Hello gamer! After a short rest, I made the English subtitles today. Here is a list of all the music with timestamps since people have been asking about it in the comments. 00:00:18 Harem - Matt Uelman (Diablo 2) 00:02:45 The Merchant Raosta - Yuka Watanabe (Crossed Swords) 00:07:30 Shop - Koji Endo (King's Field) 00:10:14 Wilderness - Matt Uelman (Diablo 2) 00:16:36 Tristram - Matt Uelman (Diablo) 00:22:08 BGM 77 (can't find the name sorry) - Harry Gregson Williams/Norihiko Hibino (Metal Gear Solid 2) 00:27:01 Halls - Matt Uelman (Diablo 2 LoD) 00:30:56 Review - Kenta Nagata (1080 Snowboarding) 00:35:31 Track 5 - ??? (Virtual Casino) (I ripped this myself, idk anything about it) 00:40:17 East Seaside - Koji Endo (King's Field 2) 00:45:59 A World of Madness - Akira Yamaoka (Silent Hill 2) 00:56:07 Cave of Fear - Tamsoft Sound Team (Guardian's Crusade) 00:59:18 The Red Naval Port - Syun Nishigaki & Tatsuro Suzuki (19XX The War Against Destiny) 01:02:00 Rogue Encampment - Matt Uelman (Diablo 2) 01:04:35 Daddy's Money - Wh0r3s 01:06:30 Arms Depot - Harry Gregson Williams/Norihiko Hibino (Metal Gear Solid 2) 01:08:55 Hell - Matt Uelman (Diablo) 01:24:39 Some untitled thing - me 01:31:53 Fantasy Land - John Baker (SEGA Channel) 01:34:34 Wormsign - Dune (The Best of Keygen Music) 01:38:45 Brinstar - Kenji Yamamoto (Super Metroid) 01:47:47 26 5 [demo] - Aphex Twin 01:50:42 luke vibert spiral staircase - Aphex Twin 02:02:09 Tristram again 02:11:26 Mist Engine - James Primate (Rain World) In the future I will credit songs while they are playing, the same way I credit videos I use.
A lot of this video could be heavily edited down. Much is saying the same thing in different ways. I would guess probably 60% shorter would be conservative. This is one of the best channels I've discovered this year but after trying my first long video, it definitely has the solo creator/TH-cam problem of using 10 sentences to make what should be one sentence. I don't think I can watch other game review videos after this despite absolutely loving your content style. 😢
This was great but WAY too long and repetitive. i fell asleep watching it and literally have no idea where i got to as anywhere i go to, hes saying things ive already heard but i know i was somewhere around 70% 😂 so just skipping to the end segment and as im writing this hes making a point i heard hours ago about less affixes. Is this written by AI? The channel has talked about AIs limited memory making it repeat loads so im genuinely interested what input AI had into this script???
TH-cam is somehow so broken, that I can't see the questioning guy's comment anymore. This site is falling apart. my answer for him: Basically, metastasis is "meta-progression, but stasis, like homeostasis, you're just holding holding the same position". So when you bring the thought together, he's saying that you're basically punching the clock, and spending 80 hours to maintain progress level everytime they update, which is every four months. He's calling it out on being fake, and wastefully long, etc.
@@Cyromantik It is. I Think we should all fear games like this. In a sense, they're making a game that'll make you work to give them money, except you don't get paid, just mediocre entertainment. As if these companies couldn't squeeze us more, they turned games into jobs to do it again lol.
I work in the industry. I've seen design documents for popular mobile games. The way they talk about structuring every bell and whistle to get people addicted and to get addicted people to spend more money is so blunt I was shocked. They talked like super villains basically. Any game that implements anything similar puts me off now.
I went to college to learn game design Yup you nailed it, the way the teachers talk about how easy it is to earn cash trough mobile gaming and make people addicted to your product is insanely inhuman
@@Spinevoyager @konradohlm3131 For example words like "pervasive" and "aggressive" are used to describe a how a new kind of paid collectible should be designed. It should be a "status symbol" in order to "force monetization higher" and should have a "social aspect" so it can be adopted by more people
Not to be hyperbolic but I've found more and more that having these microtransaction schemes shoved in my face, even though I never use them, just completely kills my ability to enjoy a game. I don't want to continue engaging with something after I see it brazenly try to manipulate me. That does not put me in a good mood, or compel me to see what else they have to offer, even if I know the other stuff is good. And this is all assuming that no gameplay was sacrificed for the sake of monetization, which of course it almost always was.
It's like knowing that a piece of art was generated rather than made, the little intentions behind it are corrupted (by microtransactions) or nonexistent
Agreed. A particularly egregious example I ran into recently was Tales of Arise. A single player JRPG that shoves its DLC store in your face when you camp to restore health. Game itself is fun but that completely killed my desire to keep playing.
this is one of the reasons I just dropped genshin one day, it wasn't just the constatnt pull of the gacha and the limited rng runs I had to do every day, its that all of that stuff was desperately trying to keep me hooked and buying more blattlespases and pulls, without actually giving me anything meaningful to do, all the "events" had the best reward (premium currency) as the first tier of reward, you can just do that and skip the rest, but the gameplay was fun enough that I wanted to play them all, I kept betting bogged down by how my achievements meant nothing once the new characters came out and how my team or builds were not the best possible set ups, I could simply not try and get the best rewards, trying was heavily punished and pushing the game boiled down to not having a big enough stat stick to do the thing fast enough.
Monetization in games has genuinely ruined the sense of progression and excitement. No longer do i unlock things as i play, i just have to be remjnded that "actually this better item is in the PREMIUM PASS" and that in itself kills any motivation for spending time in a game. Apex legends od example and its reward system is abhorent, so i only play the game to wnjoy the skill expression it presents. Anything like cosmetics is moot and useless. Which is. Abummer. Gone are the days of unlocking cool free skins and colours off of natural progression or challenges. No visual expression is allowed unless you fork a shit ton of money. I do hope we all wake up to how predatory these systems are and express them in a way that inspired change. Awesome video, it made me.think qiite a bit about the state of everything we consume.
I've been calling these "proxy currencies' scrip, cause that's basically what it is. You can only spend them in their company store and they regulate the exchange rate and how much you get.
Jimmy, thanks for this video! Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to see it through. Not because of its quality - it's fantastic - but because I find it horribly depressing. You summed it up pretty concisely at the start of the video: the D4 model is a sad proposition for a world growing sadder. It's meant to tickle human weakness in the lowest way, and no amount of "we're passionate about videogames" is going to improve things. Thanks anyway, much appreciated!
@@JimmyMcG33 Your Rainworld videos, for a game I've never played and probably will never play, have left me watching every single one of your videos with real enthusiasm. It's also justified exploring more of TH-cam's suggested videos since that's how I discovered yours. I don't know if you'll see this. I don't leave many comments, and this is just one hidden in a reply, but the Rainworld videos are not my favorite videos you've made. I'll likely watch anything you take the time to struggle to put together.
That ending. A two hour and twelve minute wind up to a blow so savage it needs no delivery: the target is already dead. And then you fade in Rain World music at the very end, a wistful memory of something truly and humbly brilliant. Your videos are absolutely amazing! And thank you for the indie recommendations, wishlisted almost all of those.
''The frustrating thing is that some slob can just take a Great Game - make a cheap copy and slap a bunch of psuedo-progression and monetization on top of it , in fact there's one high profile example you might have hear of..'' the most poignant of points which holds a mirror to the revolting visage of D4. Thank you for making such a thought provoking critique of the current state of the AAA games industry as a whole . These games are not made out of passion or to foster a lifelong emotional experience ,but rather to milk nostalgia and the wallets of their fans with predatory macro-transactions under the guise of 'live service'. I'll never forgive ABK for ruining all the heart , soul and legacy of Diablo that Blizzard North/ Condor (Brevik et al) meticulously crafted with passion and devotion for their fans. Support AA/ indie studios that create games with love for the artform and where the sole purpose is not to manipulate your enjoyment on their terms for shareholder metrics and quarterly reports.
Or just play retro. The two Yakuza on the PSP have fan translations now, I'm on the 2nd playing them consecutively and the games are FANTASTIC. Everything modern games are not.
@@JimmyMcG33 we knew what you meant, you knew what you meant but just stopping and ending the video without another word said actually made me chortle. It was such a ballsy way to say it.
I've been playing a lot of indie games and rediscovered my joy for gaming. Manor Lords, Shogun Showdown, Halls of Torment, Redout 2, Slipstream, Slay the Spire. So many great indie games are out there and it's rekindled my passion for this hobby.
I'm looking for some more good indies as well. Some good ones I can recommend are Soulstone Survivors, Army of Ruin, Death Must Die, Halls of Tormet which you already listed, and Inkbound
That "exploiting people at their lowest" point is so true, I've rarely been in a happy state of mind when I've spent money on game cosmetics. The most monetarily successful live service games make you feel empty inside while simultaneously making you not want to stop playing, aka League of Legends.
Something I really enjoy about your videos is how you sprinkle in some humor and sincerity without breaking the flow. I find not many creators can walk the line for me between presenting a serious critique with bordeline esterile delivery or without resorting to the same 4 jarring jokes.
that little set up for a compliment about the tutorials being as good as those typically found in the triple AAA space... and the payoff is just an expert bonk to the head delivered without the slightest deviation or distraction oh to live in a world where so much of what plagues us could be as easily dispatched and moved on from
You are gradually filling in the gap that matthewmatosis left behind when he retired from making videos for me personally. Seriously one of the most forward thinking 'video essaysists' on this platform with unique insight on every topic you cover. This stuff may be ugly, but the way you structure this creates a fascinating analytic text.
There are three wolves inside D4. The first is an auteur, making a grim dark masterpiece. The second wolf is trying to find a way to turn that work into a universal studios theme park with egregious over monetization. The third wolf just blew in from stupid town.
It's honestly even worse than this. Its more like Wolf 2 hired a whole team of other Wolf 2s to delegate a dozen teams of Wolf 1s to produce a product that *feels* like Wolf 1's baby, while actually being masterminded form the start to be Wolf 2's cash cow.
Armor used to look cool asf with lore behind them; With what they did often being tied to the lore. Now, anything with an ounce of effort put into it is usually reserved for the store.
Once stores are standard, why would a company that can get away with a store offer anything cool for free? (Given they consider anything included in the £70 cost of the game as being given for free, the £70 only buying you a store client with the minimum extra to not be sued) The most depressing thing is that and more than anything should have stopped anyone engaging with the current gen.
Thank you for going into such detail about how predatory those RLM shop systems truly are. People all too often just handwaive it away with arguments like "Don't like it, don't buy it" or "It's only cosmetics, bro!" but never seem to acknowledge how they pray on vulnerable people like addicts, depressed individuals, young children and other individuals with low self control or impulsive habits! I've had many a heated argument about exactly that point with Dragon's Dogma 2's MTX with a large majority of people simply refusing to admit that it IS a problem, even if you don't need to buy them to "enjoy" the game, meanwhile completely neglecting the aforementioned predatory issues and the fact that you are buying bandaid fixes to problems the developers created. Edit: Damn, you even managed to figure out that the inclusion of open world multiplayer was most definitely motivated to be a presentation of store cosmetics to potential buyers! Respect, didn't think you'd mention that.
This could only exist under economic fascism, where the dominant feeling people have toward others can be summed up as "I'm alright Jack" - in a society and under a system where people care about others, the current state of gaming is one of thousands of things that couldn't exist.
This video helped me put into words why video games just turn me off very often and I realized it's modern games never leaving room for you to take extended breaks. I've played D2 since LoD released, on and off, and it always feels like the game welcomes me back by just being in the state I left it; no matter how long the breaks I take are. All this seasonal content, the battle passes, MTX and so on are just carnival barkers that never shut up and instills in you the feeling you cannot leave at any time and come back later to keep enjoying the experience.
Just want to say, I know it's strange, but your subscriptions are awesome for allowing me to find alot of other intelligent youtubers like Jimmy Mcgee. Thanks. And I fully agree. What's engaging about a game that tries to make you come back constantly? Nothing at all. No art has ever functioned in that way and it's so nakedly exploitative barren capitalist manipulation
Off topic, but at the end, when the music credits show up at the end (btw thank you for attributing the music, not nearly enough people do that), the patterns that they pop in and the way it's in time to the beat is super satisfying
The codex rework highlights a broader issue with D4. As you said, skills alone don't carry a build. You need a bunch of synergistic Aspects to make a build work, and there's no chance generic affixes will be powerful enough to make you swap a synergistic piece out for a "0.2% more damage on fridays" type of thing. Addiction over fun means they need you to complete your build relatively early, otherwise the progression grinds down into frustration, and once you have most Aspects the only thing you're looking for is higher % (they removed D3 item sets just in name, you're effectively collecting sets of Aspects). Since there's no system to improve Aspects, it's all RNG, when you drop a perfect Aspect now you're likely going to be frustrated: use it and you'll inevitably drop an item with better affixes, wait for the perfect item and feel you're running a lame build. The new system will steer players towards collecting different sets of perfect Aspects and trying different builds once the current one gets boring, pushing the grind to peripheral stuff like slowly improving affixes % and leveling glyphs, which on their own have a small enough impact you won't feel the build is gimped. To me it's not enough to overcome the feeling of the D4 game being a Rupe Golberg-esque decoration around the PURCHASE button. It took me years to realise addiction isn't the same as fun, and the feeling of having been exploited isn't pleasant and doesn't go away.
Its too grindy. Played older arpgs that had more variety in viable builds for hardest modes and end game. Literally dozens. Sure theyre not all absolute identical peak dps but theyre close enough that you wont care. Besides if one b uild makes everything that touches you die its only fair that it has 10-20% less dps than actively spamming keys until you get early onset arthritis.
@@Andytlp it feels grindy because with its current mechanics it has to give you a mostly complete build (all skills + most aspects/uniques, for sure all the core stuff) by level ~50. Past that it's a game of chicken for when you'll pop those high roll aspects while you improve the "0.2% more damage on frozen pescatarians" affixes. Even universally acclaimed ARPGs like PoE degenerate into builds that can clear screens worth of chaff until they get one shot by a random booger lost in the visual clusterfuck, but those have great pacing. There are always multiple stepstones (for PoE it could be an extra gem link, accumulating enough mana to activate an extra aura, reaching an important node in the tree...) you're working towards while you accumulate those (individually) pointless and boring 0.2% increments, until the very very lategame where only true Hardcore Gamers™ run challenges to prove they can. Diablo 4 gives you the complete experience by level 50, and gives constant reworks and free respecs to keep you going, to let YOU gimp YOUR character by restarting on a different build just to keep the game interesting, under the illusion that the new, stronger build will be more fun.
I quite like the ending to this video. I'm surprised at just how many games you showed there too - I've always known myself not to keep up with games that much, but I knew of 0 of those and if I had to compile a list of my own I'd struggle to come up with 3 releases I'm looking forward to, no matter how obscure. Perhaps I should check some of those out sometime, although the itch palestine bundle (and the inspiration to make a game after playing ZeroRanger) will keep me occupied for a while. Also, I'd recommend showing song names on-screen when they play. Listing them all is good, but it's quite difficult for somebody to find something they're looking for if they have to manually count how many tracks played, or try to find a song they're familiar with to use as a reference point. There may well be a reason you refrain from doing this, but seeing as how you show other sources on-screen it seems like it'd be totally fine to me o,o
Thanks! I mostly use Twitter to follow developers these days (when I'm not yelling at zi0nists) so I find a lot of interesting games that way. That Palestine bundle has lots of great stuff. Yeah I'm going to do on-screen music credits from now on, I thought they might clutter up the video but the credits are completely useless the way they are now lol
"A drip feed of dopamine for it's own sake" is a phenomenal phrase. imo lots of software products (social media, AAA liveservice games, ai girlfriend apps, whatever) are converging upon that optimum. An obscene limit point of consumption; an eternal present, a comfortable waking dream. People are eager to be transported, they can be drawn in without full awareness, without regard for the time it will exact from them. It's an addictive mechanism we can understand, but the full consequences of it's rapid global deployment will take a long time to come to terms with.
@@arcmage7000it's an awesome thing to receive. The most important thing we can do now in modern times is to hang on to each other. I recommend that you look through commenters here and find youtubers they're subscribed to, which are also often just as good, intelligent and verbose as Jimmy Mcgee, but aren't recommended on TH-cam anymore because our algorithms are becoming far too good at directing us towards circular content farms and hate speech instead of actual art. You might discover alot of new games you haven't heard of through it, because I know I have
I'm going to assume this will be the most insightful review of D4 to ever be created. I don't think I would've gotten this much out of just playing the game myself.
The video was amazing and it opened my eyes. Was watching it while leveling in the season 4 of diablo 4 and you actually made me stop running on the treadmill for a second to think about my decision.
Well, this video finally got me to uninstall Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, so thanks lol I had already seen your other videos on the machine-zone and gaming and those were really influential intellectually for me, but knowing it cognitively wasn't enough. Hearing you say at the end of the video, that at the end of your experience with D4 you just felt weird and tired and sad really resonated with me emotionally. These games... these types of games... just made me feel tired and sad. No more!
I think one of the most damning indictments of D4 is that it actively tries to persuade you from playing the campaign. I like to make multiple characters to test out some abilities before committing to a character, and the game started asking if I wanted to skip the campaign even though I hadn't even finished act 1. The campaign is the best part of the game by far and they don't want you to engage with it at all, so they can push you straight to the treadmill. I personally believe every season should have at least 1 campaign playthrough, but whether or not you agree with that, a new player who hasn't even finished act 1 should NEVER be prompted to skip the campaign.
Learning that the horse armour DLC sold really well flipped some kind of switch in my brain. Maybe they put it in Diablo 4 to celebrate the Microsoft acquisition.
8:39 "All systems like these exist to exploit people at their lowest, who are either bad with money or in such a bleak mood that they think a videogame cosmetic will make them feel better." I've had a couple depressive cycles in my life (like COVID, a really bad breakup, and a workplace re-structure that axed most of my social structure overnight) and one of the staple stages of these cycles is re-installing Destiny 2, buying the current season pass, buying a few Eververse items with silver, reaching the max level in the season, slowly realize what's really happening, and ending it all by deleting all of my weapons, armor, and items, and then uninstalling.
I get "why" Diablo 4's UX/UI is like a mobile game. I just don't understand "why". Like, isn't having a super gritty realistic cutscene juxtaposed with battle passes and rewards and BUY NOW just the ultimate failure in thematics? Like the cutscene is what I expect for buying the game, only for them to pull the rug out from under me. It feels cheap.
2:07:43 I am going to violently disagree with this statement. People in game development are being laid off for two reasons; AI, and a reduction in demand for games now that the pandemic is over. It’s the industry trying to extract more work from its workforce for less pay, combined with the end of a temporary spike in demand for video games they knew was coming. Games are cheaper and easier than ever to make, as well as more in demand at all levels of polish/effort- the indie market proves that. Don’t let the AAA industry fool you into thinking they have to go to live service models- they’d simply prefer to because they make money on them hand over fist. If modders can update Skyrim modern graphics, for free, on their off time, AAA studios can produce games without relying on gambling to fund them. Lining your corporate executives pockets is not a necessary cost of game development.
God I'm so glad that you're not pushing that "they fixed it!" narrative that so many crappy games try to push after the colossal and well-earned success that No Mans Sky had, looking very angrily at Bethesdas direction... and saw it at Ubisoft obviously as well, but they're well... Ubisoft...
no mans sky is still not a game. its an empty sandbox with nothing to do. 8 rehashed plannets and 10 rehashed animals that get demonically combined in all possible ways.
Great video, one of my fav subs on YT. Not sure if you've ventured into Warcraft 3 custom games much? but I'd love an essay on the deep world of custom games in wc3.
I'm gonna consider this Pay to Win Ep 2.5 as the waiting room continues lol Thanks for the video, your work here is is appreciated Thoughts: 1) It's been an interesting experience observing the Modern Day Gamer's Triple A Video Game™transform itself into a vehicle to over-monetize and bleed you of time like a mosquito In relation to your developing thesis in Pay to Win, of how gambling machines manipulate folks, and how one could see that essence weave its way into games-- it is quite sobering to see this "casino-fication" in real time without too much fuss from the general audiences 2) Speaking of the greater industry at large, the thoughts your video brings out are poignant to current happenings, as layoffs numbers in the industry continue to rise, while games continue to make money and executives continue to make money, as they panic over stock dips, as they are unable to compete with a pandemic boom If I could specifically talk about Xbox for a second (since they do own Activision Blizzard now), Brad Hilderbrand recently posted a breakdown of the hot water situation Xbox is now finding itself in --The tldr here is that their standing is basically untenable At this point, I would not be surprised if we see another western video game industry crash before the end of the decade Considering the direction that all this nickle-and-diming of our time and money will ultimately move towards, one could say it would be a deserved fate if anything 3) All the more reason to support your local neighborhood indie developer If I could make a recommendation to you, feel free to check out a game (on Steam) called *Raw Metal*. It is pretty tough, but skill curve is satisfying to learn. It has a demo too And that's my comment Cheers
One of the best video game documentaries I’ve seen and you really strike the nail on the head. Inadequate developers is not the problem, development designed around monetary gain and addiction is the problem.
Diablo 2 was one of, if not literally the first game I ever played. For a large percentage of my time on this planet it was a large percentage of my total playtime. If you had asked my younger self if he wanted to play 'Diablo 4' when it came out, you would have been met with unbounded excitement And I was a little excited seeing some of the early trailers, but honestly I can't see myself ever buying it. It's not even a like internal struggle, I just genuinely don't even feel like it :/ It's sad to see it become this, but I'm just happy other people are effectively picking up the slack. PoE2 looking like it's gonna be what D4 shoulda been
Still dont understand how this lad isnt hitting hundreds of thousands to millions of views on every upload, I get nobody gives a shit about tripple A microtransaction fest but imo this should be like an hbomber guy situation where vastly more people watch the video than actively play the game its discussing. The editing is on point, the pacing is great, the jokes are pretty rapid fire, and the writing is particularly good for a youtube video essay. You also credit people in the video directly like when you mentioned the reviews by article or writer. Thats something that most video essayists have been pretty shit about. Youre also explicitly anti capitalist which is great because so many of the critiques of games with these monetization systems fall flat because they cant comprehend critiquing the incentive structures that force creativity out of the games industry
I've never played a diablo game before but my friends have, this was a very interesting critique. I love watching videos on things I only slightly care about
1:52:23 As someone who played cookie clicker (and modified the JavaScript code to speed up the sugar lumps drops) the main fun isn't the cookie clicker part but rather the side gameplay loops (sadly not enough side loops of gameplay to keep me invested) the stock market being my favorite one. Cookie clicker gives you other gameplay loops to progress towards that feeds into the main gameplay loop and vise versa. My tism is acting up you meant the idiom cookie clicker and not literal cookie clicker -_-;
I'm in a somewhat similar brainspace to you, but microtransactions and gambling addictions and the mechanics behind them drive me on to try and understand them with a morbid fascination *because* I'm extremely susceptible to them. Autistic, suffering from ADHD, I'm the exact kind of mentally ill that these techniques are laser targeted to prey on. And even when I work to understand them on every level, I have sometimes still found myself succumbing to them. Anyway, I'm glad to see someone push back against these practices from the "other" side of that, so to speak - someone who recognizes that they're evil not just because they're personally affected by them, but because they are just plain evil, no two ways about it. Great video, very cathartic to watch.
And here I am fully aware of the shop in d4 and still having fun because I (and I believe everyone, too) can totally ignore the shop and battlepass and just focus on the game part which is, as I said, really fun for me, playing an hour or two each day between work and going to bed.
what makes me upset the most about d4 is that i truly get the feeling the devs the people actually making the game wanted more with the gameplay and story but higher ups forced them to make it as monetizable as possible because i feel like there were choices they wanted to make but couldnt
'it was like eating candy until you get sick and continuing to eat candy.' really was D4 for me in a nutshell this critique has been so clear and surgical, thanks for making it. Its frustrating because D4 is so well polished, and managed the shed much of the stench of Chris Metzen that D3 had, but live serviceness of it just seeps through constantly and makes you feel awful for playing it.
I agree completely with you on the story, with the exception of how Neyrelle is handled at the end. Everyone being cool with a child running off alone, in this evil demon world, is stupid. Is ultra stupid when she's carrying a prime evil's soulstone with her. Her 'wishes' really don't mean spit, finding her and dragging her home should be priority #1.
Lol. Ive been thinking about doing a vid where I play a level of the old Amiga game _Barbarian,_ watch Conan, then do another level, watch Conan the Destroyer, do another level, watch Red Sonja, then rave about how good the 'cutscenes' are in the game. Fundamentally cutscenes are _not the effing game._ The game happens while you press buttons and stuff. If I wanted to watch a movie, I'd... watch a movie. I first felt this playing Diablo 3, where the cutscenes were (or at least felt at the time) so prolific that playing the game felt like an interruption in the movie. I have literally no recollection of the story past act 2, because by that time I was just saying 'p*ss off and let me play' and skipping them. I didnt buy D4.
i'm stunned i haven't been subscribed to you yet after watching pay to win, your guided tours, the raiden fighters video, and finally this one. also to add to the indie games, Selaco is a fantastic tactical fps built in GZDoom, and Blue Revolver is a recently released indie sh'mup that got me into the genre.
This is probably the best d4 review I have seen but besides that I really like that you listed of all music with artists you used in the video at the end
Diablo 4 has a good (enough) story and a treadmill in the same way the epic store has "helped promote competition in the pc marketplace", as a backdoor to ensnare a user base for profit at the expense of the entire ecosystem
i've been thinking about the last bits of this video, and the point about "addictive" game design not being inherently bad is a good one. it's easy for me to say the market trends in the industry feel like watching Zyn get created over and over forever, but this stuff is dual-use. i really would like to see a world where industry stops trying to subordinate people to addictions and instead we see healthier modes of interaction with what we can create. i don't see it getting better in the short-term, but having that explicitly pointed out felt like a bit of a silver lining i hadn't thought about much. also man Eternity Egg looks so damn cool, i can't wait for it to come out
Why the heck am I watching this? I am coming back to this video to continue watching it for some minutes every one or two hours. It seems to me that I am enchanted by your level of analysis, because I am by no means interested in a game like this.
when you talked about "striking visuals" all I see is a black screen with a few dots around, the game being dark and youtube's compression exessabaiting it isn't helpful.
i havent finished this video yet and idk who you are but i appreciate you trying to look at the aspects of the game that work/dont work and why exactly that is the case. i also like your simplistic but deliberate editing style
"Diablo IV has a good story" is a sentiment I just do not understand. It has /vibes/, it gets across impressions and knows how to set tones, but narrative? What narrative is there to speak of? The most interesting thing D3 did was set the stage for the whole "Sanctuary was made by an angel and a demon to escape the eternal conflict" but the payoff we get in D4 is that the angel is a low-t cuck who acts no different from the angels in D3 and the demon, for all she and Elijah and the cult say about being "salvation" or some kind of third force or /for/ Sanctuary, is UTTERLY indistinguishable from the big three evils or the Triune, not even being given a visually distinct faction the way Malthael's Reapers in D3 RoS were. And it's frustrating that nobody, not even the protag, calls out the obviousness of this, that functionally if you removed all of Lilith's dialogue about "salvation" and just called her Lady Diablo Returned From D3 NOTHING in the plot's construction would need to change, not really. It's another fruitless chase a-la D2, with preening villains who never admit defeat a-la D3, and one hell of a lame final beat designed to up-sell you on an expansion that will "complete (trust me guys the story in the expansion will be SO GOOD)" the story. As some Blizzard veterans say, all it takes is one shiny cutscene for upset blizzard gamers to forget all gripes, and it's like that with the story I feel - everyone remembers how poggers the hell-battle cutscene was but there's honestly nothing substantive to the story at all, not even in an "excuse to murder demons" kind of way. What was the point of Lilith? What was the point of Elijah? If you just write your villains as saying "I want to do Good Thing" and then all their actions contradict that but nobody even brings it up and they are indistinguishable from the villains whose entire thing is Just Being Bad you haven't written a compelling antagonist, you've just tricked anyone who runs on vibes that you have.
Jimmy literally calls that out in the video by saying Lillith is purposefully vague to hide a shallow and contradictory character and makes fun of her last words by saying they basically just promote the expansion.
Thanks for highlighting those indie titles cause i never would have heard of them otherwise. Just wanted to throw out Pseudoregalia, Corn Kidz 64, Orbo’s Odyssey, Abyss X Zero, and V.A. Proxy as some interesting titles that I have wishlisted
Diablo 4 makes all the improvements I wished for when I was a little kid playing Diablo 2. I still continued playing D2 because it was all I had, but it frustrated me with some mechanics, design decisions and the communication of mechanics and goals. Now that I'm an adult I appreciate D2 not just for the nostalgia, but because I can see the considerations that went into its creation and how the design allows me freedom while playing (and also because I simply know enough now to enjoy it). D4 on the other hand is clearer, more polished, more clearly communicates its mechanics and general objectives and makes it harder to skill yourself into a corner, where you practically can't progress anymore. I think if you look at it from the angle of a more casual or perhaps even not-so-good player, Diablo 4 is probably well designed to keep casual interest over a long period of time and still give a satisfying gameplay loop for an evening every week or so. To give another example of this: I recently played Path of Exile and while I enjoy the game (I'd even go so far and say I enjoy it greatly once I'm in the flow state) it's very daunting and after not playing for some time I grow hesitant to boot it up, because I have to spend some time remembering everything going on, I have around 40 skill gems for example, at this point I need a Guide to keep track of good synergy options between them. I have 3 main spells for damage and 3 for support plus an aura and I frequently forget to use half of them if I'm not already an hour into playing and fully immersed and warmed up. I want to make it clear that I abhor the business practices that are woven into D4 (which is the reason I would never buy it) and I think especially story wise there's room for improvement (even though the individual set pieces and characters are great), but the game part of the game is, in my opinion, intentionally designed in a good way. It's just not a way that appeals to capital G Gamers, but to a casual audience of newbies, older people, people who are just looking for an escape after a stressful work week and children. And the predatory business practices are sprinkled on top, to get the most revenue out of whales with too little self awareness. The existence of these battle passes and shops of course upsets a puritan Gamer, but most people aren't those and most likely don't even care. Phew long comment over, I liked your video btw :) I think you should use text pop ups less frequently, because they distort the flow, especially because you show them for such a short amount of time that you never have enough time to pause quickly enough causing skips back. And I think you would benefit from being more considerate in choosing your background footage, I noticed you are reusing clips and stuff like the graphs you showed are so much more interesting than contextless hordeslaying, shifting through menus or walking around the town, but that's probably due to the sheer length.
ill comment on the text aspect as well. it may be a me issue, and I fully plan on rewatching the video with more attention, but the way i watched this video the first time was with my headphones on while i was playing earthbound and mostly listening to it. i really like the editing of these videos, but non-narrated text forces my attention back to the video when i hear the music grow louder and narration cease. if this is intentional, frankly, i love it, which is why I fully intend on rewatching with more attention given, because the amount of effort and though put into this is so evident, it would be a disservice to not fully engage with it. my experience is there though, if you want the video to be more podcastified, then reduce the text comments or narrate them, if theyre meant to keep visual attention on the video, then they worked for me, because the text is important and usually succinct and to the point. i hope i didnt disrespect the video by paying less than full attention, i will be getting adhd medication like this week lol.
Your points on the morality and shoddy "ambiguity" of characters caught my attention, because they seem to line up with a problem I've run into myself in writing. Given how libertarian and generally uncentralized our culture is, it can be really difficult to write sin as a concept. Most people won't care or follow along unless it somehow, quickly, and directly, devolves into war, murder, slavery, directly life-threatening addiction, or, if you're selling to the right crowd, environmental destruction. When it comes to ontological conflicts like "cave to instincts that we know are selfish, or strive for standards we don't know are feasible," your average Joe Sixpack will usually just shrug and say "do whatever works for you." It puts one in a frustrating position where in order to make a point you feel the need to dumb down and exaggerate. So rather than salvation through one's own desires and thoughts versus salvation through the legacy and wisdom of past generations, it becomes frenzied cannibal ape-man cult versus systemic manipulation by boring old people. But at that level of ideological decay, you're not REALLY making the point you set out to make in the first place, are you?
i wasn’t running anything that was broken or meta, but a random patch nerfed one of the abilities my build was based on back when the game first came out. the nerf rendered my build pretty weak compared to other players at my level. i realized how long and how much it would take to get my character back to a point where i could tackle content at the same level and stopped playing. i havent really felt the desire to come back since. i dont regret buying the game. it was great fun on first playthrough, but the endgame was pretty boring
I'm realizing having watched this that I ignored immortal--assuming IV would be the 'real' one. I still imagine it might be trash, but now I want to play it just to see how similar it feels. I did finally kick the WoW habit. No idea why people play that thing anymore.
Nice to see someone not saying "diablo 1 was only good because it inspired diablo 2 and there is nothing that wasn't improved" I enjoyed my diablo 2 remaster playthrough last year, but boy howdy did I prefer my subsequent diablo 1 replay afterwards... even with flaws. The tone, progression, restrictions and even roguelike presentations of tomes and staves made the whole experience feel... fresh. And also, the quests and lore books, there were more than I remembered.
I honestly was surprised with how much praise was heaped on the writing here. I found it mostly by the book and cliche. Pretty to look at, but not really saying much, with occasional questionable decisions. (Yonan just deciding to pet a zombie wall in the middle of hell may be one of the funniest ways to kill a character off). Shot composition simply put can not make up for boring unrelatable characters in a drab setting with uneven pacing thanks to the open world.
Would love to hear your thoughts on Grim Dawn, since you're a POE enjoyer looking for good ARPGs, I think you would love it, and would be interesting to see how you think it contrasts with Diablo 4.
Another great video. I don't have anything to say about Diablo you didn't mention. But I did want to say I was really pleased to see your list of indies you were looking forward to, lots of incredible games I was already interested in myself, and some new ones I hadn't seen before. Looking forward to whatever you make next man.
I think I'm getting a bit over the view that PoE is this flip-side of D4 that is free to play and doesn't tend to shove transactions into the game. I didn't mind buying initial stash tabs, I treated it like paying to unlock the full game after the trial. But the current mechanic forces you to spend a fair amount of money if you want to interact with it, probably $60 to make it feel comfortable. Even though I didn't give into it, it still left a sour taste in my mouth, and it constantly reappeared since the mechanic sticks its head out at every stage of the game. I dunno, people just tend to make PoE sound like innocence, but the truth is that micro transactions being at the core of the game have a tendency to dampen the experience.
I totally get why people follow a "series" but D4 is basically the end point for capitalism. Make a product, build a base, monitize that base. We look at video games like art, and they are, but we forget they're also products first and foremost, especially coming from a publicly traded corporation. This isnt a new phenomena, we've been cursing EA since the 90s or earlier. I'm honestly glad every time a new generation learns this lesson. That said, you will ALWAYS have to hop from company to company, and stay with the small ones. We all want sequels because we want more of a good thing, but they are always the start of a road of more. More game, bigger staff, more content, better long term support and whoops, now we have over 100 employees and shareholders and now were just like every other big game company. By the time Diablo got a 3 at the end it was doomed. Made the jump to Torchlight because PoE is way too complicated for me. Torchlight got a sequel (their third game now being that wonderful 'live service') so i jumped to Last Epoch. Thats very fun but when they inevitably get big enough to make their sequel, it'll be time to find another studio again. The only experiences that can be made truely for the player, with player interest coming first, are those without a financial incentive. IE small indie games made by very few people at a time, who aren't hoping for a breakout success to begin with. Is that a cynical view? Most likely. 30+ years of gaming mostly prove it true though. Are there exceptions? Sure. Larian and Supergiant Games seems to have bucked the trend. But they are very much the exceptions, not the rule (and they are, very impotantly, privately owned).
Thank you for making this, this helped me separate my personal feelings for D4 from the actual content of it. Playing the game on launch effectively ruined the game permanently for me and I doubt I would have ever thought about it again. I made the unfortunate mistake of "beta" testing the buggy launch of the game, on hardcore no less. I was 68 Necromancer Quazzie on pace to be one of the first 200 or so to reach level 100. I genuinely really enjoyed the game and was having a blast playing through it. My only gripe was how mandatory doing all of the side content felt. My playthrough came to an end when I fully cleared a dungeon to completion, warped back to town and after 13 seconds of running around my game went black screen and had to be force closed out. After relaunching my character was gone. They did not appear in the death screen until two days later at which point it listed Shambling Corpse as my cause of death. To make things worse months later when I tried getting back into the game they had added account wide progression for all side content. In theory this would mean I would not have to grind everything out again in order to be at full power. This feature did not work for me. I effectively spent 80 hours on nothing. Not just the typical video game esque online intangible "nothing", but the literal nothing, the one where I can't even interact with it.
22:12 >"Raiden, take heed and bear witness to the truth that lie herein." Brilliant, mate. Probably woke up my poor neighbors by laughing too loud on my patio with that one.
love the slideshow of promising indie games at the end, nice way to contrast the unchanging bedrock of the gaming scene with the current AAA+ slop fest
Hello gamer! After a short rest, I made the English subtitles today. Here is a list of all the music with timestamps since people have been asking about it in the comments.
00:00:18 Harem - Matt Uelman (Diablo 2)
00:02:45 The Merchant Raosta - Yuka Watanabe (Crossed Swords)
00:07:30 Shop - Koji Endo (King's Field)
00:10:14 Wilderness - Matt Uelman (Diablo 2)
00:16:36 Tristram - Matt Uelman (Diablo)
00:22:08 BGM 77 (can't find the name sorry) - Harry Gregson Williams/Norihiko Hibino (Metal Gear Solid 2)
00:27:01 Halls - Matt Uelman (Diablo 2 LoD)
00:30:56 Review - Kenta Nagata (1080 Snowboarding)
00:35:31 Track 5 - ??? (Virtual Casino) (I ripped this myself, idk anything about it)
00:40:17 East Seaside - Koji Endo (King's Field 2)
00:45:59 A World of Madness - Akira Yamaoka (Silent Hill 2)
00:56:07 Cave of Fear - Tamsoft Sound Team (Guardian's Crusade)
00:59:18 The Red Naval Port - Syun Nishigaki & Tatsuro Suzuki (19XX The War Against Destiny)
01:02:00 Rogue Encampment - Matt Uelman (Diablo 2)
01:04:35 Daddy's Money - Wh0r3s
01:06:30 Arms Depot - Harry Gregson Williams/Norihiko Hibino (Metal Gear Solid 2)
01:08:55 Hell - Matt Uelman (Diablo)
01:24:39 Some untitled thing - me
01:31:53 Fantasy Land - John Baker (SEGA Channel)
01:34:34 Wormsign - Dune (The Best of Keygen Music)
01:38:45 Brinstar - Kenji Yamamoto (Super Metroid)
01:47:47 26 5 [demo] - Aphex Twin
01:50:42 luke vibert spiral staircase - Aphex Twin
02:02:09 Tristram again
02:11:26 Mist Engine - James Primate (Rain World)
In the future I will credit songs while they are playing, the same way I credit videos I use.
thank you + based aphex twin
I'd also appreciate a link list of any recommended resources or things referenced, like at 35:00 reverse design of diablo 2
A lot of this video could be heavily edited down. Much is saying the same thing in different ways. I would guess probably 60% shorter would be conservative.
This is one of the best channels I've discovered this year but after trying my first long video, it definitely has the solo creator/TH-cam problem of using 10 sentences to make what should be one sentence.
I don't think I can watch other game review videos after this despite absolutely loving your content style. 😢
That's figuratively - your issue is using 10 sentences to make a point you already used 10 sentences to make 5 times already. 😢
This was great but WAY too long and repetitive. i fell asleep watching it and literally have no idea where i got to as anywhere i go to, hes saying things ive already heard but i know i was somewhere around 70% 😂 so just skipping to the end segment and as im writing this hes making a point i heard hours ago about less affixes. Is this written by AI? The channel has talked about AIs limited memory making it repeat loads so im genuinely interested what input AI had into this script???
"this game is 80 hours of metastasis every 4 months"
is the most violent commentary i've ever heard about any game lmao. Thanks for your work
Wait what does he mean here? The phrasing is throwing me off
@@nickjohnson398
Every few months the game will steal 80 hours of your life but will offer you nothing substantial.
TH-cam is somehow so broken, that I can't see the questioning guy's comment anymore. This site is falling apart.
my answer for him:
Basically, metastasis is "meta-progression, but stasis, like homeostasis, you're just holding holding the same position". So when you bring the thought together, he's saying that you're basically punching the clock, and spending 80 hours to maintain progress level everytime they update, which is every four months. He's calling it out on being fake, and wastefully long, etc.
@@tumultoustortellini Thank you for your explanation. Goodness it's a rather elegant and grim turn of phrase, isn't it?
@@Cyromantik It is. I Think we should all fear games like this. In a sense, they're making a game that'll make you work to give them money, except you don't get paid, just mediocre entertainment. As if these companies couldn't squeeze us more, they turned games into jobs to do it again lol.
Been waiting for this one so I can flippantly type "D4 bad" before actually absorbing anything from the video.
D4 bad(haven’t read your comment yet)
Post-viewing Update: D4 Bad.
it is in fact bad but we cant all be path of exile
D4 bad
Actually D4 season 4 update made the game a lot better.
That thumbnail is a work of art, it literally says everything before watching the video
I felt the urge to clap when I saw it, and I'm barely meming.
It's why i clicked the video lmao its such a burn
Ikr
I work in the industry. I've seen design documents for popular mobile games. The way they talk about structuring every bell and whistle to get people addicted and to get addicted people to spend more money is so blunt I was shocked. They talked like super villains basically. Any game that implements anything similar puts me off now.
Take a snapshot of it and post it online. Its better to know your enemy than otherwise
Would you mind sharing some specific verbiage used? I'm morsely curious.
I went to college to learn game design
Yup you nailed it, the way the teachers talk about how easy it is to earn cash trough mobile gaming and make people addicted to your product is insanely inhuman
@@Spinevoyager @konradohlm3131 For example words like "pervasive" and "aggressive" are used to describe a how a new kind of paid collectible should be designed. It should be a "status symbol" in order to "force monetization higher" and should have a "social aspect" so it can be adopted by more people
@@konradohlm3131 Just look up the speech "let's go whaling", you don't need to be "in the industry" to have this information.
Not to be hyperbolic but I've found more and more that having these microtransaction schemes shoved in my face, even though I never use them, just completely kills my ability to enjoy a game.
I don't want to continue engaging with something after I see it brazenly try to manipulate me. That does not put me in a good mood, or compel me to see what else they have to offer, even if I know the other stuff is good.
And this is all assuming that no gameplay was sacrificed for the sake of monetization, which of course it almost always was.
My exact feeling
It's like knowing that a piece of art was generated rather than made, the little intentions behind it are corrupted (by microtransactions) or nonexistent
Agreed. A particularly egregious example I ran into recently was Tales of Arise. A single player JRPG that shoves its DLC store in your face when you camp to restore health. Game itself is fun but that completely killed my desire to keep playing.
this is one of the reasons I just dropped genshin one day, it wasn't just the constatnt pull of the gacha and the limited rng runs I had to do every day, its that all of that stuff was desperately trying to keep me hooked and buying more blattlespases and pulls, without actually giving me anything meaningful to do, all the "events" had the best reward (premium currency) as the first tier of reward, you can just do that and skip the rest, but the gameplay was fun enough that I wanted to play them all, I kept betting bogged down by how my achievements meant nothing once the new characters came out and how my team or builds were not the best possible set ups, I could simply not try and get the best rewards, trying was heavily punished and pushing the game boiled down to not having a big enough stat stick to do the thing fast enough.
Microtransactions creates an adversarial relationship between game creator and player. It turns the game creator from gamemaster to car salesmen.
Monetization in games has genuinely ruined the sense of progression and excitement. No longer do i unlock things as i play, i just have to be remjnded that "actually this better item is in the PREMIUM PASS" and that in itself kills any motivation for spending time in a game. Apex legends od example and its reward system is abhorent, so i only play the game to wnjoy the skill expression it presents. Anything like cosmetics is moot and useless. Which is. Abummer. Gone are the days of unlocking cool free skins and colours off of natural progression or challenges. No visual expression is allowed unless you fork a shit ton of money. I do hope we all wake up to how predatory these systems are and express them in a way that inspired change. Awesome video, it made me.think qiite a bit about the state of everything we consume.
I've been calling these "proxy currencies' scrip, cause that's basically what it is. You can only spend them in their company store and they regulate the exchange rate and how much you get.
I might steal that, really good point.
And you can't trade back for real money. It's basically an even worse crypto. At least you can buy drugs with crypto.
Jimmy, thanks for this video! Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to see it through. Not because of its quality - it's fantastic - but because I find it horribly depressing. You summed it up pretty concisely at the start of the video: the D4 model is a sad proposition for a world growing sadder. It's meant to tickle human weakness in the lowest way, and no amount of "we're passionate about videogames" is going to improve things. Thanks anyway, much appreciated!
I totally get it, it was a struggle to put together. I'm going back to indies after this, probably forever.
@@JimmyMcG33 looking forward to it
@@JimmyMcG33 Understandable, I think there’s a lot of indie games that deserve more coverage and analysis than they get too so it’s a win-win
@@JimmyMcG33 Your Rainworld videos, for a game I've never played and probably will never play, have left me watching every single one of your videos with real enthusiasm. It's also justified exploring more of TH-cam's suggested videos since that's how I discovered yours. I don't know if you'll see this. I don't leave many comments, and this is just one hidden in a reply, but the Rainworld videos are not my favorite videos you've made. I'll likely watch anything you take the time to struggle to put together.
@@JimmyMcG33 :D
That ending. A two hour and twelve minute wind up to a blow so savage it needs no delivery: the target is already dead.
And then you fade in Rain World music at the very end, a wistful memory of something truly and humbly brilliant.
Your videos are absolutely amazing! And thank you for the indie recommendations, wishlisted almost all of those.
''The frustrating thing is that some slob can just take a Great Game - make a cheap copy and slap a bunch of psuedo-progression and monetization on top of it , in fact there's one high profile example you might have hear of..'' the most poignant of points which holds a mirror to the revolting visage of D4.
Thank you for making such a thought provoking critique of the current state of the AAA games industry as a whole . These games are not made out of passion or to foster a lifelong emotional experience ,but rather to milk nostalgia and the wallets of their fans with predatory macro-transactions under the guise of 'live service'.
I'll never forgive ABK for ruining all the heart , soul and legacy of Diablo that Blizzard North/ Condor (Brevik et al) meticulously crafted with passion and devotion for their fans.
Support AA/ indie studios that create games with love for the artform and where the sole purpose is not to manipulate your enjoyment on their terms for shareholder metrics and quarterly reports.
Or just play retro. The two Yakuza on the PSP have fan translations now, I'm on the 2nd playing them consecutively and the games are FANTASTIC. Everything modern games are not.
>3:40 'In character email from Hoyo-verse'
That's hilarious on so many levels... It's also incredibly sad
they do the same thing for star rail 💀💀
bro they won't stop, i have more of their roster in my spam folder than in the game
they send in game mail, make posts on all social media and send you an e-mail if it's a character's birthday
@JimmyMcG33 As I was watching the vid, I literally got an in character email
For a character’s rerun 💀
@@JimmyMcG33 Then make a filter to trash mails like that. There's a lot of options in gmail; it's not that hard
Thank you sincerely for not adding those final two words to the end of the script
sometimes i think of a joke like that and it makes me cackle like a villain in a cartoon
I'm complerely lost on what the joke here could be.
Wait it "Diablo 4", or a gotcha like "Your Mom"?
@@JimmyMcG33 we knew what you meant, you knew what you meant but just stopping and ending the video without another word said actually made me chortle. It was such a ballsy way to say it.
I'm betting he meant "Diablo Immortal"? Diablo 4 isn't exactly a cheap copy.
I've been playing a lot of indie games and rediscovered my joy for gaming.
Manor Lords, Shogun Showdown, Halls of Torment, Redout 2, Slipstream, Slay the Spire.
So many great indie games are out there and it's rekindled my passion for this hobby.
I'm looking for some more good indies as well. Some good ones I can recommend are Soulstone Survivors, Army of Ruin, Death Must Die, Halls of Tormet which you already listed, and Inkbound
Millions of great retro games too. Both PSP Yakuza have translations now. I've only finished the first but it's a 9/10 and the second is great so far
7:52 this just made me look up how weak the Canadian dollar is. wow is it weak. Congrats CA
Kinda fitting
That "exploiting people at their lowest" point is so true, I've rarely been in a happy state of mind when I've spent money on game cosmetics. The most monetarily successful live service games make you feel empty inside while simultaneously making you not want to stop playing, aka League of Legends.
Something I really enjoy about your videos is how you sprinkle in some humor and sincerity without breaking the flow. I find not many creators can walk the line for me between presenting a serious critique with bordeline esterile delivery or without resorting to the same 4 jarring jokes.
that little set up for a compliment about the tutorials being as good as those typically found in the triple AAA space... and the payoff is just an expert bonk to the head delivered without the slightest deviation or distraction
oh to live in a world where so much of what plagues us could be as easily dispatched and moved on from
You are gradually filling in the gap that matthewmatosis left behind when he retired from making videos for me personally. Seriously one of the most forward thinking 'video essaysists' on this platform with unique insight on every topic you cover. This stuff may be ugly, but the way you structure this creates a fascinating analytic text.
There are three wolves inside D4. The first is an auteur, making a grim dark masterpiece. The second wolf is trying to find a way to turn that work into a universal studios theme park with egregious over monetization. The third wolf just blew in from stupid town.
and the third wolf is Bobby Kotick in his furry suit
@@notalpharius2562Nah, that's the second. The third is whoever designed the inventory and weapon dmg alteration systems
It's honestly even worse than this.
Its more like Wolf 2 hired a whole team of other Wolf 2s to delegate a dozen teams of Wolf 1s to produce a product that *feels* like Wolf 1's baby, while actually being masterminded form the start to be Wolf 2's cash cow.
Armor used to look cool asf with lore behind them; With what they did often being tied to the lore. Now, anything with an ounce of effort put into it is usually reserved for the store.
Once stores are standard, why would a company that can get away with a store offer anything cool for free? (Given they consider anything included in the £70 cost of the game as being given for free, the £70 only buying you a store client with the minimum extra to not be sued) The most depressing thing is that and more than anything should have stopped anyone engaging with the current gen.
Honestly?
Dunking on the game this hard for two hours despite your thumbnail saying it all is savage
Respect👍
Thank you for going into such detail about how predatory those RLM shop systems truly are. People all too often just handwaive it away with arguments like "Don't like it, don't buy it" or "It's only cosmetics, bro!" but never seem to acknowledge how they pray on vulnerable people like addicts, depressed individuals, young children and other individuals with low self control or impulsive habits! I've had many a heated argument about exactly that point with Dragon's Dogma 2's MTX with a large majority of people simply refusing to admit that it IS a problem, even if you don't need to buy them to "enjoy" the game, meanwhile completely neglecting the aforementioned predatory issues and the fact that you are buying bandaid fixes to problems the developers created.
Edit: Damn, you even managed to figure out that the inclusion of open world multiplayer was most definitely motivated to be a presentation of store cosmetics to potential buyers! Respect, didn't think you'd mention that.
This could only exist under economic fascism, where the dominant feeling people have toward others can be summed up as "I'm alright Jack" - in a society and under a system where people care about others, the current state of gaming is one of thousands of things that couldn't exist.
This video helped me put into words why video games just turn me off very often and I realized it's modern games never leaving room for you to take extended breaks. I've played D2 since LoD released, on and off, and it always feels like the game welcomes me back by just being in the state I left it; no matter how long the breaks I take are. All this seasonal content, the battle passes, MTX and so on are just carnival barkers that never shut up and instills in you the feeling you cannot leave at any time and come back later to keep enjoying the experience.
You just put into words what ive disliked about Diablo 3 past the main story.
Just want to say, I know it's strange, but your subscriptions are awesome for allowing me to find alot of other intelligent youtubers like Jimmy Mcgee. Thanks. And I fully agree.
What's engaging about a game that tries to make you come back constantly? Nothing at all. No art has ever functioned in that way and it's so nakedly exploitative barren capitalist manipulation
Off topic, but at the end, when the music credits show up at the end (btw thank you for attributing the music, not nearly enough people do that), the patterns that they pop in and the way it's in time to the beat is super satisfying
He did the same in his "AI revolution is rotten" video and this was the moment my rating for it went from 10 to 11 out of ten
The codex rework highlights a broader issue with D4.
As you said, skills alone don't carry a build. You need a bunch of synergistic Aspects to make a build work, and there's no chance generic affixes will be powerful enough to make you swap a synergistic piece out for a "0.2% more damage on fridays" type of thing.
Addiction over fun means they need you to complete your build relatively early, otherwise the progression grinds down into frustration, and once you have most Aspects the only thing you're looking for is higher % (they removed D3 item sets just in name, you're effectively collecting sets of Aspects).
Since there's no system to improve Aspects, it's all RNG, when you drop a perfect Aspect now you're likely going to be frustrated: use it and you'll inevitably drop an item with better affixes, wait for the perfect item and feel you're running a lame build.
The new system will steer players towards collecting different sets of perfect Aspects and trying different builds once the current one gets boring, pushing the grind to peripheral stuff like slowly improving affixes % and leveling glyphs, which on their own have a small enough impact you won't feel the build is gimped.
To me it's not enough to overcome the feeling of the D4 game being a Rupe Golberg-esque decoration around the PURCHASE button. It took me years to realise addiction isn't the same as fun, and the feeling of having been exploited isn't pleasant and doesn't go away.
Its too grindy. Played older arpgs that had more variety in viable builds for hardest modes and end game. Literally dozens. Sure theyre not all absolute identical peak dps but theyre close enough that you wont care. Besides if one b uild makes everything that touches you die its only fair that it has 10-20% less dps than actively spamming keys until you get early onset arthritis.
@@Andytlp it feels grindy because with its current mechanics it has to give you a mostly complete build (all skills + most aspects/uniques, for sure all the core stuff) by level ~50. Past that it's a game of chicken for when you'll pop those high roll aspects while you improve the "0.2% more damage on frozen pescatarians" affixes.
Even universally acclaimed ARPGs like PoE degenerate into builds that can clear screens worth of chaff until they get one shot by a random booger lost in the visual clusterfuck, but those have great pacing. There are always multiple stepstones (for PoE it could be an extra gem link, accumulating enough mana to activate an extra aura, reaching an important node in the tree...) you're working towards while you accumulate those (individually) pointless and boring 0.2% increments, until the very very lategame where only true Hardcore Gamers™ run challenges to prove they can.
Diablo 4 gives you the complete experience by level 50, and gives constant reworks and free respecs to keep you going, to let YOU gimp YOUR character by restarting on a different build just to keep the game interesting, under the illusion that the new, stronger build will be more fun.
I quite like the ending to this video. I'm surprised at just how many games you showed there too - I've always known myself not to keep up with games that much, but I knew of 0 of those and if I had to compile a list of my own I'd struggle to come up with 3 releases I'm looking forward to, no matter how obscure. Perhaps I should check some of those out sometime, although the itch palestine bundle (and the inspiration to make a game after playing ZeroRanger) will keep me occupied for a while.
Also, I'd recommend showing song names on-screen when they play. Listing them all is good, but it's quite difficult for somebody to find something they're looking for if they have to manually count how many tracks played, or try to find a song they're familiar with to use as a reference point. There may well be a reason you refrain from doing this, but seeing as how you show other sources on-screen it seems like it'd be totally fine to me o,o
Thanks! I mostly use Twitter to follow developers these days (when I'm not yelling at zi0nists) so I find a lot of interesting games that way. That Palestine bundle has lots of great stuff.
Yeah I'm going to do on-screen music credits from now on, I thought they might clutter up the video but the credits are completely useless the way they are now lol
@@JimmyMcG33 Not completely useless; having any credit at all is miles above most videos and much appreciated. But yeah synchronized is better
"A drip feed of dopamine for it's own sake" is a phenomenal phrase. imo lots of software products (social media, AAA liveservice games, ai girlfriend apps, whatever) are converging upon that optimum. An obscene limit point of consumption; an eternal present, a comfortable waking dream. People are eager to be transported, they can be drawn in without full awareness, without regard for the time it will exact from them. It's an addictive mechanism we can understand, but the full consequences of it's rapid global deployment will take a long time to come to terms with.
Also thanks for the indie recs at the end! Psycho Patrol R was already on my list, but i didn't know about my work is not yet done, looks cool
@@arcmage7000it's an awesome thing to receive. The most important thing we can do now in modern times is to hang on to each other.
I recommend that you look through commenters here and find youtubers they're subscribed to, which are also often just as good, intelligent and verbose as Jimmy Mcgee, but aren't recommended on TH-cam anymore because our algorithms are becoming far too good at directing us towards circular content farms and hate speech instead of actual art. You might discover alot of new games you haven't heard of through it, because I know I have
I'm going to assume this will be the most insightful review of D4 to ever be created. I don't think I would've gotten this much out of just playing the game myself.
The video was amazing and it opened my eyes. Was watching it while leveling in the season 4 of diablo 4 and you actually made me stop running on the treadmill for a second to think about my decision.
"this feels like old money" was a perfect description
a good day when jimmy uploads
So far you've helped with 5 sleeps and I'm only 40 mins in. Thanks!
I honestly can't tell if this is a compliment or insult lmao
@@schmidth compliment
Well, this video finally got me to uninstall Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, so thanks lol
I had already seen your other videos on the machine-zone and gaming and those were really influential intellectually for me, but knowing it cognitively wasn't enough. Hearing you say at the end of the video, that at the end of your experience with D4 you just felt weird and tired and sad really resonated with me emotionally. These games... these types of games... just made me feel tired and sad. No more!
I think one of the most damning indictments of D4 is that it actively tries to persuade you from playing the campaign. I like to make multiple characters to test out some abilities before committing to a character, and the game started asking if I wanted to skip the campaign even though I hadn't even finished act 1. The campaign is the best part of the game by far and they don't want you to engage with it at all, so they can push you straight to the treadmill. I personally believe every season should have at least 1 campaign playthrough, but whether or not you agree with that, a new player who hasn't even finished act 1 should NEVER be prompted to skip the campaign.
7:40 Oblivion was clearly ahead of its time
Learning that the horse armour DLC sold really well flipped some kind of switch in my brain. Maybe they put it in Diablo 4 to celebrate the Microsoft acquisition.
8:39 "All systems like these exist to exploit people at their lowest, who are either bad with money or in such a bleak mood that they think a videogame cosmetic will make them feel better."
I've had a couple depressive cycles in my life (like COVID, a really bad breakup, and a workplace re-structure that axed most of my social structure overnight) and one of the staple stages of these cycles is re-installing Destiny 2, buying the current season pass, buying a few Eververse items with silver, reaching the max level in the season, slowly realize what's really happening, and ending it all by deleting all of my weapons, armor, and items, and then uninstalling.
Introspection is rare ability. Is useful to make sure you dont repeat mistakes from the past. You have this ability :)
@@domisPL_01 Thank you! What a nice message.
I get "why" Diablo 4's UX/UI is like a mobile game. I just don't understand "why". Like, isn't having a super gritty realistic cutscene juxtaposed with battle passes and rewards and BUY NOW just the ultimate failure in thematics? Like the cutscene is what I expect for buying the game, only for them to pull the rug out from under me. It feels cheap.
2:07:43 I am going to violently disagree with this statement. People in game development are being laid off for two reasons; AI, and a reduction in demand for games now that the pandemic is over. It’s the industry trying to extract more work from its workforce for less pay, combined with the end of a temporary spike in demand for video games they knew was coming. Games are cheaper and easier than ever to make, as well as more in demand at all levels of polish/effort- the indie market proves that. Don’t let the AAA industry fool you into thinking they have to go to live service models- they’d simply prefer to because they make money on them hand over fist. If modders can update Skyrim modern graphics, for free, on their off time, AAA studios can produce games without relying on gambling to fund them. Lining your corporate executives pockets is not a necessary cost of game development.
Your videos are criminally underrated. You deserve more exposure.
hell yeah man a long time in the making congrats
God I'm so glad that you're not pushing that "they fixed it!" narrative that so many crappy games try to push after the colossal and well-earned success that No Mans Sky had, looking very angrily at Bethesdas direction... and saw it at Ubisoft obviously as well, but they're well... Ubisoft...
no mans sky is still not a game. its an empty sandbox with nothing to do. 8 rehashed plannets and 10 rehashed animals that get demonically combined in all possible ways.
Great video, one of my fav subs on YT. Not sure if you've ventured into Warcraft 3 custom games much? but I'd love an essay on the deep world of custom games in wc3.
I haven't but that's a good idea!
There were some wild af custom maps, i remember playing Bleach versuses One Piece in the school computer room
I'm gonna consider this Pay to Win Ep 2.5 as the waiting room continues lol
Thanks for the video, your work here is is appreciated
Thoughts:
1) It's been an interesting experience observing the Modern Day Gamer's Triple A Video Game™transform itself into a vehicle to over-monetize and bleed you of time like a mosquito
In relation to your developing thesis in Pay to Win, of how gambling machines manipulate folks, and how one could see that essence weave its way into games--
it is quite sobering to see this "casino-fication" in real time without too much fuss from the general audiences
2) Speaking of the greater industry at large, the thoughts your video brings out are poignant to current happenings, as layoffs numbers in the industry continue to rise, while games continue to make money and executives continue to make money, as they panic over stock dips, as they are unable to compete with a pandemic boom
If I could specifically talk about Xbox for a second (since they do own Activision Blizzard now), Brad Hilderbrand recently posted a breakdown of the hot water situation Xbox is now finding itself in
--The tldr here is that their standing is basically untenable
At this point, I would not be surprised if we see another western video game industry crash before the end of the decade
Considering the direction that all this nickle-and-diming of our time and money will ultimately move towards, one could say it would be a deserved fate if anything
3) All the more reason to support your local neighborhood indie developer
If I could make a recommendation to you, feel free to check out a game (on Steam) called *Raw Metal*. It is pretty tough, but skill curve is satisfying to learn. It has a demo too
And that's my comment
Cheers
only a few minutes in and so impressed by your writing/research/presentation. You’ve got a solid amount of subs but are still underrated imo.
subbed btw
i like jimmy because every video reminds me what a fun game actually is as to not be tricked into being hopelessly addicted to the skin box.
One of the best video game documentaries I’ve seen and you really strike the nail on the head. Inadequate developers is not the problem, development designed around monetary gain and addiction is the problem.
Diablo 2 was one of, if not literally the first game I ever played. For a large percentage of my time on this planet it was a large percentage of my total playtime.
If you had asked my younger self if he wanted to play 'Diablo 4' when it came out, you would have been met with unbounded excitement
And I was a little excited seeing some of the early trailers, but honestly I can't see myself ever buying it. It's not even a like internal struggle, I just genuinely don't even feel like it :/
It's sad to see it become this, but I'm just happy other people are effectively picking up the slack. PoE2 looking like it's gonna be what D4 shoulda been
Still dont understand how this lad isnt hitting hundreds of thousands to millions of views on every upload, I get nobody gives a shit about tripple A microtransaction fest but imo this should be like an hbomber guy situation where vastly more people watch the video than actively play the game its discussing. The editing is on point, the pacing is great, the jokes are pretty rapid fire, and the writing is particularly good for a youtube video essay. You also credit people in the video directly like when you mentioned the reviews by article or writer. Thats something that most video essayists have been pretty shit about. Youre also explicitly anti capitalist which is great because so many of the critiques of games with these monetization systems fall flat because they cant comprehend critiquing the incentive structures that force creativity out of the games industry
Your videos are really a cut above, looking forward to this.
I've never played a diablo game before but my friends have, this was a very interesting critique.
I love watching videos on things I only slightly care about
I was not expecting this. Love your work and appreciate the effort you put into these essays. Finally got around to sending you a bit of coffee cash.
Seeing ATMA in a video caught me off guard. Takes me back to endless solo offline play that I used to do.
1:52:23 As someone who played cookie clicker (and modified the JavaScript code to speed up the sugar lumps drops) the main fun isn't the cookie clicker part but rather the side gameplay loops (sadly not enough side loops of gameplay to keep me invested) the stock market being my favorite one. Cookie clicker gives you other gameplay loops to progress towards that feeds into the main gameplay loop and vise versa.
My tism is acting up you meant the idiom cookie clicker and not literal cookie clicker -_-;
I'm in a somewhat similar brainspace to you, but microtransactions and gambling addictions and the mechanics behind them drive me on to try and understand them with a morbid fascination *because* I'm extremely susceptible to them. Autistic, suffering from ADHD, I'm the exact kind of mentally ill that these techniques are laser targeted to prey on. And even when I work to understand them on every level, I have sometimes still found myself succumbing to them.
Anyway, I'm glad to see someone push back against these practices from the "other" side of that, so to speak - someone who recognizes that they're evil not just because they're personally affected by them, but because they are just plain evil, no two ways about it. Great video, very cathartic to watch.
Thanks! When people defend practices like this, it's a quiet way of saying that it's OK to hurt people if they are susceptible to being hurt.
Surprise 2 hour video from Mr. McGee and I am HERE FOR IT!
And here I am fully aware of the shop in d4 and still having fun because I (and I believe everyone, too) can totally ignore the shop and battlepass and just focus on the game part which is, as I said, really fun for me, playing an hour or two each day between work and going to bed.
what makes me upset the most about d4 is that i truly get the feeling the devs the people actually making the game wanted more with the gameplay and story but higher ups forced them to make it as monetizable as possible because i feel like there were choices they wanted to make but couldnt
'it was like eating candy until you get sick and continuing to eat candy.' really was D4 for me in a nutshell
this critique has been so clear and surgical, thanks for making it. Its frustrating because D4 is so well polished, and managed the shed much of the stench of Chris Metzen that D3 had, but live serviceness of it just seeps through constantly and makes you feel awful for playing it.
I agree completely with you on the story, with the exception of how Neyrelle is handled at the end. Everyone being cool with a child running off alone, in this evil demon world, is stupid. Is ultra stupid when she's carrying a prime evil's soulstone with her. Her 'wishes' really don't mean spit, finding her and dragging her home should be priority #1.
Damn they did a really good job with the cut scenes almost makes me want to play the game.
Lol.
Ive been thinking about doing a vid where I play a level of the old Amiga game _Barbarian,_ watch Conan, then do another level, watch Conan the Destroyer, do another level, watch Red Sonja, then rave about how good the 'cutscenes' are in the game.
Fundamentally cutscenes are _not the effing game._ The game happens while you press buttons and stuff. If I wanted to watch a movie, I'd... watch a movie.
I first felt this playing Diablo 3, where the cutscenes were (or at least felt at the time) so prolific that playing the game felt like an interruption in the movie. I have literally no recollection of the story past act 2, because by that time I was just saying 'p*ss off and let me play' and skipping them.
I didnt buy D4.
22:06 I’m here for _you,_ bud.
i'm stunned i haven't been subscribed to you yet after watching pay to win, your guided tours, the raiden fighters video, and finally this one. also to add to the indie games, Selaco is a fantastic tactical fps built in GZDoom, and Blue Revolver is a recently released indie sh'mup that got me into the genre.
This is probably the best d4 review I have seen but besides that I really like that you listed of all music with artists you used in the video at the end
Videos this long are rarely this concise and dense. Very smart script!
Diablo 4 has a good (enough) story and a treadmill in the same way the epic store has "helped promote competition in the pc marketplace", as a backdoor to ensnare a user base for profit at the expense of the entire ecosystem
i've been thinking about the last bits of this video, and the point about "addictive" game design not being inherently bad is a good one. it's easy for me to say the market trends in the industry feel like watching Zyn get created over and over forever, but this stuff is dual-use. i really would like to see a world where industry stops trying to subordinate people to addictions and instead we see healthier modes of interaction with what we can create. i don't see it getting better in the short-term, but having that explicitly pointed out felt like a bit of a silver lining i hadn't thought about much. also man Eternity Egg looks so damn cool, i can't wait for it to come out
Love your work Jimmy keep it up! I always look forward to your thoughtful examinations on gaming and pay to win mechanics!
Why the heck am I watching this? I am coming back to this video to continue watching it for some minutes every one or two hours. It seems to me that I am enchanted by your level of analysis, because I am by no means interested in a game like this.
Babe wake up, it's Jimmy time again!
when you talked about "striking visuals" all I see is a black screen with a few dots around, the game being dark and youtube's compression exessabaiting it isn't helpful.
sheeeit
i havent finished this video yet and idk who you are but i appreciate you trying to look at the aspects of the game that work/dont work and why exactly that is the case. i also like your simplistic but deliberate editing style
"the inevitable steampunk season" - too true.
Jimmy, can you please put the list of upcoming indies you are looking forward to into a google doc link in the description or something?
I think you have said everything with the thumbnail
👍
another feature length movie from executive producer writer Jimmy McGee, what a time to be alive
I love these videos man, if I wasn't dead broke in southern America I'd donate monthly just to see as many of these as I possibly could
"Diablo IV has a good story" is a sentiment I just do not understand. It has /vibes/, it gets across impressions and knows how to set tones, but narrative? What narrative is there to speak of? The most interesting thing D3 did was set the stage for the whole "Sanctuary was made by an angel and a demon to escape the eternal conflict" but the payoff we get in D4 is that the angel is a low-t cuck who acts no different from the angels in D3 and the demon, for all she and Elijah and the cult say about being "salvation" or some kind of third force or /for/ Sanctuary, is UTTERLY indistinguishable from the big three evils or the Triune, not even being given a visually distinct faction the way Malthael's Reapers in D3 RoS were. And it's frustrating that nobody, not even the protag, calls out the obviousness of this, that functionally if you removed all of Lilith's dialogue about "salvation" and just called her Lady Diablo Returned From D3 NOTHING in the plot's construction would need to change, not really. It's another fruitless chase a-la D2, with preening villains who never admit defeat a-la D3, and one hell of a lame final beat designed to up-sell you on an expansion that will "complete (trust me guys the story in the expansion will be SO GOOD)" the story.
As some Blizzard veterans say, all it takes is one shiny cutscene for upset blizzard gamers to forget all gripes, and it's like that with the story I feel - everyone remembers how poggers the hell-battle cutscene was but there's honestly nothing substantive to the story at all, not even in an "excuse to murder demons" kind of way. What was the point of Lilith? What was the point of Elijah? If you just write your villains as saying "I want to do Good Thing" and then all their actions contradict that but nobody even brings it up and they are indistinguishable from the villains whose entire thing is Just Being Bad you haven't written a compelling antagonist, you've just tricked anyone who runs on vibes that you have.
Jimmy literally calls that out in the video by saying Lillith is purposefully vague to hide a shallow and contradictory character and makes fun of her last words by saying they basically just promote the expansion.
Thanks for highlighting those indie titles cause i never would have heard of them otherwise. Just wanted to throw out Pseudoregalia, Corn Kidz 64, Orbo’s Odyssey, Abyss X Zero, and V.A. Proxy as some interesting titles that I have wishlisted
Diablo 4 makes all the improvements I wished for when I was a little kid playing Diablo 2. I still continued playing D2 because it was all I had, but it frustrated me with some mechanics, design decisions and the communication of mechanics and goals. Now that I'm an adult I appreciate D2 not just for the nostalgia, but because I can see the considerations that went into its creation and how the design allows me freedom while playing (and also because I simply know enough now to enjoy it). D4 on the other hand is clearer, more polished, more clearly communicates its mechanics and general objectives and makes it harder to skill yourself into a corner, where you practically can't progress anymore. I think if you look at it from the angle of a more casual or perhaps even not-so-good player, Diablo 4 is probably well designed to keep casual interest over a long period of time and still give a satisfying gameplay loop for an evening every week or so. To give another example of this: I recently played Path of Exile and while I enjoy the game (I'd even go so far and say I enjoy it greatly once I'm in the flow state) it's very daunting and after not playing for some time I grow hesitant to boot it up, because I have to spend some time remembering everything going on, I have around 40 skill gems for example, at this point I need a Guide to keep track of good synergy options between them. I have 3 main spells for damage and 3 for support plus an aura and I frequently forget to use half of them if I'm not already an hour into playing and fully immersed and warmed up.
I want to make it clear that I abhor the business practices that are woven into D4 (which is the reason I would never buy it) and I think especially story wise there's room for improvement (even though the individual set pieces and characters are great), but the game part of the game is, in my opinion, intentionally designed in a good way. It's just not a way that appeals to capital G Gamers, but to a casual audience of newbies, older people, people who are just looking for an escape after a stressful work week and children. And the predatory business practices are sprinkled on top, to get the most revenue out of whales with too little self awareness. The existence of these battle passes and shops of course upsets a puritan Gamer, but most people aren't those and most likely don't even care.
Phew long comment over, I liked your video btw :) I think you should use text pop ups less frequently, because they distort the flow, especially because you show them for such a short amount of time that you never have enough time to pause quickly enough causing skips back. And I think you would benefit from being more considerate in choosing your background footage, I noticed you are reusing clips and stuff like the graphs you showed are so much more interesting than contextless hordeslaying, shifting through menus or walking around the town, but that's probably due to the sheer length.
Lmao
@@Bejitabro What did I say that's so funny?
ill comment on the text aspect as well. it may be a me issue, and I fully plan on rewatching the video with more attention, but the way i watched this video the first time was with my headphones on while i was playing earthbound and mostly listening to it. i really like the editing of these videos, but non-narrated text forces my attention back to the video when i hear the music grow louder and narration cease. if this is intentional, frankly, i love it, which is why I fully intend on rewatching with more attention given, because the amount of effort and though put into this is so evident, it would be a disservice to not fully engage with it. my experience is there though, if you want the video to be more podcastified, then reduce the text comments or narrate them, if theyre meant to keep visual attention on the video, then they worked for me, because the text is important and usually succinct and to the point. i hope i didnt disrespect the video by paying less than full attention, i will be getting adhd medication like this week lol.
Your points on the morality and shoddy "ambiguity" of characters caught my attention, because they seem to line up with a problem I've run into myself in writing. Given how libertarian and generally uncentralized our culture is, it can be really difficult to write sin as a concept. Most people won't care or follow along unless it somehow, quickly, and directly, devolves into war, murder, slavery, directly life-threatening addiction, or, if you're selling to the right crowd, environmental destruction. When it comes to ontological conflicts like "cave to instincts that we know are selfish, or strive for standards we don't know are feasible," your average Joe Sixpack will usually just shrug and say "do whatever works for you."
It puts one in a frustrating position where in order to make a point you feel the need to dumb down and exaggerate. So rather than salvation through one's own desires and thoughts versus salvation through the legacy and wisdom of past generations, it becomes frenzied cannibal ape-man cult versus systemic manipulation by boring old people. But at that level of ideological decay, you're not REALLY making the point you set out to make in the first place, are you?
Can't wait to watch this video 4 times in 2 weeks.
i wasn’t running anything that was broken or meta, but a random patch nerfed one of the abilities my build was based on back when the game first came out. the nerf rendered my build pretty weak compared to other players at my level. i realized how long and how much it would take to get my character back to a point where i could tackle content at the same level and stopped playing. i havent really felt the desire to come back since. i dont regret buying the game. it was great fun on first playthrough, but the endgame was pretty boring
This along with Noah Gervais' work, stellar coverage.
wholeheartedly agree, thanks for taking the time to make this video
I'm realizing having watched this that I ignored immortal--assuming IV would be the 'real' one. I still imagine it might be trash, but now I want to play it just to see how similar it feels.
I did finally kick the WoW habit. No idea why people play that thing anymore.
Me, after brutally dismantling all of a game's systems: "overall, I did still find the experience enjoyable"
I always love your choice in music. I smiled when a song from silent hill 2 started playing
Nice to see someone not saying "diablo 1 was only good because it inspired diablo 2 and there is nothing that wasn't improved"
I enjoyed my diablo 2 remaster playthrough last year, but boy howdy did I prefer my subsequent diablo 1 replay afterwards... even with flaws.
The tone, progression, restrictions and even roguelike presentations of tomes and staves made the whole experience feel... fresh. And also, the quests and lore books, there were more than I remembered.
I honestly was surprised with how much praise was heaped on the writing here. I found it mostly by the book and cliche. Pretty to look at, but not really saying much, with occasional questionable decisions. (Yonan just deciding to pet a zombie wall in the middle of hell may be one of the funniest ways to kill a character off). Shot composition simply put can not make up for boring unrelatable characters in a drab setting with uneven pacing thanks to the open world.
Dude got killed by the WALL. My gf and I died laughing at that part
Thanks for vid, always impressed with the effort you put into your essays. Keen for the next one
Would love to hear your thoughts on Grim Dawn, since you're a POE enjoyer looking for good ARPGs, I think you would love it, and would be interesting to see how you think it contrasts with Diablo 4.
About time someone mentioned Grim Dawn, such an underrated gem. No MTX, no battlepass, no always online DRM, mod friendly, all for half the price.
A short and concise diabloe in 4 critique, great ♥
Another great video. I don't have anything to say about Diablo you didn't mention. But I did want to say I was really pleased to see your list of indies you were looking forward to, lots of incredible games I was already interested in myself, and some new ones I hadn't seen before.
Looking forward to whatever you make next man.
"Fine. Go see the Tree." might be among my favourite dialogue bits ever.
Yo, those "toasts" overlapping sounded 🔥
I think I'm getting a bit over the view that PoE is this flip-side of D4 that is free to play and doesn't tend to shove transactions into the game. I didn't mind buying initial stash tabs, I treated it like paying to unlock the full game after the trial.
But the current mechanic forces you to spend a fair amount of money if you want to interact with it, probably $60 to make it feel comfortable. Even though I didn't give into it, it still left a sour taste in my mouth, and it constantly reappeared since the mechanic sticks its head out at every stage of the game. I dunno, people just tend to make PoE sound like innocence, but the truth is that micro transactions being at the core of the game have a tendency to dampen the experience.
I totally get why people follow a "series" but D4 is basically the end point for capitalism. Make a product, build a base, monitize that base. We look at video games like art, and they are, but we forget they're also products first and foremost, especially coming from a publicly traded corporation.
This isnt a new phenomena, we've been cursing EA since the 90s or earlier. I'm honestly glad every time a new generation learns this lesson.
That said, you will ALWAYS have to hop from company to company, and stay with the small ones. We all want sequels because we want more of a good thing, but they are always the start of a road of more. More game, bigger staff, more content, better long term support and whoops, now we have over 100 employees and shareholders and now were just like every other big game company.
By the time Diablo got a 3 at the end it was doomed. Made the jump to Torchlight because PoE is way too complicated for me. Torchlight got a sequel (their third game now being that wonderful 'live service') so i jumped to Last Epoch. Thats very fun but when they inevitably get big enough to make their sequel, it'll be time to find another studio again.
The only experiences that can be made truely for the player, with player interest coming first, are those without a financial incentive. IE small indie games made by very few people at a time, who aren't hoping for a breakout success to begin with. Is that a cynical view? Most likely. 30+ years of gaming mostly prove it true though.
Are there exceptions? Sure. Larian and Supergiant Games seems to have bucked the trend. But they are very much the exceptions, not the rule (and they are, very impotantly, privately owned).
Thank you for making this, this helped me separate my personal feelings for D4 from the actual content of it. Playing the game on launch effectively ruined the game permanently for me and I doubt I would have ever thought about it again.
I made the unfortunate mistake of "beta" testing the buggy launch of the game, on hardcore no less. I was 68 Necromancer Quazzie on pace to be one of the first 200 or so to reach level 100. I genuinely really enjoyed the game and was having a blast playing through it. My only gripe was how mandatory doing all of the side content felt. My playthrough came to an end when I fully cleared a dungeon to completion, warped back to town and after 13 seconds of running around my game went black screen and had to be force closed out. After relaunching my character was gone. They did not appear in the death screen until two days later at which point it listed Shambling Corpse as my cause of death.
To make things worse months later when I tried getting back into the game they had added account wide progression for all side content. In theory this would mean I would not have to grind everything out again in order to be at full power. This feature did not work for me.
I effectively spent 80 hours on nothing. Not just the typical video game esque online intangible "nothing", but the literal nothing, the one where I can't even interact with it.
22:12
>"Raiden, take heed and bear witness to the truth that lie herein."
Brilliant, mate. Probably woke up my poor neighbors by laughing too loud on my patio with that one.
love the slideshow of promising indie games at the end, nice way to contrast the unchanging bedrock of the gaming scene with the current AAA+ slop fest