Xbox Can't Stop Shitting Themselves, Restarting AC Shadows and GTA 6 Goes Digital

 

            Helloooo. So Xbox is doing some dumb shit huh? Like, it’s really hard to like them right now. I’ve been interested in Fable but it’s kind of like I don’t want to support Xbox right now because of their dumb practices but at the same time I want to support the devs and maybe by buying the game it would help but it could sell amazingly and then they’d still lay the dev team off like they did to Tango Gameworks after the success of Hi-Fi Rush. I really like Ninja Theory, I liked the first Hellblade a lot, bought the second but admittedly haven’t played it and they go and announce another one and Xbox is going to shut them down? Makes no sense, I don’t even know why anyone still works as a dev for any of their companies anymore. I’d be out of there. Xbox also seems to think that Gears of War is what will get gamers to their console. Personally, I would keep Halo as an Xbox exclusive and have Gears be the multiplatform game. It’s multiplayer, multiplatform would help with player count. I’ve never really got what’s so great about Gears, I’ve bought most of them, hoping each one would be better than the last but it was just the same. I don’t know. Since Xbox One, Xbox has just been struggling; it’s such a disappointment to me. I was so onboard during the 360, when the One was announced I was gung-ho and it turned out to be nothing like they promised. I really don’t care for exclusive games, besides Nintendo. New God of Wars are just okay, haven’t finished the second Horizon, second Spider-Man was kind of disappointing to me (all the second games for some reason) and on Xbox’s side, I don’t care about any of those games really. I was into Halo when it was Bungie but since then it’s been crap. I don’t even know, I don’t know what I’m talking about anymore, let’s try to move on.

            With the E3 season being over, relatively, I was thinking “Doesn’t Capcom usually have a thing? What about Ubisoft?” Capcom did have something recently, I think maybe Monster Hunter Stories 3 got some DLC announced and maybe Dragon’s Dogma 2 got something but nothing else new. I Googled Ubisoft Forward and the AI was like “Uh no, they’re not doing that, they’re just gonna show their stuff during the other events” and I was like “Did they?” Assassin’s Creed 4 was shown again, nothing new, some Rayman remake and that is it. Where’s Ghost Recon? Where’s Assassin’s Creed Hexe? No new things for Siege? For Honor? (That still going?) Wild.

            I started playing Assassin’s Creed Shadows again, I don’t know why. My problem is that I’ll start a game, stop, come back months later, not know how to play, things don’t go well so I give up. I decided to do a fresh start so I’ll know the combos and such. I’ve been making some note cards with moves or combos for games lately. When I was getting back into WoW I just needed to know what I was supposed to do for my healing rotation. I’ve got some for my loadouts in Helldivers and when I was picking random weapons for Monster Hunter I needed to write down some combos for weapons I don’t normally use. During my first playthrough of Shadows I was doing the canon version and this time I decided not to. You have some dialogue choices throughout but a lot of them are just an illusion of choice, both choices have the same outcome, but there does seem to be some differences for the bigger plots. I was going after the teppo woman and when I did the canon version after the tea ceremony her and Naoe go into a hut and have a confrontation and Naoe kills her. I know during the conversation that the teppo woman asks to be spared or to join forces with Naoe so I figured that was the choice to be made. When I did it in this playthrough I don’t know what was different, maybe I screwed up the dialog, you’re given a choice of who to accuse as being the teppo woman and maybe I wasn’t supposed to pick the right person because I knew who it was but whatever happened she walked off and was at a castle up north or something. I had to get there and have a regular fight with her. The canon way was cinematic and all that so it’s interesting that you might not see some of these things. I don’t know why they would do that, I don’t know who would really play this game through multiple times given how massive it is, maybe during a New Game+ or something but this scenario made me think of how the targets of Ghost Recon Wildlands was originally showed off by being able to go after them in different ways and doing different things would change outcomes. One thing I noticed doing this mission was something videogames have been doing forever that is annoying. I’m tracking down this woman and I’m going through this castle and I haven’t touched anyone. I didn’t kill a soul, the only person I killed was a guy that was on the same platform as her but she was back to, she had no idea I was there or that he died. But after I killed him she says “Damn girl, how did she find me?” I haven’t done anything besides killing that one guy, how do you know I’m here? Because I killed the guy everyone now knows that he died but don’t know why or even where he was? But, from my earlier canon playthrough I feel like canon mode just forces puzzle pieces together before you even know you have those pieces.

            I was browsing through whatever the battle pass things are in AC Shadows and there is a couple that are labeled “crossover” and are Black Flag themed. So I’m looking through them and some of the rewards say something about “Check in Black Flag to view this” and I’m thinking “huh??” After looking at some other ones, like there were pirate sails, clearly not being used in Shadows so it must be used in Black Flag, that’s kind of cool. I like shit like that. It reminded me of when Blizzard used to make games and every game had bonuses to be used in every other game be it pets, portraits, other cosmetics. It also reminded me of whatever Ubisoft wanted to do years ago with like blockchain or whatever where assets just carry over from game to game, I don’t really know how that was supposed to work, but in this instance, it’s neat. If I had known this was a thing earlier then I might’ve tried to unlock this stuff and get Black Flag but at this point I have way too much to do in Shadows to even consider getting Black Flag. These games are too damn big man. I’ll have to pay attention when Hexe is coming out if there’s anything to get in Shadows for it and maybe, MAYBE some day I’ll get Black Flag Resynced.

            There’s been a LOT of talk lately about GTA 6 not having a physical copy and “a bunch” of people are complaining about it but they’re all still gonna buy it, it’s still gonna sell like crack, they’re not fooling me. But some of the comments and my replies to them have been… thought provoking? I don’t know, I just want to tell you what I said, what they said, deal with it. So there’s one meme I guess, not a very good meme if it is a meme, but saying like “You preorder digital games like they’re going to run out” and one person commented “If I’m going to play it day one what does it matter?” to which another says “Why play day one when you could wait for patches and updates and it will eventually be cheaper?” Now you’re not wrong but I come from a time when a game would come out it was done, it was complete. There was no “Uhh just shove it out and we’ll patch it later.” And these people would probably lose their shit if they knew how many games I have bought and simply haven’t even played yet. It’s like in Iron Man when Pepper is asking Tony about a piece of art I think and he says “I need it. Buy it. Store it.” That’s me. I saw on Reddit a post about someone just bought Fire Emblem Conquest and it’s their first FE game and they bought it because it was cheaper then Birthright. People, myself included, were telling them that it was kind of difficult and they’re response was, “Well it was cheaper.” One, how much cheaper could it actually have been? A few dollars? Two, it was probably cheaper BECAUSE it is harder. And three, I looked at GameStop and, around me anyway, Birthright was cheaper, then Conquest, then Awakening. Birthright was like nearly $10 cheaper then Awakening but there was hardly any difference between Conquest and Awakening but also, Awakening was $40 fucking dollars! What the hell? I mean it’s GameStop and a Nintendo game but still, all three of those should be under $20 by now.

            So that’s my spiel I guess. Xbox is still being bad, Assassin’s Creed is still mediocre and nothing will stop the sales of GTA 6. Assassin’s Creed games are always just “good.” They always have this potential to be really great but they always come up short, always keep me thinking “They’re almost there, they’ll get it the next time.” But they don’t. There’s always something that falls flat. But I am still interested in Hexe, if the setting is what I think it is then it could be cool. Xbox needs to stop shooting themselves in the foot, it’s not hard and I have no interest in GTA 6 and I’m quite tired of hearing about it. Alright, until next time, bye-bye, check out these other posts of mine.

The disappointment that is the Xbox One (I guess I don’t have a post like that? I searched but I’m only getting part of the story I’m sure I wrote about once, guess I’ll write that sometime, for now this will do.), Xbox exclusives, my first thoughts of AC Shadows.

            @AztecSauce