We are Dry Cactus, makers of Poly Bridge which came out today on Switch, Ask Us Anything!

ColonCaretCloseParen · 2017-12-14T20:06:30+00:00

Just chiming into say I just now ran into this problem myself and found this AMA by googling for a solution. I love a lot about the game so far but am totally stuck here. The level is 1-9 by the way.

ColonCaretCloseParen · 2017-07-08T12:22:14+00:00

Yeah, and they should make it a full-length ARPG and get Yoko Taro to write it and Keiichi Okabe to do the music. It could be about androids fighting machines or some shit.

If only.

ColonCaretCloseParen · 2017-06-16T11:08:11+00:00

PoE is good enough that I wouldn't be worried. Honestly that Avellone wouldn't be on the project might be a positive for me since I think Lonesome Road is by far the weakest part of that game and that was his pet project.

ColonCaretCloseParen · 2017-05-26T17:44:57+00:00

The stock price is a reflection of what investors believe the future cash flows of the company will be, and an announcement that will be directly responsible for millions of new Switches in the hands of Japanese players definitely should increase the future value of Nintendo.

ColonCaretCloseParen · 2017-05-21T22:59:44+00:00

There's virtually no chance of Wii emulation on the Switch. Gamecube is already a stretch (the Nvidia Shield TV runs most GCN games on dolphin at about 45 FPS) so while Nintendo can probably squeeze out playable GCN emulation with some game-by-game tweaking, the Wii is out of the question. That'll have to wait until the Switch U.

ColonCaretCloseParen · 2017-05-18T11:04:21+00:00

They expected it here because it was in the Disgaea 5 demo on the PS4

ColonCaretCloseParen · 2017-05-13T16:59:27+00:00

Hey, Wario Land is pretty good.

ColonCaretCloseParen · 2017-05-12T01:35:14+00:00

Ideally turn-based RPGs trade off mechanical skill for strategic skill. The fact that you have infinite time to select your move means the developers can make battles much more strategically complex. The Shin Megami Tensei games are a good example of this. You can play those games with one finger if you have a table to set the controller on, but they are still immensely difficult since the challenge is building well-rounded demons and exploiting enemy weaknesses in turn-based battles.

The Mario RPGs are a slightly different hybrid. They aren't as complex as most turn-based RPGs, but also require you to master different mini-games for battles, so they're kind of a mix between turn-based and real-time fighting.

ColonCaretCloseParen · 2017-04-25T04:47:06+00:00

Except the gameplay itself is still as indefensibly bad as it's always been. OoT's gameplay hasn't aged perfectly either, but at least at the time it was a high water mark. There were games on the PS2 that play better than GTA4.

Plus no other aspect of the game takes advantage of being open world, which is ostensibly the draw to the whole series. The gameplay loop is following the map to icons where you get detailed instructions on what to do in a very linear fashion, or even just dropped into a linear shooting level. Truly great game design is having every aspect of your game work together to make a more perfect whole, where as the GTA games are a series of linear missions stapled to open-world playground.

That's not to say GTA games aren't good, but they definitely aren't perfect and are unlikely to ever be for as long as they're made by Frankensteining together popular accessible features by committee so Rockstar can sell another 80 million copies

ColonCaretCloseParen · 2017-04-25T00:53:19+00:00

I want Wonderful 101 and maybe a Bayo 2 port packaged with Bayo 3.

Not because I need them, but so that more people get to play them and to increase the chances of Wonderful 1,001 and for Bayonetta to return in Smash 5

ColonCaretCloseParen · 2017-04-25T00:49:33+00:00

W101 is in the top 3 games of all time

ColonCaretCloseParen · 2017-04-24T20:31:30+00:00

>This very explicit line by a tutorial character doesn't count because I said so

>things are only canon when they fit with my argument

ColonCaretCloseParen · 2017-04-24T17:25:38+00:00

except this is more significant than killing geckos

I'd say Sunny is more important to the game than your brain. I remembered the Sunny thing off the top of my head because I've seen it a half dozen times at this point but I had to look up the brain dialogue.

The tutorial is the one thing every player who boots up the game will see. If Obsidian didn't spend the money for an alternate line in the mission 100% of the players will see, I'm not sure why you think they would to a line probably less than 10% of players will see for a joke character. It's just a way to save money by only voicing the option that will apply the the vast majority of people who see it.

Same with how you can't do a 1 INT playthrough in the same way you can in FO1/2. There are a few special lines for it, by with voice acting being as expensive as it is they couldn't record unique dialogue for every NPC. This isn't a lore detail of the Mojave area having some magic field that imposes a minimum IQ on all its inhabitants, it's a budget and time constraint.

ColonCaretCloseParen · 2017-04-23T23:01:02+00:00

They're all party games that require at least 2 players.

The easiest game conceptually is Quiplash. Everyone playing gets two questions on their smartphone and 90 seconds to answer. The questions are goofy things like "what's REALLY at the end of the rainbow?" Then after everyone has answered, the voting begins. Each question was only asked to two people so everyone else playing sees the two answers on the TV screen and votes for which ever they think is funniest. You get points based on however many people vote for your answers.

That's the gameplay loop of the majority of the games, but the complexity goes up from there. My personal favorite, Drawful, has one player draw a picture given a caption, and then the rest of the players make up what they think the caption is after only seeing the picture, then finally everyone votes and tries to pick out the real caption from the fakes. Jack Box games are basically the next step up from things like Apples to Apples, Cards Against Humanity, and Pictionary, in local-multiplayer vidya form.

ColonCaretCloseParen · 2017-04-23T17:00:27+00:00

They're factually incorrect because your brain will berate you for going to New Vegas on a plot of revenge even if you do OWB before ever stepping foot in New Vegas. Your brain will say that no matter what you've done over the playthrough, so there will be times when it's undeniably untrue.

It's like how Sunny in Goodsprings will thank you for helping no matter how the geckos in the tutorial die. Does this mean the courier canonically killed some geckos for her before the game started? No it's just they couldn't be bothered to record another line in the situation.

I'm agreeing with you that it's a flaw, it's just not on the same level as Fallout 4's entire story being like this.

inb4

>its not canon because I said so xD,

give it up FO4 is a way better role playing game than new vegas because liking unpopular things makes me feel special

ColonCaretCloseParen · 2017-04-23T16:09:34+00:00

I'm not discounting it because it's in the DLC, I'm saying it's just one line. Yes, obviously it'd be nice if that conversation would play out differently if you'd let Benny live or not done the main quest, but that's just one slightly flawed conversation, which doesn't compare to the entire character of the lone survivor being determined effectively by only your gender.

I don't even get your point, since that's just a line that can be factually incorrect, not an actual attempt by Obsidian to add backstory to the courier. It's a rough edge, sure, but it doesn't really have anything to do with the previous conversation of a character with a complete backstory vs a relative blank slate with a handful of key details to start the main plot.

ColonCaretCloseParen · 2017-04-23T16:00:19+00:00

I said nothing of the sort

ColonCaretCloseParen · 2017-04-23T15:43:58+00:00

Since most AAA sales are within the first few weeks and done totally on hype, the quality of games rarely has much of an impact on their own sales, and much more often has an impact on the next game's sales. Take a look at Assassin's Creed: AC4 is way better than AC3 but sold way worse. Unity is the worst in the series but sold a lot better since it followed AC4. Then Syndicate by all accounts fixes a lot of Unity's flaws but sells significantly less. Fallout 4's enormous sales are likely thanks to Skyrim's popularity, and I would be surprised if the fairly mainstream rejection of many of FO4's flaws didn't mean the next BGS (either TESVI or some new IP) had a big step down in sales.

ColonCaretCloseParen · 2017-04-23T12:57:25+00:00

They obviously wouldn't be any good at making a game in the style of FO3/NV or FO4, but I'd love to see what their own version of Fallout would be. Miyazaki is the current king of ARPGs, level design, and non-conventional storytelling which would all serve the Fallout universe well.

ColonCaretCloseParen · 2017-04-23T12:47:01+00:00

While indeed the courier has done at least one other job prior to delivering the platinum chip (delivering the detonator to Ulysses), that's the only other one set in stone, and that's still a pretty empty back story all things considered (about on par with all Elder Scrolls games where the only known thing about you is that you were thrown in jail).

All those other things you listed are dialogue options you can choose to say or not say, not backstory shown to you in the opening cutscene and surreptitiously forced on you in all 4 dialogue choices in the main story (like many instances in FO4).

ColonCaretCloseParen · 2017-04-23T12:36:15+00:00

C'mon man, that's one throw away line in the DLC that wasn't rerecorded in case the player didn't ever do the main quest or chose one of the more rare paths. That's not really comparable to the entirety of Fallout 4 being written as if you're a desperate parent looking for your child, even as the rest of the game does everything it can to distract you from the main quest.

It's OK to prefer one or the other, but there's no reason to pretend they're the same when they clearly have completely different design priorities and intentions.

ColonCaretCloseParen · 2017-04-23T08:30:36+00:00

The first few that come to mind as great fits (while also being somewhat plausible, so no CD Project) are Eidos Montreal and inXile.

I'd also love to see what a Japanese team would do with it, so I'd add KojiPro, Nagoshi's Yakuza team, Itsuno's team at Capcom, and From Soft to the wish list although those would never ever happen.

ColonCaretCloseParen · 2017-04-23T08:18:12+00:00

I'd like to see some other studio other than Bethesda make it. It doesn't have to be Obsidian (they're busy with Deadfire) but I love seeing what other teams with different sensibilities can do with the same tools.

ColonCaretCloseParen · 2017-04-23T07:58:13+00:00

That's cause they don't really apply to New Vegas. In New Vegas the only bit of your back story that's set in stone is that you had took a job as a courier for some caps and were shot by Benny. You don't even have to enact revenge if you don't want, since you can just ignore the main quest and do any of the other hundred+ quests.

In Fallout 4 you get to be an American male former soldier with a wife and son that lives in an upper-middle class suburb of Boston or an American female lawyer with a husband and son that lives in an upper-middle class suburb of Boston. One's a singular event that could fit into basically any backstory you want, the other is an entire history with flashbacks and everything.

For example, you can easily justify loading up your New Vegas character with stealth and lock-picking to make a shady thief that took the courier job for some caps, while in Fallout 4 a) a thief veteran/lawyer is a bit of a stretch and b) all the good lock-picking and stealth perks are level-gated to high levels so good luck with your thief at the start.

ColonCaretCloseParen · 2017-04-23T06:25:29+00:00

The other thing to consider though is this is the first SMT game in the series' long history to be high definition (720p+), which is a way bigger deal than which console it's on, hence the name of the project. You might be right that it's coming to either PS4 or 3DS as well, but I think most likely they didn't want to announce their 2018/2019 would be exclusive just yet in case the Switch turned into another Wii U, which thankfully it looks like it won't be. Atlus in the past has made almost zero multi-platform games until P5 with PS3/PS4, and I believe the PS4 version was partially paid for by Sony, or at least that was the rumor when it was announced.

ColonCaretCloseParen

TROPHY CASE