Last night I spent the majority of my evening hanging out with Grace and Mor in Final Fantasy XIV. First I have to give a massive shout out to Thalen who crafted a full set of Samurai gear and had it waiting on me in the mailbox by the time I logged in for the evening. Other than the fact that he is just an amazing human being, I think he was wanting to quell any possible excuse I had for not playing. In the past I have talked about hitting walls where I just don’t have the gear level to be able to complete the next story dungeon. In one quick motion, Thalen wiped all of these excuses off the table.
Final Fantasy XIV – PC – Cactuar Server – The Praetorium
In part I came back specifically last night because there is an event happening that I have missed out on the last two times it has been in place. Essentially Yoshi-P and crew are exceptionally good at bribing people to do content that might be less than popular. Essentially you are rewarded for running less popular Dungeons, Raids and PVP Activities with special tomestones that you can then turn in for a number of cosmetic or non-game-play impacting items. These include some pretty rare chase mounts and as a result it seems way easier to grind out some bookrocks rather than hoping and praying for a drop to happen. I started the evening with Grace and I running Praetorium for xp and the 10 Irregular Tomestones of Law that you get for completing it.
Final Fantasy XIV – PC – Cactuar Server – Hidden Gorge
From there at the suggestion of Mor I wound up trying out some PVP in the form of the Hidden Gorge map. This is effectively Summoners Rift or whatever it is called in your MOBA of choice, as you protect minions as they attack towers. If you take out two towers you can effectively assault the “Nexus” and win the match. The match itself is constrained to twenty minutes and you will be rewarded 5 special bookrocks and 50 poetics per completion as well as 500 wolf marks for a lose and 1000 for a win. So it seems like a pretty chill way to sit back and get your event currency while also racking up marks that you can spend on some of the sweet PVP cosmetic sets.
Final Fantasy XIV – PC – Cactuar Server – Hidden Gorge
I can’t say that I actually did a great job, but I did manage to effectively hold my own. This is probably where I am going to be living for the next bit because it also seems to be a reasonable way of leveling alternate jobs. I spent the majority of the evening working on my Bard and managed to get it to 73 before the evening was over. Between running a Praetorium and a bunch of Hidden Gorge matches, I should be able to rack up some of those mounts in relative short order. Does this mean I finally have traction in Final Fantasy XIV again? Quite possibly… but I still have yet to finish up the main story quest which I will likely be doing in between PVP matches.
This weekend was one where I was all over the place on my gaming. There is a huge part of me that wants to be playing Phantasy Star Online 2 since several of the AggroChat crew are currently enthralled by it. The biggest problem I have is that I know how good this game looks on a PC and as a result I am constantly confronted by how awful it looks on my base Xbox One. I know at some point on the near horizon it will be releasing for PC and that the characters will be cross compatible. In theory I should be able to catch up without much issue, and all of this means that my desire to actually play is severely diminished. I did get to level 10 however before ultimately “noping out” of its chunky graphics.
Trials of Mana – Nintendo Switch
I also played a bit of Trials of Mana and progressed the story to the point of being able to my make very first class change choice. On Duran I went light side and became a Knight, on Riesz I went Dark to eventually become a crazy dragoon, and on Angela I went light to go Sorceress because the Dark “blood magic” route seemed like a trap. Still greatly enjoying this game but I am only really playing it before bed, and even then only until sleep claims me. The prolific appearance of golden angel statues seems to help me out in this mission as it never feels like I have to make it much further to get to a save point.
Final Fantasy XIV – PC – Cactuar Server
I’ve also been trying to ease my way back into Final Fantasy XIV, with minimal success. This is in part because my friends Bells and Zuu are now playing, and I want to be able to hang with them and run content as they get to various dungeons. The other side of this point is that an event is about to start today where you can farm moogle widgets and earn older mounts. I like mounts so it might be fun to poke around and farm up a bunch while the event is going on. Thalen in theory says he can craft a lot of the gear pieces that would potentially make my viable again, so here is hoping I can actually get back in the swing of things. I have no clue what the struggle is with this game, but it is real.
World of Warcraft – PC – The Scryers Server
On the World of Warcraft front, I managed to finish the Death Knight and am in the process of gearing him out. This makes my seventh character to level 120 since the Winds of Wisdom buff went active, and I went from having only a couple of characters horde side to play around to a pretty sizable stable of options. I am still not quite certain what I plan on “maining” come Shadowlands, but ultimately I have narrowed it down to a handful of options.
Warrior – This is my OG love as far as classes go, but ultimately it all depends upon how good tanking feels on it. Last expansion at the start tanking felt like I was being completely ineffective. The positive here is that I really do love Fury as well and gives me an enjoyable DPS alt for running content and raiding.
Demon Hunter – Once the Warrior failed out after getting it to 120, I rapidly leveled a Demon Hunter because tanking felt extremely strong. Over the course of the Battle For Azeroth expansion, I have come to really enjoy it.. but I do not really love DPSing on it.
Paladin – After leveling a Paladin on both Alliance and Horde sides, I have really come to love the class. Tanking feels great and I have always loved Ret as a dps spec. This even would give me the option of healing… which admittedly will probably never happen but of the WoW options this was the only healer I could actually stand playing.
Death Knight – When I finally hung up my Warrior shield at the tail end of Wrath of the Lich king it was for playing the Death Knight and I “mained” this all through Cataclysm. Playing the Death Knight has made me remember what I loved about it, so it now is in the running as well.
World of Warcraft – PC – The Scryers Server
I legitimately have no clue what I am going to choose for a class, but at least for now I am somewhat leaning in the Paladin direction. As far as World of Warcraft projects going forward I will be working on finishing off the Monk since he is in his 80s. That would give me a 120 for every class but Priest, Shaman and Rogue which are not exactly favorites of mine. However I like playing all of them more than a Mage, so that is ultimately why I chose to boost that . Monk is fun, but not nearly as fun as leveling some of the other classes I have had in my stable so far. I should give Brewmaster another shot, but so far leveling as Windwalker has had a pretty high time to kill.
I am all over the place right now when it comes to my gaming habits and I guess for now that is perfectly fine. What have you all been up to over the last few weeks? What games do you find yourself drawn to? Leave me a note in the comments below.
Featuring: Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen
Tonight we start off with what has become a regular side topic of us talking about our lives dealing with the pandemic. From there we dive into Cloudpunk a game about a digital dog and delivering packages in a blade runner landscape. Bel dives into a discussion about how Modern Consoles are effectively turning into Gaming PCs and the weirdness of cross generational purchases for Microsoft games. Bel also waxes nostalgic about Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and how he is greatly looking forward to the upcoming remaster of 1+2 coming this September. We end up getting off on a side jaunt into Elder Scrolls games, and then transition into a talk about Sodoku. Finally we talk some about the announcement of a brand new Paper Mario game and the new footage available for Ghosts of Tsushima.
This week we were able to see footage of what this generation of video games will bring us on the new consoles with the release of an Unreal Engine 5 demo running on live PlayStation 5 hardware. Before I dig into this topic I want to throw up a disclaimer that nothing I am about to say is meant to discount the hard work or how revolutionary this may be for game developers. It does in fact sound like it is going to reduce the work load significantly allowing them to directly use assets rather than trying to bake them down to usable assets in a game engine. However from a pure visual standpoint, this seems less like a generational leap and more like cranking the settings from High up to Ultra in a video game.
Unreal Engine 5 Demo on PlayStation 5
I am wondering if we have gotten to the point where graphics are good enough that any improvements just end up feeling marginal? We reached this point with pixel graphics during the jump from the 16 bit era to the 32 bit era with games like Castlevania Symphony of the Night, not really looking that much better than games you could have seen on the Super Nintendo. Sure you had a much wider palette and could therefore display a wider variety of colors on screen at once. However if you jump between playing SoTN and a game like Dracula X that released for the SNES there isn’t much of a noticeable difference.
Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time – Nintendo 64
We’ve been on this journey with 3D graphics that started out with something as primitive as this, and evolved rapidly over the course of a few generations. We’ve gotten used to each generation being instantly and noticeably better than the previous generation. I am starting off with the Nintendo 64, because while it technically released after the PlayStation it seems like the floor of 3D graphics that were available during this generation.
Vagrant Story – PlayStation
It may be a matter of preference but for me at least games like Vagrant Story showed the PlayStation 1 era to be cable of a superior experience. The Nintendo 64 games felt childish and block, whereas the PlayStation games were capable of conveying rich emotions. Now these could come entirely down to art direction and decisions made by the studios, but for me at least it felt like I was leaping forward a full generation when I moved from the 64 over to my Dual Shock Playstation.
God of War – PlayStation 2
When I moved up to the PlayStation 2 the leap was even more noticeable. The textures were smooth and gone was the blocky nature of the characters. Other than the 4:3 aspect ration of most PlayStation 2 era games, I still consider many of these to be completely playable. God of War was one of the better looking games on the system, and since I have some direct comparisons to games on the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4, I figured I would use this as a reference title.
God of War 3 – PlayStation 3
To be honest, looking at these two screenshots, I would argue that this generational leap at least with this title wasn’t as big. Last of Us after all originally released on the PlayStation 3. However just between these two shots you can see higher fidelity of assets and better lighting. It is hard to tell it in a single image, but the main thing that came with the PlayStation 3 was bigger and more open worlds, whereas the PlayStation 2 mostly focused around more static scenes, you had a sense that you were roaming a living environment.
God of War – PlayStation 4
Now I realize this is a completely different type of game to the previous God of War titles, but it no less highlights something important. For me the leap forward that happened between the Xbox 360/PS3 era to the Xbox One/PS4 era was significant. This was the first time we were capable of playing in what felt to be photo realistic worlds, and the games were completely capable of carrying off that illusion. For years PC games had effectively stagnated due being tied to the 360 and PS3, but this is also the generation that 4K became a major player in gaming and with it a higher level of fidelity than we had experienced before. This generation felt like it was the biggest leap to date, for me personally.
Unreal Engine 5 Demo on PlayStation 5
There is no denying that the Unreal Engine Demo footage looks good, but when you compare it directly to an image coming from a game of this generation, I see higher fidelity but not enough to make it clear that we are making a generational jump.
Jedi Fallen Order – Xbox One X
If you compare the above image to a screenshot from Jedi Fallen Order, I am not sure if I could tell they were effectively running on different generations of hardware. I think the challenge there is that we had a half generational jump in the middle of this generation. Notice that this image is from an Xbox One X which is capable of 4K gaming, whereas the base model is still stuck in the 1080p era. I think this generation is going to feel like another incremental bump forward, and not necessarily the radical shift that I was hoping for.
Horizon Zero Dawn – PlayStation 4 Pro
Granted I am cherry picking examples of some of the best looking games from the current generation to use as contrasting evidence, and they are being placed up against a demo reel. However I do feel like it is an important question to ask ourselves as we go into this next generation. If you are already running an Xbox One X or a PlayStation 4 Pro… is this leap worth the $500 to $600 price tag that is going to come with it? For me it likely is because at least on the console front I never took the half leap and am running an original Xbox One and PlayStation 4. So yeah it probably will be a sizeable upgrade, but for those rocking a 4K capable console or PC right now, I am questioning if this is a big enough bump to make it feel worth it?
Unreal Engine 5 Demo on PlayStation 5
All of this said… it could just be that I am getting older and that my eyes are not capable of picking out the same level of visual fidelity that they once were. However if I went into this scenario and you threw screenshots of all of these 4k games in with the Unreal Engine footage, I am not sure if I could immediately tell the difference. Granted all of this is ultimately moot because I am mostly a PC gamer, and maybe it is just that I am used to the fidelity of games that can be produced on that platform already with significantly higher performing hardware than the consoles will likely ever have. Ultimately this has left me with a feeling that the games look great, but that ultimately I expected more in some way that I can’t quite quantify. I feel like we have maybe reached the limits to what is visually possible, and everything moving forward is going to be a battle of margins and not the big leaps forward I experienced throughout my gaming career.
