GWJ Conference Call Episode 486

Tom Clancy's: The Division, The Witness, The Old Republic, Lots of Your Emails and More!

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This week Sean Sands, Julian Murdoch, Shawn Andrich and Rob Zacny talk games that begin with "The" and catch up on your emails!

To contact us, email [email protected]! Send us your thoughts on the show, pressing issues you want to talk about or whatever else is on your mind.

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Show credits

Music credits: 

XXV - Broke for Free - http://brokeforfree.com/ - 43:45

Comments

In which Shawn and Julian are ejected unceremoniously from my smoking room!

Different strokes for different folks I guess, I loved my time with The Witness, but then again spatial reasoning and puzzles are totally my bag. Assuming you didn't get to some of the 'aha' moments in the game, it's a pity. There really is some great stuff here.

Understanding games are pretty subjective aside, Julian, I have to ask how these are not interesting environments to explore...

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Also, happy birthday.

Agreed. Quite surprised by the reaction to The Witness. I've been loving it so far and I am getting that rush when I solve what I feel are particularly difficult puzzles. It's also been great to play with the family. It is a rare game that gets my wife to sit in front of the TV to watch and participate. Even rarer to hear: "if you play later, tell me".

The Division sounds interesting, but I am concerned that, even though it sounds like they have made griefing a mechanic that can work against the griefers, the griefers will find ways to outgrief the griefing mechanic to grief me to rage quit.

Louis

I had never even given The Division a first look since it has "Tom Clancey" attatched to it and figured it was some modern/near future tactical team based shooter that I had no interest in. I'll be trying to check out the open beta that is supposedly happening on the 16th-21st.

00:02:15 Tom Clancy's The Division
00:26:56 The Old Republic
00:31:30 The Witness
00:43:45 Your Emails

It's shocking how wrong you guys are about The Witness.

(By which I really mean to say, I'm very sad that the game isn't working for you, because it's been an absolute delight for us.)

EDIT: And yet so right about the CH Pro Throttle -- it is just so, so good. It kills me that the CH Fighterstick doesn't have twist yaw, though, because I would buy it in a second if I could use it without pedals (which wouldn't work for me for a variety of reasons). So, I personally pair it with a Thrustmaster T16000, which is a bit pricier and has a bit less useful button options on stick than the Logitech option mentioned on the show, but reportedly has much smoother and accurate response on its X and Y axes.

Wow. If there's something we can all agree on, it's that The Witness seems to be divisive!! I haven't gotten around to getting it just yet, but it sure looks pretty, and I'm looking forward to experiencing it myself.

I've played a significant amount of the Witness and I can totally agree that the "plot" means nothing to me. I don't care even a little.

I was certainly not a fan of Braid either because similarly the plot was meaningless(to me) and even more in your face than the Witness. Throw in my complete disinterest in platformers and you have a game that couldn't be any less for me.

Having said that I love The Witness. Just wandering around and solving puzzles does it for me for whatever reason. Which is weird because I was never that person that could get into Myst. I'm not sure if this game is doing something fundamentally different than what the Myst games did or if I'm just a significantly different gamer than I was back then.

Haven't got to the discussion about the Witness yet, but wow, it feels like there are two games we'll disagree on. I tried the beta for The Division and found it awful. It's like we played entirely different games here.

Pretty sure it was Rob who said the gunplay felt really shoddy, and I agree. To the point that it was enough to turn me off of the game. The controls felt as awkward (if not more so) as those of the original Army of Two, but with more immediately annoying trappings.

The game's mechanics did nothing to sell me on it, regardless of what neat systems there may be- the dark zone stuff sounds neat, but if a game isn't fun to play, I'm not going to delve deeper into its systems. If I'm to play a Tom Clancy game, I shouldn't be running into bullet sponges that you'd find in a Borderlands or other "RPG"-like shooter.

It feels like every other game wants you to craft something, build something, or collect something, or a combination of these. When those kinds of systems are slapped into an already mediocre shooter, they aren't going to be a draw for me.

...I thought it was pronounced like "tickle."

Rat Boy wrote:

...I thought it was pronounced like "tickle."

He always responded to me in TF2 when I would call him "TehKill".

Eleima wrote:

Wow. If there's something we can all agree on, it's that The Witness seems to be divisive!!

No it's not!!!

Serious question: Is there a story to The Witness? I'm intrigued because I love first person games, but if it's just puzzles (and difficult ones at that) I'm confused as to the mechanic. Is there a point to exploring the island and unlocking the next puzzle beyond just the solving the next puzzle?

Also, from what I've read online, I was going to pass on The Division, but you guys sold me on it. I am going to wait a bit after release though to see if it has legs.

Regarding The Witness, I have only this to say to Certis and Rabbit:

IMAGE(http://www.theprospect.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/welcome-to-my-world.gif)

Regarding The Division, I'm surprised to find myself this intrigued by a game that features multiplayer so heavily.

"Is he the one who put the boobs on that snake? "

Welp, shut her down, we're never going to hear anything better than this from the conference call.

PaladinTom wrote:

Serious question: Is there a story to The Witness? I'm intrigued because I love first person games, but if it's just puzzles (and difficult ones at that) I'm confused as to the mechanic. Is there a point to exploring the island and unlocking the next puzzle beyond just the solving the next puzzle?

My comments from The Witness thread:

There's allegory and symbolism, but isn't this literally a game without plot? Just a pretty, thoughtful sandbox with a sense of mystery, puzzles, symbolism and philosophical missives scattered among it.

Basically, if you're not interested in being driven primarily by exploration, puzzles, viewing pretty vistas/perspective art, then be warned. YMMV.

kazooka wrote:

"Is he the one who put the boobs on that snake? "

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/p292fzs.jpg)

troubleshot wrote:

Different strokes for different folks I guess[...]

I'd say this applies to "walking VR" as well.

It seems that different people have different tolerance levels for VR sickness. When I first put on a headset, I played Half Life for a good 3 hours straight. The biggest challenge was getting the beer to my mouth without spilling it, but there were no other serious side-effects.

troubleshot wrote:
There's allegory and symbolism, but isn't this literally a game without plot? Just a pretty, thoughtful sandbox with a sense of mystery, puzzles, symbolism and philosophical missives scattered among it.

Basically, if you're not interested in being driven primarily by exploration, puzzles, viewing pretty vistas/perspective art, then be warned. YMMV.

You know... I have a problem with this response but I am exhausted and all I can think about is counterproductive snark.

JeremyK wrote:

I've played a significant amount of the Witness and I can totally agree that the "plot" means nothing to me. I don't care even a little.

I was certainly not a fan of Braid either because similarly the plot was meaningless(to me) and even more in your face than the Witness. Throw in my complete disinterest in platformers and you have a game that couldn't be any less for me.

Having said that I love The Witness. Just wandering around and solving puzzles does it for me for whatever reason. Which is weird because I was never that person that could get into Myst. I'm not sure if this game is doing something fundamentally different than what the Myst games did or if I'm just a significantly different gamer than I was back then.

You are my internet twin! I never really liked Myst back in the day, and I was meh on Braid. The Witness has been a wonderful experience so far. It can indeed be frustrating when you're stuck, but as long as I go look for something else to do, then eventually I can come back and solve the dang puzzle. I've had more "leap out of my chair in joy" moments in The Witness than any other game in recent memory.

Also, thanks for reading my email about refunds. I enjoyed the discussion.

No matter how carefully I word this, it's not going to sound good. So I'll forgo careful and veer sharply into clumsy.

I was bored by Braid and too stupid to play much of Myst, as much as I enjoyed making my own hypercard myst-murder clones on the computer lab Apple SE's of my youth. As much as I loved Phantasmagoria and 7th Guest, I was also really, really bad at them and never got far due to getting stumped early on.

So, I have reservations for a game like The Witness, which compounds the above with also willingly partaking in being part of the cultural ritual of basking in the brilliant genius of a cult personality. I think my time in art school may have also soured my impressions of people cognizant of their own status as that of the artiste.

Also, I have other strong opinions on the culture of returning things you've purchased. I'm in agreement with Rabbit, and if it comes up again when I'm on, I might bring up more of my angle in a future podcast.

Would be interested in your take if it comes up, especially from the perspective of someone who studied art formally.

At the time of Braid, I didn't appreciate the significance of what the game meant for the medium or the industry and what it did for indie games at the time, and knew nothing of Blow until years later. I do remember feeling like it was overly conscious of itself as an opus in relationship to the personality behind it when I'd first played the game.

I'd deleted most of the middle parts of that post before I submitted it, and I realize I've omitted the fact that I've yet to play the witness myself. To clarify, I have reservations until I've had the chance to play the game firsthand to pass any further judgment, other than being curious if it would have gotten anywhere near the acclaim it's received had been made by anyone else.

To say that I have no interest in formal artistic critique of games as a medium would be an understatement, and I didn't mean to imply as much. Experience with the art world isn't synonymous with expertise. Sorry for the confusion!

Edit: That last paragraph waxes too heavy on hyperbole. I actually do really enjoy talking about color and composition quite a bit without noodling about too heavily in the messy details of artistic intent.

I just really love the colour and design of the game world, and there's one big spoiler (I think it's big) to the game that could possibly be a moment that you might dig going by some of your discussion on the conference call, but I won't spoil that here.

But given your experience with getting stumped on other puzzle based exploration games, I could see it likely this could happen with the The Witness. The game is hard.

The Division seems very cohesive. Everything you are doing, even the multiplayer aspect, fits snugly and naturally with the games concept.

Ubisoft these days seem to favour very busy interfaces with lots of notifications, etc and in recent times (AC:Unity) I've taken to turning most of it off to rediscover/preserve the games atmosphere. With the Division it all looks and feels like readouts you are getting from your own Hololens type set up. It's busy but it doesn't stop me from soaking in the games environments and doesn't take me out of what I'm doing in the game.

I understand not liking The Witness. It can be obtuse, is definitely challenging, and contrary to some of the claims that the story is pretentious, I just find it non-existent/unintelligible. 8 hours in, I cannot say that I have seen anything I would call a story (I didn't find my first audio diary until at least 5 hours in), so I am confused by how people who played less than 2 hours can have an opinion on the story other than "where is it?" But in general, I get how some people wouldn't like this game. Totally fair.

I don't understand not liking that others like The Witness, or suggesting that positive reviews/forum chatter is just a result of people falling victim to Jonathan Blow's cult of personality or otherwise congratulating themselves on how smart they are for "getting it." I promise I am enjoying the game because I actually find it fun, and I am not enjoying it so that people on the internet will think I'm smart or because I imagine some day Jonathan Blow will give me a pat on the back. Perhaps I am being overly sensitive about the way the game was discussed on the show, but I perceived a lot of sneering about how people are just falling all over themselves to be seen praising this game, when I think the much more likely explanation for people praising this game is...a lot of people like this game. Just not you all, which is totally fine.

I really enjoyed Braid and I love games like Myst, so I've been looking forward to The Witness with great enthusiasm. But I have to say that the forty dollar price tag, combined with reviews like this, have me concerned about where all that development time and money went.

I have a feeling that it's the same thing that happens when a great writer becomes popular and then starts to override or ignore their editor. You end up with a ton of bloat, for the sake of "art", and their works suffers as a result. When a work becomes about exposition rather than execution, it loses it's purpose and it's audience. You can build a finely detailed world, but if it's not fun or interesting to play in it, it's wasted effort.

The classic example of this is Neal Stephenson's Baroque cycle. These three damn books were nearly a thousand pages each, fascinating as hell with great characters and a unique plot, but finishing them felt like running a marathon uphill in the rain. So much of the extra detail that didn't drive the story along could have easily been pared away to make the books more readable and enjoyable.

See also: Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, and the later books in Stephen King's The Dark Tower series

Give a developer a huge budget and a nearly unlimited timeline, and they'll use all of both. I really think that Jon Blow is a genius, but sometimes even genius needs someone to say "Just get to the point."

I don't think anyone said implicitly, or even implied, not liking the game just because other people liked it. I think that dismissively paints an unecessarily negative picture of people who didn't like the thing you like.

Your reasons for enjoying the game are totally valid and the merit it'd earned by your experience with it has value on it's own. Other people's distrust of the established review machine or the emphasis of the celebrity behind the creation of the product don't really touch that.

mrlogical wrote:

I understand not liking The Witness. It can be obtuse, is definitely challenging, and contrary to some of the claims that the story is pretentious, I just find it non-existent/unintelligible. 8 hours in, I cannot say that I have seen anything I would call a story (I didn't find my first audio diary until at least 5 hours in), so I am confused by how people who played less than 2 hours can have an opinion on the story other than "where is it?" But in general, I get how some people wouldn't like this game. Totally fair.

I don't understand not liking that others like The Witness, or suggesting that positive reviews/forum chatter is just a result of people falling victim to Jonathan Blow's cult of personality or otherwise congratulating themselves on how smart they are for "getting it." I promise I am enjoying the game because I actually find it fun, and I am not enjoying it so that people on the internet will think I'm smart or because I imagine some day Jonathan Blow will give me a pat on the back. Perhaps I am being overly sensitive about the way the game was discussed on the show, but I perceived a lot of sneering about how people are just falling all over themselves to be seen praising this game, when I think the much more likely explanation for people praising this game is...a lot of people like this game. Just not you all, which is totally fine.

I've gotta say, I'm on the same page as you. There was no actual story through the whole game, and I don't think you can really consider audio logs that are quotes from scientists and philosophers to be story. Sure they can colour your perception of the game, but they are seriously so easily ignored/missed (and you don't get an achievement or trophy for them) that if you let that spoil your opinion of the game, you're doing yourself a disservice.

I genuinely enjoy being in this world that is just there for me to solve. I don't need some plot to motivate me to do this, and I think the game would be weaker if it had some big plot. Hell, I liked Braid better as just a puzzle platformer than with its plot trappings, though the way the last level brought it all together was really clever. People play Tetris just fine without a plot. This isn't much different.

A lot of the reaction that I've seen to this game has been baffling. It's either, "Jonathan Blow is an asshole so his game is bad/pretentious/whatever", "Why isn't it easier/why isn't there more of a reward for solving puzzles/etc", or "I love this!". Most of the complaints seem to center around the game not rewarding and holding the hand of players in the same way pretty much every other game does. If you don't like that, you don't have to play it. You don't even have to like it. Not everything has to be made for everyone. It just sounds like whining.

Alz: There is no bloat in this game, aside from the aforementioned entirely optional audio logs. Try the game before making assumptions of it.

On the reviewers/Blow-worship issue, I would modify a classic saying: never attribute to hype or bias what can more easily explained by people simply enjoying a thing that you didn't. Sure, it's possible there are people out there praising the game just because they think they're supposed to. But I don't see why that's a more likely explanation than that there just a lot of people to whom this game is appealing, even if it's not for everyone. I think criticism, and really all sorts of discussion, are more interesting and valuable when we treat opinions we disagree with as genuinely held, even if we believe they are wrong.

I sure wish there was a demo for The Witness. I loved Braid, apart from the overhype and overwrought discourse about it, but I'm a bit scared to drop $40 amidst all the bad words, and i don't want to spoil it by watching Let's Play videos to see if i would like it. Catch 22.

I've watched maybe a half-dozen let's plays and walkthroughs, and other than the first few puzzles the complexity ramps up enough that I think most people aren't going to memorize the more interesting puzzles and ruin the game for themselves.

However, I think it will totally spoil the experience of initially engaging the world! There's a distinct tension and release to the opening sequence that stages you to begin your journey into exploring the space.

If you have any interest in the game, i think it would be go in with as little exposure as possible to the actual content of the game itself. I think a demo would lessen the impact of your introduction to the world.

I think there's at least two different conversations going on here at the moment; one is about the game itself, the othe about the culture around it.

Amoebic wrote:

I've watched maybe a half-dozen let's plays and walkthroughs, and other than the first few puzzles the complexity ramps up enough that I think most people aren't going to memorize the more interesting puzzles and ruin the game for themselves.

However, I think it will totally spoil the experience of initially engaging the world! There's a distinct tension and release to the opening sequence that stages you to begin your journey into exploring the space.

If you have any interest in the game, i think it would be go in with as little exposure as possible to the actual content of the game itself. I think a demo would lessen the impact of your introduction to the world.

I think there's at least two different conversations going on here at the moment; one is about the game itself, the othe about the culture around it.

I think you nailed it here. The biggest draw for me was discovering everything, since I hadn't really paid attention (intentionally) to any preview stuff for the game. Not having that would definitely diminish the sense of discovery. That said, if the demo were just the opening part of the game, I think that would work pretty well as an intro to see if the player would want to see more.

Culture and the creator is always a tough one. It's near impossible to separate them from the actual media being consumed unless you go on total blackout and avoid knowing anything about what's going on around it.

I didn't pay attention to anything Blow said regarding this game aside from an interview he did on the Giant Bomb Presents podcast where he talked about designing the game and some of the choices they made for it, like hiring actual architects. I think he often comes across as thinking far too highly of himself or what he puts out, but this has yet to stop me from enjoying his games.

Edit: jonnypolite - if you're on PS4, I would happily do Share Play so you can try it out.