YI_Orange

@starvinggamer: I'm still not sure I get it. That Booker already made that decision, so is that instance supposed to be actual time travel and not just dimension travel? Everything I'm about to say is more a question than a statement. I'm not really trying to refute, more just understand.

Also, there are supposed to be infinite universes, correct? And the existence of at least 123 baptism rejections is acknowledged right? So if splits only happen where a choice is to be made, the baptism scene would become 2 timelines, and taking into account the rest of the game, not many more timelines would have been created over the course of the rapture journey, so most of the timelines would have to have been created before then? Or is it safe to assume that with infinite timelines comes infinite possibilities. Elizabeth mentions how songbird keeps stopping Booker. And some have interpreted dying as that timeline ending and then being dropped into another. Could we assume that every possibility for difference in events creates a new timeline? Even down to something so simple as to whether or not he picked up a silver eagle? To your coin example, the result is always heads, but does that mean Booker always selected tails? Again, I don't really know. It's very possible I don't understand the laws of the universe.

That stuff aside, I don't understand how drowning that one Booker would eliminate the other timelines. Especially considering he already made that choice. It might make a bit more sense to me if it somehow broke the loop and prevented timelines created out of the timeline central to the game from having Comstock and Columbia, but I don't get how it works retroactively. Unless they travel back to some sort of "Alpha" timeline. But even then, I don't see how drowning that Booker would help. Wouldn't you have to drown the Alpha Booker?

Sorry if this is a bit confusing. I'm confused so just kinda saying whatever's coming to mind.

I don't really feel I'm as affected by this problem as a lot of others seem to be, but I acknowledge it exists.

That said, how do you keep the games fun but also cut down on the faceless hordes? Make every game trying to tell a strong narrative a stealth game or walking dead/heavy rain game? No thanks. Those are fine once in a while, but if everything is going to be like that...don't get me wrong. I loved Heavy Rain when I first played it, I love The Walking Dead, and I even love Asura's Wrath, but they wouldn't work if they were mass produced.

The Impression The Last of Us seems to be giving off could be a way to go, but if it is going to be very few enemies per encounter but with other circumstances, then you can't produce large amounts of that either. It will stay engaging because of the tension in those scenarios, if too many games are trying to do that same thing then you lose that tension and risk falling into something formulaic.

As someone who values stories and characters as much as if not slightly more than gameplay, it might seem a bit weird that this stuff doesn't really bother me, and I've never really thought about why that is before.

Maybe because when it's time to play, I'm in play mode, and when it's time to story, I'm in story mode. Though sometimes they bleed over. For example, toward the end of Bioshock Infinite when you get separated from Elizabeth I stopped my normal playstyle and tried to rush as fast as I could through everything because I was feeling a sense of urgency to get there as fast as I could. It's times like this the hordes actually do break it for me because I want to just keep going and not give a fuck about anyone in my way, but usually I'm forced to fall back or slow down or spend 5 minutes in one room purely because of the number of enemies.

Another reason it may not bother me so much is that I sort of invented something for myself a long time ago. I started viewing it as that unless the murder is in some way canonically acknowledged, then it didn't necessarily happen. Sure, Nathan Drake kills 300 guys. But he also jumps at walls he can't climb and other nonsense people might do because it's funny, yet somehow this doesn't break the game for people? I don't see it as him killing 300 guys. Sure he probably kills some, but I choose to believe that most of them are there for the purpose of gameplay and if the narrative were in some other form there would be a significantly reduced number of enemies.

The flip side of that is games like Fire Emblem or Valkyria Chronicles. Are we to believe that this wars are being fought by numbers in the 10s vs. numbers in the 100s in battles of 12 vs. 12 at a time? I'm out of time to write this, took longer than I thought, but you see where I'm going with this last bit right? I'll try to say more later if I can.

I would play this game. Especially if Steve Blum was the villain. Throw Johnny Yong Bosch in there too for good measure.

@starvinggamer: The Berserk anime ends at the end of the Golden Age, right? If so, then yeah, holy shit is that all sorts of fucked up.

I have to throw out another vote for I Saw The Devil. That movie is fantastic. I actually enjoyed it more than Oldboy(granted I knew the twist going in)

Something that engages more than my inner completionist.

ahhhhhhhhhh fuck. I really love both God Hand and Persona 3. If you're deciding which to play, play God Hand. Otherwise, my vote would have to go to Persona 3.

I will never understand why people need the disclaimers of "I think" or "in my opinion". If you're talking about something subjective, then no shit it's an opinion.

Syndicate totally deserved to be in the top 10 last year. It was one of the most fun games I played all year. I generally value story and stuff over gameplay, but something about syndicate just clicked with me. What would you put in it's place?

Dust? Psh. I did everything in that game but man did it get repetitive and the story wasn't that great.

FTL? I really like that game too, but bad RNG kinda ruins that game.

Hotline Miami? I had more technical problems with this than with Syndicate. The boss fights and hospital level almost destroyed that game. When it works exactly like it's supposed to it's awesome, though after 3 hours I was ready for it to be over.

Hell, Syndicate deserves to be on there more than Mark of the Ninja and ZombiU(granted I haven't played this, so I could be wrong), I don't know why people are so caught up on this one.

I might be interested in this. I haven't been as active on the forums as I'd like to be recently, but I'm trying to remedy that.

I have a headset that should be fine, but if it's no good I could always replace it if I'm in included.

I don't have experience recording audio, but if needed I could dick around with things and see if I can figure it out.

As for time, I'm an East Coaster, but I guess it all depends when you want to record it.

Most importantly though(I think anyway), I think doing a podcast would be a ton of fun.

I'm gonna piggy back on this thread. I wanna get back into the ladder, but I'm just lost. Experimentation isn't the fun part to me, execution is. So what I'm asking is if there's anywhere I can go to get a good feel for the current meta. Openers, general game flow, stuff like that. I had a good handle on all the matchups in WoL, but feel like I know nothing anymore. Or maybe I just need to wait for the game to shape a bit more?

As a side note, I'm not interested in the "this works until X league"(I was diamond/plat in WoL). I like to try and mimic high level play to the best of my ability.