Steam Community :: antoniusjakovius

328.6 hrs on record (44.1 hrs at review time)

Yes, I guess I recommend this game. It has its fare share of flaws, but is certainly a unique experience and has a fantastic open world. It can't be overlooked that mods make a huge difference to this game. The pitfalls, however, impact on the immersive experience and story. The Sole Survivor never sufficiently engages in the world and with the characters, other than just passing through and giving indications of baseline responses. The reaction to "emotionally stimulating" events (I avoid mentioning due to spoilers) is at best underwhelming. But there are many of these moments in the game. This is almost certainly due to the lack of focus on either a male/female character and the scope involved to build a story around the player's choice. It wasn't needed. I think it would be more realistic to just build the world around Nate in the first place. He has military experience and well he's a male (oh no, you can't say that!!), where it seems unrealistic that a lawyer lady would be going around shooting mutated monsters when her last practical experience in life was pushing papers around and defending clients in courtrooms.

There is a similar problem with companions. Due to the vast amount of companions in this game, their dialogue is quite limited in general. This especially becomes apparent when you have completed affinity with one companion. They essentially become an empty vessel, following you around, with the occasional comment you have already heart 50+ times. It would have been more realistic to implement a select few companions, and vastly expand on their dialogue - and let's be honest - Nick, Piper, Paladin Danse and Codsworth are the best written, most well-rounded companions. I left out Dogmeat for obvious reasons but clearly, he hangs with the best, too. The missions (main/side) are great, and the story itself is well developed and impactful... it's just a shame the execution was, I think, far too ambitious. Overall a unique experience but it falls flat in a number of areas.

Maybe one day in the distant future we can see a sequel to this story, bringing back some of the old characters and giving them new life.

7/10

Posted 16 November, 2022. Last edited 9 December, 2022.

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Not Recommended

28.3 hrs on record

Possibly the worst ending in a video game, ever. Developers trying to go above and beyond, but in doing so they destroyed everything good about the first game. No more French accents anymore or anything indicating location (which felt like a breath of fresh air amidst all the generic AAA games) - all enemies have generic English accents, and the main characters look and sound completely detached from their previous iterations, especially Amicia. The events of this game feel completely separated from the main world in which the game takes place, which is in Christian Europe. In effect, you as a player do not feel like you are actually engaging in the world, but in a story that seems like it could have taken place at any time in history, and you are acting outside of it. Yes, this could have been the intention, but it destroys the significance of the locations travelled, which merely serve as a backdrop, and completely takes away the characters being rooted in their world. That is the trade-off the developers made and I don't think it was a good one... I think this is going to be a very dated game when we look back on it.

It's all pretty hollow when you actually think about it. In the end, the story seemed like it was going somewhere, but the writers lost the plot. If there's no better way to end the game than killing your own brother who is/has been so integral to the story and essentially the only motivation behind the main character, then you have done something wrong and your game doesn't deserve any accolades. There is no explanation as to why he needs to be killed, or why they couldn't have prevented it. What we're left with is - essentially - euthanasia, because "da macula" or something. Unbelievable treatment. Honestly when you have massacred the story this hard there's no point talking about gameplay or graphics, they don't matter. And so now I'm thinking they will insult us further by setting the sequel in the modern-day world to end the source of the plague or something, abandoning the roots of the first game completely. And no doubt it chumps will eat it up and give it positive reviews. There's a lot more criticism I have (ahem, optimisation etc etc) but it would take a day to type out here. So congratulations, Asobo! You just demolished a good story and the potential for another good sequel. No worries! Won't be playing the next one...
Kingdom Come: Deliverance did it much better anyway.

3/10

Posted 21 October, 2022. Last edited 24 October, 2022.

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