The Giant Beastcast: Episode 81

i'm playing through the mass effect games again because i never got the dlc and CONFIRMED: THOSE DLCS ARE EXPENSIVE AS HELL

ps drew i laughed when you said "mack 2" just wanted to give you a little credit for that one

I've never played more than a handful of hours of any FF but I figured I'd give FFXV a shot. Rented it and was enjoying it more than I thought I would. I got to the part where they finally set you loose on the open world and then the news about the patches and dlc came out. It pretty much killed any desire I had to continue playing the game. Now I'll probably just get it dirt cheap next year once they actually finish it.

IIRC a major point with the Mass Effect 3 ending that you missed, is that they continually advertised the game as having a different ending depending on what you did in the game. (You could just pick the ending independent of everything you did in the game I think?) And the ending not being A, B or C. (Which is exactly what it was.)

This doesn't matter much in the USA... But if you do this enough times, it starts to matter a lot in other places like the EU. So I guess if you're not from the EU it could seem hypocritical to take corporate lies seriously (because they lie all the time anyway, so why focus on this). Or maybe that lying isn't something that should ever be punished because it's just words. You could also say that if you don't do anything to stop it at all, more consumers will be deceived and that is maybe a bad (potentially unhealthy) thing. Should the people be more important than the profit.

I think they changed the ending to prevent being dragged to court and potentially have their profits cut off. I know they've been cleared of false advertising by the ASA (in some miraculous way?), but I think they were already working on it by then. It wasn't just people shouting something. They did have a point. I think it was a very good moment for the industry to be a reminder that corporates shouldn't just spout nonsense to sell their product.

Didn't help much though, did it. With No Man's Sky. Oh well. Incidentally I did play through Mass Effect 1-3 after all the patches and I thought the story throughout the games was fine, by the way. I enjoyed it a lot and had no complaints. It's still a game and games have plotholes. Just wanted to type this because it wasn't just gamers complaining about something random or insignificant. I think they had a point given the way it was advertised. And if EA could have just ignored the message that would have set a very troublesome precedent for other titles. I think we're underestimating how many people simply believe advertisements when deciding to buy something.

Talking about Rockstar re-releases, I bought GTA: SA for a couple of quid on the Windows 10 store a few months back. It looks like the mobile version, but works fine on PC, with Xbox button prompts etc.

Ultimately not as moddable but a lot easier to get up and running than the Steam version.

You didn't have to play through Mass Effect 3 again, Jeff. They kick back your save to before the point of no return when you beat it, as I recall.

I played through ME3 for the first time this year. I don't think it's a great game even now, but the Leviathan/Citadel DLC and the new ending(it's the same story, you can just tell what actually happens this time around) were certainly the difference between me feeling okay about it and me not standing it. Made their main story go from incomprehensible and stupid to comprehensible and stupid, and added in a lot more character moments and humor to mellow me out.

The ending was actually one of the things that bothered me the least about Mass Effect 3. I felt that they removed too much of the exploration and world building.

Vinny - thank you for coming out to the office over your Wife's birthday. You need to buy her a real large ring...

I'll miss Jeff on this podcast, you guys should consider doing this more often, it's excellent!

Yeah as much as I'm enjoying FF15 and now that the story is finally rolling its fine, but at first I was like who even are these characters, why are these 3 people travelling with the prince. I get that we're going to get married, but why? Who even is the empire. Why are they so evil? Where is the empire located physically compared to where I'm at? There's so much missing information. I almost feel like there used to be a lot more story and dialogue written into this game, but they removed it all at some point. Maybe they thought people didn't want story heavy games anymore or something, but with FF that's what a lot of us go to it for. Storywise this game is very light. Its almost FF1 levels of character motivation/backstory and overall story.

But yeah as Jeff mentioned, I will probably play through this game another time so I suppose it'll be nice to have some new stuff at that point.

Ryckert's 16k rent...how many months is that?

Maybe it's just the way I was raised, but him looking for ways to renege on the lease for what seems like it is at least 5 months worth of rent is giving me some serious "what a jerk" vibes. Especially when considering how long we've known he's moving to NY...I'm not sure how one would get oneself in this situation, but passing the buck for your poor planning on to your landlord is decidedly not a cool-guy move.

"These mechs need dicks."

- Jeff, 2016

for the love of God, someone make an animated bit with the socks...

I am positive @lackingsaint was/is all over that.

I guess that's my cue to give this episode a listen!

I'm one of those folks who sleeps wearing socks. Otherwise, my feet get really cold, and then I get nightmares, and I can't sleep anymore >_>

There's a bit near the end, in the Emails section, that involves sleeping in socks where my literal first thought was "LackingSaint has his next Giant Bomb Animation audio"

East meets West.