Yeah, I’m glad I didn’t see it before I finished the game. I know why they did that though… it definitely helps sell videogames.
@rei, Respawn have invested a bunch of money into motion capture for in-engine stuff. Have you seen what they did at The Game Awards with Mirage and his voice actor? It’s pretty impressive. They are way ahead of many others on this stuff because they are embracing the actors and letting them perform as well as pushing the tech so it’s a performance in game.
Respawn made two of my top five games of the year.
And done, well with the story anyway. I went back to one planet and explored all the paths - that only got be to 90%. I’m missing some chests and one of whatever the other icon is on map progress. I think that’s as far as I go. Time to play something new.
I thought their actor captured cutscenes were on the same level as “The Last of Us” by Naughty Dog. Or am I mis-remembering and Last of Us wasn’t on this level? It’s been a while, my memory could be filling rosy colored cutscenes.
Mirage is one of the characters in Apex Legends. He “appeared” at The Game Awards this year. They had the voice actor set up in motion capture gear across the street and he interacted with Geoff Keighley in real time during the broadcast.
Roger Craig Smith plays Mirage. There are other companies involved in what Respawn is doing there too.
Anyway, the people in this game, Fallen Order, are captured completely both voice and acting in those cutscenes and their likeness is what you see on screen.
Cameron Monaghan
Debra Wilson
Elizabeth Grullon
I find this seriously impressive and an excellent step into the future on both counts. Respawn have been quietly pushing a lot of boundaries in 2019 and I’m excited to write about my games of the year because of it.
Yes. Vince Zampella and Jason West are the founders of Respawn and before that the founders of Infinity Ward. They created Call of Duty and the game I think you’re referring to, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. West left Respawn for family reasons in 2013 and joined Epic Games in April of last year.
While I probably won’t be able to play it, their next game is a VR version of Medal of Honor.
The real-time stuff at the game awards was neat but they aren’t at Naughty Dog level, and Death Stranding was more impressive this year, look at the various scenes with Mads.
Even though I’m getting senile (and got stuck in Zeffo ice caves at beginning without most of my powers yet to be learned still) Respawn did put enough visual cues in the environment. I will agree the red/green/yellow exits on the map were helpful.
I don’t think Fallen Order is making my 2019 top 5.
The combat was good (especially the bosses) and the level graphics were about as good as it gets for scifi games. Everything else I was a vaguely disappointed by.
The arcs of the companions seemed mostly unearned. It was like half the conversations and cutscenes were randomly removed from the script. It feels like this wanted to be a character-driven Sony prestige game, but the good ones of those have the companions present during the gameplay, not just during cutscenes.
There was way too much backtracking and trudging through levels. The third time the linear path through the game made me fall back all the way to the bottom of Dathomir, I was pretty close to just stopping. The metroidvania aspects just didn’t do this game any favors.
Exploration felt really unrewarding, since like 95% of the time the reward was either some flavor text that was so uninspiring that they didn’t even bother to have it voice-acted, or cosmetics that were so subtle as to be irrelevant.
The progress systems didn’t feel great. There’s no meaningful weapon progression (at least I didn’t find the double bladed lightsaber particularly interesting, and that’s all there is). The new lightsaber attacks seem like a bad way to spend skill points since almost all of them consume force. The other skill upgrades are basically just about making a number go up, they don’t really change anything.
No regrets about playing this, but I kind of think they need to change the formula a bit for me to consider buying the sequel. (And given Fallen Order seems to have been a commercial success, I suspect they’ll be quite change averse).
Yep, it was rock solid for me on PC. There was one place where I saw enemies get stuck in a run animation while not moving, but it was so consistent that it might have been intentional.
(Edit: I guess there was also an issue with stuttering, but turning off hyperthreading seemed to fix it, so I didn’t mind too much.)
Yeah I played a few weeks after release and definitely experienced a fair amount of jank on the PS4 Pro. I’d say it was the buggiest AAA game in a while but…Anthem came out this year too.
Anthem had shit multiplayer core services for first 3 months and it’s still giving that “pilot load error” with profiles but mostly things have stabilized. There’s just no “rest of the game/story” there, pointless and unfinished. The first 3 months were brutal in core matchmaking and the whole “always multiplayer” not working and it still doesn’t have proper text chat. From the console videos I watched before I bought the PC version for Fallen Order, the jank for it seems different. Anthem is just unfinished and more disappointing.
Anyways, new patch today for Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order. Patch notes:
Hello everyone,
We had an update go live today on all platforms for Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Below you'll find the details of what's in the patch.
Fixes & Improvements
We’ve fixed an issue where Bounty Hunters would sometimes get stuck in Zeffo.
Not only was the Photomode camera able to explode rockets, it could interact with trigger volumes within the levels that could potentially break the game. We’ve fixed this to ensure that you can continue playing the game after using Photomode. Unfortunately, this also means that rockets will be unaffected by the camera moving forward.
There was a bug that was causing one of the elevators in the last level to have a tendency of disappearing. It should now be present at all times.
We’ve improved collision on Ilum.
Our language translations have been updated.
There was an issue where some text was overlapping in Photomode for specific screen ratios. That has been fixed.
The Albino Wyyyschokk tactical guide entry wasn’t appearing for all users, this should now be fixed.
We’ve fixed Gorgara having a tendency to disappear at specific times on Dathomir Content
Pre-order content has now been unlocked for all players. This content includes:
Orange Lightsaber Blade Color
Mygeeto Campaign Lightsaber Hilt
Umbaran Campaign Lightsaber Hilt
Bee-D-1 Skin
Gold Squadron Stinger Mantis Skin
