What Are You Playing 6: DLCs of Kevin Bacon

[Thomas Cardew]

TWW3 has the Destiny 2 problem: You take the completed product polished over years and the new one was made by a different set of devs that weren't on the team that polished the previous game to a mirror shine. It'll catch up, eventually. In the meantime, every fan should have known what to expect from a Total War launch.


My favorite is how in M2 some times the AI wouldn't make armies so you'd have roving stacks of 2-3 covering the map.

That's definitely a big chunk of it, but there's still some regressive choices and change-for-change's sake. The red UI being the most generally obvious. Speaking for myself and other new-ish players this was my first launch. I started playing WH2 on a free weekend in -checks steam achievements- April 2020. I'm generally aware that Troy and Rome rereleased somewhere in there, but I was uninterested in Troy once I found out it was Epic exclusive and didn't care about Rome at all. I mean I sadly expect major games to be released buggy messes at launch but I didn't preorder because I wanted to wait and see how bad it was. I think I bought day 5 of the first week, just long enough to see a couple unfiltered reviews and general reports come in.

[Anonymouswizard]

EA's earned their negative reputation for being a ghoulish corpse farm for studios. Bioware is one of their larger corpses. All the issues in DA2 and Inquisition can be laid at their feet both in forcing talent from the company through corporate mismanagement and absurd deadlines. Dragon Age 2 was supposed to have four acts, one solely spent in the Deep Roads with a lot more lore for Red Lyium and a whole boss fight that had to get cut. The sole reason the Mages went Blood Mage in every story path is because they wrote a boss fight against Orsino if you went Templar but didn't have a boss fight for the Mage route and EA demanded an equal number of boss fights right before launch so there was no time to make a new one. There was a ton more dedicated to the serial killer plot, which would have taken up a good deal more of Act 1 but EA didn't trust players to remember all the details between Act 1, then a break in the Deep Roads, and then the political struggle against the Qunari. Instead of cutting it ,which would have reduced content, they kept it in as it was. Everyone knows about how the poor dev time led to the game only having like 10 maps to fight in, there was supposed to be triple the number with other areas outside the city. DA2 could have really been something.

Inquisition was originally planned to take on Skyrim's popularity and was intended to be just as open world with all its areas (which is why the first two are stupidly huge with barely anything in them) but Skyrim took 5 years with a few years of development and planning, so closer to 7. Inquisition too 3 years of actual work with 2 years of development for a total of 5. So it's no wonder it didn't come out looking like Skyrim. There was also some regime changes, which led them to decide against going full open world. I know less on the troubles Inquisition had because by the time I finished it I swore I'd never buy another Bioware or EA game but it had to be worse than DA2 considering how many big named people fled the company after it's release. With more fleeing even before Dragon Age 4's release, and the decade it's taken them to actually release it I'm not holding my breath that it will be any better and that's not even taking into account that Dragon Age 4's had two massive rewrites even before the new team they've put to it.

I believe Origins took about five years plus planning, and Inquisition clearly wanted to be bigger than Origins, and so I'm guessing it faced another EA-enforced deadline.

But yeah, I'm not looking forward to Dragon Age 4 for exactly that reason. The talent that made me love the series has gone, and DA4 is starting to show the signs of Duke Nukem Forever syndrome. I'll likely pick it up with all the DLC when it's on sale for like £10 three or four years after eventual release. Until then I'll just wait until I can pick up the tabletop RPG book for more Dragon Age.

[GloatingSwine]

I believe Origins took about five years plus planning, and Inquisition clearly wanted to be bigger than Origins, and so I'm guessing it faced another EA-enforced deadline.

Although it's always worth considering when a game appears to have taken X number of years how often it all got thrown away and started again in that time.

Cyberpunk 2077 came out six years after they announced it, but what was in the release product was probably more like 18 months of actual work, and Final Fantasy 15 was the same, announced as Versus 13 in 2006, reannounced as FF15 in 2013, and actually came out in 2016 but the game that came out was basically all made in the last two years of that by an almost completely different team with a different director.

[Zevox]

Well, my entire weekend was basically me playing the DNF Duel beta test. And damn, if it's not a lot of fun. There's a few things I wish they'd do differently, but overall, the pacing of the game, the power of the options available to every character, the overall feel of it, the combos - everything's just really satisfying. A big part that doesn't get enough credit, I think, being the meter system. Rather than meter being a scarce resource you build up over the game and need to carefully decide when to spend, you start with 100 MP, and after use, it briefly stays lower, but then just automatically regenerates. Pretty quickly, too. So you're encouraged to use it quite a bit, and only punished if you over-use it. This is pretty nice, helps keep the feeling of being able to do powerful things often going.

It's selling me on one-button special moves in traditional fighting games, too. I do the motion inputs whenever I think of it (especially since most of them are just easy quarter-circles anyway), but it is nice to have the option to do them more quickly in a pinch, especially the reversals, and it doesn't feel like it hurts anything at all. Well, aside perhaps from making anti-airing easier, since most characters' reversals can act as an anti-air and you can't air block in this game, but eh, that's fine, it's not like people anti-airing with DPs is new; if more people can do it now, cool, the more the merrier.

Inquisitor and Dragon Knight remain my favorites, jockeying for position as potential mains. And Dragon Knight may be pulling ahead there. Inquisitor's pressure and combos are really satisfying, but I also love Dragon Knight's neutral options (giant sword swing special move, air fireball with fly cancels), and the pressure she can get off her little dragon buddy if you can make them respect that. I also found what seems to be a safe jump into multi-layered mixup off one of her easiest combo enders, so at that point she turns into quite the little blender.

Also really liking Kunoichi, Striker, and Ghost Blade. Striker is a rushdown monster with long combos, which is always fun; Kunoichi's bag of tricks is fun to play with, though I never did figure out any great combos with her; and Ghost Blade is a glass cannon. Can do big combos for good damage, zone well, and get strong pressure with his ghost, but he's the only character in the game without a real reversal, and that combined with his normals being a bit slow makes him awful on defense.

I was also playing Hitman some, and eh, I may be souring on him. I just can't find anything to do with him besides fairly basic stuff. He has big buttons and straightforward combos, but beyond that, eh. He's slow and doesn't feel like he has anything fancy compared to the others I'm playing. But oh well, if I don't play him in the full release, not going to be a big deal when I've got at least five other characters I'm enjoying, and more still unannounced.

The game definitely has some problems with its matchmaking though. Disconnects were happening way too often, whether I went with the PS4 or PS5 version of the beta, so I really hope they can get that ironed out. And the lobbies cap out at 9 players each, as opposed to the 64 that's been normal in other ArcSys games for a long time now, which makes it a lot harder to find games, necessitating more lobby-hopping to find someone who's looking instead of already in a match or spectating. I figure the full release will have a ranked mode, or something similar to Guilty Gear Strive's tower system maybe, but still, wish the lobbies were better there.

But yeah, outside of that, I had a blast, and can't wait for the full release come late June.

[Anteros]

Although it's always worth considering when a game appears to have taken X number of years how often it all got thrown away and started again in that time.

Cyberpunk 2077 came out six years after they announced it, but what was in the release product was probably more like 18 months of actual work, and Final Fantasy 15 was the same, announced as Versus 13 in 2006, reannounced as FF15 in 2013, and actually came out in 2016 but the game that came out was basically all made in the last two years of that by an almost completely different team with a different director.

Well, I don't know if we can blame the director change for 15 considering the hot mess that was KH3. Nomura let his ego get bigger than his ability, and his work suffered for it.

[Rynjin]

That's definitely a big chunk of it, but there's still some regressive choices and change-for-change's sake. The red UI being the most generally obvious. Speaking for myself and other new-ish players this was my first launch. I started playing WH2 on a free weekend in -checks steam achievements- April 2020. I'm generally aware that Troy and Rome rereleased somewhere in there, but I was uninterested in Troy once I found out it was Epic exclusive and didn't care about Rome at all. I mean I sadly expect major games to be released buggy messes at launch but I didn't preorder because I wanted to wait and see how bad it was. I think I bought day 5 of the first week, just long enough to see a couple unfiltered reviews and general reports come in.

There's also the fact that the game runs like hot ass in general. There's a lot of performance related issues, especially in multiplayer.

[Anteros]

You'd really think the TotalWar games would be more polished than they are considering that they release the same game every year. I enjoyed 3 kingdoms well enough, but I'm not supporting that franchise anymore until they actually bother making a new game instead of just (poorly) reskinning the same old slop.

[Razade]

Just a point of order re: Warcraft being a ripoff of Warhammer. Warcraft was supposed to be a Warhammer game, I'd hardly call it a ripoff for a company to sell the game they were brought on to make after the original company backed out. Games Workshop backed out after seeing Blizzard's first test demo thinking it wouldn't sell, after asking for a test demo. Blizzard reworked the test demo, wrote their own lore, and sold it and Games Workshop kicked themselves when it broke out as a hit. Games Workshop didn't even pay for the work Blizzard did to secure the license, as promised.

[Anteros]

Just a point of order re: Warcraft being a ripoff of Warhammer. Warcraft was supposed to be a Warhammer game, I'd hardly call it a ripoff for a company to sell the game they were brought on to make after the original company backed out. Games Workshop backed out after seeing Blizzard's first test demo thinking it wouldn't sell, after asking for a test demo. Blizzard reworked the test demo, wrote their own lore, and sold it and Games Workshop kicked themselves when it broke out as a hit. Games Workshop didn't even pay for the work Blizzard did to secure the license, as promised.

Not exactly. Blizzard was trying to get the rights to make Warhammer stuff and failed so they decided to market it as a "unique" product instead. Then they figured since they got away with it once, they may as well rip off 40k as well to make starcraft. If they tried the same thing today they'd get absolutely annihilated in court.

I grew up loving Blizzard and spent hundreds of hours in WoW and Warcraft 2/3 playing with friends, but they've always been an incredibly shady company.

[Razade]

If you take their word for it, and of course they'd say this, Patrick Wyatt says that Games Workshop approached them and that after their experience working with DC on some stuff, were uncomfortable giving control over something they made that Games Workshop and that the initial idea was to make a game like Dune 2. Games Workshop (also a shady as hell company) denies this and says that Blizzard approached them with the tech demo and they were unhappy with Blizzard wanting creative control over the game, a thing Games Workshop is absolutely not a-ok with, and they didn't think it'd make money. Considering how both companies are suspect, I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle. It's still a mischaracterization to call it a ripoff. Games Workshop is on the record as approaching Blizzard about a game. The details of the tech demo, pay, and all of that not so much.

Starcraft and Warhammer ripped off the same IP: Starship Troopers for their spacefaring version.

[Thomas Cardew]

Huh. I didn't know all of the backstory, just whatever filtered down version I'd heard over the internet for years. That said my Warhammer knowledge is extremely shallow: I never got into the setting before playing TW:WH2. I have internet meme knowledge of 40k because I think it's impossible not to but didn't really know fantasy was a thing. Then I started reading about it and got pissed off about how they handled End Times 6 years after it happened and swore off ever getting involved beyond TW and Vermintide 2.

On a related note to both Warcraft/Warhammer and blatant ripoffs, I stumbled across Loria and have been unashamedly enjoying it. Described as homage classic RTS, it's basically Warcraft 2.5. It's got nearly identical music and visuals to WC2 but imports the hero system and spellcaster style from WC3. It's free on both GOG and Steam. Occasionally unstable, it tends to crash when first loading or sometimes on alt-tabbing. And if you're building when you save and load, your buildings are destroyed and you don't get the resources refunded. Still it's got some great cheesy voice acting and has been an absolute nostalgia blast for the price. Which again was free.

[Anonymouswizard]

Starcraft and Warhammer ripped off the same IP: Starship Troopers for their spacefaring version.

Warhammer took influence from a lot of things, so I'm sure there's some Starship Troopers in there somewhere. But I don't think it was the primary influence for any faction, and it's worth noting that Space Marine armour is based on Chaos Warrior Armour from WFB.

Now I'm not up to date on my 80s and 90s Warhammer lore, but I believe most factions were originally just WFB ones IN SPAAACE with an extra coating of evil. They then took on more influences as time went on.

[Morgaln]

Warhammer took influence from a lot of things, so I'm sure there's some Starship Troopers in there somewhere. But I don't think it was the primary influence for any faction, and it's worth noting that Space Marine armour is based on Chaos Warrior Armour from WFB.

Now I'm not up to date on my 80s and 90s Warhammer lore, but I believe most factions were originally just WFB ones IN SPAAACE with an extra coating of evil. They then took on more influences as time went on.

Tyranids are pretty much straight out of Starship Troopers (Edit: if you make the closer to what human propaganda says about them, not what they are actually like), although probably with some HR Giger Aliens as additional influence.

[Anonymouswizard]

Tyranids are pretty much straight out of Starship Troopers (Edit: if you make the closer to what human propaganda says about them, not what they are actually like), although probably with some HR Giger Aliens as additional influence.

Wait, we talking UCF propaganda or Imperium propaganda?

Having read the book, we kind of don't get enough details on the pseudo-arachnids* to form a complete picture. There's even disagreement over whether the book bugs have biotech ships and the ability to shoot plasma like in the films and cartoon or if they just use hardtech guns and ships (I'm on the hardtech side).

Oh, and *insert moaning about how book bugs have eight legs and three castes here*.

[Razade]

Warhammer took influence from a lot of things, so I'm sure there's some Starship Troopers in there somewhere. But I don't think it was the primary influence for any faction, and it's worth noting that Space Marine armour is based on Chaos Warrior Armour from WFB.

Now I'm not up to date on my 80s and 90s Warhammer lore, but I believe most factions were originally just WFB ones IN SPAAACE with an extra coating of evil. They then took on more influences as time went on.

Tyranids and Zerg are absolutely pulled from Starship Trooper and a fair few models for the Imperial Guard are taken from the movie, the old helmets especially.

[Eldan]

Yeah. Especially since they decided that all guards look like Cadians, who are starship troopers with early WW2 tanks. There's more influences, though. There's a lot of Dune, a bit of Star Wars, some Canticle for Leibowitz, bits and pieces of Lovecraft and most of the classical fantasy canon via Warhammer Fantasy (which in turn takes a lot of from History, plus Leiber, Howard, Lovecraft, Tolkien and everything else Gygax used, too).

[Razade]

It's really become the sausage of media at this point. It's even turned back around to put back some of the old sausage back in and trying to package it as new sausage.

[MCerberus]

Yeah. Especially since they decided that all guards look like Cadians, who are starship troopers with early WW2 tanks. There's more influences, though. There's a lot of Dune, a bit of Star Wars, some Canticle for Leibowitz, bits and pieces of Lovecraft and most of the classical fantasy canon via Warhammer Fantasy (which in turn takes a lot of from History, plus Leiber, Howard, Lovecraft, Tolkien and everything else Gygax used, too).

I thought smashing fantasy and soft sci-fi tropes together like kids with mismatched action figures was the whole point of the exercise, and we were all on board with it.

[Eldan]

Of course. I like 40k, I'm on board for it. At least as long as they don't pretend it's actually super serious.

[factotum]

Of course. I like 40k, I'm on board for it. At least as long as they don't pretend it's actually super serious.

But of course it's super serious, it is totally grimdark after all!

[Zombimode]

I bought the game because I could get for 20% off with the Ogre DLC for free in the first week of release and I know it will eventually be good.

Same here. It now sits in my steam library completely unplayed. I feel no urgency. The game will get massive ammounts of content. Comparing it, freshly hatched, to the refined and mature Warhammer 2 is probably a bit unfair

I will probably pick it up when either Immortal Empires gets released or when the Main Campaign gets a bit more meat on its bones (Chaos Dwarfs would be a good start).

[IthilanorStPete]

Yeah. Especially since they decided that all guards look like Cadians, who are starship troopers with early WW2 tanks. There's more influences, though. There's a lot of Dune, a bit of Star Wars, some Canticle for Leibowitz, bits and pieces of Lovecraft and most of the classical fantasy canon via Warhammer Fantasy (which in turn takes a lot of from History, plus Leiber, Howard, Lovecraft, Tolkien and everything else Gygax used, too).

I've always thought Guard tanks look more like WW1 tanks (albeit with larger cannons), between the sponsons and the shape of the treads.

[Anonymouswizard]

Of course. I like 40k, I'm on board for it. At least as long as they don't pretend it's actually super serious.

Please, only Americans could mistake it for something serious.

...maybe I should play more DoW.

[Cespenar]

As far as I have experienced, there is definitely a subset of wh40k fans that might be described as "serious until actually confronted, haha".

I hope/believe it's not a big subset, though.

[warty goblin]

I'll check it out after I've had my eye surgery, thanks.

Welcome, I hope you like it. You do have to beat your head against it for a bit, particularly at the beginning, because you are supposed to fail a bit at the start, for purely thematic reasons. Also because the initiative system is relatively unique, and takes a bit to adapt to.

Got to chapter 2 in Elex. Level 26 now, and can actually kill some stuff at last, although there's still some ridiculously powerful mobs around--one of my companions wants me to do a quest where we have to take on a pair of Cyclops along with a few lesser mutants, and I noped out of that one after putting something like fifteen arrows into one of the Cyclops and not being able to see any change whatsoever in its health bar! The difficulty I have now is that my dexterity is 60, to upgrade my bow to do more damage requires it to be 70, and once an attribute passes 60 it takes 5 attribute points to increase it by 1--and when you consider you only get 10 points per level you can see the problem, especially when I don't even have high enough Constitution to wear decent armour (or the 19,000 monies needed to buy it, for that matter!). This game is really aggressively old school and I both sometimes love and sometimes hate that...

You're definitely farther than I am, though I only get like 40 minutes to play a lot of days. I just got to the Domed City and met Cara. Mostly because I've exhausted most of the quests I can do around Edan, and am still like level 8.

I like how pretty much all the characters have different opinions on the different factions, and different interpretations of them and what they stand for. Makes the world feel inhabited by actual thinking people..

The Albs are pretty obviously the bad guys, but with them there's the separatists, and none of the other groups I've encountered are anywhere near as straightforward. It's nice to have the game's central choice be less good playthrough vs bad playthrough, and more a legitimate question of belief and preference.

[factotum]

You're definitely farther than I am, though I only get like 40 minutes to play a lot of days. I just got to the Domed City and met Cara. Mostly because I've exhausted most of the quests I can do around Edan, and am still like level 8.

I just checked and Steam says I've played 39 hours--doesn't feel like it's been that long, TBH! I did try to go around all the major friendly cities as early as I could in order to pick up quests, since those are by far the best way of levelling up. Presumably if you've reached the Domed City you've also been to Origin, or haven't you found that yet?

[Anonymouswizard]

I decided to give Inquisition a break and started Omega Ruby for the nostalgia hit (as Ruby was my first Pokémon).

If you'll excuse I've got to do the 'I've got a female mudkip' dance. I called her Nereid.

[DigoDragon]

Wait, we talking UCF propaganda or Imperium propaganda?

Wait, what did my university do? O.o


Been watching a friend stream Hearts of Iron IV, except he has a mod installed called "Equestria at War" and it's hilarious to watch cute horses go to war with each other, and griffons, and reindeer, and... it's quite an involved mod, changing everything about the game. Lots of different scenarios to play out.

[IthilanorStPete]

Wait, what did my university do? O.o

Hey, another Floridian! (Though I went to FSU).

[Cespenar]

I'm trying something called the Library of Ruina, which is kinda fun. It's a single player card based RPG, with some visual novel sections for storytelling in between. It's apparently from the south korean team that did Lobotomy Corp., though I didn't play it.

It's not bad, overall. There's definitely more thought put into the story and setting than usual, which is nice. The tactical aspects are a bit iffy -- it feels like there are more details in parts that don't need it, and less in parts that do. Overall it's enjoyable, though the writing does the carrying a bit, IMO.