7 hours ago, Jegergryte said:

Also, as it was called out - and in these Mandalorian days - I found the mention of Yaddle cool, also that Greez found her attractive... Cool.

The gameplay is fun, running, jumping, rinse and repeat, but I find the conversations fun, informative, and better than a lot of the jumpy-bumpy twirly-swirly glowstick show.

Yeah, I really enjoy BD-1. His design and beeps instantly endear him to me. And he's done some things at a few important parts in the story that just made me cheer and giggle to myself. But I've always had a soft spot for the "support" characters, and giving them time to shine and be awesome. And so far, BD-1 had had at least one of those, and it was great.

5 hours ago, Stan Fresh said:

I'm just glad we didn't get some rage-based hatewhiner as protagonist.

Yeah, though I personally didn't have an issue with Starkiller, who I assume you are referring to. Given his backstory, I thought it was fairly fitting.

But yeah I like Cal, he's very endearing and easy to empathize with. His dialogue in the different conversations feels genuine, for someone who isn't a jaded, bitter post O66 character. Just someone who is doing his best to survive, but still believes in the Jedi philosophy and ways.

I honestly have zero real issue with the narrative and characters, my issues with the game so far, are purely game mechanics.

Like a particular issue that I still don't understand why they decided on this is thus:

So if you want to grab onto the climbing surfaces, to scurry up a vertical surface, you have to press a button to tell the game "I want to stick to this surface and climb it." You have about 1.5 seconds to indicate this, before Cal falls off, usually to his death since these climbing surfaces are usually over sheer pits. When I saw this I thought "Huh, that's weird, I guess it's because the surfaces will be dual purpose, and sometimes, depending on where I'm trying to get to, I will need to climb the surface, or wallrun along it. And this is the way to tell the game "No, I don't want to wallrun right now, I want to climb." So it knows which movement mechanic to activate. But...no, that's not it at all. The climbing and wallrun surfaces are completely segregated, and there is no situation at all, where the paths overlap. It's completely obvious when you are meant to climb, and meant to run. So...WHY, in the seven hecks, would you introduce a button requirement, into a mechanic, that has been used for decades, and is usually just an automatic thing the character does when coming into contact with the surface? It serves no purpose whatsoever, and only serves as another way for the player to goof up something and lose health.

Also, seriously, the sliding stuff can just go die in a fire. I've had more respawn deaths from failed sliding challenges, than combat related stuff.

1 hour ago, Stan Fresh said:

Guess they think gamers couldn't have handled a female protagonist after seeing a movie or two with a female lead 🤷‍♂️

Given how inflammatory discussions about Rey can get, they may have not been wholly unjustified in that thought.

3 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Given how inflammatory discussions about Rey can get, they may have not been wholly unjustified in that thought.

1) They still would have bought the game.

2) Allowing bigots to dictate terms never leads anywhere good.

1 hour ago, Stan Fresh said:

Guess they think gamers couldn't have handled a female protagonist after seeing a movie or two with a female lead 🤷‍♂️

6 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Given how inflammatory discussions about Rey can get, they may have not been wholly unjustified in that thought.

Coming from people who seem to think that there are too many male protagonists, this is pretty rich. He's using your logic. I take issue with that logic in that I don't think it's necessary to have quotas or equilibrium one way or another! It should just be what they think makes sense for the story. Some stories start with a character, other stories start with the story, that characters are then made to fill. All I want are well-written, interesting characters. It never really crossed my mind that two of the three important Mandalorian characters (before The Mandalorian) were women (Sabine Wren and Bo Katan [two of my all-time favorite characters]. The man was Pre Visla) until someone complained on twitter that quote: "There is no f****** reason why the Mandalorian couldn't have been female." so I came up reasons as to why their point was wrong, using their own logic (aside from the obvious errors in their argument). Since the Mandalorian is male, it actually achieves the 50% mark they claim to be aiming for.

4 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

Coming from people who seem to think that there are too many male protagonists

Bwaha, how obvious can you get.

I mean, this is the industry that brought us "female characters are too expensive and hard to animate."

3 minutes ago, Kaigen said:

I mean, this is the industry that brought us "female characters are too expensive and hard to animate."

Boob physics broke the budget.

5 hours ago, Stan Fresh said:

Bwaha, how obvious can you get.

I think you misspelled "oblivious" there.

6 hours ago, Stan Fresh said:

1) They still would have bought the game.

2) Allowing bigots to dictate terms never leads anywhere good.

True on both counts, but the one positive is that we're spared complaining from the incel manbaby crowd about how the game's lead protagonist was a "Mary Sue" if Respawn had gone with a female lead character.

So... hooray?

11 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

the game's lead protagonist was a "Mary Sue" if Respawn had gone with a female lead character.

Not a Mary/Gary Sue by any measure. He had training, for one (aside from the other criteria). Regardless of the gender of the character, you cannot reasonably call Cal Kestis a Mary Sue. (I don't remember Ahsoka, Sabine, Hera, Leia, Padme, Iden Versio, literally any female character other than Rey being called a Mary Sue, so your point seems rather off base)

Nope, nope nope nope. **** right off right now with derailing this into another bickerfest between the two of you. Stop it right the **** now.

Discuss the game, or **** off. We have enough threads derailed with this tired argument, we don't need more.

26 minutes ago, KungFuFerret said:

Nope, nope nope nope. **** right off right now with derailing this into another bickerfest between the two of you. Stop it right the **** now.

Discuss the game, or **** off. We have enough threads derailed with this tired argument, we don't need more.

Sorry.

Okay. I thought the story was decent, wasn't stand out, but it wasn't bad. I thought that the characters were okay, but

One thing I really liked was how they justified "learning new powers" and how they sort of sprinkled tutorials throughout the story. I really liked the flashbacks, though seeing the clones turn on the Jedi is always sad to me. I've got a soft-spot for clone troopers. I thought that the bits with Eno Cordova were interesting,

I thought BD was an interesting companion, though I think they played up the puppy-dog a little bit too much.

This is a much more general gripe, but I really don't like the lightsaber mechanics in any video game I've seen so far, with a lightsaber you should be able to just cut them in half in one swing, not have to hit them again, and again, and again. Boss fights are another thing I've always had something of a gripe with, because suspension of disbelief wlys out the window when I landed 17 solid strikes to a relatively unprotected opponent with a lightsaber, and yet they aren't showing any ill-effects. With blasters, there is a little bit more of a suspension of disbelief there. It's a big problem I've had with SWTOR/KOTOR in the past, but this is really not something they can fix, so I don't know why I bother. I've always been more one for strategy games anyway.

I thought the ship looked decent, but the extra-long wing seemed unnecessary, (though when has that ever stopped Star Wars? ) but all-in-all, a decently interesting design.

51 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

One thing I really liked was how they justified "learning new powers" and how they sort of sprinkled tutorials throughout the story. I really liked the flashbacks, though seeing the clones turn on the Jedi is always sad to me. I've got a soft-spot for clone troopers. I thought that the bits with Eno Cordova were interesting,

It reminds me of that Tekken movie they made many years ago, where the protagonist keeps learning new combat tricks by having flashbacks to training with his mother. Not a bad thing, but it did make me chuckle that they used the trope of it.

51 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

I thought BD was an interesting companion, though I think they played up the puppy-dog a little bit too much.

Eh, I enjoyed his puppy dog behavior. That's something I always find interesting about portrayal of AI/Droids in stuff, when they try to make them behave in a way that causes people to empathize with them. Sure, it's a calculated part on behalf of the game devs, but is it really that odd to think that actual droid designers wouldn't incorporate that kind of behavior into real robots we are making? To make it where we are less creeped out by them, and openly accept them into our lives. To be able to convey meaning with motion (oh, BD wagged his butt, he apparently liked that upgrade I gave him. He hung his head, he is also sad that something bad happened), to allow more nuanced communication between the droid and owner? I mean, it works. The way we can simply hear his beeps and boops, and movements, and without any actual human dialogue, we know what BD is trying to convey, it's an effective design strategy. Both for convincing people to buy BD-1 merch, but also in the theoretical "actually buy BD-1 to help you in your life" day off in the future. So I don't really have an issue with it, as I see it being a very natural, and highly likely way that our robotics experts will likely develop such beings.

56 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

This is a much more general gripe, but I really don't like the lightsaber mechanics in any video game I've seen so far, with a lightsaber you should be able to just cut them in half in one swing, not have to hit them again, and again, and again. Boss fights are another thing I've always had something of a gripe with, because suspension of disbelief wlys out the window when I landed 17 solid strikes to a relatively unprotected opponent with a lightsaber, and yet they aren't showing any ill-effects. With blasters, there is a little bit more of a suspension of disbelief there. It's a big problem I've had with SWTOR/KOTOR in the past, but this is really not something they can fix, so I don't know why I bother. I've always been more one for strategy games anyway.

I thought the ship looked decent, but the extra-long wing seemed unnecessary, (though when has that ever stopped Star Wars? ) but all-in-all, a decently interesting design.

I rarely like lightsaber combat in the SW Games at all really. I'm more of a Force user, which is why I really enjoyed Force Unleashed. As I thought the Force mechanics in that game were REALLY intuitive, and easy to use to manipulate the world around you. The Force mechanics in FO feel really clunky by comparison. I think my favorite saber mechanics were probably in Jedi Outcast and Academy. They weren't great, but they did feel really fluid and fun to mess with.

1 minute ago, KungFuFerret said:

Eh, I enjoyed his puppy dog behavior. That's something I always find interesting about portrayal of AI/Droids in stuff, when they try to make them behave in a way that causes people to empathize with them. Sure, it's a calculated part on behalf of the game devs, but is it really that odd to think that actual droid designers wouldn't incorporate that kind of behavior into real robots we are making? To make it where we are less creeped out by them, and openly accept them into our lives. To be able to convey meaning with motion (oh, BD wagged his butt, he apparently liked that upgrade I gave him. He hung his head, he is also sad that something bad happened), to allow more nuanced communication between the droid and owner? I mean, it works. The way we can simply hear his beeps and boops, and movements, and without any actual human dialogue, we know what BD is trying to convey, it's an effective design strategy. Both for convincing people to buy BD-1 merch, but also in the theoretical "actually buy BD-1 to help you in your life" day off in the future. So I don't really have an issue with it, as I see it being a very natural, and highly likely way that our robotics experts will likely develop such beings.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I thought it was cute, I just think it was played a little bit too strong. Very minor issue, overall, I liked the puppy-dog behavior. Dogs are great companions, so it also makes sense for the droid buddy to be dog-like.

2 minutes ago, KungFuFerret said:

I rarely like lightsaber combat in the SW Games at all really. I'm more of a Force user, which is why I really enjoyed Force Unleashed. As I thought the Force mechanics in that game were REALLY intuitive, and easy to use to manipulate the world around you. The Force mechanics in FO feel really clunky by comparison. I think my favorite saber mechanics were probably in Jedi Outcast and Academy. They weren't great, but they did feel really fluid and fun to mess with.

Cool. I don't know a lot about those games (the only one I've seen any gameplay of was a game-movie for Force Unleashed I/II [kinda funny that the acronym for Force Unleashed is FU]), but from what I've heard, they were pretty good.

Just now, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

Cool. I don't know a lot about those games (the only one I've seen any gameplay of was a game-movie for Force Unleashed I/II [kinda funny that the acronym for Force Unleashed is FU]), but from what I've heard, they were pretty good.

They get a lot of nerd hate because Starkiller becomes incredibly OP at one point, pulling off a move that just makes all of them toss up their hands and yell foul. Never really bothered me though. But if you are looking for a fun SW game that lets you go hog wild with fairly well thought out Force mechanics, and good saber mechanics (though not as much personal fun as the Force stuff), I'd suggest picking them up on a sale or something. They kind of felt like "God of War level crazy...but with a Star Wars skin." If you can embrace that vibe, they are insanely fun to play. Though the second one didn't hold my interest as much, story wise. It was just sort of ....meh. First one, really dang fun IMO though.

Yeah, I'm not much into single player story games to actually play them, but I'll take it under advisement. I'm generally more into the strategy game category. I thought the force pulling an ISD was over-the-top, but I thought the story was pretty interesting, and since it was a video game I was able to largely disregard the force-pulling an ISD.

8 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

Yeah, I'm not much into single player story games to actually play them, but I'll take it under advisement. I'm generally more into the strategy game category. I thought the force pulling an ISD was over-the-top, but I thought the story was pretty interesting, and since it was a video game I was able to largely disregard the force-pulling an ISD.

never really thought about SW as a strategy game, but I just came across this Empire at War, which is apparently an RTS. If you played it, is it any good?

11 hours ago, KungFuFerret said:

never really thought about SW as a strategy game, but I just came across this Empire at War, which is apparently an RTS. If you played it, is it any good?

Um. Yes. I might have played it before... for at least a couple hundred (Whoops! Turns out I lowballed. Just over 500 currently) hours. It by itself is decent, but to really get the full experience, I'd recommend getting the Thrawn's Revenge mod and maybe the Awakening of the Rebellion mod. They are conversion mods that are currently being developed and updated. Thrawn's Revenge has been around since about 2008, if I remember correctly. Both are finished products, they just add more stuff and tweak some things ongoing.

But yeah, I love it! I really like the ability to target subsystems, and the ability of bombers to go through shields (just not in TR, Corey removed it because he thought it didn't fit the lore) as it adds a new level to the strategy.

I would suggest playing the base game a little bit first (though you should get the Forces of Corruption expansion, it adds a new faction and a bunch of fun stuff), and then check out the mods.

Here is the link to the YouTube channel of the guy who makes the Thrawn's Revenge mod. He also made the spin-off mod Fall of the Republic (not sure if it's out yet, haven't been keeping up with the news in that regard): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC24e_8ncnLg-vptxVDNP-DA/featured

I haven't picked up the game in a while, been playing other games, but I should get back to it. For a 13 year old game, it holds up surprisingly well. Especially with the better mods. TR and AotR's graphics are unbelievable.

8 hours ago, KungFuFerret said:

I rarely like lightsaber combat in the SW Games at all really. I'm more of a Force user, which is why I really enjoyed Force Unleashed. As I thought the Force mechanics in that game were REALLY intuitive, and easy to use to manipulate the world around you. The Force mechanics in FO feel really clunky by comparison. I think my favorite saber mechanics were probably in Jedi Outcast and Academy. They weren't great, but they did feel really fluid and fun to mess with.

Yeah, the combat controls in this game do feel more on the clunky side of things. I've had a number of instances where I try to hit a button to do one thing (usually Force slow) and the game just freely doesn't give an eff and lets the baddie I've targeted get their attacks in before the power takes effect. Or doing an evade and still getting tagged by an enemy's attack. Or occasional instances where I'll make an attack and the enemy will pull off a perfect last-second dodge; with a boss fight I could kind of understand that, but I've had that happen with regular mooks, especially the smaller ones. It's not frequent enough to sour the game (though did happen most frequently on Dathomir), but it is frustrating when it happens.

Force Unleashed was a different beast, and was built around the idea of the character's main method of attack being the Force and that it was supposed to be as over-the-top as possible, so it makes sense that Force usage in that game was both easier to execute and far more potent than anything we'd previously seen before, and the lightsaber almost being secondary and there so that you could keep attacking once you'd burned through your Force meter. If I remember right, the main reason the game even got made in the first place was Lucas was shown a demo clip for a new in-game physics engine that had the central character do all sorts of crazy telekinesis-based Force stuff, and he told the folks "I want to play that game, make it happen."

With the Star Destroyer scene, I never heard munch in the way of "he's OP!" since that was literally the entire point of the game. If anything, most of the gripes I heard about that scene was from the PS and X-Box users who found it to be extremely frustrating due to the TIEs playing the roll of gorram bats trope.

8 hours ago, KungFuFerret said:

Eh, I enjoyed his puppy dog behavior. That's something I always find interesting about portrayal of AI/Droids in stuff, when they try to make them behave in a way that causes people to empathize with them. Sure, it's a calculated part on behalf of the game devs, but is it really that odd to think that actual droid designers wouldn't incorporate that kind of behavior into real robots we are making? To make it where we are less creeped out by them, and openly accept them into our lives. To be able to convey meaning with motion (oh, BD wagged his butt, he apparently liked that upgrade I gave him. He hung his head, he is also sad that something bad happened), to allow more nuanced communication between the droid and owner? I mean, it works. The way we can simply hear his beeps and boops, and movements, and without any actual human dialogue, we know what BD is trying to convey, it's an effective design strategy. Both for convincing people to buy BD-1 merch, but also in the theoretical "actually buy BD-1 to help you in your life" day off in the future. So I don't really have an issue with it, as I see it being a very natural, and highly likely way that our robotics experts will likely develop such beings.

Given we've had examples of exposition faeries (what BD-1 essentially is) done poorly in the past (Hey! Listen!), I'd rather have the resident EF be more on the "cute" side, especially given that it doesn't speak a language the audience can understand, and instead has to emote to get any sort of player attachment beyond "useful tool for progressing in the game."

Plus, given Star Wars audiences' favorable reactions to BB-8, again an overly cute droid companion, it'd make sense for Respawn to take note of that for a game that broad audiences were skeptical of due to EA's practices. To say nothing of Artoo-Detoo, who has been a fan favorite since the earliest days of the franchise and is seen as varying degrees of adorable (which was probably helped along by Threepio being a bit of a jerk towards the little guy) in spite of his design really not being essentially not much more than a trashcan on legs with rollerskates for feet.

18 hours ago, Stan Fresh said:

"Ultimately, we didn't go with an alien race, because, no pun intended, we thought that would alienate a lot of people."

Seems they thought that the audiences couldn't handle playing as something other than a regular Human, or at least what a number of the A-list video game companies tend to consider the "main audience" to be comprised mostly of teen-to-twentysomething males.

Again, not saying that they should have gone crazy with species options, but there are species in Star Wars that fall into the "bumpy forehead" trope for which Star Trek is well known for employing that it wouldn't have been impossible to simply give the lead a different color of skin (Chiss, Mirilians) when doing the character model renders, and it seriously couldn't have taken that much extra time and effort to add in a set of horns for a Zabrak model (not full on Darth Maul look, but instead something akin to Eeth Koth).

Then again, they also could have gone for a different ethnicity very easily; since Cal's ethnicity plays zero part in the story, why not go with Asian, African, or Hispanic (The Mandalorian did this by picking Pedro Pascal to portray the lead). Heck, if Cal had been Asian in appearance, there's a number of young and talented actors with the physical chops to make doing the mo-cap for the combat sequences simpler (and less expensive and time consuming) than training an actor with no previous experience in that realm. It might have spiced things up in terms of the video game industry to not have yet another video game's central protagonist be of the Caucasian persuasion.

Hopefully for the almost inevitable sequel (sales for this game appear to be quite strong thus far) Respawn will opt to open up the options for that game's protagonist, even if only a little, with Cal taking up the mentor role to a new Force-using character. Elsewise, they'd have to have Cal suffer from the Bag of Spilling trope and have to relearn most of the abilities he gained in this game.

1 hour ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Seems they thought that the audiences couldn't handle playing as something other than a regular Human, or at least what a number of the A-list video game companies tend to consider the "main audience" to be comprised mostly of teen-to-twentysomething males.

The way the interviewee makes female and alien equivalent is kind of messed up, really. Anything other than a white dude might as well be an alien to him (and what he imagines his audience to be).

17 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:

The way the interviewee makes female and alien equivalent is kind of messed up, really. Anything other than a white dude might as well be an alien to him (and what he imagines his audience to be).

Sadly that's a mindset that's going to hang around for a long time in the video game industry. We'll see exceptions, but they're going to be just that, exceptions, at least amongst games made by the A-list production companies. It frankly sounds like they decided to go with the typical WMP before even doing the casting calls, which is a shame.

2 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Force Unleashed was a different beast, and was built around the idea of the character's main method of attack being the Force and that it was supposed to be as over-the-top as possible, so it makes sense that Force usage in that game was both easier to execute and far more potent than anything we'd previously seen before, and the lightsaber almost being secondary and there so that you could keep attacking once you'd burned through your Force meter. If I remember right, the main reason the game even got made in the first place was Lucas was shown a demo clip for a new in-game physics engine that had the central character do all sorts of crazy telekinesis-based Force stuff, and he told the folks "I want to play that game, make it happen."

Well mission accomplished I would say, because I loved that game specifically because of the Force mechanics. They worked so much better than any other game prior to them, or since really.

2 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

With the Star Destroyer scene, I never heard munch in the way of "he's OP!" since that was literally the entire point of the game. If anything, most of the gripes I heard about that scene was from the PS and X-Box users who found it to be extremely frustrating due to the TIEs playing the roll of gorram bats trope.

Really? Because that's like the most common thing I've seen people who ***** about Starkiller bring up. Usually in the context of a Move thread about "can I Move objects higher than Sil 3-4? Because the mechanics seem to suggest yes" on this very forum. And the responses are usually along the line of "oh god, another ******* Starkiller situation! You're not supposed to be powerful enough to pull Star Destroyers out of orbit!" blah blah.

Yeah the TIE's in that scene were very annoying, also the control indicators on the screen were kind of weird. The visual cue they were giving you, didn't exactly synch up with what you were actually supposed to do, to trigger the pull effect. I remember a friend of mine getting confused as it seemed to prompt him to hold the joysticks in a different way, and it made him not actually pull the ship down, which meant it took longer, and became frustrating.

2 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Given we've had examples of exposition faeries (what BD-1 essentially is) done poorly in the past (Hey! Listen!), I'd rather have the resident EF be more on the "cute" side, especially given that it doesn't speak a language the audience can understand, and instead has to emote to get any sort of player attachment beyond "useful tool for progressing in the game."

Plus, given Star Wars audiences' favorable reactions to BB-8, again an overly cute droid companion, it'd make sense for Respawn to take note of that for a game that broad audiences were skeptical of due to EA's practices. To say nothing of Artoo-Detoo, who has been a fan favorite since the earliest days of the franchise and is seen as varying degrees of adorable (which was probably helped along by Threepio being a bit of a jerk towards the little guy) in spite of his design really not being essentially not much more than a trashcan on legs with rollerskates for feet.

Yeah the droids have a long standing tradition of being cute. R2 set the standard way back in ANH. With R2, it's mostly down to his vocal cues I think. His chirps and trills, and little warbling chuckles and growls are instantly endearing, especially in the context of the scene. Like when he's giving 3PO ****, and annoys him, and then he clearly lets out a little digital chuckle to himself. He's just expertly vocalized to 1. Perfectly convey what his mood is in any situation. 2. Instantly endear the audience to the little mobile trashcan. I actually like BD's design a bit more I think, since he has actualy legs, he has limbs to animate with. Like that one shot, which is in the trailers, of when Cal takes over that walker, and the little hologram of a stormtrooper is yelling at him to stop what he's doing. And BD just sort of looks down at him, and then stomps on his head to disrupt the transmission. I loved that bit. Partly because the scale difference in them, made it look like an AT-ST stomping on a trooper, but also because it was just cute.

Though so far, nothing has topped BB-8's butane thumbs up scene in my books. That still cracks me up every time, and the theater I was in died laughing when he did it.

So yeah, I'm totally fine with the continued tradition of "cute droid sidekick". They serve a good purpose, aside from just being a utility item, they give the PC someone to banter with, and react off of, to break up fairly tedious sequences of running around a map. It helps keep the player engaged.

Oh, something else I just remembered about lightsaber combat in Fallen Order. When he is wielding the double bladed lightsaber, he (or at least he appears to) cuts his legs off every couple seconds, particularly when he is knocked to the ground. It sort of breaks the immersion a little bit.