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Dragon's Dogma : Dark Arisen.


wholehole
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A nice touch I've not mentioned is that the armour changes when you're in safe areas. I'm wearing a full face helmet right now but when I go into civvy areas he pops the visor up so people can see his face.

 

The weakest part is the story. I have not got a clue what's going on at all. The story feels like shit side quests. It's rivals have it beat hands down there.

 

I did a story bit earlier on where you have to go into the catacombs and it appears that the whole of the map has multiple levels to it. You know when you're playing Skyrim and you go into a random cave and when you get to the end of it suddenly you're in Blackreach? It's sort of like that You go into an underground bit and then come out of it at the other side of the map. It feels specifically designed to have these underground ratruns if you know where they are and how you unlock them, since a lot of them are barred off if you approach them from the wrong side. 

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There's zero cohesion. I feel like they had to tick boxes for tropes with the characters. The blonde aloof one. The comedic relief. The dead serious one. The black dude. The hooded man that's almost certainly not a rip of of Star War's Emperor. It's crap.

 

The gameplay is joyous though.

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Made a fair bit of headway tonight.

 

Evicted the family and ended up paying for lodgings. That was an expensive quest.

 

Went back to the bandit camp and told them them I dealt with the issue they were having in the hope they'd give me the tome over I needed. They didn't so I killed the dude and then found out I don't think I needed to but I couldn't revert a save. A bit of platforming later I had the tome. Oh yeah, before this a Gryphon jumped me. Made the fucker pay for interrupting me though, gave him the fucking of his life.

 

Then I went into a water temple and did some light puzzling and some combat against a mix of shit that varied from dead easy to OMFG it's riding me and I can't get it off.

 

This all followed the fact that someone has been using my pawn and now she knows more about the game than I do. We're off to the water temple? Cool, lead the way person I created. It was like taking the dog to the park, practically dragged me there.

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Did the bits of story the guy that works for the king wanted and then went in and had an audience. It all went David Lynch, fucking weirdness that makes no sense and people with Dwarfism. Irish Dwarfish as well, the worst kind. I don't understand anything that happened in that cutscene or any of the following parts.

 

Anyway, the important stuff is still good. Fought some monsters I've fought before because quests told me to go do so. One of them looks like an arena style thing where you fight gradually harder and harder mobs. Also fought another big boy outside the witches hut. It's a good fight, one I'd wager feels nicer to do if you have projectiles, but whatever. Climb up him and jizz your metally load into his weak spots for massive damage..

 

Also started gearing up quite quickly now. I have a feeling that will accelerate even more once I find this idol the weapon smith is after.

 

Swapped out the short round with the sword that was bigger than her for a woman that sounds like a man that can do stabbings and ranged. It's the first time I've seen a pawn actively climb on a beast tonight as well. The Mage I am using also did it on a Griffin as it was trying to fly away. I emphasise trying, because it exploded in a fireball as soon as it took off to make an escape.

 

Also the Witch had a Pinocchio moment and is a real boy now. Oh Dragon's Dogma story. You so silly.

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I have one Idol I got it from meeting the people near the big picture in the grass. I tried to be spoiler free there since there's (admirably poor) story there that's mainline stuff. Or at least I think it's mainline stuff, it's so bloody disjointed it could have been a side quest.

 

The merchant actually lit me up an idol quest, I think that's the next thing on the agenda.

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Yeah, I know where you mean... There's actually Bronze, Silver and Gold that can be gotten, Gold is obviously the best.

 

Meeting those folks can definitely be considered the main questline but yeah, things aren't particularly clear in the respect.

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  • 2 weeks later...

"Go kill the Griffin that's harassing the city" they said. In reality it means a trek the furthest into the map I've ever been while amassing a murder count that would have impressed the Mansons'. It's fucking dead though, and so is everything between the Griffin's rotting corpse and the doors north of Gran Soren.

 

I also murdered a man called Balsac. Best game ever.

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It's started a timed morality quest. I think the guy is crooked but is important in Gransys' survival since he seems to be the one greasing the wheels of the war machine. I already handed in a lot of evidence against him but a huge chunk of that could be dismissed as it's just a poor framing of character from one family. The real evidence is better. Really it all swings on the last bit of evidence I'm going to collect next and if the evidence I've collected is enough to see him go free or swing. I've a feeling he'll swing, but to the detriment to the wider picture. I like it when they do moral stuff like this in games. He's doing inherently bad things to facilitate good things. His character is very unlikable too.

 

Also, I am being hunted. By whom? Well the game would have to have a coherent story for that to work. It's just another set of enemies to stab, and stabbed they shall be.

 

I forgot to mention I found the healing fountain too. Very Legend of Zelda. No fairies in bottles though.

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Guess you're talking about Fournival... one outcome is definitely better for you in the long run, I'll leave it at that.

 

When I was first playing the game I didn't even realise half those hunters were part of a quest until they were dead just that unlike most things in this game these guys were quite talkative. 

 

You killed that Drake at Devil Fire Grove yet?

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Just now, Nag said:

You killed that Drake at Devil Fire Grove yet?

 

I've not had a reason to go down that neck of the woods for a bit. I've been up near the north for and where it is windy. There's another fort that's shut off to me. I've still a lot to explore though, all to the east of where the mausoleum is. The part where the bandits hang out as well I've to go looking about, I've got a bit to under to the east there. There's parts of the game I've discovered but not gone into yet, like the path that cuts through the mountains. I'm sure there's a huge part under the map that acts as a warren too, every time I seem to do a quest that sends me underground I crop up overground miles away from where I started.

 

I should go back and see if I can fuck it up. I'm up something like 20 levels since I first met it. I should have a better time of it next time we face off anyway.

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I didn't go back. I went to some place called soul flayer or some shit. I thought it was going to intro a new big lad to stab because I was going down and deeper and one of my pawns were talking about a monster and I was like, shit, I think this might be a dead end with a double hard bastard at the end of it. Nothing happened and on the way back I learned I'm going to have to dress as a woman.

 

Also I discovered a bug. Remember when I said that the woman had a deep voice and she sounded like a man? Well I have a dude in my party now and he sounds like he's in witness protection. His voice is unnaturally deep. There's parts of the game where they sound alright, but in the open world they drop an octave, with hliarious results.

 

Also Fournival ended up in prison. Not as bad as dead, but still.

 

Speaking of prison, I ended up there. The law and order in this game is a joke. I'm not going to spoil it because a certain Irish guy that is going to join eventually might read it and I don't want to spoil it for him, but there's a mission where you have to do something and you get a choice, my choice ended up with me in jail where I had to sneak  out. So I grabbed the guard and tried to kill him and got locked away again after a fine. So I used my final skeleton key and just walked out. Nobody bothered me at all. Which is dead stupid.

 

It also raises a question. What happens if you have no skeleton key? Do you just have to sit and wait until you're let free? Because if that's the case, then that idea sucks. The whole law and order thing feels like an afterthought, especially when you line it up against TES.

 

There's been a few missions where it tells you to sneak as well. I don't know if it's been entirely serious. I was tasked with sneaking somewhere, did it all cheeki breeki like, robbed the fuck out of the castles treasury and then went on my way, only to walk past an NPC that couldn't give a flying fuck I was supposedly trespassing. If they do a sequel the stuff I've mentioned needs looking at, because it's it's pointless it being there.

 

And while I'm doing a big post, I changed vocations. I now have a bow and daggers. Holding LB for the aiming is kind of uncomfortable, I'm sure I'll get used to it, but they should know that anything that requires aiming should be put on the triggers. I might swap the triggers and bumpers thinking about it because stowing a weapon or grabbing someone is far less prevalent than the other button that allow you to do specials. I have no idea why they have a whole button for sheath, you should just hold B or something to put your weapons away.

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No, I am on playstation.

 

I started a steam playthrough way back when but it got messed up by a bad controller driver release from MS. And now I don't have a computer anymore anyway to play it, so here I be slumming it at 30fps :(

 

 

Anyway I got my revenge on a gryphon that ganked me earlier on

https://youtu.be/ZhISWSPxMiM

There's an openness to the fight here I haven't really seen in any open world, the way it just drags across one side of Gran Soren to the other. But it's all completely unscripted. All dynamic, but it feels like some sort of God of War boss fight yet you're in charge of where it goes.

This is a 2012 game so I'm very late to the party on this one but this was like a "wow, games can do this?" sort of moment for me and I had a Blakey moment of "oh shit I'm freaking out this is the best thing I can remember in a video game".

There's so much drama in it but it's not prompted by some invisible director's hand. There's a cool moment around 11:24 where I play chicken with the Gryphon with a charged arrow shot while on low health. It felt like something out of a movie. Unfortunately the bit just after is a bit more like Kenny from South Park :oops:

The whole thing where the pawns scream at you how to fight it is an excellent way of tutorialising cause some of them have fought the Gryphon before in different people's game. So they know the things like "shoot the wings and set them on fire" or "hit it before it gets too high and does a wing blast at you"

Maybe this is as good as it gets and the other encounters don't really hold a light to fighting gryphons but that almost makes fighting rubbish wolves stuck in a running animation behind a rock for 15 hours worth it.

That Skyrim dragon can't really compare
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it's interesting watching someone else playing, 

I remember watching in amazement when someone got thrown into the air by their pawn. Instant grabbing access to the face of a cyclops for some eye stabbing action.

Also watching the reverse of where some guy was launching his pawns into the air at anyone and everything.

 

The drake fights are awesome, I seem to remember there being some weird criteria about them only showing up at certain dates/times because they're an online group event thing.

Hmm, I wonder if this is back-compatible, with my xbone on the way through the post...

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