@lazarus11 The "more" in the saying "Less is more" refers to the preference for a less complicated, refined core experience, which is the game philosophy in E33 compared to KCD2. "Less is less" is redundant and self-evident, and bringing it up on your part, as some kind of clap back, is an intellectually dishonest diversion made in bad faith from the meaning of the original saying. Some people don't want a complicated RPG. They just want a refined core experience. E33 does that well, and it won in part because of that, not in spite of it.
@themightyant if they were firing for NDA breach they would likely be more surgical in firing just those who leaked info. But it sounds like they fired the whole group. They would need to prove that each individual leaked information.
@ShieldHero you are not understanding the fundamental issue with people using AI. It robs people of the capital they built in time and effort they’ve put into learning a skill or craft. A person who perfects an art or creates something unique has invested a massive amount of time into doing that. They can then leverage that to make money off their time and effort earned skill. When an AI ingests that content and puts it at the fingertips of thousands if not millions of people it robs the person who originally learned the skill of the capital in time and effort that they invested. Now people can get it easily for free and even claim it as their own. And these people who use AI generation have not earned the skill, but they’ve certainly robbed the person that has. When you read a book and borrow a plot idea, as you mentioned in another comment, you still need to be able to write competently and craft a narrative and create characters that have unique characteristics that are not exactly the same as the original writing you’re borrowing from, otherwise it would be copyright infringement. So you still need to invest the time and effort to earn that capital in writing. AI circumvents that and robs artists of the capital they’ve built in honing their writing craft.
@ShieldHero the companies are making money off of creating a copyright infringement generator by providing it to people. The people who are clicking the generate button are not as much the issue as the companies who create the AI and skimmed the work of human beings.
@Oram77 It does have multiplayer — in the campaign. For those who loved the pvp component it's surely a loss, though there's a solid chance it could always be added later. But for me, the most fun was playing the campaign with a friend. So no issue on my end.
I have very nostalgic memories of playing through the campaign with my brother during Christmas on my cousin's Xbox because my family didn't have that console. We'd basically play through the entire campaign while visiting family down in California, and that was, at the time, our only opportunity to do so. I've since, as an adult, replayed the remaster. But I can't wait to relive some of those memories playing this with my brother, again—if I can talk him into it as we live in separate states—with modern graphics and improved gameplay on my preferred console. Can't wait!
@nessisonett improving loads times from sometimes 2 minutes to 10 seconds is a massive improvement. This was a quality of life generation and I can’t imagine anyone wanting to go back. People seem to take this for granted.
@-Sigma- how are you able to tell from this trailer that Wolverine is premeditative and unlawfully killing the individuals in this trailer. Just because it’s gory doesn’t make it murder.
I’m actually kind of shocked it’s as gory as it is. Shocked in a good way. Doing Wolverine legit tonely. On another note, where’s the person who was saying in the Push Square community that Wolverine doesn’t work as a leading role? Lol.
@Medic_alert Draw distance and pop in was absolutely an issue last gen and many complained about it. It’s immersion breaking. These improvements, along with much faster loading times and more stable 60 fps modes, are big improvements over last gen. It’s not all about perceived graphical fidelity, even though that has also improved if only marginally to the eye.
@EK42 You do realize there are PS games that aren’t available on the Switch, right? Maybe, just maaaaaaaybe, there are some people who might value reducing their utilities while being about to play games not available on Switch.
@DogPark No other character in the X-Men comic books has been explored more than Logan’s. He has more story arcs than any other character. And he has a history spanning 200 years dealing with PTSD, amnesia, moral conflict, failures at being a father, the curse of longevity, the loss of countless loved ones, seeking forgiveness and redemption, codes of honor, control, exploitation, regret. Your opinion that his character lacks depth is not backed up by objective reality.
@DogPark Awful take. If you don’t like the character as a lead that’s fine. But he objectively works as a lead given the many leading roles he’s had with great success. He objectively has been more than a support character for the majority of his history. This is factual. Saying his character is 2D suggests you don’t actually know his comic history. He’s been everything from a trained, mind controlled assassin to a school teacher to the leader of multiple teams in books that have ran for decades including his own, which is the most bankable solo book in X-Men history, not to mention being the most recognizable and popular character in the films. He’s a nearly 200 year-old Canadian that’s lived much of his life in Japan and the U.S. and beyond. He struggles with his feral, violent side, while simultaneously longing for peace and solitude. You can find plenty of 2D depictions of him, but you can say that for pretty much any comic character. I would admit his character could use some new growth, as he hasn’t changed a ton in recent years (comics like to maintain their status quo) but recent years really don’t do the depth of his character’s justice.
@Oram77 I got an email with your previous comment but don't see it here, so maybe you deleted, and sorry to beat a dead horse, but to be clear I'm not defending the quality of the game. I'm defending it from an uneducated opinion. You can have an opinion, but that doesn't make it as valid as an educated one, and that does not shield your uneducated opinion from outside criticism when you post to a public platform.
I said I don't hold an opinion on this game. Me defending it against an unfair, uneducated opinion is not contradictory. These are two different things.
To repeat, defending something against an uneducated criticism is not the same as holding an opinion about that thing.
Furthermore, all it takes to understand the hype is to have empathy and to listen to other people as to why they're excited. Just because you're personally not excited for the game does not preclude you from empathetically understanding the reason why others are hyped.
@Oram77 No, you said, "JUST competent" after saying you didn't understand the hype. The implication you're very clearly making is not that the game is good but rather that the game is nothing special. It's JUST competent. Again, you haven't played the game. If you'd played the first so as to understand the context and reasons stated by other games as to why they're hyped then you would know. But that doesn't seem to be the case. These are bizarre statements to make from someone who has not played the game. And you are very much hating by devaluing it before even playing it.
I have not played Silksong. And I have not stated and I do not hold an opinion on it because I have not played it. Why you're asking me this is equally bizarre.
I do understand the excitement around the game because I played the first and understand why a large contingent of gamers are excited. It's not hard to understand if you know the reasons why other gamers are excited.
@Oram77 Claiming to not understand the hype around a game when you haven't played it is head-scratching.
"Not to hate on the game". Proceeds to hate on the game by devaluing it by calling it "just a competent platformer." Again, without having even played it. Lol.
@Haruki_NLI If the game is as good or better than Hollow Knight then fans will be satisfied. There's no more hype than that. Plenty achievable. The devs have already proven themselves highly competent at creating tight platforming, challenging and creative boss designs, and rewarding metroidvania exploration. Nobody is expecting anything else.
@themightyant It's medieval swords and magic in an open world action, adventure game with a serious tone. Those are the similarities being drawn. Making the comparison by saying it will hold people over isn't that far of a stretch.
The particle effects are incredibly overdone. I can hardly follow the character movements in battle. I can already see dying a bunch because I can't tell what the enemy is doing. Please tell me the particle effects can be turned down or off entirely. It otherwise still looks promising.
@KundaliniRising333 PS+ Essential is $9.99 a month and GP Ultimate is $19.99 a month. So not remotely the same. You have to use the Core conversion hack to get them comparable, but that is not the normal retail pricing. If everyone was using the Core hack I’d wager they wouldn’t be able to sustain the business model. It’s questionable as is with Microsoft propping it up.
I also am a big fan of the genre and haven’t played it yet and I’m sure there’s many others like me. It’s also selling used for nearly $50 at GameStop, a price indicating it’s still plenty desirable. I think you’re underestimating the number of people who will now be doing their first play through because of their sub.
@RoomWithaMoose I appreciate your effort to needle down on this further, but you're kind of misrepresenting what's being discussed here by being too granular and bringing up absolutes. I'm completely willing to acknowledge that all games require some level of repetition. Everything in life requires some level of repetition. Making yourself a sandwich requires repetition. Learning music requires repetition. Taking a shower requires repetition. Sports involve repetition.That's just the nature of reality and life. But that is too granular, and akin to how you're framing things, and not what's being discussed in relationship to these games. What's being discussed here in regards to lacking variety are mundane tasks like follow a fox for the 20th time to a collectible. This is unimaginative and frankly boring, lead-players-by-the hand game design with no challenge involved. It is the kind of brain dead repetitive task that the players who've actually played the game complain about. And it is the kind of repetitive task that the game designer is hopefully here acknowledging improving upon. But you wouldn't actually know EXACTLY the kind of repetition that is being discussed because you have not played the game. And you have not followed the fox for the 20th time to a collectible that's probably meaningless at later stages in the game. You're not engaging at the same practical level based on the experience of playing the game that the developer or myself are engaging on this topic. Is there going to be some repetition. Sure. Fine. Whatever. But it does not require much imagination to improve upon the follow the fox task to make it not repetitive and meaningfully engaging. Change the animal and the traversal required to follow it. Introduce more platforming mechanics that actually make following it challenging. Don't do the same follow activity for the same type of reward. Mix it up. This is just one of many brain dead tasks in this game the are repeated many times. Soak in a hot spring. Write a haiku. All with basically the same rewards. Terrible enemy variety. Etc. Quest markers telling you everywhere to go to make the repetition feel worse. These elements can be improved upon to make them far more varied. And that is the spirit of what is being discussed here. Not an absolutist notion that every trace of repetition will be gone. That is not the spirit in which I was addressing your comment. And it is not what the game designer was indicating when they said that game would have more diverse experiences.
@RoomWithaMoose I did not say you have a COMPLETE lack of understanding. But you were commenting as if you weren’t acknowledging the nuances, as you stated that “The nature of open-world SIDE-CCONTENT kinda NECESSITATES repetition.” This is simply not true in regards to SIDE CONTENT, especially from a big budget AAA studio, so long as they don’t get distracted by shiny things like gigantic empty maps in lieu of quality content. I illustrated games that did not NECESSITATE repetition in SIDE CONTENT.
That said, almost every game in existence will have a central gameplay loop that involves repetition. This repetition is overcome by depth in mechanics and enemy variety, which multiplies encounter variability and strategy.
Enemies encounters that have depth and variety, even though you might call it repetitive due to the central Loop, is very different than following the 20th fox to an idol to get a stupid collectible. It’s just mindless bloat.
Those are two very different degrees of repetition.
Over-focusing on the “necessity” of a central gameplay loops downplays what is achievable through creative and varying mechanics throughout the central loop and side content. It is absolutely achievable. You could plug in Hazelight’s varying gameplay mechanics into an open world RPG to great success. FF Rebirth proves it. Yakuza proves. The bloat repetitive tasks that those games do have only reinforces that over repetition makes those games worse and that finding creative ways to vary and iterate and build up the core mechanics creates a richer experience.
There was absolutely a trend in open world games that bigger is better. More gameplay hours is better regardless if it’s spent just running aimlessly around and doing the most basic of fetch quests.
This is the kind of repetition that is not needed. It can be overcome. And game designers that continue that path are indeed displaying a failure in imagination.
@RoomWithaMoose you’re commenting on two games that you have not played and are not understanding the difference in variety between them in regards to side content. The only games that maybe have more varied side content than FF Rebirth is maybe Yakuza games. There are tons of totally different mini games that make the world feel rich. Ghost has none of that. All side content are repetivite tasks. They are drastically different in game design decisions. There are some repetitive elements in FF Rebirth but it could have done without them. It would have been a long enough game without the towers and summon shrines. Open world game designers need to learn that less is more. Fewer unique side quests in a denser, smaller map is far superior than a sprawling map with repetitive tasks galore. And, yes, this would be achievable if developers weren’t so focused on gameplay hours and moreso on quality of content.
@RoomWithaMoose Saying that open worlds have to be repetitive is a failure of imagination. Take FF7 Rebirth. While it did have some repetitive elements such as towers and summon shrines, there were numerous completely unique mini games with simple mechanics which still provided some form of challenge and were easy enough to pick up. Games like It Takes Two and Split Fiction, while not open world, prove that a game can be wildly successful while incorporating new ideas at every stage without players feeling lost as mechanics change. And while, open worlds do not need to be as varied as those games, GOT was egregious in its brainless repetition by its end.
@tangyzesty its pretentiousness as a form of humor for a good portion of his work. If you don’t connect with the humor of how sudo-intellectually over-the-top everything is then you’re going to have a hard time with it. I think you might have to learn to not interpret his games as taking themselves so seriously. Because they’re not really. He has characters named such as Die hardman for goodness sake. It’s all a big joke with some wild sci-fi storytelling mixed in.
I'll say it, again, return to the roots of FF with some iterations on turn-based design. Both Clair Obscur, Fantasian, Chained Echos, and Sea Of Stars show that new ideas can be used to enrich the turn-based formula. Also, use the animated art style of Yoshitaka Amano to inspire the world and character designs. It is a unique art style and it has a through and through FF feel. Ditch the try hard emo boyband, fantasy realism aesthetic and look at how Nintendo uses simple but great art design. The series should have been leaning into Amano's art style when the 2-D sprits were ditched in favor of 3D realism. Bring back elemental weaknesses that matter. Party members you can control. More armor and accessories with interesting stats and abilities. Get rid of open-world bloat. Make exploration and secret bosses meaningful. Include mini-games. But don't go overboard like FF7 Rebirth.
@get2sammyb I’m a little unclear about the combat. Do you hack every enemy? Then once’s hacked do you then shoot the enemy like normal in a TPS? About how long does the hacking generally take? Is hacking more the challenge than any shooting element? Are there some enemies you eventually over level and thus can skip the hack and just shoot to speed up the encounter? Or is the shooting aspect just an auto animation triggered once hacked?
@UncleByron @RS1 I would add that the game is putting you through this story of dueling perspectives and violent rationalizations to kind of train you with the ability to see conflict in real life from varying viewpoints rather than just your own. And it especially is training you to view the perspective of people you hate and to see their humanity and their pain. To make you a more empathetic person toward those you view as bad people or even your enemy. If more people were able to do this there would surely be less violence in the world. And that, especially, is not hollow.
@RS1 the game is not asking you to agree with Abby’s actions. Sympathizing with a person does not mean agreeing with everything they’ve done. This is exposing a maturity issue on your part.
The first game highly insinuated that Joel has also committed immoral acts. But the first game conveniently frames the story to allow you to sympathize with him. And you learn to sympathize with him as he comes to love Ellie and eventually save her.
The second game does this exactly with Abby and Lev.
Abby does something immoral. But then the game forces you into her perspective as she comes to love Lev and saves him.
As much as Ellie and Abby are analogous in ways. So are a Joel and Abby. But you only sympathize with Joel because you started the games framing him as the hero despite the terrible things he did in his past.
But that you can’t see similarities and between these characters and you can’t dissect and view your tribalism from a bird’s eye view and have sympathy for someone you disagree with or for someone you see as having moral failings suggests a maturity issue.
More simply put, you don’t have to agree with someone to sympathize with them. It’s not a matter of taking sides.
It’s more a matter of viewing people as three dimensional and having both good and bad in them, and being able to view them more tragically for the terrible things their emotions drive them toward committing.
@lindos what irrational behavior is Ellie engaged in in the first hour? Ellie’s revenge mission hasn’t even begun at that point. You-know-who isn’t even dead yet. Lol. Regardless, Ellie hasn’t committed horrendous acts yet one hour into her revenge quest either. It’s not that Ellie is being irrational that is solely the issue. It’s when she kills a defenseless person (Nora) when she really crosses the line. Everyone else up until that point was also trying to kill her, as far as I remember.
I think its a simple telling of "people do terrible things in terrible times"
This is the most rudimentary take you can have on the game. The fact that you’re measuring this game on a level of enjoyability against other games suggests also that you have a poor understanding of what this game is doing.
It seeks to be entertaining, yes, but it absolutely does not want you to be enjoying what’s going on. This is intended to be a painful, uncomfortable experience for the player and it’s intended for you to question and regret what you’ve done both as Ellie and as Abby. Those take aways are intended to be difficult. Not enjoyable.
This isn’t a game just about Ellie and Abby’s revenge spiral and doing bad stuff is wrong. This is a game that distinctly wants the player participant to commit themselves to the revenge, as well, for the loss of someone of tribal affiliation. Think of all of the players who have a hard time coping with the death of you-know-who. This coping problem is distinctly because of the player’s tribal affiliation with this person.
Consider never beginning the games with Joel and Ellie. Consider starting the games solely with Abby and her father. Yes, the father is engaged in ethically and morally dubious experiments. But we’d be far more likely to associate with Abby, to be of her tribe, if we started the games framed from her perspective. Just like how we accept Joel even though the first game frames his past dubiously and glazes over the horrors he was all but assuredly involved in.
Human beings tend to form tribal attachments with communities they’re born into.
This isn’t just about the affiliations that Ellie and Abby have with their people, their tribes. It’s also about the tribal attachments that the player has. This is the point of putting you in Abby’s shoes, even if you’re unable to understand her point of view and sympathize with her. The game is challenging your tribal viewpoint as a player. This is the point of the switcheroo.
Nora’s death scene is the key to unlocking the game.
All you as the player has to do is push square to mortally beat Nora. So simple. So dehumanizing. Ellie is already committed in that scene to beating Nora. But the game is requiring you, asking you the player, to agree to this commitment in pushing forward, to the dehumanization of this character not in your tribe. To commit to seeing it through. The prompt to push forward is asking you as the player for permission to continue with this game, for this reason, to draw you into the decision making.
This is a game that is intentionally using simulation on a high level in an attempt to plumb the emotions felt by the player due to decisions made at greater depths, and that’s what makes it unique and so divisive.
@nessisonett Wait, how does the gameplay not match the thematics? Again, this is a completely shallow take and misunderstanding of the material. The game is asking the player to take part in a fantasy revenge mission. The game pushes the player to participate in the killing and justify it up until the point where it makes you start questioning your actions. And, yet, it still convinces you as the player and participant in the game world to push forward despite knowing what you're doing in world is abhorrent. This is the game showing you how easy it is to devolve into a mode where you justify dehumanizing people. And that is exactly what we do as we play the game and kill a whole bunch of people in a singular focus to get revenge, or, in other words, to finish the game.
@UncleByron It's good to hear other people get what the game is going for because some of these takes are just baffling and suggest a severe lacking in media literacy.
It's kind of like how people criticize the game for its split narrative and how it ruins the pacing.
Like, that's kind of the point. It's supposed to jarringly mess with the pacing.
The game is trying to trick you into thinking that this is a revenge fantasy where we're solely rooting for Ellie and that is no more complex than that and we're driving toward that goal.
Then the game slowly starts making us commit abhorrent acts to make us question what we're doing as Ellie.
And Jesse gets unceremoniously shot in the face and we're supposed to feel like this isn't worth! What have we committed ourselves to?
Then the game pulls the switcheroo, and it's supposed to put us on our back feet, it's supposed to make us want to object to walking in the same shoes of the person who killed member of our tribe, Joel and Jesse.
And then the game dares us to live out the life of this murderous member of another tribe that we hate. And it dares us to try to understand where she's coming from and the horrors she's endured to push her to do the things she does.
It's a depressing story but I ultimately walk away with a positive message of trying to see the way the other side sees events, to try to understand where someone is coming from in a conflict regardless of whether they're justified or not, to realize that people in both sides of a fight have grievances that may seem revenge worthy from their perspective. And in these situations, it's worth stepping back and taking a breath and trying to be clear-eyed and sympathetic before letting situations spiral out of control.
In any case, a split narrative that doubles back from another perspective typically doesn't work well . . . unless it's done for a specific thematic reason. In this case it was.
It's a classic example of breaking rules in storytelling when you have a distinct reason to break that rule.
@RS1 The game is in no way shape or form saying that Joel killing Abby's father and Abby killing Joel are morally equivalent.
The game does want you to understand how a human being can be pushed to blindly wanting revenge after an act of violence is committed against a family member, regardless if they deserved it or not.
The game is not trying to convince you that Abby is totally justified or as justified as Joel was to save Ellie. It simply wants you sympathize with understanding why Abby is doing what she is doing as she justifies it from her perspective.
The game doesn't want you to see it just from your perspective. The game wants to limit you and narrow your perspective to just what Abby is perceiving and feeling.
@nessisonett, "Dunno, it depends," is probably the most shallow take on the game and its story you could probably gather from it and suggests you're not making an honest effort to actually engage with its themes.
TLOU2 is about more than revenge or cycles or tribalism or morals, or perspective, etc. It is definitely all of those things. But on a deeper meta-analysis, it is about simulation by making the player act out a revenge, making the player question the brutal actions they're justifying in the game world, and making the player question their own moral motivations from various perspectives that the game forces them to embody.
It is not just about Ellie's and Abby's tribalism. It is about the player's tribal relationship with them.
It is not just about Ellie and Abby's moral decisions. It is about the player's moral outlook on how we relate to them.
It is not just about Ellie and Abby's perspectives. It is about the players perspective.
What makes this game genius is that it uses the distinct advantages of video game medium, ie simulation, and it tells a story about morals and the like that we don't just read but we participate in.
Take for example the key moment where you have to beat Nora to death in the hospital. This moment isn't just about the lengths someone will go to achieve revenge.
This moment is about forcing the player to do something so simple and menial yet abhorrent to progress the game. All you have to do is simply press square to beat someone to death and progress the game. It's meant to actively involve the player in the dehumanization of Nora with the simple press of a button to push forward both in revenge but also in game progression.
It ties the need for game progression to the act of revenge and dehumanization. And it makes us as the player feel and embody how easy it is to slip in the mental state of someone who can so easily dehumanize another human being.
And this aspect of simulation extends into almost every aspect of the game from various angles as they relate to the various themes above.
I can't point to any other piece of media that achieves this same effect and makes the player feel so deeply that they are an active participant.
I don't see where in any of these quotes it says that the next console will be a PC. If it were a PC it would be able to do word processing, image editing, etc. There may be some PCs that are optimized for gaming, even with silicone specifically developed in conjunction with the Xbox team, but that doesn't make it a console. It's still a PC. There will still be standalone consoles that are just for gaming and media consumption. And it's indicated that those consoles will also be able to run GOG, Epic, etc. But that still does not make it a PC. A PC runs other types of programs. So there will be PCs in the lineup of Xbox branded and designed hardware that run a variety of software. But there will still be a console for those that want plug and play. That's what I take from this.
@rjejr I think that it's stated or at the very least implied that the handholds were installed by previous expeditions. That's why they're not just rock handholds and rather why they look like devices mounted to the rocks.
In a journal you can find it mentions a climbing expedition that set up the grapple anchor points, and you even find an expedition bodies and an item with a bunch of climbing equipment laying around. Can't remember if it explicitly states the climbing handholds, as well, but it would make sense lore wise. In any case, I think that's why they look the way they do.
In older RPGs, there would be times where the way forward isn't super obvious. It's intentional to create some level of difficulty to exploration requiring observational skills, even if at times it's frustrating. Clair Obscur intentionally pulls inspiration from past RPGs like this.
I missed a couple handhelds as well that I eventually found with further exploration, but never blamed it on the game. I blamed it on my observational skills in the moment and I viewed it as a challenge and an intentional game decision. Plus, it kept me searching, and I found other secrets because I momentarily couldn't find the main path forward. That's by design.
Anyway, to each their own, and honestly its a small quibble however you slice it.
@rjejr I think the intent of the handholds is to actually make them a bit hidden at times, to give traversal through the world a little bit of a challenge, and because they lead to special items. The paths are supposed to be a discovery. The game design is one that rewards exploration and searching. They don't want to serve everything to you on platter and make the handholds jump out at you.
For me, The novelty of gaming subscriptions wore off after a year when I realized I can't really milk as much value out of them as it would seem. I'm all about buying used physical copies now that I can resell and keep my hobby relatively cheap. I mostly play one game at a time, so the convenience of switching between games quickly sounds nice, but in practice I wouldn't use it all that often.
@themightyant There are often lanterns throughout the world that for the most part lead you in the correct direction. They use these environmental markers in lieu of a map. When there aren't lanterns, there aren't that many routes you can go down anyway. Using these with a little bit of spacial awareness and a willingness to explore, navigating the world isn't that hard. My biggest complaint when it comes to navigation is that after talking to someone (and I think when you use a flag to rest) it will change the way you are facing, which disorients which way you're making your way through an area.
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Re: Chrono Trigger Revival Hopes Have Been Reignited Yet Again
An all-time great. Played it many times. Wish they'd make another.
Re: Expedition 33, Ghost of Yotei Have Started Scooping Up GOTY Awards
@lazarus11 The "more" in the saying "Less is more" refers to the preference for a less complicated, refined core experience, which is the game philosophy in E33 compared to KCD2. "Less is less" is redundant and self-evident, and bringing it up on your part, as some kind of clap back, is an intellectually dishonest diversion made in bad faith from the meaning of the original saying. Some people don't want a complicated RPG. They just want a refined core experience. E33 does that well, and it won in part because of that, not in spite of it.
Re: Expedition 33, Ghost of Yotei Have Started Scooping Up GOTY Awards
@lazarus11 sometimes less is more. That would be the case for E33.
Re: Arthurian Action Game Tides of Annihilation Stuns in Staggering PS5 Boss Fight Trailer
Looks like gameplay is constantly being interrupted by cutscenes, and even with the cutscenes I can sometimes hardly understand what is going on.
Re: Protests at GTA Developer After Sacked Staff Deny Leaking Confidential Info
@themightyant if they were firing for NDA breach they would likely be more surgical in firing just those who leaked info. But it sounds like they fired the whole group. They would need to prove that each individual leaked information.
Re: Sony Stands with Japan's Creators in AI Copyright Crackdown
@ShieldHero you are not understanding the fundamental issue with people using AI. It robs people of the capital they built in time and effort they’ve put into learning a skill or craft. A person who perfects an art or creates something unique has invested a massive amount of time into doing that. They can then leverage that to make money off their time and effort earned skill. When an AI ingests that content and puts it at the fingertips of thousands if not millions of people it robs the person who originally learned the skill of the capital in time and effort that they invested. Now people can get it easily for free and even claim it as their own. And these people who use AI generation have not earned the skill, but they’ve certainly robbed the person that has. When you read a book and borrow a plot idea, as you mentioned in another comment, you still need to be able to write competently and craft a narrative and create characters that have unique characteristics that are not exactly the same as the original writing you’re borrowing from, otherwise it would be copyright infringement. So you still need to invest the time and effort to earn that capital in writing. AI circumvents that and robs artists of the capital they’ve built in honing their writing craft.
Re: Sony Stands with Japan's Creators in AI Copyright Crackdown
@ShieldHero the companies are making money off of creating a copyright infringement generator by providing it to people. The people who are clicking the generate button are not as much the issue as the companies who create the AI and skimmed the work of human beings.
Re: Halo Confirmed for PS5, Remake of First Game Out in 2026
@Oram77 It does have multiplayer — in the campaign. For those who loved the pvp component it's surely a loss, though there's a solid chance it could always be added later. But for me, the most fun was playing the campaign with a friend. So no issue on my end.
Re: Halo Confirmed for PS5, Remake of First Game Out in 2026
I have very nostalgic memories of playing through the campaign with my brother during Christmas on my cousin's Xbox because my family didn't have that console. We'd basically play through the entire campaign while visiting family down in California, and that was, at the time, our only opportunity to do so. I've since, as an adult, replayed the remaster. But I can't wait to relive some of those memories playing this with my brother, again—if I can talk him into it as we live in separate states—with modern graphics and improved gameplay on my preferred console. Can't wait!
Re: This Is Why Xbox Is Bringing All of Its Games to PS5 Now
@trev666 Gee, maybe it’s because XBOX publishes games on PlayStation. They are multiplatform now. Keep up.
Re: Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 3 Will Be 'A Bit More Concise' Following Feedback on Rebirth's Filler
Chanley also needs to go. The summons felt like part of the world in the original. Having them tied to VR feels unauthentic.
Re: Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 3 Will Be 'A Bit More Concise' Following Feedback on Rebirth's Filler
Keep the unique mini-games and ditch the repetitive towers and shrines filler.
Re: PS6 Out 'in a Few Years' as Sony, AMD Discuss the Future of Games
@nessisonett improving loads times from sometimes 2 minutes to 10 seconds is a massive improvement. This was a quality of life generation and I can’t imagine anyone wanting to go back. People seem to take this for granted.
Re: First Wolverine PS5 Gameplay Is Incredibly Gory, Set for Fall 2026
@Porco Donald Pierce and The Reavers, who I'm assuming these cyborgs are, are classic Wolverine enemies.
Re: First Wolverine PS5 Gameplay Is Incredibly Gory, Set for Fall 2026
@-Sigma- how are you able to tell from this trailer that Wolverine is premeditative and unlawfully killing the individuals in this trailer. Just because it’s gory doesn’t make it murder.
Re: First Wolverine PS5 Gameplay Is Incredibly Gory, Set for Fall 2026
I’m actually kind of shocked it’s as gory as it is. Shocked in a good way. Doing Wolverine legit tonely. On another note, where’s the person who was saying in the Push Square community that Wolverine doesn’t work as a leading role? Lol.
Re: 'We Can Now Load Millions of Assets': Ghost of Yotei Dev Explains Technical Leap on PS5
@Medic_alert Draw distance and pop in was absolutely an issue last gen and many complained about it. It’s immersion breaking. These improvements, along with much faster loading times and more stable 60 fps modes, are big improvements over last gen. It’s not all about perceived graphical fidelity, even though that has also improved if only marginally to the eye.
Re: PS5 Firmware Update Out Tomorrow, Brings Power Saver Mode, DualSense Controller Pairing
@EK42 You do realize there are PS games that aren’t available on the Switch, right? Maybe, just maaaaaaaybe, there are some people who might value reducing their utilities while being about to play games not available on Switch.
Imagine being someone who can’t grasp the above.
Re: 'The Game Looks Fantastic': Insider Shares Wolverine PS5 Tidbit Ahead of Rumoured Re-Reveal
@DogPark No other character in the X-Men comic books has been explored more than Logan’s. He has more story arcs than any other character. And he has a history spanning 200 years dealing with PTSD, amnesia, moral conflict, failures at being a father, the curse of longevity, the loss of countless loved ones, seeking forgiveness and redemption, codes of honor, control, exploitation, regret. Your opinion that his character lacks depth is not backed up by objective reality.
Re: 'The Game Looks Fantastic': Insider Shares Wolverine PS5 Tidbit Ahead of Rumoured Re-Reveal
@DogPark Awful take. If you don’t like the character as a lead that’s fine. But he objectively works as a lead given the many leading roles he’s had with great success. He objectively has been more than a support character for the majority of his history. This is factual. Saying his character is 2D suggests you don’t actually know his comic history. He’s been everything from a trained, mind controlled assassin to a school teacher to the leader of multiple teams in books that have ran for decades including his own, which is the most bankable solo book in X-Men history, not to mention being the most recognizable and popular character in the films. He’s a nearly 200 year-old Canadian that’s lived much of his life in Japan and the U.S. and beyond. He struggles with his feral, violent side, while simultaneously longing for peace and solitude. You can find plenty of 2D depictions of him, but you can say that for pretty much any comic character. I would admit his character could use some new growth, as he hasn’t changed a ton in recent years (comics like to maintain their status quo) but recent years really don’t do the depth of his character’s justice.
Re: Hollow Knight: Silksong Release Crashes Storefronts Like Steam, Finally Live on PS5, PS4 Over Two Hours Late
@KundaliniRising333 the original sold 15 million copies and is extremely well regarded. It’s not “just literally viral hype”.
Re: Hollow Knight: Silksong Is Finally Out on 4th September
@Oram77 I got an email with your previous comment but don't see it here, so maybe you deleted, and sorry to beat a dead horse, but to be clear I'm not defending the quality of the game. I'm defending it from an uneducated opinion. You can have an opinion, but that doesn't make it as valid as an educated one, and that does not shield your uneducated opinion from outside criticism when you post to a public platform.
I said I don't hold an opinion on this game. Me defending it against an unfair, uneducated opinion is not contradictory. These are two different things.
To repeat, defending something against an uneducated criticism is not the same as holding an opinion about that thing.
Furthermore, all it takes to understand the hype is to have empathy and to listen to other people as to why they're excited. Just because you're personally not excited for the game does not preclude you from empathetically understanding the reason why others are hyped.
Re: Hollow Knight: Silksong Is Finally Out on 4th September
@Oram77 No, you said, "JUST competent" after saying you didn't understand the hype. The implication you're very clearly making is not that the game is good but rather that the game is nothing special. It's JUST competent. Again, you haven't played the game. If you'd played the first so as to understand the context and reasons stated by other games as to why they're hyped then you would know. But that doesn't seem to be the case. These are bizarre statements to make from someone who has not played the game. And you are very much hating by devaluing it before even playing it.
I have not played Silksong. And I have not stated and I do not hold an opinion on it because I have not played it. Why you're asking me this is equally bizarre.
I do understand the excitement around the game because I played the first and understand why a large contingent of gamers are excited. It's not hard to understand if you know the reasons why other gamers are excited.
Re: Hollow Knight: Silksong Is Finally Out on 4th September
@mvhess The new DK game is a definite romp. Pure fun. Highly recommend!
Re: Hollow Knight: Silksong Is Finally Out on 4th September
@Oram77 Claiming to not understand the hype around a game when you haven't played it is head-scratching.
"Not to hate on the game". Proceeds to hate on the game by devaluing it by calling it "just a competent platformer." Again, without having even played it. Lol.
Re: Hollow Knight: Silksong Is Finally Out on 4th September
@Haruki_NLI If the game is as good or better than Hollow Knight then fans will be satisfied. There's no more hype than that. Plenty achievable. The devs have already proven themselves highly competent at creating tight platforming, challenging and creative boss designs, and rewarding metroidvania exploration. Nobody is expecting anything else.
Re: Astoundingly Ambitious PS5 RPG Crimson Desert Looks Like It'll Ease the Wait for The Witcher 4
@themightyant It's medieval swords and magic in an open world action, adventure game with a serious tone. Those are the similarities being drawn. Making the comparison by saying it will hold people over isn't that far of a stretch.
Re: Astoundingly Ambitious PS5 RPG Crimson Desert Looks Like It'll Ease the Wait for The Witcher 4
The particle effects are incredibly overdone. I can hardly follow the character movements in battle. I can already see dying a bunch because I can't tell what the enemy is doing. Please tell me the particle effects can be turned down or off entirely. It otherwise still looks promising.
Re: Poll: Are You Happy with Your PS Plus Essential Games for August 2025?
@KundaliniRising333 PS+ Essential is $9.99 a month and GP Ultimate is $19.99 a month. So not remotely the same. You have to use the Core conversion hack to get them comparable, but that is not the normal retail pricing. If everyone was using the Core hack I’d wager they wouldn’t be able to sustain the business model. It’s questionable as is with Microsoft propping it up.
I also am a big fan of the genre and haven’t played it yet and I’m sure there’s many others like me. It’s also selling used for nearly $50 at GameStop, a price indicating it’s still plenty desirable. I think you’re underestimating the number of people who will now be doing their first play through because of their sub.
Re: 'We Won't Make You Do the Same Thing Over and Over': Ghost of Yotei PS5 Will Keep You Guessing
@RoomWithaMoose I appreciate your effort to needle down on this further, but you're kind of misrepresenting what's being discussed here by being too granular and bringing up absolutes. I'm completely willing to acknowledge that all games require some level of repetition. Everything in life requires some level of repetition. Making yourself a sandwich requires repetition. Learning music requires repetition. Taking a shower requires repetition. Sports involve repetition.That's just the nature of reality and life. But that is too granular, and akin to how you're framing things, and not what's being discussed in relationship to these games. What's being discussed here in regards to lacking variety are mundane tasks like follow a fox for the 20th time to a collectible. This is unimaginative and frankly boring, lead-players-by-the hand game design with no challenge involved. It is the kind of brain dead repetitive task that the players who've actually played the game complain about. And it is the kind of repetitive task that the game designer is hopefully here acknowledging improving upon. But you wouldn't actually know EXACTLY the kind of repetition that is being discussed because you have not played the game. And you have not followed the fox for the 20th time to a collectible that's probably meaningless at later stages in the game. You're not engaging at the same practical level based on the experience of playing the game that the developer or myself are engaging on this topic. Is there going to be some repetition. Sure. Fine. Whatever. But it does not require much imagination to improve upon the follow the fox task to make it not repetitive and meaningfully engaging. Change the animal and the traversal required to follow it. Introduce more platforming mechanics that actually make following it challenging. Don't do the same follow activity for the same type of reward. Mix it up. This is just one of many brain dead tasks in this game the are repeated many times. Soak in a hot spring. Write a haiku. All with basically the same rewards. Terrible enemy variety. Etc. Quest markers telling you everywhere to go to make the repetition feel worse. These elements can be improved upon to make them far more varied. And that is the spirit of what is being discussed here. Not an absolutist notion that every trace of repetition will be gone. That is not the spirit in which I was addressing your comment. And it is not what the game designer was indicating when they said that game would have more diverse experiences.
Re: 'We Won't Make You Do the Same Thing Over and Over': Ghost of Yotei PS5 Will Keep You Guessing
@RoomWithaMoose I did not say you have a COMPLETE lack of understanding. But you were commenting as if you weren’t acknowledging the nuances, as you stated that “The nature of open-world SIDE-CCONTENT kinda NECESSITATES repetition.” This is simply not true in regards to SIDE CONTENT, especially from a big budget AAA studio, so long as they don’t get distracted by shiny things like gigantic empty maps in lieu of quality content. I illustrated games that did not NECESSITATE repetition in SIDE CONTENT.
That said, almost every game in existence will have a central gameplay loop that involves repetition. This repetition is overcome by depth in mechanics and enemy variety, which multiplies encounter variability and strategy.
Enemies encounters that have depth and variety, even though you might call it repetitive due to the central
Loop, is very different than following the 20th fox to an idol to get a stupid collectible. It’s just mindless bloat.
Those are two very different degrees of repetition.
Over-focusing on the “necessity” of a central gameplay loops downplays what is achievable through creative and varying mechanics throughout the central loop and side content. It is absolutely achievable. You could plug in Hazelight’s varying gameplay mechanics into an open world RPG to great success. FF Rebirth proves it. Yakuza proves. The bloat repetitive tasks that those games do have only reinforces that over repetition makes those games worse and that finding creative ways to vary and iterate and build up the core mechanics creates a richer experience.
There was absolutely a trend in open world games that bigger is better. More gameplay hours is better regardless if it’s spent just running aimlessly around and doing the most basic of fetch quests.
This is the kind of repetition that is not needed. It can be overcome. And game designers that continue that path are indeed displaying a failure in imagination.
Re: 'We Won't Make You Do the Same Thing Over and Over': Ghost of Yotei PS5 Will Keep You Guessing
@RoomWithaMoose you’re commenting on two games that you have not played and are not understanding the difference in variety between them in regards to side content. The only games that maybe have more varied side content than FF Rebirth is maybe Yakuza games. There are tons of totally different mini games that make the world feel rich. Ghost has none of that. All side content are repetivite tasks. They are drastically different in game design decisions. There are some repetitive elements in FF Rebirth but it could have done without them. It would have been a long enough game without the towers and summon shrines. Open world game designers need to learn that less is more. Fewer unique side quests in a denser, smaller map is far superior than a sprawling map with repetitive tasks galore. And, yes, this would be achievable if developers weren’t so focused on gameplay hours and moreso on quality of content.
Re: 'We Won't Make You Do the Same Thing Over and Over': Ghost of Yotei PS5 Will Keep You Guessing
@RoomWithaMoose Saying that open worlds have to be repetitive is a failure of imagination. Take FF7 Rebirth. While it did have some repetitive elements such as towers and summon shrines, there were numerous completely unique mini games with simple mechanics which still provided some form of challenge and were easy enough to pick up. Games like It Takes Two and Split Fiction, while not open world, prove that a game can be wildly successful while incorporating new ideas at every stage without players feeling lost as mechanics change. And while, open worlds do not need to be as varied as those games, GOT was egregious in its brainless repetition by its end.
Re: Of Course Hideo Kojima Would Want to Make a Game in Space
@tangyzesty its pretentiousness as a form of humor for a good portion of his work. If you don’t connect with the humor of how sudo-intellectually over-the-top everything is then you’re going to have a hard time with it. I think you might have to learn to not interpret his games as taking themselves so seriously. Because they’re not really. He has characters named such as Die hardman for goodness sake. It’s all a big joke with some wild sci-fi storytelling mixed in.
Re: Square Enix 'Aware' of Clair Obscur's Success, Ponders Turn-Based RPG Revival
I'll say it, again, return to the roots of FF with some iterations on turn-based design. Both Clair Obscur, Fantasian, Chained Echos, and Sea Of Stars show that new ideas can be used to enrich the turn-based formula. Also, use the animated art style of Yoshitaka Amano to inspire the world and character designs. It is a unique art style and it has a through and through FF feel. Ditch the try hard emo boyband, fantasy realism aesthetic and look at how Nintendo uses simple but great art design. The series should have been leaning into Amano's art style when the 2-D sprits were ditched in favor of 3D realism. Bring back elemental weaknesses that matter. Party members you can control. More armor and accessories with interesting stats and abilities. Get rid of open-world bloat. Make exploration and secret bosses meaningful. Include mini-games. But don't go overboard like FF7 Rebirth.
Re: Preview: Don't Sleep on Capcom's Pragmata, the Most Inventive PS5 Shooter in Years
@get2sammyb I’m a little unclear about the combat. Do you hack every enemy? Then once’s hacked do you then shoot the enemy like normal in a TPS? About how long does the hacking generally take? Is hacking more the challenge than any shooting element? Are there some enemies you eventually over level and thus can skip the hack and just shoot to speed up the encounter? Or is the shooting aspect just an auto animation triggered once hacked?
Re: Poll: How Do You Feel About The Last of Us Part 2, 5 Years Later?
@UncleByron @RS1 I would add that the game is putting you through this story of dueling perspectives and violent rationalizations to kind of train you with the ability to see conflict in real life from varying viewpoints rather than just your own. And it especially is training you to view the perspective of people you hate and to see their humanity and their pain. To make you a more empathetic person toward those you view as bad people or even your enemy. If more people were able to do this there would surely be less violence in the world. And that, especially, is not hollow.
Re: Poll: How Do You Feel About The Last of Us Part 2, 5 Years Later?
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Re: Poll: How Do You Feel About The Last of Us Part 2, 5 Years Later?
@RS1 the game is not asking you to agree with Abby’s actions. Sympathizing with a person does not mean agreeing with everything they’ve done. This is exposing a maturity issue on your part.
The first game highly insinuated that Joel has also committed immoral acts. But the first game conveniently frames the story to allow you to sympathize with him. And you learn to sympathize with him as he comes to love Ellie and eventually save her.
The second game does this exactly with Abby and Lev.
Abby does something immoral. But then the game forces you into her perspective as she comes to love Lev and saves him.
As much as Ellie and Abby are analogous in ways. So are a Joel and Abby. But you only sympathize with Joel because you started the games framing him as the hero despite the terrible things he did in his past.
But that you can’t see similarities and between these characters and you can’t dissect and view your tribalism from a bird’s eye view and have sympathy for someone you disagree with or for someone you see as having moral failings suggests a maturity issue.
More simply put, you don’t have to agree with someone to sympathize with them. It’s not a matter of taking sides.
It’s more a matter of viewing people as three dimensional and having both good and bad in them, and being able to view them more tragically for the terrible things their emotions drive them toward committing.
Re: Poll: How Do You Feel About The Last of Us Part 2, 5 Years Later?
@lindos what irrational behavior is Ellie engaged in in the first hour? Ellie’s revenge mission hasn’t even begun at that point. You-know-who isn’t even dead yet. Lol. Regardless, Ellie hasn’t committed horrendous acts yet one hour into her revenge quest either. It’s not that Ellie is being irrational that is solely the issue. It’s when she kills a defenseless person (Nora) when she really crosses the line. Everyone else up until that point was also trying to kill her, as far as I remember.
I think its a simple telling of "people do terrible things in terrible times"
This is the most rudimentary take you can have on the game. The fact that you’re measuring this game on a level of enjoyability against other games suggests also that you have a poor understanding of what this game is doing.
It seeks to be entertaining, yes, but it absolutely does not want you to be enjoying what’s going on. This is intended to be a painful, uncomfortable experience for the player and it’s intended for you to question and regret what you’ve done both as Ellie and as Abby. Those take aways are intended to be difficult. Not enjoyable.
This isn’t a game just about Ellie and Abby’s revenge spiral and doing bad stuff is wrong. This is a game that distinctly wants the player participant to commit themselves to the revenge, as well, for the loss of someone of tribal affiliation. Think of all of the players who have a hard time coping with the death of you-know-who. This coping problem is distinctly because of the player’s tribal affiliation with this person.
Consider never beginning the games with Joel and Ellie. Consider starting the games solely with Abby and her father. Yes, the father is engaged in ethically and morally dubious experiments. But we’d be far more likely to associate with Abby, to be of her tribe, if we started the games framed from her perspective. Just like how we accept Joel even though the first game frames his past dubiously and glazes over the horrors he was all but assuredly involved in.
Human beings tend to form tribal attachments with communities they’re born into.
This isn’t just about the affiliations that Ellie and Abby have with their people, their tribes. It’s also about the tribal attachments that the player has. This is the point of putting you in Abby’s shoes, even if you’re unable to understand her point of view and sympathize with her. The game is challenging your tribal viewpoint as a player. This is the point of the switcheroo.
Nora’s death scene is the key to unlocking the game.
All you as the player has to do is push square to mortally beat Nora. So simple. So dehumanizing. Ellie is already committed in that scene to beating Nora. But the game is requiring you, asking you the player, to agree to this commitment in pushing forward, to the dehumanization of this character not in your tribe. To commit to seeing it through. The prompt to push forward is asking you as the player for permission to continue with this game, for this reason, to draw you into the decision making.
This is a game that is intentionally using simulation on a high level in an attempt to plumb the emotions felt by the player due to decisions made at greater depths, and that’s what makes it unique and so divisive.
Re: Poll: How Do You Feel About The Last of Us Part 2, 5 Years Later?
@nessisonett Wait, how does the gameplay not match the thematics? Again, this is a completely shallow take and misunderstanding of the material. The game is asking the player to take part in a fantasy revenge mission. The game pushes the player to participate in the killing and justify it up until the point where it makes you start questioning your actions. And, yet, it still convinces you as the player and participant in the game world to push forward despite knowing what you're doing in world is abhorrent. This is the game showing you how easy it is to devolve into a mode where you justify dehumanizing people. And that is exactly what we do as we play the game and kill a whole bunch of people in a singular focus to get revenge, or, in other words, to finish the game.
Re: Poll: How Do You Feel About The Last of Us Part 2, 5 Years Later?
@UncleByron It's good to hear other people get what the game is going for because some of these takes are just baffling and suggest a severe lacking in media literacy.
It's kind of like how people criticize the game for its split narrative and how it ruins the pacing.
Like, that's kind of the point. It's supposed to jarringly mess with the pacing.
The game is trying to trick you into thinking that this is a revenge fantasy where we're solely rooting for Ellie and that is no more complex than that and we're driving toward that goal.
Then the game slowly starts making us commit abhorrent acts to make us question what we're doing as Ellie.
And Jesse gets unceremoniously shot in the face and we're supposed to feel like this isn't worth! What have we committed ourselves to?
Then the game pulls the switcheroo, and it's supposed to put us on our back feet, it's supposed to make us want to object to walking in the same shoes of the person who killed member of our tribe, Joel and Jesse.
And then the game dares us to live out the life of this murderous member of another tribe that we hate. And it dares us to try to understand where she's coming from and the horrors she's endured to push her to do the things she does.
It's a depressing story but I ultimately walk away with a positive message of trying to see the way the other side sees events, to try to understand where someone is coming from in a conflict regardless of whether they're justified or not, to realize that people in both sides of a fight have grievances that may seem revenge worthy from their perspective. And in these situations, it's worth stepping back and taking a breath and trying to be clear-eyed and sympathetic before letting situations spiral out of control.
In any case, a split narrative that doubles back from another perspective typically doesn't work well . . . unless it's done for a specific thematic reason. In this case it was.
It's a classic example of breaking rules in storytelling when you have a distinct reason to break that rule.
Re: Poll: How Do You Feel About The Last of Us Part 2, 5 Years Later?
@RS1 The game is in no way shape or form saying that Joel killing Abby's father and Abby killing Joel are morally equivalent.
The game does want you to understand how a human being can be pushed to blindly wanting revenge after an act of violence is committed against a family member, regardless if they deserved it or not.
The game is not trying to convince you that Abby is totally justified or as justified as Joel was to save Ellie. It simply wants you sympathize with understanding why Abby is doing what she is doing as she justifies it from her perspective.
The game doesn't want you to see it just from your perspective. The game wants to limit you and narrow your perspective to just what Abby is perceiving and feeling.
Re: Poll: How Do You Feel About The Last of Us Part 2, 5 Years Later?
@nessisonett, "Dunno, it depends," is probably the most shallow take on the game and its story you could probably gather from it and suggests you're not making an honest effort to actually engage with its themes.
TLOU2 is about more than revenge or cycles or tribalism or morals, or perspective, etc. It is definitely all of those things. But on a deeper meta-analysis, it is about simulation by making the player act out a revenge, making the player question the brutal actions they're justifying in the game world, and making the player question their own moral motivations from various perspectives that the game forces them to embody.
It is not just about Ellie's and Abby's tribalism. It is about the player's tribal relationship with them.
It is not just about Ellie and Abby's moral decisions. It is about the player's moral outlook on how we relate to them.
It is not just about Ellie and Abby's perspectives. It is about the players perspective.
What makes this game genius is that it uses the distinct advantages of video game medium, ie simulation, and it tells a story about morals and the like that we don't just read but we participate in.
Take for example the key moment where you have to beat Nora to death in the hospital. This moment isn't just about the lengths someone will go to achieve revenge.
This moment is about forcing the player to do something so simple and menial yet abhorrent to progress the game. All you have to do is simply press square to beat someone to death and progress the game. It's meant to actively involve the player in the dehumanization of Nora with the simple press of a button to push forward both in revenge but also in game progression.
It ties the need for game progression to the act of revenge and dehumanization. And it makes us as the player feel and embody how easy it is to slip in the mental state of someone who can so easily dehumanize another human being.
And this aspect of simulation extends into almost every aspect of the game from various angles as they relate to the various themes above.
I can't point to any other piece of media that achieves this same effect and makes the player feel so deeply that they are an active participant.
Re: The Next Xbox Is a PC, So What Does That Mean for PS6?
I don't see where in any of these quotes it says that the next console will be a PC. If it were a PC it would be able to do word processing, image editing, etc. There may be some PCs that are optimized for gaming, even with silicone specifically developed in conjunction with the Xbox team, but that doesn't make it a console. It's still a PC. There will still be standalone consoles that are just for gaming and media consumption. And it's indicated that those consoles will also be able to run GOG, Epic, etc. But that still does not make it a PC. A PC runs other types of programs. So there will be PCs in the lineup of Xbox branded and designed hardware that run a variety of software. But there will still be a console for those that want plug and play. That's what I take from this.
Re: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Teases Big Improvements for Future Updates
@rjejr I think that it's stated or at the very least implied that the handholds were installed by previous expeditions. That's why they're not just rock handholds and rather why they look like devices mounted to the rocks.
In a journal you can find it mentions a climbing expedition that set up the grapple anchor points, and you even find an expedition bodies and an item with a bunch of climbing equipment laying around. Can't remember if it explicitly states the climbing handholds, as well, but it would make sense lore wise. In any case, I think that's why they look the way they do.
In older RPGs, there would be times where the way forward isn't super obvious. It's intentional to create some level of difficulty to exploration requiring observational skills, even if at times it's frustrating. Clair Obscur intentionally pulls inspiration from past RPGs like this.
I missed a couple handhelds as well that I eventually found with further exploration, but never blamed it on the game. I blamed it on my observational skills in the moment and I viewed it as a challenge and an intentional game decision. Plus, it kept me searching, and I found other secrets because I momentarily couldn't find the main path forward. That's by design.
Anyway, to each their own, and honestly its a small quibble however you slice it.
Re: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Teases Big Improvements for Future Updates
@rjejr I think the intent of the handholds is to actually make them a bit hidden at times, to give traversal through the world a little bit of a challenge, and because they lead to special items. The paths are supposed to be a discovery. The game design is one that rewards exploration and searching. They don't want to serve everything to you on platter and make the handholds jump out at you.
Re: 'People Are Less Willing to Pay': Dev Speaks Out Against Day One Releases on PS Plus, Xbox Game Pass
For me, The novelty of gaming subscriptions wore off after a year when I realized I can't really milk as much value out of them as it would seem. I'm all about buying used physical copies now that I can resell and keep my hobby relatively cheap. I mostly play one game at a time, so the convenience of switching between games quickly sounds nice, but in practice I wouldn't use it all that often.
Re: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Patch 1.3.0 Makes Big Balance and Difficulty Adjustments
@themightyant There are often lanterns throughout the world that for the most part lead you in the correct direction. They use these environmental markers in lieu of a map. When there aren't lanterns, there aren't that many routes you can go down anyway. Using these with a little bit of spacial awareness and a willingness to explore, navigating the world isn't that hard. My biggest complaint when it comes to navigation is that after talking to someone (and I think when you use a flag to rest) it will change the way you are facing, which disorients which way you're making your way through an area.
Re: Xbox's Next Round of PS5 Games Are Available to Pre-Order Physically
It absolutely does not render the advantage of physical redundant. YOU CAN STILL RESELL THE GAME.