Mara said Nezarec is out of the picture so does that mean it's over? That was all there was for Nezarec :(

Pretty much yeah! We might get some extra info on his role in the Collapse, but he is not going to be an active character in the future. Link to the video where she says it.

And he never was an active character! This is something that I actually wanted to touch on because I've seen way too many comments and sentiments about Nezarec that are incredibly incorrect. A lot of it is on Bungie's handling of this lore, which I and others have spoken about at length before; the introduction was clumsy and disjointed and left a lot of people wondering about how relevant he is.

But also a lot of it is on the fandom mystification of random story elements and characters, as well as the fandom's inability to distinguish between important topics and curiosities that exist to spice up the setting. This is a problem in general with media, not just Destiny. Fandoms tend to not have a filter when it comes to things mentioned in the story and the setting. The truth is that some things that are mentioned are simply not important or are less important and will never be brought up again.

Long post below where I go into details about this trend in the community and specifically about Nezarec, tangentially related to the ask:

A really good example for this is Suraya Hawthorne. I know. I want more about her too. She was a really cool character and I love getting updates about her. But is she relevant and important enough to have more special storylines dedicated to her? Not really. A part of it is on the fact that she has fulfilled her character arc back in vanilla. She served as the human element to the Red War and was a face for the civilians impacted by the invasion. She served as someone who survived due to her exceptional skill and reluctance to join the rest of us in the City; she was not there when the attack happened, which saved her. Her survival skills in the wild helped her survive while on the run and allowed her to save others, including us! She fought alongside everybody to retake the City, a place she shunned but nonetheless felt connected to.

It ended with her accepting her role as an exceptional human that can help the City grow; she accepted that her potential is fulfilled when she joins everyone else in the City and helps humanity, instead of pretending that everyone should live on their own in the wilds. Destiny is inherently about people coming together against insurmountable odds and Suraya's story showcases that and ends with her understanding that message. Her story is over. There is nothing more to be said. Outside of small lore snippets that are really nice to see (Suraya playing Guardian Games, Suraya visiting her dads often), there is nothing to add to Suraya's story and theme. Sometimes we have to understand when a character arc ends. It's a good thing. The story has been told in a cohesive way and it ended.

There's also meta reasons such as VA availability. Amanda fills almost the same niche as Suraya and her VA is available since she also voices Caiatl so Amanda featured more often than Suraya. This also doesn't mean that no story can ever be made involving this character; just that expecting her to be a part of some big ongoing plot is not reasonable. Getting minor updates is fine.

There's a lot of this in Destiny. The game has A LOT of characters. There are plenty of others that fit the same issue as Suraya; their stories have concluded or they weren't as important as people thought in the first place. We always want more about our blorbos, no matter how niche they are. Sometimes, the more niche they are, the more attractive they are. The element of mystery often makes the interest skyrocket.

This is where Nezarec comes in. I want people to fully understand that Nezarec was just a name mentioned twice. He was never a character. It's highly unlikely that he was created with the idea of him being a disciple in mind; he was created as a mystery. It's a cool sounding name on a cool looking exotic with a mysterious lore tab. This immediately sparks people's curiosity. Nezarec's Sin was literally the only information about this character we had.

I've seen a lot of people claiming that Nezarec was a huge thing being set up for 5 years; this is simply incorrect. He is definitely a concept that was of personal interest to people who like digging and imagining solutions to mysteries, but he was never "set up." It was a cool name. The fandom created and enhanced the mystery around it, trying to "solve" who that was for years. The game did nothing to encourage this until Season of the Haunted.

There was a brief mention in Y2 where Drifter mentions that he's been to the "Fourth Tomb of Nezarec." Or rather, Shin mentions that Drifter mentioned it. This was meant to sound cool. That's all. You can tell because Shin mentions other mysterious things that Drifter claimed he's seen, none of which have ever been given the same scrutiny because people understand that they are supposed to be cool names;

"He says he's seen the deep side of Jupiter. Been to the Core Mines of Saturn. Name drops old myths no one's heard—the Luvial Crux, the Shift Chasms Below Elios, the Fourth Tomb of Nezarec. Goes on about the Idols of Lower Sul, the Treasure of Exodus Prime, the Solar Engine of Dead Star-Six.

Every single one of these is a "cool name" concept that you can speculate about for a thousand years. They don't mean anything, or at least they didn't in 2018. Nezarec only popped out because the exotic exists and people started imagining, again, that this is some incredible set up for epic reveals in the future about a character that will become super important and relevant and be the raid boss or whatever.

In a lot of writing, especially big ongoing MMO games and projects that last for years, things will be mentioned to spice up the setting and its mystery and size without the writers actually knowing or even planning to ever know what those things are. But then later, if they ever need to use something, they can look at those unexplained mysteries and pick one and use it to explain current content. It's easier than coming up with something brand new AND it gives you credit with the diehard fans who will see their niche blorbo being explained.

I can't confirm this obviously because I don't work for Bungie, but this is most likely what happened to Nezarec. He was never planned as a disciple, he was never planned as a big player or a huge character or a huge reveal. It was a mystery to make the setting exciting.

When they needed mysterious cursed artifacts for the pirate season AND they needed to tie that in with the current big story (Witness and its disciples) AND they needed to tie it with a location they can use AND that location has to be something known to people and mysterious in of itself AND they need a reason to talk about a very important historical event that shaped the world (the Collapse) which was also reframed in the current expansion by Savathun telling us we don't know anything about it = "revealing" that Nezarec was a disciple tied to the Lunar Pyramid whose body is used as evil artifacts is the perfect solution. Why invent a new character when you can name drop people's niche blorbo?

I'm mentioning this because people still insist that Nezarec was some huge mystery planned for years that kept us teased and primed for the eventual huge reveal. In reality, it really wasn't. That's personal bias talking, which I am also a subject to because I was obsessing about a name mentioned in two lore tabs as well. But it's important to recognise when the game is actually setting up an important plot point and when it's not.

All that said, you'd think that it doesn't really matter HOW it came to this. It only matters that now, Nezarec is no longer just a niche lore tab; he is a character! Which is true, to a certain extent. Once again, people tend to overblow the importance of something that is perceived as a big reveal.

Nezarec is certainly a character, but he is not an active one. He has been established as dead and gone ever since he was first mentioned. There have been vague hints about how he persists after death and how "he shall rise again." Persisting after death is not uncommon in the Destiny universe (Ahamkara are the most notable example), but it doesn't mean the character is active. Hints about him wanting to return are there, but don't necessarily signify that the character WILL return. Just that he wants to, as our villains tend to want. It's not exactly something to write home about? Taniks came back like 8 times and he's not even a disciple of the Witness (that we know of...............).

In Plunder, it was definitively established that Nezarec is dead and has been dead for a millennium. It was established that his body parts still have residual energy that whispers and influences people, but that keeping them apart effectively nullifies it. It was also established that these things can be cleansed and used for good, effectively ending Nezarec's influence and ambitions to return. Which is what happened and was always going to happen.

He is a character from our past who was always meant to be a mystery. Any further extrapolation of what that means is purely fandom speculation and fandom overhype of a name. He doesn't have a personality, he doesn't have a character arc, he doesn't have a story, he doesn't have relationships. Some of these might be explored in the context of the Collapse if they're relevant. He is part of our history and always was. Whatever the fans decided to overthink about him is on the fans.

And that's fun! I still like overthinking about him and speculating. Enrichment! The problem is when Bungie eventually says "there is nothing more to this" and people get disappointed and angry because of ideas they themselves conjured out of thin air. Bungie never gave us any reason to think that Nezarec is the next big villain that we will talk to and fight in the game. No more than they are implying that any of those mysteries mentioned by Shin are going to be new in-game locations or raid bosses.

Again, a lot of this is obviously on the storytelling itself. While there are obvious markers of stuff that's just here to enrich the setting and make players think and speculate and imagine, sometimes these markers aren't clear or they don't land well. I think with Nezarec a lot of this has to do with the additional hype created by the relase of Nezarec's Whisper glaive in Haunted that casually dropped flavour text about him being a disciple after not having heard of this niche mystery for 5 years. People lost their minds (me included) because that was an obvious hint that he is no longer purely a mystery.

And then we had to wait three more months in which people speculated to hell and back and conjured a story about how he MUST be an incoming next big bad disciple for us to fight. Only to be told, in Plunder, that he's a corpse. People's instinct is to say "No WAY they brought this guy back after 5 years just to have him be body parts." But there was never anything to "bring back." He was a name. Plunder gave information about that name. It's not like there was a treasure trove of information before or a promise that this specific concept will be the next villain.

Much like Destiny community insisting there's a secret mission when there isn't one, they're like that with this type of lore as well. Parsing through the overwhelming amount of information to figure out which bits and pieces are relevant and which are flavour for the setting is difficult, but it's something that has to be done. Every character is the most important character to someone in the community, every niche concept mentioned once is the most important next big hint to someone. And sometimes they will be correct! But in most cases they will not. And instead of sighing and moving on, a lot of it turns into "the writers are bad" spiel.

And sure. Everyone makes a bad storytelling decision sometimes. But that includes the fans as well. We can all be exceptionally bad at recognising and distinguishing between intended important events, plots and themes and those that are background information meant to enrich the setting.

Personal example would be the Aphelion. I desperately want to know more. I want an entire expansion about this. I think this is one of the most fascinating things in the entire setting. But that's just my personal preference. Bungie never explicitly stated that the Aphelion is some incredibly important concept that will be explored in the future. It's a flavour. It's meant to be mysterious. It's meant to be a cool scifi concept. I would love to see more, but if I never do, I will understand why that is. Bungie can obviously flip the switch and actually turn this into a big plot if they want to at any point in time, but we can't be angry with them if they don't.

This was not entirely related to the ask, but I had the need to write something about this anyway and it sort of fits. I've seen a lot of this recently especially with Nezarec. People have been claiming that Bungie "wasted" the potential of a super important character like Nezarec to end with him being turned into soup. They also tend to insist that it's impossible that his story is over and that he will still be some big villain or that it will turn out that he is possessing Osiris or something. The latter of which makes zero sense since Osiris had a storyline akin to this already. He will not have it again. I hope we can put that to rest. Osiris is Osiris and he will remain Osiris.

And the truth is that Nezarec was never an important character. He was never set up for anything extraordinary in the future. He is a curiosity from our past that has ties to the Collapse. He certainly WAS important in-setting for whatever happened back then, but he is now dead. Bungie didn't "waste" anything; whatever importance the fans projected onto Nezarec was the fans' own invention.

Remember back in Splicer when a completely new dialogue dropped where Mithrax mentioned the old Eliksni legend about "Skira the Watcher" and how it terrorised the Eliksni for a long time? And how it sparked about 7 billion posts and videos and theories about who this is and how this is hinting to the next big bad and how it has ties to everyone and everything and how this is obviously the next raid boss or whatever? Yeah. Does anyone remember now? Not really. It wasn't a hint for the next big bad. It was what it said on the tin; an old Eliksni legend.

Furthermore, Mithrax explained how it was defeated before the Eliksni had the Traveler and they did so by staying silent about it. I don't think that really spells "raid boss" or "big bad." Whatever it was, pre-Golden Age Eliksni were able to deal with it. It's probably not the Witness' next greatest agent.

Curiously, the new dungeon is called "Spire of the Watcher." I could make a clickbait video about this. Is there a connection for real though? Unlikely. And Bungie will not have "wasted the potential" of it to be, because it's not supposed to be. There's a difference between something being possible and something being probable. It's always possible because Bungie controls the setting, but it's not very probable.

You can genuinely make any connection to anything and blow a single mention of some lore thing out of proportion. And sometimes you'll be correct! A single lore mention of something called "Nefele Stronghold" led me, and others, to the conclusion that Rasputin has to be involved somehow with the story of Neomuna before Lightfall and that Rasputin needs to be brough up as a season this year. And we were correct!

To an extent, we were also correct that Nezarec was more than a flavour text on an exotic helmet. But that doesn't necessarily mean that he's the next big thing. Sometimes things are mildly important, or just temporarily important or important just for specific context. Just because something exists in the setting or was important in the setting once before, doesn't mean that it will remain important forever or that its narrative arc can't end.

Halo through its guns: Halo 2

Welcome back to Halo. Feeling well? Had enough water? Had a good week? Good.

Halo 2 is a game that was as ambitious as it was rushed, with a lot of work being thrown out to accommodate engine overhauls and restrictive Christmas deadlines. Regardless, the finished product is hailed as among the best games in the series.

Much of Halo 2’s work was done to add to the foundations built with Halo CE, both in mechanics, in equipment, and in story/world. (Last week), I discussed the baseline game design and innovations the series in general brought to the world of first-person shooters through the lens of the iconic Plasma Pistol, the backbone of the Covenant military. This week, I intend to discuss the additions its sequel made to this formula through the lens of a similar piece of alien technology.

That’s right, we’re eschewing the Battle Rifle (kinda), this is Halo 2 through the Covenant Carbine.

It’s kinda impossible to talk about the Carbine without talking about the Battle Rifle, though. And you can’t talk about the Battle Rifle without talking about the CE Magnum. So I guess we’re stopping back there again for a moment.

Every single gun in Halo: Combat Evolved has a deliberate purpose within the weapon sandbox. The Magnum is a part of this, being the intended sidearm used to finish off targets softened by other weaponry (typically the Assault Rifle), or in Campaign to mow through smaller targets like Grunts and, with good aim, Jackals. It was one of only two weapons (the other being the Sniper Rifle) that both had hitscan, good accuracy, and bonus headshot damage (in this case one-hitting an unshielded target 100% of the time), and considering the restrictive fire rate and ammunition of the Sniper and the fact that you often spawn with the Magnum, it became many a player’s weapon of choice.

One could argue that the Magnum was too powerful, and they might be right- one-shotting Hunters and three-shotting players (with headshots) is a little much. But I think most of the reason that the Magnum worked so well in that game was because it was quite literally the only thing that did what it did. It was excellent at medium range and functional at long or short range, it suits team-based engagements extremely well, and just has the fasted TTK of any non-“power” weapon in the game.

However, Halo 2 sought to introduce a new mechanic, that of course being dual wielding, that would require a significant tweak to the Magnum. There’s really no beating around the bush- the returning weapons that became dual-wieldable got hit hard with the nerf bat to compensate for the added flexibility. The Magnum lost its scope and much of its damage, being almost completely useless against shields, though it now fires much faster- and the unshielded headshot kill still works, so you could now dual-wield the Noob Combo if you preferred. It was not the hardest nerf to any of the weapons (the Needler suffered that fate), but it was a pretty big one.

However, the role of the Magnum as a medium-range all-purpose get-em gun was still something that Bungie wanted filled, and in order to do that, the Battle Rifle was introduced, quickly becoming one of the franchise’s most iconic weapons. Like the CE Magnum, it has the scope, range, and all-purpose nature, but the three-round burst fire makes it much, much harder to use.

The Battle Rifle effectively introduced a new classification system into Halo’s lexicon. The Magnum, Sniper Rifle, and Battle Rifle were now “precision” weapons, as delineated by their semi-automatic/burst fire nature and unshielded headshots always being lethal. This paralleled the automatic weapons, in this case the SMG and Plasma Rifles, which were better at stripping shields and at closer range. Combining the two was not only the standard player loadout but also generally quite effective. This trend would continue for the entirety of Halo, though the effectiveness of automatics has generally crept upwards as games go on- the BR was effectively the staple for professional and casual players for it’s entire lifetime.

But we aren’t here to talk about the Battle Rifle, neat as it is. I’m here to talk about the Carbine.

Another thing introduced in Halo 2 was an expansion of the game’s alien enemies, the Covenant. More specifically, there’s more of them, with more weapons and more species, and also you spend half the Campaign playing as them. The Arbiter’s introduction into the story is kind of a shock for newer players, as hovering your crosshair over an Elite or Grunt and seeing it turn green is extremely odd. The game does deliberately ease you into it, with the Heretic enemies having significantly different silhouettes as a result of their, like, jetpacks and shit.

And part of that easing is in giving the player a familiar, but different, loadout. Carbine and Plasma Rifle instead of Battle Rifle and SMG. The point I’m trying to get to is that Halo 2 came with an effective parallelisation of the Covenant and UNSC arsenals, with most of the game’s available weapons having an equivalent on the other site of the technological divide.

This comes at a cost of variety, as it means a lot of the guns kind of play the same. There isn’t a huge difference functionally between the SMG and the Plasma Rifle most of the time,  and the Sniper/Beam rifle debate isn’t really a thing that exists. But for much of the remainder, the weapons play and feel different enough that it’s easy to see how people might prefer one over the other.

Much like I do. I’m not going to beat around the bush, the Carbine is probably mmy favourite gun in all of gaming, definitely my favourite one in any first-person shooter. Much of that is nostalgia- Halo 3 was one of the first if not the first FPS I ever played, and since I was obviously player 2 the Carbine was in my starting inventory. It immediately struck me as very cool. It’s a weird looking thing with a long purple barrel and a rounded stock, it shoots green fucking lasers, it reloads up the top with a strange little cartridge, and it even has a visible ammo counter- but it’s like a healthbar! What’s not to love about this thing?

The Carbine and Battle Rifle make an interesting pair. Functionally, they’re basically the same, but there’s an interesting interaction between the two as player skill changes. A weak player will do better with the BR since spamming three-shot bursts is more likely to hit something than with individual ones, a medium player who can aim will do great with the Carbine since hitting most of the time is better with the shots doing more damage, and a strong player will excel with the Battle Rifle as they’re able to get a higher DPS landing every shot, sometimes finishing the shields and getting the headshot in one burst.

The parallelisation represented by the Carbine is kind of a turning point for Halo in general, as it allowed for slight preferences in gameplay between specific weapons. This also extends to entire gamemodes- Halo 2 was the first to allow you to play as an Elite in both Campaign and Multiplayer, and through the Carbine, going between the two species wasn’t as jarring as it potentially could have been. Could you imagine if you started with the Plasma Rifle and Pistol or something? How would you kill anyone out of melee? This is a trend that would continue along later games, for better (Reach!) and worse (4!).

That’s kinda the long and short of it, I guess. Halo 2 introduced a lot, both story and gameplay wise, but much of it is laying the foundations of what would come to Halo in future. Much of it had to be thrown out in the process, but what we were left with is an extremely solid foundation for the rest of the series. Of course, Halo CE is supposed to be the foundation, but that’s kind of the thing about early Halo with Bungie- everything was building and experimenting on top of itself, iterations and expansions upon the same formula, keeping it fresh all the way through.

Next up is, of course, Halo 3, and things end up getting a bit more brutish. Maybe that should be capitalised?

Destiny 2's Infinite Forest Sucks

Forbes thinks it could be better

Destiny 2's Infinite Forest is such a minor problem, effectively a single branch on a tree in the forest of issues that affect player's looking for this game to have some entertainment value versus the amount of money we're paying for it, that I think most people will ignore that it could be the game’s saving feature in the short terms. But will probably not get updated and so will be disappointing and tedious for a long time. The issue as I see it is that there's problems with the format of Destiny 2's activities and rewards systems. This is both for returning veterans, who have experienced everything from the original game, through all of the new activities added to the game and which have since been removed, through deprecation. But for right now we're trying to figure out what it is like for all the new players who are trying to figure out what they paid for and where the game is going. Someone buying the base game because this didn't want to commit to the DLC packs having to decide on buying those apparently mandatory content updates based on the game as is.. I can't see any of them being convinced. It's just been controversy since it launched. Easy answer is none of us knows what's in store for the game and Bungie keeps fucking shit up by making stupid decisions for no apparent logical reason. Like removing all the useful materials and level gear up with things like Motes of light. Also.. what happened to the speaker after the campaign ends? Is there a reason why he's not at the new tower? etc I mean I understand that the solo stuff can be underwhelming and focused on learning the game.. but why can't it have value to players that just want to replay that content? There's a large number or people that would like to get their money's worth out of the game while playing solo, or at least without friends because it can be hard to play a game like destiny if you don't know anyone else that plays it, OR more likely because all of your friends have left the game already and aren't going to come back while Bungie keeps making idiotic decisions like dumping everything from the old game. Also there's the thing about having to use a mic for matchmaking activities, some people don't want to because of the negative behavior that they are subjected to when they do. The new raid happened to cause an outcry because it appeared that communication was mandatory for a couple of parts of the activity. Since then players have found ways to complete the activity without voice communication and even without any communication at all. That's the core of the Destiny experience.. that progression towards mastery. The activities might not come off as self evident due to sparse explanation of how they function, but after practicing them for a while it clicks and you can end up mastering the content. That isn't expected from the single player activities of course that tend to be heavy with help for the player to understand how to play.. but once you get into strikes and public events their mechanics aren't always obvious or well explained by the game. Other players will show you what to do. For Raids, you'll have to learn from other players because next to nothing will be explained. Some of the changes that have been made to the game affect those principals in that the single player activities aren't fun or rewarding, for example the Mercury public even which has 2 chests.. that give you nothing for completing it on its Heroic Mode. It feels like Heroic modes don't add much for increasing the rewards getting doled out versus the actual bump in difficulty. Why does that matter? Well as a player starting out you have certain activities open to you and what you're looking at is a couple of hours to a dozen of leveling up. During that process you can expect to collect some gear that is supposed to make those bigger activities easier and prepare you to confront the hard stuff. While that is the case, those harder activities ARE hard for some new players that don't benefit from an established knowledge of the general mechanics of the game. Worse is that the variety of game play in the assortment of activities available in Destiny 2 doesn't feel much different. At least if you're a veteran that has played everything the game has had to offer so far. Because of that difficulty curve and lack of players (because they keep quitting) it feels like new players are getting bored without trying everything. There's no reason for the game to be so poor with giving the player useful rewards. What's a useful reward? Perhaps those new Masterwork weapons that drop orbs? Maybe.. I wouldn't know.. haven't been able to do prestige Nightfall this week and otherwise it doesn't seem like any way to get any of them. It isn't even that the activity is impossible to complete but the time investment with strangers, after finding them, is demanding. Even the regular Heroic Strikes which are straightforward repeatedly caused wipes (not even due to lack of communication which is not expected) but because it is just too easy for all three players to get killed. Example.. one time one of the other players had randomly died.. no problem.. but just as we noticed it myself and the other remaining player got kicked off the platform by god only knows what. It becomes annoying when you're actually trying to complete something hard and then you get wiped for no apparent reason. That aggravation was pervasive in the original game because it was rife with significant bugs and garbage mechanics that Bungie didn't usually fix. Those issue for the most part don't affect Destiny 2 and so present one of the only critical advancements in the series so far.. that the game isn't laugh out loud buggy and you don't often here players saying they are getting Bungie'd. Yet stunningly.. there are those random moments when you just don't know what killed you, or wiped your team. Paradoxically it makes Destiny 2 even more tedious when it happens because it just isn't as common to lose progress for no reason. I say this after playing through the DLC on Xbox and PS4 with 5 characters and don't feel like I've yet seen all the rewards... and that's fine, but not because I haven't played enough.. or that the game is artificially limiting the rewards.. but that there are too many duplicates and some of the new stuff is locked inside loot boxes that take a shit ton of time to earn. The rewards system just feels broken. From the small things that Bungie has claimed to have fixed, like patrol chests that tend to be empty most of the time, and that otherwise offer next to nothing as rewards (just tokens most of the time).. it feels like there's no point in going out on patrols other than when the game forces you to in order to collect materials or complete x number of activities to complete a quest. I'm not really trying to get into the issue of how long it takes to actually earn then, because on 2 accounts with 5 of 6 active characters (one Titan is on vacation).. but that I HAVE seen shit loads of play earned loot boxes return nothing.. or duplicates. If money was actually a consideration in their decision making then there should be more stuff in the loot boxes and fewer garbage items. This has been an ongoing thing because these loot boxes are just for cosmetic things otherwise they'd tread into pay-to-win problems. Bungie could have imported things from the old games for the new players to purchase in the loot boxes like legendary weapons, had they not contorted the gun system so badly. That would give the boxes some value for returning players. As that isn't the case and as the available loot boxes are full of shit items no one wants.. I can't see why they would have designed the game around them and why people would even buy them unless you really are that pressed for play time that you'd buy the game, and DLC and pay extra to unlock vanity items. Buying any amount of them and getting nothing worthwhile would be far worse than spending the time in the game and earning them. And then fully ignore that the items that matter, the weapons and gear.. have been nerfed. There's even less play choice involved in how we set up our gear. Bungie has said that there's potential for Mods to evolve to replace the old min maxing system but they never said why the system was removed in the first place. It was time consuming and perhaps tedious for some players, but that system of complexity was rewarding and helped justify the loot system (dropping so many duplicates).   We knew about these changes prior to the games launch because Bungie decided to let us in on, 1 resetting gear and level, 2 gear would no longer be unique, 3 we'd be losing an entire weapon class for no reason as two that have nothing to do with each other would be combined. So before releasing the game, and after the pre-orders were opened, Bungie DID tell us they'd be trying out so really dumb shit. The response was negative. The result is negative. Bungie don't give no fucks. But gear and levelling aside, there's the activities. Would there be activities that would make it worth loading up the game every day? 4v4 PvP isn't going over well. And oddly the most played activity seems to be public events. So popular are public events in patrol for rewards over time played, that Bungie nerfed them. They claim that the rewards are better but that's only because they swapped blue drops which are literally useless.. to purple drops, which tend to be duplicates. Thus the only recent changes they made was to give players more legendary shards. Which has no value. You can dump hundreds into whatever vendors take them and get nothing back.. compared to just playing the game. Some would argue that as you have them anyway.. you might as well just sit there in a tedious menu system mashing a button to empty your shards into a handful of engrams that will have nothing in them. Instead.. just play the game and get experience AND as good odds of hitting exotic drops. But those exotics will most likely be duplicates and can often be of a lower level than the one you already have. Its aggravating because Bungie claims that have systems in place to avoid duplicates. Bullshit. Losing access to several locations from the first game.. for no reason other than that they haven't yet been added to Destiny 2 means that players are forced to explore the new worlds. Had there been a story based reason to block off those locations from patrols at the very least would have been nice but there's no reason given. Bungie doesn't give reasons. They don't explain themselves. Yes the obvious reason is that it would have been too much for them to deal with to add all of those places in a game that would have to grow it's player base.. apparently because their retention from the first game was so poor. Perhaps another argument is that the reception for existing locations would have been lukewarm. We've been to these places already.. why are they still here. Because you're continuing the series not replacing it with something else? Idfk. Is there anything wrong with them? No. Not as such. Titan would be the main location to feel 'poor' because it is so small. I have spent the majority of my hundreds of hours on Titan.. and was delighted when one of the first ghost shells I got was to increase XP gains on Titan. I like Titan because the public events are close together and they used to occur frequently AND their Heroic variants are somewhat easy to complete solo. So as a loot farm, Titan is nirvana. But.. why aren't the public events inside the Arcology? No reason. Very disappointing as there are story locations within the campaign that suggest that Titan should be much large and there's room for other public events but more importantly different and bigger public events. The Curse of Osiris DLC highlights this because the much longer intervaled, more complicated, and much more rewarding public even (not really) public even seems to hint that Bungie wants to try adding much bigger public events. That actually matters now because they resolved and issue (if it was real) that was loading players into empty patrol zones making them have to master solo'ing the public events. Now that the world is getting more populated it makes more sense for bigger public events where there actually is an expectation that you'd have help. The result though is that while Mercury is populated at any given time, the public event takes a long time to cycle. And it's rewards are shit. There's no reason to do it as there are no rewards unique to it. I don't care about the other locations tbh. Io especially just annoys me. And I mean that's the main complaint.. there's no worthwhile rewards from anything. Once you have a set of gear that gets you through the majority of activities.. there's no reason to keep playing. By that time you'll have done everything ad nauseam. But the reason people tend to gravitate to Patrols and public events is that you can complete them almost all of the time so the flow of loot is constant. Trying to do that with Heroic Strikes and Prestige Nightfalls for example.. isn't a guarantee even if you're playing with friends unless you've mastered those activities. Year 1 nightfalls were a joke for a while for having joke rewards like horns and emotes if you got anything at all.. I actually thought those days were done until I started getting blue mods as rewards. Its aggravating to receive something that's worse than useless. These items are worse than useless because they clutter an already small inventory and force the player to spend significant amounts of time emptying bullshit from their inventory like blue mods and shaders. Those inventory spaces get smaller when you ad useless shit like ornaments that are permanent. They show that either Bungie doesn't learn or they intentionally keep designing their menus to be aggravating. There are too many duplicate items due to the gear system which gives the player exact copies of the same gear which requires them to dismantle or infuse virtually everything they receive as rewards for a given activity. This automatic response to the majority of rewards makes the entire rewards system feel very unrewarding. Adding to the tedium of inventory management. Gee I need x item but all I'm getting is 1000x of x. Like right now I have a Heart of Time on Xbox. It took a bit to try it because I hate pulse rifles. But holy shit it is great. https://db.destinytracker.com/d2/en/items/4145119417 I don't have one on PS4. So I'm looking for it but can't get it. In the meantime I'm trying the Nergal PR4. It isn't the same even though the rounds per minute are the same and it's full auto.. should be better. https://db.destinytracker.com/d2/en/items/339343290 And I then accidentally opened my Destiny 1 inventory and started seeing those old Prison of Elders guns... the primaries with elemental burns.. or that were energy weapons in the primary slot. There was no reason to remove them or split the primary slot. Could have just made low mag powerful weapons their own slot and put Kinetic secondaries. Leaving it as weapons determine the slow not what they shoot. A power weapon needs to do damage and have low ammo. Why is that complicated? I'm actually made about this now because Telesto is back and even when the ground is littered with power ammo.. in most encounters you don't have it where it matter. There's no heavy ammo synth for the times when it matters.. when you're in a boss encounter. Telesto should be useful in boss encounters but not when there's no ammo for it. But that in itself wouldn't be bad when you consider that the first games rewards had uniqueness, materials and ammo packs etc, AND encouraged the player to level up the gear they wanted AND some gear was better than others based on their perks. That's all gone and there's very little right now that makes the new systems worthwhile. You'd sometimes obtain GOD roll items which still didn't break the game, it just made it easier to play certain encounters. So.. No God rolls. Fewer perks. Locked perks and stats. Duplicates aplenty. Garbage rewards. No materials, no ammo packs.. and a buch of garbage like armor ornaments that takes up space in the mod inventory for something cosmetic. WHO IS DESIGNING THIS SHIT AND MAKING THESE DECISIONS?! So.. The Infinite Forest Why is the Infinite Forest the camel that breaks my back? I mean there's not much wrong with the design of the infinite forest area except that like the Acrology on Titan.. there's no reason why it isn't a public space with public events. The majority of time on Mercury patrols should be in the IF once you have access to it. That means you would have needed to play through the story to have access to it. FFS there's a god damned door. As long as you get through that door in the campaign then you should have access to that area. Had Bungie not made it so you didn't have a sparrow for the entire campaign (complete idiocy) then getting into the Arcology in patrols would have that same type of gate. Same could have been said for the Raid areas, once you have access to them becoming public areas with public events with rewards in the Plague Lands and Vault of Glass. To some extent even the Dreadnaught could have had a few more patrol zones inside the ascendant realm. Aren't there enough players that would have access to the infinite forest? Now here's the big issue. The old patrol zones don't have to be gone. They could be added into the IF. As well as the old Raids. This again blocks from somewhat from players that haven't yet completed that part of the campaign. But how would the current design of the IF integrate new simulations of those old areas without falling into the trap of too much work to redesign old activities so that they are familiar but still fresh. That's up to Bungie. Adding a forth simulation tower thing that contains all the old activities brought forward into Destiny 2 would help shoe horn it into the overall story. I mean as it stands Osiris is able to modify and build simulations. More importantly it allows Bungie to bring back content that they might not have thought appropriate to, such as the Skolas encounter, because he's dead. And what happens if you consider that any Vex exposure to SIVA would have meant simulations of SIVA.. A SIVA power Gatelord? sounds like another great public event for the Infinite Forest. All those old boss fights could be those bigger public events. So ultimately what we have is a convenient way for Bungie to add stuff back into the game if they wanted without yet opening back up the old patrol zones. It just doesn't answer the question of WHY those areas are gone or are inaccessible.

     I’ve been thinking a lot lately about podcasts. I love them. Lately I’ve fallen back into listening to podcasts like crazy. I think if I were to attempt a creative medium, I would want to try to podcast. In fact, I think I want too. 

     Especially when listening to Destiny related podcasts. I’ll go in a richer story about the video game Destiny in a future post, but in short, I’m addicted to this game. Er, I was addicted to it. Destiny 2 has released and I bought the Collectors Edition thinking I would play this game daily like I did Destiny 1. Turns out, Bungie has made Destiny 2 without any of the grind and replayability that the first game had. I’m already looking for other games to play. Hell, by week two after release I was already looking forward to other games, which is sad. Destiny 1 consumed my every free moment, and this game…doesn’t consume a god damned thing. 

     Anyways, I digress. I’ve been thinking about starting a podcast and just talk about Destiny and other games I play. Just to do it. Just to add to the noise. I listen to all of these Destiny podcasts and they literally just suck on the dick of Destiny while doubting their disappointment, or they bitch and whine about things that literally don’t fucking matter. Not a whole lot of them actually make thought out arguments and as a listener it’s unfortunate to hear the amount of white noise that comes out of these beloved podcasts. 

     I think I want to invest in some equipment and start up my own podcast. My friend Ali did that for his business where he talks about his company and 3D printing and whatnot. I kind of want to try it. Not as a living, of course, but as a creative medium to say some things and send it out to the world. 

     We shall see. For now, I need to focus on real life and the changes about to take hold. Podcasting? Well, that can come later once I find a soapbox to stand on that won’t cave out from underneath me.

Horsing around

After watching the Darksiders III trailer I’m surprised Gunfire Games didn’t take the opportunity to retcon out Vigil’s bizarre decision to rename Famine and Pestilence. Instead we are left with a game featuring that famed horse rider of the Apocalypse, Fury (the other one is Strife).

The series has always seemed weirdly reluctant to make full use of the cool premise of the Four Horsemen battling against Heaven and Hell. Darksiders II was set largely in a fairly generic fantasy world with the Apocalypse pushed into the background and Death portrayed as an elite warrior rather than the actual Grim Reaper.

I don’t know if they’re just worried about stirring up religious controversy, but I can’t help but feel the setting would be more interesting if it went deeper into the Book of Revelation inspirations. TGN Professor

GC: It’s almost certainly the religious aspect, particularly with regards to the American market. As you imply, we can’t help but feel they would’ve been better off making up their own fantasy universe from scratch.

Stuck in time

Hooray!

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been playing through Darksiders, having enjoyed the sequel a few years ago. I was just thinking about what they could do for a third entry then saw the news about the new game which is great. Although watching the IGN reveal trailer I’m a little disappointed to see that the story doesn’t seem to have moved on at all.

Darksiders has you as War trying to clear your name. Darksiders II has you as Death in a concurrent story to the first game – trying to clear War’s name. The trailer for Darksiders III starts with War in chains, so it looks like his name is still not cleared yet?! Don’t tell me Fury now has to clear his name!

I was also thinking the format might have changed slightly. It’s probably a bit ambitions for a smaller studio (assuming Gunfire Games are smaller studio compared to a company like Bungie) but maybe they could have or will do something like a four-player co-op where you each play one of the horsemen and have to take on Destiny style raid dungeons. Anyway, can’t wait to hear a bit more info.

If Darksiders III does OK, it’s pretty certain we’ll eventually get a fourth staring Strife but let’s just hope it’s not all about clearing War’s name again! PsillyPseudonym (PsillySeudonym – gamertag)

GC: According to IGN it’s ‘set around the same time as the events of Darksiders II’, so we think you’re right. It certainly doesn’t look like War’s name has been cleared in the trailer.

Big impression

Can I just say what a wonderfully creepy game Little Nightmares is. I think walking through the dark with all the mannequins around toward the end was great/nerve racking!

But I’d also like to draw people’s attention to the PS Store, where, if like me, you were happy with the news of a third Darksiders game there is a bundle of both remastered games for £16. Which considering it’s £16 for the first one alone is pretty good! Liam

Furniture land

Thank god Bethesda chose to release a Prey demo, indeed. Wanted to write in to defend against Phil’s point. I was always planning on getting Prey based on the premise, alone but was probably going to wait for some sales first.

After playing the demo on hard difficulty I was not disappointed by the previews suggesting it was ‘a thinking man’s game’, which is undoubtedly a dig at the Call Of Duty crowd. It was a challenge of nerve and mind, like a cross between Garry’s Mod prop hunt and The Thing. I raised my wrench against any and all mugs and chairs. Playing with headphones on, even mop buckets I knew were black spiders made me touch cloth because of that damn music sting!

After multiple playthroughs of the demo I now have a good idea of what skill trees to level up (hacking seems like a very useful starting point) and have now pre-ordered the game (£40 on Amazon Prime). Really looking forward to exploring the rest of the game and I hope it’s not too short. And I’m really glad Bethesda decided to release a demo.

They got extra money out of me by doing so, as the demo convinced me to buy as soon as possible because it is so different from the majority of other first person shooters available now. I never got round to playing Dishonored 2, so I can’t comment how much of a clone Prey may be to it but I like Arkane and hope they do well. Beware the chair! Stretchy Grunt

The second year

I’m seriously beginning to wonder whether the Nintendo Switch could be a hit on the scale of the Wii. Every time we hear a new story about it the situation seems even more positive than before. And despite what it seemed like before launch I think the release schedule is working out pretty well, with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe clearly off to a great start and Splatoon 2 likely to do very well too. I’m not so sure about ARMS, but I’m beginning to think it won’t be ignored as others were predicting a few months ago.

But of course with E3 approaching it only makes me wonder more about what Nintendo has coming up next. Super Mario Odyssey should be the perfect way to end the year but what about after that? We know about literally nothing at the moment and they’ve already used up all their biggest franchises: Zelda, Mario Kart 8, and Super Mario. If Nintendo think they can follow that up with second-stringers like Pikmin and Kirby then I would’ve hoped they’d learned their lesson by now.

Maybe a new Metroid, since it’s been so long since we’ve had a proper one, but they need to keep with the new franchises. Splatoon worked out great and ARMS might do too. That’s what we need more of, not diminishing returns with a new Donkey Kong and a new Star Fox, until they get down to franchises not even their biggest fans care about. The Switch in 2017 seems to be working out great but it’s the Switch in 2018 I’m worried about now. Goose

You get what you pay for

Well, I just bought one of them retro game controllers from Argos with 200 games on it (you know the one where it’s in the shape of a joypad the size of a matchbox, priced at a tenner). However, I wasn’t expecting much for the price. Unfortunately, I will never know because my two-year-old LG 4K UHD smart telly hasn’t got the phono plugs to plug the game controller in so I can play it.

Now I not what you’re all going to say – why didn’t you go and get a converter to play the Damon thing? So off I went to my local Maplin store, only to be told it would cost me around £50 to buy a converter so I can see it on my screen. Or go and buy a new telly with the phono jacks already built into it. I wouldn’t mind but the whole gaming box only cost me a tenner in the first place.

So my question is how do other people manage to have all these other retro gaming devices like your new retro Ataris, Mega Drive, and the Nintendo gadgets to work on their tellies, because mines at least two-years-old now and surely any newer telly made after mine is just not compatible for these latest retro-crazed gaming devices to be played on due to the phono plugs. JAH

GC: We don’t know about the others but the NES Mini uses a HDMI cable. We assume you bought this, but it doesn’t seem to contain any real retro games – just a bunch of cheapo Flash games (there’s a PDF list here).

Oldest school

All this talk of remasters from gaz be rotten has got me thinking. I’d like to see much older games put onto games consoles, ones that were invented long before video games.

When I was growing up in Mevagissey many years ago my mates and I used to enjoy a jolly game of Poohsticks. I sure that some sort of video game could be made out of that.

Here’s hoping for some Inbox magic The Dark Fud

Catch up on every previous Games Inbox here

Making the list

I have just finished playing Titanfall 2 and although it’s a great game, it doesn’t quite beat the other multiplayer shooters I’ve played in recent years.

My list goes in reverse order: 4. Titanfall 2 3. Overwatch 2. Star Wars: Battlefront (controversial!) 1. Splatoon (of course)

I’ve got a feeling not everyone will agree with that list. One thing I’ve noticed in all four games is the lack of emphasis or downright absence of a free-for-all mode. Titanfall 2 obviously has one, but the wait for a match was 10 times longer than the team modes – making it very unappealing to actually play. Free-for-all used to be the only game in town, with several different variants, but slowly it is being wiped out by team modes/games.

It seems a real shame as I am naturally a lone wolf player and free-for-all is a much more fitting mode for me to play. Not that I don’t enjoy team games at all, with Splatoon my favourite game ever, but I miss the more cutthroat and chaotic play of having everyone out to get you. Free-for-all is something I’d love to see as an option in Splatoon 2, I’m sure they could find a way to make it work. Ryan O’D PS: I know some would cry foul that they weren’t included already, but I hope they release new DLC tracks for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

Inbox also-rans

What’s everyone assuming Bethesda’s two new games at E3 are? Wolfenstein must be one of them, but what’s the other? The Evil Within 2 by the sound of the rumours I’d say. Ollie

Do you know what Link’s favourite song is? A Good Heart These Days Is Hard To Find by Feargal Sharkey. DMR

This week’s Hot Topic

The subject for this weekend’s Inbox was suggested by reader Steiner, who asks how much money do you spend on gaming a month?

Do you have a specific budget that you stick to, or some other kind of system to make sure you don’t spend too much at once? What do you do when multiple games come out at the same time? And do you try and have money in reserve for the launch of new consoles and other hardware?

What percentage of your games do you buy for full price and how much do you take advantage of sales? Do you resell your games or buy second-hand, and how are your habits changing as digital downloads become more prominent?

from Blogger Darksiders III reaction, Titanfall 2 free-for-all, Nintendo Switch