miscellaneousinsanitygrass grows, birds fly, sun shines,and brother, i hurt peopleRegistered Userregular
oh neat, the steam version updated to include all the new trappings of the PC Edition (new menus, new typefaces, language options, interludes bundled in, etc) i was considering getting it on ps4 or something but i guess i don't have to now!
need some time to collect my thoughts but we have now played through everything just before Act V proper
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miscellaneousinsanitygrass grows, birds fly, sun shines,and brother, i hurt peopleRegistered Userregular
just be warned that The Entertainment is a good 30-45 minutes
also i kinda preferred doing it after Act III
I wish I had known this ahead of time after the first interstitial was like 20 minutes? I was tired and I think that affected my feelings on it as well.
But (The Entertainment spoilers):
After about 10 minutes I was just waiting for it to be over. Like the play review I game says...it’s not a very good play. So sitting through 40ish minutes of meh dialogue and characters I don’t think was worth the payoff? Like spooky yellow skeleton man was cool, but i feel that I got the character beats really quick between everyone prett fast and got bored.
Maybe Act III makes it better but I soured on that interstitial pretty quick. Loved both of the first two acts and the first interstitial though.
Act III is a seriously hefty installment so you might want to take breaks but it's amazing, like a giant step up from the first two acts and i already loved those
and yeah while i feel conceptually The Entertainment is my favorite interlude, we were definitely feeling it drag on (and we did it right after playing through Act III for the past two and a half hours-ish) so that was rough
still prefer doing The Entertainment after Act III, also, i think the beats work better as backstory than as prelude
so according to one of the postmortems Act V had been mostly done since late 2017, but it was being held to do all the ports and language translations and release them simultaneously, so there have been a lot of side projects going on at Cardboard Computer and they're already into development on their next full game
one of those side projects Ben Babbitt has been working on is a full album of Junebug songs
bought the tv version because i mean why not play this again on a pretty tv version
did they uh add stuff to the previous parts, because I'm sitting here playing act one, accidentally misclicked and uh, dramatically different things have happened from any other time I've played this game.
bought the tv version because i mean why not play this again on a pretty tv version
did they uh add stuff to the previous parts, because I'm sitting here playing act one, accidentally misclicked and uh, dramatically different things have happened from any other time I've played this game.
I keep finding things that I've never seen before and I'm pretty sure I've just always overlooked them but I dunno
Early Acts
I've never found Carrington before, and if you find him in act 1 he shows up in all the other acts
It reminds me of like, Marie in persona 4 or something even though I believe he's always been findable and I just missed him by not backtracking to the gas station
bought the tv version because i mean why not play this again on a pretty tv version
did they uh add stuff to the previous parts, because I'm sitting here playing act one, accidentally misclicked and uh, dramatically different things have happened from any other time I've played this game.
More likely it's just that there was all that stuff there you never saw because you took a different way before.
bought the tv version because i mean why not play this again on a pretty tv version
did they uh add stuff to the previous parts, because I'm sitting here playing act one, accidentally misclicked and uh, dramatically different things have happened from any other time I've played this game.
I keep finding things that I've never seen before and I'm pretty sure I've just always overlooked them but I dunno
Early Acts
I've never found Carrington before, and if you find him in act 1 he shows up in all the other acts
It reminds me of like, Marie in persona 4 or something even though I believe he's always been findable and I just missed him by not backtracking to the gas station
Okay what
I have to have played act 1 like 6 or 7 times over the years at this point and never have I seen or heard of this, crazy
I’m playing through with my wife and we’ve finished up act 2 now and yes this game is still amazing and perfect, can’t wait to get to acts 4 and 5
You can keep going back to Equus Oils to get a couple of different little scenes and unlock a few things in the Act 1 uh "overworld" depending on where you've been before visiting Joseph again.
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Linespider5ALL HAIL KING KILLMONGERRegistered Userregular
The Verge had a somewhat enlightening piece of KRZ’s completion, although I feel like a bigger story is still waiting to be unearthed, regarding the three-person dev team, where they came from, how they maintained cohesion through such a protracted development cycle, and what, if any, plans they have for Cardboard Computer moving forward.
so according to one of the postmortems Act V had been mostly done since late 2017, but it was being held to do all the ports and language translations and release them simultaneously, so there have been a lot of side projects going on at Cardboard Computer and they're already into development on their next full game
one of those side projects Ben Babbitt has been working on is a full album of Junebug songs
@Mr. G where did you see the postmortem? I'd love to read it but i'm having a hard time finding it
the problem is there's like four of them, and they all have unique stuff in them
the main ones I read were from USGamer and...I think maybe Eurogamer? The Verge has one too as said previously, and I think Waypoint has another one in the works
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Linespider5ALL HAIL KING KILLMONGERRegistered Userregular
I am steadily making my way through Part 3 right now. It got harder to pursue the endings with the extended wait times between releases, I’m almost I was when parr 4 came out and I only started it but decided to stop in hopes of waiting for Part 5...which is, I guess, what I did end up doing.
Some general thoughts:
-Have had a noticeable amount of trouble driving on the roadmap-in many places I seem to actively be diverted from Route 65 as if by some invisible force. Definitely never had this trouble in the original desktop release...just an oddity.
-I can’t decide how I feel about a lot of the dialogue options and people that can be spoken to. The pacing in these moments really runs counter to moving through the game world. It’s rare you’re ever trying to learn anything, and the conversations do run long. The options give some character but I’m not sure how much it contributes in a meaningful way.
Overall though their commitment to the presentation and the story they want to tell is absolutely fearless.
-Have had a noticeable amount of trouble driving on the roadmap-in many places I seem to actively be diverted from Route 65 as if by some invisible force. Definitely never had this trouble in the original desktop release...just an oddity.
I-65 is a fairly smooth ride, by memory. Definitely ain't a real life feature. Connects Louisville to Nashville, and crosses I-64 which goes horizontally across Kentucky into Virginia.
Lots of lanes (6-14) though, as it's one of more trafficked roads in the country.
the problem is there's like four of them, and they all have unique stuff in them
the main ones I read were from USGamer and...I think maybe Eurogamer? The Verge has one too as said previously, and I think Waypoint has another one in the works
Ah ok
I remembered waypoint mentioning that CC published a bunch of development notes on act 5 somewhere, thought that's what you meant
still slowly replaying through acts one through four (+extras) on the TV version until I get to act V.
just gotta say, I forgot how much I like Shannon. In Act 2 I often picked Conway's responses to get more information but I do really enjoy how Shannon cuts through people's bullshit.
okay i'm pretty sure i've done all the secret tourism stuff in act 2 before but I've gotten some weird, unsettling scenes that seem unrelated to the tourism stuff while traveling back and forth on the hyper loop. the loop is one of those things that feels like there could be just so many secrets hidden in it.
I beat Act V, though my save file apparently corrupted after Un Pueblo De Nada and I had to play the last act without any save data. It was still very, very good in spite of a few differences between the "default" pick and what I chose.
I'm not sure how to put it, but I loved the way the choice setup of the series wasn't about trying to choose certain paths, or to get certain outcomes, but just choosing whether to be melancholy or upbeat, whether to be tired or push on, whether to get serious or play along, whether to choose remorse or hope. At the end, every time I could, I tried to choose hope.
I read all the stuff you put up, don't you even worry
Act V has had a weirdly muted response, most of the pieces it brought on are about KRZ as a whole, either as a retrospective or critics finally coming to it for the first time
and then none of them touch on Act V for fear of spoilers, so it feels like basically nobody has actually talked about it
+1
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miscellaneousinsanitygrass grows, birds fly, sun shines,and brother, i hurt peopleRegistered Userregular
welp
i didn't cry during Act V but austin's review brought me to tears
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GustavFriend of GoatsSomewhere in the OzarksRegistered Userregular
currently blasting my ears and feelings with the soundtrack and thinking all kinds of thoughts
@Grey Ghost@Gustav you two better finish this, I need more people to express feelings about it
I just finished Act 2 (barely been home this month as it were)
And I finished Act 2 with a wasp sitting on my forehead and he refused to move.
As for story stuff I'm still processing but, got I'm loving the atmosphere and the vibe. And there's something in both Appalachian and Ozark Folklore at play here that I love. And that's the general near mundane reaction to the supernatural. Like in a lot of stories you have someone encountering the devil, and the response not being "oh shit, Satan himself is upon us!" it's more on the end of "great another hassle for my day."
I think the main thing I’ve been evangelizing to people is they gotta get to the Zero itself
That’s when their surrealism really takes off, I think the Act 2 opening question of “are we inside or outside?” really hooks a lot of people, and traversing it is really ethereal and interesting
There’s plenty of interesting stuff on the surface, but the Zero is where all their best ideas are and is the real heart of the story
So this is sort of a personal take on KR0 having mainlined it over a week, and after reading Austin's take
I first tried playing Act I shortly after it came out, and I don't believe I finished it. I probably got it on Steam Sale or something, the pace was a little too slow and methodical, and honestly, I don't think I had enough lived experience at the time. Being shortly out of university and barely into more than a vague sense of liberalism as politics, I don't think I was really ready to pick up what it was laying down anyway
I think I played it through at the right time, though I'd recommend taking it a lot slower than I did. I mostly rushed through it over a few sick days this week as I've been dealing with pneumonia for about a month, and a series of doctors who seem to just underprescribe what I needed, and burning the majority of my leave on needing to take half of February off. That sort of fever-bound exhaustion felt like the right way to play it, to me
In the years since uni, my politics have trended steadily leftward through a series of abusive and underpaying jobs, unaffordable rent, and having to accept that my family has only occasionally broken through the barrier to the middle class, but mostly borne on the back of my Dad, who would do hard labour seven days a week and maybe get four or five weekends off in a year, a pace which became wildly unsustainable as he aged but especially after he suffered his own leg injury. As the years went by I've become the biggest earner in the family and taken on more and more of the costs of living, which has essentially involved me moving out three times and realizing by the end of it that I had to choose between shoes without holes in 'em or paying my family's debts. I've come to a sort of peace with living at home because at least I get some quality of life this way while also providing for my family, but it's hard sometimes not to slip into frustration that man, my parents worked damn hard in this ostensibly socialist country and can never retire while my colleagues who are 10-15 years younger talk about how "it's about time" for themselves; meanwhile, I have to sacrifice my independence to make sure my Dad doesn't die from a stroke on some rich guy's floor trying to earn the money for rent
All of this to say that a ton of KR0 spoke to me in ways both immediate and upon further reflection well after every act and intermission have ended. Some parts of The Entertainment and the Hard Times tour really struck me especially in the language about debt, as well as Conway's injury and his struggles to heal and repay the Co. for it, but I especially felt some of the comments Austin made about how capital basically drives you to feel guilty and ashamed of your biology, a feeling I'd had about taking any amount of leave to stop my lungs from trying to drown me, and which drove me to go work for the morning where I proceeded to read his review between coughs and think "huh yeah this is pretty fucked up"
I'm pretty sure I could read a million takes on this game and still want to tackle a few more. It manages to really capture the desperation and the loneliness of living under capitalism, while emphasizing that a balm, and maybe even a cure, is to create and seek spaces and communities to be a part of, to try and push back and try to find something better, and to realize that so much of those dark feelings are being caused by other parts of the system making you feel isolated when so many others are experiencing the same issues of security and well-being
Anyway, the game really spoke to me and should be a necessary playthrough to understand the mood of the 2010s, and now that I've written the length of Act IV in introspective rambling, I'll close out by pointing out Blue is the one true dog name option and you're a fool to believe otherwise
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need some time to collect my thoughts but we have now played through everything just before Act V proper
Act III is a seriously hefty installment so you might want to take breaks but it's amazing, like a giant step up from the first two acts and i already loved those
and yeah while i feel conceptually The Entertainment is my favorite interlude, we were definitely feeling it drag on (and we did it right after playing through Act III for the past two and a half hours-ish) so that was rough
still prefer doing The Entertainment after Act III, also, i think the beats work better as backstory than as prelude
he also plays her in this music video!
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
one of those side projects Ben Babbitt has been working on is a full album of Junebug songs
Act V spoilers:
did they uh add stuff to the previous parts, because I'm sitting here playing act one, accidentally misclicked and uh, dramatically different things have happened from any other time I've played this game.
I keep finding things that I've never seen before and I'm pretty sure I've just always overlooked them but I dunno
Early Acts
It reminds me of like, Marie in persona 4 or something even though I believe he's always been findable and I just missed him by not backtracking to the gas station
http://www.audioentropy.com/
More likely it's just that there was all that stuff there you never saw because you took a different way before.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Okay what
I have to have played act 1 like 6 or 7 times over the years at this point and never have I seen or heard of this, crazy
I’m playing through with my wife and we’ve finished up act 2 now and yes this game is still amazing and perfect, can’t wait to get to acts 4 and 5
so it's possible, but, hrm
austin found him but patrick had not
(32:57 for relevant bit)
@Mr. G where did you see the postmortem? I'd love to read it but i'm having a hard time finding it
http://www.audioentropy.com/
the main ones I read were from USGamer and...I think maybe Eurogamer? The Verge has one too as said previously, and I think Waypoint has another one in the works
Some general thoughts:
-Have had a noticeable amount of trouble driving on the roadmap-in many places I seem to actively be diverted from Route 65 as if by some invisible force. Definitely never had this trouble in the original desktop release...just an oddity.
-I can’t decide how I feel about a lot of the dialogue options and people that can be spoken to. The pacing in these moments really runs counter to moving through the game world. It’s rare you’re ever trying to learn anything, and the conversations do run long. The options give some character but I’m not sure how much it contributes in a meaningful way.
Overall though their commitment to the presentation and the story they want to tell is absolutely fearless.
I-65 is a fairly smooth ride, by memory. Definitely ain't a real life feature. Connects Louisville to Nashville, and crosses I-64 which goes horizontally across Kentucky into Virginia.
Lots of lanes (6-14) though, as it's one of more trafficked roads in the country.
Ah ok
I remembered waypoint mentioning that CC published a bunch of development notes on act 5 somewhere, thought that's what you meant
http://www.audioentropy.com/
(Act V) spoilers:
just gotta say, I forgot how much I like Shannon. In Act 2 I often picked Conway's responses to get more information but I do really enjoy how Shannon cuts through people's bullshit.
I'm not sure how to put it, but I loved the way the choice setup of the series wasn't about trying to choose certain paths, or to get certain outcomes, but just choosing whether to be melancholy or upbeat, whether to be tired or push on, whether to get serious or play along, whether to choose remorse or hope. At the end, every time I could, I tried to choose hope.
Because Blue was definitely in Act V for me.
Wait what???
http://www.audioentropy.com/
Yeah
Wait what???
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I wonder...(Act 4 & 5 spoilers)
Because picked the Turn Around arrow.
i'm just gonna.. sip some bourbon for a bit
@Grey Ghost @Gustav you two better finish this, I need more people to express feelings about it
If you're lookin for KRZ feelings, I wrote a thing: https://medium.com/@gometeorogo/everything-on-that-tape-was-wild-ebd6e0885b41
http://www.audioentropy.com/
Act V has had a weirdly muted response, most of the pieces it brought on are about KRZ as a whole, either as a retrospective or critics finally coming to it for the first time
and then none of them touch on Act V for fear of spoilers, so it feels like basically nobody has actually talked about it
i didn't cry during Act V but austin's review brought me to tears
I just finished Act 2 (barely been home this month as it were)
And I finished Act 2 with a wasp sitting on my forehead and he refused to move.
As for story stuff I'm still processing but, got I'm loving the atmosphere and the vibe. And there's something in both Appalachian and Ozark Folklore at play here that I love. And that's the general near mundane reaction to the supernatural. Like in a lot of stories you have someone encountering the devil, and the response not being "oh shit, Satan himself is upon us!" it's more on the end of "great another hassle for my day."
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
That’s when their surrealism really takes off, I think the Act 2 opening question of “are we inside or outside?” really hooks a lot of people, and traversing it is really ethereal and interesting
There’s plenty of interesting stuff on the surface, but the Zero is where all their best ideas are and is the real heart of the story
I think I played it through at the right time, though I'd recommend taking it a lot slower than I did. I mostly rushed through it over a few sick days this week as I've been dealing with pneumonia for about a month, and a series of doctors who seem to just underprescribe what I needed, and burning the majority of my leave on needing to take half of February off. That sort of fever-bound exhaustion felt like the right way to play it, to me
In the years since uni, my politics have trended steadily leftward through a series of abusive and underpaying jobs, unaffordable rent, and having to accept that my family has only occasionally broken through the barrier to the middle class, but mostly borne on the back of my Dad, who would do hard labour seven days a week and maybe get four or five weekends off in a year, a pace which became wildly unsustainable as he aged but especially after he suffered his own leg injury. As the years went by I've become the biggest earner in the family and taken on more and more of the costs of living, which has essentially involved me moving out three times and realizing by the end of it that I had to choose between shoes without holes in 'em or paying my family's debts. I've come to a sort of peace with living at home because at least I get some quality of life this way while also providing for my family, but it's hard sometimes not to slip into frustration that man, my parents worked damn hard in this ostensibly socialist country and can never retire while my colleagues who are 10-15 years younger talk about how "it's about time" for themselves; meanwhile, I have to sacrifice my independence to make sure my Dad doesn't die from a stroke on some rich guy's floor trying to earn the money for rent
All of this to say that a ton of KR0 spoke to me in ways both immediate and upon further reflection well after every act and intermission have ended. Some parts of The Entertainment and the Hard Times tour really struck me especially in the language about debt, as well as Conway's injury and his struggles to heal and repay the Co. for it, but I especially felt some of the comments Austin made about how capital basically drives you to feel guilty and ashamed of your biology, a feeling I'd had about taking any amount of leave to stop my lungs from trying to drown me, and which drove me to go work for the morning where I proceeded to read his review between coughs and think "huh yeah this is pretty fucked up"
I'm pretty sure I could read a million takes on this game and still want to tackle a few more. It manages to really capture the desperation and the loneliness of living under capitalism, while emphasizing that a balm, and maybe even a cure, is to create and seek spaces and communities to be a part of, to try and push back and try to find something better, and to realize that so much of those dark feelings are being caused by other parts of the system making you feel isolated when so many others are experiencing the same issues of security and well-being
Anyway, the game really spoke to me and should be a necessary playthrough to understand the mood of the 2010s, and now that I've written the length of Act IV in introspective rambling, I'll close out by pointing out Blue is the one true dog name option and you're a fool to believe otherwise
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