CollegeBaby

No you're right. English used to be like that but changed for some reason. Most European countries apparently keep the old system. When a billion is referred to as being 1,000,000,000,000, or 1012, or one-million-million, what is now called a billion or 109 is called milliard. Milliard means one-thousand-million. Variations of this word are used in most other European languages. 1015 or one-thousand-billion is a billiard. 1018 becomes a trillion. 1021 or one-thousand-trillion is a trilliard and so on. The reason being that a billion is one-million-million (1,000,0002) and a trillion is one-million-million-million (1,000,0003). Long and Short scale comparison. Speaking of weird naming conventions, Americans get rants from Commonwealth nations for supposedly butchering English, but I have to say they are in the right for abbreviating the word Mathematics to Math instead of Maths, which is the way it tends to be said in other English speaking countries. Mathematics doesn't have an 's' at the end because it is a plural. You don't have "one Mathematic" or "many Mathematics". I believe the 's' exists because it refers to a noun, as opposed to the adjective on which the word is based. Mathematic is the adjective - Mathematics is the field of Mathematic study. Aerobic is the adjective - Aerobics is the field of Aerobic techniques. #StopSayingMaths2014

Oh man people are still arguing about objective game reviews? What is there objective to say about a game that isn't just a wiki article? Well considering a review is an analysis of a piece of media/art/entertainment while a court hearing is an analysis of real world events - the slippery slope stops pretty damn short of giving up all decisions to subjectivity. They keep talking as if reviewers shouldn't be biased. What actually is a non-biased critic? What do they have so say about anything that is actually meaningful? What qualification can they possibly have to give their analysis of a piece of entertainment? What does an un-biased critic think is the definition of a "good" video game? It's a sad reflection that the most intelligent comment is right at the bottom of the heap.

How difficult do you find it fighting higher level enemies? Like at what level difference do they feel like you shouldn't be fighting them, and to what extent can you defeat a high level enemy with the right tactics?

I had seen this before the podcast but at first I was so not interested in another depresso survival shooty stabby thing in this age of constant zombie outbreaks and post-nuclear wastelands. It wasn't until Sean explained that it doesn't have any supernatural or science fiction jibba jabba, and that it models the emotional turmoil of the characters that I became super interested.

Yeah some reviews mentioned that. It has apparently strayed from older Bioware quest design where they tended to have a real story behind them with a theme that relates to the lore in an interesting way, then give the player a chance to leave their mark or otherwise take a stance on something in a personal way. I guess it should be expected to have a lot more MMO style quests given the game is supposed to be so huge with a lot of areas, but it raises the question does the game really need to be this big in the first place? Is it valuable to have a 80+ hour game if it is padded out with filler collection/fetch quests? It's one of those back of the box features to say "100 hours gameplay" and "open world with lots of quests" but there's never the checkbox for "quests that are actually good." As long as there are some good quests I could skip the bad ones and hopefully not compromise my party members. It's something that has me skeptical about Witcher 3. Witcher 2 was clever about its quest design - one quest even openly parodied collection quests - but Witcher 2 wasn't a massive open world RPG.

Sorry not that I know of. I was just daydreaming about Dishonored again.

Yeah the Giant Bomb review says there is no conditional AI programming to the extent of if-then-else statements. Not surprised, but I tended to take control of that myself anyway.

Yeah I would expect it's designed to fit into an action game and it's there if you need to get a better handle on the action when it gets overwhelming, which is actually fine to me. It's something I really wish was in something like Dragon's Dogma which didn't let you directly control your party members or even give them complex orders which got really frustrating if you needed your mage to cast a damn fire spell on an enemy that was only weak to fire... but they just stood around like a zombie. Does Inquisition have friendly-fire on AoE spells and backstab zones behind enemies? That's the sort of thing a pause mode is really handy for.

Sleep darts, stun grenades, choke holds... it's not like you can't make a challenging emergent game while using non-lethal tools. Paint ball guns and bean bag guns sound like the kind of quirky silliness that should be in a Far Cry game.

What I've heard of the tactical camera is that is a pretty weak add-on. Nice that it's there, but totally insubstantial. Nowhere near comprehensive enough to play it like a real-time-with-pause RPG. A token gesture to Origins fans that just borders on being insulting more than anything.

OK a thing I discovered is that how you kill an animal effects what you get from it. If it dies in a fire or explosion the skin is damaged beyond use. Makes sense. Killing an animal cleanly (machete or arrow) gets you more craftables and "karma points" which lead to lower store prices and more AI backup. Basically things that make it easier to kill more people. Sure sounds like a Dalai Lama quote. Oh man they really missed a golden opportunity to completely bastardize Eastern reincarnation mythology by incorporating it as a death/respawn system. Disappointed in you Ubisoft.

First link has a space at the end. lol internet.

I liked O&S, hard as it was, because it seemed pretty trivial to separate them for a few one-on-one attacks. Healing spells and regen mana sounds like an opportunity for cheesing. I remember Demon's Souls had a similar loophole. I don't have the patience to use those sorts of tactics these days so it doesn't matter. At least it means you must rarely have the problem of depleting your healing items and gimping yourself before getting to a boss.

Yeah I think it's a pretty amusing gag ending. Seems to be Far Cry's way of telling you "if you want to play this like a good guy, then don't play the game at all." Yeah there is plant harvesting so that could work. I presume they didn't add something like that because you don't solve it by shooting at it. It just goes to show how arbitrary the upgrade system is. All this illegal gun trading and nobody anywhere has a weapon holster unless they tear it from the back of a mountain goat. Apparently everyone in Kyrat is an expert leather craftsman. True but making money from murder sprees is not efficient and it's not the only way to make money in the game, as opposed to Far Cry 3/4 where crafting is only possible by killing animals. The police also provides the player with an interesting gameplay challenge. Killing pigs to make a thingamajig to hold more weapons is just boring, and treats animals as trivial tools. I've heard people mention this game has some sort of Karma system, which made me groan so hard I almost lost my voice, but it could provide an interesting dynamic to this problem. I have no idea what it entails though. I did like the way Dishonored handled this sort of thing with its morality system; by doing more violent acts the game retaliated with a more violent world.

Another day, another garbage PC port. Well looks like I'll be skipping this for a while. Too bad, it sounded decent.

Well I don't mind being different from Dark Souls (presumably that's what Bloodborne will be) as long as it isn't different in arbitrary or broken ways, which is what Dark Souls 2 felt like. It seemed like a relevant comparison to Lords of the Fallen in that both games seem to be aping Dark Souls while attempting to put their own spin on things. Something that really bothered me about DS2 is how much of the enemy encounters and bosses relied on overwhelming you with enemy numbers. In my opinion the Dark Souls combat system completely shits itself in group combat unless you have one of the handful of weapons with long horizontal arcs, but the excess of it in DS2 just made the game feel broken especially considering it removed certain invincibility frames. Another thing was the collectible life gems removing most of the threat of damage later in the game. This was a problem in Demon's Souls, and Dark Souls fixed it with the limited estus flasks. I don't know what on Earth they were thinking putting both systems in Dark Souls 2. Dark Souls seemed a bit stacked towards DEX and/or INT builds so playing a tank might be an interesting change of pace for me. Less content is good as long as it is quality content. Dark Souls 2 felt like too much quantity over quality. Does this game have multiplayer at all? I don't think I've seen this discussed anywhere so I assume not. I think I'll give this game a shake if it goes on sale. There seem to be a lot of complaints of technical issues so I'll give it some time anyway.

What are people's opinions on how this game compares to Dark Souls 2? That game was even closer to Dark Souls than this appears to be, but even that managed to bugger with the core game in ways that made me not want to play it.

^Looks like the lead character artist on Dot Gobbler is still getting work.

I had the same reaction as Chris to the GTA V first-person video. I didn't care much for GTA V when it came out. I'm sure the game's great, but I've already been playing these games for over a decade now and it didn't seem to bring much more to the table. However I love exploring games in first person, so this adds a whole new mode to experience the game that I want to play it more than I ever did before. There are so few first person games that exist on this scale, and with a full first person body model as well. I was always going to wait for the PC port anyway so this is just cherry on top. I played first-person mods for GTA IV and Saints Row 4 and it's cool, but not the same thing as a dedicated first person mode. I hope the textures can hold up in first person.

Now that we've almost drained the well on Far Cry's racial insensitivity, does anyone else feel uncomfortable with the way animal violence is handled in this game? I don't really have a problem with the core ability to kill animals in a game. It's one thing to build a wildlife simulation (which I think is great), but Far Cry 3 and 4 build systems that deliberately encourage you to exploit and kill animals. And all for what? To build a big leather satchel to carry more assault rifle ammo and then sell animal skins on the black market. This isn't a survival simulator like Minecraft where you must eat just to stay alive. Far Cry has a built in poaching simulator, which is made more authentic by the fact almost every animal in Far Cry 3 was endangered in the real world. There are even missions where you must kill one-of-a-kind animals for the biggest and best equipment upgrades. I know people always say "but but but you also kill PEOPLE so why aren't you complaining about THAT huh!?!" The truth is I don't like killing people in video games either. Whenever a game like Metro Last Light, Dishonored or Deus Ex offers a pacifist run I always prefer that because it feels less gross and I think it provides a more interesting and unique gameplay challenge, as well with using dialogue skills in RPGs like Fallout. I also wish the experience system was removed from these games, which exists to create even more incentive to kill people that you don't need to engage with, just so you can get better at killing even more people. The system of animal crafting is made even more gross by the fact it is exists to fit into the core feedback loop at making you more effective at killing humans for it's ever-growing cycle of violence. However I think there are some differences between violence against animals and humans in video games. -Killing humans usually makes for a much better gameplay experience than killing defenseless animals that offer little or no challenge. Humans have more complex AI with a wider range of behaviors and tactics, and compared to animals they exist on a more level playing field in terms of combat ability. Therefore reward comes from the challenge of fighting them. What would the reward be for killing animals without the craftables? How much time did people spend killing animals in Far Cry 2? Most people probably shot a few zebras, got bored after a few minutes then forgot about it for the rest of the game. It's one thing to kill tigers out of self-defense, but like I said my main issue is with the way the game creates incentives for killing. -Most of the humans are antagonistic and will risk their life to hunt you down, while the game discourages you from killing allies. I can't speak much about the enemies in Far Cry 4, but in 3 they were total scumbags. Pirates, private mercenaries, slave traders, rapists, endangered animal traffickers, torturers, sadists, war criminals. Animals are a neutral party and don't have the moral responsibility of humans. So when I see a large number of people react to the news that you can ride elephants into enemy camps in Far Cry 4 my reaction was not "omg sick baddass elephant mofo lolz." Set against Far Cry 3's politics towards animal exploitation, my reaction was "this game has finally achieved 100% complete parody of itself." Having said all that, I really want to play this game just so I can test how viable it is to do a vegan playthrough. I also want to avoid killing humans as much as possible, but that will be a necessary evil of getting through the main missions. I would have done this in Far Cry 3, but I expected that game to be much harder than it actually was, so this will also act to make a weak ass shootyman game have some decent challenge to it.

Don't forget Christmas Duck Amiibo!

Having 10 studios work on a game actually sounds like a good way create a total mess of a game. What a logistical nightmare to be a project manager for that.

I've been really tempted to play Origins as well but I'm trying to hold off otherwise I think I might end up disappointing myself while playing Inquisition. Also that games is like 50 hours.

I will play this game if the hair merges into a sentient monster that you kill as the final boss to destroy all anime hair in the world. So basically this needs to be a Hideki Kamiya game.

Yup. This will actually be my first Origin game. Hopefully it doesn't convince me it should be the last game I play on Origin.