The Exquisite Corps: XCOM: Enemy Within - Part 06

Yea, I found Dan changing established characters into himself to just be super lame. Actually kinda kills my investment in this series which I was loving.

It's not a heel move that makes me want to root against Dan, which I'm down for; it's a heel move that makes me not want to watch.

I'm gonna be annoyed at Dan for a while for this one.

hahaha poor Abby.....GG

This is fun, video games are fun, people are having fun. Lighten up!

Yeah the "story" of this feature has changed from how three people command XCOM with their force of videogame industry people, and the generated stories that result from that, to a meta one about how Dan is going to monkey with stuff and how the other two players react to that. I guess if watching that sort of thing is fun more power to you but it's not really what the feature was sold as and I'm guessing planned to be either.

Personally we already have a few features about how other people react to Dan playing a game while "playing" as a jerk so it would have been nice for this one not to devolve into that as well. Just look at how every conversation in this has gone after the second episode. Most of it centers around Dan and how Alex or Abby correct for Dan. The feature wasn't supposed to be a vehicle to promote Dan's tired gimmick which is why people are annoyed at it.

Sub Brad in for Dan. Call it divine retribution.

10 minutes in and Dan's just making two more Dans ?

someone put Ryckert’s ego in check, please, for the sake of the #content

Wow, doubling down on the shtick when so many were on the fence after last time....

Dan is good.

This. So much this.

I am A-Okay with Dan being a heel in this series. It's very entertaining.

Oh so this is how "New" Dan was born

Fucking what?

Enough about Dan, I am 10 times more worried about Abby next week.

I thought Dan was hilarious in this one. I was worried the mission itself would be a disaster, but it turned out OK somehow. I feel sorry for Abby, though, that next mission is stressful in the best of circumstances.

@roy42 said:

I actually wrote in to the Beastcast last week wondering if Dan (and Abby, of course) would be joining in, since I figured if anyone could get Dan to understand the joys of roleplaying it would be Austin framing it as a Coen movie. Yet I ultimately know in my heart of hearts that it's probably for the better if he just not be there.

Can we transfer Dan to the purgatory of Kingdom Heartache and have Ben instead?

Things still on track, Dan is a Monster, but he lost the opportunity to call someone "Liquid Ryckert". I suppose there's still time. Depending on how the terror mission goes...

Best of luck to Abby next time! I really hope she doesn't go spicy because of the last mission ( Otherwise find out what chryssalids do, the hard way)

Abby playing is a no-brainer. The issue with Dan is that he sees everything as something to win. The way you "win" in roleplay is to be the star of the story. So the way it would probably go down with Fiasco is once he feels like he's not the focus, he will start doing things that cause intra-party friction until either his character is getting a predominant amount of attention centered around it, or the actual players are arguing about him. I've seen it firsthand and It's exactly what he did when they played D&D that one time.

You see this in the feature where it's no longer really about XCOM, it's about how Dan is going to take over focus. It's a bad attitude when you are playing a coop game.

I'm 23 minutes in, and Vinny has the patience of a saint.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but it's up to Abby to restore Dave Lang to his former glory!!!

@wibblefish: Ohhh!!! This x1000!!!

i'm sure that behind the scenes dan talks to the rest of the crew about some of the shenanigans he plans to do, no one is going to be seriously mad about anything.

this is fun to watch for me because trying hard to play well is already what i do when i actually play xcom(or games in general), so i just treat it as a show. i guess a lot of people really want them to "win" but i don't really care about the outcome, just the journey.

Now, now. He may be screwing up this fun little game, but there's no reason to be cruel to the poor guy. He hasn't deserved that… yet.

@tippis: I've never put too much stock into the tiny benefits granted by the Medals, but I do think you're right there. I was pretty frustrated when he gave his Assault (himself) an assault rifle and kept him back.

I thought that he definitely did a better job playing this time however. No team-wipe!

I nearly stopped with th character swap and near desertion, but overall the mission was entertaining

Dan takes the "Enemy Within" part of this game really, really seriously. If he starts throwing grenades at his own people once the dlc-faction of human traitors appears, I guess we'll know for sure.

Next week is going to be make or break for the squad. The odds are long, but if Abby can pull it off (or die in a blaze of glory) it might be the best episode yet.

I don't mind Dan doing his bit, but I'm very glad he wasn't put in charge of the terror mission and was given a fairly easy mission leading up to it. Hopefully Vinny will remember to remind Abby to get those laser rifles for next episode so she has a fighting chance.

So they are gonna wipe next mission right. No way they get out of that alive.

Of course that's why you wanted to know who was highest rank in the Barracks, Commander Ryckert.

May the Langzone consciousness transcend to A.I. and haunt your Personal Computer.

@sicamore: It's got nothing at all to do with "playing well". On the whole Dan played fine in this episode. People are more upset about Dan's overall attitude being antithetical to the series. It would have been really nice to explore where the sniper Dave Lang story could have gone through the organic story telling process of Xcom. But we're not going to get that now because Dan had to make everything about his ego. And I don't care if it's a bit. Playing a heel character doesn't really have a place in a coopertive game. It's not entertaining to hate watching a member of the team you're meant to be rooting for.

I picked up XCOM 2 because of this series. Fun times x2.

Dan.

After reading the comments--which I probably should NOT have done--I think I might be done with this series.

I can't help but feel this is a case of the audience taking things a lot more seriously then the crew.

I replayed this recently and pretty sure I only survived the first terror mission because of a lucky reaction shot and bad path finding on one of the chrysalids. So, yeah, good luck...

Also maybe try to scrape some cash together for more laser rifles, those really help.

@rktjmp: Dan is the Heel of X Corps or haven't you noticed?

Rk. Ryckert" was killed!

Cpl. Ryckert has panicked!

I love this series.

Welp, I'm out.

Yeah, this has gone from a bit to Dan just being a dick. XCOM is hard enough already without one of the commanders deliberately sabotaging it for his ego. It's a shame, because this and Murder Island are genuinely fun to watch when it's one of the other guys at the helm.

Well... Dan knows how to make his own fun.

It sucks though because Abby and Alex are taking this series seriously.

@faxon said:

Watch it on www.giantryckert.com, the place for all your Dan Ryckert themed entertainment needs.
Subscribe today and you will not only get one Dan Ryckert, you will get three* of him!

*One Dan Ryckert is only a body double, the other is Dave Lang in disguise, no refunds for nacho-cheese related injuries.

I'm gonna try and work out why this didn't work at all for me even though I'm not opposed to Dan playing the heel.

Part of it is that there's really nothing Abby and Alex can do to get back at Dan. If he's always going to rewrite himself as the hero, then it just means that Abby has to rewrite him back out every time or whatever. And it makes the series not about an ingame narrative it makes the series about Abby and Alex, and the audience, being subjected to Dan's Danness, while also trying to play XCOM.

It's like they were writing a book and then Dan went and erased the whole thing and wrote "DAN RULEZ"

Dan's created an existential threat to this cooperative story. There's no way to respond within that story. The only way for Dan to get his comeuppance is to be forced to change his behavior or get kicked out. If Dan can only get invested in himself, because I guess that's the only bit he can get into, then fine. If he were just making a new Dan every time then fine, that's not a great bit, kinda repetitive and boring, but at least we'd get the pleasure of seeing Dan die over and over or whatever.

If Dan were just writing "DAN RULEZ" in the margins of the book every time it was his turn then at least the through line would still be there.

Now nothing in the game matters, It was a good heel move by Dan in that I really want to see him get his comeuppance, that I want to see, but there's no way to do that within XCOM so it kinda ruins the series.

He went too big. He's a bigger threat than the aliens at this point.

I you liked what Dan did, that's cool, I'm glad you enjoyed the video, but I had to turn it off. I may go back to it just because I enjoy Vinny so much and I'm curious about his reactions. But I just didn't enjoy Dan's bit here and seeing him play through entire XCOM missions within that bit wasn't something I felt like watching. Which is extra annoying to me because going into this video this was one of my favorite ever series on Giant Bomb. I'm still gonna watch Abby and Alex play, but I'll just be rooting for them to play well for themselves, I really don't want them to beat the game with Dan as a part of the team.

As much as I liked the idea of this series going in I'd rather just watch Abby (and/or Alex) do a playthrough herself at this point.

Also, regardless of how you felt, where do people think the series goes from here?

Well...this went bad in a totally different way than I'd anticipated.

Dan has maybe broken the entire format of this series by renaming established characters.

Dan did pretty well on the mission. A rookie getting killed can happen very quickly and has to be excepted.

However, renaming the highest level soldier, so you can get yourself back into the campaign, is totally lame to me. The fact that soldiers die and don't come back makes it so much more interesting. It creates stories. Who knows what feats of bravery Langzone would have accomplished. Instead we get not one, but two Dan Ryckerts that stay back and have to be tended to like babies. I don't want to see what Dan Ryckert #31 will do to hinder the team. I want to see characters like Suda make unlikely shots and save his teammates and the mission.

I have confidence Abby will do her best and with a little luck she might be able to pull out a victory in a very difficult mission.

Hahaha. I decided not to watch any more Dan episodes after the last shit show, and from the comments and spoilers, looks like I made the right choice! I know frustration is the goal of Heels, but it just makes me want to not watch at all.