Updated thoughts post-trying the DLC. (Gaming)

by Korny , Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Sunday, November 19, 2023, 15:31 (160 days ago) @ Korny
edited by Korny, Sunday, November 19, 2023, 15:37

Some serious discounts on big games, across Playstation, XBox, and Steam!

And I have one big recommendation!

Remnant 2:
$34.99 Playstation
$34.99 Xbox
$34.99 Steam
Ultimate edition available on all pages for $14 more, includes two expansions!

And while a new expansion just released this week, I am still running into new encounters and loot in the base game that I hadn't seen before, so be sure to support Indie devs who love to keep surprising!

If there's one thing that I've consistently noticed about Gunfire Games, it's that they're constantly iterating on what worked, are willing to move away from what doesn't, and they try to understand the why and how of player behaviors in a way reminiscent of Digital Extremes, as they are willing to lean into what the playerbase latches onto, while maintaining control of the ship, so it doesn't just descend into a mess.

Case in point, the first big update that lead into this first DLC. Up until the first update, players were leaning into status and tank builds, with many others simply relying on the Engineer's Turrets to do the heavy lifting, without really engaging with the hundred+ rings/amulets in the game. Many other devs would nerf all of these outlying builds, mods, weapons, and tools.
But what Gunfire did was buff a majority of underused gear, rebalance the player crutches with a super satisfying system of give-and-take (Your turret no longer feeds the Challenger's Rage, but you can build it 3x faster than before, making it an almost guaranteed proc if you are as aggressive as the build expects), and they made status builds way more interesting, offering way more tools to use, in order to entice players away from their staples, including rings that reward moving away from tanky builds in interesting and engaging ways.

And I love how consistently we all go from saying "Okay, previous enemies were well-designed and engaging, but this new one is just super unfair and bad." To "Remember when these guys were terrifying? Are we sure we're still on Apocalypse difficulty?"

And it's refreshing how well designed this game is. When you first enter the DLC area, you are greeted with a giant castle looming in the distance above you as a storm churns the waters of the docks you've stepped onto, a non-hostile enemy spouting cryptic woes as he stares into the sea, and a locked door in the rocks below the castle, with a known NPC chained up on the other side visible through a tiny window...
And that's it. The game presents this to the player, trusts that this is enough to engage you, and lets you figure the rest out on your own. No opening narration, no radio drama, no motion comic giving you an exposition dump, and no waypoint. I've longed for games to just be this trusting of the player, and the game delivers.

We spent six hours in just a handful of zones, With many laughs, screams, and triumphs along the way. I can't wait to get back in there.
In the meantime, here's a clip of a moment of downtime, where I saw something innocuously placed in the environment that made me wonder for a brief, terrible moment.