to hear the crew at bombcast talk about performance issues with that game given that it doesn't even look that good? Regardless of how maxed the settings are. Raytracing is nice, but something like Control took far more advantage of it. Though I will admit this one might just be me being jaded on game graphics.

The story is terrible from what I've seen of it, as it makes a joke of the fascist surveillance state you're going up against, and never addresses the creepy shit Dedsec themselves do. Switching "evil hologram" off is enough for #GamersRiseUp apparently.

I really sympathize with anyone who took time off work for the previous release. That sucks.

Whats really going to suck though is for developers who are now going to be crunching even longer. And likely some more after release 'cause I doubt it'll be perfect launch. No game is worth that and its on management who seemed to have continuously fucked it up, though Im sure some of it is on lockdowns etc.

Given that a number of key employees left after Witcher 3, I wonder if CDPR is due for another exodus after Cyberpunk with the work conditions on it. I wonder if they'll end up another Rocktar - 'serve' few years in crunch, get an uber hit on your resume and go cash out elsewhere.

I really liked the game when I played it first as a kid near release. Star Wars had it hooks in me so any way I could interact with the universe was great (Growing up in the Eastern Block games were surprisingly easier to come by than the movies).

Since then though, I've almost done a turn around on it along with many other Star Wars and Bioware games. KOTORs main issue to me is kinda that its just Episode 4 in a classic Bioware wrapper, and I'm aware calling that an issue is high herecy. But unlike Kotor2, which in itself has a gigantic number of issues, it doesn't do anything particularly interesting with the universe. To add onto herecy, I think the "You're Revan" reveal is overblown and isn't as impactful as people make it out to be.

Being able to interact with Star Wars is the main appeal of KOTOR to me at this stage. There is something magical about being able to go to all of these planets, even if they do look kinda ass.

On the topic of Taris being bad - the oddest crime it commits is doing everything you can do on Taris actually hurts you long run. You can only get to level 20, and its entirely possible to leave Taris around 10 and a half, meaning your Jedi progression is hampered. Granted, game is not difficult enough to ever punish you for it and gives you full spec Jedi companions you can control instead if you want.

Shoutouts to Old Republic having neat class stories on release. As someone who poured waaay too much time into that thing, they've never hit that high again. Imperial Agent story is the closest we got to KOTOR3.

@toughshed: I have the same hope, my main concern is that they are letting anything go right now since the service needs games. VR platforms threw money around the launch to try and create a library, but once they stopped the 'genre' immediately shrunk to few "proven" formulas.

The "Netflix of games" they are chasing is what Im worried about since what does well on Netflix dictates what Netflix buys and creates (revolutionary thought, I know). There is a separation of the platform and its product that Game Pass might lack and which will result in the same issue current Netflix model has - if you're not somewhere within the "vibe" of their current direction, you're not on it. And like some people have mentioned in this thread, Game Pass warps the way we interact with games. If in few years Game Pass decides that fantasy action games do well for their retention, what happens to games that don't fit? The anecdote of Destiny 1 and "fantasy doesn't sell" leading to its retooling into a sci-fi comes to mind and boy was that a tire fire. Or Anthem, that was clearly designed in EA's "monetize dem teenz" lab. And the rest of the industry might get affected in the "why pay 70$ for anything if I can just Game Pass", which could create a complete opposite effect and less weird experimental games.

Granted, these are all just hypothetical 'cause its fun to theorize on the topic. I guess there is also the Mixer option, where after sinking a bunch of money MS decides it was a wee bit a bad idea and just bails on the whole thing.