Comments on: Thoughts: Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

By: ilitarist

ilitarist — Thu, 18 Oct 2018 08:52:24 +0000

I certainly think of it as less polished Assassin Creed deal, will mostly launch it for historic down to earth feel as opposed to eye-in-the-sky historical experience of wargames and grand strategy games.

Dev not being a nice guy is not that important because, just as you’ve rightly mentioned, most owners of big franchises would probably regard me – an Eastern European relatively poor guy sheepishly living under a dictatorship – as scum of the Earth anyway. And not that consuming some cultural product implying different views is somehow sinful and damaging, I’ve read Iliad and still not big on war, slavery and polytheism.

So I hope for some good time with a peasant to knight story told in less fairy tale manner than usual.

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Thu, 18 Oct 2018 08:00:49 +0000

Kingdom Come is… interesting. It has some unsavoury politics –the main enemy faction is group of Turks who you cannot communicate with and cannot take prisoner, unlike all of the rather more conspicuously *whiter* enemies in the game — and the developers are apparently not very nice people, but ultimately I found the content to be no more objectionable than your average Tom Clancy game. (Which is to say, pretty objectionable, but I don’t understand why Tom Clancy games being full of neocon bullshit mostly gets a pass from people these days.)

Now, as long as you’re aware of that, and you install the mod that gives you unlimited saves, and are in the mood for its brand of intentionally long-winded gameplay, Kingdom Come is a game that can be a lot of fun. The “authentic” combat system was probably the least interesting thing about it; it had some surprisingly good writing and neat spins on established genre concepts that I kinda wish had been in another game that I’d feel better about recommending people try. Kingdom Come itself is definitely in “buy when on sale” territory, but as long as you go into it with both eyes open it’s unlikely to disappoint.

By: ilitarist

ilitarist — Wed, 17 Oct 2018 12:17:49 +0000

…I remembered another game with an open world that made me look at map markers with anticipation. Just Cause 2. And it had a very similar thing with clearing up settlements/bases, and main quest was more or less gated, it forced you to earn rage or whatever it was called. JC3 moved away from that model. Hmmm.

By: ilitarist

ilitarist — Wed, 17 Oct 2018 11:30:27 +0000

I too played Origins and bought Odyssey mostly because of the setting. I was very surprised how good it is. I have an urge to clear out all the ? on the map and I never do that in an open world game. I like character progression and I’m even sad that I’m overleveled for all those quests that come my way because I explore all I can find. At the same time I know that the game is padded, you can’t just play main quest line unless you buy bullshit “time savers”. I was angry about it in Origins because the game felt boring outside of main quest and few grand sidequests.

Playing on Hard/Nightmare difficulty feels right here, I can’t survive in a direct fight and there are people I can’t instakill even with upgraded stealth skills so I always have to combine approach to clear up those locations. And this XP boost for doing all objectives in a location is some sort of psychological warfare.

It’s game is surprisingly good. Thank god we had Into the Breach and Pillars of Eternity 2 this year, but I’d better check out that Kingdom Come Deliverance and Battletech games to make sure that my game of the year is not a freaking Ubisoft open world game.