brehonia

Foghorn Cafe is the name of the kitchen where you find one of the Dishwasher characters. It's not a helpful note.

The orb has an hourglass on it to match the one on the wall, that whole thing is a reference to Simon's Quest.

Keep holding the X button down. Even if you swing and bounce off the shield, as long as the enemy hits you before you're back in the idle stance you'll parry.

I agree, both of those scenes came off really weird to me. It's almost like there was going to be some kind of branching storyline where you decide to be the good guy or the bad guy, and that part at the end is how it would play out if you'd decided to become Jin.

I mean, I thought the whole point was supposed to be that Dust is a new person regardless of his origins, but whenever I tried to adhere to that in dialogue choices the game got all weird about it. Like, my answer to "who are you exactly" was "Dust" but everyone reacted like I'd picked "I don't know, I'm a total idiot" and explained everything again. Talking to Ginger after that, I specifically told her "Jin's dead and you have to get over it" but then the finale had everyone referring to Dust as Jin.

Oh well. The story wasn't really the draw for me anyway!

@efman said:

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, a game that just came and went, passed through the airwaves. I hadn't found out about it if it wasn't for some of the word of mouth and the critical reactions. It's a game not without its flaws, from obtrusive color-coding and choppy framerate, but had it sold well, it could only have gotten better with the supposed lessons learned. Nevertheless, the two characters at the core of this tale were so well releazed and their dynamic had so much potential for great story telling in future installments -- a shame, for sure. Really looking forward to what these guys do next, not to mention Andy Serkis' next stab at headlining a game.

I loved Enslaved and I wish it had done better business, but on the other hand imagine what a sequel would be like... that ending wasn't going anywhere pleasant!

@PixelPrinny said:

Except for, yknow, Caius could have just won from the very start by stabbing himself in the heart and ending it. And he certainly wasn't averse to suicide, as that's how the whole thing ends anyways with him forcing Noel to kill him (not to mention killing the goddess supposedly would have screwed him over regardless, but he just wanted the cycle to end so he and whats her face could find peace). But he decided not to do that and draw you out on a long, pointless quest, why exactly? If something stopped him from doing it himself, why didn't he just let Lightning win?

No, the ending wasn't cool; It was a stupid, contrived piece of shit that's only reason for existing is so they can sell you a "true ending" in the form of DLC or a sequel (which they deny atm, but business is business so we'll see). But i if you enjoy empty stories that are nothing more than, as you said -- an incredible fake-out -- where the characters are doomed from the start and the entire journey is absolutely pointless, well, all the power to you. Personally, I always hate stories that end with "Let's reset everything so you don't remember any of it happened!" or "Yay, everyone's dead and this was pointless. The end!" In video games, it's especially silly, as it's the equivalent of basically making a story out of a random game over. Like "Hey, you lost to Lavos and got the end where he destroys the world. Guess what? That's the true ending! Thanks for playing! Roll credits!" OMG it's shockingly grim they would end the game like that! How avant-garde!

But let's not kid ourselves -- that's not even what's going on here. There's going to be a "true" ending through DLC or another game. Maybe Serah will stay dead, Lightning will remain stuck in Valhalla, Noel will cease to exist because his timeline is gone, and everyone will be forced to rebuild their destroyed cities. (Had that been the ending, I'd be totally content with it because at least it's an ending). But more than likely it'll involve another contrived scenario where they'll defeat the bad guy, save the day, and the timeline will magically reset back to before Lightning was kidnapped and they all live happily ever after.

I recognise all these flaws and enjoyed it anyway. It helps that most of what you brought up was already apparent 30 hours prior to the ending (eg, why doesn't he just kill himself), so I had a chance to get over it, and it also helps that the bar was set so low that just having it raise an honest real-life reaction was refreshing (even if the reaction was "WHAT THE FUCK").

Final Fantasy Thirteen Two isn't high literature by any stretch of the imagination, but at a point where I was expecting to have been strung along for the sake of cheap drama, where I was totally ready for the story to just undo itself because there wasn't any content left on the disc, it actually did something different. That's why it's a "fuck you" to critics of the previous game (where all these bad expectations originated) and why I think it's worthy of a little respect, even though the face of it pretty much sucks.

You're right that wrapping it up in DLC would be beyond terrible. I'd be ok with another full sequel though.

** Edit: basically what I'm saying is I hated all the characters and was glad to see them doomed. :) **

@PixelPrinny said:

Really not sure how XIII-2's ending was a big "fuck you" to people that bitched and moaned about the first one. I really liked the first one and didn't like 2's ending at all.

A dark ending does not immediately make for a good ending.

It's not really about it being dark, it's about it being a huge, ballsy swerve away from what turned a lot of people off before.

The other game (fantasy the first, thirteenth and final) built up this whole impossible scenario where the party struggles to defy their fate, then in the end they just bring down Cocoon like they were told and catch it with magic and the power of love. I didn't hate it myself, but it was a little disappointing how neat and pat it was.

This game seemed like it was doing the same thing, ignoring all the stuff about Lightning and the heart of chaos and everything going back to where it should be, I guess it was all overcome by faith in the goddess or the power of the human spirit or some crap like that?? No it's actually an incredible fake-out - the impossible situation really was impossible, now Caius has won and everything is boned. It's not cool just because it's grim; it's cool because it's shockingly grim, and consistent with the rest of the story.

People who didn't have a problem with these, do you have some kind of strategy for working it out or are you just patient enough to bang against it until something works?

It's ok when there are like 6 numbers but I'm in Oerba 300AF now and it's giving me huge, random, time-limited ones that are absolutely not solvable by humans. It's ridiculous. You can pause it and map it out on paper, but if they wanted you to do that and cheat around the time limit, why have the time limit? You can pick random numbers until it works, but that's a total waste of time, why even have the game at that point?

Unless there's some simple strategy or algorithm that I'm missing, there is no way to make this not tedious. And of course it's not optional! Probably the worst damn thing in the entire game. Fire a designer for this.

Was there another Game in Birmingham or was the tiny useless one in the Bull Ring really their "flagship"?

Edit: oh, the article is actually referring to the Gamestation on New St, which was huge and awesome.

I kind of enjoyed the tutorial, so yeah I was not prepared at all for how insanely bad the real missions are. Nothing happens for 10 minutes and then the last unit just walks through everything. Holy shit. Did they actually forget to play this after they coded it? Like, is there a typo in some spreadsheet putting extra digits on the last guy's stats, and nobody caught it?

The worst part is I went out of my way looking for this junk. The alternatives (shank a dude/climb his tower or just keep your notoriety down) are basically second nature after 3 and a half games, so I had to actively grind notoriety and then hang around for half an hour until it randomly activated. If I could just hit "retry" at the end I'd probably have another go, see if there's some kind of trick I missed, but no. They've hidden it away like it's a reward to be sought. Lmao.

Update: I tried it again and the same thing happened, only this time there was the added frustration of being on a map with space for exactly 2 barricades, one of which obscured the gates so I had no idea what was going on the entire time. Den lost, I spawned in front of some guards who immediately became hostile and made the captain run inside.

They just did a double XP weekend and it was packed, I played it a lot.

I'm really enjoying Corruption mode, it gets so tense when you're the last one hiding. Make sure you spec for a chase because they'll find you eventually! The two Artifact modes are great too but it depends on who you're playing with - most of the time people will just be running around like they forgot what game it is.

I still kind of prefer Brotherhood because the character designs were much more broad and distinct. Like now, for every feature I use to distinguish between people at a distance, there are at least two people with the same thing. Two guys in cloaks, two guys in armour, a whole bunch of women in dresses that I can't figure out at all from the little portrait in the corner, etc.