Podcast 544 - The Ball Dropping Show (Far Cry 5, Sea of Thieves, Ni No Kuni 2, A Way Out, and More!)

The discussions on 544 were all great and enthusiastic, great job! I also thought the community questions were all wonderful, good job to all of you patrons asking smart and fun questions~

One question this week focused on Prey and about it's combat feeling a lot more free-form, rather than focusing on stealth like other games of it's type. My thought is this has a lot to do with the enemy types in the game. In Dishonored and Deus Ex you're largely fighting against humans that react like humans. Guards. They'll call out to their allies for backup and go into an alert mode of some sort. I think the fact that you're fighting animal-like aliens in Prey loosens that idea of getting caught because you know they're not going to announce it to everyone else in the area. It's only you versus this single enemy in front of you when you're caught.
Not to mention, they make you comfortable with the idea of getting caught early on with the Mimic enemy types suddenly attacking you when you least expect it. You're not always the assassin hunting your enemy like in Dishonored, the enemies are sometimes and often hunting YOU in Prey.

Prey takes inspiration from the "Shock" games in general and those games capture that similar gameplay style as well despite having a lot more enemies that are closer to human.

As someone who spent over 30+ hours on Sea of Thieves and enjoyed it immensely, I wasn’t offended by the comments from the discussion over the lack of content. I agree a lot on Rare needing to add a great deal more to value the game at $60 but I wanted to share some unique things from the game that was left out of the good segment of the discussion since a lot of it is found either by higher rank tier quest missions or just found throughout the world at random.

1. While Skeletons are the only foe in the game besides snakes and the Kraken, they do evolve as you rank higher such as flower skeletons who heal in water or ghost skeletons who can only be damaged once you shine your lantern at them.
2. Higher Tier Treasure hunts will sometimes give cursed Chests, such as The Chest of Sorrow, which will cry tears that’ll eventually flood your ship unless someone either holds it or plays a tune to calm it down.
3. There are several hidden islands not marked on the map, such as a hidden underground temple and some suggest those will be used for future content.
4. Storms can cause your ship to slowly fill with water while your compass will spin outta control as you must shout at your crew where to steer as the wind pushes the wheel in random directions.
5. While sailing you may come across a flock of birds circling the waters, which will either be a couple of barrels to restock your supplies or sometimes there may even be a sunken ship with rare loot to nab.
6. Lastly, a giant Skull may appear above the clouds, leading towards a fortress that has a ton of skeletons guarding a vast amount of loot. However, since everyone can see it, it tends to cause the most PVP clash moments to see who can race to loot it all.

All in all, those don’t warrant enough for a massive difference but mix that in with a good crew to chat as it all happens and you can have a great time. At least I didn’t put 800 hours in The Division.

Even though mostly a lurker and truthfully missed some of the podcast, still what was watched, interesting to say the least.

The Far Cry 5 discussions was very engaging and honestly thought provoking. Will say some general issue I had with it where mentioned. Key example always running into guys on the road. Case and point I was nearly trapped in a horrible death loop all due to bad check-pointing while trying to finish one area.

Sad true fact, I have no heart to finish this game and its not resting on concerns/problems of this game. More the fact this game broke me on a personal level, all centered around Deputy Hudson...

It left me with a heavy heart and no desire to continue on after clearing the same area three times now which was honestly torture at parts, especially after purposely spoiling myself on the end game..

In the end just ask please don't think less of me...

I thought the Sea of Thieves discussion was pretty insightful and definitely a conversation worth having going forward for future titles, though I think there was a bit of a run-around trying to get your points across.

Personally, when you release a game in it's "1.0" state, your thoughts should be towards that current state. You can revisit it later and reevaluate your opinions (which as you all mentioned is difficult for you guys), but I think it's fine to get a negative first impression from your experience.

Whereas I did thoroughly enjoy these discussions, I want to remind you that the developers for Sea of Thieves and Farcry 5 have never obligated people to like either game.

Far Cry 5 on the other hand, is what it is and what it’s always been regardless of the message you felt owed to you: a Far Cry game (period). Bringing a film or literature-based critical discussion to this game’s story or any story in the series, doesn’t make any sense to someone who has played these games. The developers with writers build a halfass, sometimes intriguing, contextual story to justify you killing dudes, taking outposts, driving jeeps, and collecting stuff; that’s about it.

I think Nolan put it best in the Sea of Thieves discussion. You want people to keep playing your game? Then ‘sell’ the game.

I think most of us are fine with idea that this game could be dope as fuck in a year’s time, but they have to actually hook you enough to want to keep it and the updates on your radar.

Long time listener here. Some constructive criticism, as the beginning of this episode was kind of hard to listen to:

Nolan talks over everyone all the time, but it was pretty rough this time around. It's already hard enough with how harsh he can sound to others at times (especially to Chris Davis), but Nick really just got taken over with interruptions and unnecessary anecdotes.

Nick's points were valid and his concerns were justified. Though the game had clearly not marketed itself to be what people hope it could have been, a developer like Rare being published by Microsoft putting out a full-priced title on their dying platform is something that should be exciting and full of content, yet it turned out to be glorified early access scenario just without the "early access" stamp. I agree with Krispy on how the future of games could look like this and it is important to discuss it, but there was not a precedent for this title in particular to be as bare as it is while still being considered a full-priced product.

Hey guys, from Iowa City. Last weeks podcast was great. Without criticism and discussion we can’t expect improvement.

Nothing has ever made me go from 0% interested to 110% interested until I heard about the intro of Ni No Kuni 2. I need to see this for myself. And an easy going RPG is something I can go for right now. By the way, I'm from a town outside Chicago.