Giant Bombcast 10/27/2015

@brunoffs:I'm getting tired of it

@ripelivejam: They seem to be doing a fair bit of whining themselves most of them without an up to date feel for the game

I take umbrage with the idea that people think of Indigo Prophecy with anything other than derision.

...That game had a matrix fight scene with a Mayan cultists and an AI posing as a grandmother.

@ripelivejam: i don't know how many emails they are getting about it, but all they need to do is ignore those, whining over and over about it is pointless.

@rasrimra: It's a weird narrative they've built around that game that isn't really true. It feels slightly different but it's no different than any game that put animation priority in there. The new movement feels better than MGSV's, which shows its limitations in Online and in those action-packed missions. I bring up MGSV because Dan compared the two's movement.

@meltdown547: The first two acts are an interesting mystery with some supernatural elememts. Then the plot completely falls apart and it turns into a completely different game almost. I remember staring at my TV for the last couple hours like I was watching someone go insane.

I think most people choose to fondly remember the early parts and have a mental block for the rest.

@spitz1000 said:@ripelivejam: i don't know how many emails they are getting about it, but all they need to do is ignore those, whining over and over about it is pointless.

Yeah I mean, I said it last week and I still overall feel like it's a big who cares but...they keep bringing it up. This is a pretty popular podcast, the Witcher 3 is a pretty popular game (some might even describe it as orgasmic), so bringing it up just to basically deride it as justification for not playing it isn't going to solve anything either.

That said, people tend to freak the fuck out when they go radio silent on games too so...yeah, they can't win!

I don't know why they're so shocked that people are up their asses about the witcher 3 when everyone spent months before this saying they really need to get back into the witcher 3 every single podcast. Stop talking about the witcher then geeze.

I'd understand angry Witcher fans more if they were actually really derisive about it or the people who like it and not just "Yeah I don't like that game, still haven't played it."

Basically if they treated it like Dynasty Warriors or Monster Hunter then okay maybe I'd get it.

By this point I realize I'm a bit of an Assassins Creed apologist, and I also realize this isn't a great rationalization... but if you played a couple of AC games to completion then the controls not only make sense but the changes implemented in Unity and carried over to Syndicate afford them a large degree of control - especially the circle to climb up and x to climb down part that seemed to have confused Dan.

I know personally I found the controls in Arkham Knight a lot more confusing than I do those in AC games, but thats probably because I played a lot more of those while I only played Asylum and then City only once and took a long break until Arkham Knight came out - at which point I had the exact same issues Dan mentioned of not remembering which button makes Batman glide off and which one is just for hopping down and which modifier did what..

Can't wait to hear at least one of these emails repeated on the Beastcast!

Clunky UI and inventory management. The two things people complain about while discussing any RPG ever made.

I also had a professor in college that made us create an account on Second Life as part of our final. I really hated it but thankfully I was able to complete the paper for the assignment while spending as little time as possible in the nightmare that is Second Life.

#Buildingthelist

@danryckert Canadian as fuck.

I've just accept that Giant Bomb is not the place to go for RPG championing. They like Bioware games for some reason, but that seems to be about it. No reason to hound them about it folks.

I would like to take a moment and step away from all of this complaining about Witcher 3 to complain that they're still talking about Destiny.

@meltdown547: shit, really? I may need to reevaluate my stance on david cage games.

It's weird they talk about all these quirks about the Witcher that turn them off and then like Mass Effect has almost all of those things except Mass Effect's story ties up in a cheap way that most people hated (but I could take or leave personally). Like, the movement is Mass Effect was always "Shepard jogs for like a minute before she or he actually stops" but in combat you just stuck to cover the whole time anyway so that didn't really matter there. It's just weird to hear people dislike the Witcher 3 so much and love Mass Effect, when to me they're so similar aside for being sci-fi or fantasy, and The Witcher isn't about saving existence from being destroyed constantly.

That being said, never touched the first Witcher game and have no desire to ever do that, and I liked a lot of the story and quests of 2 despite the gameplay usually just feeling like a menial(though almost never offensive) task rather than the adventurous feel of 3.

Speaking of ska, did this with a buddy of mine way back when (2009). Tried to bring that next wave in, but it didn't stick.

Never got into the Zelda games... LOVED Beyond Good & Evil.

Man, nobody ever mentions Beyond: Two Souls when talking about Quantic Dream, its always Heavy Rain. Heavy Rain was okay, but I really liked Beyond.

@sethshandor: Ya, know you're right. The past few conversations I've heard about Quantic Dreams has been lacking B:TS.

@meltdown547: Also living corpse sex between two people that just met? Sometimes I remember that Carla 'posed' in Playboy and I want to gouge my eyes out.

Regardless, I'm glad to hear Jeff not showing one ounce of confidence in David Cage's pretty android lady game. His track record hasn't been stellar in modern day settings (with and without weird psychic kung fu/ghost pal elements) so I doubt he'll somehow work magic on the whole android rights/future slavery allegory thing.

I don't understand why they feel the need to dump on the Witcher 3 every single week. We get it. You don't like it. That's fine, but no need to belabor the point. The more they talk about how happy they are that they aren't going to continue it, the more it seems that they are just reveling in it rubbing it in against the people who bugged them so much about insisting that they go back to it.

And for the record, I didn't like Witcher 2 but I think Witcher 3 is arguably the best Western RPG ever made.

So yeah @rorie about the things stored on the online FOB business, screenshot collage from the PS4 version enclosed:

It needs to get put into a category like THE DUMBEST GAME THINGS OF 2015 when it's time for GOTY season.

My one FOB does not have 13 trucks on it, not a single one of those 32 jeeps either. Same thing for the turrets, there aren't that many spread out over the fully built FOB that I have with all four decks a platform.

And then the plants and resources, need to pick flowers for a few in-game weeks to get that last tranq sniper rifle done. And then those processed resources stored online, that had the ratio of offline and usable to online and locked modified an obscenely bad way. Next playthrough I'm going offline (trying a zero-kill where applicable challenge)

"Gee boss we only have one 6ton truck to send to you, you have to go on foot"

Wait, they don't know Instagram has no restriction on image "shape" anymore? There's no need for it to be a square at all anymore. You came make it really tall or wide at this point, though to be fair where it is now is where it should have been ages ago.

Dear Bombcast,

Every week from now until the end of the year, please have a segment on each episode of the podcast called "We're Still Not Playing The Witcher 3". It should simply be a reminder that each member of the podcast continues to have no interest in continuing to play the Witcher 3.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Me.

It's weird to hear so much hate, or maybe I'll call it dislike of The Witcher 3 every week, a game I love, probably my game of the year if Fallout 4 doesn't surpass it. Weird to think it probably won't even make the top 10 for the site. Maybe they should just stop mentioning it

@madcat6204: Thanks for validating my concerns, it had me confused. I did re-listen to a snippet or two and, yeah, there was definitely a different vibe back then.

People telling folks to "let it go" over the Witcher comments may be missing the point. I don't care about if it gets GOTY or not, those awards are just worthless lists to plaster on the back of DLC collections/re-releases anyway. Way I see it, you can't talk about a game as if it's already game of the year on one hand and then basically say it's nothing with the other after some time has passed.

If you don't dig it, whatever, but I've personally never played a game at the start and proclaimed it to be awesome only to turn around later on and dismiss it almost immediately. Especially in the case of a game like Witcher 3, which has only shown progress with each patch and DLC they offered. DLC that was, mostly, free by the way: Something that some of the GB staff praised Nintendo for doing but never dwelled on much in this case.

I suppose it doesn't matter though; they're just going to mock us next podcast anyway for bringing it up...just like they do on most bombcasts in which TW3 is mentioned. It's a vicious cycle. Almost makes me wonder if there is such a thing as "clickbait" podcasts: If they really didn't care about it they would just stop talking about it wouldn't they?

Not if this kind of feedback keeps up. Remember - Vicious Cycle.

@zefpunk: Eh, how many of the GB staff finished DAI last year?

Hint: It was zero.

They're not big RPG fans, and for them to put tons of hours into a game, they have to really like it.

I'll give up on the Witcher 3 and be the one to start getting mad none of them played Tales From Borderlands. That's what the internet is about, pivoting your anger. The real game of the year is getting mad that other people's opinions don't match yours

I loved the Witcher 2, but I haven't played any of the Witcher 3 so I can't speak to its quality. That said, it's times like these that I miss having Vinny, Patrick, or Ryan on the Bombcast, to get some more diverse perspectives and maybe a reality-check (Jeff in particular needs these from time to time). Like when Vinny was the lone Dark/Demon Souls defender and everyone else derided it, Jeff being the most vocal in how much he detested it. Then, over time, Patrick and Brad got into it and gained a kind of respect for it. Jeff still talked about hating the games, but in a more reasonable voice that allowed for the possibility that maybe there's something to the series after all.

With some exceptions, I just don't feel like that's the case as much anymore. The Bombcast has a tendency to be an echo chamber these days, where Jeff and to a lesser extent Brad get hyperbolic and unreasonably negative on a lot of games, and there's no Vinny, Patrick or Ryan to challenge them.

Holy shit, I just got around to reading some of these comments. Some of you people are cuckoo bonkers with a side of bananas.

What they actually said on the podcast: "We keep trying to go back and finish Witcher 3 because we believe it's a significant game and will likely be a GOTY candidate, and for one reason or another we just can't get back into it."

What people hear: "WE HATE THE WITCHER 3, WE HATE RPGS, WE HATE VIDEO GAMES, AND WE HATE YOU!"

Jeff has no idea what he's talking about re: only people who love TW2 love TW3, and the dismissiveness of people who are head over heels for TW3 is fucking stupid. The fact that they're all doubling down on their fairly petty reasons for not liking it or not wanting to play it has got to be the most annoying thing I've ever listened to in my year + with this podcast. Brad's defensiveness came off as clueless too, the same could be said for Dota 2 or Destiny or anything they love as far as little things that "add up" to create a valid excuse for not finishing it. They need to step out of their bubble and give the game it's proper due.

Also, Brad's complaints about the map taking forever to pull up is just wrong. It takes one button on PC and pressing two buttons at the same time with a controller. I guess the gameplay is always the same if you want to be reductive. Rorie taking some kind of jab at performance on PC was... what? Of course it's going to run like shit if you don't turn down the settings. It's like they're taking every little shot they can at it, facts be damned. Oh, and the movement complaints post-patch also don't make much sense, it feels (like others have said) like any other third person RPG.

Meh, I didn't finish Witcher 3 either. Good game, but I just lost interest.

Srsly. I've heard the crew say much worse things about games that I greatly enjoyed and that's fine. They're not trying to personally attack you, guys. You all are taking what they're saying and twisting it into something it's not. If I had an entire audience messaging me daily telling me why my opinion was wrong I'd probably be a little weary as well.

They do mostly hate RPG's, though, and while I know they don't hate any of their fans they are being somewhat dismissive.

@nevergameover: As I loved both Witcher games I would agree that 3 would be the best. The raves around is something that is quite familiar if you delved in both. Although i woudln't say the those games didn't have some issues. Problem for many is that its a game thats seriously invested in plot and has a huge overhead. If you stop playing long enough to forget, its a lot to catch up on at once and that can be pretty daunting.

That's not a problem with the game, it's a problem with the player. That's like criticizing a movie for having a plot that doesn't hold your hand.

On the subject of cool games you wished that happened but didn't quite get finished or came out. There is one particular game that is quite prominent and still talked about from time to time.

Fallout 3

No not Bethesda's Fallout 3 obviously, but Blackisle's Fallout 3 that was in production when Interplay started shutting down their studious. The fabled project Van Buren. Who knows how that game would have eventually turned out but at the time the gameplay screenshots and other assets released for it were quite fascinating and it's kind of sad we never got to see it.

@sethmode: It's already happened lol. Protip: If you claim to be outraged and swear on your ancestor's grave to not listen to a future episode of a podcast, only to come back and COMMENT the next week... Maybe make a new fucking account? At least TRY to appear to stick to yr guns, my dawgs.

Also, I think everyone's is misinterpreting Jeff's Witcher 2 comment. He isn't saying Witcher 3 only appeals to Witcher 2 fans. He's saying the W3 fanboys screaming "IF YOU DON'T PLAY THRU THE WITCHER 3 IT'S LIKE YOU'VE NEVER HAD SEX" are exactly the same as the fanboys around W2's release. The Witcher 3 is a great goddam game, but it is not a requirement for all humans forever.

The guys' all have interesting tastes and have been working in the industry long enough to have very specific turn-offs. It's okay. We all knew GOTY season was going to be MGSV and Just Cause talk anyways. The guys aren't big into 80+ rpgs and even less into the fantasy variety.

I'm really into anime and Jeff calls me a jerk! I am not outraged, because... he's probably right. The guys talk shit about "niche" stuff all the time. The Witcher 3 doesn't appeal to everyone. Dropping a game after having a large gap between sessions is normal. It makes any weaknesses even more glaring.

I mean straight up, if you're not invested in the lore there's not a lot keeping people there. The draw is the world and story, not the gameplay. IMO the core storyline isn't even that amazing. The characters, side stuff, world building, etc. is what brings people in, but most of that is built upon the books.

I think The Witcher 3 doesn't necessarily have the narrative hook to keep newcomers going. It's more about being Geralt in this world with all these characters you already love. The game does jack-all to tell you about the significance of Lilac and Gooseberries. We have to think about the others' perspective and context. I read the first two books and played Witcher 2, so I'm already invested in the world. Someone new isn't and might not do enough outside reading to familiarize themselves with it. Then you have to go further and think, is what's only in the game enticing to everyone? I think the game truly shines when you have the context of the world building that already occurred in other pieces of media, but that's a lot of fucking effort and homework you're asking people to do. Time is valuable and all that.

Just for the record, I actually stopped playing The Witcher 3 around the same time the the Bombcast crew did, and for reasons unrelated to the game itself, much like them: stuff just came up that made it difficult to play right then, and once I was out it was hard to get back in to something that immense.

The thing is, when I heard the bombcast before this one, when they all started talking like they thought maybe the game wasn't worth getting back to, I decided "Fuck that, I am not going to be THAT GUY" and picked up the game again and started playing. Yeah, it took me several hours to re-acclimate myself to it and to get a feel for the story again, but once I did it felt just as freaking awesome as it had before. I finished that game that weekend, playing through a solid 8 hours or so, and I loved it.

Something else, just for interest's sake. Originally I wasn't going to buy Witcher 3. I had no plans to do so. I only did because the Bombcast crew were praising it so highly, for multiple Bombcasts, that I thought "Ok, wow, this must really be something. I'll give it a shot." They were the ones who got me into it. The amount of praise they were giving it, the amount of love they were showing for it, they did not award those to games very often. Now to hear them expressing opinions that seem to range from "meh" to "ugh," it almost feels like they lied to me. I still loved the game myself, but when they praise a game that much only to flipflop on it later? If we can't trust them when they're that fervent about something, what do we have left?

@iggypoptart No one swore on their ancestors grave they'd never listen to the Bombcast again. I said I probably wouldn't, and I mostly didn't outside of the TW3 thing here for context. As much as I sometimes abhor their opinions, they're enjoyable to listen to on long commutes.

And no one is saying anything even close to "You haven't had sex if you haven't finished TW3". What other bullshit do you feel like making up today?

@sinjunb: I mean I don't know if you go on on Reddit (which I believe they mentioned last week), but there IS a huge fan group saying things along those lines. Also, have you heard of hyperbole? It makes reading interesting! You're doing it, I'm doing it. It's fun! I wasn't even specifically mentioning you. There are several people who claimed they were dropping the show only to come back here. Sure, they might not have said what I said in jest, but not listening to a podcast because they don't like this game you enjoy is pretty extreme in and of itself. As I said in my previous post, I love anime, jrpgs, and Yoshi's Island. ALL things they've talked shit about, but I understand their personalities and realize they shit I'm into isn't for everyone.

Maybe instead of trying to discredit my opinions by claiming I'm "making shit up" you could respond to my speculation of WHY people might not respond to The Witcher 3 as strongly as others. And how dropping it for a bit could lower one's tolerance for some of it's flaws in gameplay, flow, and quality of life/UI. I would love to dialogue about why the Witcher 3 doesn't appeal to everyone, but if you're going to try to invalidate any points I was trying to make, because I made a goof about the extremism of the fanbase. I don't think it'll end up being very constructive or enlightening.

At this point, I really just hope that they don't mention it next week, and in response we have a hilarious onslaught of "No mention of the Witcher 3 this week, guess that means that they really, REALLY hate it."

Spartans chasing spartans? I thought master chief was the last spartan? I haven't played Halo since 1...

edit: Ah roarie asked. Meh. those aren't real spartans.

@mrfluke:

Do yourself a favor: play Witcher 1 and 2, AND read the books.
Based on what you said, you'd really enjoy them.

The Witcher is more than just a game to me, it's my favorite fantasy universe.

I love everything about it.

It always surprises me how much the GB guys dislike too.

I feel like they intentionally used more sinister royalty-free music during the Draft Kings ad this week. The music sounded like a mob movie.