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Assassin's Creed Odyssey

Started by The Boston Crab, October 03, 2018, 07:26:56 AM

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Thursday

Quote from: biggytitbo on October 05, 2018, 11:39:58 PM
All he does is overstate his case, he's rarely actually wrong. In this case, ubisoft are fucking terrible for all the reasons he states, but they pretty much continue to get away with it.

Well EA set such a low standard with Star Wars Battlefront 2, so now as long as your microtransactions aren't so exploitative that they become an international story and start to inspire changes in laws worldwide, they basically seem fine in comparison.

biggytitbo

True but its obvious in retrospect, and even I didn't realise it about origins until it was pointed out, that the actual game design is now revolving around the idea of forcing people into spending more money on micro transactions,  in games that already cost 50-60 quid to play.

I, like Sterling, totally reject the 'but games cost so much to make these days' argument. No, you decide how much your games cost, cos you want to spend £20m on the AI of how fish swarm underwater or the physics of collapsing  Greek architecture, or making a new custom engine for every game you make. Fuck off, stop charging people for your own absurd largesse. If you can't make a game that you can charge people to buy and thus make money from that sale then you've failed as a business. If you have to continually fleece people for more money after they've already bought your game you're either a terrible business or you're greedy cunts who will end up destroying the entire industry.

Kelvin

Quote from: Thursday on October 05, 2018, 11:52:46 PM
Well EA set such a low standard with Star Wars Battlefront 2, so now as long as your microtransactions aren't so exploitative that they become an international story and start to inspire changes in laws worldwide, they basically seem fine in comparison.

That's literally a point Sterling has made.

Thursday

Hmm okay, he sounds good actually I was wrong.

Thursday

But as I said, he can often be right, but he presents issues in a way that can be irresponsible.

biggytitbo

I refer people back to ninja theory's hellblade sensua's sacrifice, a single player double A game without microtransactions intentionally made to a modest budget that made a fairly tidy profit purely on sales of the game alone. Exactly the model that gave us the golden age of gaming between the megradrive/snes era and ps3/Xbox 360, where mega budget triple aaa games hadn't yet come to totally dominate and entire gaming landscape to such a suffocating degree that virtually no one else can get a look in.

Kelvin

Quote from: Thursday on October 06, 2018, 12:20:53 AM
But as I said, he can often be right, but he presents issues in a way that can be irresponsible.

How do you mean? I've heard people say that before, but I don't understand what it means (with relation to Sterling). Irresponsible how? What unwarranted effect could he have?

Thursday

For one thing he's creating this very "us vs them" attitude in a world where we'll often see game developers harassed and threatened. Not saying he's doing this deliberately or that he'd condone it, but he's foolish for not seeing the connection.

biggytitbo

From what I've seen he's always very vehement in defending game developers from harassment, he's more gunning for the major multinational corporations shitting on gamers and the industry in general.

bgmnts

Jim Sterling has been on the same warpath for a good 5 or 6 years. I'd hardly call him reactionary.

Zetetic

Quote from: biggytitbo on October 06, 2018, 12:05:33 AM
No, you decide how much your games cost, cos you want to spend £20m on the AI of how fish swarm underwater or the physics of collapsing  Greek architecture, or making a new custom engine for every game you make.
I think this is probably buying into publishers' guff about where the expenses for a game like this lie.

Quotethat virtually no one else can get a look in.
?!

brat-sampson

I don't think Sterling's ever done much to attack *developers*, his angle has always been aimed squarely at *Publishers* who are the ones who tend to be responsible for strong-arming these kinds of mtx and loot-boxes etc into places they don't belong. The dude/gal who programmed the fish AI doesn't get the flack, but the suits who want to make sure every SP game has questionable reward balance to make those constant 50% boosts more tempting absolutely do, and deserve everything they get.

Kelvin

I almost started a thread about Stirling yesterday, before I posted that video. Wish I had now.

Thursday

I feel like I need better examples now of things he did that annoyed me and turned me off him, but now I can't quite remember exactly. This is why I'm bad at arguments, I'll just rant about people without properly explaining myself.

Kelvin

No, I've heard the arguments made by others, too. I've only been regularly watching him for a year or so, so maybe he did say some more dubious stuff before that. I've been very impressed by him recently, though. He feels like a breath of fresh air in a games media that feels so compromised by close relationships with developers, and a reliance on free games for review. I frequently find myself thinking 'Jim Sterling demolished that argument' while listening to podcasts by people defending publishers.

Excellent game this, start another thread about that fat cunt? Really enjoying the way that side quests keep splintering out and out and feeding into bigger and bigger systems. It's kind of mad. It's got nothing to do with AC games as far as I'm aware and it's thrown in loads of systems I'd normally not give a shit about, the ability to weaken regional forces by taking out mini bosses and captains and stuff and then trigger mass battles against vulnerable powers. Also if you're a little tit, bounty hunters will be on your dick and trying to track you down, like the Nemesis system kind of from Shadow of Wankers games and also the Nemesis from Resident Evil 3 or whatever! Totally unnecessary but pretty cool stuff. There's also branching dialogue stuff that's very straightforward but does affect your options and how people respond to you. It's very Witcher 3 lite, and I mean that. There's even some mild investigation bits and finding evidence and that but much less boring. The fucking bird is back which is actually great. Turn off all the HUD shit and get El Cunto flapping about spotting fellas and then set a way point and that's the only shit thing on your screen. Works brilliantly well. Quests are like 'he hangs out near a fuckin well' or 'somewhere to the south of Wankers' Bog' instead of 'follow this flashing arrow with a distance meter ticking down'. You really 'soak up' the views and environments. Bye!

Thursday

Excuse me, can you talk about Assassin's creed somewhere else? This is the Jim Sterling thread.

I need to pay the XP boost so I can be on Jim's level, then I'll knock him out with a Spartan kick and recruit the fat bastard for my fucking ship. Get rowing or El Cunto will peck your fat eyes out you prick!

Everyone who enjoyed Black Flag for the naval stuff should be buying the fucking out of this. Also, sharks never are not scary. Amazing amazing water and waves in this. Colossal waves. Sealife is unreal, I won't spoil anything. This is absolutely wild. It's a opening up and up and up and everything it adds is great.

Lemming

I'm really excited about this, but fuck, £50. That's a sphincter-clenching price. Already had one splurge this year on Far Cry 5, which was followed by six hours of fetal-position crying while clutching my bank statement. I'll have to see if I can find someone to give me £50 in exchange for some brief manual labour or sex act.

In the meantime I'm just morosely replaying the first Assassin's Creed game for the first time in years, setting my Steam status to "Invisible" to avoid committing full-on social suicide.

If you bought FC5 physical, trade the bugger in. Also, you should be able to get this cheaper physical at Tesco or something. Good luck with it. Comfortably the best Ubisoft style game ever.

I've got to be honest, this is almost overwhelmingly massive at this point. I've played a good twenty or twenty five hours and I've really enjoyed it but I've only seen about a quarter of the world map, and that's literally legging it from one area to another to unlock the fast travel locations. There's a whole massive third phase to it, as well, which I've heard about so I've not even properly revealed all of its systems at this point. Spectacular game but I have no idea what resources were required to produce such a thing. I imagine I have a good year's worth of game here. I'm not sure whether the combat and stealth really merits that much, as good as it is, so it'll come down to the thrills and spills of discovery and quests, I imagine.

biggytitbo

That's the problem isn't it, I don't want to play the same game for a year, or even more than about 2 or 3 weeks at the top end. No game is good enough that some boredom and repitivness doesn't start to draw in after 10-20 hours. That's an increasing trend with the big publishers, they want to lock you into their game indefinitely to sell you microtranstions but that can't be good for the games industry as a whole as it means people will buy less games, especially small and mid teir, in favour of these megagames you have to play for months, which is likely to make the industry even less diverse than it already is.

I agree with you but after another entire evening of this (and please bear in mind that I absolutely hate skill trees and waypoints and padding and everything that one might imagine this involves), it's still absolutely brilliant, and one of the best games I've played this year. It's the best AAA game since Mario Odyssey last November and takes a massive shit on God of War. Fun, fun, fun and so many satisfying systems and loops. I feel like I'm wanking on oxygen.

Thursday


My other main game at the moment is FIFA 19 which I'm loving. Just need the new COD and I'll be swigging Monster with the best of them.

I went back to this having not been gripped by Red Dead since I restarted it. That said, I restarted this on the One X just because I knew it'd look nicer and it's pretty close to be honest. They either did a real solid job on the Pro or decided not to crank it too much further on the X. That said, it does look better, just not Red Dead levels of better.

It's my favourite AAA game this year. Extremely playable and entertaining. I've jibbed the side stuff and mainlined the story missions so got back to my thirty hour save on five or six hours, which is pretty great. I think I'll turbo the main quest because it's a good romp. I'll save Red Dead for a week off over Chrimbo I reckon.

Barry Admin

Bump. I've been slow this week with this as I'm playing on the toughest difficulty and I've been exhausted, bad combination. But I'm making headway now. Getting off the island was awesome, best storytelling since the third game. And I love Kassandra, she's a great character, very well performed. Great moment when I got my first shroud. Yeah, loving it so far, really enjoy a good Assassin's Creed game.

My honest advice (and I know what you're like and what you like) is to knock the difficulty down because the scaling is quite shitty to encourage MXT, that's my only criticism with the game.

I absolutely loved Kassandra. Great character, really well performed. And it's just a gorgeous looking game and world to go mad in.

Barry Admin

#59
I'll see how I go; previously I would rather refuse and give up instead through eventual boredom :-) but this is going well so far, level 8, few skills under my belt.

I see what you mean about stealth options in the other thread. The "recruiting" thing works very well, and is obviously lifted wholesale from MSGV!

Edit: now I think of it, Ikaros is also very similar to scoping out and tagging enemies with your binoculars or whatever. Similarities have probably been mentioned but I'm too early in to read the thread.