I don’t know when this came to light, but at some point details about the script of the survival version of The Dig came out, which included the original plan for the aliens. Originally the ticking clock for the end of the game was that there were evil aliens in stasis who were going to get free. You learn that in the past the aliens had discovered a philosophy of peace and broadcast it across the planet. One race of aliens didn’t get the broadcast, however, and their warlike nature lead them to wipe out everyone else. To beat the game you broadcast the peaceful philosophy to the warlike aliens as they come out of stasis, and they become peaceful.
Only in the 90s.
Now to be fair the teams in Lucasarts were already experimenting with minimalizing the list of verbs, but for The Dig this was a result of having to cobble together the assets of the cancelled survival version of the game into something they could ship. They couldn’t afford to make more failure states, so they put in context sensitive interaction to try and hide the game’s duct taped nature. The PDA originally had a bunch of star trek tricorder features you would have used (testing things for poison, a map) so an examine feature using its UI would have made a bit more sense in context.
Back home. Resumed Ocarina of Time 3DS. I’m still right before the Temple of Time, but I succeeded in getting the Giant’s Wallet. Going to do some more prep but I feel like I’m close to done, really just want to make sure I have all the hearts I can get, and all the bottles, and have sold all the masks I can sell.
Finally playing Dark Souls. Going to take some time to get used to the controls. The animation windups this subgenre is known for are tricky. This does feel like a Famicom RPG in a way with NPCs to talk to that give various hints. Laughed really hard at an Indiana Jones style rock that comes at you from nowhere.
So I played the remake of the first Trails game and Clair Obscur back to back over the last like month and a half and that was an interesting contrast. I’m not as wild over CO as a lot of people, but it was good and worth playing. The Trails remake was really good, and I think I enjoyed it more than CO, but I get why people wouldn’t.
How’s the combat system in the Trails remake? From what I saw it looked like a weird mix of ARPG and traditional turn based, like you could pick and mix or something weird.
Would you recommend it to someone who hasn’t played through the original, or is it more of a ‘for fans only’ kind of thing? I played a few hours of the original a long time ago but I think I bounced off maybe because it felt like it was going to be a ‘too much cake’ sort of thing
kinda wild to be playing Dark Souls the first time and experience it. So many surprises! Really can’t get too angry when a flaming barrel wipes you out if it only happens once. Making my way thru undead burg right now. Just really really good level design, enemy placement, and etc.
So the ARPG stuff is pretty nice actually. You can completely ignore it if you want, bit you can also use it to wipe out low level enemies, or soften up bigger ones to get the advantage when you switch to turn based, which is just one button instant into battles. I can’t emphasize enough how cool it was to play a turn based RPG with no transition in and out of turn based battles. It made it jarring going to Clair and being back to that.
I think it’s definitely meant to be a Yakuza Zero like reset, an entry point for new people that still has some neat features for fans. like Rudie said, there is a demo, and it’s about 4 to 6 hours long, depending on how you get through it, and carries over to the full game if you like it.
everyone and their mom knows King’s Field is the predecessor to Demon’s Souls and its subsequent series/genre but not enough people talk about how Armored Core totally is just as much if not moreso. Combat based around a refilling stamina/energy meter, emphasis on changing loadouts for the situation, considerations like equipment weight and weapon moveset… Like its not a new observation, we know Hidetaka Miyazaki got his start with From on AC4 and directed For Answer and it was probably his idea to bring elements of it over to a flagging prototype DeS – buuut i think it’s neat and worth remembering and it stood out to me while playing AC1
More generally i love how From has always had the same values and built on/repurposed their own work in order to try new branches of the same ideas.
(sometimes it’s in charmingly low-rent ways, like hitting on a weird but thoughtful shoulder/trigger based control scheme for 3D look-and-movement before the innovation of the DualShock… then using it for most of their games well into the PS2 era.)
So ex. as early as this game they wanted the early game to be hellish and intimidating but drop off once you get your [giant metal quadrupedal] sea legs under you. i was so anxious and frustrated at the start of AC1 – you make so little as a fledgling Raven and lose so much from every hit you take or missile you fire, i kept restarting missions to avoid damage and efficiently spend ammo just to squeeze a little bit of profit. Now of course i know that’s overkill. You can buy/sell parts at the same price so there’s no reason not to try out other builds, or sell off parts you get from missions (PROTIP! there is one sitting right behind you in one of the first missions you can choose, “Eliminate Strikers”. i sold it to buy a new generator and better boosters), and money eventually becomes irrelevant like in 99% of games with an economy. (Though PROTIP! investing in energy weapons ASAP doesn’t hurt)
This game feels so damn good in the hands once you get some decent upgrades, and get a grasp of your Core’s movement. Like, there’s some clunk – your turn radius is a little too slow and your AC can be a little too fast, which the camera struggles with – but when you do something like leap out of a dash, feather your jets to the top of a structure, and fire a volley of missiles down at your enemy as you land, it feels so weighty and satisfying and fucking cool like you’re really flinging around a giant hunk of steel with a couple of tiny jetpacks. Even just the basic sliding dash looks and feels sick as hell, scraping your AC’s feet across the ground kickin’ up sparks
i do wish there were more missions with big open arenas and areas with multiple angles of approach, to really use those movement techs… there are a lot of missions that are just mazes of enemy corridors unfortunately. On the other hand, anytime the level design gets vertical it’s really cool
i’m… close to the end maybe i think?? the story mostly does not progress in an obvious way so it is hard to tell, but i did just hit a major plot development i inadvertently sided with Murakumo and put down Chrome’s uprising. it’s cool to finally crack this walnut and i def wanna check out some of the later gamez
Dragon quest XI S has this fanservice area where you get teleported to 2-3 places from every past game, and get to solve alternate timeline issues, etc.
I have played every DQ but X, most multiple times, yet I can barely recognize any of these locations. What is this place and who are these people? How is this even trying to pander to me?
I feel like the fanservice area is arguing to me that the series is kinda unmemorable and average, and I can’t really disagree. Ouch
Played Dark Souls for like 10 minutes and got stuck at the area right outside the bonfire that I could get past easily before and had to quit because I got so tilted.
