toxicitizen

Considering that the Project Beast leak was legit last year, I think that settles it.

I thought that was already known? Or maybe it was just hinted at. Either way, it seems to have been somewhat confirmed today. Official name is Mirror's Edge Catalyst. Doesn't actually say reboot but they do make it a point to say it's not a sequel.

Maybe? It's what they're called in-game and I'm not familiar enough with Twin Peaks to know whether there are any similarities beyond the name. I actually have the series on my hard drive right now. I've been meaning to watch it for a while and since it's coming back soon I figured I might as well do it now.

Yeah, I fully understand I'm in the minority in regards to narrative structure preferences. I did appreciate how open it was, it was just an initial moment of "Oh..." when I realized that the fee thing was going to last until the end of the game. But like I said, I thought it was handled very well all things considered. It's a minor gripe overall and not something I really hold against the game. As far as mission choices go, I pretty much just did every single one that was offered to me. That probably factored into why it took me so long, I guess. I'm kinda curious if I missed any, though. The only quest line that I actually turned down was the Black Lodge one, because fuck those guys after that first mission. I'll definitely have to do another run and go for it at some point, though. There's also a few more big choices I'm really curious to see play out differently.

Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut. Well, that was way longer than I expected. I knew it was a bit longer than Shadowrun Returns but according to Steam it took me 44 hours, and even cutting that down generously to account for time spent alt-tabbed, reloads for various reasons and one particularly nasty bug that caused me to lose an entire evening's worth of progress, we're still looking at about twice the length of Returns. Fortunately, people were mostly right about this one: it is significantly better than the first game. By the time SR was over, I was pretty much done with the game. It ended at more or less the right time, I didn't wish it had been any longer. Dragonfall kinda felt like it was overstaying its welcome a bit about 80% of the way through (which, in retrospect, was clearly exacerbated by that nasty bug I mentioned) but by the time the game was over that was no longer the case. Now I can't fucking wait for Shadowrun: Hong Kong. I'll definitely be jumping on that pre-order discount for the deluxe edition. One thing in particular that made Dragonfall for me was the inclusion of a main cast of characters. My biggest issue with Returns was constantly having to hire a bunch of assholes every time I went on a mission. It sucked so hard having to save my cash to pay these shitheads. Having actual party members with their own stories, missions and skills I could choose was a very welcome addition. I don't think I ever bothered hiring any of the optional characters. The only disappointment I had was the overall narrative structure, and even then it wasn't really a problem, it just comes down to personal preferences. The way the game is structured, most of the middle chunk is essentially filler. There's a narrative reason for it and it works, but you're still essentially given a big exposition dump at the beginning and then told to go do a bunch of jobs until it's time to go do the end-game stuff. I kinda preferred the way Returns handled it, where the entire game was one continuous story. All of that being said, most of those side-quests are so damn good and well-written that it ultimately becomes a non-issue. The main story has enough weight to it that you never really forget about just how much shit you're in (and as someone unfamiliar with Shadowrun lore, I was on the edge of my seat reading all that exposition about the Dragonfall at the beginning of the game!) but the side-quests are interesting enough to stand out on their own and not feel like padding. So, yeah, if they keep that level of writing then I don't care what kind of narrative structure they use in Hong Kong, it'll be great! I think it says a lot that, while I was done with SR by the end and felt no need to revisit any of it, I kinda wish I could keep following the characters from Dragonfall. Especially given the note it ends on, which almost feels like a sequel tease. One decision I made in particular clearly turned out to be a mistake and I'd love to see what the fallout from that is going to be. I don't expect it'll happen but I'd love for Harebrained Schemes to have one of their future campaigns be a direct follow-up to this one, save import and everything. edit: Oh, one thing I forgot to mention. What the fuck is up with this game's RNG? Like, I'm an XCOM player. I fully understand that a 90% shot is by no means a guaranteed hit. But when you miss like 6 fucking 90% shots in a row across your entire party in a single turn, you kinda have to ask: are these guys the most inept Shadowrunners ever or what?! Profanities were screamed at my monitor on a fairly regular basis.

I'm with you on that one. That's why I'd rather have everything on Steam: (mostly) infinite backwards compatibility. I'm in for the Vita versions personally, but it's not like it's a much more permanent solution. "Legacy platform" and all that nonsense. My PS3 is still hooked up but I don't see myself making any serious game purchases for it anymore, either. Persona 5 is pretty much the only exception if I don't own a PS4 by the time it comes out, which seems increasingly likely as it's a purchase I find myself prioritizing less and less. On the bright side, the XSEED blog post I linked mentions the PC versions of Zero and Ao that exist in Japan and China, so there's at least a chance for those. Sen I and II are also fairly recent releases in Japan, so I guess it's still possible they might get PC ports for the Chinese market or something. I imagine XSEED will be interested in bringing them over if that happens, since the localization work will already be done.

Yeah, I don't think them returning to being PC exclusive is realistic but like I said, they're pleased with their success on Steam. I really hope that's enough to make them at least reconsider their Playstation-only focus and move towards multiplat development. Also, XSEED just put up a blog post about the current status of the Trails series in general. Sounds like the games they skipped aren't necessarily being written off entirely, so that's good to hear. And TitS SC is still coming before Cold Steel I, so I'm guessing it's still planned for a summer release. Speaking of SC, I'm really not sure what to do with that one. I was initially planning on getting it for my Vita but at this point there's just no way they'll be able to release PSP versions of future games (it's also why they're doing Cold Steel now, since the PS3 is on its way out). So I'm really tempted to just grab FC in the Steam summer sale and replay it to have a save file ready for SC. :/

That's my hope as well. I'm glad to have more games to play on Vita in the near future but I'd love to eventually have the entire series on Steam. Likewise Ys and Memories of Celceta. And it seems like there's a decent chance considering Falcom recently made a statement about how they were pleased with the performance of their games on Steam. Some of them apparently outsold their Japanese console versions.

Holy shit, XSEED just announced that Sen no Kiseki I and II are coming out in the west! They mention this fall, which is presumably only the first one. For those not in the know, those are the two most recent games in the "Trails in the Sky" series. Sen no Kiseki II came out just last September in Japan. It's a bummer that they're skipping 3rd, Zero and Ao but my mind is actually blown with how fast they managed to sneak this one up on us. I have to assume they either got some serious outside help or they've been working on it for quite a while. Only disappointment here is that PC versions of these games don't exist (yet?). But hey, that means more stuff to play on Vita!

After a few restarts while I was still learning the core mechanics, I finally managed to get a city going in Cities: Skylines yesterday. Unfortunately for the citizens of Fucktown, their mayor was still quite inexperienced and ultimately abandoned them to drown in their own garbage. I can only assume that at this point they are living in the some kind of post-apocalyptic garbage wasteland where chaos reigns and only the strong survive. I can't say for sure, though. I'm not reloading that save. Now, Fuckburg on the other hand, is a thriving community that is growing steadily and shows no sign of stopping! it's profitable and so far hasn't encountered any kind of catastrophic problem. Let's hope for its citizens that things will stay that way because their mayor has absolutely no qualms about dropping them like a sack of bricks at the first sign of trouble. In other words, Cities: Skylines is fucking great! I don't know how long it'll manage to hold my interest but right now I'm completely hooked and other video games might as well not exist. I probably should've finished Dragonfall before digging into it, though. Think I'll try doing that tonight, actually.

Yeah, I can't tell if that's supposed to be a computer mouse or a prop from one of Michael Bay's Transformers movies...

I agree but it's also the first time Microsoft does the whole free OS thing, so I didn't want to assume. I wouldn't have put it past them for there to be some kind of catch.

Not sure if this is old news, haven't been keeping up with this thread much, but it looks like they confirmed you can do clean installs post-upgrade. So I guess it's not just your current install that's upgraded, but your actual key or something. That's pretty much the only thing I was worried about, so it looks like I'll be upgrading then.

Nah, GMG is picky like that these days. You can't use vouchers and credit at the same time and vouchers don't work on VIP deals. I think the VIP thing was a sneaky way of letting you use your credit on top of a "fake" voucher-like discount for selected games.

Clearly, what we're dealing with here is a pre-reveal dog downgrade. We can't let the sneaky bastards get away with this, guys! Come on, let's get ourselves some good old internet outrage going!

It's not happening, man. Let it go. on topic: Well that didn't take long. Arkham Knight wouldn't show up in the VIP deals but this did, so after the base discount and my credit it was like 10 bucks. Which is really nice since it was on my shopping list for the Steam summer sale but I didn't expect it would go low enough for me to pull the trigger. Anyway, I've been really looking forward to trying this one out, I almost impulse bought it at launch. I've been wanting to get into the city building genre for years but I could never get into SimCity 4 and we all know how the new one turned out. It was a bummer but I sure as hell wasn't going to buy that piece of garbage EA shit out. I fully expect the citizens of my first city to all die horribly. This should be fun!

I'm pretty skeptical about this considering Bloodborne and Scholar of the First Sin literally just came out a couple months ago, but apparently Dark Souls 3 might be announced at E3. If true, I imagine it's an early announcement and the game is still quite a ways off. But man, after DS2 turning out slightly disappointing and Bloodborne being PS4-exclusive, having Miyazaki return for Dark Souls 3 would be pretty damn awesome.

From what I've been hearing, it's different but one of the better FF in recent years. The story is supposed to be quite a bit darker, too.

Uplay only, I assume?

I really hope they're not going to wait until E3 to show some damn gameplay.

I was holding off on the GMG deal because I have some credit I wanted to use, so I was waiting for it to show up in the VIP deals again. But I just came across a deal that was too good to pass up. It's 45 bucks over on Funstock Digital and the code BATMAN-COUPRED-10OFF brings it down to 30 bucks (not sure I quite get the math on that one, I'm guessing it must be 10 British pounds off?). Anyway, that's pretty much the exact price I was hoping to get on GMG, and now I get to use my credit on something else. I wonder what's up with all these sick pre-order discounts on the game, though. Based on the gameplay footage, I seriously doubt it has anything to do with the game's quality. Maybe those nVidia promo codes hurt pre-orders on PC?

The point being that some aspects of this version actually predate the other game by quite a few years. I never said fully 9 years, though. Some of it was on and off and the game was "officially in development for five years" according to that Polygon piece. Beyond that, we're just arguing semantics so I'm going to take that as my cue to end this here. I was talking about The Bureau when I mentioned development hell. Actually, Solomon was given a team to make the first prototype back in 2003. That Polygon piece is actually a pretty good read, you guys should check it out. To be fair, he failed on that first attempt. But I think being given a team and six months to prototype his idea qualifies as being in development at least on some level.

Fair enough. And yeah, I'm sure some people transition between teams over the course of the projects . But I don't really see that as being a particularly relevant distinction given the context here. They're still two separate teams working on two separate projects. Transferring people between the two as the projects' needs change is preferable to layoffs. That shooter was announced in what, like 2008? That Polygon piece mentions that Solomon was trying to get his XCOM off the ground as far back as 2003. It's quite possible that the negative reception to the shooter is what prompted 2K to finally give the game the full greenlight, though. But the game itself was never made as a response to it, it's been a dream project of Solomon's for essentially his entire career as a game designer. I dunno, I just don't think it's fair to label it a quickly slapped together response to what I basically view as "Development Hell: The Videogame!".

I think they only ever vaguely said "Spring 2015" but yeah, even that window is closing very soon. Really wonder what's up with that as the only reason I bothered double dipping the first two was because they announced the full trilogy right off the bat. Apparently their streaming service has bombed pretty hard, so some people are saying LR might've been silently canned along with it. That seems like a bit of a stretch but I'd be pretty annoyed if that's actually what happened. I kinda want to hope that they're actually taking the time to do a good port job this time but I just can't bring myself to be that optimistic about S-E these days.