InquisitorAles don't let dumbasses get you down. It's just idiot fanboys refusing to accept reality.
Community MetaSteam | June 2020 - Month Of The Seal, With Many A Deal, Throw Money With Zeal, The Wallet Will Kneel
- Thread starter lashman
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Why wouldn't there be? There were many games announced for Steam last year and Epic sponsored that show too.
I want Tokyo Jungle and Gravity Rush to come honestly.
So just finished Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero.
Boy, did this game leave an impression. That ending was probably, taken as a whole, the most impactful thing I ever experienced in a game, certainly among the best endings of any RPG I ever played. It's kind of unfair, since the thing that affected me most the resolution to Renne's story is something that was built up over 4 games, but it still really hits the feels for me.
The game itself feels like a great follow up to the Sky games, vastly expanding the setting. Where the Liberl Kingdom was a truly idyllic place, where the actual state was nearly perfect, and the plot focus was mainly on simple-to-identify external forces (Ouroboros and the Empire), with Crossbell the issues are quite inane to the state itself. It's not so much that Crossbell's politics are corrupt, it's that it was founded as a sort of compromise between two major powers, who then kept using it merely as a useful trade hub and a barrier between their respective rival. This creates the perfect opportunity for organized crime to take root, playing both sides against the middle. This is actually the most interesting point to me, and acknowledged by Dudley midway through the game: as long as Crossbell exist as it does, nothing the heroes can do against Revache would ever truly matter. Even rooting out Revache would just mean that Heiyue takes its place. The problems run much, much deeper. How to overcome such a barrier? Our heroes do not know, and even the ending of this game leaves open how Crossbell could ever be reformed.
I really liked the playable heroes of the SSS, and this aspect of the game also feels like a natural evolution from the Sky games. Where in those it was all about a single character, Estelle, the SSS aren't solely about Lloyd, he'd make a very dull character just on his lonesome. But as a group? They are just superb, with great banter among themselves, and great responses collectively to any situation. I know some people complain that there's already some harem shenanigans going on, but at least in Zero that's really not very overt. There's a few scenes where Lloyd gets to bond with each character, and it's clear that both Tio and Elie have some feelings for him, but I felt it was only with Elie that Lloyd truly developed romantic feelings, with Randy it's clearly just a bromance and with Tio I feel it's closer to a sister-brother thing, but maybe that's just me mentally blocking out the creepy Anime bullshit.
I know from reading here on and on Era that many people didn't like the pure scale of this game in terms of NPC dialogues. And I totally get where they come from, if you feel compelled to read all the little things these myriad of characters have to say across the game, across the 10 maps (if we count the cathedral, Station Street, and everything within the city proper) of Crossbell City, plus the 3 settlements outside the city, plus the 2 guard stations, then yeah, that's a fuck ton of stuff. A normal person would get annoyed at that. But if you are a weirdo like me, who can't get enough of this slice-of-life dialogue that Falcom is so great at producing, and which the Geofront people have impeccable rendered into English, then that's a feast that you won't ever get enough of.
In that same vein, I never minded the back-and-forth travelling that you need to do for a lot of the sidequests, the fishing, and so forth. Especially with the fast-travel option. I know where people are coming from, and I can just say that I didn't mind it.
I must say, my main criticism, at least plot wise, would be how flat the villain feels like. There's literally zero foreshadowing, and Joachim is just silly Anime villain.Hell, it doesn't help that Falcom keeps reminding you during the actual ending how Joachim is just a sillier version of Weismann, the villain of SC. Still, it's over fast enough, not like Weismann who gets far more screentime in SC.
According to the timer, I spend near 120 hours with the game, so I guess all that massive amount of content does take a while to play. Still, time you enjoy is never time wasted, and I loved just about every minute with this game.
In my overall score of Trails games, I would place this just behind SC, and 3rd. SC just feels more epic, building on all the things in FC, truly allowing you to appreciate the greatness of Liberl, and with a ton of dramatic events, which don't feel rushed since you had the time to get to know everything in FC. And 3rd is just insane, every hour feels like it's assaulting you with great story revelations and providing closure to things in FC and SC.
So, normally that would be everything, but as I promised to Line , I wanted to go back to his post from last month, and give a detailed answer:
Overall, I'm really looking forward to Ao. I will put in some lengthy break, though. Zero was a great game, but also pretty tiring, just due to its sheer length. I'll wait a bit before tackling its sequel, and finding out whether Lloyd and his friends truly do manage to get over the barrier.
Boy, did this game leave an impression. That ending was probably, taken as a whole, the most impactful thing I ever experienced in a game, certainly among the best endings of any RPG I ever played. It's kind of unfair, since the thing that affected me most the resolution to Renne's story is something that was built up over 4 games, but it still really hits the feels for me.
The game itself feels like a great follow up to the Sky games, vastly expanding the setting. Where the Liberl Kingdom was a truly idyllic place, where the actual state was nearly perfect, and the plot focus was mainly on simple-to-identify external forces (Ouroboros and the Empire), with Crossbell the issues are quite inane to the state itself. It's not so much that Crossbell's politics are corrupt, it's that it was founded as a sort of compromise between two major powers, who then kept using it merely as a useful trade hub and a barrier between their respective rival. This creates the perfect opportunity for organized crime to take root, playing both sides against the middle. This is actually the most interesting point to me, and acknowledged by Dudley midway through the game: as long as Crossbell exist as it does, nothing the heroes can do against Revache would ever truly matter. Even rooting out Revache would just mean that Heiyue takes its place. The problems run much, much deeper. How to overcome such a barrier? Our heroes do not know, and even the ending of this game leaves open how Crossbell could ever be reformed.
I really liked the playable heroes of the SSS, and this aspect of the game also feels like a natural evolution from the Sky games. Where in those it was all about a single character, Estelle, the SSS aren't solely about Lloyd, he'd make a very dull character just on his lonesome. But as a group? They are just superb, with great banter among themselves, and great responses collectively to any situation. I know some people complain that there's already some harem shenanigans going on, but at least in Zero that's really not very overt. There's a few scenes where Lloyd gets to bond with each character, and it's clear that both Tio and Elie have some feelings for him, but I felt it was only with Elie that Lloyd truly developed romantic feelings, with Randy it's clearly just a bromance and with Tio I feel it's closer to a sister-brother thing, but maybe that's just me mentally blocking out the creepy Anime bullshit.
I know from reading here on and on Era that many people didn't like the pure scale of this game in terms of NPC dialogues. And I totally get where they come from, if you feel compelled to read all the little things these myriad of characters have to say across the game, across the 10 maps (if we count the cathedral, Station Street, and everything within the city proper) of Crossbell City, plus the 3 settlements outside the city, plus the 2 guard stations, then yeah, that's a fuck ton of stuff. A normal person would get annoyed at that. But if you are a weirdo like me, who can't get enough of this slice-of-life dialogue that Falcom is so great at producing, and which the Geofront people have impeccable rendered into English, then that's a feast that you won't ever get enough of.
In that same vein, I never minded the back-and-forth travelling that you need to do for a lot of the sidequests, the fishing, and so forth. Especially with the fast-travel option. I know where people are coming from, and I can just say that I didn't mind it.
I must say, my main criticism, at least plot wise, would be how flat the villain feels like. There's literally zero foreshadowing, and Joachim is just silly Anime villain.Hell, it doesn't help that Falcom keeps reminding you during the actual ending how Joachim is just a sillier version of Weismann, the villain of SC. Still, it's over fast enough, not like Weismann who gets far more screentime in SC.
According to the timer, I spend near 120 hours with the game, so I guess all that massive amount of content does take a while to play. Still, time you enjoy is never time wasted, and I loved just about every minute with this game.
In my overall score of Trails games, I would place this just behind SC, and 3rd. SC just feels more epic, building on all the things in FC, truly allowing you to appreciate the greatness of Liberl, and with a ton of dramatic events, which don't feel rushed since you had the time to get to know everything in FC. And 3rd is just insane, every hour feels like it's assaulting you with great story revelations and providing closure to things in FC and SC.
So, normally that would be everything, but as I promised to Line , I wanted to go back to his post from last month, and give a detailed answer:
So, first of all, I must say I liked your take on this game , just based on the very idea of taking the events of the game and interpreting them on your own terms, removed from what the game wants you to think about them. Whish more people looked at games, or any creative medium, like that.
Now, mind you, I do no agree with any of our conclusions, not even remotely, but I like and appreciate this kind of in-depth analysis, and even if you probably hate this game with the passion of a hundred suns, from reading your post, I think even you can appreciate that's it's a rare JRPG where you can complain about its portrayal of things like foreign policy, political corruption, powers and limits of the police, and civil liberties, and so forth.
Your complaints about Grace: To summarise, you said that Grace is corrupt, she doesn't care about the SSS, only using them as fodder for her articles, and is complicit in the corruption of Crossbell, and that she has no interest in the truth.
To which I can really just say:
I honestly don't know what game you have played. Yes, she is playing hardball on the SSS, but only because they are pretty bad at their job initially, and she expect them to live up to Guys ambitions, as she knows that the SSS is basically what Guy wanted the police force to always be. Her reports on the SSS allow them to become quite famous very quickly, at a time when that much focus on them wasn't really justifiable, purely from a journalistic point of view. Many of the sidequests early on, are from people who have read about the SSS from the CNS.
Saying that she is corrupt and supporting the status quo is laughably wrong, as she complains multiple times that she wants to publish about things like the Schwarze Auction, but is kept from it from political pressures on the CNS, presumably the Imperial Faction. And finally, how anyone who read the dialogue of this character can even remotely claim that she isn't interested in the truth, that's just beyond me.
Another point I will focus on, is how the SSS behaves, purely legally, before and during the Schwarze Auction (you call it "black money auction", which I guess might have been the name used in the early Zero patch?) :
So first of all, let's realise that the way the auction is set up, Hartmann and Revache deliberately don't check the identify of people entering. They don't want there to be a paper trail, after all. Our heroes get an invitation, which they didn't steal, they just received it. (We know it's from Renne, but purely legally no one can prove that, it just appeared). This is presumably exactly how the Schwarze Auction actually delivers the invitations, without names and even without sender info. Again, they don't want a paper trail, that would defeat the entire point of this highly illegal event. Not illegal for Crossbell perhaps, but it's basically smuggling as far as the Empire and the Republic are concerned.
So, our heroes then walk up to the auction, and show their invitations, and are left in. Legally, it's not illegal entry, and they are at the event as civilians. They do not have any official SSS business there (which is true, btw, they didn't inform anybody about it, not even Sergei).
Then comes the important event: Finding KeA and the ensuing fight. The SSS witness clear signs of human trafficking, and find a possibly kidnapped child. Taking her (she willingly follows Lloyd) into their custody and evacuating her from the promises is: 1) Easily justifiable since they are rescuing the victim of a crime and 2) legally justifable. All Western countries have laws that allow police officers, if they witness a crime in action, to intervene. If a police officer walks by my window while I'm pointing a gun at someone, then you can bet they would be allowed to enter the house and arrest me. Yes, I could argue in court that they broke my rights, but my chances of convincing a court that it wasn't justifiable would be fairly slim. Hell, in-game Revache doesn't even try to fight the SSS legally on what happened in the Auction, they are openly cooperating with the police, since they know how much shit they are in for the credible accusation of human trafficking.
From the moment KeA entered the scene, it was official and legal police business, as I said, rescuing a child. Revache are the ones attacking police officers doing their jobs. The SSS are not attacking anyone, they are carrying a child and are simply trying to leave the house and Mishelam as fast as they can. Claming they deserve the "death penalty" is laughable. It's the goons who are shooting at police officers, who are carrying a child, Revache are commtiting crimes here, and plenty of them.
And finally, I believe you are missing the complexity of the setting. Falcom isn't saying that the Imperial Faction and Hartmann are bad, and if they stopped existing, then suddenly everything would be good about Crossbell. As Dudley himself said during the game, the very existance of Revache is a necessary consequence of Crossbells flawed nature. The question, then, is to find ways to reform the state from within, which of course would also require, as final consequence, to confront its relationship with Calvard and Erebonia at some point. It's worthy to remember that it is Hong Kong which served as the inspiration for Crossbell, and just as with Crossbell, the idea of a free and truly autonomous Hong Kong is a near insurmountable barrier. Due to it's very existance, between the liberal nature due to constitution and laws from the former UK colony, and the realities of being part of modern day China, how could this country ever simply fix its problems on its own?
Long story short, I really appreciate how Falcom has taken inspiration from real life politics to produce the setting of a a deeply flawed country, with our heroes fighting against nearly unbeatable odds, as far as the politics are concerned. While Revache and Hartmann being gone will probably fix some things, it doesn't address the deeper issues, issues which could now even threaten the precarious balance that had existed before.
Now, mind you, I do no agree with any of our conclusions, not even remotely, but I like and appreciate this kind of in-depth analysis, and even if you probably hate this game with the passion of a hundred suns, from reading your post, I think even you can appreciate that's it's a rare JRPG where you can complain about its portrayal of things like foreign policy, political corruption, powers and limits of the police, and civil liberties, and so forth.
Your complaints about Grace: To summarise, you said that Grace is corrupt, she doesn't care about the SSS, only using them as fodder for her articles, and is complicit in the corruption of Crossbell, and that she has no interest in the truth.
To which I can really just say:
I honestly don't know what game you have played. Yes, she is playing hardball on the SSS, but only because they are pretty bad at their job initially, and she expect them to live up to Guys ambitions, as she knows that the SSS is basically what Guy wanted the police force to always be. Her reports on the SSS allow them to become quite famous very quickly, at a time when that much focus on them wasn't really justifiable, purely from a journalistic point of view. Many of the sidequests early on, are from people who have read about the SSS from the CNS.
Saying that she is corrupt and supporting the status quo is laughably wrong, as she complains multiple times that she wants to publish about things like the Schwarze Auction, but is kept from it from political pressures on the CNS, presumably the Imperial Faction. And finally, how anyone who read the dialogue of this character can even remotely claim that she isn't interested in the truth, that's just beyond me.
Another point I will focus on, is how the SSS behaves, purely legally, before and during the Schwarze Auction (you call it "black money auction", which I guess might have been the name used in the early Zero patch?) :
So first of all, let's realise that the way the auction is set up, Hartmann and Revache deliberately don't check the identify of people entering. They don't want there to be a paper trail, after all. Our heroes get an invitation, which they didn't steal, they just received it. (We know it's from Renne, but purely legally no one can prove that, it just appeared). This is presumably exactly how the Schwarze Auction actually delivers the invitations, without names and even without sender info. Again, they don't want a paper trail, that would defeat the entire point of this highly illegal event. Not illegal for Crossbell perhaps, but it's basically smuggling as far as the Empire and the Republic are concerned.
So, our heroes then walk up to the auction, and show their invitations, and are left in. Legally, it's not illegal entry, and they are at the event as civilians. They do not have any official SSS business there (which is true, btw, they didn't inform anybody about it, not even Sergei).
Then comes the important event: Finding KeA and the ensuing fight. The SSS witness clear signs of human trafficking, and find a possibly kidnapped child. Taking her (she willingly follows Lloyd) into their custody and evacuating her from the promises is: 1) Easily justifiable since they are rescuing the victim of a crime and 2) legally justifable. All Western countries have laws that allow police officers, if they witness a crime in action, to intervene. If a police officer walks by my window while I'm pointing a gun at someone, then you can bet they would be allowed to enter the house and arrest me. Yes, I could argue in court that they broke my rights, but my chances of convincing a court that it wasn't justifiable would be fairly slim. Hell, in-game Revache doesn't even try to fight the SSS legally on what happened in the Auction, they are openly cooperating with the police, since they know how much shit they are in for the credible accusation of human trafficking.
From the moment KeA entered the scene, it was official and legal police business, as I said, rescuing a child. Revache are the ones attacking police officers doing their jobs. The SSS are not attacking anyone, they are carrying a child and are simply trying to leave the house and Mishelam as fast as they can. Claming they deserve the "death penalty" is laughable. It's the goons who are shooting at police officers, who are carrying a child, Revache are commtiting crimes here, and plenty of them.
And finally, I believe you are missing the complexity of the setting. Falcom isn't saying that the Imperial Faction and Hartmann are bad, and if they stopped existing, then suddenly everything would be good about Crossbell. As Dudley himself said during the game, the very existance of Revache is a necessary consequence of Crossbells flawed nature. The question, then, is to find ways to reform the state from within, which of course would also require, as final consequence, to confront its relationship with Calvard and Erebonia at some point. It's worthy to remember that it is Hong Kong which served as the inspiration for Crossbell, and just as with Crossbell, the idea of a free and truly autonomous Hong Kong is a near insurmountable barrier. Due to it's very existance, between the liberal nature due to constitution and laws from the former UK colony, and the realities of being part of modern day China, how could this country ever simply fix its problems on its own?
Long story short, I really appreciate how Falcom has taken inspiration from real life politics to produce the setting of a a deeply flawed country, with our heroes fighting against nearly unbeatable odds, as far as the politics are concerned. While Revache and Hartmann being gone will probably fix some things, it doesn't address the deeper issues, issues which could now even threaten the precarious balance that had existed before.
Overall, I'm really looking forward to Ao. I will put in some lengthy break, though. Zero was a great game, but also pretty tiring, just due to its sheer length. I'll wait a bit before tackling its sequel, and finding out whether Lloyd and his friends truly do manage to get over the barrier.
I think you should not take 99% of users from Resetera seriously or even link that forum here.Something very troubling if true......
"Lmao. This guy is a joker. I'd post the Discord screenshots of them admitting to making this video without any proof just to fuck with people, but I don't want to get banned. "
[Rumor] Sony to Close PS5 Event with Demon's Souls Remake; More Bloodborne on PC/PS5 Info Rumor
It won't if it runs at 60 like ds3 and Sekiro.
What's going on InquisitorAles ?
Nice writeup. I believe I mentioned this in my own impressions last month, but I believe that the main antagonist is simply existing to serve as a catalyst for Tio and Renne's catharsis. They're not even trying to humanise Joachim's character too much, apart from some modest interactions via NPC dialogues, a couple of side quests and a few brief moments in the mainline quest.
I enjoyed Crossbell as a setting a lot, and Lloyd's exponential growth is something I can really appreciate especially when I tried to draw a parallel with Rean, which I mostly lukewarm on until Cold Steel II.
huuuuge hug to InquisitorAles, don't let the internet ruin your weekend!
I´m downloading the leaked Dead Island 2, if I don´t comeback, my PC exploded or something.
It's interesting that you say that, because I feel the opposite. Even though I did enjoy MH:W, it's far more "grindy" than DS ever was: the whole main game mechanic is basically repeating the same thing for resources, isn't it?
Huge indie BLM bundle from Itch, includes Night in the Woods and a ton of others Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality by itch.io and 566 others
Just a heads-up. Amid the current BLM movement in the US, INDIE Live Expo 2020 is probably not delaying to another date and going to live at 8pm JST.. It is an Asian-centric event so expected to see some indies games from Japan, China, Taiwan and other places. Personally I wish to see news from Type Moon BB Studio (one of the contributors) as well as updates on Reverse Collapse (spinoff of gacha game Girls' Frontline).
www.gematsu.com
Edit: The event page on gematsu is very useful for tracking upcoming events, btw.
www.gematsu.com
INDIE Live Expo 2020 - Gematsu
INDIE Live Expo 2020, a live streamed independent games event, will broadcast from Japan on June 6, 2020 from 20:00 to 23:00 JST. You will be able to watch it on YouTube (English, Japanese)…
www.gematsu.com
Edit: The event page on gematsu is very useful for tracking upcoming events, btw.
Events - Gematsu
www.gematsu.com
I just cleared the 10th covenant in Monster Train, and it's still fun as hell. I think this will probably end up being my goty. I just love how you always feel like you're getting to do something totally overpowered.
Managed to get three of these in my last run, and it felt great. Who needs units when you can just delete everything?
Managed to get three of these in my last run, and it felt great. Who needs units when you can just delete everything?
Manowar disagrees. You don't live under one of those flags, you don't count!
USA is number 1!!!
USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!USA! USA!
Another update to the Steam Controller v2 patent
This time with overlays that go over the touchpad to mask finger detection. I don't know if this'll end up in the final package, but it's nice to see them trying things. I just need a bit of hope that the SCv2 is coming.
US20200164269A1 - Handheld controllers with detachable overlays - Google Patents
Described herein are, among other things, handheld controllers that include one or more touchpads (i.e., touch-sensitive controls) configured to detachably couple to one or more overlays that effectively transform the respective touchpad into a different control. For instance, one example...
patents.google.com
This time with overlays that go over the touchpad to mask finger detection. I don't know if this'll end up in the final package, but it's nice to see them trying things. I just need a bit of hope that the SCv2 is coming.
Gotta say from what I'm seeing those designs look like a big plus overallAnother update to the Steam Controller v2 patent
US20200164269A1 - Handheld controllers with detachable overlays - Google Patents
Described herein are, among other things, handheld controllers that include one or more touchpads (i.e., touch-sensitive controls) configured to detachably couple to one or more overlays that effectively transform the respective touchpad into a different control. For instance, one example...patents.google.com
This time with overlays that go over the touchpad to mask finger detection. I don't know if this'll end up in the final package, but it's nice to see them trying things. I just need a bit of hope that the SCv2 is coming.
Apparently PS5 is going to obliterate everything in existence and its SSD is nothing short of magic. Are you folks ready to throw away your common man PCs and rejoice in console superiority like any nobility should?
Can someone explain to me how SSD is going to help Sony with the worst CPU and GPU on the market?
Can someone explain to me how SSD is going to help Sony with the worst CPU and GPU on the market?
People really drank this SSD koolaid shit. But it is the same song and dance every gen. This gen was the teraflop dick measuring contest, prior to that it was the Cell chip, Toy Story graphics and all that stupid shit companies say to hype their stuff.
Hey, I'll expand a bit too in the spoilers!
She starts screwing them over in favor of the bracers, first for Arios. Then she works hard to belittle them in the news, to manipulate public opinion.So, first of all, I must say I liked your take on this game , just based on the very idea of taking the events of the game and interpreting them on your own terms, removed from what the game wants you to think about them. Whish more people looked at games, or any creative medium, like that.
Now, mind you, I do no agree with any of our conclusions, not even remotely, but I like and appreciate this kind of in-depth analysis, and even if you probably hate this game with the passion of a hundred suns, from reading your post, I think even you can appreciate that's it's a rare JRPG where you can complain about its portrayal of things like foreign policy, political corruption, powers and limits of the police, and civil liberties, and so forth.
Your complaints about Grace: To summarise, you said that Grace is corrupt, she doesn't care about the SSS, only using them as fodder for her articles, and is complicit in the corruption of Crossbell, and that she has no interest in the truth.
To which I can really just say:
I honestly don't know what game you have played. Yes, she is playing hardball on the SSS, but only because they are pretty bad at their job initially, and she expect them to live up to Guys ambitions, as she knows that the SSS is basically what Guy wanted the police force to always be. Her reports on the SSS allow them to become quite famous very quickly, at a time when that much focus on them wasn't really justifiable, purely from a journalistic point of view. Many of the sidequests early on, are from people who have read about the SSS from the CNS.
Saying that she is corrupt and supporting the status quo is laughably wrong, as she complains multiple times that she wants to publish about things like the Schwarze Auction, but is kept from it from political pressures on the CNS, presumably the Imperial Faction. And finally, how anyone who read the dialogue of this character can even remotely claim that she isn't interested in the truth, that's just beyond me.
And then indeed, they work together, and Lloyd is not happy about that but she has intel. Obtained from dubious sources, that she no doubt would be able to use to clean up the mafia, but the news are more important.
And that's a good reflection of modern day: she supports the status quo early on, manipulate the population, then switch to the heroes of the story when it's convenient for her image while still focusing on her news... and her fantasy Pulitzer price.
She's in for herself.
Lying is no biggie in the beginning, she has all the reasons to be frustrated, but her actions are certainly not for the truth. Hell, she gets censored when the news are not palpable to the elites... and had no issues keeping on because her career is at stake. And her paper is very important after all, can't let that close down.
She's a complete hypocrite, like pretty much everyone in this game.
Anything the heroes do is used to make others look good, but they never support them, and will actively try to stop them when they can.
It's the oh-so-topical brand awareness applied to an entire state apparatus. And the press, we all know what's going on with it even under literal fire. Can't cross a line, keep your job, keep it fair and balanced, protect the government.
The point is not that they can't go to the auction, it's that they've been ordered not to, multiple times.
Of course finding KeA is a crime the mafia committed, I'll come to that after.
But if you're a police officer, off duty, against orders, and you go waltzing in a well known den of criminal activity... you'd better know what you do. It's not like they can't just say "we're cops you're all under arrest". They can, they'd be right in general.
However, they're not allowed for a reason that proves correct: there's plenty of ministers and foreign dignitaries doing shady stuff: the Crossbell government do not want them discovered by the public (they love the auction, it brings them plenty of dirty money) and even less hurt.
When they start the shoot out, which is bad for the mafia... but it's the fucking mafia, a lot of VIPs are in danger.
Of course it's a videogame, so they know the important people to begin with and nothing bad happens.
But in a real life situation, waltzing on human trafficking while an investigation was going on when told not to interfere, then shooting your way out while I dunno, a Russian minister is hanging out with the chairman of the CCP's largest shell company... and they both die hit by stray bullets?
Yeah.
Morally, I agree with them.
But they are cops.
Legality and politics are VERY different. On top of blowing up the ongoing investigation, and probably putting the Crossbellian spies in quite a pickle, there's no way they'd get out unscathed by their own government. They'd probably have a mysterious accident falling from the fifteenth floor while discharging their shotguns in their backs.
As far as the foreign countries are concerned, Crossbell cannot be trusted, their police force has gone wild (and later with the drugs... the military too), their citizens and ambassadors are threatened.
This is not a moment where you can say "but we saw human trafficking and it's a crime".
Plus KeA was kidnapped (as far as they understand), that's bad of course.
But all the over activities are fine, as they say, even the Bracers would intervene in front of that. It's a good thing. But that also means that all the rest is okay as long as it doesn't get too well known or... make them lose money I guess?
Racketeering is fine, bribery and arson is whatever, plus I'm suuuure the mafia with unlimited would never kill and kidnap anyone else. We have a legendary assassin in the game, but it's really the supposed kidnapping of one girl that is the thing that they should never do. Nothing really bad happened before.
Riiight.
The police and the Bracers are insane hypocrites. Again.
Crime is a-okay as long as it's doesn't interfere with their activities and their money making schemes. Hell, considering all that happens, Bracers being bodyguards against criminals but doing nothing to crush them, instead focusing on desperate rabble trying to survive... the entire political game smells fishy when you combine modern day culture and fantasy tropes of intercontinental guilds.
The entire segment is absolutely ridiculous and is the main reason why making the subject of the game the fucking cops was a bad idea.
Law and order are completely irrelevant, consequences are hilariously absent in the game.
If they were bracers, that would be fine. Plausible deniability and all.
Cops, absolutely not. If they don't intend to use that element in any other way than "bracers but-not-really and we don't follow orders we're young lol", they should not have. The political impact on the lore is staggering, and would bring Crossbell's destruction.
JRPG tropes are a deal breaker if you want a realistic world.
I like the lore in general, but increasingly less so the modern anime tropes infesting the series.
I like the game (well not the gameplay, combat and backtracking is crap).
Just not at all the heroes, and everything that they did. Because as far as the real world is concerned, that would be Hong Kong giving the CCP the perfect reason to just steam roll them. In the game everything goes on as if it was normal, but after the police and the military going nuts, it's pretty unlikely that "no we didn't want to stop your illegal activities, but there was a green haired kid to save plus a cult drugged our armed forces so it wasn't our fault we're in control now kthx" would be effective.
Shortened, the later part of the game is tremendously stupid and destroys any semblance of political parallels.
There's two very different games at play in Zero (and it gets worse from here).
And it just doesn't work.
Apparently Sony's SSD really is a big deal. What's irritating is that people think it's a technology straight from the Star Trek and nobody is going to came up with a solution for PC in like 6-12 months top. Add to that, that PS5 will be severely underpowered compared to high-end PCs and XSX in every other department from the beginning and you'll see what's gonna be a weakest link few years down the line.
Even if ends being the bee’s knees, why can’t people just be happy with their boxes. They always feel the need to feel ‘superior’ to others and drowns out every possible debate about anything.
People just need an excuse to hype their choice up and shit on competition. We're going to do the same couple of years after the gen starts.
Because they lose the numbers war against their competitor except in SSD number, so they will use that aspect in the war.
There is no doubt that PS5's SSD is fast and will bring much improvement to PC scene though.
There is no doubt that PS5's SSD is fast and will bring much improvement to PC scene though.
I don't know man, I'm no IT specialist, I'm talking out of my own field of expertise here and I understand that there is always a lot of Snake Oil with those console manufacturers, but let's try to be a bit more objective here:
The new AMD CPUs ain't bad anymore. High core count, good IPC, power consumption (and therefore heat generation) is low, especially under 4GHz. Hard to complain about them and if developers decide to really use 8C/16T eventually, for games targeting 30fps, we'll have a big wave of upgrades coming to us.
We know nothing about RDNA 2.0 GPUs. But if the lowest tier RDNA 2.0 will beginn or even exceed RX 5700/XT levels of performance, and developers start to use it again for 1800p-2160p at 30 fps. Than current GPUs might not hold for as long as we'd like them to, depending on the preferred resolutions. The biggest unknown is Ray Tracing performance imo.
Maybe PS5 will use its NVMe drive to circumvent, the relative low amount of shared 16gb of memory between CPU and GPU? Maybe it will allow for new engines and techniques to present data both to CPU and GPU? Maybe levels will be designed completely different?
Because whenever I reach a point in a level, where I have to slowly crawl through a gap, or an elevator takes exceptionally long, or a corridor with two slowly opening doors on each side makes me wait, I'm fully aware that it's there to mask loading times. Maybe levels will be bigger, with less artificial obstacles to mask "loading in"? And we'll either need to upgrade our own system memory to 32GB+ and/or have NVMe ourselves to get no stuttering in gaming in a year or two? Especially as we tend to aim above 30fps..
I don't know, I'm a bit more careful when it comes to those new consoles. They are setting some interesting standards imo.
But with Microsoft releasing their games on PC and Sony appear to try it out. I'm actually not concerned at all. Having to upgrade a gaming PC down the road is normal and I'll maybe end up without the need to buy a PS5 at all.
PS5 pro with double the ssd sauce
I bet SpaceX will use it to send people to space twice as fast.
I bought a PS4 Pro last December just to play Shin Sakura Wars, and immediately sold it after completing the game... I will probably do the same if SEGA decides to release a sequel on PS5.
Well revision is always better than day one edition and price can be the same so unless you really want a piece of shiny new hardware it's always better to wait.
New consoles are definitely not in the same ballpark as PS4 and Xone were when they released, but I'm pretty sure (depending on a situation with Corona) we're going to see a new high-end GPU that will outperform consoles by the end of a year and more affordable stuff by the middle of 2021. CPUs are probably not far behind. The only unknown at this point is SSD and we don't know how much change it'll actually bring, especially in a first year after release.
not really , just the usual collage full of out of context posts made to push the narrative
That and Persona 5 Royale might be the last games I’ll buy for my PS4. Not interested in TLOU2 and FF7 will be coming to PC soooo.
Not sure about P5R, but I have a feeling that they will port Sakura Wars to PC and Switch sooner or later as I am not sure if the localized version sells well enough on PS4 only. And they obviously want to make a sequel judging by the story so far (including the anime) so they would want to build a larger base for it. Maybe they will announce a port once the anime ends.
Yeah, I'm mainly interested in how their specs translate into resolution/framerate "standards".
The CPUs especially look to be a big step up, and if they still try to sqeeze out of everything for just 30fps...
things could be a bit rough, especially if you want 60+.
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This. The CPU and GPU power of the new consoles will be surpassed in no time. The SSD, especially the PS5 SSD, is more of an unknown quantity, but even that will be limited to PS5 first party games unless developers want to completely rule out Xbox Series X and PC (assuming it is as magic and groundbreaking as Sony claims).
This is of course in no way downplaying how special the PS5's SSD might be. But I still think in this multiplatform world we will not reap the benefits of it outside of first party games because even if you remove PC from the equation, the Xbox Series X still exists and the SSD on that is more of a bog standard (albeit still very fast) one.
The way I see it is in terms of specs for at least a year after these new consoles release, Xbox One and PS4 will be anchors holding most AAA games back. The high end PC, PS5 and Series X versions of games will have lots of nice new features like ray tracing, 4K resolution, better textures and shorter loading times than the PS4/Xbox One/lower-spec PC and Switch, but they will still be games that release on those lower-spec systems.
After that, chances are PS5 will be the CPU/GPU anchor and Xbox Series X will be the I/O anchor for the vast majority of AAA games. And I don't see a point in the near future (1-2 years) where you can't get a PC SSD that outperforms than the Series X SSD, or a GPU/CPU that outperforms the PS5's to the point that a decent gaming PC is a bottleneck. We see this talk every console generation, and where there is true hardware innovation in the console space the PC manufacturers catch up fairly quickly. Always.
And I say this talking about only AAA games. I think indies and "mid-tier" developers will continue to do what they do; PS4 and Xbox One don't seem to be holding back their vision just yet. And I haven't seen any indie developers really publicly groaning about the nightmare of having to optimise for the current-gen consoles as they did towards the end of PS3/360, which were clearly bottlenecking developers that couldn't afford to optimise in the same way that the AAA developers could (in fact, we've seen a resurgence of the mid-tier games that all but died thanks to how costly PS3/360 development was). With that in mind I wouldn't be surprised if we see many non-AAA PS4 and Xbox One games being released for years to come.
In short, there's nothing to worry about. This is just more "The Future" soothsaying from fanboys. New console releases always raise the minimum specs bar for PC gaming eventually and this go around will be no different. All this talk of PC's past/present/future being fundamentally incapable of ever reaching the godly highs of PS5 is more nonsense in the vein of Saddam Hussein buying all the PS2s to use in his WMD missiles.
I confess my only understanding of SSDs is that they load stuff faster. As to the VOLUME of stuff they must load faster...wouldn't that also put stress on CPU at least? I'd like to think that the PS5 and XSX would load such data without issue, esp. if PCs can do that fine already, but someone enlighten me on this :X
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Honestly, my main hope is that with hardware in the new consoles not being a complete ass the masterminds at Nvidia/Intel/WD etc. will finally lower their prices to levels affordable to an average human being, but I don't hold my breath 
I believe the consoles have a dedicated chip to decompressing data, which takes stress off the CPU and removes the CPU as a bottleneck to getting data into RAM. Sony claims they can load gigabytes of game data into RAM in seconds, which obviously drastically changes how games are designed around data streaming. It's no doubt a very useful feature, but hardly something that's going to fundamentally change how PC hardware is designed.
Worst case scenario, PC hardware smashes it by brute force in the future. But I have no doubt that CPU and/or GPU manufacturers are working on some sort of super fast SSD caching solution that has the same (or better) effect.
Found a Getter robo chilling in a cafe.
While i am really liking the game in terms of gameplay, i haven't even finished a run with every single faction combination yet and feel already burned out.I just cleared the 10th covenant in Monster Train, and it's still fun as hell. I think this will probably end up being my goty. I just love how you always feel like you're getting to do something totally overpowered.
Managed to get three of these in my last run, and it felt great. Who needs units when you can just delete everything?
I wish the game had a bigger variety of enemies and bosses instead of forcing you to go through the exact same every run.
70 hours in Civ6 now but only 7% of the achievements, it's going to take a long time to get a respectable amount!
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