I preferred “horribly traumatized to the point of near-catatonia” New Order BJ over “world-weary slap-happy grindhouse” New Colossus BJ, personally. I love all the camp stuff in New Colossus, and the Venus scene where he infiltrates Hitler’s casting call is SO good, but it doesn’t hit the same feeling. TNO rode a balanced edge as far as writing went and was also trim and mean. TNC sprawls a bit, goes into comic book mode, and as such isn’t as powerful to me, even if I love the over-the-top characterization. It’s just different.
i found both games miserable to play, but had a good 5 hours getting stoned watching cutscene compilations. will happily watch a third game.
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God, yeah, I’m pumping my fist recalling it
The subplot with Max is where the antifascist bona fides shine.
It’s a game about disability. The inevitability and universality of it. Not to mention the absolutely incredible wheelchair movement and kinematics. It’s also confident enough to be transgressive with this theme in the back half.
Nothing at this budget has come close to walking the walk in the text.
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I tend to find insincerity more sincere in general so this totally tracks
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yeah the disability/body stuff is incredibly strong, and whenever it takes a big swing at frothing nazikill stuff it’s really in its own league. also the america is a fuck quotient is really way off the charts, extremely charming there
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I’m just thinking about it again now and nothing else had made me nearly as excited to fill someone with bullets
that’s just how bad dads are
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What about this situation could possibly have led you to mistake it as a “big moral choice.” It’s like explicitly the opposite of that, that’s the whole point of it, it’s grinding your face in the moral reality that’s blindly denied by X RESCUE Y HARVEST bullshit
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oh my god this is my personal The Senpai
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yes sorry, that was unreasonably dismissive shorthand
damn if I say it you can slap me right here
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I played through Cataphract OI, a perfect little 3-hour RPG by a designer I started following after they posted interesting blogposts on the NES Dragon Quests.
Like those DQs, a big part of the aesthetic it’s going for is iconic JRPG purity. It’s made using a specific old version of RPG Maker (2000), and it makes use of the classic tiles and enemies (especially skellingtons of course). What makes it feel modern is the dungeon crawler DNA it has as well: in particular, the movement is room-by-room and the enemy parties are mobile on the map, not random encounters.
The largely wordless plot is that you’re a team of mercenaries escorting a “Supplicant” to stop the wheel of time. It’s never explained why it’s a good idea to stop it and I perceived an undertone of tragic environmentalism there, especially in the beautiful game over screen that shows the world turn to desert, and then regenerate back into a thriving forest, mountain range, and castle, and then back to the ruins that your party enters once again on the next cycle.
Mechanically, the premise is used to set up opposing incentives for the player. On the one hand, the wheel of time resets at midnight, so there is a gamelong timer which ticks forward with almost any action you take, which left me impatient and on edge. On the other hand, the Supplicant dies in two hits and it’s an instant game over the moment they do: pushing a bit too far in an innocuous normal battle can and did game-over me. A lot of the specific tools and abilities basically calibrate your level of recklessness or caution, and the better I got at the game, the more precise I got in assessing how much I could get away with.
Anyway I recommend it! Love to see a design involving a gamelong time limit succeed again finally, as I hadn’t seen it particularly do so since the original Prince of Persia back in the 80s.
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Still thinking about Wolfenstein – remembered that they made a co-op 80s sequel set in Paris starring BJ’s daughters with Arkane Lyon as a support studio and it sucked
Maybe it doesn’t suck now that it got the RPG parts spackled but lord what a missed opportunity.
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I enjoyed your wolfenstein discussion a lot.
Is a third episode still in the works? Now it’s been quite a few years.
I think they are developing the bethesda indiana jones game so I wouldn’t hold your breath for anything to come out soon.
Pete Hines (publisher) said they’d make a third around Youngblood’s announcement and release but yeah, the developer announced working on an Indiana Jones game. Arkane Austin is also accounted for but I don’t know what Lyon is doing — done right I think the narrative folks from Machinegames could codevelop 3 but it’s an open question. I can’t see Microsoft leaving the IP alone, though, it carries prestige and legacy like little else they own.
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the writing was pretty cringe (funny in places, but mostly overbearing) and directionless, and the RPG number cruncher shit was bad, but you can see the Arkane ImSim influence all over it, and the promise of a nuWolf game in that genre is pretty delightful. hoping they lean further into that if they do another sequel
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I loved the Laserkraftwerk on New Order.
Should I stick to Wyatt or go with Fergus for the Dieselkraftwerk? Which did you guys prefer?
Stick with Wyatt imo. He has a nice subplot in New Colossus.
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