f13.net

Jedi Fallen Order (https://www.ea.com/games/starwars/jedi-fallen-order)

Apparently, you're playing a padawan on the run soon after Order 66. Hiding your powers could be an interesting dynamic.

Of course, EA will probably fuck it up.

Edit by Trippy: fixed title

EA + prequel

 :awesome_for_real:

"Action Adventure"

So, another Force Awakens basically?

Probably more like Titanfall, Anakin.

Deus Ex: Star Wars could be interesting.  Using your powers to stealth or fight your way through sprawling levels.  Gaining more abilities as you progress but also using them too much can get you detected.

I'm sure it wont be that, but that's my best case scenario.

EA

the boycott continues

Since Respawn is making it, it'll probably be solid as long as they're allowed to use the engine they want. If they got forced into Frostbite though then it's probably fucked. It's Star Wars though so it's going to take a lot to make me give a fuck now anyway.

Action Adventure?  Hmm.  Force Unleashed was fairly entertaining, even if it felt a bit sloppy compared to the old Jedi Knight series of games.

And probably that is the point.  They should completely fucking copy how those games were constructed.  I have been waiting a goddamn decade or more already.

What are the long-term monetisation and live service plans, though?  :uhrr:

"Insert Credit Card, get leg warmers."  :why_so_serious:

Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GLbwkfhYZk&feature=em-uploademail

Good trailer  that obviously begs for some (hopefully not faked) gameplay during E3.

Stay tuned :P

I find it beyond boring, but maybe it's time for me to acknowledge and admit that for as much as I will always madly adore the holy trilogy, I have outgrown Star Wars and everything about it feels uninteresting. Minus Rogue One.

I’m in. Question is, “is it canon?”

*edit* Looked it up. It is.

Looks intriguing. Except for that fucking EA logo in the bottom middle.  :awesome_for_real:

literally unplayable garbage, I don't even know what thread i clicked on

Edit by Trippy: fixed title

It really is basically Titanfall: Jedi Edition, down to the parkour wall-walking shit.

Lovely presentation, fantastic music, gameplay will be boring shit. Destiny Wars.

I really felt sorry for the poor composer watching that, as he did really good work, and was trying his level best to wring out the emotion, but I really felt nothing watching it. It was a totally by the numbers trailer that implied a lot but said nothing.

Oh is there any gameplay footage around? Also, I doubt it'll be first person, or is it?

Might be a mix.  But it won't matter.  In first person mode, hitting "X" will fire your blaster.  In third person, hitting "X" will have you stylishly unsheath and ignite your saber in a gorgeous flourish, have you twirl it behind your back whilst switching hands spinning and moving into a leaping lunge followed by a quick parry/riposte-counter sequence to get you ready to perform your real power attack, which comes via hitting the "Y" button.  Don't get me started on the "Y" button.

In other words, it will lack any real soul or connection to what you are doing, while looking pretty enough to move a couple million copies.

I was inferring that from the section where dude walks on the walls in the trailer, because it looked EXACTLY like the wall-walking in Titanfall. And I'd be shocked if EA let Respawn wander too far from what they've already built in TF1, TF2 and Apex.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bf5dUI3sgk

GET HYPE

Let's not get carried away quite yet - it was just a CGI trailer, after all. We don't know anything about the actual gameplay - even if you trust(?) Respawn to make a good game (under EA).

Az, have you seen the Ep 9 thread yet? It's how they do bro.

I try to avoid the movie threads because spoilers. And I'm WAAAAAAY behind on movies.

They posted on Twitter it won't have microtransactions or multiplayer. People are shocked and a bit in disbelief since this is an EA game. We'll see if they're lying or not I guess.

What EA means is they won’t be in at launch. They’ll add them in after launch and the reviews are in and most people who want the game have bought it like they did with Battlefield 5.

Edit: they being microtransactions.

The tweet didn't give them any wiggle room. It's out there now and seen and if they go back it'll get flung in their faces and cause another huge controversy.

https://twitter.com/EAStarWars/status/1116917677115760640 (https://twitter.com/EAStarWars/status/1116917677115760640)


I don't trust EA at all, this is why I suspect this came straight from Disney. Disney doesn't seem to care about the video games but they had to have been aware of the controversy last time and this hits right before Episode 9. I imagine Bob Igor called and said something like "I can buy your company with pocket change. Don't make Star Wars look bad one month before our next movie comes out."

Hmm...okay yeah that does sound like Disney learning from the Star Wars Battlefront 2 fiasco and saying never again.

EA said in 2014 that it was tired of being regarded as one of the worst Companies in America and from now on their motto was going to be "Player First." Maybe they are actually going to try it. 5 years later. Um.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ea-ceo-says-company-is-changing-to-become-player-first/1100-6420699/

they're lying

fuck'em

EA is the Ike Turner of video games, after all.

Eat the cake, Anna Mae.

EA has totally changed  :oh_i_see: :uhrr: :ye_gods:

I cannot imagine this game being any good. It won't have the story chops to make gameplay secondary. It won't have the tight gratifying gameplay to make a by the numbers story ok. And it sure as fuck isn't going to break any kind of new ground and be worth it for the feeling of playing something new and interesting.

That was five years ago, they've gotten a ton worse since then.

What? You don't trust EA to follow through on their "Moral Compass"?  :oh_i_see:

Gameplay Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8939aURV9Dc


post edited with just the link to the gameplay trailer

So 3rd person Titanfall Uncharted?

No thanks.

Huh, I dunno, maybe?  I rather like Uncharted, so that comparison is a positive.  And it looks purty.  Might give it a whirl.

Hope they have some option to change your looks, otherwise I'm going to have a hard time seeing the Joker as a Jedi.

It looks...decent enough. I understand where the devs are coming from, but all that wall climbing, rope jumping etc. look a bit out of place in muh SW game :D. Game might risk the "it's THAT game just with a SW coat painted over it" critic.

Movement and VFX (all around, from blasters to jedi lightsaber) definitely need a lot more polishing, hopefully with  more "oomph" when it comes to melee impact. We'll see in a few more months when it approaches release.

Isn't that the Joker from Gotham?

Because it looks weird. Saw was fine but Joker jedi is a bit uncanny valley.

Well that looked pretty boring. Was there any point the player was in danger?

good ol light saber stopping electrified batons

pure canon

EAface is the real tragedy here. Saw looked passable but the protagonist has the broken-lifeless stare of ME Andromeda.

It's Cameron Monaghan, yeah.  The gameplay looks ok, but I am not a fan of digitized actors faces.

There were lots of bits where a player who didn't know the route or how the enemy AI might have struggled or taken a couple of attempts.

But this is a 6 hour story game. I'm sure it will be fun for those hours. I'd buy it if it were on steam.

Wait.  6 hours?  Wait.

Wait.

6 hours is not many hours.

it's a star wars videogame

the fuck do you want

Would you still say that if you saw this exact demo without the Star Wars license?

I didn't particularly care for the Force Unleashed games but they seemed an order of magnitude more inspired than what we've seen of this game so far. Everything they're showing looks slow and awkward. Maybe there's more depth to the combat later (this is supposed to be about three hours into the game) but this doesn't look like a great place to start from.

I don't know what to tell you. It is the normal number of hours for a first/third person single player heavily scripted shooter.

This isn't based on knowledge of this game BTW, just an assumption based on the genre.

It isn't 1995 any more.

6 hours? I'd say it is the normal time only for a last minute story campaign attached to a multiplayer shooter, like Battlefield 5 story mode, definitely the running time of any major aaa 60$ single player title ever, let alone Star Wars.

Maybe I am just not too familiar with the sub-genre? Bayonetta was short, but that came as a surprise to me.

4 more hours.

Now I remember why, among other reasons, I do not buy FPS games any more.  Guess I can ignore this one after all.

Is the genre really down from 16 hours first time playthrough? I remember the Wolfenstein reboot taking about 18 for me, but I like to take a slow pace even in FPSes.

Well I hope you guys with a more optimistic view on the generosity of EA are right.


Yes it definitely is. Mass effect is only about 16 hours.

Also wolfenstein has been rebooted four times since 1981 original. Do you mean the 1992, 2001, 2008 or 2014 Reboot?

Yeah but they are talking 6 hours above, that's why I was asking -- I was wondering if it was just a typo.

And I probably mean the 2014 reboot -- the one with the NAZIs won alternate future. I actually rather liked the 2001 remake.

6 hours for a story mode in Force Awakens III? Nah. Maybe when it drops to super sale times and also has decent reviews.

I would settle for a 15-18 hours first blind playthrough (how long was a first playthrough of Tomb Raider and/or Uncharted?) . IMO, with a decent enough storyline, it would hit a good balance.

C'mon guys, from what I've read, the single player campaigns of COD:Infinite Warfare and SW:Battlefront 2 were 5-6 hours long, but we're talking about a different approach.

If I remember correctly, our original complaints about the 6 hour single player modes came from one of the COD games.  People collectively shat themselves when they found out, but the counterargument was that "hey, at least these games have robust multiplayer modes and in fact that is essentially the entire point of them in the first place".  Which is fair.

But this?  If it is only a single player game and/or has not longevity beyond that?  I submit that that is not acceptable, and we should not try to convince each other it is a reasonable standard in this day and age.  It isn't a reasonable standard.  That will have me likely waiting until this is on a steep discount, or simply never play it at all.  More likely the latter, unless it also gets rave reviews, which already seems unlikely.

On what planet is Mass Effect only 16 hours? I mean, I guess if you rush through it and ignore all side content maybe. But my first playthrough of each of the games was 30-40 hours.

Also, let's not all get our panties in a twist. We haven't heard anything about times yet. It may be 6 hours in which case I'll wait for it to go on sale. Or it may be closer to Tomb Raider with enough side content it can stretch out to 15-20 hours easily. We'll have to see I guess.

Yes, personally these days when I see statements about a game being 5 hours long I know it really means 10 hours long. If they say 16 hours long, it means 32 hours long. At least for me, which is all that matters. 6 hours long campaign for a main Star Wars AAA $60 game seems too short though, even if it's actually 12 hours.f

Multiplayer focus in both of those games aside, these are the games you hold up as examples?  :uhrr:

*note - I own both. In both cases as a result of super-cheap discounted sales. I haven't actually completed either campaign, either! QUALITY, MOREISH GAMES! :oh_i_see:

My biggest issue with it is that it is another Star Wars game with the main protagonist being a white male. In a galaxy with an assortment of alien species and/or the opportunity to have a Person of Color as the lead, they went with the blandest, safest choice. In the films, when he initiates Order 66, we see multiple characters of different races and genders be killed. Only the white guy survives? Pass.

Recent bullshit has made me pretty SJW about this sort of thing, but seriously, Iden Versio says hi.

At least casting the Joker gives representation to sociopaths.

Well, Star Wars BattleLootbox 2 had a WHite female character in its 6 hour campaign.

Uh...no it didn't? The actress who played her is Indian (with a bit of Dutch on her mother's side) and the character is clearly darker skinned. I actually assumed she was Latino until I looked up the actress.

(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/KgPoU2NLfHE/maxresdefault.jpg)

Looked white to me, especially in comparison to the other characters. And I really could not care less what ethnicity her voice actor is, thats irrelevent to the visual experiance. And besides, the characters  father was lilly white. OR WAS HE???

(https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/aa146514-ec50-4e96-a30e-e56e9399fb3a/scale-to-width-down/800)

Granted, these days they are carefully shading the skin just enough to look white to whites and dark to those ethnics. Dont want to alienate any paying customers and either side of the SJW idiocy.

Fascinating.

You know a thread is going places once you start guessing the pedigree of fictional characters.

Did you know that Phil LaMarr voiced Samurai Jack?

While this now has way too many posts on it, she is very obviously intended to be mixed race and you can pick a screenshot lit according to whatever point you wish to make.

Disney have done a decent job in diversifying both star wars and MCU leads over the last few years. To come back that to the point that started this silliness, complaining that this specific Disney product has a white male lead was dumb.

And James Avery voiced The Shredder.

No it isn't.  :-P

I want to play a Wookiee Jedi. Subtitles and all.

MUURRROOOAAAGGGHH

Subtitle: MUURRRRROOOAAAAGGGGHHHH

Rodians have been underrepresented and portrayed poorly for far too long.

Greedo:
This time HE shoots first!

And not no fucking blue rodian country ass shit, either

I'm not sure I get why this title specifically has backlash over a white male lead. I see complaints about no customization but outside of RPGs, that's not often the case in these purely action games. Uncharted didn't have character customization. You were the dude they made or you didn't play the game. Same with Tomb Raider.

I'm not saying the overall point isn't valid. I'm just not sure why it has come up so much with this specific game.

Probably because since it's EA and will probably have a veritable fuckload of loot boxes *AHEM* surprise mechanics, Disney has been painfully transparent in their attempts to market Star Wars to female/non-traditionally geeky and male audiences, and because it's an easy mark.

Tbh, I'm all for less catering to the traditional gamer nerd.

Pretty much that, fuck those guys.

Oh yeah, fuck those incel cunts in their earholes.

I love variety in character creation myself. If you can't make a female or a non-white character in a game it irritates the hell out of me. (So many damn games launch with "Females coming soon!" it blows my mind...)

Anyway, I quite like this actor due to his work on Gotham so am happy with JokerJedi personally. I don't think it'd have hurt at all to have a few character models you could flip through though. I just think the backlash targeting this game in particular is kind of odd. I'll take it over the Incels whining about Rey and Finn any day though.

It seems rather arbitrary when some topic becomes hot for some particular game. Hot Coffee, for example, in GTA San Andreas. Then time passes and you have fully-rendered titties in God of War, which generally doesn't spark any real controversy that I recall. I assume it's just the usual case of activists picking out a stick and flogging us with it, rather than any sort of logical approach.

Star Wars in general has been more progressive than average on the whole.  This is a weird ass conversation.

Arguing about too many white male Star Wars protagonists is totally the hill to choose to die on. Because it's still  ̶1̶9̶7̶7̶ ̶1̶9̶8̶0̶ ̶1̶9̶8̶3̶ ̶1̶9̶9̶9̶ ̶2̶0̶0̶2̶ ̶2̶0̶0̶5̶. And while you might be all humans = boring, it's got the widest appeal.

Most importantly, fuck EA. (and fuck Respawn these days, too!)

Depends on what the game is, and how central the protagonist's story is as an individual to the writers and project devs (not us, basically). The Ubi guys made a big deal about how from now all all AssCreed protagonists will be a choice of male or female, and they've done that for the last couple of Far Crys. I'm cool with that. I'm also cool with Uncharted being Nathan Drake's story, Lost Legacy being about the female leads, Aloy in Horizon, Lara in Tomb Raider, and so on. People need to get over their little fucking agendas and let games makers make their own stories. As long as we have a good balance of representation and not exclusively a collection of shorn-headed, gruff white males, I'm good with it.

I agree that if you're going to offer a character creator, then devs need to do that shit properly, but within reason. Alexios and Kassandra obviously needed to be Greeks, etc.

Oh, and thanks for the Incels thing. I'd never heard of those. Another set of useless shitbirds.

I haven't played an Assassin's Creed in forever but in Far Cry at least it didn't seem to make a difference. It was all first person and I'm not sure even cutscenes really showed your character and I never noticed any difference in reactions or dialogue based on gender. Still, the option is nice to have.

This game is more of an Uncharted/Tomb Raider game from what I see. That means it's probably not worth it to them to do two or more versions of cutscenes for different genders and such so they made a choice. I get that. I'd probably have been happy with any human protagonist (I'm a speciest, what I can say. "Human Power!")

On the other hand a game like Assassin's Creed Odyssey is also 3rd person has two genders with a shit ton of animations and voiced cut scenes. And the Mass Effect games with two genders are all about the voiced cut scenes too. So it could've been done -- they just chose not too.

Mass Effect is a massive (hah!) RPG with tons of choice and a detailed character creator. I'm not saying they couldn't have, minimum, given a choice between genders. I'm just saying it's weird this specific game got pushback on it when others are given a pass. I don't buy "Star Wars is progressive" because the whining of the Incels about Rey and Finn is deafening these days. And let's not forget, Padme died because she was bummed her boyfriend broke bad.

It's not weird it's being picked on cause it's EA.

Meh, pretty sure the protagonist is a guy because the story will ultimately end up as Canon and with the new Disney rules on what is and isn't canon, the ability to create your own toon flies solidly in the face of that.

I could see it. I do wonder, if on some level, this isn't a reaction to Rey and the Battlefield 2 protagonist. (I forgot her name, I actually enjoyed her story too!). Like "fine, we gave you a dude now, happy?"

That was my take as well.  If they want to make real canon around the character (which probably won't work, but that's a different question), it is easier to keep the race and gender static.  OTOH, they already have Revan, so....I don't know.  But mostly, who fucking cares.

Did I just see the opinion of 'the incels' as a reason for SW not being progressive?

 :why_so_serious:

Come on, man.

Its pretty weird anyway because the glass ceiling of Female protagonists as main characters has been broken on PC games for literally decades. Just off the top of my head I can name Tomb Raider, Metroid, the Longest Journey, Remember Me, Gone Home, Bayonetta etc etc. So crying becasue they are actually using a white Male for once is... pretty stupid

Now granted this is Star Wars where peoples brains dribble out the back of their skulls rather than admit the Movies just are Not That Good, so they lash out at unimportant bullshit rather than just dismiss Star Wars as something that really isn't that great or important anymore. And of course there is their seething resentment of having got rid of the EU and the (for example) Mandalorians that could break Jedi in half with one twitch of their Manly eyebrow muscles.

That wasn't what I meant though it did come across that way. I meant that Disney and/or EA might have just wanted to not have something get bitched about for once so they were like "fine, no loot boxes, and the main character is a white male. Will you shut the fuck up now?"

Ok, not as funny but better point  :grin:

Yeah, Revan and the Force Exile after them is technically not cannon, same with the protagonist in Jedi Academy after Disney's Order 66 on the EU, so we're back to square one.

I thought of the Jedi Academy main character as well, but didn't mention it because it is pretty obscure.  Revan, on the other hand....I am not following Disney's canon rules, but I thought Revan might have been considered canon on some level?  The Galaxy of Heroes game has him/her, and he/she is probably the most powerful in the game.  I thought they only included canon characters, which currently included Old Republic character.

Lots of licensees use non canon material and Disney don't seem super bothered. They talk about everything not canon as 'legend'. Which isn't a completely bonkers way of managing it.

Revan is a legend.

So that's to say that all the Old Republic stuff is considered Legend?  I haven't really paid attention to such things since the Mouse took over.

Disney only regards the Expanded Universe books, most of which are set after Return of the Jedi as non-canon. That doesn't mean they won't steal ideas, but it does mean that games and books set before the main star wars movies are treated as canon until Disney wants to recon. I'm in the "call me when EA and Disney gets bored of star wars and stops making stuff for them camp" so I literally just heard of this game today.

That plainly isn't the case.

Everything is now labelled canon or legends.

Lots of pre tPM stuff is legends. Possibly all of it, I'm not sure. Everything Kotor is legendary, not canon. Bits of it occasionally become canon when a canon source refers to them, for example, GCW era people have recalled that the mandalorian wars happened, but not a lot more than that. If a future canon writer wishes to decide that those people are mistaken, I suspect they would be allowed to do that.

It gets used as inspiration and nobody at Disney gives a fuck if FFG want to make a Malak miniature or EA put Revan in a non-canon game.

When Disney took over they said everything not in the main movies or Clone Wars cartoons was legends. Period. Except for new material they put out. It was a good idea. The EU was terrible for the most part with the exception of the KOTOR stuff and the X-wing novels. Seriously, George Lucas seemed to let them do anything they wanted in novels and comics and it got increasingly bad over time.

One thing that's been happening is people have been sneaking Legends characters into canon stuff and making them canon again. The most famous example is Thrawn. He became an official part of canon thanks to the Rebels cartoon. I wish the same was true for Mara Jade but sadly, it's not meant to be. Revan may have been brought into canon in a similar manner though I haven't paid attention to it. Disney seems mostly obsessed with stuff from the Prequel era to their own sequel trilogies and hasn't branched out much into any other eras of the franchise.

Basically, it was a smart move. The EU stuff contained such a wild riot of good, bad and utter rot. They wanted to be free to take whatever seemed good in all that steaming pile and not have insane fans telling them but but it says here that Darth Bane had a child with a Dathomir Witch who had a pet yslamiri that met a wookie once and so... If I'd bought the entire SW license lock stock and barrel I would have done exactly the same thing--none of it is 'binding', all of it is useful source material for stories going forward.

The problem with using Revan is that to use Revan you have to nail down some basic facts that due to game mechanics they left vauge, like basic things like Revans gender. If the were to use that character, it will probably be as some humand that has evoilved into something completly nonhuman in order to keep the game "cannon," and to explain why he is alive 1000 years after KOTOR. Or actually slap a face on Revan and risk pissing off group X Y and Z.

Not necessarily.  Revan is already used in a couple places where they don’t reveal gender.  And besides, what better way to please the SJW types than to include a genderless mask-wearing badass?

Anyway, I find myself not caring.  There is plenty of good stuff they could draw from the old material anywhere along the timeline if they wanted.  I actually think the Darth Bane character works on a number of levels.

In Far Cry, it doesn't really make a difference due to 1st person silent protagonist, but given that you're playing as a character and that the character is essentially a tabula rasa, it's nice to put your own spin on it. Besides, it's got that co-op element to it as well, so my African American deputy ran around with my wife's Latina as we shot the shit out of the game's multi-racial religious nutso hillbillies, and that had a nice feel to it.



And I'm ok with that. Like I'm ok with the lead in Gears 5 being a woman, or not being able to choose the gender of Aloi or the race of Nathan Drake or to play as Peter Parker vs Miles Morales vs Spider-Gwen in the Spidey game (though that last one would have been quite cool). I'm good with a mixture of choice, assigned race and/or gender/(species), and pretty much everything in between for games.

Like I said, context matters a lot. I was in a lore argument here a few years ago over Space Marine when a couple of people were all like "why can't I be a female Space Marine for this videogame?" and the (very reasonable, I thought) answer was "thirty years of established lore from the game's licensor". Reply then was "they should just change it" (for this licenced game that will be forgotten in 2 years), to which I pretty much facepalmed. OTOH, GW should have changed it with the advent of the Primarins revamp a couple of years ago - a missed opportunity for sure there.

On the other hand, shit like Ubi's piss-poor excuses for not having a female option for AC: Unity "animashuns are too hard for make at woman player" on the other hand, I'm not cool with.



Star Wars has become progressive, and that's genuinely a good thing. I like Rey and Finn. The problem I have with Star Wars is that of the four new movies, one has been good (R1) one has been decent despite (or because of?) being a retread (TFA), one has been pretty bad but ok if ou have super-low expectations (Solo) and one was just fucking awful (TLJ). The issues there weren't because of the casting or the genders or races of the actors - just like Sam Jackson, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Liam Neeson and even poor old Hayden Christiansen - all of whom are good to amazing actors - the issue is with the writing and directing - which includes the totally lame way that Padme went out. But as much as we old nerds love the OT, Lando and that Bespin security guard may as well have had "token" patches on their clothing, which amazingly was still better than what we saw in ANH.



 :drill:

To be fair, a woman skeleton is different to a male skeleton, so if you want to do it right you do have to make different animations. Japanese and Korean games are ctually very good at mocapping with the different Genders for their characters, so theres no reason why UBI couldn't have done it if they weren't lazy fucks and not spend a bit of extra cash. Or you could go the GTA 5 route and effectivly just add tits and a waist to the male model and call it a day. 95% of people woudn't notice or give a shite if they did.

The most popular solution when other games use Revan is that he/she wears a mask. It was the same solution Kotor itself used in prerendered cutscenes and solves pretty much all issues.

True enough. Mask, obviously robotised voice and away we go.

Prior to Disney and Revan becoming Legends he was by "canon" male and the Force Exile (KOTOR2's main character) was female. I don't think it matters too much though in the SWTOR MMO he's also a male when you fight him in a raid.


This is pretty much where I am. I think when I was much younger I might've sometimes made choices based on that but as I grew older and became less stupid it stopped mattering to me. On a side note, I bet if the Spidey game was made after Into the Spiderverse those options might have been available. I think that movie hugely raised awareness of those characters, arguably Spider-Gwen more than Miles because she was such a scene stealer.


This is actually a reason Space Marines are such a huge turn off to me in games where they're available. They're barely even human and are all big brawny dudes. I just find them very meh as characters. Give me Imperial Guard over them anyday since they're, you know, actual people.



Star Wars itself has. Some of the fanbase, not so much as we all know. Rey gets bitched about so damned much. I constantly have Yotube videos on my feed that are bitching about Rey or SJWs ruining Star Wars. I'm actually confused by it because I don't watch those kinds of videos so I don't understand why Youtube keeps popping them up to me.

Also, just for shits and giggles, my ranking of the Disney Era Star Wars movies.

The Force Awakens - The best of them. It's a retread but it was on purpose to show fans we were past the Prequel era of movies. And I genuinely like every single new main character. (Finn, Rey, Poe)
Solo - I didn't think I'd like this one but it won me over when I caught it on Netflix. I think it got screwed by its release being so soon after TLJ to be honest. That said, I'm glad it killed all the "Here are movies with backstories of characters because we can't think of a single new thing to do in this huge universe we have."
Rogue One - It has 45 minutes of awesome at the end. The rest of the movie is a drag and Jyn is a super boring protagonist who doesn't make any decisions until that last 45 minutes. She just sort of sleepwalks wherever Cassian drags her.
The Last Jedi - *sigh* It turned BB8 into a joke. Finn's plotline was a waste of time. The concept was good the execution was awful. The same applies to Poe's plotline. Rey's plotline...I actually liked. I even liked grumpy old man Luke who was lost in regrets and had turned his back on the galaxy. I liked the character of Rose but thought she was handled poorly. (The actress did a good job but the writing for Rose in general was bad.) Speaking of, I haven't seen her in any of the Rise of Skywalker trailers yet...

Which is true if they have different skeletons. Or you can just share the same one like they almost certainly did with Odyssey -- i.e. the male and female models are extremely similar in size and I wouldn't be surprised if the underlying skeletons are identical or nearly so. Also makes modelling armor sets a lot easier.

Absolutely, but they did already have female NPCs, which would have had a few of the animations - not nearly as many as PCs, obviously - but it would have been the lazy/cheap answer. Or perhaps it was planned and dropped early becaiuse of crunch (did they say something like that? I forgot), since the released game was far from properly finished/QAed?

Agreed - I think when the inevitable sequel comes out for PS5, there's probably a good chance of some stuff like that being incorporated into it. Maybe even some kind of ..what was that game? Web of Shadows? Where you play as different Spideys through the game. I could see that happening.



They're fine in their own way. The issue with them as characters is that they're often portrayed as far more one-dimensional then they need to. Even back in the 1990s there were books where they had a lot more nuance added to them aside from "for the emprah!" and a few other catchphrases - and that's been expanded on so many times now across a fair few books that are actually, you know, decent. I mean, we don't get that in videogames because kil kil kil.



Yeah, well, we can't have blacks and girls in our whiteboi treehouse, after all. I do wonder though - if the new movies had been overall amazing or at least much better (think MCU level) quality rather than subpar if these toolbags would have gotten as much traction as they have. What's his name? The Quickening? Something like that. He keeps popping up in my feeds and I have to keep whackamoling him (after that first 5 or 10-min listen I gave him out of curiosity).

It was Shattered Dimentions, where you play Spidey, Ultimates Spidey, Spidey 2099 and Spidey Noir.

In Web of Shadows you fight Venom infecting an entire city with Symbiotes.

I set my Xbox One to New Zealand location about 5pm my time today and played about 4 hours of this. It's fun and definitely harder than I expected though not "throw your controller at the wall" hard. I'm on the 2nd planet and have seen stuff on both of the first two planets I can't get to yet and will have to backtrack to when I get new Force powers. It's hard to judge how much game there is so far though I have 3 planets to explore so far. Interestingly I found the coordinates to one of them by just exploring on the starting planet. My little droid scanned a wall mural and it was like "Coordinates for <semispoiler> found."

It's definitely not a hack and slash game. I've seen a bit of variety in enemy types so far. Several types of wild life and I think half a dozen or so different types of stormtroopers with different attack styles you have to adjust to. Things can get quite hectic when the game mixes different types in, especially if some of them have attacks that can't be blocked and you have to watch for those and dodge them. The worst for me so far was two different kinds of scout troopers wielding stun batons , 2 regular stormtroopers and a stormtrooper with a missle launcher all at once. That was a wild fight!

Early reviews are, like, extremely positive.  Huh.  I did not see that coming.

The story is surprisingly good and while the controls are clunky as fuck and somewhat counter-intuitive when you start, once you're used to them, it's on. 

Is this a game where a controller is preferred? 

I played it on Xbox One and the controller was just fine. I can't compare it to keyboard and mouse so I don't know. I will say, in general I had zero issues caused by controls.

That said, this game is hard as hell sometimes. I purposefully avoided Dark Souls and I've heard this game called Dark Souls lite so I think I made a wise choice. There were a few boss battles where I was almost like "this is as far as I can get in this game" but I somehow managed to pull off a win. Oddly, the final boss battle was relatively easy but I also had a nearly full powered character and had gotten marginally better at the fighting as the game went on.

I quite enjoyed the story and think something like this would have made a good "A Star Wars story" movie. I also have to say this:

So, this is on steam.

Did everyone decide not be assholes all of a sudden, and/or is this going to do something awful to my PC?

I see a load of small print on the steam page but I'm too tired to decide wtf it all means in practice.

I think EA realized no one was going to drop Steam just because it didn't have EA games on it, so stopped making shit Origin exclusive.

They announced a partnership for EA Access to come to Steam recently, so I'm guessing a good chunk of EA games will be coming back to Steam but launch through the Origin client.  Just like like Fallen Order does and how Ubi does with Uplay.

https://www.ea.com/news/ea-and-valve-partnership

Really dislike the way the controls feel--like, the first fifteen minutes are the tutorial from hell with bad jumping shit mixed in. But yes, I'm also interested in the characters and situation.

It took me a bit to settle in but by the last 1/3rd of the game I was feeling like a Jedi bad ass. I was also playing on Xbox One so if you're on PC it may control a lot differently.

On PS4 for this.

Apparently I need to eat crow because I have ended up liking this. It really feels like SW and I care about where the characters and story goes.

Oct/Nov 2019 has actually been somewhat decent for releases.

PS4. Like I said, the controls are shit at first, but once you’re used to it? Dark Souls/Mirror’s Edge with lightsabers. The story on top of that? Fucking Aces. This is the shit I’ve been looking for in the Star War.

A good Star Wars game and a good Star Wars TV show release at the same time?  Something terrible is going to happen now.  The universe demands balance!

Not just a good Star Wars game but a good game released by EA that is not riddled with microtransactions or even DLC/Season Pass stuff nor does it have any amount of online stuff. The stuff you get for preordering was relatively trivial too. A couple of extra lightsaber customizations.

I hope it sells like a billion copies so EA goes "Huh, this can actually make some money?"

Borrowing my kid’s PS4 account, and DAMN.  Blown away so far.  It is UnStarCharted Souls.

Also, how the FUCK does the PS4 still manage graphics like this?  Incredible.

Finished it. I. Want. Moar.

If this and Mandalorian is what Disney/Lucas is bringing to the table, pump that shit directly into my veins.

I feel the same on both counts. On the game front I loved the Night Sister and I only had a couple of issues with how it all ended:

If somehow the last movie is actually great, it will have been and insane few weeks for Star Wars fans. 

But it probably won't be, so two out of three ain't bad.

If Youtube is to be believed* it's going to be a disaster.

*A lot of the channels claiming it have been hating on Lucasfilm non-stop since TLJ if not since TFA.

JJA remaking Rotj doesn't sound like a recipe for success to be completely honest.

The first 45 minutes of tFA, sure, that is exactly what he does well. But hey, we'll see.

I enjoyed most of TFA except for seeing the planets explode from the surface of another planet and Starkiller base in general. I've avoided leaks and spoilers for this movie but the trailers, at least, don't lead me to believe we'll be getting ROTJ remade.

Played this a bit and more interesting than I thought it would be to play, but on the other hand holy hell the utterly bland storyline. I can't even concentrate through a 30 second cutscene of the boring lady. I got that the terminally dull dead Jedi was hiding some kids but have literally no idea why us travelling from planet to planet and then exploring along the only available route forward is helping those kids.

Everyone except the pilot guy is giving me Bao Dur flashbacks.

I haven't got to the telegraphed twist yet but fucking hell I'm going to understand entirely why they turned to the Dark side when I get there.

On reflection your pal on starter planet was OK too. If a bit earnest.

You've clearly tuned out. You're told very, very clearly why you're doing what you're doing. Multiple times. As for the characters, Cere wasn't my favorite but I dug the story and most of the characters.

Expect lots of increasing corporate blanditizing™ to avoid triggering Internets. We're approaching peak retard commentary at light speed and there's nothing wrong with our hyperdrive motivators (reference the Pelaton commercial nonsense).

I've taken to watching Sanford & Son reruns just to remember what it was like when the world was a saner place. Also for research into my new phase of life as Fred Sanford.

I kind of suspect the story is the same as all the other star wars stories so I'm sure you're right that I just tuned it out, I think it is part performance and pacing, but also possibly they don't integrate story and play all that well.

It is very much 'now stop for exposition'.... 'OK now go for platforming'..... 'OK combat room'.

You never really see things happen, instead they just tell you.

Equally, while I enjoy the puzzles and set pieces as a lump of abstract gaming, it never quite feels like anything other than lumps of abstract gaming. Zeffo and Bogano especially felt like nothing other than a game set. The random appearance of an ATST or being told more empire dudes are showing up never felt like a natural story progression to fear, they just felt like 'oh the next star wars themed abstract game room'.

I'm ok with it. It is fun.

And the intro planet didn't feel this way at all.

But even the short CoD campaigns feel a bit more like they are set in a world where stuff is happening independently of you.

It is also possible I've been playing too much Hitman, and been spoilt on their level design.

Further in now and OK it gets better.

In unsurprising news, job adverts have been spotted for people to work at respawn on another '3rd person action adventure game in the star wars universe' .