buzz_killington

The Snyder Cut should be studied as a cultural phenomena in the years to come. There was an incredible amount of hype for a re-edit of a bafflingly boring super hero movie done by a director who made an average movie in 2007 and has made hot trash ever since.

How was Zack Snyder elevated to some sort of auteur whose revision of a two year old average film would salvage the DC verse? Is this just a case of super-hardcore DC wants wanting this to be good and playing into the hype?

Having said all that, I do have a morbid curiosity to watch this because I hate myself and don't value my time.

This is fake wokeness applied to the lowest hanging fruit with not-even-remotely-a-thing "scandals". There's real sexism and transphobia in the world and these guys aren't even in the same galaxy.

What would canceling the G4 revival accomplish in the fight to make the world more just?

Once you play it as a PS1 era rhythm game instead of an action game, everything clicks. It's not any easier but at least it makes sense.

@bigsocrates: Immortals specially feels like they had a free studio and a quota to meet. At least their production pipelines haven't been ground to a halt like EA. I guess we'll see where the chips fall.

Also, they mention even freakin' Skull & Bones as a "real video game that will be released at some point" in the call but not BG&E 2. At this point I think that game trumps Duke Nukem Forever in the development hell category. 2008 to infinity!

I guess I read it as "cut down from 3-4 AAA releases a year to 1 which is probably a live service game like The Division". But you're right, they're not 100% moving away.

Apparently in today's earnings call, Ubisoft CFO has mentioned that they're going to pivot away from "relying" on several AAA releases a year more into F2P and squeezing what they can out of their back catalogue. Link from IGN.

He also mentioned that their new big investor Tencent is supposed to help them crack F2P on mobile in China and beyond.

This is weird since Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, The Division and Siege all seemed to do well for them over the past few years and they haven't had notable huge flops unlike EA. I can see they do one AC game every other years until that well runs dry, and they keep remaking stuff and do one new live service game every 2-3 years (Star Wars probably next up).

This is kinda sad also. Another AAA powerhouse signaling a pivot away from this business model & yet fewer big games going forward. I think EA is going to do the same very soon, but they're pretty much there already anyways.

Such a shame. Hopefully just a coincidence that it's CDPR and that the hackers are just average criminals & the note is just some psychological warfare.

But if it turns out to be some targeted effort by some angered gamers, it'll show that some people live very sad lives.

I got rid of my PS4 in 2016 and missed out on all the Sony exclusives since. I'm looking forward to catching up on the upgraded PS5 versions of TLOU2, God of War and hopefully getting into the new Ratchet & Clank sometime this summer! I have a PC with a 1060 and I can still play most Xbox games on there (on medium at 1080, but still) so Series X has little appeal to me.

I tried Stadia over the holidays to play Cyberpunk and the Immortals demo. I even tried it on a 25Mbps LTE hotspot on my laptop. I was fairly impressed with the tech.

What they should really do is open submission to all developers, including Indies, offered as white-label or "Powered by Stadia". Then anyone with a Unity or Unreal game can sell a 4k 60fps experience that plays instantly in any browser instead of worrying about publishing the game on a bunch of platforms.

Players pay for the game once, directly to the developer, and can play on any platform. The developer only has to build and maintain 1 version of the game. The developer pays Google for sever time and hosting fees (basically like AWS or Google Cloud). Everybody wins.

I went back and saw all endings, except for the "go out in blaze of glory" with Johnny ending. My instinct went towards Arasaka because I still believed Takemura wasn't dead and he'd factor in. His end felt untimely. As it turns out, there's an ending where he factors in- he replaces Hellman as your driver and delivers you the Mikoshi contract on the space station. I'd mistaken his friendship during our missions as genuine, but ultimately he only had an unwavering devotion to Saburo Arasaka, who is a ghastly human being. I'm happy I was spared this ending to remember Takemura more fondly.

So the Arasaka endings were the first two I saw. Going into Mikoshi sounded awful & repulsive. Refusing it and going back to Earth, unsure of what's next, felt pretty appropriate. My reasoning to go with the Arasaka to begin with ending was I cared too much about Panam to involve her, and I didn't trust that Johnny could execute his plan.

Learning that Yorinobu was basically a somewhat noble anarchist who wanted to dismantle Arasaka from the inside made things click. I had totally misjudged him. I'd thought he was just a thug.

I wanted to get back with Panam after returning but that wasn't possible in this ending, at least explicitly. Maybe back on Earth V could track her down and they'd get back together.

The Panam ending felt a bit bittersweet. I liked riding out into the sunset with her, but I was so hesitant to risk their whole clan on a suicide mission. Mitch implied it might've been for loot on Saul's side, but I think Saul genuinely wanted to help. The nomads were portrayed as very noble people.

The "Johnny gets to live" ending dragged a bit for me. I genuinely saw myself in V and the Johnny epilogue felt like a different game.

The Panam ending had a sweetness to it but also a feeling of very dark guilt. If she wasn't the leader of the Aldecaldos, and V wasn't her partner, they'd definitely refuse his request for help. But they had no choice since Panam was their leader. Although the Aldecaldos do keep reassuring V that she/he's truly family and that they'd do a suicide mission for one of their own, so maybe this earning is deserved.

Also a special shoutout to the Gary the Prophet side quest. I wish that side quest went deeper. I know they definitely wanted to go deeper and have more fun with the conspiracy theory side of this dark future and dabble a bit in Rockstar territory with some goofy missions but probably didn't get there budget wise.

I applaud CDPR's ambition to pull off this production. I felt like 3-4 Call of Duty campaign's worth of incredibly fluid & detailed first person visuals alonside this jigsaw puzzle of an open-world dynamic storyline and immersive-sim style combat sandboxes. However the world felt empty and unpolished and driving always felt horrendous except for the bikes. I had a terrible time every time I accidentally went into the water under the highways. I only drove the bike and hated Claire's dull race quests.

But I still chose to drive my bike around town even into the Badlands almost the entire game. And I finished all side quests, except for Kerry's romantic lead and the Cyberpsychos elimination quest. ~70 hours total.

I loved the game, probably the one that's immersed me the most since Breath of the Wild, in a very different way. I was completely sucked in and only wanted to play this game for almost 10 days. I had vivid dreams walking around the Night City game world. It's so enchanting and intoxicating as a production. Every single significant character you got to spend time with was genuinely well realized and had something real to say- or at least an engaging twist to their story.

I just started a 2nd playthrough in small bits and pieces on Stadia just to see the female V and go for a different combat spec. I know the game's flawed, but I love it.

The developers should feel proud of what they've accomplished. I don't think the console situation is worse than some stuff we've seen this generation. Avengers & Control one to mind where it's basically unplayable on base consoles. But there's hysteria since this game's marketing was overhyped. I think the news cycle will get old.