Roleplayer's Off Topic Thread #32

[Centurion]

4 minutes ago, TheCzarsHussar said:

Centurion you're going to be a wildman by the end of the year.

It’s only until Tuesday lol

[The Good Doctor]

2 hours ago, Centurion said:

It’s only until Tuesday lol

Centurion gonna be a wildman by the end of the week.

[BigBossBalrog]

On 3/5/2021 at 9:59 PM, The Good Doctor said:

I just spent hours working on a post and then my computer randomly shut down without saving any of it. I’d have had it up tonight. 

I spent my weekend slamming my keyboard as I tried to replay my fifteen year old copy of Diablo 1  It's still a great game. I kinda miss the old FMV look that games like it had (Fallout 1 and 2 looked kinda the same) 

Nice dark and gothic. It's aged though. Like aged badly, I can't believe I played all of it. 

Call me a blasphemer, but I think satanic imagery is some of the most badassery creepy shit. I love the satanic scare imagery and art direction a ton. 

[TheCzarsHussar]

TMI fellows but my canglion cyst ruptured

My left wrist is going to be sore for a few days.

[TheCzarsHussar]

It's all the rage in 8e Skyrim

[The Good Doctor]

5 hours ago, TheCzarsHussar said:

It's all the rage in 8e Skyrim

@Witchking of Angmar @Tdroid

Resident Scandinavians, how accurate is this?

[Tdroid]

4 hours ago, The Good Doctor said:

@Witchking of Angmar @Tdroid

Resident Scandinavians, how accurate is this?

Seems about right.

[BigBossBalrog]

This is why you don't play Gacha games and why they are a scourge in general 

Doctor Edit: Warning, anime

Edited March 11, 2021 by The Good Doctor
These are the rules

[Witchking of Angmar]

11 hours ago, The Good Doctor said:

@Witchking of Angmar @Tdroid

Resident Scandinavians, how accurate is this?

Just drag it out for two more hours.

[Centurion]

Well boys I’m finally of that fucking island! Spending a few days in Washington with the in-laws and then it’s off to Colorado.

[BigBossBalrog]

1 minute ago, Centurion said:

Well boys I’m finally of that fucking island! Spending a few days in Washington with the in-laws and then it’s off to Colorado.

Instead of Nam flashbacks, Centurion is going to be having nightmares to his boring times in Hawaii 

[The Good Doctor]

10 minutes ago, Centurion said:

Well boys I’m finally of that fucking island! Spending a few days in Washington with the in-laws and then it’s off to Colorado.

Congrats my man! Welcome back to the actual United States.  

10 minutes ago, BigBossBalrog said:

Instead of Nam flashbacks, Centurion is going to be having nightmares to his boring times in Hawaii 

 

[BigBossBalrog]

I'm not going to lie; watching Sebastin from Evil Within watch Skyrim was pretty weird 

 

[The Good Doctor]

On 3/11/2021 at 1:39 PM, BigBossBalrog said:

I'm not going to lie; watching Sebastin from Evil Within watch Skyrim was pretty weird 

 

You know, all else aside, there was actually some pretty cool editing in that video. I liked the transitions.

Sebastian watching Skyrim was definitely the goofiest part.  His expression made me laugh.

[The Good Doctor]

This is really cool. The video is an hour long but you only have to watch the first two minutes to see what I mean.

 

[Centurion]

[TheCzarsHussar]

So Metro 2033 is free on steam right now if anyone wants to grab it, it's the last day to do so.

I've a huge soft spot for that game, having played it as a kid so I leapt on the opportunity to replay it now. I played on the second to last hardest difficulty (only reason I didn't play on Ranger Hard was because unlike the remaster, there's no way to know how much ammo you have at all, cannot even check) and with only one extremely frustrating exception, the game was amazing to relive.

Compared to Last Light, it's sequel, this game is much more atmospheric (with better story if you ask me) but suffers from subpar AI and slightly clunkier but still really good combat. The tone and story of 2033 without spoiling anything reminds me a lot of how grim Fallout 1 was. In 2033 there's a level where you desperately help an evacuating metro tunnel/station's defenders hold the entrance against a seemingly never ending horde of mutants, and despite your literal best efforts, so many slip through into the station that the people inside are slaughtered. Then you alone trek through what's left within the station and find it desolate, with swarming scavengers munching away on the corpses of those unfortunate enough unable to escape. The canon ending of the game is depressing, where you and your stations survive but in doing so destroy something you barely even understood that never intended to be an enemy.

In Last Light you fight against communist neo-soviets attacking your super bunker, escort a baby survivor of the race you destroy in 2033 to his people, and have a sappy love interest. Maybe when I play Last Light again at some point, I'll be less harsh

[BigBossBalrog]

The OG Metro is the better horror experience, but I prefer Last Light by alot. Thematically, it ties into the original novels way better (I think the author of the books even helped with the writing team of the games), has WAY more polish and much better shooting mechanics, and I think the story is much, much better. Last Light is a story about redemption and has way higher stakes.

And the Neo-Reich and Neo-Soviets were also in 2033 and are one of the coolest parts of the world building in the series 

I love the series as a whole. It's like STALKER's weird cousin. 

[BigBossBalrog]

I still remember him calling the Witcher author "an arrogant son of bitch"  It's cool to see an author being so on board with the games; enough he actually helps with them directly, and see's how much success the games have brought the series. 

[TheCzarsHussar]

Just now, BigBossBalrog said:

Thematically, it ties into the original novels way better (I think the author of the books even helped with the writing team of the games)

Last Light literally has nothing to do with Metro 2034 novel
Not that it's a bad thing in the slightest, with some character changes like Bourbon being sympathetic instead of planning on murdering Artyom instead of paying him, 2033 is very faithful to the first book.

2 minutes ago, BigBossBalrog said:

The OG Metro is the better horror experience

Khan's levels are legit spooky and are a really interesting post-apocalyptic faith. He believes that heaven, hell and purgatory were atomized along with the world so all souls are forever trapped in the metro. Spooks, and his three levels are some of the highest points of the game.

But holy fuck don't even get me started on the two Library levels. That's pure anxiety in a screen, had me on the edge of my seat the entire time. Although having the automatic heavy shotgun helped release the tension when I could waste a librarian with twelve shots, when I ran out of ammo, I was fucking scared. Ranger mode ain't no joke.

5 minutes ago, BigBossBalrog said:

Last Light is a story about redemption and has way higher stakes.

I'd argue that an unknown threat that is (unintentionally) wiping out entire stations though it's own actions and causing mutants to be more aggressive has higher stakes than a big brain mutie kid trying to get back to his parents, that for some reason are locked in D6. (Maybe it's from the books? Correct me if it is.)

I know I keep drawing on this, but it's a lot like Fallout 1 vs 2 story and tone. 2033 was fucking g r i m, no matter where you turned there was no happy endings. The one ending that has you spare the Dark Ones by realizing they've only wanted peace (and were too psychically powerful, causing serious harm to anyone they tried to reach out to), is non canon because Artyom followed in Hunter's footsteps too closely. "If it's hostile, you kill it." 
Only after watching the Dark One's getting obliterated by the nukes did he have any regret at all.

7 minutes ago, BigBossBalrog said:

And the Neo-Reich and Neo-Soviets were also in 2033 and are one of the coolest parts of the world building in the series 

 

You see I love the inclusion of communist neo-soviets because it's Moscow, in real life there's a bunch of romanticism from Russian youth and the old party members resentment on thinking that the soviet union was glorious. It can totally see a totalitarian communist regime cropping up in the Metro.

It's literal, actually, no joke, R u s s i a n  n a z i s that suspends my disbelief. Even the Russians that joined the nazis in WW2 were largely rebelling from their oppressive regime than being fascists. These were White Russians and their descendants. Why in all the fuck would nazis suddenly pop in in Moscow's metro system is beyond me. They could have been fascists still and I'd enjoy that too, you don't have to have nazis to have fascists, do a Russian blend

But I do agree that the levels where you're stuck between a battle going on between the Reds and the Reich are some of the best gameplay moments in the game. I'd like to believe the reason why the Red Line got so powerful in Last Light was because our character destroyed too much valuable infrastructure and killed enough soldiers of the Reich that it tipped the balance of power, what I don't like is the insane scale we see in Last Light.

[TheCzarsHussar]

21 minutes ago, BigBossBalrog said:

has WAY more polish and much better shooting mechanics

Forgot to mention this. I won't argue at all that the AI is better and gunplay is smoother in Last Light, but holy fuck is it easy.

Stealth was heavily dumbed down and made real easy in Last Light plus the remaster of 2033. They even did away with the armor system.

"Do you want to survive the horrors of the surface world, wear heavy armor; but good luck sneaking. Or are you going to be mauled by monsters in seconds but be a silent killing machine against humans, wear stealthy equipment."

[BigBossBalrog]

3 minutes ago, TheCzarsHussar said:

Last Light literally has nothing to do with Metro 2034 novel
Not that it's a bad thing in the slightest, with some character changes like Bourbon being sympathetic instead of planning on murdering Artyom instead of paying him, 2033 is very faithful to the first book.

 

I'm talking about the story themes; it's more mystical and epic then what the video game adaption of 2033 did. Last Light feels more connected to the books (the writer even incorporated the original characters from Light Last into the sequel novel of 2033, 2035, even if he considers them a different continuity. 

5 minutes ago, TheCzarsHussar said:

Last Light literally has nothing to do with Metro 2034 novel

I'd argue that an unknown threat that is (unintentionally) wiping out entire stations though it's own actions and causing mutants to be more aggressive has higher stakes than a big brain mutie kid trying to get back to his parents, that for some reason are locked in D6. (Maybe it's from the books? Correct me if it is.)

It isn't  Kinda

They tweaked the difficulty a bit in the Remaster, just go Ranger difficulty. 

The Child Dark one is looking for the survivors of his species. There's some frozen dark ones in D6. 

[TheCzarsHussar]

1 minute ago, BigBossBalrog said:

I'm talking about the story themes; it's more mystical and epic then what the video game adaption of 2033 did. Last Light feels more connected to the books (the writer even incorporated the original characters from Light Last into the sequel novel of 2033, 2035, even if he considers them a different continuity. 

It isn't  Kinda

They tweaked the difficulty a bit in the Remaster, just go Ranger difficulty. 

 

  Hide contents

The Child Dark one is looking for the survivors of his species. There's some frozen dark ones in D6. 

That I remember, it brings up the question that maybe the Dark Ones were a Russian experiment in biological warfare considering the nature of D6. They would 

not have gotten in before the nukes. I just didn't know if the Dark Ones being there was in 2034 or just a creation of Last Light.

[TheCzarsHussar]

3 minutes ago, BigBossBalrog said:

 it's more mystical

That I couldn't disagree with more. I cannot speak from memory, because I only remember the major story elements of Last Light (it's been like seven years since I played it ). But I seriously don't recall anything near as mystical as the levels with Khan in 2033. Khan is like the Rasputin of the apocalypses in 2033, I don't recall getting the same feeling from him in LL. But again take that with a grain of salt, it's been many years since I played it.

[BigBossBalrog]

2 minutes ago, TheCzarsHussar said:

That I couldn't disagree with more. I cannot speak from memory, because I only remember the major story elements of Last Light (it's been like seven years since I played it ). But I seriously don't recall anything near as mystical as the levels with Khan in 2033. Khan is like the Rasputin of the apocalypses in 2033, I don't recall getting the same feeling from him in LL. But again take that with a grain of salt, it's been many years since I played it.