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Giant Bomb 18: Everything is always a surprise on some level

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Except Dan isn't the only person that really liked it.

I feel like the discussion like of turned on that game once everyone finished it for the Spoilercast and only gotten worse every time we get a update on how Konami are inserting microtransactions into it.

Its the Destiny thing again. The shooting and moment to moment gameplay is best in class but everything else is a giant disappointment and just makes you wonder what could have been.
 
1. Super Mario Maker
2. Metal Gear Solid V
3. Rocket League
4. Axiom Verge
5. Splatoon
6. The Witcher 3
7. Bloodborne
8. Undertale
9. Fallout 4
10. Rise of the Tomb Raider


Subject to change in the event of Just Cause 3.

I don't see until dawn on that list.Also for the last bombcast, it seems only Jeff and Dan are super high on mario maker, so I just don't see it being the collective number 1
 
but at a certain point when you have 100 hours of great moment-to-moment gameplay (in my case) then it's kind of silly to fret too much over "could haves"
 
Exactly. The only two people to really get into Super Mario Maker are Dan and Jeff which makes me think MGS V will win GOTY because it should have the pull of everyone, seeing as the entire staff played it and liked it.

Brad was essentially the only one beating the Skyrim drum in 2011. My point being that you need Brad to get a game to #1.
 
Why is Rocket League so high on everyone's list? Sure personal list but as a group, the game has hardly even come up in conversation.

They did two massive streams of it and Jason plays it like every night.

Brad loves it, Dan loves it, Jeff liked it until it made him puke.

Vinny loves it, Austin loves it, Alex loves it.

It has the feel good factor of the devs doing right by their community and great post-release DLC.
 
I feel like the discussion like of turned on that game once everyone finished it for the Spoilercast and only gotten worse every time we get a update on how Konami are inserting microtransactions into it.

Its the Destiny thing again. The shooting and moment to moment gameplay is best in class but everything else is a giant disappointment and just makes you wonder what could have been.

Most likely because none of them really wanna talk about it after having months worth of discourse about Metal Gear and being so busy with the tons of other games coming out. Again, if you really think Metal Gear is gonna get the Destiny treatment to where only two people are really gonna fight for it to be in the top 10 and everyone else completely disagrees, you're probably gonna be really disappointed. I think you're confusing your own opinion of the game for theirs, where none of them besides Dan even had expectations for it and were all blown away by how good it was, completely unlike year 1 Destiny.

The difference between judging the game now vs launch is the difference between #1-3, not #1 or possibly being left off the list.
 

Strax

Member
Interesting, so all people not enamored with the writing are idiots of one form or another? I hadn't considered that.

Maybe I'm not being clear.

Most people can't tell a difference between a bad script and a story they don't like. I don't like There Will Be Blood be because I don't like the story and characters but both are really well written. Fallout 4 may not have stories everybody likes but its not because of its badly written.
 
This would be a good 4-player UPF game...

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http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=557591331
 
They did two massive streams of it and Jason plays it like every night.

Brad loves it, Dan loves it, Jeff liked it until it made him puke.

Vinny loves it, Austin loves it, Alex loves it.

Well if Vinny loves it then it stands a chance. I'm not talking about whether or not a game deserves to be ranked high or now, I'm just trying to gage interest based on personality and who will fight for something.
 
Maybe I'm not being clear.

Most people can't tell a difference between a bad script and a story they don't like. I don't like There Will Be Blood be because I don't like the story and characters but both are really well written. Fallout 4 may not have stories everybody likes but its not because of its badly written.

Ok, I'd honestly like to hear why you believe that Fallout 4's writing should not be considered bad by anyone with the knowledge and ability to criticize creative writing. I have not finished the main story, I haven't touched all of the side quests obviously, so I'd like your take on the first interaction that soured me on their storytelling very early on.

When the player character saves the trapped settlers in Concord. You make your way through the museum and encounter the settlers. You are asked to step up, get the fusion core, get the power armor, beat back the raiders (and ultimately a Death Claw) and then escort the group to their new home. The main character that from his/her perspective, has just time traveled 200 years into the post nuclear war future, witness his/her spouse murdered and then child kidnapped just moments ago.

The protagonist is able to accomplish all of this pretty effortlessly, really, while life long survivors in this world couldn't find a way. In fact, up to this point they were dropping like flies. This idea that the character has adapted to his/her surroundings immediately and is now the potential savior of the wasteland continues when you are asked to save another settlement. When you do this you are named the General of the Minutemen by the last known survivor of the group and are now being asked to rebuild them as the new leader.

I want to know how they were able to write good dialog that drove the narrative in this direction. For me it seemed so far from actual human interactions that I've experienced that I immediately rejected it as poor writing but I will be the first to admit, I have not been trained in how to criticize creative writing. I want to know from a critical perspective, what about the writing here was good.
 

tuxfool

Banned
Maybe I'm not being clear.

Most people can't tell a difference between a bad script and a story they don't like. I don't like There Will Be Blood be because I don't like the story and characters but both are really well written. Fallout 4 may not have stories everybody likes but its not because of its badly written.

There is already a thread about how poorly framed the beginning of the game is. After playing it I took 5 minutes think of a better way of designing the narrative of the beginning of the game whilst keeping within their apparent design goals. It would work far better contextually with the open nature and freedom of the world and gel in a much more natural way with the narrative of the main quest, without making some aspects feel artificially hammered into place.

I very much doubt I'm the only person, and what I thought up is still utterly derivative, but it is amazing Bethesda's writers seemingly didn't manage to do it.
 

Xater

Member
SMM at #1 is too good. I'll cry tears of joy if it happens.

I don't see Axiom Verge making it that high.

Undertale at 7-8 sounds about right.

No Life is Strange?

Brad has already teased the filibusters when it comes to Mario Maker on this week's podcast.
 
Yeesh, that Animal Crossing game is getting Urban Champion numbers. This is going to be a good stream.

also I think Mario Maker may be slowly becoming my game of the year over MGSV
 
I want to know how they were able to write good dialog that drove the narrative in this direction. For me it seemed so far from actual human interactions that I've experienced that I immediately rejected it as poor writing but I will be the first to admit, I have not been trained in how to criticize creative writing. I want to know from a critical perspective, what about the writing here was good.

I honestly don't have the time or personal investment to pull this game's writing apart, but if you want to take the haphazard opinion of someone with a literature degree, this game has some remarkably poor writing. It makes barely any logical sense, it's tonally inconsistent, and it seems like someone came up with a couple of interesting pillars to write around, and filled the gaps with first-draft placeholder text.
 

tuxfool

Banned
I honestly don't have the time or personal investment to pull this game's writing apart, but if you want to take the haphazard opinion of someone with a literature degree, this game has some remarkably poor writing. It makes barely any logical sense, it's tonally inconsistent, and it seems like someone came up with a couple of interesting pillars to write around, and filled the gaps with first-draft placeholder text.

Yup. This has been the case for all their games post Morrowind. They want to make their games open, free form but fail to commit the intellectual resources to make their writing work in such a context. I hate to harp on about this but Obsidian gave them a template with which they could aspire to reach, but instead they chose to go in the other direction.
 
Brad has already teased the filibusters when it comes to Merio Maker on this week's podcast.
As soon as he questioned if Mario Maker was a game I knew that GOTY this year was going to be real special.
I honestly don't have the time or personal investment to pull this game's writing apart, but if you want to take the haphazard opinion of someone with a literature degree, this game has some remarkably poor writing. It makes barely any logical sense, it's tonally inconsistent, and it seems like someone came up with a couple of interesting pillars to write around, and filled the gaps with first-draft placeholder text.
The fact that they actually show brief flashes of cool ideas is part of why the Bethesda writing can be so frustrating.
 

jaina

Member
I took Braid's "is it even a game?" as tongue-in-cheek, or at least playing devil's advocate. I guess you're all just burned by his track record :)
I didn't take it 100% seriously but I'm not willing to discount the idea that he might pull that one out if he feels that he needs to push MM down the list.
He's the one most likely to take cheap shots during the deliberations, yeah.
 
I took Braid's "is it even a game?" as tongue-in-cheek, or at least playing devil's advocate. I guess you're all just burned by his track record :)
I didn't take it 100% seriously but I'm not willing to discount the idea that he might pull that one out if he feels that he needs to push MM down the list.
 
I honestly don't have the time or personal investment to pull this game's writing apart, but if you want to take the haphazard opinion of someone with a literature degree, this game has some remarkably poor writing. It makes barely any logical sense, it's tonally inconsistent, and it seems like someone came up with a couple of interesting pillars to write around, and filled the gaps with first-draft placeholder text.

That lines up pretty well with my take on it, especially the lack of logical sense. They make a real quick awkward stab at establishing that the character is thrown out of their perfect little world into a horrific new one, in almost the most tragic scenario you could think of and then put him/her on the express train to superhero status with barely a moment to digest what just happened.
 

mnz

Unconfirmed Member
I took Braid's "is it even a game?" as tongue-in-cheek, or at least playing devil's advocate. I guess you're all just burned by his track record :)
Brad pulls every dirty trick if he has a horse in the race, which I'm not sure he does yet.
 

repeater

Member
Regardless of what you think of the EX format, I thought "Just Cause 3" looked great both graphically and gameplaywise.
Do we know if they're aiming for 60 fps on consoles? I guess that's pretty farfetched?
 

tuxfool

Banned
That lines up pretty well with my take on it, especially the lack of logical sense. They make a real quick awkward stab at establishing that the character is thrown out of their perfect little world into a horrific new one, in almost the most tragic scenario you could think of and then put him/her on the express train to superhero status with barely a moment to digest what just happened.

Very early game Spoilers.

They could have just fixed this so easily by having the Wanderer wake up with amnesia, and have the realisation of the missing child develop across the main quest. This way they could add more extensive flashbacks to flesh out the relationship with old life. This would knock down the narrative dissonance, by allowing people to engage with that aspect of the narrative at their own terms, without imposing it on the beginning. People that go wandering about would have no reason to care about the baby or wonder why the character isn't mourning the loss of the spouse.

This would also solve the dissonance with the inherent strangeness of the new world when compared to the Wanderers old world. An amnesiac would have an easier time accepting the new reality than a 200 year old warp.

The nonsense at Concord, shouldn't have you join the Minutemen as their leader, but as another person, whereby the Minutemen could help fill out your understanding of the world. The quests you do for them should top out at you becoming their leader.
 
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