#the gen dev working overtime

[sengenism]

shed a tear

[felassan]

Insights into DAI’s development from Blood, Sweat, and Pixels

The book is by game industry journalist Jason Schreier (it’s an interesting read and well-written, I recommend it). This is the cliff notes version of the DAI chapter. This info isn’t new as the book is from 2017 (I finally got around to buying it). Some insight into DAO, DA2 and cancelled DA projects is also given. Cut for length.

BW hoped that DA would become the LotR of video games. DAO’s development was “a hellish seven-year slog”

The DAI team are compared to a chaotic “pirate ship”, which is what they called themselves internally. “It’ll get where it needs to go, but it’s going to go all over the place. Sail over here. Drink some rum. Go over here. Do something else. That’s how Mark Darrah likes to run his team.” An alternative take from someone else who worked on the game: “It was compared to a pirate ship because it was chaotic and the loudest voice in the room usually set the direction. I think they smartly adopted the name and morphed it into something better.”

A game about the Inquisition and the large-scale political conflicts it solves across Thedas, where the PC was the Inquisitor, was originally the vision for ‘DA2′. Plans had to change when SW:TOR’s development kept stalling and slipping. Frustrated EA execs wanted a new product from BW to bolster quarterly sales targets, and decided that DA would have to fill the gap. BW agreed to deliver DA2 within 16 months. “Basically, DA2 exists to fill that hole. That was the inception. It was always intended to be a game made to fit in that”

BW wanted to call it DA: Exodus, but EA’s marketing execs insisted on DA2, no matter what that name implied

DAO’s scope (Origin stories, that amount of big areas, variables, reactivity) was just not doable in a year, even if everyone worked overtime. To solve this problem, BW shelved the Inquisition idea and made a risky call: DA2 would be set in one city over time, allowing locations to be recycled and months to be shaved off dev time. They also axed DAO features like customizing party members’ equipment. These were the best calls they were able to make on a tight line

Many at BW are still proud of DA2. Those that worked on it grew closer from all being in it together

In certain dark accounting corners of EA, despite fan response to DA2 and its lower sales compared to DAO, DA2 is considered a wild success

By summer 2011 BW decided to cancel DA2′s expansion Exalted March in favor of a totally new game. They needed to get away from the stigma of DA2, reboot the franchise and show they could make triple-A quality good games. 

DAI was going to be the most ambitious game BW had ever made and had a lot to prove (that BW could return to form, that EA wasn’t crippling the studio, that BW could make an ‘open-world’ RPG with big environments). There was a bit of a tone around the industry that there were essentially 2 tiers of BW, the ME team and then everyone else, and the DA team had a scrappy desire to fight back against that

DAI was behind schedule early on due to unfamiliar new technology; the new engine Frostbite was very technically challenging and required more work than anyone had expected. Even before finishing DA2 BW were looking for a new engine for the next game. Eclipse was creaky, obsolete, not fully-featured, graphically lacking. The ME team used Unreal, which made inter-team collab difficult. “Our tech strategy was just a mess. Every time we’d start a new game, people would say, ‘Oh, we should just pick a new engine’.”

After meeting with an EA exec BW decided on Frostbite. Nobody had ever used it to make an RPG, but EA owned FB dev studio DICE, and the engine was powerful and had good graphic capabilities & visual effects. If BW started making all its games on FB, it could share tech with sister studios and borrow tools when they learned cool new tricks. 

For a while they worked on a prototype called Blackfoot, to get a feel for FB and to make a free-to-play DA MP game. It fizzled as the team was too small, which doesn’t lend itself well to working with FB, and was cancelled

BW resurfaced the old Inquisition idea. What might a DA3 look like on FB? Their plan by 2012 was to make an open-world RPG heavily inspired by Skyrim that hit all the beats DA2 couldn’t. “My secret mission was to shock and awe the players with the massive amounts of content.” People complained there wasn’t enough in DA2. “At the end of DAI, I actually want people to go, ‘Oh god, not [another] level’.”

It was originally called Dragon Age 3: Inquisition

BW wanted to launch on next-gen consoles only but EA’s profit forecasters were caught up in the rise of iPad and iPhone gaming and were worried the next-gen consoles wouldn’t sell well. As a safeguard EA insist it also ship on current-gen. Most games at that time followed this strategy. Shipping on 5 platforms at once would be a first for BW

Ambitions were piling up. This was to be BW’s first 3D open-world game, and their first game on Frostbite, an engine that had never been used to make RPGs. It needed to be made in roughly two years, it needed to ship on 5 platforms, and, oh yeah, it needed to restore the reputation of a studio that had been beaten up pretty badly. “Basically we had to do new consoles, a new engine, new gameplay, build the hugest game that we’ve ever made, and build it to a higher standard than we ever did. With tools that don’t exist.”

FB didn’t have RPG stats, a visible PC, spells, save systems, a party of 4 people, the same kind of cutscenes etc and couldn’t create any of those things. BW had to create these on top of it. BW initially underestimated how much work this would be. BW were the FB guinea pigs. Early on in DAI’s development, even the most basic tasks were excruciating, and this impacted even fundamental aspects of game design and dev. When FB’s tools did function they were finicky and difficult. DICE’s team supported them but had limited resources and were 8 hours ahead. Since creating new content in FB was so difficult, trying to evaluate its quality became impossible. FB engine updates made things even more challenging. After every one, BW had to manually merge and test it; this was debilitating, and there were times when the build didn’t work for a month or was really unstable.

Meanwhile the art department were having a blast. FB was great for big beautiful environments. For months they made as much as possible, taking educated guesses when they didn’t know yet what the designers needed. “For a long time there was a joke on the project that we’d made a fantastic-looking screenshot generator, because you could walk around these levels with nothing to do. You could take great pictures.”

The concept of DAI as open-world was stymying the story/writers and gameplay/designers teams. What were players going to do in these big landscapes? How could BW ensure exploring remained fun after many hours? Their teams didn’t have time for system designers to envision, iterate and test a good “core gameplay loop” (quests, encounters, activities etc). FB wouldn’t allow it. Designers couldn’t test new ideas or answer questions because basic features were missing or didn’t exist yet. 

EA’s CEO told BW they should have the ability to ride dragons and that this would make DAI sell 10 million copies. BW didn’t take this idea very seriously

BW had an abstract idea that the player would roam the world solving problems and building up power or influence they could use. But how would that look/work like in-game? This could have used refinement and testing but instead they decided to build some levels and hope they could figure it out as they went.

One day in late 2012, after a year of strained development on DAI, Mark Darrah asked Mike Laidlaw to go to lunch. “We’re walking out to his car,” Laidlaw said, “and I think he might have had a bit of a script in his head. [Darrah] said, ‘All right, I don’t actually know how to approach this, so I’m just going to say it. On a scale of one to apocalyptic... how upset would you be if I said [the player] could be, I dunno, a Qunari Inquisitor?’” 

Laidlaw was baffled. They’d decided that the player could be only a human in DAI. Adding other playable races like Darrah was asking for would mean they’d need to quadruple their budget for animation, voice acting, and scripting.

“I went, ‘I think we could make that work’,” Laidlaw said, asking Darrah if he could have more budget for dialogue. 

Darrah answered that if Laidlaw could make playable races happen, he couldn’t just have more dialogue. He could have an entire year of production.

Laidlaw was thrilled. “Fuck yeah, OK,” he recalled saying.

MD had actually already realized at this point it’d be impossible to finish DAI in 2013. They needed at least a year’s delay and adding the other playable races was part of a plan/planned pitch to secure this. He was in the process of putting together a pitch to EA: let BW delay the game, and in exchange it’d be bigger and better that anyone at EA had envisioned. These new marketing points included playable races, mounts and a new tactical camera. If EA wouldn’t let them delay, they would have had to cut things. Going into that BW were confident but nervous, especially in the wake of EA’s recent turmoil where they’d just parted ways with their CEO and had recruited a new board member while they hunted for a new one. They didn’t know how the new board member would react, and the delay would affect EA’s projections for that fiscal year. Maybe it was the convincing pitch, or the exec turmoil, or the specter of DA2, or maybe EA didn’t like being called “The Worst Company in America”. Winning that award 2 years in a row had had a tangible impact on the execs and led to feisty internal meetings on how to repair EA’s image. Whatever the reasons, EA greenlit the delay.

The PAX Crestwood demo was beautiful but almost entirely fake. By fall 2013, BW had implemented many of FB’s ‘parts’, but still didn’t know what kind of ‘car’ they were making. ML and team scripted the PAX demo by hand, entirely based on what BW thought would be in the game. The level & art assets were real but the gameplay wasn’t. “Part of what we had to do is go out early and try to be transparent because of DA2. And just say, ‘Look, here, it’s the game, it’s running live, it’s at PAX.’ Because we wanted to make that statement that we’re here for fans.”

DA2 hung on the team like a shadow. There was insecurity, uncertainty, they had trouble sticking to one vision. Which DA2 things were due to the short dev time and which were bad calls? What stuff should they reinvent? There were debates over combat (DAO-style vs DA2-style) and arguments over how to populate the wilderness.

In the months after that demo, BW cut much of what they’d shown in it. Even small features went through many permutations. DAI had no proper preproduction phase (important for testing and discarding things), so leads were stretched thin and had to make impulsive decisions.

By the end of 2013, DAI had 200+ people working on it, and dozens of additional outsourced artists in Russia and China. Coordinating all the work across various departments was challenging and a full-time job for several people. At this sheer scale of game dev, there are many complexities and inter-dependencies. Work finally became significantly less tedious and more doable when BW and DICE added more features to FB. Time was running out though, and another delay was a no.

The team spent many hours in November and December piecing together a “narrative playable” version of the game to be the holiday period’s game build for BW staff to test that year. Feedback on the demo was bad. There were big complaints on story, that it didn’t make sense and was illogical. Originally the PC became Inquisitor and sealed the breach in the prologue, which removed a sense of urgency. In response the writers embarked on Operation Sledgehammer (breaking a bone to set it right), radically revising the entire first act.

The other big piece of negative feedback was that battles weren’t fun. Daniel Kading, who had recently joined BW and brought with him a rigorous new method for testing combat in games, went to BW leadership with a proposal: give him authority to open his own little lab with the other designers and call up the entire team for mandatory play sessions for test purposes. They agreed and he used this experiment to get test feedback and specifically pinpoint where problems were. Morale took a turn for the better that week, DK’s team made several tweaks, and through these sessions feedback ratings went from 1.2 to 8.8 four weeks later.

Many on the team wished they didn’t have to ship for old consoles (clunky, less powerful). BW leadership decided not to add features to the next-gen versions that wouldn’t be possible on the older ones, so that both versions of the game played the same. This limited things and meant the team had to find creative solutions. “I probably should’ve tried harder to kill [the last-gen] version of the game”, said Aaryn Flynn. In the end the next-gen consoles sold very well and only 10% of DAI sales were on last-gen.

“A lot of what we do is well-intentioned fakery,” said Patrick Weekes, pointing to a late quest called “Here Lies The Abyss”. “When you assault the fortress, you have a big cut scene that has a lot of Inquisition soldiers and a lot of Grey Wardens on the walls. And then anyone paying attention or looking for it as you’re fighting through the fortress will go, ‘Wow, I’m only actually fighting three to four guys at a time.’ Because in order for that to work [on old gen], you couldn’t have too many different character types on screen.”

Parts of DAI were still way behind schedule because it was so big and complex, and because some tools hadn’t started functioning until late on. Some basic features weren’t able to be implemented til the last minute (they were 8 months from ship before they could get all party members in the squad. At one point PW was playtesting to check if Iron Bull’s banter was firing, and realized there was no way to even recruit IB) and some flaws couldn’t be identified til the last few months. Trying to determine flow and pacing was rough.

They couldn’t disappoint fans again. They needed to take the time to revise and polish every aspect of DAI. “I think DAI is a direct response to DA2,” said Cameron Lee. “DAI was bigger than it needed to be. It had everything but the kitchen sink in it, to the point that we went too far... I think that having to deal with DA2 and the negative feedback we got on some parts of that was driving the team to want to put everything in and try to address every little problem or perceived problem.”

At this point they had 2 options: settle for an incomplete game, which would disappoint fans especially post-DA2, or crunch. They opted to crunch. It was the worst period of extended overtime in DAI’s development yet and was really rough: late nights, weekends, lost family time, 12-14 hour days, stress, mental health impacts.

During 2014′s crunch, they finally finished off features they wished they’d nailed down in year 1. They completed the Power (influence) system and added side quests, hidden treasures and puzzles. Things that weren’t working like destructible environments were promptly removed. The writers rewrote the prologue at least 6 times, but didn’t have enough time to pay such attention to the ending. Just a few months before launch pivotal features like jumping were added.

By summer BW had bumped back release by another 6 weeks for polish. DAI had about 99,000 bugs in it (qualitative and quantitative; things like “I was bored here” are a bug). “The number of bugs on an open-world game, I’ve never seen anything like it. But they’re all so easy to fix, so keep filing these bugs and we’ll keep fixing them.” For BW it was harder to discover them, and the QA team had to do creative experimentation and spend endless late nights testing things. PW would take builds home to let their 9 year old son play around. Their son was obsessed with mounting and dismounting the horse and accidentally discovered a bug where if you dismounted in the wrong place, all your companions’ gear would vanish. “It was because my son liked the horse so much more than anyone else ever had or will ever like the horse.”

MD had a knack for prioritizing which bugs should be fixed, like the one where you could get to inaccessible areas by jumping on Varric’s head. “Muscle memory is incredibly influential at this point. Through the hellfire which is game development, we’re forged into a unit, in that we know what everyone’s thinking and we understand everyone’s expectations.”

At launch they still didn’t have all their tools working, they only had their tools working enough.

DAI became the best-selling DA game, beating EA’s sales expectations in just a few weeks. If you look closely you can see the lingering remnants of its chaotic development, like the “garbage quests” in the Hinterlands. Some players didn’t realize they could leave the area and others got caught in a “weird, compulsive gratification loop”. Internet commentators rushed to blame “those damn lazy devs” but really, these were the natural consequences of DAI’s struggles. Maybe things would have been different if they’d miraculously received another year of dev time, or if they’d had years before starting development to build FB’s tools first.

“The challenge of the Hinterlands and what it represented to the opening 10 hours of DAI is exactly the struggle of learning to build open-world gameplay and mechanisms when you are a linear narrative story studio,” said Aaryn Flynn.

“DA2 was the product of a remarkable time-line challenge,” said Mike Laidlaw, “DAI was the product of a remarkable technical challenge. But it had enough time to cook, and as a result it was a much better game.”

Read the chapter for full details of course!

[danwhobrowses]

A Personal Rant before Sword and Shield comes out

I’ve sat idly by for months, tried to weather a few negative responses but given that it’s now 6 days from release and I’m hearing that devs are getting literal death threats I’m going to put my foot down

If you’re already shitting on a game that hasn’t been released yet, you are all juvenile bitches, and I’m about to tell you why.

Before we begin, I’m not saying that you’re not allowed to dislike a game, that happens, but usually it happens after you play a game, not before.

You are viewing this game through a keyhole and judging the room and what you’re seeing is not worthy of this much hate. Let’s start with the big one Dexit: Not as Big as You Think Having No National Dex is of course not ideal, but it doesn’t ruin the game. Let’s Go has no National Dex, all it had was Alola forms and nobody whinged about it. Ruby and Sapphire didn’t have a National Dex until FRLG, and nobody whinged about it. Sun and Moon and Ultra Sun and Moon do not have a National Dex And Nobody Whinged About It Do you know why? Because it’s not actually a big deal. People who complain about it are bandwagoning because ‘Dexit’ is a meme, its name literally parodies an event in current Britain that many people don’t actually want to happen.  Now currently, the anger of Dexit is that Bulbasaur and Squirtle are not in it, which frankly is hilarious because the last wave of bitching was ‘Kanto mons are getting all the new stuff’. You wanna know how many main series versions Bulbasaur and Squirtle have not been in? Seven, only way to get them is trade and event. The other complaint is that there’s ‘only 400′ Pokémon. Remember those days where people were fine with 150? 400 is huge, in fact it’s 3 less than USUM and it’s not accounting for the Gigantamax forms Don’t let headlines fool you either, Sun and Moon had 302 Pokémon, it’s far from the ‘lowest dex number since 2003′. Do your own research with these things. Kalos’ regional dex was 151, BW2 was 300, BW 153, Sinnoh 210, RSE has 386 and GSC had 252 Don’t get me wrong, it smarts that some Pokémon isn’t there, but it’s not a dealbreaker, like let’s be honest here. For a good year and a half all your pokémon are gonna do is sit in an unused cartridge or a PC box, you’re literally whining about the fact that you can’t move your perfect IV Pokémon from one box to another. You could simply just let them stay in Let’s Go or USUM, you don’t have to use Bank or Home on continued subscription for that, so your complaints are only set on the foundation that you feel like you have to continually pay to not transfer your Pokémon, Finally, people act like these Pokémon are deleted forever, they’re not, this is for spacing to make sure this game doesn’t break down from the sheer mass of models and textures it has to maintain in a massive open world space, the local and online camping and battles. Just use the Pokémon that are there! There’s new Pokémon don’t you wanna try those? You can also look at FRLG or Emerald and consider that maybe more Pokémon will get patched in once the game proves to be stable. I don’t think you’ve noticed, but the Nintendo Switch isn’t as powerful as the other consoles out there, sometimes it runs like shit. Believe me on that one, Switch is still in a very buggy development phase. Let’s Go was kept small to test it’s capability and Sword and Shield can’t just fly in and give you all 1000 Pokémon just so one of the ones you want can be in there

You have to be much less obtuse with this, I mean this was a long time coming. You’re gonna have to live with the fact that not every Pokémon ever can be supported on one game alone. Disk, Download, Cartridge and Patch Sizes have limits in Compliance, you can’t just throw everything at it. Waah, the New Pokémon Don’t Look Good They do, you’re being petty. It happens every version, the people dislike the starter evolutions or just one in particular. Remember all the Oshawott hate? This all comes and goes because people have simply gone on the first instinct that ‘new and different is scary and should be shunned’ You’re that Simpsons meme when young Homer accuses Grandpa of not being ‘with it’ I won’t spoil to those who haven’t seen it, but I like the new starters, and some of the new Pokémon will need some growing but not every Pokémon looks good at first glance. If Mr Mime, Hypno or Gastly came out nowadays they’d be crapped on so much for lacking creativity or for looking weird. Look at Drampa as well, thing looks like Falkar from The Neverending Story, when I first saw it I thought it look weird but now I like it. You should offer these things time And actually fall back on past experience, you’re reacting like this isn’t the same thing that happens every version; the dex gets leaked, people whine about the evolutions, people get over it and accept that they overreacted. hIgH QuAlItY aNiMaTiOnS I’ve seen that video, 2 clips and you judge a whole game how classy of you? If you don’t see improvement you’re blind. You can’t shit on a game for keeping the battle animations, you can’t expect every Pokémon to move their own unique way to the exact position of the body part the opponent needs to get hit by, that’s just unrealistic. You’re also failing to equate to the new moves and all the new movesets. You have to ensure that each Pokémon is capable of calling this animation as well. The second clip in that video was Hop and Hau having the same rigging, and once again, that’s not abnormal. Rigging is not easy either, do it wrong and it sticks and deforms texture. There’s nothing wrong with Hop having one animation that matches Hau’s, you’ll probably find that many models actually have similar rigging as previous games. Because it’s not that big of a deal and it saves money, as an example look at Disney they copied hand-drawn motion and stuck a different character on them, Robin Hood’s Little John dances just like (animated, for those too young to know otherwise) Jungle Book’s Baloo The thing you’re also ignoring from that clip is the graphical improvement of Hop compared to Hau, Hau looks like a balloon with a smiley face but Hop’s face has depth and his mouth actually moves like a normal person, his clothes have far more contrast and complexity, but no just zero in on one fighting animation and one rigging that’ll surely be worth abusing a game that’s not even out... B-But Charizard I’ve already explained this before but Charizard is Leon’s main, it’s obviously going to have a Gigantamax, ergo it’s also going to be in the Dex. Does Charizard get a lot? Yes, but the reason is because Charizard is popular. One of the rarest cards is a Charizard Hologram Card, Charizard is one of the first version mascots, it is one of the most recognized Pokémon Ash has in the anime Reality of the matter is that like Pikachu, Charizard is a recognized Pokémon for all ages, it appeals to a demographic that’s not playing In Layman’s Terms: that part is not for you A reality you really need to face. Pokémon is a game for all ages, so elements of the game are not always going to be tailored to your age range. The gimmick of Dynamax and Gigantamax is for merch sales and young children because it’s got an audience there, you can’t expect the Biggest Entertainment Brand in the World to simply shut out a large fraction of its demographic just to appeal 100% to you And again, it’s not a big deal, so there’s a Charizard there, just save a Stone Edge and be done with it, if you hate Charizard so much this’ll be catharsis, but in actuality you’re complaining because it’s something to complain about Kanto are getting Everything That went down like a lead balloon didn’t it? Reminder that the first Gigantamax forms were Galar Pokémon, so you can’t really say that anymore. There are Galar forms from non-Gen I Pokémon too I assure you, but the reason Kanto gets a lot of them is because Kanto is the oldest. Let’s not pretend that other gens don’t get love either Or should I remind you of Mega Ampharos, Scizor, Heracross, Houndoom, Tyranitar, Blaziken, Gardevoir, Gallade, Mawile, Aggron, Medicham, Manectric, Banette, Absol, Garchomp, Lucario, Abomasnow, Steelix, Sceptile, Marshtomp, Sableye, Sharpedo, Camerupt, Altaria, Glalie, Salamence, Metagross, Latias, Latios, Rayquaza, Lopunny, Audino and Diancie? It’s true that the Johto starters could use something, but I don’t think they’re being purposefully ignored, perhaps the right design hasn’t come along. Rather it be done right than poorly wouldn’t you agree? The Devs Should’ve Done <Insert Thing Here> People who say this kinda stuff have no idea how a game is made. I have a First Class Bachelor’s degree in Computer Gaming and Animation Technology and I can tell you that none of the stuff you want them to do is easy. Even getting grass right is a complete hassle. You want small insights you should watch Corridor Crew react to Good and Bad VFX, they tell you about the mechanics of CGI a few times on those vids. This is what annoys me with the prior swipe at the Battle animations and rigging, even with 2 years this is a heavily massive workload and Game Freak have only recently expanded the team that work on Pokémon which makes communication much more widespread and difficult to manage, likewise they are working on other games too they are not just Pokémon, currently their next IP is why Toby Fox was able to do a bit of music for Pokémon, because he’s collaborating with them on another game. The work doesn’t stop, most of these people are overworked and still doing overtime, they bring out a good product and all it gets is ‘but it should have this’, and unless it’s a huge part of the game that’s needed to function then that’s really disrespectful Before you start critiquing on what the people making this game ‘should’ve done’ perhaps you should try to make a game yourself, because it is not easy even for pros, I call back to Toby Fox because creating Undertale took 32 Months to create, that’s 2 years and 8 months for those slow with math, it also took 3 years before it could be ported to Switch because the Engine couldn’t support the platform, Pokémon has less time to do that, greater graphical and animation quality to achieve and more characters to battle, attacks to animate and more songs to compose. Conclusion: You’re All Just Bitter I’ve already seen it happen recently but this group of people senselessly bashing something because of ridiculous demands, expectations or arguments based on a lack of understanding all combine into something I’m simply calling the ‘Bitterness Fandom’. It’s people hating for the sake of hating and trying to bring something down just because it’s been a popular force for so long, and it’s not just Pokémon that’s getting it It’s already been happening to Star Wars. The Last Jedi and Solo were great films but the Bitterness sank its fangs in and act like neither are as good as the original trilogy (like killing Snoke without knowing anything about him and Phasma before she could do anything is any different to killing Sidious and Boba Fett in Jedi or Maul in Phantom Menace and Grievous in Revenge of the Sith), a lack of awareness to reality and the desire to complain for the sake of complaining continues to infect Star Wars. We even have a thing called ‘Star Wars Fatigue’ Star Wars can’t release a film every year because of ‘Fatigue’ but Marvel can release 5 MCU films a year and nobody bats an eye. Those frustrations aside, I refuse to let the Bitterness sink in without me calling them out, because you are not Pokémon Fans. If you were you’d know that having no National Dex isn’t new, you’d know that the graphics have improved and leaks of the game happen every time, you’d know why Charizard is popular and that some features are not intended to be targeted at you Shock and Horror to the heavens above but games can’t do everything And if you’re that naive to think so then you’re clearly not doing your homework So let’s throw out an absolutely WILD suggestion shall we? Let’s decide our opinion on a game After playing it? Because shitting on something you don’t even have hands-on experience with it is a fragile pedestal to put yourself on. If we all think it’s bad then, so be it, but I sincerely doubt that is the case When my copy of Pokémon Sword gets delivered to my house I am going to enjoy it because I will not let petty and incorrect statements sway my feelings and I swear to Arceus if you think the Bitterness will bring down Pokémon that easily then you did not see the queue to the London Poké Center that had been amassing since midnight and was forced to stop taking more people when the doors opened What should matter is how you enjoy the game, play it before you judge it And honestly, don’t send death threats, why we need to tell you that is beyond me, the ones who made these games are people who have worked their asses off day in and day out to provide something you aren’t even going to play because one Pokémon isn’t in it, the irony is not lost on me when I say this but deep into the very bottom of my heart: Grow Up. If you don’t like the game, don’t play it, don’t bother people about it, we don’t need your shit here Enjoy the Game People

[biscuitreviews]

Biscuit's Opinion on Xbox Series X, The Spring Release Delays, and Sony First Party Games Coming to PC?

Happy 2020! It has been awhile since I had a review or much of anything for that matter. So, what’s going Biscuit? Where’s the reviews? Where’s the opinions? Where have you been?

Frankly, I’ve been trying to figure out how I’m going to do 2020 because March, April, and May looked really scary at first with a lot of big releases that I was looking forward to: Final Fantasy VII Remake, Cyberpunk 2077, Last of Us 2 and that’s just what we know. 

Then came the delays!

I’m actually relieved that these delays happened, mostly Cyberpunk as that will give me time to actually enjoy Final Fantasy VII and Last of Us 2. That’s not counting the other 2020 games that have yet to receive an official date as we still have no idea how Fall will play out. We do know that the next console generation will begin at the end of the year so we can expect what those final titles for this gen will be and what will open the next gen soon. 

Which I’ll go ahead and say the next generation Xbox, The Xbox Series X as it stands right now, there doesn’t seem to be much of a reason to purchase on release. Halo Infinite, is going to be a cross generational title and also be released on PC. It’s even been shown that the Series X will not have any exclusives for the first two years of its life cycle. It’s concerning as it could potentially hinder the initial growth that the Series X needs. However, this is also going along with what Microsoft has been doing lately and it’s a strategy that’s been working fairly well. I think if they market the Series X as just another option to play games, it could probably be a big hit. But, until we know the marketing strategy for sure, I’m going to remain skeptical on the Series X.

Then you have CD Projekt Red admitting they are expecting their staff to crunch claiming that it’s to do bug cleanup. I’ll admit that I am a little disappointed that they are having their employees crunch to get this game out. I get it, CD Projekt Red is a business and sometimes in the working environment, there are times you have to stay late, it just happens, that’s the case in any industry. But the late hours that game devs pull to get a game released are insane. I can only imagine this may or may not be the case as well for CD Projekt Red. The only good side I see to this crunch is that at least the devs are being paid for their time as Polish laws do require overtime pay so at least these devs are being compensated for their overtime.

Next, is the rumors of Sony bringing their first party titles to PC. There have been talks of Horizon: Zero Dawn coming to PC which is a first party Sony exclusive. I’ll admit this is actually exciting to see if this is true. It brings a great game to another platform for PC players to enjoy. Horizon: Zero Dawn has been out almost three years and the PS4 generation is getting ready to come to a close. The people that played it on PS4 and enjoyed it have moved on to other titles. So Sony looking into the possibility of bringing some of those older first person titles to PC is actually pretty interesting. I’m hoping this could inspire them to bring some of their other IPs to PC as well. Last of Us? God of War? inFamous? Dark Cloud? The possibilities are endless!

So with that, what am I doing now. Well, I’m actually playing through Dragon Quest XI, which is a series I have always wanted to get into. I do have Dragon Quest VIII and have played a little bit and enjoyed what I did play, but I just haven’t gotten back around to it. So I figured why not do a full dive by going at it again with the most recent release. I also plan to later play a 2019 game that I had on my radar but just never got around to it and that is Judgment, a game that is a spinoff of the Yakuza series.

The goal is to have a review for Dragon Quest XI sometime in February so be on the lookout for my first dive into that series! As always, thank you all for liking, following, reading, and commenting on my opinions and reviews as they I feel they do add more to the discussion as other come across them and read them.

Here’s to enjoying the end of a gaming generation and preparing for the new one!

[snowwolf1118]

Humans Are Weird: Women’s Edition Part XIV

This update has been a long time coming, guys. My sincerest apologies for the delay. I hope you can forgive me. In the meantime, please enjoy this long, drawn-out post that is painfully slow and agonizing post. I guess I want everyone to suffer with the characters.

Part I >> Part II >> Part III >> Part IV >> Part V >> Part VI >> Part VII >> Part VIII >> Part IX >> Part X >> Part XI >> Part XII >> Part XIII

The escape plan had proceeded so smoothly until now. Balogh and her team freed a few dozen other prisoners along the way to the hangar and took down a few more Pollikons. Her group was feeling good. They had momentum. Things were looking up. And, as Balogh and the others got closer to the hangar, they kept in communication with Murakami’s, Vallion’s, and Jay’va’s groups for their escape. They were to search for the Frek’jon’s escape pods once they arrived in the hangar and to locate a habitable planet where they would lay low until they could contact the A.F. and go home.

After that, Balogh was not sure of what the A.F. would do, but she was sure she would fight for more A.F. vessels to return to this area of the universe. More victims―human, H’hish, and many more races―were likely enslaved and in need of emancipation.

Or we can just start some sort of rebellion like late twentieth and early twenty-first century movies did. Whichever comes first.

Balogh honestly believed things would change. Unfortunately, life never goes as planned.

Why? Because right now, she was splayed out on the ground, unable to move, nearly lifeless.

Balogh struggled to breathe, every single one of her muscles burned like she ran a 3K marathon in a New Harlem Province winter. Black spots danced in her vision; she could barely see. And of what she could still see? Mayhem. H’hish hunched over humans, desperately calling out their names, performing CPR. Riel’on, Kiel’ish, Jaja’ion, someone, was performing chest compressions on her. Everything she saw was a blur. Everything she heard was white noise. Everything she thought was a jumbled mess. For the first time in her life, Balogh thought for sure this moment was her death. Her frustrations and regrets; satisfactions and joys; her family and friends; all of them came to mind.

I. WON’T. DIE. I. WON’T. DIE. I WON’T DIE. I WON’T DIE. She chanted the words as she struggled for another breath, the last of her vision fading.

I can’t die...

Can’t die...

Won’t die.

No.

No...

.

.

.

“BALOGH!”

Vallion knelt over Fatima, helpless as she and the other humans collapsed one by one, going into various levels of muscle spasms and unconsciousness. CPR was attempted on the humans, but Vallion decided the chest compressions made the situation worse. Why does it feel like my chest is the one being compressed? Fatima is the one dying right in front of me. Fatima, Romano, Freshwater, Wong... All of them are the ones dying, so why do I feel this pain in my chest? What’s going on? Why can’t I stop this? How can I be so selfish? I need to fix this. Save them.

I am their superior. I need to lead them.

Vallion gripped their head, focusing their thoughts into actions. Think. Think. Think. You can’t let her die. You and her just reunited.

No.

Wait.

You can’t let anyone die. They are all your responsibility. You are their protector. Their leader. Their friend. Think, Vallion. Think.

As Vallion wracked their brain, a thought suddenly occurred to them. The humans were having difficulty breathing...but the H’hish were not. “Jon’kon, check the oxygen-carbon dioxide ratio of the air. Now.”

Startled, Jon’kon fumbled with her stolen Port Dev before she went to work checking the air composition of the ship. A heartbeat stretched into several when Jon’kon released a startled “Ah-ha!” and gave Vallion a knowing look. Soon, Jon’kon was hacking into the Frek’jon’s ventilation system and they all could hear the results of her efforts.

However, Vallion knew damage must have surely been done on all the humans and simply escaping from the Frek’jon was no longer a viable option. Taking a deep, steadying breath, Vallion looked at Jon’kon once again. “Patch me through to Murakami, Balogh, and Jay’va’s groups. We have a change of plans.”

Jay’va checked Thompson’s pulse and growled in frustration. Gone. First Pérez, then Ivanenko, and now Thompson. The other humans were down and out, suffering from whatever took Thompson and the others, but the H’hish were perfectly fine. Physically that is. A little winded, but physically fine.

Mentally...

Mentally, we’re fucked. We’re falling apart at the seams, as the human idiom goes. I’m not even over Cyborg’s death, and now I’m losing my whole team. Jay’va felt the energy of the universe crashing down on her and sweeping her along in a tidal wave.

Jay’va buried her head in her hands, feeling the hopelessness and grief pile up on right after the other because she was just that fucking lucky of a H’hish—

“ —va...”

And not to mention, she also had to deal with that thing that happened back in her cell. From that odd smell. Her head was a mess afterwards and now her memories would forever be scarred by these events—

“—COLONEL JAY’VA!”

Startled, Jay’va whipped her head around, searching for the H’hish shouting her name. “WHAT?! What could you possibly want?!” she snapped.

Gigi’ish did not flinch at her harsh words. He just held out the stolen Port Dev for her and said one name: “Vallion.”

Yeu’ish was helping Fuku’kon tend to Lt. Gen. Murakami when a Comm came in from Maj. Gen. Vallion. The escape plan was changing. Seize control of the ship. Kill all the guards. Kill anyone who stood in their way.

Then.

Then.

Then they would put the humans into the infirmary. Heal them while making their escape back to the A.F. Made sense, for the still living humans, but Yeu’ish knew as Murakami’s pulse ceased, the dead had little chance of revival. But who knows? she thought, humans always prove to be more resilient than they seem.

Krellion leaned against the central control console, watching as the ship’s security droids and feeds went down; listening as communications between guards decreased. The humans and dulgo arrogantly thought they would escape. Their little jailbreak could not succeed.

“The filth moved exactly as you predicted, Captain,” said Krellion as he pushed himself off the console. “However, I am hesitant about the extent of the neurological damages this experiment of yours could cause to the cargo.” As he spoke, Krellion pulled up the vital charts of the human cargo, assessing the current oxygen saturation levels.

Zeelot did not spare Krellion a glance as they pulled the charts towards their position. “These dulgo are as weak as the humans with whom they cohabitate. Once enough of the humans become ill, the dulgo will panic and be at our mercy. The fondness they carry for the humans will lead to their surrender.” Zeelot was correct. Already, more of the humans began showing symptoms of oxygen oversaturation and the duglo were becoming increasingly concerned for their human companions’ welfare.

Still, waiting was tedious and Krellion had no interest in toying with the cargo as Zeelot did. “As you say. Oh, these humans will do well as servants of kulgo. They are exhibiting better resistance to oxygen toxicity than the other humans,” he noted.

“Add that to their profiles,” Zeelot ordered before seating themselves down to watch the carnage.

Carnage of all Krellion’s hard work. His hard work in fixing all the neurological and physiological issues with which the humans were prone, yet Zeelot wanted to test Murakami’s loyalty and the abilities of her crew.

But my opinion does not matter. All that matters if my work wasted for a needless experiment or two. Aaaannnnd I must revive Snell again.

But whatever, Krellion truly had no say in the matter, so he just stood and watched as the cargo neared the hangar and the humans began collapsing. A few humans even fell into seizures. Krellion spoke in hushed tones to his fellow kulgo as they all became increasingly worried about the health of their cargo. The amount of overtime they all had to put forth into fixing the damages Zeelot’s experiment was causing became a headache, especially when they were due to arrive at the Market any gulkib from now. If I have to revive a single human or dulgo, I swear by the mighty reign of Ghayz Tadmir’lis, I will leave this vessel and take my team with me...

As Krellion fumed, the overhead lights dimmed and a odd chill ran down his back. He glanced at the other kulgo and they appeared as confused as he did.

However, the confusion was over within a heartbeat because within that heartbeat, the emergency lights began to flash and the alarms blared. Warnings flashed on the ship’s control console about oxygen levels increasing in the room. For Krellion, he only needed less than a qulib to understand the events that were transpiring.

The dulgo figured out the cause of the humans’ collapsing, but they were foolish to think they could kill a kulgo so easily. H’hish had higher oxygen tolerance than any humans, and kulgo as fine as Krellion and his team more so. Even the Pollikon had high oxygen tolerance. And whatever creature Captain Zeelot was, they would not fall to such a lowly and pitiful revenge tactic. Already, the room was filled with twice the oxygen levels needed for a kulgo to comfortably breathe in air and already Krellion’s team worked on combating the increased oxygen levels. “These dulgo are simpletons,” one of his team said with a laugh. Another kulgo added, “They are as clever as the humans.” Krellion could only agree with his team. The dulgo were as slow witted and unimpressive as the humans.

So that brought to question why Captain Zeelot remained so calm, and why they had such a smug look on their face. Just as Krellion opened their mouth to ask, Zeelot spoke first. “I will be returning to my quarters. And do not disturb me.” Their warning carried an additional meaning, one of which Krellion did not wish to invoke.

Swallowing his trepidation, Krellion refocused on the monitors, tracking the remaining guards and the locations of all the escaped cargo, but they were gone. The Pollikons, the ones he could see on the vids, deceased. Brutally so. The humans, remained were he last saw them, but he could see most of their life signs were gone. He and his team had their work cut out for them to revive all the worthless filth. The dulgo and other cargo were nowhere to be seen, as could be said for the escape pods. None of them showed up on the life signs monitor. They were out of range of the transmission. They jumped ship.

Murakami talked big about the loyalty of her crew, but the dulgo escaped the first chance they got. Pathetic. Dulgo are as cowardly and weak as those humans.

Krellion was so lost in his superiority that he never heard the knocking.

Only the sound of the room engulfing in flames.

After that, he only felt the searing pain of his death.

[jonghoshoe]

Actually the game only started development in late 2016 👀👀

But yea its hella buggy. There have been a good few patches that fixed things though!! Maybe I'm just lucky, but I've been playing on a ps4 and the worst things I've experienced were just crashes. (which are almost nonexistent now???) Its mostly just graphic related bugs like textures taxing ages to load in, things like subtitles not disappearing from the screen, or the dreaded npc T-pose. But most of the game-breaking bugs have been fixed now which, considering the people who actually worked on the game thought it'd take at least another year to be playable, I think is pretty good.

So much was cut from the game due to the greed of the executives who set a launch date way too early and were too scared to loose investors that they released and broken game and now seem to be making their devs work overtime to make all the patches to fix what should have been a final product in the first place. Luckily cdpr has said they'll release any dlcs for free like with the Witcher 3 (which also had a hella rocky launch but sadly I wasn't there for it so I can't comment on that much), so really the only thing you're paying for all the missing content is space on your device lmao.

There's also the fact cdpr focused on making the game for high-end PCs and THEN worked on making it playable for lower end ones and consoles, so they really overestimated themselves (as was said in a literal apology video released by one of the execs??? Ok cdpr I see u, good on u owning up to that ig)

It absolutely could have and SHOULD have been better, but considering the actual circumstances of just how huge the game is, the fact they basically had 2 years to make it (since all the demo stuff was apparently faked) and that they somehow have made it playable at this point on even old gen consoles? I think they did pretty good, I can definitely see the game actually being great in a year or so once everything has been smoothed out and they add back in any of the missing features now that they don't have a release date to worry about. They can actually work on perfecting the game now, which is good.

mt favourite thing in the world was everyone talking about Cyberpunk and hyping it up for the longest time and then it came out and its shit and everyone hates it 

[lunalovesangst]

Here for those tags it's very trueee!!!

shed a tear