#Triple A Gaming Company

[jeanstapleton]

i have to roll back like 3 days worth of gameplay bc mizora was bugged to not visit wyll in camp to discuss the contract & the only way i learned abt this was bc i wanted the wavemother robe without knowing how its indirectly tied to his questline

[miyku]

[full-pockets]

Wait wait okay so Mineru's ability is she can seperate her soul from her body and put that soul in something else. I believe in game she calls it her spirit but soul is like the same thing. Also spirit sounds more 'mystical' and soul might have religious context to it? Whatever. The stones amplify the holders already present power, not giving them 'new' ones, meaning she already had some power relating to spirit magic.

Two questions.

One, what was the extent of her power BEFORE she got the stone? In the scene she describes it as the stone gave her the ability to take her soul out of her body, not like she always had the ability to do that.

Two, if she can do that, why couldn't she separate Ganon's spirit from his body as a way to stall for time or temporarily stop his rampage?

It still doesn't make sense to me that Rarau, the light guy, was able to put Ganon in a stasis when Sonia's thing was time. Thou with Ganon killing Sonia and stealing her stone that couldn't be done. But it felt like, a kinda crappy way to go about that. The whole scene felt, not planned well. It felt like a first draft they went with instead of really dissecting the possibilities and making a more compelling and imo, more 'logical makes sense' of a story. If Sonia wasn't used as a sacrificial lamb for the story, SHE could have used her time powers to stall+stasis Ganon. She could have used her time powers to stall the malice infecting Link's arm, slowing it but never fully able to stop it due to her weakened power from keeping a lock on Ganon all these years and giving us the same reason to get the orbs to purify Link's arm.

This could also serve as a mirror back to Zelda's plight from BotW, stalling the big bad (she wasn't using time powers but still) but her power waning, unable to fully end it, just slow it down. Fighting the same foe, failing, and stalling, relying on the hero to finish business.

However, I feel like part of the reason Rarau was chosen to stop Ganon and give Link his arm was that he's Zonai, he's new, and the developers wanted to push that rather than the ancient Hylians. After all they did give us *too much of the Zonai and also still not enough. Even thou Rarau ends up playing such a small part in Link's encounters and is like, never seen again after the tutorial area then once more at the very anti climatic ending for Zelda.

Incase you couldn't tell, I have NOT finished the game, I probably never will and I've only spent 45 hours on it then never picked it up. 5 of those hours was spent on the tutorial sky island (I messed up so badly my first time that I *had to start over). I have also not seen many ending scenes so maybe there was a legit reason Mineru couldn't trap Ganon's soul but with the crappy writing of this game, I wouldn't be surprised if it was some dumb reason.

[thefirstknife]

I don’t understand people who are upset we don’t have all the answers about the Veil right now because quite frankly I thought that was the point? Like if we had all the answers then we get to the issue (that a lot of these same people had) where the seasons feel disconnected and like little actually matter until the last one before the expansion. They didn’t give us everything probably because we’re supposed to discover the answers as the year goes on before we chase the Witness through whatever portal it made. Bungie is doing what they wanted and yet people still complain

Yep, pretty much. They also did explicitly say in the latest TWAB that yes, the story will continue throughout the year. Some people took that as Bungie "having to tell us that there's more story because of how shit their writing is" but what I saw was community managers trying to politely explain to tens of thousands of raging players that the story isn't over. It felt almost passive aggressive to me given that this is exactly what players wanted:

We know there are still plenty of questions left unanswered at the end of Lightfall’s Campaign that you’re all eagerly awaiting answers to. As the events of Season of Defiance get into full swing this week, know that this is just the beginning of the next year of storytelling that will connect the events of Lightfall and The Final Shape. We can’t wait for the community to learn more about The Witness’s origins, its objective, and the ways we can thwart it and its disciples throughout Season of the Deep, as well as Seasons 22 and 23 later this year.

You made a great point about that. People asked that seasons become more meaningful. I remember that initially seasons were kinda all over the place and not really connected into a full story. Like, there were very few connecting points between Undying-Dawn-Worthy-Arrivals. Nothing that couldn't be summarised in 2 sentences. Even less if you look at Black Armory-Drifter-Opulence seasons from Y2.

On one hand, it meant that you could skip any and not lose much. But on the other hand, those that weren't skipping complained that the seasons aren't very well connected between each other and the main campaign of the year. This was a serious enough complaint that it became the reason for more connected seasons and also a reason to let seasons last the whole year, as detailed in a TWAB from April 2020:

We have been making progress carrying the overarching narrative Season over Season in Destiny 2. Saint-14 and Osiris led to the Warmind which leads to… [REDACTED]

It’s not perfect yet. The bridges between Seasons can definitely be improved, and we could do a better job of recognizing prior Seasons’ narrative threads in the active Season. 

In Year 4, we are going to build a better interconnected narrative and, more importantly, let players be a part of that narrative no matter when they enter the current year.

I'm putting this here because people have notoriously bad memory, but we have tangible proof of people asking Bungie for seasons that have more meaningful and interconnected narrative. Bungie listened, but that also meant that skipping a season became harder if you wanted to stay in the loop. Obviously you can watch a playthrough online, but you know. But clearly the majority wanted seasons to be meaningful and were happy when Bungie listened.

And now suddenly we don't want the story to continue during the year? I understand the FOMO complaints and monetary complaints. If you buy an expansion, you want to NOT feel forced into buying all seasons for it in order to experience the full story. It's just strange to me that we are dropping that issue at Lightfall when BL and WQ were the same. A lot will say that they liked it before, but now just got tired of the same thing over and over, but what exactly is that thing? A good and connected narrative that links expansions and seasons? Do we now want a break year where seasonal stories are irrelevant and nothing meaningful happens?

Obviously, connected seasons benefit Bungie. I am aware that connecting the narrative like this means more people will feel compelled to buy the seasons. But if they're already making contect they want us to buy, then people want their purchase to mean something instead of getting content they easily could've skipped. It's kind of an impossible conundrum? We want the seasons to be good and narrative rich and meaningful, but we also want the seasons to be easy to skip and not necessary to play. That's kinda contradictory.

I genuinely don't know what is the solution and I welcome discussion about it. I just find most of the discussions about this kind of stuff to be very strange. Like, in most cases it just boils down to a contradiction of wanting the story to feel worth investing yourself into, but also easy to sit out. Those two things just can't both be true at once.

[vicekings]

veilguard has an assassin companion and I know its cheap coming from me bc 15 year old me ripped off etiennes story from a combo of Jon snow/altair/zevran but it does make me want to yoink etienne closer to my chest and bare my teeth like a chimpanzee about to rip someone’s arm off

[thesaintelectric]

my most controversial gaming opinion is that all multiplayer games should let you explore the maps in single player. not some convoluted system of making a custom match & then locking it so only you can join. im talking a creative mode where you have access to everything you own and can just fuck about.

[angeltannis]

My personal theory re: OW2 PVE is that it was a Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines situation where I fully bet the devs WERE working on PVE for ages, but it took so much time and money that eventually the higher-ups said “we’re cutting you off” and pulled the plug. That’s the only explanation I can think of that factors in the fact that playable versions of PVE missions DID exist, and gives them the very slight benefit of the doubt that they weren’t just lying about this whole thing right along.

[mochapanda]

tears of the kingdom was never made to replace botw in the same way majoras mask was never made to replace ocarina of time and yall need to fucking get over it

[sunvisetrip]

after finding out @nn@pur@ rigged the game awards for themselves:

[pinkfey]

far cry 6 goty edition being $120 has to be illegal

[edgepunk]

I keep thinking that the AAA gaming industry can't get worse but every big studio comes out of the woodwork to prove me wrong once again it's like a competition of who is the biggest piece of shit

[persephinae]

Some NPC that's clipped through the wall in Todd's Game(TM): hey sister, looking to make some caps?

Me, looking everywhere for this disembodied voice: GOD???????

NPC, disgruntled: suit yourself

Me: GOD????????

[hinus]

My dev team are planning on releasing a tech demo for our game in June (I think) so I've just been nose to the grindstone trying to pump out as many concepts as I can without destroying myself just cause I really want for us to see some sort of minor success and show what I can do. We're a small (technically indie?) team so it's do or die trying lol....

[dragontummy]

man are people seriously blocking others over something as silly as tumblr checkmarks?

[jaythelay]

If you lowered texture resolutions by half and cut 100 million polygons from a modern title, you wouldn't notice. At all.

If you removed the ability to jump in Mario, you'd notice, if you removed the guns from Halo, you'd notice.

Graphics have Never mattered and are affecting the quality and quantity of product in order to be advertisable. It's insane. We're decades removed from the bit wars and yet we still have not had a single game in which it's graphics ever mattered on a fundamental level.

Sure, games like Farcry 3 and Crysis were advertised and sold themselves on their visual fidelity, but do you play them? Ever? No you play the sequel or moved on entirely, and the graphics? Bout the same as then, just with Far More Filters than is comfortably viewable.

What it boils down to is Artistry has always been the important "visual" element to gaming and it got murdered for polygons you can't even fuckin' count, and what does it do for anyone? Increase prices on hardware, on software, and for what, possible, benefit?

None. We have yet to have a single example of Graphics ever improving or harming a game. Not a single one.

[quietwingsinthesky]

debating whether to do my presentation on friday on todd howard or walt disney. i have Thoughts on the legacy of both and they’re weirdly similar.