Official Giant Bomb Thread Mostly for Complaining About Dan

[chummer]

  On 12/29/2015 at 8:09 PM, Badfinger said:

I don't know how they end up voting but it is KILLING me that Brad just fucking refuses to play music from anything other than level 1 from Crypt of the Necrodancer trying to make his case. He didn't bring up the hot/cold swap on level 3, or that the bosses all have music gimmicks that give it so much more variety than just "Danny B Club". He should be fighting for it to win the category (because they didn't even nominate Nuclear Throne somehow) and it's on the verge of being dropped for motherfucking Metal Gear. He's telling instead of showing in the BEST MUSIC CATEGORY.

 

Still salty for them failing to even nominate Dustforce's OST back in '12 (a game they quicklooked and even noted how good the music was during).

[seamus2389]

The agreement over fallout 4 as one of thee most disappointing games is what I love about the GOTY podcasts. 

 

[Dewar]

Fiasco was brilliant.

[rohlfinator]

Glad to hear Jeff and crew take Fallout 4 to task for a bit. I don't understand how Bethesda constantly gets a pass on technical problems that other games are chastised for. The "clockwork world" argument raised by Austin and Brad is starting to get really thin given that the underlying systems (and many of the bugs) have been generally the same for nearly a decade now.

[twmac]

Listening to that talk right now.

 

I genuinely love how passionate people are getting over it, especially Gerstmann.

[Nappi]

I'm so happy that they awarded the best moment of 2015 to

 

  Reveal hidden contents

"Kerbal Space Program getting into orbit" (which Vinny wisely expanded to mean "achieving something in Kerbal Space Program"). I agree 100% with their justifications, namely that you actually feel like you have learned something by the time you finally reach your goal, that the moment is more uniquely rooted in gameplay than most "holy shit" story moments, and that achieving something simply feels fucking amazing in that game. You really do experience that NASA mission control elation because you are actually rooting for those dumb brave Kerbals who are just so excited about getting into space.

 

(Decision spoiler in case you want to listen to their discussion without knowing the outcome. No story spoilers.)

[juv3nal]

ok, completely apropos of nothing, but I just noticed this recently:

Jeff Gerstmann

 

totally has the eyebrows and scruffy facial hair to pull off A+++ Shogun Assassin cosplay:

[BadHat]

HAH. I swear I noticed that similarity on some kind of subconscious level. I feel like it was eating at me for years but I never knew until now.

 

Here's some stuff I said elsewhere while listening to the GOTY pods. Preface: I'm enjoying them a lot and generally kind their discussion entertaining if not super enlightened, it just got frustrating on day 2 when they could not get off Fallout 4 for like an hour.

 

  Quote

man, austin being on these GOTY podcasts kind of brings into stark relief how bad everyone else on the site is at actual game criticism

he's so patient and articulate about everything, even stepping in to explain other people's positions to people who don't understand them, while most of the others just shout the most base level argument for/against their game

actually dan is pretty good too but he's mostly silent. brad is doing his best to be a good host and keep things rolling but he can't reign in jeff/alex/vinny once they get going on something they're passionate about

[Cbirdsong]

Can anyone tell me how spoilery the Life is Strange chat gets on day 3 and 4? I'm on episode 3, so it looks like I'm almost caught up to the GBEast playthrough.

[Badfinger]

  On 1/1/2016 at 12:35 PM, BadHat said:

HAH. I swear I noticed that similarity on some kind of subconscious level. I feel like it was eating at me for years but I never knew until now.

 

Here's some stuff I said elsewhere while listening to the GOTY pods. Preface: I'm enjoying them a lot and generally kind their discussion entertaining if not super enlightened, it just got frustrating on day 2 when they could not get off Fallout 4 for like an hour.

I feel Brad's problem is that the person he's unable to reign in is Brad. I have felt this for a number of years. Jeff and Brad are the two biggest filibusters. I'm glad Alex talks more, because he's willing to listen, concede opinions, and pull for games because he sees merit in something he personally was not enthralled by. I do love Austin dearly on the podcast, because he's able to 1) articulate his position and 2) actually articulate it in more than one way (continuing to look at you Brad, whose biggest argument is often "DUDE").

 

I am SHOCKED how often The Witcher ends up hitting the lists and just kind of hanging around.

 

 

CBirdsong, they explain the story to Life is Strange through Episode 3. They are as explicitly descriptive as it's possible to be.

[pkirkner]

  On 1/1/2016 at 2:39 PM, Cbirdsong said:

Can anyone tell me how spoilery the Life is Strange chat gets on day 3 and 4? I'm on episode 3, so it looks like I'm almost caught up to the GBEast playthrough.

 

They discuss the endings of the episodes they've played in detail. I think that was through the end of episode 3, but I'm not 100% on that.

[thefncrow]

There's a comment on the Day 3 podcast post on their site where someone gives timecodes for the beginning of discussion of specific games, as well as for the categories as a whole.  So if you just want to skip that bit to avoid hearing that stuff, you could use those to skip past it.

[Architecture]

  On 12/31/2015 at 12:29 AM, rohlfinator said:

Glad to hear Jeff and crew take Fallout 4 to task for a bit. I don't understand how Bethesda constantly gets a pass on technical problems that other games are chastised for. The "clockwork world" argument raised by Austin and Brad is starting to get really thin given that the underlying systems (and many of the bugs) have been generally the same for nearly a decade now.

The problem lies in the way their engine has been built and updated. To do what Jeff is asking for would mean Bethesda would have to take twice as long between games to develop an engine from scratch and staff up. They're a major studio, but they're like one sixth the size of any given Ubisoft production. The amount of shit is so incredibly complex that fixing any one item is liable to break hundreds of others. It's not like you can just fire up Unreal 4 and start building Skyrim.

 

I still imagine that they bought id so they could get access to John Carmack's technical knowledge and fix their toolset, though obviously that didn't work out so well. But maybe there's still enough magic left within id to build a more efficient engine that can still handle the unpredictability and freeform nature of Bethesda games.

[Dewar]

I think that Jeff is definitely capable of Austin-level criticism and thought, you can definitely see it in his jar time videos, but he filibusters in these game of the year discussions for entertainment value. Personally, I loved the Fallout 4 discussion, but I can see why others could be annoyed by it. In the end, I like to see passion in these things because it's so easy to get cynical about the whole thing.

[eot]

  On 1/2/2016 at 2:13 AM, Architecture said:

The problem lies in the way their engine has been built and updated. To do what Jeff is asking for would mean Bethesda would have to take twice as long between games to develop an engine from scratch and staff up. They're a major studio, but they're like one sixth the size of any given Ubisoft production. The amount of shit is so incredibly complex that fixing any one item is liable to break hundreds of others. It's not like you can just fire up Unreal 4 and start building Skyrim.

 

I still imagine that they bought id so they could get access to John Carmack's technical knowledge and fix their toolset, though obviously that didn't work out so well. But maybe there's still enough magic left within id to build a more efficient engine that can still handle the unpredictability and freeform nature of Bethesda games.

I agree with your first statement, it's clear that they have an insane amount of technical debt that they won't get over unless they start fresh. I disagree that they couldn't though, Skyrim is one of the best selling games of all time, F4 seems to have sold better than Battlefront! They made what was probably a $100m MMO. They can invest in new tech, and I think they have to if they want these games to keep doing as well as they are. My gut feeling is that Elder Scrolls VI on this engine would get a bit of backlash. Next gen? Forget it.

 

I hated how hard Brad leaned into Lang's argument that you simply cannot QA these games. He's right that you can't, but that's true of so many complex software projects or even more general engineering projects. What you can do is create systems that interact more robustly, that give their scripters and quest designers better ease of use and less risk of breaking stuff. I bet you that a large reason why CDP were able to create TW3 at all is because they have developed amazing in house tools. Of course Lang isn't going to call out Bethesda on a podcast like that. He's the CEO of a company that probably wants to do business with them.

 

Btw, it's a bit funny how Rockstar went from sacrificing polish in favour of ambition, to being cutting edge in both, whereas Bethesda started out in the latter place and have gradually sacrificed both.

[miffy495]

Is Rockstar really that ambitious? I can't help but feel like GTA has just been remade but more polished every time for the last decade.

[rohlfinator]

Agree with eot, and I also think Jeff made a good point that to some extent, the customer shouldn't need to care about the technical details. Most "broke-ass games" have some technical or financial justification for why they shipped that way, but that doesn't stop the GB crew from calling them out.

 

I'd be more forgiving if Bethesda was really pushing the envelope with their simulation stuff, but from a sim angle Fallout 4 is basically Fallout 3 + settlements.

 

 

I was kind of surprised to see Mario Maker get GOTY -- I thought Metal Gear would have more support but it seems like most of them have cooled on it quite a bit. Also pretty glad to see a lot of smaller/indie stuff in the top 10 this year.

[eot]

  On 1/3/2016 at 1:18 AM, miffy495 said:

Is Rockstar really that ambitious? I can't help but feel like GTA has just been remade but more polished every time for the last decade.

When I say that they're more ambitious, I mean in terms of scope. Things like putting golf and tennis games inside the game, or building an extensive cinematography tool into the game. I personally don't care about that stuff, but I do think it's impressive how they keep adding more to the games while increasing the fidelity at the same time. The one way they've dialled things back is by giving you less freedom to use the sandbox systems in the actual missions. That wasn't something that broke the old games though, but it seems like Rocktar doesn't want random systemic crap messing with their c-tier hollywood story.

[Griddlelol]

Mario Maker is such a weird game for me. I like playing it for about 20 minutes at a time, until I get frustrated because I'm awful at Mario. Despite my incredibly sporadic playing pattern, I still have around 20+ hours in it. It's unbelievable!

[Badfinger]

MGS being GOTY would have been unconscionable. Overlooking all the social issues that game has for its pure technical gameplay has always been what Giant Bomb is about, and I'm glad they managed to buck that for at least one year.

[Delerat]

  On 1/3/2016 at 11:32 AM, eot said:

When I say that they're more ambitious, I mean in terms of scope. Things like putting golf and tennis games inside the game, or building an extensive cinematography tool into the game. I personally don't care about that stuff, but I do think it's impressive how they keep adding more to the games while increasing the fidelity at the same time. The one way they've dialled things back is by giving you less freedom to use the sandbox systems in the actual missions. That wasn't something that broke the old games though, but it seems like Rocktar doesn't want random systemic crap messing with their c-tier hollywood story.

The thing about those systems is that they're fairly separate from everything else in the world. Even populating GTA, while an impressive feat, especially with how good everything looks, they have fairly basic AI and don't need to exist outside of a certain range of the player. They also don't need to have any interactions past collisions, frightened reactions, and dying. I think the problems Bethesda is running into should definitely be fixed, the big bugs anyways. Game-breaking stuff isn't acceptable. The common jank though, is too risky to deal with.

[twmac]

  On 1/3/2016 at 11:32 AM, eot said:

When I say that they're more ambitious, I mean in terms of scope. Things like putting golf and tennis games inside the game, or building an extensive cinematography tool into the game. I personally don't care about that stuff, but I do think it's impressive how they keep adding more to the games while increasing the fidelity at the same time. The one way they've dialled things back is by giving you less freedom to use the sandbox systems in the actual missions. That wasn't something that broke the old games though, but it seems like Rocktar doesn't want random systemic crap messing with their c-tier hollywood story.

 

And that is exactly why I haven't given a shit about a GTA game.

[Dewar]

  On 1/3/2016 at 10:57 PM, Badfinger said:

MGS being GOTY would have been unconscionable. Overlooking all the social issues that game has for its pure technical gameplay has always been what Giant Bomb is about, and I'm glad they managed to buck that for at least one year.

 

I'm disappointed after they struck Fallout 4 from the list and pushed Witcher so low, that Metal Gear ended up so high. The stuff they did after release to that game has been a tragedy, and it should have exiled it from the top 5 at least.

[graddy]

  On 1/4/2016 at 4:46 PM, Dewar said:

I'm disappointed after they struck Fallout 4 from the list and pushed Witcher so low, that Metal Gear ended up so high. The stuff they did after release to that game has been a tragedy, and it should have exiled it from the top 5 at least.

Didn't they mention that you can completely ignore the online stuff? I'm selfish and worried about my eventual play through X months/years from now

[Patrick R]

I only just started listening to Giant Bomb, who is this Dave Lang they keep mentioning? Is he an industry person or a friend or an inside joke or what?