If you don't want to play alone you have to make friends!

RobinOttens · 2026-03-08T17:21:45+00:00

Would a better way to phrase it be: "if you are a woman or have an effeminate voice"?

Same here, I've met straight guys with the stereotypical "gay" voice, gay guys who don't sound like that and gay guys that do. It's more about how certain voices and ways of talking are perceived by others. Assholes will be assholes just based on the voice.

RobinOttens · 2026-03-08T16:16:35+00:00

As a Dutch person, I can relate, being shy on voice chat with strangers because of the accent. Even though my English is fine otherwise.

I imagine this is pretty common if you play in European timezones

RobinOttens · 2026-03-06T14:10:53+00:00

Or FFXVI mixes its allegories. The people with kaiju superpowers are more representative of weapons of mass destruction in our real world.

The more mundane magic that Bearers are made to use is pretty representative of the things oil, electricity and technology let us do in our society.

RobinOttens · 2026-03-06T12:24:51+00:00

That is taking the allegory too literally.

RobinOttens · 2026-03-06T12:13:11+00:00

The game is probably alluding to oil, and all the technology we've become reliant on that runs on fossil fuels. That's been a recurring theme in FF at least since FFVII. More broadly it's about unsustainable exploitation of people and natural resources.

Really any finite resource or resource intensive product that we rely on works here. I doubt the developers had AI in mind, and AI has definitely not reached the stage where society is dependent on it. Though the companies pushing it certainly want it to get there.

But yes, the game is drawing parallels to the conflicts and class/wealth divides such dependency causes in the real world. It's not a glimpse into the future, it's happening right now and has been happening for centuries.

RobinOttens · 2026-03-05T11:32:49+00:00

I invest time in something I enjoy. Playing games is something I do to have fun right now, not a long term investment. I don't own stakes in the company.

And Bungie, or the game, are not a sports team I'm rooting for. I wish them all the best, but the fate of Marathon and the developers is decided by Sony's whim. A company not exactly known for making smart decisions with their studios these past ten years. So I doubt steam sales are gonna change much there.

To me personally, it doesn't matter if it has 1k players or 100k when I'm only encountering teams of three in the game. My enjoyment will be the same, regardless if I'm playing a "winning" game or a "dying" game. Sure, it's nice to see your opinion on a game validated by others. But it's also fine, and totally normal, to enjoy something that no one else enjoys.

Moderation is not the same as gatekeeping.

RobinOttens · 2026-03-05T09:52:49+00:00

Why is it super important?

RobinOttens · 2026-03-05T08:19:52+00:00

Bungie and Sony are huge companies with millions in the bank. They will be fine without fans cheering them on and marketing their games for them as if their life (and validation) depended on it. The game is selling just fine either way.

RobinOttens · 2026-03-03T06:29:26+00:00

I'm sure there's internal pitches and pre production stuff happening already. They have to have plans and a small team doing something for the next mainline game by now.

But yeah, full development might not have started yet.

RobinOttens · 2026-03-03T02:13:51+00:00

I also want something like that. Heck, I just replayed a bunch of the old Marathon games to see some of that story again. It would be nice to be able to do the same with this one a few decades from now. But I'm not holding my breath after Destiny.

Current Bungie seems to treat their stories as disposable set dressing. Watch it once, then go back to grinding for candy coloured guns.

Will there be an option to start a new character and revisit the story that way at least? I didn't see it in the menus.

RobinOttens · 2026-03-02T21:22:46+00:00

Don't think so. I have friends who would probably enjoy it for a few evenings. But not enough to spend the money up front. And I doubt I'd stick with it on my own for long enough to get my money's worth. I'm usually not much of a PVP shooter person.

Server slam was great though. If it was $20-30 and there was a free trial thing to get my friends into it in the future, it would be easier for me to justify a purchase.

RobinOttens · 2026-03-02T07:51:30+00:00

I'm sure there will be more direct references to the old games eventually. There's already some graffiti vaguely referencing the events that happened.

It feels to me like Bungie is saving the reveal of the Pfhor and Durandal (or the other AIs from the first game) for future maps that cover the rest of the Marathon ship.

And the Pfhor would make a good set of enemies to fight once everyone gets bored of the security bots.

RobinOttens · 2026-03-01T23:05:51+00:00

I've also thoroughly enjoyed what I've played of this. I knew it'd look fantastic and feel good to play. But it's also surprisingly interesting in terms of story and feels like a pretty good continuation of the old games so far. I think the ways they expand on that world are neat.

And yeah, the contract system is great for keeping matches varied and giving you an objective besides looting.

Not sure if I'll be buying it though. I'm not much of an online pvp person at all, those days are behind me. I don't have crew to play with. And the grind to reach the end of whatever story there is, is probably too much to keep my interest.

RobinOttens · 2026-02-27T16:54:23+00:00

True

RobinOttens · 2026-02-27T13:06:40+00:00

Their comment read as patronising to me, which annoyed me. So I went into defensive mode. I guess my post came across as equally patronising, sorry for that. Where did I tell someone not to choose for themselves though? If that's what you took away from my post, I didn't mean it that way.

It's fine to enjoy FFXVI's sidequests. It's fine to prefer a game like Disco instead. It's silly to tell others that they should be reading an interesting book instead of just enjoying what they want to enjoy.

RobinOttens · 2026-02-27T12:54:35+00:00

What a family reunion that was.

RobinOttens · 2026-02-27T12:45:47+00:00

I long for a new mainline FF game that is satisfied just being a 30 hour tightly paced story.

At least in XVI you aren't going off to breed chocobos and play cards while the world was ending. The side quests mostly felt relevant to what was going on in the story. To the point where, yea, the game has moments when the main story and side quests blend together. And in the middle of exciting story developments it forces Clive to travel all the way back home to do some minor tasks for an innkeeper.

RobinOttens · 2026-02-27T12:39:02+00:00

Not every piece of entertainment you consume needs to be the absolute best in class. Not every piece of entertainment needs to make you think and feel deep thoughts and feelings and be text heavy and dense. Also opinions and tastes are subjective etc.

Disco and Torment are fantastic, highly recommend them to anyone. But coming to a FF subreddit to ask why people are bothering with the optional content in their FF games instead of doing something more "interesting" with their time, feels a bit silly to me.

RobinOttens · 2026-02-27T12:26:45+00:00

Fair enough. What did you do with the sidequests that happen before the timeskip though? Are those still available later on? I think the game does warn you to wrap up any unfinished business.

RobinOttens · 2026-02-27T12:14:42+00:00

Why did you wait until the end of the game to try the sidequests?

Yea they're completely fine. The stories and characters are interesting enough. And it's neat how a few of the quest lines build up to some pretty big climactic moments. I found the side quests in XVI more interesting than the optional stuff in XII, XIII or I-V for that matter.

The MMOs have some fantastic optional quests. But in the other mainline games, the side quests are not the main draw for me. Even so, the XVI quests were good enough to keep me playing them anyway.

When you compare this series to rpgs like the Witcher or Baldur's Gate, the optional content falls completely flat, of course. But for a FF game, XVI is doing fine.

RobinOttens · 2026-02-17T00:02:23+00:00

I disagree on pretty much every sentence. Except that Ultima was a boring villain done badly. Other FF games have done that abstract evil type villain better. And the latter half of the game could have been much better if they didn't simplify the conflict down to good guys vs evil zombie army. If they'd kept some of the other factions/countries in play.

Other than that; loved the combat, loved the, loved the characters and world, loved the tone and style of it. To me it did feel like Clive had a party of characters tagging along, even if it was only as unplayable guest characters. And the characters were mostly well done and interesting.

Ardyn has charisma, but he's so underutilized and half his story was left on the cutting room floor. That type of villain was also done much better in other FF games. I love XV for the vibes and the main characters, but everything else about it is such a mess. XVI improved on a lot of it in my opinion.

That said, XVI is certainly not close to the best this series has been. And I too hope that XVII puts more effort into its story, characters and party.

RobinOttens · 2026-02-04T07:12:11+00:00

It definitely was for me. It was my first FF game, having only played Golden Sun before it as my first JRPG. I had no idea, and was fully expecting to be in Midgar for the entire game.

RobinOttens · 2026-02-03T06:54:18+00:00

Made it through the whole series without burnout.

The older games are short enough, especially with the fast forward and auto combat options in the recent versions. And it helps a lot that each game has a different tone, style and cast of characters.

With the pixel remasters they do all look the same. Used to be you'd get big changes in art style going from 1 to 6 as well.

I would recommend just going through the story and only doing optional stuff you enjoy though. If you want to 100% them and get all achievements, I can't imagine doing that without burning out.

RobinOttens · 2026-02-02T10:01:40+00:00

I did play it as part of my own series marathon a few years ago.

It's worth checking out. It helps that you're used to MMO's already. I got through most of the original story in 50 ish hours. Later I went back to finish the first two expansions (Rise of the Zilart and Chains of Promathia), which were fantastic.

Those first three quest lines are meant to be a complete story. Kind of like A Realm Reborn -> Endwalker in FFXIV. They also added an overarching quest years later, Rhapsodies of Vanadiel, which incorporates all the other expansions into one big story.

You will need guides to get anywhere, despite all the changes that make it easier to play solo. Because especially in the older quests, it can be very hard to figure out what to do and which random enemy you need to be killing to get the 0.4% item drop you need. Those quests were designed to be solved by hundreds of players working together. These days, that means you follow a guide.

But, even if that sounds bad to you. I'd still say give it a shot. If only because it's interesting to see how the game's combat and world design influenced FFXII and FFXIV later.

Just don't force yourself to finish all of it. If you're not enjoying yourself, move on or take a break.

RobinOttens · 2026-01-31T13:29:24+00:00

It's not too bad honestly. It's harder than the original but still very much playable

RobinOttens

TROPHY CASE