Lydia is one of your possible companions in Skyrim. She’s likely your first and the only one you must obtain during the course of the main quest. She’s strong and stalwart, and doesn’t give you any crap for any of the insane things you may find yourself doing. She’s easily the most popular companion. But beneath her pretty face (by the standards of the gameworld) she is very much a product of Betheda Softworks. For example:
Link (YouTube) |
Link (YouTube) |
9:05 – Really? The guy delivering the SUPER EGG just jumped over a canal by hopping onto one of those barbershop poles in the middle of the water. Was nobody worried about this thing falling to the bottom of the canal? Does this guy have some alien blood in him like Ezio does? Is this really the most reasonable way to transport this thing across the city, or was this the way that made things easiest on the game designers?
14:35 – Game designer says, “Ha ha! GOTCHA!”
16:29 – After having a lone courier prance over the rooftops and over canals with the SUPER EGG, they’re suddenly all obsessed with ceremony and making sure it’s in a nice package. Perhaps we should wipe the dirt, sweat, and blood off the thing first, no?
16:37 – Ezio says, “The Spaniard’s here?!” Earlier Josh said that we were following the egg because we wanted the Spaniard. But now we’re surprised to find out he’s going to show? So now I don’t understand the in-world justification for not just nabbing the egg and walking away.
17:28 – Stay in formation? The contrast between this parade and the earlier parkour is rather striking. What ARE the bad guys thinking? Do their actions make any sense, or was this the way that made things easiest on the game designers?
18:30 – So you have an escort which does nothing to protect you from other guards or even from being jostled by civilians. In fact, your “escort” will ditch you if you get hung up on peasants! How to we explain this? Did the guards really act in this incomprehensible way, or did the animus fail to simulate their behavior? I can’t help but think of the joke Rutskarn made about Ezio de-synchronizing because the Wienermobile drove past. This really does feel like the game isn’t playing by its own rules. It does this in order to add “danger” or “tension” to an otherwise boring sequence. But rather than break the fiction of the gameworld, I think a better solution would be to not have boring sequences in the first place.
20:30 – I now officially hate Ezio. What’s your goal here, Ezio? Was it to assassinate that one guard? No? Then why did you give up your surprise advantage by killing him? You needlessly killed someone who wasn’t the target, thereby making it harder to kill the person who WAS the target. After spending 20 minutes punishing the player for slight failures in detection, Ezio pisses away all your efforts with a childish bit of macho showboating. Remember this moment when we get to the end.
20:37 – Uhhh. The guy falls, and Ezio is standing there still holding the box. His hands are around the bottom of the box. Didn’t he need one of his hands free to pull that off?
20:58 – “How many people have died for this?” He did not just say that! For those of you watching at home: Rodrigo has personally killed one person. (And actually, you had to finish him off.) Ezio has killed dozens, even in the hands of a merciful and careful player.
21:36 – Fight the old man who is immune to the hidden blade, extremely durable, as nimble as a ninja, immune to gunshots and smoke bombs, and… this is just shockingly childish and lazy. I can’t believe that the plot of this game requires us to fight this guy TWICE.
22:49 – Is this still going on? This is the stupidest thing I’ve seen in a long time.
23:16 – “Guards!” WTF?!?! So half a dozen guards were just standing in that alley, but they never made any effort to intervene until Rodrigo called for them? Remember this when the assassins run out in a few seconds. Were the assassins and guards waiting in the alley TOGETHER?
24:27 – Wooo! Jump that shark! Jump it, baby!
26:29 – I started doing these timestamp annotations because I was dumbstruck during the episode. But now I am, once again, dumbstruck. This game has abandoned any pretense of telling a coherent tale. I have no stake in the story because it’s clear this is a plot driven by convenience, not reason and logic. This fight even LOOKS ridiculous.
27:11 – I love how the game just spent the last 10 hours convincing you that your allies were smart, capable people. (Except for the Thieves’ Guild guy, obviously. He’s always been inept.) And now the game pisses them all away by showing them to be completely incompetent. Rodrigo evidently knows he’s got Plot Armor, since he hasn’t run away or retreated to the alley where he couldn’t be surrounded. He’s evidently confident that he can dispatch your entire group.
28:17 – Poof! The fat man runs away from you and ALL OF YOUR COMPANIONS. Including the Fox. Come ON, Ubisoft.
28:37 – Ezio says, “I don’t care about your prophet. I came here to kill the Spaniard.” Ezio, you lumbering dumbass, your actions over the last eight minutes say otherwise. If that was your goal, you could have handed over the box and pounced on Rodrigo instead of pointlessly murdering the guard.
29:17 – “You are all assassins? Paola? Volpe?” Yep, Ezio. They are. Now your follow-up question should be, “WHY DIDN’T PAOLA ASSASSINATE THE DOGE AT CARNEVAL?”
30:18 – These are the scribblings of a child.
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Behold, it is the triumphant (and belated) return of the Shogun 2 Let’s Play! Yes, it’s a Tuesday, not a Monday, but I ended up oversleeping yesterday and Shamus and I decided to switch the days of our posts. If all things go well, this should return to a regular Monday-morning schedule next week.
Picking up from where we left off last installment; as the first snow begins to fall on the winter of 1548, the Murakami have been convinced to break their alliance with the Hojo by our generous diplomatic overtures. Unfortunately, the full strength of our forces has not yet arrived at Suruga â€" the launching point for our planned invasion â€" and it would be unwise to attempt to attack the Hojo with a weaker force. We’ll have to bide our time for the next few turns until everything is ready.
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In the meantime, the Hatakeyama have grown to control almost the entirety of the capital region, and they show no signs of faltering soon. This turn of events has been the impetus of much concern amongst the Shogun’s court, and as a “loyal” clan, the Shogun has generously offered us full permission â€" and invitation â€" to curb the Hatakeyama ambition and bring them to order.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Josh Plays Shogun 2 Part 9: A Roll of the Dice”
I have all the notes here on Elfman’s origins and how he fits into the world. I’ve rough-drafted a good bit of his genealogy and personal history, but I’m still researching and proofing those parts. For now, I thought I’d share just a small slice of his adventures. These events take place during the period that will eventually comprise Book 4 of his story. (Still untitled.)
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Skyrim: The Adventures of Elfman the Man-Elf”
Link (YouTube) |
Like I said, the game ended for me last episode, so I didn’t reach this part. At 21 minutes, does the game really make all of your assassination tools impotent so you have to wade in and swordfight? If so, that seems like a really obnoxious decision for a game about ASSASSINATION. Particularly since we just got the pistol. “Here is a new tool. You will find it powerful and useful. Until you need it.” However, I can’t tell from the video. Later on Josh was able to assassinate the guy without any problem.
For those of you who say we complain too much: It’s probably going to get worse before it gets better. If all goes well, AC2 will end next week.
Check out at 5:34, when Josh reaches the cutscene just a fraction of a second before the guards flip out. (If they had been alerted, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have been able to go through the door.)
Link (YouTube) |
Okay, so Ezio is notorious while wearing the golden mask that made no sense to obtain. On the other hand, it was impossible for him to become notorious when wearing a SMALLER mask, even though his hood hides both masks and later he’s incognito anyway because… I don’t know. I don’t even know what the rules are anymore.
This part of the game is like one of those, “How many things can you find wrong with this picture” deals. Except, this thing is fractally wrong: Every plot hole encompasses a number of smaller plot holes, which in turn contain more holes, all the way down.
I do get mad at sloppy writing, but it’s an inescapable truth that most people just don’t seem to care or even notice. I have never seen any Assassin’s Creed 2 review that even mentioned these issues in passing. This does not bode well.
I liked the story of Assassin’s Creed 1. I think Assassin’s Creed 2 is bigger and dumber. In a lot of ways this reminds me of the shift from Mass Effect 1 to Mass Effect 2, where the story was pounded into mush, but sales went up. It’s not just that developers think that stories don’t matter. They are looking at evidence that good storytelling is a liability, and that what you need is a button that makes awesome happen.
Aside: at the seven minute mark we all talk over each other at once and nothing makes sense. What happened was that Josh lagged out, and then Vent delivered ten seconds of dialog in a few seconds to get him caught up. Sorry about that. There’s not much that can be done to untangle that when it happens.
Link (YouTube) |
And the haters continue to hate. Let the record show that this is Rutskarn’s first F-bomb on Spoiler Warning. Not even Fallout 3 drove him to such mad and desperate measures as using one of the Forbidden Words of Power. Truly these are dangerous times.
Note how the camera cuts away from Ezio to the guys paying off the judges. Does Ezio recall his own life in terms of movie cuts and scenes presented for the benefit of an audience, even things he didn’t personally observe? I wish I remembered life that way. I’d remember every trip to the grocery store in terms of me walking away in slow motion, putting on sunglasses, while the building explodes behind me.
So what is it, Ubisoft? Are we re-living Ezio’s memories or not? Did Ezio really play a round of one-on-one capture the flag where the game was flagrantly stacked against him and the only way to win was to repeatedly fall two stories onto pavement? Historical capture the flag was a children’s game that looked almost nothing like what we see here. In fact, what we see here looks more like modern videogame CTF than anything they might have played in the renaissance. Why did you guys spend so much time meticulously re-creating historical Venice and famous historical figures if you were just going to throw such a hilariously incongruous anachronism into the mix?
How about that plot twist at the end? That thing, that seemed like a stupid waste of time? In the end, it turned out to be… a stupid waste of time! DUN DUN DUN!
As I said, this ended the game for me. I played a few rounds, turned the game off, and never went back. It wasn’t fun. The golden masks made no sense. It made no sense that someone could acquire a golden mask by playing CTF. It made no sense that Ezio would bother to play it. The mechanics of CTF made no sense. The conclusion was both predictable and nonsensical, which is quite an achievement.
And then we get to the party and NOBODY ELSE IS WEARING A GOLDEN MASK, NOT EVEN OUR ALLY WHO IS ALSO AT THE PARTY SOMEHOW. GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAarg sdm msdfm, ewj ;jvdsm lk/kfsm lkrwm l3rm io;m f’ l
This is, on balance, dumber than anything in Fallout 3. There. I said it.
Here is a 13 part series where I talk about programming games, programming languages, and programming problems.
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2014.
This mess of dross, confusion, and terrible UI design is the storefront the big publishers couldn't beat? Amazing.
Why are RPG economies so bad? Why are shopkeepers so mercenary, why are the prices so crazy, and why do you always end up a gazillionaire by the end of the game? Can't we just have a sensible balanced economy?
Team Cap or Team Iron Man? More importantly, what basis would you use for making that decision?
Raytracing is coming. Slowly. Eventually. What is it and what will it mean for game development?
Few people remember BioWare's Jade Empire, but it had a unique setting and a really well-executed plot twist.
This series began as a cheap little 2D overhead game and grew into the most profitable entertainment product ever made. I have a love / hate relationship with the series.
When the source code for Doom 3 was released, we got a look at some of the style conventions used by the developers. Here I analyze this style and explain what it all means.
I really thought one thing, but then something else. There's a bunch more to it, but you'll have to read the article.
T w e n t y S i d e d
