Parzival

I was replying to the suggestion that one needs to use an "exploit" to go to New Austin as Arthur, which AFAIK is simply not true. I'm not trying to change the subject, just replying to something that came up during the discussion.

... which is exactly what The Walking Dead does while struggling with too large a cast.

Well, he mentioned the name H&R. I just thought I'd elaborate a bit on who they are, that's all.

I'm curious to know exactly which encounter this is, too. I've been ambushed on the road numerous times, but nothing to the intensity described here.

I'm talking about in reference to A Test of Faith, where you have to find the dinosaur bones. Three (I think) of them are in New Austin.

AFAIK, there's nothing actually preventing Arthur from going into the southern portion of West Elizabeth and New Austin. Doing so results in bounty hunters hounding him at practically every second, but otherwise both areas are open for exploration beginning in Chapter 2. So if the player knows where the bones are, they shouldn't have any issues completing A Test of Faith as Arthur.

Remington QC has actually gone downhill quite a bit in the past several years. H&R is Harrington & Richardson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%26R_Firearms

I would definitely watch a series based on TD (post-apocalyptic is by far my favorite genre of fiction), but I think the number of factions and the pool of characters they would require would be a bit prohibitive, requiring it to be cut down to one "hero" faction facing one "villain" faction per season. The Walking Dead started to struggle once the cast increased significantly beginning in the third season with the prison and Woodbury and that struggle only became worse when Hilltop, the Kingdom, and the Sanctuary were added to the mix. They did away with the Sanctuary and disappeared or killed off most of the former Saviors in the most recent season, but the pool is still too large, IMO. I don't watch Game of Thrones, but I've heard it struggles with a too large cast as well.

Especially these days with even supposed low budget games having production budgets that rival some films, which in turn has resulted in the consumer price almost doubling. I remember back in the day I could go into GameStop with a $100 bill and walk out with at least three brand new games and change to spare, but these days I can barely afford to buy three new games a year. And I honestly think another drastic price increase is inevitable once the next gen systems come around, it's just a question of how much. No wonder some are predicting a major video game industry crash. And here I was about to sit down and watch the amazing Green Lantern movie. 😝

Well, Xbox players have State of Decay 2, which is pretty similar and something I was annoyed I couldn't play until I found out about Days Gone. IMO, though, I think platform exclusives (maybe excepting certain PC games like ArmA that give you so many control options that you'd need six controllers and twice as many hands to actually play it) are an outdated concept that should be done away with. Anyone thinking of getting Days Gone might want to hold off or at least shelve it for a bit, though. The 1.06 update that was released for it the other day is causing some consoles to crash, with yours truly being one of those affected. As much as I want to fire it up and play right now, I'd rather not risk my PS4's hardware or hard drive being damaged in some way.

Honestly, there are already a number of westerns that are "RDR-worthy," IMO. True Grit, 3:10 to Yuma, The Quick and the Dead, to name a few.

I'm liking it a lot. Being a fan of post-apocalyptic fiction, Days Gone checks off the most boxes on the list of features I look for in that ideal third-person, open-world post-apocalyptic survival horror game I've been searching for. I've seen a few reviews criticizing it for not being revolutionary or groundbreaking in some way, but I honestly don't see why it even needs to. Seems like reviewers these days want every game to include some new, never-before-seen mechanic that blows everyone's minds, but yet will give CoD's most recent facelift a 1,000,000/10 for doing absolutely nothing the previous title didn't already do. But I digress. Any proper review of the game I try to compose would be laughably incoherent (believe me, I tried three times in this post to make a short one and all three times it came off as the random ravings of a madman lol), so if there are any specific aspects of the game that are holding you back, tell me what they are and I'll give you an honest opinion on how the game fairs in respect to them.

Has anyone else here played it?

Have you start using cheats since you last saved? This time around, using them disables the save feature.

Rockstar put a lot of creepy things in RDR2, but the mission strand with Marko Dragic and his robot was just downright disturbing. Finding it sitting up there on the mountain muttering "Papa" over and over again was nothing short of terrifying. 😱

This line bugged the hell out of me the first time I read it back in '17 and it still bugs the hell out of me today. There's no way in hell the GTA5 protagonists' individual story arcs are enough for it to be considered "three games in one." I mean, first and foremost, Michael's was intertwined with Franklin's so much at the start that it can't even be considered his own. Yeah, Franklin took a backseat and the focus settled on Mike and his family as it progressed, but still. And Frank's and Trevor's arcs were far too short, being less than half the length of GTA4's Episodes from Liberty City. I mean, not counting collectibles and side activities, I think each episode had 25 - 30 missions. I don't think Franklin's arc had even 10 missions, which is light even for a DLC add-on these days. And when Stretch was brought up by Franklin as a "loose end" in the Option C mission after being ignored for practically the entire game, one could be forgiven for not even remembering who he was. I remembered who he was just by virtue of being abnormally attentive to story details, but after all I'd been through in the game by that time, I honestly didn't give a crap whether he lived or died and would have ended the game just as satisfied if he were never mentioned again.

It's highly unlikely there will be any story DLC for RDR2. Heck, they couldn't even be bothered to add the Evans repeater to story mode, as opposed to GTA5 that still got DLC weapons and vehicles made available in story mode for a time afterward until the Heists Update (IIRC) where everything suddenly became GTAO exclusive with Rockstar never giving a reason for this sudden change.

Oh, this will be the first episode I've ever watched as a whole. Without Batman, I never had a lick of interest. Now that Batman's gonna show his cowl... 🤣

Can't lie, that's legitimately something I'd play. 😆

Bugisoft? Ubiglitch? Glitchisoft? Unity was legit the first time I ever heard a major publication use the word "horrific" in reference to any glitch, though.

Yeah, if you die while in possession of a legendary pelt, it's automatically transferred to the trapper. You just don't get the payout that you'd get from selling it to him.

My evidence? He sparkles, just like Edward.

So, the Gotham finale airs next week and, after seeing the promo, is anyone else here geeking out to the insane and probably unhealthy level that I am right now? You could cut steel with the goosebumps on my neck right now.

Trust me, I'd be just as critical of any US company as well off as Ubisoft that donated so little. Some, especially telecom giants like Viacom and AT&T, could probably finance the rebuilding by themselves and not see a dent in their bottom line. In other news, the leading suspected cause of the fire is a short-circuit. https://www.aol.com/article/news/2019/04/18/police-official-short-circuit-likely-caused-notre-dame-fire/23714194/

I guess it wouldn't matter if they decided to cut that amount down to the equivalent of a single US dollar, then? After all, a donation is a donation, right? I just think it comes off as a bit on the patronizing side when an entity that can spare so much more gives such a paltry sum. And for Ubisoft, 500,000 is a paltry sum. Their execs probably get three times that just in holiday bonuses alone. From the reports I'm reading, the donation amounted to 500 million between all of them rather than by each of them.