Assassin’s Creed Origins
The Will of the Moon
This weekend was largely about me trying to recuperate from whatever crud I had on Friday. I’m feeling better as a whole but still not feeling 100%. I’ve referred to this weekend as a name brand beta, because when a company throws a special test that most of the world seems to be invited to it definitely comes off as more marketing ploy than actual test of the game infrastructure. Overall the game performed flawlessly other than an apparent known memory leak bug, that I never quite encountered because I didn’t play longer than the requisite two or three hours that it takes to encounter it. The missions that I ran were rather enjoyable, and I fully expect to at a minimum play through the story content and unlock all of that. I make no guarantees about how long it will take me given that it took me a good two years before I reached maximum level in the original game.
I still question how well the game fits my play style, but at the moment I am looking at it for a purely single player experience given that I know going into it that none of the other AggroChat crew will be playing it. They all for the most part bounced off of the original Division, and primarily for the bleak story beats. I think the fact that we were effectively working for the various communities that we discover makes the flow of the story feel better. However as Kodra pointed out on the podcast, it does leave us a question of why exactly we are still an agent if there is no organizational structure left? I mostly view that trope as the lone lawman in the wild frontier sort of approach. I will say the game improved massively after I turned off the HDR, given that I was only able to SEE the HDR effect upstairs in my office and not while playing remotely through parsec… and as such it made everything extremely washed out and hard to pick out details.
The game I spent the majority of Saturday playing was Assassin’s Creed Origins and I have reached a point where I am staring down the barrel of the ending. However I am extremely frustrated by what appears to be the ending that is unfolding in front of me. Now I have said for some time that my opinion is that when this game was originally planned the ultimately design was that you could play it as Bayek or as Aya since the two characters at least on some level are interchangeable and have the same reasons for engaging in the main story plot. For sake of budget I assume they cut one character so that they would not have to animate two copies of everything, but the problem with this is… that every time you are forced to play Aya it is like stepping foot into a level one character.
What I mean by that is through the course of the game you make a lot of stylistic decisions about what weapons you want to use and what talent points to sink into. Then each time you are throw into playing Aya you are forced to return back to the character that lacks the ability to customize anything. So spoilers time… but I just went through a sequence where it appears that I am saying goodbye to my character Bayek… aka the one that I have spent the last 40 levels customizing to be exactly the way I want him to be… and being forced to do the ending of the game with Aya the level 1 blank slate. This makes me really not want to do any of the ending and just call it good enough… returning to playing through the fun part of the game which is doing random quests out in the world. Maybe this isn’t exactly what is about to happen… but it certainly seems like I am just about to be forced into beating the game as a proxy. Please note… I like Aya as a character and would have been fine playing her… if I could actually control what sort of gear and talents she had.
Lastly I spent some time playing Final Fantasy XIV this weekend and accomplished two things. Firstly I managed to get my Blue Mage to 50… which means I now need to find a party of blue mages to go collect the rest of the spells I have available to me given that everything else seems to come from a dungeon or trial. I spent the podcast grinding out mobs in Northern Thanalan and managed to push across the line solo. I also managed to get through The Burn which served as a bit of a roadblock since the final boss of that dungeon appears to be a PUG destroyer. I’ve now moved the quest line along to where I am failing miserably at a fight that is about four times longer than it really needs to be. Actually I have only failed it the one time and it was mostly because I didn’t catch on what was going on fast enough. I opted to play through the mission as a warrior instead of a samurai, but that also meant that I was not prepared for a burn phase, because I assumed I was simply trying to out survive the encounter.
I will likely poke my head back in again tonight and give it another shot. I think I am probably nearing the bridge between 4.4 and 4.5 and as such getting closer and closer to being able to understand what the hell is going on.
AggroChat #239 – Sticking the Ending
Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen
Tonight we have a bunch of not entirely related topics, but there is at least a minor theme of how you end something is extremely important. Bel talks a bit about his experiences with the latest brand name beta in the form of Division 2. From there he also shares some frustrations with the way Assassin’s Creed Origins is ending which leads its way into a larger discussion about what makes a satisfying game ending. We talk about what this means for passive media and how it might be different for interactive media. We then get into a discussion about progression systems and why fixed ones often times feel better than completely random ones. Finally we have some assorted digression about us looking forward to Anthem as a non-PVP mmo that somehow leads its way to FFXIV housing?
Topics Discussed:
- Division 2
- Military Fantasy Fallout but no Nukes
- Worthy Successor to Original
- Assassin’s Creed Origins
- Great Game… But
- Forced Character Swaps
- End of Game Without “Your” Character
- Satisfying Finales
- Twist Endings
- Mass Effect 3
- Resolution Endings
- Plot Twist Ending
- Plot Twist at Beginning of Final Chapter
- Fixed Length Shows
- Anime
- Babylon 5
- Russian Doll
- Revisiting Choices From Game in Ending
- Twist Endings
- Fixed vs Random Progression Systems
- Warframe Blueprint System
- Destiny Random “Powerful Gear” Frustrations
- Warframe Economy
- Excitement over Non-PVP MMORPG
- Anthem
- Free PVP Gear from FFXIV Retainers
- Lacking Money Sinks in FFXIV
- House Reclamation
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Giza and Memphis
Today we return to my normal nonsense. Yesterday felt really weird, but not as weird as I guess I expected it to feel? I am still very much engaged in Assassin’s Creed Origins… or in the way that I play it… Egyptian Skyrim? I’ve made it to Giza and can now die happy… or actually at this point I have made it past Giza. Climbing to the top of the pyramids was an interesting challenge as you effectively had to work your way from gap in the capping to the next gap all the way up to the top. That is one of the bizarre things about this game… in some ways it feels very much like Breath of the Wild where it seems like you can climb everything in your view… until you suddenly can’t. When the game wants to cut off a route it makes something un-climbable which just feels really odd considering the rest of the game you are pulling off crazy moves that would be impossible to actually do in real life.
One of the mechanics that I both love and hate is the torch, because I am having to use it an awful lot here in Giza as I explore the depths of many tombs. It feels cool because in theory the torch shows about as much as you would expect from an actual torch. The negative however is the game knows this… and regularly presents you with rooms that have dimensions that do the torch no favors, and in those situations I find myself working around the edge in a vague attempted to not fall into some pit or something. So far I have not actually encountered an actual pit, but by god my mind knows that the moment I stop being vigilant… BAM A PIT. Additionally I love that the game shows me actually equipping weapons… but it really shows the nonsense of my inventory as I am equipping two different bows… a sword and shield… and a giant freaking battle axe.
Another thing we need to continue talking about is how freaking gorgeous this game is. I’ve always been enthralled by Egyptian history… and roaming around all of these locations in virtual avatar form is amazing. Memphis is pretty much how I imagined it… a swampy mess. I also love the fact that there is a dedicated croc hunter in a vague attempt to keep the waterways clear enough for the people to safely traverse. I am not entirely sure why I am on this single player kick, but I am going to roll with it at least until Anthem starts going through its pre-release posturing early next month. I will say… all of this is really making me want to pick back up Witcher 3, which is even less linear than Assassin’s Creed Origins… and quite literally something I could play for six months and never have seen everything. The biggest thing about this game…. is I am always happy to return again the next night.
So readers… what are you up to that is interesting? Playing anything great?