SomTervo

Weren't you just parading that theory around on the last page, Canadian Cowfart?!

Shit, is it worth actually playing PvP now? I actually really enjoyed the game's PvP when I played it, moreso than the campaign in many ways. Would be sorta interested in jumping back in.

The Bolton bastard has been treated pretty well

Yes! And the people from the show floor - even non-combat Mirror's Edge 1 purists - said that the flowed-in combat worked really well. If you lose your momentum you won't be able to stop anyone and you'll die quite quickly.

That is possible. I still think they make the more corridor-like bits very enjoyable by mixing up the enemy type variations and writing great dialogue into these sequences. Plus the 'role playing' enjoyment of being a badass fast-and-loose adventurer, which makes basically all the combat fun for me, even the worst bits of UC3. I can't recall where I read it, but I'm pretty sure Neil Druckmann said they're implementing the more open approach for a significant amount of the new game. IIRC it's a high-level thematic direction, that they're doing this to make you feel more like you're adventuring with Drake rather than just watching him adventure on a set path. Personally: I mean, it's the same team as The Last of Us. I trust they can do this shit. The Last of Us was deeper than any of the Uncharted games and they said they're taking many cues from what they learned on it.

UC3 was the worst one, and I won't defend it. And UC1 was proof of concept - pretty flawed - so I won't defend that either. But the point of demonstrations like this is to show the potential of gameplay, not everything you can actually do at each moment. When Drake jumps up onto the awning, right before he dive-punches the guy, you can see that there's a whole right-hand wing of the marketplace he never even went into. Ie rather than running left from a stall to hide behind sandbags, he could run right to take a different route. Uncharted 2 had plenty of moments like this. Sections of gunplay which seemed linear and on-rails, but actually had at least two route options, but usually more sandboxey approaches where creative gunfights and stealth could happen. Did you guys even watch the Uncharted 4 gameplay video from last year? Where there was a long, large space full of foliage for stealth and multiple vertical levels? At several points he had about 3-4 paths to choose from, and there was clearly an AI/combat sandbox of guys finding him, losing him, platforming and sneaking. It looked very open and great. If you read any interviews about it, the creative directors are aiming to make it the most open Naughty Dog game since Jak 2 and 3, significantly more open than TLoU. They mention sections where you'll be able to choose from 2 or 3 paths which may open or close in their own unique ways and give specific pros and cons. This also fits with the chase sequence where we can see there are frequently 2 paths to choose from, and clearly freedom to drive down any one of them you choose. What the heck are you saying 'if/how' it works? Every bit of Uncharted gameplay that's been shown in conferences since the first one has been nearly 1:1 with what we played in the final release.

I don't think so, but it's playable on the show floor. One story mission in a chunk of the open world, plus three side missions in a chunk of the open world.

This... I asked for this... I even wrote an article about it in 2013 about how Mirror's Edge is one of the few IPs that would truly benefit from going open world. I am so excite. Now we just need people's thoughts from the show floor.

SORRY FOR TRIPLE-P BUT THEY JUST ANNOUNCED A RARE PACKAGE FOR XBONE. LIKE 20 CLASSIC RARE GAMES INCL BANJO AND PERFECT DARK, ALL FOR $30, IN ONE XBONE PACKAGE CAPITAL LETTERS EDIT: OUT IN AUGUST. AUGUST 4

Some evidence on the above re The Last Guardian (my speculations were accurate): From Kotaku here: http://kotaku.com/what-happened-to-the-last-guardian-1711835457

May mean the more scripted/cinematic bits and the more ridiculous adventuring aspects. But this is only a short trailer. Unless they show improved open area design and more puzzles, I'm with Strange on this. Didn't enjoy this trailer that much. About to replay the reboot on PS4 to 100% it, that'll wash the taste of this out my mouth.

The driving part certainly looked like more fun and excitement than mowing down waves of dudes in another corridor, but I'm confident there will still be plenty of that. You call the marketplace, a large open space with lots of scalable buildings and guys at every angle, with almost every surface destructible, a crazy APC chasing you, with being grabbed by a guy and beaten up before Sully dynamically intervenes, with scaling buildings on-the-fly to escape a choke point, and punching a dude with a giant drop-strike... 'Mowing down waves of dudes in another corridor'? I missed this. There were so many good announcements this year. My god. Been wailing at people over on NeoGAF about this for a while. The two tidbits of info we heard about the game while it was in development hell specifically cited the ambitious AI as the cause of the delay. So, aesthetically, it was never really going to change. The problem was: A) The PS3 couldn't handle the complex AI processes (plus the high graphical barrier) B) The AI itself was insanely hard to implement This led to: 1) The game needing to be pushed onto PS4. This alone could add 2-3 years dev time as it wasn't even finished for PS3 2) A selection of other Japan Studio teams to get involved and lots of work just to ensure the AI worked Ostensibly the AI for the catbird is super advanced – in one sequence it can go from combat AI to vehicular AI to puzzle-tool AI to idling/pet AI – and you can see this in the trailer if you look closely. I'm pretty sure very little it does in the trailer is scripted. Maybe the bit where it's clinging on to the little platform and he has to roll the pole down so he can climb it. But I think all the jumping/climbing/catching/fear response/running can happen anywhere. Notice how the kid had to jump up and down to tell the catbird to leap the crevasse to the other side? Ingenious. I might be fully wrong about all of this, but the reasoning above would make sense particularly if the game was entirely mothballed for a couple of years in the middle of the process before they got their act together. Apparently Mark Cerny was significantly involved in reinvigorating it, as he's now down as a producer or whatever. Both the first games were on Dreamcast. They haven't aged well. But at the time they were unprecedented new shit. And artistically they still stand up well today – the whole appeal is that they're kind of like... Twin Peaks, but Japanese. Slow paced. Capture the mundanity of day to day life. A slow burn mystery with occasional tense bits. Weird as hell with very idiosyncratic moments. In terms of game design they did a few pretty new things for big budget RPGs – there was little/no inventory or handholding or map, you really had to do detective work on your own. And the premise was that nothing can happen that wouldn't happen in real life. At one point you even have to get a day job and drive forklift trucks around. Of their time, very much. Also we now know Sony are helping them alongside the Kickstarter funding (which was obvious), and the demand was so record-breakingly high that there's a solid chance they'll Remaster them, I reckon. Depending on Sega, who still hold the rights to 1 and 2.

But keeping an important national secret close to his chest... That is in character. Compelling idea. Let's hope GRR Martin has some actual plot-twist chops in him. Hah, I love it. The climate change idea. I'd agree with you if it weren't for the fact that I wouldn't trust Martin's writing abilities with my laundry. (Weirdest mixed metaphor I ever wrote.)

Well... In FDS's defence, a load of stuff did happen aside from Stannis's story. Cercei, Snow, Tyrion teaming with thingmy, thingmy getting captivated, whatever the fuck was happening to Arya... The goddamn white walkers for goddamn's sake! Ethan's right that it was super slow until eps 7-10, but plenty of actual shit did happen in this season. And I'm a giant ole critic of Song of Ice and Fire

Not enough gameplay in that trailer (MirEdg), but it was aight. I love the look of the open world. Love it. Hope it's plenty big. It looks like they're going to overwrite Faith in this one, after fully underwriting her in the first. Whatchall think of the MGS5 trailers? Loved them. Especially the first. Some cray shit. I've been replaying Ground Zeroes in hype for MGS5 and it's just so great. Phantom Pain is gonna be a game changer. PS Everything is loading super slow for me on the forums today, anything going on Dean?

Fallout 4 will be out on 10 November 2015. Have people here missed that? [Edit: I got to eat my hat after saying it would certainly not be out until 2016] Well, CDPR is no longer that small, as far as I know. We're talking about a multi-national staff of hundreds of people here. I remember that bethesda rpgs never were that good when it came to tech standing behind them. All their games looked good because the art was great, but engine always had it's quirks, like stiff animations, very plastic looking shaders or character models straight from the uncanny valley. Maybe it's time to get a new engine, but I really won't mind if the graphics aren't "as good as witcher 3, omg", as long as art design will be as good as always and characters don't animate like someone rammed a pole up their ass. Swear I responded to this, but I'm pretty certain The Witcher 3's team was only like 100 people. It's a relatively small team who achieved something incredible.

A ton of new info about this just dropped from the Official UK Playstation Magazine. GOAT? GOAT. EDIT: there are some spoilers in there not even I wanted to see that got de-tagged, let me just get rid of them. EDIT EDIT: saved us from spoiler-nation. very minor stuff, but significant to super hyped folk like me

I love how that terrible artwork we all assumed was fake/mock-up turned out to be the actual real thing and that leak months ago was 100% true. Seconded. Playing Uncharted 2 again is going to be wonderful. Hopefully prompt my gf to get into it too – she can't get past the very slow first Istanbul stealth level – which is the game's only blunder. Uncharted 1 and 3 are just a nice bonus, tbh. I hope there's an option to play them all back-to-back as one adventure. That would be great. But there won't be, not BluePoint's remit. Oh yeah, I don't know if anyone's picked up on it yet, but the port is by BluePoint - who are the best at remasters. MGS HD Collection, GoW HD, Shadow of the Colossus/Ico, etc.

That's a really good parallel. Especially considering What confuses the idea is that the game is set over one week where we know something is building up anyway. It's not clear where Max's influence ends and the general fucked-uppery of Friday's tornado events begins.

I'd wager mid-2016, possibly even late-2016, personally. I really doubt they'd announce the game 6-10 months before release. Late-2015 and early-2016 would probably be too early.

You holding off because of the no-XP bug? I've put in 20 hours in the last week and have received plenty of XP from many, many quests. The bug doesn't affect everyone and, according to CDPR, doesn't affect the game's overall balancing in any significant way. I'd say do a brief save-scum to see if it affects you or not. If you're not holding off because of this bug, then ignore me. Amazing tip re flying beasts. Only tip I've got is to use Dancing Star against werewolves, especially once they're regenerating. Ruins their shit.

Yeah, episodes like that remind me why I watch the show in the first place. Very well done. While watching the last two episodes this season, it felt like I was following a soap opera, not an HBO-class fantasy show. (Which was how I felt for 70% of my time reading the books. Soap opera-nation.) Anybody get weird Witcherey vibes when the Wraith horsemen appeared at the top of the cliff? I was watching it with four people who haven't played The Witcher 3, so they all were really weirded out when I whispered, "... The Wild Hunt..."

You can get the +70 saddlebags from the blacksmith's wife in Crow's Perch Also - no story spoilers - there's an alchemist northeast of Novigrad who buys things for their full value. (Only ever carries 500g around though, replenishing every 5 days or so, but still killer)

Just finished Ep 3 with the gf. Holy nutballs. The thing is brilliant. Events have so much more impact than they did in the Telltale ones. Not sure if that's still a perceived effect of our choices or if things CAN change a lot, but amazing regardless. Episode 2 spoilers: Episode 3 spoilers: Ethan: