Videogames Killed the TV Star

[Werthead]

Soooooo the Watch Dogs and Assassin's Creed franchises take place in the same world and timeline, which is odd. I'm wondering if they're going to confirm that Far Cry does as well in the next game: the Ubisoft Gaming Universe (UGU).

Watch Dogs Legion reintroducing the played-out tower mechanic and then trying to ironically make fun of it because they're mocking the way AssCreed does it, doesn't work when they're playing it straight.

[Toth]

44 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Soooooo the Watch Dogs and Assassin's Creed franchises take place in the same world and timeline, which is odd. I'm wondering if they're going to confirm that Far Cry does as well in the next game: the Ubisoft Gaming Universe (UGU).

Watch Dogs Legion reintroducing the played-out tower mechanic and then trying to ironically make fun of it because they're mocking the way AssCreed does it, doesn't work when they're playing it straight.

That just caused me to do a double-take and look it up, ended up watching the trailer of the crossover DLC. I read that they already occasionally dropped hints that they share a setting, but more in the vein of small winks, easter eggs. Didn't expect that they actually go out of their way and make it a thing. I... guess that's where people who have been asking for a modern day Assassin's Creed get pandered to, huh?

Also one of the first comments below the trailer was joking whether Sam Fisher gets introduced next. Though you are right, Far Cry would make more sense, what with Sam being tied to Tom Clancy properties. Though didn't the Far Cry world go through a little bit of a nuclear war lately? Pretty sure that should have been mentioned in other stories that then would take place simultaneously...

(or they reintroduce the long retconned super shitty state of the world in Assassin's Creed 1)

[Werthead]

19 hours ago, Toth said:

That just caused me to do a double-take and look it up, ended up watching the trailer of the crossover DLC. I read that they already occasionally dropped hints that they share a setting, but more in the vein of small winks, easter eggs. Didn't expect that they actually go out of their way and make it a thing. I... guess that's where people who have been asking for a modern day Assassin's Creed get pandered to, huh?

Also one of the first comments below the trailer was joking whether Sam Fisher gets introduced next. Though you are right, Far Cry would make more sense, what with Sam being tied to Tom Clancy properties. Though didn't the Far Cry world go through a little bit of a nuclear war lately? Pretty sure that should have been mentioned in other stories that then would take place simultaneously...

(or they reintroduce the long retconned super shitty state of the world in Assassin's Creed 1)

They started off saying references were Easter Eggs, but then Ambergis was a pretty major player in several missions in Watch Dogs 1 (and were referenced in 2) and Aidan Pearce even briefly appears in the future scenes in AssCreed: Black Flag. They still claimed that was just a laugh, but in Legion they bring in the Assassins and Templars for a full-scale DLC storyline and you can recruit an Assassin into DedSec afterwards, whilst making it clear that the London of Legion and the London of Assassin's Creed Syndicate are one and the same (and it looks like some of the underlying map geometry is similar, and they may have used the Syndicate map to jump off on the London map for Legion).

This gets more confusing when you realise that the Assassin's Creed video game series exists in the Watch Dogs games (there's a whole side-mission in Watch Dogs 2 about breaking into UbiSoft's San Francisco development studio) but they also exist in the Assassin's Creed universe itself (where Ambergis's game division and UbiSoft joint-develop them).

All of the Tom Clancy games take place in a shared universe bar possibly the Division sub-franchise (as I believe several of the Rainbox Six and Ghost Recon games depict a near-future at odds with the Division timeline).

Far Cry is so wildly incoherent that it's not even clear if all the games take place in the same universe, let alone sharing that universe with anyone else. I'm intrigued to see how Far Cry 6 handles the whole "the world got nuked in the last game" thing, or if they dodge it by setting it earlier.

[Toth]

So... if anyone wants to grab them, right now Surviving Mars is free on Steam and Far Cry 3 is free on Ubisoft for forever. No harm in claiming them.

[Rhom]

3 hours ago, Toth said:

So... if anyone wants to grab them, right now Surviving Mars is free on Steam and Far Cry 3 is free on Ubisoft forever. No harm in claiming them.

I really enjoyed Surviving Mars.

[Toth]

3 hours ago, Rhom said:

I really enjoyed Surviving Mars.

Me too. Though I'd say Green Planet is mandatory for the game to have a proper endgame. Otherwise once you've got a solid foothold there isn't too much to do.

[Inkdaub]

I have started playing Valhalla and so far it is pretty good.  I am always disturbed by the lack of jumping in AC games. 

[Rhom]

7 hours ago, Toth said:

Me too. Though I'd say Green Planet is mandatory for the game to have a proper endgame. Otherwise once you've got a solid foothold there isn't too much to do.

Agreed.  That was the only DLC I had, but this new Below and Beyond looks interesting.

[Fez]

Played an absolutely absurd amount of Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous over the 4-day weekend. I haven't been this sucked into a game since I don't know when; maybe my very first playthrough of Mass Effect 3. It is an extremely good game, although I also think it's that I've been so starved for a properly sprawling RPG for so long. Same reason I mainlined my replay LE of Mass Effect, though with the added motivation of this being all-new content.

I've gotten 35 hours in, and am about mid-way through chapter 2 I think (out of 6). I'm thinking of starting a new character though. Partially to see how different things might get, but mostly because the start of chapter 2 unlocked "Crusade Mode" which is the replacement for the "Kingdom Mode" from the first game. And Crusade Mode needs some work still.

There are apparently some pretty bad bugs with it still, though they only show up in chapter 3 when you can create buildings. But even in chapter 2 there's been some funky stuff with morale and troop numbers that don't feel right. Even without the bugs, it's not a great system; it's a very simplified "Heroes of Might and Magic" clone that screws up the pacing of the rest of the game. It's a cool concept, just like Kingdom Mode had been, but also like that it feels half-baked. Which is a shame, because the rest of chapter 2 has felt as good as chapter 1; and chapter 1, which was so tightly focused, was one of the best RPG experiences I've had in years.

I don't think anything fundamental about crusade mode will get fixed for a while, if ever, but I'd like to know that everything is at least working as intended before I go too much further.

And in the mean time, now that I've seen what the experience of a Lawful Good Crusader of Iomedae on the path to becoming an Angel feels like (basically the stock vanilla experience of the game; maybe Paladin would be slightly closer, the Crusader is a kinda complicated hybrid of a Paladin and a Cleric), I want to see what things are like on a different path. I'm thinking Chaotic Evil of some sort, but I want a character who is more the sort who will do absolutely anything to defeat the villains because of a revenge quest; rather than a simple murder hobo.

There's background and deity stuff in character creation to support that, but I don't know if any of the mythic paths really line up right with that. I also want to see some more gameplay mechanics. And I know I want to go evil of some sort just to see what changes. I suspect chapter 1 is basically the same for everyone, with just some flavor dialog difference. But there is a choice at the end of the chapter that I'm very curious about; I think it probably can't change too much though, because there's 4 distinct options rather than just 2. Also, early on you get the choice between a Lawful Neutral and a Neutral Evil character to join your party and you can only get one (and for the brief time early on when you have both they are so mechanically similar that I suspect you'll never get the other). I want to see what the Neutral Evil character is all about.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

I pulled the trigger and pre-purchased the D2 reboot. It's my favorite game ever afterall. 

MFingUrGear will rise again!

[psynetik123]

5 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

I pulled the trigger and pre-purchased the D2 reboot. It's my favorite game ever afterall.

I think at this point a bunch of Blizzard employees could be revealed to be a bunch of cannibalistic serial killers, and people would still buy their games.

In other news, the new Life is Strange game comes out tomorrow!!!

[Toth]

Uhm... I feel like this has been rumored to have been in the works for quite some time, but apparently it is now here:

 

[Werthead]

23 minutes ago, Toth said:

Uhm... I feel like this has been rumored to have been in the works for quite some time, but apparently it is now here:

 

Potentially outstanding.

Other news: Alan Wake Remastered confirmed for next month, marking the first time the game has been available on PlayStation. More annoying is that the remaster is relatively constrained on PC (the original game looked fantastic on release, and still pretty good today) and they're charging £25 for it and making it an Epic exclusive for a year.

We are getting Uncharted on PC...but only Uncharted 4 and the stand-alone expansion thingy. Weird place to start, but I imagine a full Uncharted 1-3 remaster is in the works behind the scenes for PS5 and PC will get to tap into that as well.

GTA5 Remastered Remastered delayed to March 2022, still no confirmation of the upgrades coming to PC, but the trailer seemed to feature single-player story scenes not present in the original game, hinting at some expansions to the story. Absolutely no whisper of GTA6, of course.

Midnight Suns looks solid but I'm really not sold on the card mechanic. If I'm playing a video game, I don't want to simultaneously be playing a shitty card game. I think I preferred it when it was was just Marvel XCOM.

[Slurktan]

34 minutes ago, Toth said:

Uhm... I feel like this has been rumored to have been in the works for quite some time, but apparently it is now here:

 

Interesting that is only PS5 and of course it isn't really said but does Remake mean an actual remake like Demon's Souls or is it just a remaster and they are banking on Sony doing it once successfully already?

[Rhom]

35 minutes ago, Toth said:

Uhm... I feel like this has been rumored to have been in the works for quite some time, but apparently it is now here:

 

Interesting that it is a PS5 remake considering that the original game was an XBox/PC exclusive.

[Rhom]

Just now, Slurktan said:

Interesting that is only PS5 and of course it isn't really said but does Remake mean an actual remake like Demon's Souls or is it just a remaster and they are banking on Sony doing it once successfully already?

Looks like we were posting the same thing at the same time!   

[Slurktan]

No gameplay footage of course but it's Insomniac

 

 

[Derfel Cadarn]

9 hours ago, Rhom said:

Interesting that it is a PS5 remake considering that the original game was an XBox/PC exclusive.

Has to be a remake. No way they would get away with calling it a remake if all they did was update the graphics

[Jace, Extat]

5 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Has to be a remake. No way they would get away with calling it a remake if all they did was update the graphics

Who, exactly, would stop them?

[Derfel Cadarn]

13 minutes ago, Babblebauble said:

Who, exactly, would stop them?

No one would stop them. They would just face a PR backlash and likely mediocre sales if they tried to fob off a remaster of a 1st gen xbox game as a latest gen console ‘remake’.