Oh yes, I definitely agree -- it probably wasn’t the number one factor in that choice, but I bet it was on their radar.

I think that the jingoism and propaganda take is accurate and legitimate, because it is absolutely and 100% true that a group of American interventionists ventilating brown people in the name of freedom as a piece of entertainment *is* problematic, but at the same time, Wildlands’s story was so toothless that I don’t…

Nomad, a man calling himself Walker, your brother, has led a rogue unit of spec-ops commandos with wild and fantastically unique but kinda nonsensical appearances called the Ghost Wolves to take over the island archipelago of Auroa. They’ve stolen a drone army and are holding the world hostage, unless their demands…

I mean, doesn’t this article posit that the next game made up a fictional location to avoid that outcome? It’s not a provable assertion, sure, and has some holes since you have to imagine Breakpoint was in development even before Wildlands released, but I’d say that it’s at least reasonable that wanting to avoid…

I think the premise that Bloodborne, for example, is based *entirely* on being challenging is a bit disingenuous. Maybe *just* being a hard-ass game is all it is to some people, but it’s a whole lot more than that to others.

Most def. I am all for a new RPG, wouldn’t even have to be Dragon Age, that functions like tabletop games. I mean, if they want games to be a service they can monetize, that model is a lot more like a tabletop than a film or book, which is the opposite model (a one-and-done story or experience).

If I could basically…

Thing here, I think, is that in order to pull off that concept at a reasonable scale, Bioware would have to write even one story where the main character wasn’t the god-given most important person in the whole world -- and I think the critically panned DA2 was like the only time they ever did that.

Hey, could the apple of eden/ties to Valhalla make our protagonist functionally immortal so that this will be a full soulslike? That’d be pretty wild and neat.

Or/also, a valkyrie/shieldmaiden.

Honest answer: I am, unfortunately, not the person to give you that judgment. I don’t love Dark Souls, and in fact I didn’t even finish 3 (and have never played 1 or 2, though I have watched them streamed so I’m relatively familiar with them). The themes, locales, and stories had a really interesting backbone, but…

Yeah, that section of Bloodborne is tough. The whole first area is a tutorial, and then Gascoigne is a major difficulty gate meant to test the player’s accumulated knowledge, and to provide a training ground for learning to gun-stun. He’s generally one of the toughest bosses for first-time players, and there aren’t…

I feel like very few will, sadly. They’ll either flock to it and berate those who don’t use it, or they’ll decide it’s not the correct way to play and it’s a silly, unbalanced extra mode (because it’s too hard for them to find enjoyable), without a hint of self-awareness.

I can’t speak to Sekiro’s themes, having not…

I don’t want to drag you down a difficulty in soulslikes discussion (I saw people getting real shitty with you in maybe Tim’s post from like a week ago, and I am sorry they were being such unrepentant jerks), but I do want to weigh in to say that Sekiro is a strange one in terms of accessibility.

Hard disagree with all those things. They’re either wholly subjective or so vague that they can’t even be nailed down (like saying “presentation is pretty awful all around,” but following it up with “some of the presentation aspects are non-awful.”

This isn’t a dig against you, I just reckon this’ll be one of those…

Me too. I’m sad we’ll never get a sequel basically because of a bunch of toxic, angry fans were mad that it was intentionally a little different.

DmC was good tho.

I don’t play or really even like Fortnite so I have zero skin in this game but honestly if respawned players don’t just jump out of the back of the van I’ll do do a disappoint.

Good. Good. Let the madness consume you.

If you’re enjoying yourself this much, and appreciate what the game offers in this way, you really should check out the chalice dungeons. They are fixed in difficulty even in NG+, and their progress is independent, so you can start them now and then go back later. At the very…

Add in direct co-op play, and change “ending” to “entire final act,” and maybe throw in like one more biome location in some dang snow, while we’re at it.

See, I hated Sherry’s section because of how heavily scripted it was, and it came off as boring when I had to do it the third time because I hadn’t been sitting in exactly the correct spot (maybe if I’d never needed to repeat it I’d still look back at it as scary) — whereas I (mostly) found Mr. X and a hall full of…

I do think one additional and important distinction worth noting, however, is that in Warframe you can earn platinum (the premium currency) through trade with other players, so even the completely paywall-locked items are still obtainable without spending real money, after a fashion (haha, after a fashion, because…