February 6ths GAMING DIGEST

Will Destiny die? Is suicide squad worth the price? What's goin' on then? HUH?

I got my hands on Suicide Squad, so I will share my thoughts on that, Destiny 2’s Game Director announces his departure, the Final Fantasy 14 TV show is confirmed dead.

The update: Did we get to Kill the Justice League?

Well, yes! The server issues and major bugs did indeed get fixed by the time I downloaded and played the game on Friday to grab some first impressions. I’ve only put around 3 and a half hours in so far so I won’t give any detailed review, but so far Id say I’m having about an average time with the game. It’s a pretty game, and I have only had one bug of note so far - my FPS dropping below 10 during a lot of cut scenes, but disabling Ray Tracing seemed to resolve that, and it played largely smoothly otherwise.

My main gripes so far have been firstly, the tutorial at the beginning felt a little clunky and tacked on, and secondly when there are four main characters competing for the same space, there are no main characters, a problem shared in my opinion by many of the DC films, but I digress. The gameplay is fairly fun, chaotic with emphasis on movement and an upgrade tree you start unlocking a couple hours in. The environments are pretty cool so far, but I worry about gameplay becoming repetitive and stale. I’ll be playing some more this week over on my twitch channel, so I’ll see if my opinion alters at all. It’s certainly not a terrible game and by and large it plays just fine, but the bar is high these days.

The main thing that tilts my head is the full £60 price point for what is reported to be a 8-9 hour campaign. There is obviously intention for this to be a ‘live service’ game, where content is released on a semi regular schedule to entice players to keep checking back in, but with a short campaign and microtransactions baked in, it leaves a bit of a sour taste before I’ve even begun to see the end game loop.

Is Destiny 2 DEAD?

If there’s one constant in life, it’s the love/hate relationship Destiny fans have with the franchise-hobby we’ve been diligently involved in since 2014. TEN YEARS. Ten years of tumultuous times, ups and downs, highs, lows, incredible story beats, head scratching lulls and promised futures. The game has changed in many ways - where there was once a thriving PVP scene is now a husk, the between-major-DLC gameplay loop has shifted to a seasonal approach designed to induce FOMO to keep you coming back every week lest you miss out. Story content shifted across the spectrum of threats introduced in the first year or so of content, vaguely tickling the idea of resolving the major plotpoints we were teased with from the franchise’s inception.

WHAT AREEEE YOUUUUUUUUUU IT’S BEEN TEN YEEEEEARRRSSSSS

In any case, things have wavered, and this week Game Director Joe Blackburn announced his departure from Bungie entirely. What does that mean for the future of Destiny? ‘The Final Shape’, the next expansion due to arrive in June, is looked towards to finally wrap up the mystery of what (or who) is the Traveler, the ominprescent overwatch of planet Earth for all these years. There is a perception, no matter how misguided, that this might just signal the end of what we know as Destiny so far, as it morphs into a sort of late stage episodic format just to keep the lights on. ‘The Final Shape’ feels like a meta promise of what we should be expecting after the Summer. Of course, further DLC’s have been announced and the game will technically go on, but will it be the game and story many of us fell in love with back in the beta? I doubt it. Is that caused by Joe’s departure? Of course not, but his leaving does feel like one of the final nails in the OG coffin. Who knows, perhaps the game may live up to it’s potential once the sails are turned towards new shores, or perhaps that’ll be the final shake that removes the remaining magic pixie dust once and for all. Or maybe nothing will change much at all.

Final Fantasy 14 TV show

Did YOU know one was in development? Probably not. And maybe that’s for the best, because it is officially dead in the water. Originally slated to be a live action set in the well-traversed land of Eorzea, apparently the risk was just too high for the project to get fully across the starting line. And perhaps that’s for the best, live-action is VERY hit-or-miss, especially when it comes to high fantasy with more anime elements - it’s almost impossible to please anyone, myself included. Now, if only they’d release a few more Advent Children esque CGI movies…

Ah Vincent, the first love of my life.

Other bits and pieces:

• The hit cinematic interactive horror game ‘Until Dawn’ will be seeing a remaster this year for PC and PS5 - the game has reportedly been rebuilt from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5, a pretty hefty feat. Originally realeasing back in 2014, Until Dawn garnered critical acclaim and had a darn good user score for something fairly unique and daring at that time (over… 9 years… ago…).

  The game is marketed as a ‘narrative survival horror game’, a genre which has seen a few other additions over the intervening years, like The Quarry and the Dark Pictures Anthology series, where the emphasis is on the choice-based narrative rather than survival mechanics of other popular grim series like Resident Evil. It was a blast to play even as someone who hates horror games, and this is one of the few ‘remaster’ style offerings that seem worthwhile.

• Skull and Bones draws ever closer… with another beta set for a week-ish from now and the release date of February 16th looming, could we have a niche favourite or will it just miss the mark? Following a tumultuous development process destined to make even the hardiest of sailors sea-sick, the extra development time will either become evident with a confused offering, or will pay off with a coherent, enjoyable game that captures what folks were looking for from a standalone Black Flag spin-off.

• Rough news continues to be uncovered from the development of the failed survival game, ‘The Day Before’. One of the most wishlisted games on Steam ahead of a crash and burn upon release (caused by lack of features and any real quality whatsoever), recently we’ve been privy to more tales of woe from within - including how two voiceover artists were reportedly fined just shy of 2000 Euros for ‘unsatisfactory performances’ - ab. surd. The owners supposedly abandoned ship as soon as the game launched, showing face only to poach willing folks to a new studio focusing on mobile games. Hmm. Fntastic released a combative statement as response to the criticism of the game, defending their actions and condemning the aspersions cast upon their work that supposedly were what lead to the downfall of the game, rather than problems with the game itself.

Alrighty! That’s about it - I’ll be live on my twitch channel this week on thrusday and friday playing more Suicide Squad most likely, but you can catch me a few times a week playing FFXIV or whatever else tickles my pickle. FF7 Remake pt. 2 is IMMINENT and I will be boshing my way through that in short order. Helldivers 2 is also very close to release so I’ll be checking that out with a couple of friends. Enjoy your first full week of February!

[Original post mentioned Joe Blackburn would continue to work at Bungie, but he in fact is leaving Bungie. Not sure where I got that notion from, but I’ve since amended the article here.]