SomTervo

I'm keen to have a blast of Rogue, actually. Though I'd really like a new-gen release.

Totes agree with your post on the whole, but care to qualify "stagnant and puerile"? "Stagnant" I could get behind in terms of gameplay, but artistically GTA V is vibrantly written and the gameworld is phenomenal. Walking around in FPS, especially in the rundown/graffiti-covered parts of town is literally like walking through a work of visual art. Stylistically, it's better than it's ever been and a towering behemoth in the world of videogaming. "Puerile", though? It's a perfectly observed pastiche of America - playing up the exaggeration which the place embodies. The aspects of opulence and ignorance are strung into the game's DNA similarly to a spoof movie. It's like calling Gulliver's Travels puerile because it uses the style and medium of a fantasy tale to undermine real political issues of the time. Ie it's like your commenting on style/genre while ignoring the substance/point. GTA is largely a mature work of fiction- its source material is just inane and insane. I may have taken what you said way too far, but it's a good topic for discussion anyway.

Yeah, in terms of 'do what you will, survive' yeah it's Minecraft In Space. I'm okay with that but can totally see why many might not be. Re the actual mechanic, there won't be any tree chopping. Apparently all the resource gathering is close to how XP is handled in Minecraft. In NMS if you blow stuff up (mining!) or kill stuff or do anything, it'll immediately turn into money and go into your account. And money is the only thing you use to upgrade yourself, ship, buy fuel, etc. Money is the only player-held resource and the only thing you gain from doing stuff. I imagine you could blow up trees or use some melee thing to chop them down... But there's no crafting. It would be a physical exercise. But aye, I get your feels on the whole.

I kinda enjoyed Tornado's insane presence. He disappeared for good since July, yeah? Following that status...

Sorta... Glad I never saw this thread till now... And yes, when you look at the cost of AAA-budget game development, it's staggering. But that does not in any way mean games will crash. The publishers are savvy. They mitigate risk. They predict 5 million copies sold on a game and it sells 2 million? They probably still made a profit. And then you can look at the many successful, great quality mobile games which cost a tiny amount to produce but rake in hundreds of thousands! The industry is changing and has more emerging, hard-to-read markets than ever. But crashing? Nahhh, bro.

There are these. Did anyone read the link I posted above on GAF? There are portals which will jump you to central-galaxy locations, which are hand-crafted and fill in backstory/story/universe. There is also this. There is a story, a mythology which apparently covers the whole galaxy, and planets/progression which will be similar to 'missions' or 'levels' as you get closer to the centre of the galaxy, revealing plot/exposition as you go. Reaching the centre is your objective and the game tells you that - but the centre is apparently very difficult to survive in (lots of toxic planets/radiation/more threats), so you'll have to spend a lot of time upgrading your gear and exploring just to make money before you can actually get close to the centre - close to 'finishing' the game. You also need to earn enough to upgrade your hyperdrive and buy enough fuel to make bigger jumps inwards. I'm not necessarily defending the thing, but there is info about what you can/will do in No Man's Sky, which people seem to be ignoring. That said, it is a strange title and it might be an absolutely tedious turd which nobody can stand. Heck, it might not even be very playable. I've seen nothing suggesting the moment-to-moment gameplay loops are in any way fun.

I agree very much with this. There's an excellent Neogaf page here, which details most of how the game will work from boot up to probably your first 10-15 hours of gameplay. It does sound compelling to begin with, but I can imagine my experience being similar to Minecraft - love the first few hours while survival is a struggle, but once set up and secure, descend into unbearable, incurable boredom. (Edit: I write my way out of this opinion by the end of the post...) I'm excited for the game, but will definitely be waiting for reviews. At this stage, it looks like it will be a phenomenal simulation with nothing to do. This is excepting very basic character progression/levelling up and some decent background story (which they say will take 40 hours to complete minimum, but with such basic mechanics, how the hell will this be engaging for 40+ hours?!). So there are millions of procedurally generated worlds. Okay - that means it's physically impossible for us to see them all, so the number is basically irrelevant. World discovery may even be rendered meaningless as a game mechanic - the 'I can't possibly see all of this so why bother exploring, I'll just find what I need' effect. It seems like the game is being made for people who want to be able to get in a ship and go find new planets, have a look around, record the info there, get bored, leave for a new planet, find a new planet, have a look around... Repeat. Ad infinitum. If the planets are almost all procedurally generated, surely most of them will be empty of meaningful content. IIRC wildlife on the planets are created by mixing together several templates, based on planetary info. If there are millions of planets, I'd like to know how many wildlife variations there are. There are also the hostile robot NPCs on certain planets who will act like 'police'. I think the gradual progression from being on the fringe of the galaxy to jumping nearer and nearer to its centre, finding secrets and new places and portals, could indeed be very exciting. They said it'll get much, much harder towards the centre of the galaxy, so I guess if you want a challenging survival experience you'll always be able to just rock in and try your luck. I love the idea of escaping a planet being difficult, though I'm not sure what they meant by this!

Ubisoft's normalization of that formula is making me anticipate games like Uncharted and MGS even more. Games where joining dots on a minimap isn't the objective for most of the experience. Although AC Unity did a good job of moving past that. In side missions at least, if not in passive open world gameplay.

Deffo. Amazing improvement

Shit. I didn't know this. I hope Ethan's right. Anywho, back on track, eh. As someone said on GAF, that Uncharted 4 gameplay reveal features some god-tier level design. Like, far better than Uncharted 2, which I already thought was sublime. The amount of verticality/capacity for choosing your own path... With the new gadgets, too. Also, do you guys reckon they'll return to one island-like location, rather than being full-blown globetrotting? The teaser + this gameplay video suggests this. It would be a really nice throwback to UC1 imo.

I'm hoping it's more three-dimensional than "He's the bad guy." I'm hoping it's more subtle, like, "he's more selfish than Nate and is inclined to screw them over/temporarily side with the baddies." Like a less strong moral compas. FLD: she's apparently working on the cutting edge, hard-nut mathematics which will allow the game to have super mental graphics. Y'know she was a nuclear physicist by trade originally? Yeah I've seen two articles about her, with comment sections full of praise and admiration. IIRC they were on Gamasutra and Kotaku or something. These were either earlier this year or late 2013. I think she joined the team in 2013. This has been done already, again, by Splinter Cell Conviction! Though nobody is the bad guy necessarily. Something similar would be incredible in Uncharted. But yeah, probably unlikely.

Yeah, this is day one for me. I really love how Corrinne Yu has become somewhat a celebrity following her work on Uncharted 4. Really great to see a gaming legend/role model who is a woman. ("Legend" may be a bit premature...)

THIS! So much this! I can't disagree with this at all - but it's definitely not something Naughty Dog are interested in, based on what they've said in the past. And Ethan's acknowledged that, so it's all cool. For ND, the "integrity" of the singleplayer experience is what it's all about. I totally appreciate that co-op is of more interest for many players (myself included in many cases). They already have the other co-op campaign mode which basically does everything Eleven has said, and doesn't compromise the singleplayer, so I guess everyone's a winner anyway. The only thing missing from that, I suppose, is the drop-in-drop-out nature of full-campaign co-op, which would be really pleasant and convenient, but basically unnecesary. Let's make up, hugs and kisses to all ---- Back-on-topic: I'm not sure at all how I feel about Drake suddenly getting a brother. This is sudden, right? In fact, I really really dislike idea. Borderline hate it. I think it compromises the solid, beautifully simple and consistent Uncharted cast. Feels unabashedly shoehorned in, which is so anti-Naughty Dog... but if at any point in any of the Uncharted games, Sam Drake has been mentioned... Then I take it back. Anybody recall him being mentioned in the past? I certainly don't.

That was a great episode Yeah, Jack, there are definitely extremely important episodes in S01 and 2. I reckon once we finish 3 I'll suggest we go back and watch season 2. It's still got some classics and yeah, introduces a few key characters/points. Eg we watched the episode the other day where Susan Strong appears and they help her fight the creatures in the sewer... But Yasmin had no idea who the heck Susan Strong was and thought she was some bizarro-world Fiona-alike.

- Except in UC2 and 3's small custom-made campaigns where level design and scenarios were skewed to benefit coop play with 3 people PS the word 'idiotic' above was too harsh- rushed phone typing, no offence meant!

I think this is what I'm struggling to get my head around

That was how it started, i skipped ahead... TN's last post still seems pretty relevant to mine? Edit: wait, is your point that it should be designed entirely for one person but that a second can drop in? That's pretty flawed thinking. Halo/Gears etc are still designed with more than one player in mind, even if they're playable SP. Coop is a ground-up campaign feature. The devs are thinking, 'right, in this bit, one player will do xyz, and with two players they can also do abc'. But with Uncharted their only thought process is 'the one player can do xyz'. With two players it would be like 'they can... Still only do xyz, and the effect of x or z may be compromised because player 2 is off in a corner doing silly stuff, or suddenly ruins the balance of level design in a combat arena which is designed to be thrilling for one adventurer' Making an SP Uncharted, in keeping with the prev games in design, then dropping in a random player would mess it up in various ways, including what i said above. Halo/Gears have been designed, front to back, start to finish, top to bottom as things which can be done with 1+ players. Not so with UC PS other series which were arguably damaged by shoehorn campaign coop- Resi, Dead Space... Sonic?

It only took two years... But i finally got my gal into Adventure Time! Ive found that it's best to skip straight to season 3 with newcomers. 1 and 2 are great when you get the jib, but as first time watching they need a LOT more work to enjoy fully. Season 3 is where the show peaks and plateaus.

^ There's potential... But they sure aint showing it off. It's like they've taken the very worst aspects of The Last of Us, Bioshock, and Uncharted. They verbally promised large open areas though- this does give me some hope. Intelligently designed battles, Halo/TLoU style, could well save the thing.

Dam strate bro FYI Ive also edited that post like mad, christ i hate typing on a phone

Jack: that's how Uncharted's been doing it since 2. (Oh except it's not a side story, but it does link in. Also Conviction did that great!) I think a big point is being missed here. You guys might want campaign-based coop ... but I'm pretty sure Naughty Dog don't. Re the previous coop modes in UC2 and UC3, they always said they would keep SP a separate entity. They are committed as shit to the 'cinematic singleplayer vision' of Uncharted. Which is founded very vitally on immersion at many points. Similar to Last of Us- it would have been WAY easy to put coop in TLoU, espesh the campaign, but they decided against it entirely. In UC this would be even more pronounced, because ND clearly value those long stretches where we play Drake - injured or down and out or plodding along talking to himself dealing with adverse circumstances - ABOVE ALL ELSE. I'm not saying this is valid; but having a random other Drake there nattering in your ear WOULD ruin the atmosphere a lot, and we wouldnt feel any intimacy with Drake. - which is 100% what ND wanna sustain. Thursday: the storylines are popcorn fare, yes- but the writing is excellent. Dialogue/character-wise. They value the player's backseat-style journey, following along behind Drake on his often lonely adventures. I think this is a big reason Halo/Gears arent relevant here. Halo and Gears are like a TV soap. The characters are there just as vehicles taking us to the next drama. But Uncharted is written so that the characters stand alone in the experience and can be enjoyed like you would a well-written blockbuster- a Guardians of the Galaxy or Indie Jones. I dont think this can be compared to Halo or Knack or Gears in gameplay either. There are almost no bits in Halo or Gears in my memory where we have really mobile, quickfire cinematic sequences which are designed wholly around one person. I mean, i guess they could design those bits around two people. But i get a gut feeling about how none of this jives with the way Uncharted has always been. Unlike Halo/Gears where it was designed in there at the front end. The dedicated coop missions in UC (... Why don't you just play these anyway?) have always been set in their own little silly universes, with pointed avoidance of immersion/good narrative pacing, and are still great fun.

The riddles and murder mysteries are the absolute shit. Like the best side missions ive ever played in any game

I adore the riddles and murder mysteries. You done em, 11?

Maybe it was Vancouver I was thinking of. Horrible, though. Utterly inexcusable. And you've probably heard a lot more than I have.