With better world-building for the game setting, and more effort at writing memorable human characters, this could have been a major IP franchise. Pity.
Without EA intentionally fucking over Respawn as the producer for Titanfall 2 by making it have the worst possible release date, and driving them to bankruptcy, this would have been a major IP.
As it is, we have Apex Legends instead of a Titanfall Series.
I REALLY hate the ongoing narrative that Titanfall 2 was sent to die or whatever.
Titanfall 2 was made by Respawn. Respawn/Infinity Ward/Whatever They Were When They Did Medal Of Honor have been more or less defining mainstream first person shooters for decades at that point.
And there is this idea that Battlefield 1 (and this was well after we had all decided we hated Battlefield) and CoD Infinite Warfare killed it.
The reality is that it always had an uphill battle because Titanfall 1 was MP only and turned a lot of people off. And FPSes had largely become a “multiplayer genre” with the big surprise of 2016 being DOOM which… still mostly needed people to realize it was good after the “weird” trailers.
The funny thing is that if Titanfall 2 had been Titanfall 1… either as pure MP or with TF1 having one of the all time great SP campaigns, it probably would have become the new Call of Duty in the same way that CoD became the new Medal of Honor. But instead it was a poisoned well released at a time when Gamers just weren’t interested in SP shooters.
Similarly, if it had come out a few years later (after people remembered you could tell a story in a shooter), it probalby would have done gangbusters.
But, like with most things, we instead blame EA. Because clearly EA were willing to piss away however much money Titanfall 2 cost to… get a really shitty VR game and make Vince Zampella work on Battlefield?
It was dropped between CoD(which at the time was riding high) and the legendary BF1, which was the WW1 one that was universally acclaimed and revitalized the series.
BF1 followed Hardline which was almost universally mocked, 4 which is largely considered to be where things started going downhill, and 3 which was shit on for not being Bad Company 3 (… I can’t entirely disagree with that). It could just as easily have been a massive flop as a success (also, I personally never noticed the universal acclaim, but I do know it was generally tolerated).
Also, I can’t be arsed to check, but wasn’t the god awful free to play game out around that time as well? like the cartoony ww2 themed one?
If a game is not allowed to even be released in the same quarter as a CoD then… yeah.
Hardline was mocked for being weird mostly, not bad. People always saw it as a stop gap, as DICE didn’t even develop it
BF4 was considered the beginning of the end at launch sure, but by the end of its lifecycle it was pulling huge numbers and great reception. They had basically FIXED things like bad netcode and many more fixes that made it the best battlefield had been yet imo as bf3 lacked grander scale in terms of mechanics and content
Bf3 not being bad company 3 was an issue pre launch, but almost immediately people stopped caring because bf3 is almost universally beloved now for its huge balls and incredible rush map design and more enjoyable vehicles than Bad Company
And finally, it’s not about the quarter… the release date is literally only a week after BF1 and CoD was already pulling in huge fps numbers about a month before. It’s been observed many times before too that people tend not to buy multiple games before Christmas, and often will only have one or two games to choose from for Christmas… which means nobody is taking a risk on Titanfall 2 (both for the reasons you stated, and because of the release window)
Wait, maybe I’m misunderstanding… are you strawmanning me? I don’t think Titanfall 2 losing the numbers game means the entire studio is dead lol, in fact I still think Respawn is one of the greatest development teams available right now and I can’t wait to see their future. EA loves apex too I bet.
The discussion is about the ongoing narrative that EA intentionally killed TF2 by releasing it too close to BF1 and CODIW. I pointed out that BF1 was not the juggernaut people think it is. You talked about how BF4 was a success even though it had a rough start… which is exactly what TF2 had.
I would add that the Titanfall 2 campaign was more “surprisingly good”, with a lot of potential for improvement. IMO, it didn’t reach the level where you were sucked into the setting and wanted to know what happened next to the characters, like say Mass Effect 1. It could have gotten there, if the writing had been stronger, but it didn’t. So I too don’t think it’s EA’s fault.
I liked but also kinda hated bioshock. All of them together. They are good games but all three show their age already.
Horizon was enjoyable enough but it’s the same post apocalyptic plotline I have seen in a few other games and movies, one I could list without having to look up if I knew how to spoiler tag.
GoW is excellent and it’s all about Mimir. I legit want Ragnarok on PC just for more Mimir. Please and thank you. My only gripe with the game is I went to do a bunch of side quests during the chapter where Atreus had his little shit phase and the dialogue became really weird and his attitude kept doing all kinds of flips and shit. My rec is progress main until he gets over himself before any backtracking.
Horizon Zero Dawn is a good game in that it is pretty, has an interesting world, and has good combat mechanics, but it is open-world in the worst way possible. It has hundreds of meaningless side quests, the rewards for which are literally just loot boxes of crafting components (often times just containing more loot boxes). Also the voice acting for most NPCs is inexcusably bad and breaks immersion, but that’s a minor gripe.
If you play Horizon, I honestly recommend sticking close to the main story and making a b-line for the end. It is a hugely bloated game.
I’m back playing Escape from Tarkov. The game has some real performance issues and a pretty big cheater problem, but there is no other game on the market like it.
I have been playing Phantom Liberty a lot. I've enjoyed it more than Starfield and BG3.
Before PL came out, I had started playing Sea of Stars. But it was extremely difficult to get into. Besides the S+++ tier pixel art, I thought the writing was poor: boring characters, bad dialogue, bad worldbuilding all made worse by slow pacing. I am gonna revisit this game sometime in the future I guess, though I don't understand its appeal yet.
Also I played Armored Core 6 for a few minutes and died to the tutorial mission helicopter like 10 times in a row. I guess some people find that fun, lol.
Despite the popularity I have no interest in starfield or BG3 Hoping to get armoured core 6 soon and can’t wait for spider-man 2 . For now I’m just going to finish up breath of the wild .
About 50 hours into Starfield, wrapping up the pirate and corpo questlines, enjoying it quite a bit, but there are issues that I'd love to mod out eventually.
Finally played the Tomb Raider reboot trilogy, probably almost halfway through the first one. A pretty good Uncharted-like experience with a bit more of a serious
tone, but I have to say, it's pretty good!
I just finished playing the System Shock Remaster yesterday night after ~22 hours. I could still do everything from memory pretty much, and it remains an amazing game to this day, especially with the slick fresh paintcoat from the remaster.
Now I’m exploring Shadow Gambit a bit. Always loved the Commandoes games, and this is the third - and sadly final - Mimimi game that copies the gameplay verbatim. And from the little I’ve played so far, it’s fantastic. Having actual supernatural characters fits the abilities really well, and the voicework is done tremendously well, too.
I tried to play the original System Shock two/three years ago but gave up at a stage that felt very close to the end. I basically had a save at a weird spot, when I was low on ammo and anything else useful, right between two complicated rooms. I reloaded a ton of times and always died trying to go forwards or backwards before giving up.
Anyway, would you recommend System Shock Remaster for someone who likely almost completed the original one, gave up, but still liked it overall? Or is there something shockingly different about the original's ending I'll be missing?
I’m not the person you replied to, but I also finished the remake recently after having tried and failed to finish the original a few times over the years (I love SS2) and I would absolutely recommend it. I do think the original has a better final boss/ending but neither really has much to it. I’m pretty sure Nightdive said they’re planning on reworking the ending again, maybe before the console releases.
Nah, it’s a very faithful remake - after a lot of back-and-forth of them considering changing the game more they ended up making a near 1-to-1 graphics update.
So I would recommend it. There are some parts that are made more challenging. Inventory management is a big one. OTOH that makes sense, as the modern controls enable *far more accurate combat and hence saving ammo is somewhat easy and you can easily use the shotgun or the magnum as staples.
I basically saved teflon ammo whenever I found it (dumped it all near the cargo lift) then before entering level 8 retrieved my modded Scorpion from there with nearly 1500 ammo and just went to town with that + leftover shotgun shells. But the drops are also changed, so both teflon bullets and magnesium ones for the Assault Rifle still commonly drop in the final few areas.
And of course, taken from the main game, EMP grenade into berserk-stim Laser Rapier is always an option and kills even the toughest enemies in the game before they recover.
That being said, one specific thing is annoying: Beta grove now deals constant and quite significant damage even with the enviropack on. You have to rush rush rush it, luckily it is brief. Other than that, it’s neatly improved, modern graphics with a cool retro-effect from the nearest-neighbor filter, modern controls and combat and some better and more convenient HUD, redone audio including new recordings from Terri Brosius (SHODAN), they also completely redid cyberspace. While I like the original, I can see why most did not, so I really don’t mind this part.
Oh man, I had such a great time with Greedfall a couple of years ago. It has a lot of jank, but you can see the heart beneath it all and I really enjoyed the world building. The fact they consulted with linguists for their invented language and created a custom accent they made sure all the VAs for natives use was a great touch.
It’s not a AAA game, but if you take it for what it is you can have a great time. I’m really looking forward to the sequel.
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