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It's hard to imagine Bungie without Marty, he's been there since the Myth series. I always really loved his work, the ODST score was especially wonderful, and the preview samples of his soundtrack for Destiny have been wonderful.

Engi Cruiser C has an augment that completely disables defensive drones for the opponent's ship, which is kind of crazy. If you want a missile-focused/combat drone-focused build, there's your ship. (This augment seems to rarely show up in shops too.)

This was a real surprise, I have a hard time imagining Bungie without Marty. I think he's one of the most talented composers working in video games, and he's been with Bungie since the Myth series, he was one of Bungie's oldest hands.

The crystal caves had those invisible paths, right? Use the prism stones to check the paths, buy a whole bunch so you don't run out. (Prism stones can also be used to tell you if a fall would be fatal, based on the noise it makes when it lands.) Arrows would probably work too, i guess. Stock up on cheap arrows.

Another piece of advice for the flagship: Fire weapons, in my experience, cripple it quite effectively. There's loads of space for fires to start, and if you can take out the door controls, they'll quickly spread out of control. Another bonus here is that you'll likely have all of its crew dead before the third phase starts, preventing those crew from swarming your ship in that third phase. Firebombs are awesome.

The boss for the return trip to the asylum is a guaranteed drop for a titanite slab, and it's the only guaranteed drop for one in the game.

always stood out to me as being very playful in its design, pushing this newfound verticality to its logical conclusion with this large, layered, low-gravity environment.

In the flagship battle, the cloaking system helps out a lot for surviving the burst attacks it does in its second and third phases, but i've beaten the flagship without a cloaking system, so i don't find it as essential as defense drones. If your build hasn't ended up with enough raw damage from standard weapons to reliably break through shields, try to have something that ignores both shields and drone defenses. Teleporters, mind control, and bombs are the main ones. I don't like being reliant on missiles or drones to help me deal damage, given the ease with which they're countered. (Keep in mind that this includes hacking drones, they can be shot down.) If you're careful with timing different attacks, you can sometimes sneak a drone/missile past a defense drone, but it often just ends up being a huge waste of resources. (However, I do like the pegasus/swarm missiles, which burst-fire missiles to overwhelm defense drones, and do so with no extra ammo cost.)

I wouldn't dare doing a run without a defense drone to fend off missiles. Missiles hurt in FTL, especially in the flagship fight, that burst-fire missile launcher should be the first thing you try to take out. From the player standpoint, bombs are more useful since they're applicable in more situations. You run into too many ships with defense drones for missiles to be particularly useful, especially late-game. (Unless you have the pegasus/swarm missiles.) Against the player though, the sheer amount of damage missiles do your hull, while also causing breaches and fires and massive system damage? I think defense drones are required gear. Mark 2 defense drones have a cheaper energy cost in AE too, which makes them hard to ignore. They have a faster firing rate and block energy weapons in addition to missiles. (However, keep in mind that the drone being occupied more frequently makes it easier for missiles to slip through. Sometimes it's better to just stay at the mark 1 defense drone and let your shields deal with energy weapons.) As for combat drones, i've never really used them. They're useful/threatening early on when shields aren't upgraded, but they fall off quickly around the mid game, they're just not a reliable source of the coordinated fire necessary to punch through shields. There now being a way to further negate their utility seems kind of silly. (If i were to use combat drones, i'd probably use a build focused on emp and bombs to take down shields quickly and keep them down, but with the way you can now defend against combat drones specifically, i don't see the point in a build like this.) Still on the topic of drones, I have had mixed success with boarding drones. Also, the new super shield drone seems like it would be best paired up with a Zoltan ship.

I think an endless mode would kind of break the game, honestly. I don't think the way the game is balanced could sustain out much further than when it already ends. One of the important things to understand about the flagship battle in the final sector is that you can actually take some time to explore the sector between phases of the fight, since the flagship actually has to sit on the base for a consecutive three jumps to win, so you do have some time to go repair and resupply. (Avoid those overrun nodes, they're hellish. Definitely take advantage of those repair and rearm sites while you can though, there's also always a store in the final sector.) I also strongly recommend getting the hull repair drone at some point during your run. Probably 2/3rd's of the games i've won, it's been because i've been able to use that to patch up my hull between phases of the fight.

You're probably at the point where you need to start talking to the right blacksmith, and finding them the right embers, to ascend your weapons to the next phases of the upgrade paths. If you're just trying to do standard path upgrades, you need to head back to the blacksmith out in front of Sen's Fortress to get you over the hump to +6, because only he can do that.

I just had a normal difficulty victory with the Tektite, the C variant of the Rock Cruiser. By the end, i had three shields, two mark 1 flak cannons, the mark 1 heavy crystal cannon, a firebomb, mark 2 defense drone, and a hull repair drone. (Drone system wasn't upgraded enough to use both simultaneously, since i was just using hull repair to patch up my ship between phases of the flagship.) Somehow the only crew member i picked up along the way was a Zoltan that i stuck on my shield console, so just barely a four man crew counting the two rockmen and the one crystal being the ship variant starts with.

When you head down the stairs into the large hall before the O&S fight, head up the stairs on the opposite side. There's a door up there that will take you over to Anor Londo's blacksmith. Also, even when you take down Ornstein, be careful with the powered up Smough. He's slow, but he has a few attacks that can potentially ohk you. For Ornstein, when he does his dash attack to close in, dodge out of the way and hit him back while he's in recovery frames. Don't get greedy, he recovers quickly. Always keep the two of them chasing you, it's the only way to separate them, Smough will struggle to keep up while Ornstein will chase effectively. However, Ornstein becomes predictable when you force him to spend all his time using dash attacks to close distance. Don't lose track of either of them though, their AI has them constantly trying to circle around you.

I usually dump the crappy missile launcher as soon as possible for another damage-dealing weapon with an energy cost of 1 or 2. In AE, a flak cannon would probably be ideal. Hang onto the dual laser though, it functions precisely the same as the level 1 burst laser, but with one less energy cost. (Just thinking here, the flak cannon's cooldown matches that of the dual lasers, you'd be able to deal five points of damage every ten seconds, that's tremendous early on. That could easily carry you, almost by itself, into the late sectors.) Then get the artillery up, the shield up, and a drone control system with a level 1 defense drone for any enemies bringing missile launchers to a fight. Then max out the artillery the rest of the way and everything else after that is just gravy. (Also consider upgrading your doors, and don't ignore your engine but don't feel like you need to focus on it. Sell missiles whenever you can, unless you end up using another missile launcher.) That's more or less the foundation of how i played with the Nisos, those things not particularly in that order, and it usually went quite well. Now, Federation C, that's a brutal start. I've been having trouble with that. I wanted to try it out since it has a different artillery weapon from the other two layouts, but it's rough getting started with that thing.

The Quake games have always been my favorite Id games. The first game, especially, had this way of keeping you constantly on guard, the player being a little more fragile and much slower than in Doom, and the enemies seeming so much more threatening. Doom felt to me like it was just on constantly and always stacked in the player's favor, but Quake had this ebb and flow of these guarded, paranoid moments waiting for the game to explode into violent, frenetic panic. (That moody and ambient Nine Inch Nails soundtrack certainly also contributes quite a bit, i think.) You know, and unrestricted mouselook was kind of a revelation, and i much preferred the more precise player movement. The game also really took advantage of its new 3D engine and put you into a lot of vertically oriented situations that would have never appeared in one of the earlier Doom games. (Or really any other shooter at the time.) You're correct to say that Quake's arsenal is kind of bland though, especially the nailguns, where the super nailgun literally is just a better nailgun with no trade-off at all. (There's at least an accuracy trade-off with the shotguns.) The final boss is also a real bummer. As for Quake 2, i think there's an argument to make for it being Id's best game, or at least their best campaign game, because i'd certainly rather play Quake or Quake 3 for competitive purposes. Quake 2's phenomenal though, i love it. It's also a wildly different game, Quake wasn't exactly a very internally consistent series.

It's by no means impossible to solo O&S, i ended up doing it in my NG+ game so i could get to the DLC. Try to take out Ornstein first, just keep backpedaling in a wide circle so Smough struggles to stay near the fight. Be patient, don't get backed into a corner. Smough will steal Ornstein's lightning power when Ornstein dies, but you can pretty much just circle in close and hammer on him with relative impunity. If he leaps into the air, run away before that attack triggers. (Doing this fight the other way and fighting the powered up Ornstein is way harder.) Smough is weak to lightning, Ornstein and both of the powered up forms are weak to fire. (I... think? I'm pretty sure.) If you have an enchantable weapon or magic to use, abuse that. (If you have any way to buff your defense against lightning, that also really helps in the fight.) O&S is the hardest fight in the game though, if you can beat them, you'll have no trouble with the rest of the game. Also, the Drake Sword sucks, it tops out with relatively crappy stats, don't use it.

I recall that one of the common arguments against it was that it wasn't enough like the old games, however. It was a weird game, it felt like it was trying to pull in two very different directions. Mechanically, it felt very much like an old-school shooter, particularly Quake 2, i think. However, it also had all these weird little incidental pieces of story-telling and environmental interactions to puzzle through, kinds of things that felt like they came from a completely different first-person gaming tradition. (SysShock, Deus Ex, etc.) You had people who liked the former hating that they had to listen to audio logs to get passwords, and you had people who liked the latter hating the part where it's... you know... an Id game. (Monster closets and all.) Those strange contrasts might have been part of why it clicked with me though, and it probably helps that i already loved all the things it was pulling from. Generally though, it really did seem like people just hated how dark it was. (Though i offer up that theory concerning this, that many people originally experienced the game as being actually darker than it should have been, because i remember the original release disabling some lighting effects on less powerful PC's.)

Rather than labyrinthine, winding level designs, i'm much more concerned about a shooter having individually broad combat spaces that can allow for a wide range of approaches and tactics. I don't really care if a level winds back on itself a dozen times or is a straight shot from point a to point b, i just want the design of that level to serve the mechanics in interesting ways. I also didn't really think the the RoTT remake was all that great, i thought its levels were very narrow and filled with bad bits of geometry to constantly get hooked up on as i moved around, so i quit playing after only a couple hours. (So there's your caveat to cling to, if somebody wants to tell me that game opens up at all, i'll give it more time. I did grow up with the kinds of games it emulates though, and it rang false to me in a kind of surprisingly upsetting way.) Also, shortly after reading your post, i saw this preview and was kind of amused and thought perhaps it might be relevant here. An omnipresent dual-wield mechanic that even extends to dual-wielding knives is definitely a dumb little old-school touch. I have hard time getting a grasp on what kind of game New Order will actually be, the trailers are definitelly packed full with obviously scripted setpieces, both character-driven and action-driven, but there are also brief glimpses of large wide-open environments, and Starbreeze's FPS history has a clear emphasis on open-ended designs. Wolfenstein: New Order could really end up anywhere on the spectrum, it's kind of fruitless speculation to make for now.

The Darkness and Assault on Dark Athena are both well worth playing. Assault on Dark Athena is the sequel to the first Riddick game, but it includes an extensively remade and updated version of Escape from Butcher Bay, so it's a pretty damn nice package. The sequel to The Darkness was not made by Starbreeze and is not as good. (While not terrible, it's a completely different game tonally, lacks the open-ended world, and also lacks the kind of inverted survival-horror thing of you being the horrible thing lurking in the dark.) Just to round out the Starbreeze talk, Syndicate was also not quite the disaster it was made out to be. There's some solid, frenetic shooting to be had, but you can definitely feel the impact of its troubled development cycle. (The guys who founded Machine Games left during development of Syndicate.)

You don't have to, near the bonfire in the swamp is a creaky wooden elevator and a few ladders that take you to a path that heads almost directly back to Firelink.

Be careful about that Tribunal content, starting a new game with it installed will push you towards it almost immediately, but you are absolutely not ready to do it. Get as far as Mournhold so you can stop the attacks, but then leave it alone. The caverns beneath Mournhold are the hardest dungeons in the game, you might even be better off doing the second expansion, Bloodmoon, before Tribunal. Both are geared towards higher level characters though, try to be in the vicinity of 20-30 before touching them. Tribunal, in particular, is good to leave for after the main quest, since its story ties into that a lot and the items you get in the main quest will make it tremendously more manageable. As for finding quests, aside from the obvious ones - the main quest, the guilds, and a couple other factions - there really are quite a number of incidental NPC's that can start random side quests, but you'll usually be able to tell right away if the NPC has a quest to offer, because they won't be spitting out generic dialogue at you. (They'll usually have a unique introduction that cuts straight to the point, if i recall correctly.) If you don't feel like talking to every single NPC though, hitting up those rumor/whatever dialogues over and over is the way to find the quest starts in a given area.

There's a new rebel stronghold area in AE that has a possible encounter with a second under-construction flagship. The fight is tough, but you only need to win once, and it's nowhere near as difficult as any of the three fights with the final boss. It's a good encounter to beef up your resource pool with, because the rewards for beating it are quite tremendous.

The Starbreeze games were fairly deft and purposed in how and why they established their very grimly violent tones, so i want to believe that this game won't be as reckessly callous as you feel you're perceiving it to be, but i guess we'll see when it comes out. Don't expect it to pull punches though, those guys don't really have a history of that. Republic Commando is one of the few Star Wars games released during the prequel-era that is really worth playing, it's really quite good. I seem to recall hearing that the PC version can be a pain in the ass to get running correctly on some setups though, so do your diligence before buying. (I think the issues tended more towards strange bugs popping up during gameplay, and less towards simply getting it running.)

Absolutely, I don't think there's really any question that Feige is the reason it all works. This piece was making the rounds a few days ago and i think it's a pretty interesting read.