OVERWATCH 2
DIABLO IV
FIRE EMBLEM HEROES
Things got really bad with the amount of disconnects, that I almost considered just uninstalling. However, seems to be better now. The great paradox of OW2 is that gameplay-wise, it's much better than the original, but seems to be far less 'stable.'
Also, I'm hardly about to go through a list of matches, but one little nugget did occur recently that I'll share, that can be summed up as:
1: Enemy Bastion does artillery ultimate.
2: Friendly Pharah, somewhat wisely, uses her jumpset ability to get airborne, thus evading the impacts.
3: Me, being Mercy, desparately looks at Pharah and my cooldown for my flight ability.
4: Shoot up into the sky just in time to avoid the artillery impacts.
I mean, we still lost in the end, but it's one of "those" moments that brings a smirk to one's face.
Also, I'm hardly about to go through a list of matches, but one little nugget did occur recently that I'll share, that can be summed up as:
1: Enemy Bastion does artillery ultimate.
2: Friendly Pharah, somewhat wisely, uses her jumpset ability to get airborne, thus evading the impacts.
3: Me, being Mercy, desparately looks at Pharah and my cooldown for my flight ability.
4: Shoot up into the sky just in time to avoid the artillery impacts.
I mean, we still lost in the end, but it's one of "those" moments that brings a smirk to one's face.
Disconnects are still occurriing, but not as often and not as severe. Anyway:
-Went through the Yelesna Mines/underground city sequence. I'm going to start by saying that as minor as this might be, I like how Neyrelle and Vigo actually impact the monsters around you. In every other Diablo game sans hirelings, NPCs wouldn't actually do any damage, but here, the effect is felt, however minor (relatively speaking).
-On the subject of Neyrelle, I know it's early days, but I have no idea why she's getting dumped on by the fanbase. She's kind of like Leah 2.0 (except I also liked Leah), but regardless, she's a good mixture of spunk and tragedy.
-Getting into the underground city section, the exposition is excellently done (again, from what I've read, people seem to prefer reading from tomes for whatever reason). Going through, it's a three-pronged approach. You can read Vhenard's scribblings, you see flashbacks to Lilith and Vhenard (in a way that makes sense, given the PC's connection with Lilith), and the artistry on the ground matches what's being narrated to the player via its murals.
-Skipping ahead a fair bit, but I'm touching on Alabaster Cathedral. As a structure itself, it's absolutely gorgeous. In part because the game has a 'camera moment' like it does whenever the scenery is to be highlighted, in part because of the interior. It's absolutely gorgeous, and in part because of the murals depicting Inarius creating Sanctuary and whatnot. Even from an isometric perspective, the artwork is gorgeous. More importantly, I love what the murals say, about Inarius creating Sanctuary, and being the father of mankind. It's a lie in the best way, in that everything the murals say is technically true, but has huge omissions (e.g. it's fair to say that Inarius created Sanctuary, it conveniently leaves out that he did it alongside Lilith). This may be an esoteric comparison, but it reminds me of the mural in the Indoline Praetorium in Xenoblade 2, depicting the creation of the world. By the end of the game, you know that the creation story is wrong from a literal standpoint, but you can also see how one could interpret it as such.
-Getting to Inarius finally...yeah. I've often said how much of a dick Inarius is, and yeah, taking the macro view, he IS a dick, but in this specific moment, I love the feeling about it. Here's Inarius, isolated from the world, able to withstand the frigid temperatures of the cathedral by virtue of being an angel. But even that aside, I love the exchange - there's a deep sense of melencholia and regret from Inarius in the entire sequence. And it's telling that even after he refuses to help you, the priest standing in the cathedral (freezing his arse off) insisting that Inarius must have helped the Wanderer, they just don't understand how yet, and Prava giving you the blessing you seek regardless. Mwah.
-That being said, I'm starting to really notice by this point that no-one has mentioned Malthael. I get that many people wouldn't know him by name, but anyone else wondering why people are so eager to worship an angel when another angel wiped out 50-90% of the human race in D3? Anyone? I dunno, D4 really comes off as a soft reboot in a lot of ways. D1-D3 all lead sequentially into each other (yes, D3 has a 20 year skip from D2, but even then the events are directly referenced), here, not so much.
-I have less to say on the Horadric Vault sequence. It doesn't help that the Bloodied Wolf's identity has been spoilt for me, but that's partly my own fault. I'm going to say that I'm very mixed on the Tristram dreamscape thing - five games in, and we still can't move on from that damn village, which has now featured in every Diablo game sans Immortal. That being said, I'll give the sequence some credit if this is what it's going for, the idea that it's not so much a case of "hey, Tristram, nostalgia," but more like a glimpse into what awaits Sanctuary if Hell succeeds. As in, we're seeing Tristram absorbed into Hell itself.
-Getting on a bit, I hate to be Dochy McNitpick, but if Vigo can smash through the ceiling to help the player defeat the Act I boss, in an area the player had to go to the Cathedral and Horadric Vault to unlock, doesn't that make their escapades kinda pointless? Seriously, just have someone suit up in that armour, drill through the roof, there you go.
-Alas, poor Vigo, we hardly knew ye.
-Lilith coming across Rathma's corpse (and ergo, the player) wasn't new to me (again, spoilers), but in of itself, the scene is excellently done. It's why I don't get the criticism that Lilith is just a "big bad," because clearly, she's able to feel grief, and it's done mainly through body language and minimal dialogue.
-So, that's Act I, and we end with Neyrelle at her mother's tomb stone. So, basically, the player failed to stop Lilith accomplishing any of her goals in the Fractured Peaks, Lilith lost her son, Neyrelle lost her mother, the world is still terrible. That's not a criticism mind you, it absolutely fits the bleak hopelessness that has permeated the game so far.
I've actually started Act II, but leaving that aside for now, as I just want to get this posted.
-Went through the Yelesna Mines/underground city sequence. I'm going to start by saying that as minor as this might be, I like how Neyrelle and Vigo actually impact the monsters around you. In every other Diablo game sans hirelings, NPCs wouldn't actually do any damage, but here, the effect is felt, however minor (relatively speaking).
-On the subject of Neyrelle, I know it's early days, but I have no idea why she's getting dumped on by the fanbase. She's kind of like Leah 2.0 (except I also liked Leah), but regardless, she's a good mixture of spunk and tragedy.
-Getting into the underground city section, the exposition is excellently done (again, from what I've read, people seem to prefer reading from tomes for whatever reason). Going through, it's a three-pronged approach. You can read Vhenard's scribblings, you see flashbacks to Lilith and Vhenard (in a way that makes sense, given the PC's connection with Lilith), and the artistry on the ground matches what's being narrated to the player via its murals.
-Skipping ahead a fair bit, but I'm touching on Alabaster Cathedral. As a structure itself, it's absolutely gorgeous. In part because the game has a 'camera moment' like it does whenever the scenery is to be highlighted, in part because of the interior. It's absolutely gorgeous, and in part because of the murals depicting Inarius creating Sanctuary and whatnot. Even from an isometric perspective, the artwork is gorgeous. More importantly, I love what the murals say, about Inarius creating Sanctuary, and being the father of mankind. It's a lie in the best way, in that everything the murals say is technically true, but has huge omissions (e.g. it's fair to say that Inarius created Sanctuary, it conveniently leaves out that he did it alongside Lilith). This may be an esoteric comparison, but it reminds me of the mural in the Indoline Praetorium in Xenoblade 2, depicting the creation of the world. By the end of the game, you know that the creation story is wrong from a literal standpoint, but you can also see how one could interpret it as such.
-Getting to Inarius finally...yeah. I've often said how much of a dick Inarius is, and yeah, taking the macro view, he IS a dick, but in this specific moment, I love the feeling about it. Here's Inarius, isolated from the world, able to withstand the frigid temperatures of the cathedral by virtue of being an angel. But even that aside, I love the exchange - there's a deep sense of melencholia and regret from Inarius in the entire sequence. And it's telling that even after he refuses to help you, the priest standing in the cathedral (freezing his arse off) insisting that Inarius must have helped the Wanderer, they just don't understand how yet, and Prava giving you the blessing you seek regardless. Mwah.
-That being said, I'm starting to really notice by this point that no-one has mentioned Malthael. I get that many people wouldn't know him by name, but anyone else wondering why people are so eager to worship an angel when another angel wiped out 50-90% of the human race in D3? Anyone? I dunno, D4 really comes off as a soft reboot in a lot of ways. D1-D3 all lead sequentially into each other (yes, D3 has a 20 year skip from D2, but even then the events are directly referenced), here, not so much.
-I have less to say on the Horadric Vault sequence. It doesn't help that the Bloodied Wolf's identity has been spoilt for me, but that's partly my own fault. I'm going to say that I'm very mixed on the Tristram dreamscape thing - five games in, and we still can't move on from that damn village, which has now featured in every Diablo game sans Immortal. That being said, I'll give the sequence some credit if this is what it's going for, the idea that it's not so much a case of "hey, Tristram, nostalgia," but more like a glimpse into what awaits Sanctuary if Hell succeeds. As in, we're seeing Tristram absorbed into Hell itself.
-Getting on a bit, I hate to be Dochy McNitpick, but if Vigo can smash through the ceiling to help the player defeat the Act I boss, in an area the player had to go to the Cathedral and Horadric Vault to unlock, doesn't that make their escapades kinda pointless? Seriously, just have someone suit up in that armour, drill through the roof, there you go.
-Alas, poor Vigo, we hardly knew ye.
-Lilith coming across Rathma's corpse (and ergo, the player) wasn't new to me (again, spoilers), but in of itself, the scene is excellently done. It's why I don't get the criticism that Lilith is just a "big bad," because clearly, she's able to feel grief, and it's done mainly through body language and minimal dialogue.
-So, that's Act I, and we end with Neyrelle at her mother's tomb stone. So, basically, the player failed to stop Lilith accomplishing any of her goals in the Fractured Peaks, Lilith lost her son, Neyrelle lost her mother, the world is still terrible. That's not a criticism mind you, it absolutely fits the bleak hopelessness that has permeated the game so far.
I've actually started Act II, but leaving that aside for now, as I just want to get this posted.
It's taken me so long to write the above stuff up, I'm way ahead in Heroes from where I was, to the point that I can't really remember that much. That being said, I'll try and establish some things.
-So, Book VII ends with Embla and Askr at peace (or at least implied to be), with their patron deities dead, and the source of Embla's bitterness (the deity, not the country) revealed through flashbacks. I think I said early on that I preferred the political machinations in Book VII more than the "god feud" thing it became, but overall, Book VII is decent enough, storywise. Come to think of it, it might actually be the strongest book storywise so far. So that means in terms of ranking it gos 7>2>3>5>4>1.
-Book VIII...sorry, I just don't care. It's time travel shannigans with paradoxes, time loops, etc. It does a cute thing with the first chapter you play being the last chapter chronologically, and so on and so forth as you jump back and forth in the timeline, but I just don't really care. Gulvig wants to wipe out everything as part of a cycle (as in, the entire Heroes setting has been caught in a time loop, and we've reached the end of it). Why does she do this? Fate, or somesuch. Gulveig has past, present, and future versions, with future Gulveig creating past Gulveig, who knows that she has to follow a path to create her future self, so that her past self can be created, and so on, and so forth, but it's just so bonkers I don't really care. Book 4 was bonkers too, but nothing about the book really interests me so far. Of course, it's only halfway released (no idea when the second half will come out), but as it stands, I don't particularly care. Book VII wrapped things up okay (sort of), this just feels unnecessary.
-Since I've got nothing better to do than wait for the rest of Book VIII, so I've started playing the game's paralogues and xenologues. These are bit-sized campaigns that take place during the main books, the main distinction being that xenologues have a bit more plot relevance, while the paralogues are far more tangental. Don't have anything to say here. Sure, since the ones I've played so far take place in Book 1, I can pick up on elements that hint at future events, but I don't really have anything notable to say
-So, Book VII ends with Embla and Askr at peace (or at least implied to be), with their patron deities dead, and the source of Embla's bitterness (the deity, not the country) revealed through flashbacks. I think I said early on that I preferred the political machinations in Book VII more than the "god feud" thing it became, but overall, Book VII is decent enough, storywise. Come to think of it, it might actually be the strongest book storywise so far. So that means in terms of ranking it gos 7>2>3>5>4>1.
-Book VIII...sorry, I just don't care. It's time travel shannigans with paradoxes, time loops, etc. It does a cute thing with the first chapter you play being the last chapter chronologically, and so on and so forth as you jump back and forth in the timeline, but I just don't really care. Gulvig wants to wipe out everything as part of a cycle (as in, the entire Heroes setting has been caught in a time loop, and we've reached the end of it). Why does she do this? Fate, or somesuch. Gulveig has past, present, and future versions, with future Gulveig creating past Gulveig, who knows that she has to follow a path to create her future self, so that her past self can be created, and so on, and so forth, but it's just so bonkers I don't really care. Book 4 was bonkers too, but nothing about the book really interests me so far. Of course, it's only halfway released (no idea when the second half will come out), but as it stands, I don't particularly care. Book VII wrapped things up okay (sort of), this just feels unnecessary.
-Since I've got nothing better to do than wait for the rest of Book VIII, so I've started playing the game's paralogues and xenologues. These are bit-sized campaigns that take place during the main books, the main distinction being that xenologues have a bit more plot relevance, while the paralogues are far more tangental. Don't have anything to say here. Sure, since the ones I've played so far take place in Book 1, I can pick up on elements that hint at future events, but I don't really have anything notable to say
