E3 2018

i tried the first demo that came out (w/ 2 playable characters) and i didn't really get it. it seemed like a totally generic JRPG? what am i missing?

the retro textures in a modern 3d engine presentation is cool and the boost system for combat looks satisfying - i didn't play bravely default but that game is very well regarded and this is an evolution of its system. idk more since i barely touched the first demo but it just seems like a well made game overall in a genre that has a lot of uneven games. and the characters all look fun

the combat felt really unenjoyable -- it wasn't clear to me how to use boost effectively and all the combats felt like a grind and then the [first?] boss beat me and i realized i'd need to grind up to win that fight and it wasn't a strategy issue and that's when i quit.

the combat's designed around you using break/boost well so it's kinda puzzley in that regard - if you don't engage with the system you do like 10% as much damage and fights will take a while. same deal as xenoblade really. i doubt you have to grind, almost no modern jrpg makes you do that.

I felt like had to grind a little bit for the boss in the original demo, and retry a couple times, which was fine; what wasn't fine is they hadn't implemented cutscene skips so I had to wait through like a three minute dialog each retry. But they already said the final version would have cutscene skipping when they did a video specifically responding to the early demo feedback.

And yeah the combat puzzle is basically identify weakness -> break -> do a ton of damage with a boosted special move, which is the sort of thing I really dig.

new demo has cutscene skipping

wish every jrpg used the same retry system as trails of cold steel - you never lose progress, any time you wipe in a fight you get a choice between 'retry' or 'retry but make enemies a bit weaker'. so if you're having trouble with a fight and aren't feeling it you can just make it incrementally easier until you pass

cutscene skipping is nice. feels like a SNES RPG with plenty of QOL improvements.

the presentation is so nice and not generic at all. i love the graphics and world design. the music is really good too, again, like a nice old FF entry. on that tip the writing is nice and classic and relatable. feels closer to FFIX than anything in the past decade.

heh i just said nice a bunch of times. but that 3d modeled world w pixel art textures & HD shading is legit stunning.

Is anyone else sick of 3D games where you shoot people? Half of the games at E3 were like this and I had no interest in them, except maybe the RE2 remake.

one reason Death Stranding stood out to me

The games are all becoming more movie like, and most big movies seem to be about people shooting each other too.

I am not really in the market for realistic gun games so it’s not much of a stance to say I’m boycotting them but I do think maybe they should stop making them.

do you think it matters if you are shooting monsters versus people?

I think the critical/commercial feedback loop is stuck on 3d action-adventure/action-RPG games right now, some of those have guns but I didn't get a sense that there were that many pure shooters at the show

do you think it matters if you are shooting monsters versus people?

That always has mattered to me actually, maybe that's odd. It's not even monsters vs people, it's cartoony people vs people too (or even sci-fi people vs people). So team fortress, fortnight, those angry solider guys in doom, imperial officers in star wars games, all fine. But put me in front of a cod or a battlefront and I just don't feel right about it.

Yeah, I don't like it either when it veers from fantasy to hyper-realism. I mean, I'm ok with hyper-realism applied to fantasy, a la Doom - it's cartoonishly OTT - but something like that Last of Us trailer, it's just suspect and gross.

i forgot where i heard it, Super Bunnyhop or somewhere, where someone explained that triangulating a single point in space is the most efficient thing you can do with 3D computing. lining up crosshairs with a target is the basis of pretty much all 3D gaming. it just happens that shooting a gun is a real world analogy to that simple act of computation (which you can design an entire game around, just ask 19th century carnival workers).

plus society is entirely violence and pro-gun, tv shows and movies glorify guns, the new/old media promotes the most shockingly violent stories. even at its most divided the US govt has never had trouble jointing reaching into the piggy bank for larger and larger budgets to buy bigger and more sophisticated weapons (that actually kill real people in real life). reality is violent therefore media is violent. sometimes people mistakenly think it is the other way around.

Yeah tbh I think I'm a lot more comfortable with shooting for fun as a UK resident than I'd be if anyone here actually had guns for real.

Which isn't justified at all but yeah.

triangulating a single point in space is the most efficient thing you can do with 3D computing

Eh, I think shooting at things is just the laziest way for these designers to craft something with minimal world building and story telling.

¿?

But put me in front of a cod

do you think it matters if you are shooting monsters versus people?

I hardly consider myself a sophisticated or self-aware gamer (I barely consider myself a gamer at all!), yet I'm deeply anti-gun IRL but have little problem playing games where you shoot people.

Anyway, I do think that even if the enemies are monsters, that greases the wheel to

... making shooting people in games more acceptable.