The Exquisite Corps: XCOM: Enemy Within - Part 06

Really hard to watch. But I lost it at "Like Lazarus from the Phoenix pit..." pure Dan! :D

Renaming the highest char to Dan and afterwards pinning all the medals on himself!

If he gets a harder mission people will die left and right again. But Vinnys advice was better this time (i.e. shooting the mind buffing alien first). Abby on a terror mission will be tense.

@iam3dhomer: Yeah, I feel like you eloquently described how I am feeling on this too. There's no easy way for anyone to get back at Dan. Oh, Dan's character in game took a risk and paid for it with his life? I guess actual Dan is just going to sub in a new one.

Also, after reading comments in recent weeks, the stress from watching Dan surge ahead without first properly securing the known area he was in was immense!

I'm normally on board with Dan's heel shenanigans but if he can simply rename the most veteran character to remake himself then it completely kills any investment you'd have whether a soldier lives or dies. When you can just bring them back via renaming an existing soldier, that in turn kills what I thought was one of the core premise of the series which is about dealing with consequences.

I really hope Vinny sees the comments and fixes the situation. Nothing wrong with bringing Lang back next episode and laying new ground rules on not bringing back dead soldiers (at least not by renaming existing soldiers) because otherwise the premise simply doesn't work.

@hydranockz: @iam3dhomer Well, they could rename their Godfather back and then name a random rookie the new true Dan to, if not "get back" at him, keep him away from relevant squad members. Whether that would stop Dan from just continuing to rename the highest-ranked, editable squad member and actually literally wasting a squad slot on a functionally useless sack of meat is another matter.

Dan you're a gentleman and a scholar. Single handedly making this series entertaining. Keep up the good work!

I stopped watching at 9:29. I just cant watch this kind of shit anymore. Someone please reply to me if he fixes his egocentric juvenile trash later in the episode. Like i said last time, if all you do is "acting" like an egocentric jerk than you are no different than an egocentric jerk. Xcom and this series didn't need wrestling shitty Dan.

Think about how much better this series would be if Austin were here instead. Think how much better EVERY series would be if Austin were here instead...

Dan: this wasn't funny and was disrespectful to the viewers and your equals there at GBE. Cut that stuff out, you should be embarrassed.

Or a lot of people don't find what Dan's doing remotely entertaining?

I'm out.

Please don't put Dan in anything cooperative.

@roy42: Taking rookies along to catch bullets is actually a viable strategy, though.

This was annoying,

Honestly if Dan just kept making Dan clone rookies I think it would actually be kinda funny, especially if one finally actually became good. It's when he has to rewrite what other players have done that it becomes super lame.

In this case, it isn't even about success. Dan is now screwing up "the journey" as well.

Playing poorly is at the very least understandable. It's a challenging game and some people are more or less inclined to this sort of strategy gameplay. It's difficult to actually get too upset about it outside of just being disappointed that this series may be cut short.

However, some of Dan's actions in this episode are indefensible, in my opinion, and really start to break the entire format of this show. He's acting in bad faith here and in a way that is extremely detrimental to the roleplaying that Exquisite Corps is built upon. Renaming soldiers breaks the storytelling and attachment to characters that is at the core of playing XCOM for many people, and more importantly, at the core of this video series.

I think the callbacks to when the crew tried to play D&D are spot on. Dan similarly struggled there with finding a balance between playing the game in good faith and completely breaking it with his heel persona.

At this point, Exquisite Corps is more about the meta story of Dan trying to ruin the feature and everyone else trying to salvage it.

If it's any consolation though, I think this series might be nearing its conclusion anyway.

Skipping every third episode of these seems like a good solution to the Dan issue.

This isn't fun anymore. I stopped watching Murder Island when Dan is playing and now I guess I'm skipping every third episode of this series too. *sigh*

I really agree with this. I've been a subscriber for years and never really comment on the videos, but I wanted to here because I really hope they can course correct for this series, because I really liked where it was going until this episode.

However this goes, good luck to the GBeast crew! I'm glad to be a part in supporting the awesome work you folks do!

DAN!

(that was just a prevemtive post, I still have to watch the episode)

@jiggles said:

If the website becomes concerned about losing money which could come in the form of lost subscriptions or wasting time on a series only to have it fail due to Dan being a dip. If that happened then I would be willing to bet someone in the organization will pull rank on Dan and tell him to cut it out. Dan's job is not to entertain himself, it's to entertain paying subscribers.

Congrats on trashing a cool feature for the sake of your brand, I guess.

I was actually thinking the whole time I watched this: "if a man is sighing, and nobody else is around to hear it, does it really matter anymore?"

Phew! Canadian Brad almost got Dan'd (Danniliated, Dannified... something like that).

"I'm not always a piece of shit!"

Every time dan made a move in this episode I felt like the wheels were going to completely fall off, and that's the real roller coaster ride that Xcom is. I enjoyed this episode quite a bit, keep up the good work exquisite corps!

Guys, you know they can always change the name back right? Kind of a lame move, but really isn't the hill to die on.

From the sounds of it, Vinny had this feature in mind for a very long time and it's something of a pet project for him. So I wonder how he feels about it now.

Also Dan's movie reference isn't really on point. He wasn't swaping anyone's faces a la Face/Off. This was more like The Matrix Trilogy.

We're fighting the machines and Dan just revealed himself to be Agent Smith.

The Dan episodes work when you take the "Enemy Within" literally. I don't have that much of a problem with the shtick when the missions don't go completely pear shaped, but I don't mind it that much. It's almost more fun to have the different play styles and knowing you're going to get a train wreck episode haha

@radish said:

This actually would have been hysterical.

Yeah, I realized today that there's no way this goes the distance.

I'm totally hyped to see Abby's run at the terror mission next week, though, and see what kind of dumpster fire Alex inherits, but I dunno, Dan coming in and claiming one of the best soldiers as himself is just kinda jarring. I think if the game wasn't proving to be challenging enough that having an "agent of chaos" amongst the players would be fine, but that isn't the case here.

In the words of one Cmdr. Russell: "Nothing matters."

Even worse, it's annoying.

Judging by the comments this episode sounds like a bummer

On the gameplay tactics front, HEAT rounds on the Heavy should have been the no-brainer. Robotic enemies have a ton of HP and there are more of them in the expansion. A chance on a second overwatch shot with the poor aim progression of the heavy is really bad

oh look...Dan.....

It pretty much is. First 15 minutes is a giant waste of time, unless you find egotistical Dan fun to watch and listen to. If so this will be a real riot i guess.

Good point! Another "Very Difficult" mission for Abby could result in a total wipe and all new characters anyhow. I wish her luck though! Oh, and patience!

I give this series two thumbs up. Personally, I think the swings between frustration, humour, disappointment and victory (by all members of the Ex-Corps) make it all the better.

Also as a current resident of Perth, I'm really hoping Cmdr. Russell rounds out a trifecta of successful missions next week...

God Dammit, Dan...

Please have Abby veto this and change him back to Langzone next week. That was kind of a shitty thing to do. 2 Dans have died, now they should stay dead forever and put Lang back in his own body. I'm fine with creating "MKII" versions of our players, but ONLY FROM NEW SQUADIES.

I love this series and want it to thrive - he did OK during the actual mission, but just quit fucking around with characters like that.

None of them have played (or still remembers) Enemy Within so the choice makes sense. Also, you're assuming they make it far enough for that to really matter. Meanwhile, an extra overwatch shot can be a big help if you're undermanned going up against enemies that like to get up close like chryssalids, which are the biggest threat in the immediate next mission. Besides, they have 2 more heavies that can still spec towards HEAT if they need it.

I think when most people play XCOM they adopt a rule that you can only name a soldier once and you can never re-use the same name within a game. It just seems like the only right way to do it that gives any weight to what happens to them.

Perhaps if you give this another go with XCOM 2 you could (should) have some pre-created pools of soldiers and adopt a rule of NO renaming. That way a large portion of the episodes aren't taken by people messing in the character creator, too.

PS if you can get past the naming fiasco, this episode really isn't that bad as people are making.

I really enjoyed this episode but Dan needs to not do what he did to Langzone ever again. Bring yourself back through rookies not established characters!

Dan renaming the best soldier after himself killed this series for me. That really sucks and isn’t fun or entertaining to the audience. I’m sure he’s being himself but I wish he’d take this more serious.

Generally, I think people are overreacting a bit on this. A name can always be changed back.

I'm much more concerned about people playing in a manner that suggests a disregard for or lack of knowledge of the game's mechanics, which didn't seem to be on display in any significant way here. No significant losses happened as a result of really poor play, and I'm not quite sure why people are so invested in the "meta narrative" here. Langzone's story is literally just, "They named a character after Dave Lang." Perhaps if this was 50% of the way through the game and Dan was changing a high ranking character, I could see where people are coming from, but at this point, I'm just not seeing all the anger as justified. Was it funny? No. Should he do it? No. Is it "ruining" the series? No.

I feel bad for Abby. She's going to get thrown right into one of the harder missions in the game.

Man, now you got me going back to Project B.E.A.S.T ....

Don't think I'm even going to bother watching this episode. I usually really like Dan, but he is just annoying in this series and really ruining it.

Be the egocentric Jackass in competitive games, but this is about teamwork. I really wanted them to succeed.

lmao, 9 min 27s in

Vinny: "What are you DOING?!"

This is gonna be good

Why are people hating on Dan this episode? He just made a joke and changed one of the characters in a Face Off sort of way. It was pretty great and it adds to the story. Now the character isn't just "a name we know from the site". He has a ridiculous backstory and I'm sure it will evolve further when Abby sees what's been done.

Ya'll need a chill pill.

His mission went super well and he only lost one rookie because he forgot the grey was in overwatch. I don't think he really understood what those stealth guys did either which is understandable.

This is true. It's only in the first base mission that those will really come into play (and the other base mission, that I believe Dan screwed them out of made sure they missed by getting the VIP killed). And I seem to recall they introduce them in small enough numbers to teach you a survivable (but one-time) lesson that maybe some kind of anti-tech weapon is needed.

On the other hand, once you get to the other faction in EW, you're right back to fighting squishy non-robotic enemies with tonnes of HP at which point the HEAT becomes less useful.

Really, EW does a pretty good job over the vanilla game of demanding a good mix of everything in your team, which is why I got such a bee up my bonnet about his wasting all those cumulative bonuses on a single, poorly-specced character, when they absolutely need to be spread around to allow almost any mix of abilities to also have a good mix of bonuses.

…still, yeah, that's hindsight talking.

Dan please chill out.