Path of Exile II Three Week Delay Announcement
The community had noticed that recently GGG was curiously radio silent regarding the upcoming early access launch for Path of Exile 2 and the plans for the 3.26 Path of Exile 1 league. Yesterday we found out why when this video dropped informing us that there would be a three-week delay in the start of early access from November 15th to December 6th. There has been a spectrum of reactions from content creators, but I think for the most part the majority have been relatively positive. Sure there is a certain amount of disappointment and a modicum of frustration around changed plans, but clearly it seems like they understand the scope of what is about to be released into the world and how popular it is likely to be. I personally suffer from an abundance of things vying for my time, so I will not lament having a few more weeks before I am pulled in by the sirens song of Path of Exile II.
New World
What I want to talk about this morning however is how game delays are generally always a positive thing. Last week I groused about how I struggle to find unbridled joy in gaming anymore, and I’ve come to the realization that in large part this is due to the fact that games keep releasing in an unfinished state. There are so many games that I have played where given an additional year of reworking the game, are actually in a pretty great state. I have my issues with the recent rebranding of New World but had that game been delayed six months to a year… I think it would be a far more successful game than it is currently. The game that I played when they launched Fresh Start servers, was a completely different experience than the buggy mess of a game that I played on launch. It almost hit a million concurrent players at launch and has never managed to attract more than a small fraction of that number after that point. You only get a single chance to make your first impression with players, and it becomes a massive uphill battle to convince them that the game is worth trying again.
Mass Effect Andromeda
Similarly, the poor performance of the game and the weird graphic glitches of Mass Effect Andromeda during press previews and early access effectively turned what was a pretty good offering into a constant meme. Within a week or so of the launch, every major issue with this game was fixed and I had a blast playing through the campaign. However, because of the poor rushed state, it was thrust out the door… it became the laughing stock of the internet and effectively killed the Mass Effect brand. Sure there is some attempt to continue the lineage of the original trilogy, but it will be once more an uphill battle to try and interest players in the franchise again. Had the game been delayed by a few months… we would probably be talking about the sequel or even a third game in the Andromeda series by now.
Diablo IV
More recently we have the tale of Diablo IV, which admittedly is probably a bit different. The core problem with the game was that the developers had a flawed vision of what ARPG players actually wanted in a game like this. “D4 Bad” has become a catchphrase that has been turned into countless AI Slop song parodies… but has legitimately infected at least the Twitch audience. You cannot watch a single YouTube video on the game without someone commenting that. The thing is the game is honestly in a pretty great state right now for core gameplay. I didn’t like the campaign for Vessel of Hatred, but have had a blast playing through the endgame content on the new Spiritborn class. Do I think another year would have helped the game? Potentially… because that is essentially what it has taken to rework all of the bad systems. However, I am not sure it would have made much difference because it was the extremely negative feedback that forced a change in direction.
Baldur’s Gate III
I think there are studios that have managed to balance the need for pushing a game out there and getting some revenue with wanting to make sure the final release of the game is a polished product. The early access incubation period certainly helped Baldur’s Gate III turn into the exceptionally polished product that we all enjoyed, and that broke concurrency records at the time for a single-player experience. I think had something like Diablo IV launched into early access and then later had a 1.0 release once the majority of the system changes were made, it might have been less of a meme. This is essentially the model that Grinding Gear Games is trying to follow with Path of Exile 2, and I am hoping it bears similar fruit. There already seem to be a number of significant shifts in the gameplay from the first game, and I am uncertain how those will shake out. I am hoping an extended early access period will give them time to react to player feedback and solidify the game experience. I know at least mentally I treat an early access game a bit differently than I would a AAA Game launch, and that extra bit of forgiveness gives a game the chance to potentially improve for the better.
Path of Exile II – Returning Uniques
So if Grinding Gear Games has come out and said that they need some more time to make sure the servers are stable, then I am of the mind to give it to them without grumbling. While this is an early access release, there are still going to be a heck of a lot of eyes on the game and expecting something playable. I know the Last Epoch 1.0 release was severely hampered by server problems, which has I think kept them from hitting anywhere near the same concurrent numbers of subsequent releases. Anyways I am good with the delay, and it seems like we have officially entered spoiler season for the upcoming POE2 Early Access. Yesterday they released the above image showing off some uniques that will be returning from POE1 and that have received a bit of a “glow up”. While I cannot think of a single build that would want all of these items, it has been interesting to see just how much better they look in the new client. There is a Reddit thread that compares the graphics of what a character in POE1 looks like wearing all of these versus the above image.
For me… I am hoping to be able to wrap up Final Fantasy XVI either tonight or tomorrow night and then likely start on Dragon Age Veilguard after that. I might take a break from all of this to play through the new Alan Wake II DLC on Halloween night in honor of the “spooposicty”. I also still want to return to Wayfinder at some point with Ace, but our schedules have not just lined up recently. Mostly the point of this morning’s post is to say… Delays are generally a good idea if a studio thinks it needs one. I am almost always going to be in support of this.
The post Delays are Good appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Hey Folks! I guess I am going through one of my single-player phases because over the weekend I burned through Space Marine 2 which I talked about yesterday, and also made significant progress into Final Fantasy XVI. Side note… There is a non-zero chance that I will accidentally type XIV numerous times just out of the habit of talking about that game. This is a game that I was very much looking forward to but did not really want to play on a console. So it took some time for this to finally come out on PC, and even then…, it took a bit of time for me to get into the right mood to play it. I love FFXIV and I was super pumped to see what that same team could do with a mainline Final Fantasy game. I am a little over twenty hours into the game but can already tell that this is quite possibly the finest Final Fantasy game that I have played.
I think what has made this game so special up to this point, is it is quite possibly telling the most adult story that we have seen in a Final Fantasy game. Final Fantasy VI up to this point has been my all-time favorite in the series, and I loved it greatly in spite of the very cartoony story that it told. It was groundbreaking for the time, but as games have grown up into the ability to tell nuanced stories… Final Fantasy has somewhat lagged behind a bit. It has long told very simplified tales of right and wrong, with the occasional plot twist… but very much a comic book caricature mirror of real life. Sixteen is telling a much more hard-hitting tale of loss, betrayal, and hopefully, redemption filled with some honestly brutal pastiches of the evils of our own society.
Ironically at the same very time… it is telling quite possibly the most Anime story in existence. Big battles with even bigger enemies… and a plot sequence pulled straight out of Bleach and the need to unlock one’s inner strength. You would think the bombastic of Anime and the grounded reality would not blend together, but they do shockingly well. Grounding this big boom sensibility are also some references that feel like they are coming directly from the Witcher series and Game of Thrones. The compelling blend of excellent characters, nuanced themes, and gorgeous world-building has created this experience that I just cannot bring myself to stop playing.
Did I mention that there are also big references to the Godzilla series of Kaiju films? There is so much in this game that I love, and it is absolutely fan service to so many different things that I grew up loving. I feel like Yoshi-P and I would honestly be somewhat drift-compatible as GenXers adrift in a sea of nostalgia for things that we would love to see again. The thing that has always been interesting to see is just how shaped his vision is by Western media, and you can absolutely tell that the same team is working on this and localizing it because I did a sidequest called “Caulk and Bawl”. I hope this team gets a second chance to do another mainline Final Fantasy game because so far this is a masterpiece. I feel like it sold “poorly” in Square terms because someone made the decision to strand this title on a single console. That said, given how much I enjoy playing these games on PC with a mouse and keyboard I am pretty much going to give a hard pass to every release that does not land on my preferred platform going forward.
Ultimately the game is going to need to stick the landing, but if it progresses similarly to everything that I have seen up to this point… I think I might have a new favorite Final Fantasy that dethrones the sixth outing. It’s a very different sort of game, but it is probably the first mainline Final Fantasy game other than Fourteen in a few decades that has entirely captured my attention. The boy band road trip (Fifteen) was fun enough, but I never actually got around to finishing it. Playing through Sixteen has actually put it back on my radar to return to it and make it a priority to complete it at some point this year. I have no clue how much further I have to go in this game, but I am here for the long haul. I am just hoping I have time to finish it up before Dragon Age drops… but either way I am not swapping games until I complete it.
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Hey Folks! I was not really feeling it on Friday so I did not make a blog post. This weekend I spent most of my time playing single-player games, and I think that was a good call. In theory, I am prepping myself for the release of Dragon Age at the end of the month and wanted to try and knock out a few games that I had been holding onto for awhile but had not started. While this blog is old enough to have existed in 2011 when the previous game came out… that was during my dry period when I was struggling with blogging. I loved the original Space Marine game, it was a blast and pretty much everything that I had ever wanted in a Warhammer 40k game. When the original Space Hulk game from EA came out in the 90s… I mostly just wanted Warhammer 40k Doom. It was a great third-person shooter with some interesting systems and enough story to keep the game from falling apart.
What I wanted from Space Marine 2 was more of the same, and I wanted to see more of the Warhammer 40,000 world displayed on the screen. It delivered both admirably and I geeked out every time I passed a new imperial armor mode that I had not seen yet up to this point. I am not as up on my 40k minis as I used to be, but I am pretty sure this is a company of Chimera tanks rendered lovingly in video game form. I am pretty sure during the course of the gameplay I also saw at least one Predator, a Leman Russ, and a Manticore. 40k is a miserable world of constant warfare, but the thing that I dig the most is that this game respected the dignity of the Imperial Guard, who are wildly outgunned in almost every battle but keep pushing forward regardless. The Cadians were an excellent choice here, and I believe they also were the army of choice in the first game.
Probably my single favorite aspect of the game is these loading screens that show the objectives for the mission as dietetic or “in-universe” screens appearing to the NPCs as a holo in the Thunderhawk drop ships. Everything about this game just drips Warhammer 40k lore from the fact that you interface with an Adeptus Mechanicus Magos any time you need to change out your Wargear aka your weapon loadout. I pretty much standardized on the Oculus Bolter, Heavy Bolt Pistol, and the Power Sword throughout as much of the game as would allow me to use them. There are folks out there who like constantly swapping weapons, but I tend to prefer sticking to a loadout that works well for pretty much all situations. Though that said… I did spend a heck of a lot of time doing melee combat because it is just fun to rip through tyranids with a chain sword or power sword.
There were also so many great setpieces in the game that put you in wild situations where complete nonsense was going on in the background. Probably the highlight of these was an orbital drop through the wreckage of Imperial Gunships as you attempt to get into the atmosphere of the planet where it is just too “hot” to get a proper landing. The first game was all about the Orks and this game is a love letter to Tyranids… with of course the “Archenemy” of Chaos always in the background. I’ve never really been that big of a fan of the Ultramarines, but I also understand why they are the poster children for Adeptus Astartes. It sort of hit me this weekend… that they are effectively the “Union Jack” Marines which is probably why they are fairly beloved in the origin country of the game. If I ever got back into the tabletop game I would probably just give up trying to do custom chapters and standardize on the Space Wolves because they have most of the elements that I love going on.
The campaign is pretty short as a whole, but it was one hell of a ride. There are so many excellent moments that are pure fanservice for Warhammer 40k folks. Once the campaign is over however there are a number of strike missions that you can venture forth on as well as a whole Online Multiplayer PVP mode in the game. Honestly, the setup of Space Marine 2 reminds me of how the OG Halo games felt. It has a solid campaign and from what I can tell a very solid and fun multiplayer experience, both doing their own things. This is pretty much everything I could have asked for in a shooter. I’ve only played the single-player content, but I have friends who have almost exclusively played co-op and said it was pretty great as well.
If you are looking for a game that throws back to an era before everything was a live service experience… then maybe check out Space Marine 2. It is just a big dumb shooter with lots of really cool vistas in the background as you rip through enemies with awesome weapons. If you also happen to be a fan of the 40k universe, then it is just the icing on top of this delightful cake. I spent most of the game hating one of the two characters that you are grouped up within the story, expecting an imminent betrayal. However, it turns out that it was just another Carth Onasi situation, and was that archetypal character that distrusts you forever until they turn into a loyal friend. I honestly hate that shit every time I encounter it. That however is the single blemish on an otherwise amazing experience.
I rate this game Five Dakkas and a Chainsword Rip.
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I’ve been working on a project lately. (CW: suicide, grief)
In early September, my brother in law Sam lost his battle with mental illness. It was… hard to watch happen, as he descended into a spiral of paranoid delusions, which led him to see hidden assailants that didn’t exist and physically assault people, both in public and in healthcare facilities and ultimately resulted in him taking his own life by jumping in front of a train, an option he specifically took because it meant he wouldn’t be found by his family.
It’s been hard to process my thoughts, especially because I’d only met him a few years ago when I met my wife, and he’d already had the edges of his fraying mental state then. His friends and family talk about him prior to his struggles, and it’s a person I don’t know and never met. The Sam I knew was an artist and musician who felt haunted by internal demons, whose creative works and whose devotion to helping communities and especially working in libraries and with people who most needed help reflected a person trying to do good, possibly because they were afraid of themselves.\
I’d talked with Sam a couple of times about painting miniatures, and he’d expressed interest. I never got a chance to teach him, but we’d talk about painting and he had been interested enough before things went severely downhill that I’d been eyeing a army to pick up for him as a starting point.
Near the end of September, a friend of mine sent me a starter pack of Blood Angels, part of a longstanding back and forth and a semi-joke gift he sent me intentionally to hit my buttons, because for decades I’ve made fun of Blood Angels, all the way back to the original Angels of Death codex where I played the cool Dark Angels and made fun of my friend who played the lame vampires. The gift came with the book Dante which I promised I’d read before deciding what to do with the army, and something clicked for me when I read it.
The Blood Angels are a faction of superhuman space marines, instilled with genetic code to push them well past human capability. They’re notable for their continuing struggle with being, well, vampires. To some extent they’re a meditation on the monster within, and they stave off their internal monster via art, creativity, and about as much community service as exists within the dark setting of Warhammer 40k. They all struggle with “the Flaw”, an affliction that both causes them to hunger for blood but also to see visions of an old battle, one in which their progenitor was killed and whose death haunts the entire group.
Some of them get lost in the visions, seeing enemies where there are none or mistaking friends or innocents for foes. They are often beyond saving, and are given special armor and treatment and transferred to a unit called the Death Company. They’re sent to places where their delusions can be turned against real enemies, where they can meet their end in honorable combat, which the Blood Angels value highly. They are remembered for who they were when they were lucid, and their loss of connection to reality is considered a reminder of how even the best of the Blood Angels are vulnerable.
It’s not… hard to make the connection. Sam was a musician, an artist, and a servant of the community. While when we’d talked about what he might play, Blood Angels weren’t on my list, but as a memorial they seemed apt.
I’ve got a handful of minis left for this project, most notably a Captain and a Death Company Dreadnought. The Captain, with some effort, has a look that’s roughly analogous to Sam’s curly hair, and I want to deck him out in ornate, gorgeous armor. The Dreadnought is a large mech, according to the lore a sort of walking casket for mortally wounded or even technically slain space marines. It’s fairly common in miniatures games to have a particular character represented in more than one way, reflecting different aspects of them or simply different points in time. I’m planning to represent Sam in both of these, golden armor and a halo in one, and a walking memorial to the dead in the other.
I’m sort of hoping it can be a way to keep a bit of Sam around for me. He can be there for the games I never got to teach him and play. My fondest wish when I eventually die is to be, somehow, made into dice so that I can continue to be a part of people’s games, their stories, joys, and memories with their friends, and that I can continue to play even past the end of my body’s limit.
I do a lot of processing my feelings through my creative work– miniatures and tabletop campaigns generally, and this is the third time I’ve done a project like this as a reflection of grief. I wish I’d gotten to get Sam into minis, and see the kinds of things he’d chosen and how he would have expressed himself through the medium. Maybe it would’ve been Warhammer, maybe Infinity or Battletech, maybe historical ship battles or Star Wars, I don’t know, but I would’ve liked to help him get started.
This is not the army I would’ve gotten him, no.
This is just a tribute.
