Tales of the Aggronaut

Death by Adorable

August 16, 2014 by Belghast

Back to School Time

I’ve said this before but the two most frustrating times in the life of a teacher spouse are the beginning of school and the end of school. It is hard to watch your spouse going through a stress filled ballet and not really having much that you can do to stop it. Here in Oklahoma it is of course the beginning of a new school year, and while my wife does have have students yet she has been back officially at work several days now. To be truthful this summer she barely got any time off at all considering she was up in her classroom almost every day. Apparently during the welcome back speech that the principal gave he mentioned this fact.

Today we are going out on that ritual of rituals… back to school shopping. It is in fact not just a ritual that the students go through. I am sure we will be hitting lots of different clothing stores in search of that “first day” outfit that we always seem to get. Back to school sales are like porn for teachers, and I am not sure if the rest of the world knows this or not. The odd thing is that this year the sales are just lacking. I am not sure what exactly it is, but so far it is not only that the stores don’t have much in the way of sales going on, but they don’t have much in the way of interesting stuff either. In the past Target and Walmart both would have these dollar sections full of all sorts of organization ideas that my wife would come away with inspired from. This year they are pretty much non-existant… and I don’t think Walmart even has their dollar section.

The biggest disappointment I have is in Office Depot. Once upon a time they were among the most supportive businesses for teachers. We had a teachers appreciation card that gave us a discount on damned near everything we bought, and while the discount wasn’t amazing… it felt like it was something. Several years back they replaced this program with one similar to that of Best Buy where you get gift cards for every X dollars that you spend. Even this has been reduced to a pittance. On top of this the stores themselves seem to have gone through a state of decline as they just don’t have the stock that they used to. I think this is the first year that I can recall where they didn’t have a teachers appreciation day, or give teachers the ability to buy more than the limit on the sales. In any case it has been frustrating to watch this, and for my wife it is like ruining Christmas morning.

Death By Adorable

For some time I had been blocked from progressing along the main storyline quest by the Thornmarch Hard primal fight. Instead of waiting for the rest of the guild to catch up so we could do the fight legitimately as an 8 man team, several of us decided to go ahead and knock it out of the way. The fourth primal of course is Good King Moggle Mog the king of the Moogles. It is a council fight of sorts, but to really call it a council fight is a bit of a misstatement. It is a fight of sheer chaos for the most part. First you are presented with a series of Moogle adds, each one representing a class in the game. Some of these are more important for you to kill than others, and as DPS I pretty much just followed the marked targets. After defeating all either of the Mooglesguard the king himself spawns and the actual fight begins.

The council aspect comes into play in that when you kill an add the King inherent their power. The Black Mage for example does an AOE ability that spreads through the entire room, the White Mage heals, the Warrior a giant version of steel cyclone, and the Paladin taunts and pulls everyone into him. These last two can be brutal in that the Paladin and Warrior and time them to happen at the same time essentially wiping the raid. This fight as a result is all about killing things in the right order and keeping the various Mooglesguard away from targets that buff them. I am not 100% sure what order we went in but I know without a doubt that Black Mage and White Mage were the first two to go down. I also know that we killed warrior, but left Paladin up in the successful attempt. However we only managed to down them because someone got off a limit break as we were wiping horribly at the time.

The fight itself is sheer chaos and the hardest part about pugging it was that no one seemed to be able to agree on the “correct” kill order. In many ways it reminded me of the Paragons fight in Siege of Orgrimmar, but at least there everyone agreed that one target was far more important than the others. I am glad to be through the fight and able to move on with my main storyline quest. That said I would gladly go back and do it another time. Extreme mode sounds like insanity, because supposedly you have to carefully dps down each of the Mooglesguard without killing them, because the king himself is immune to damage… however when any member of the Mooglesguard dies he heals all of them back to full from his own health pool. So in theory you have to burn down all of the moogles down to near death and then kill one off draining the health of the King in the process. The madness of constantly having to fight all eight Mooglesguard and deal with the king at the same time just seems like pure hell.

Syrcus Tower

The only other big thing that I did last night was work through the quest chain leading up to the next step of Crystal Tower. From what I hear Syrcus Tower is a significantly different beast than Labyrinth of the Ancients. Whereas in Labyrinth you could theoretically get a piece of loot from every encounter, each time you chose to run it, in Syrcus you are limited to receiving a single piece of loot per week. This has made it a frustrating time for a lot of people as they watch so much really good loot rot. I guess the bulk of people running it are doing so in hope of getting a piece needed for weapon upgrades. So no one actually rolls on the gear, and that means in general if you are going in there for gearing purposes you have your pick of whatever you could want.

The only problem is it takes awhile to run and I have yet to actually have time to really queue for it. Instead of doing it I ended up doing a random hard mode dungeon with the guild. So hopefully tonight I will be able to dip my toes into the dungeon proper. At this point I have progressed significantly gear wise. Right now I am sitting at 83 ilevel and the only pieces that are sub 90 are my boots, belt and gloves. All of which can be upgraded through a number of means, not the least of which are running hunts and gaining bookrocks. Additionally I could luck out and get replacements for any of those slots while running Syrcus. It seems like the hardest thing to get is jewelry as far as drops go, and as a result I have spent most of my bookrocks and hunt tokens on getting those sorted out. Still really enjoying the game and pumped to see more people joining in every few days. Our hope is that as some point we can try the actual raid the Binding Coil of Bahamut which is an 8 man duty.

#FFXIV

We Have The Date

August 15, 2014 by Belghast

That’s a Lot of Fish

Last night I did something a bit different than my normal fare and actually hung out with several of my coworkers. While I hang out with Rae at least in the virtual sense almost every night, this was a bit different. For my boss’s birthday his brother took him to a thing called Rifftrax put on by the guys from Mystery Science Theater 3000. They do the same basic thing, but they do it live and stream it to theaters all over the country. Since he had such a great time he decided it would make an excellent group activity. So last night we met for dinner and then continued on to the nearby theater to watch the Matthew Broderick version of Godzilla ripped apart by the MST3K guys.

First off this is a much bigger deal than any of us realized, as we spent probably a bit too long at the restaurant and had maybe 20 minutes before the start of the film. By the time we all got to the theater and inside the place was absolutely packed. Apparently if you want to get seats together you have to arrive well ahead of time, and it almost has a tail gating mentality. Instead we all split up mostly into groups of two to find a place to sit. So this ended up with me being down on the front row leaning back in my seat and trying to watch the movie. Thankfully we didn’t really CARE about the movie… but instead the commentary. Afterwards they said that it was a bit hard to hear the dub over as you got further back in the theater so I guess the awkward angle was worth it.

This is totally something I would do again, and it has been a long while since I have laughed this hard. I guess I had completely put large sections of the Broderick film out of my memory. I mean I remember it being bad at the time, but I didn’t remember it being THIS bad. If you have the chance to see Rifftrax in a nearby theater I suggest you take up that opportunity. They do this apparently as a semi regular thing here, so I will have to follow the schedule and see what is next. It seems like the next showing is November 4th where they do that campy classic Anaconda. I will have to see what is going on but I would really like to maybe try and go.

We Have the Date

Yesterday was the big announcement for the Warlords of Draenor release date and now we know exactly when to expect it to land. Some time ago Godmother ran a contest to see who could guess the date, and I apparently came the closest along with River. I remember at the time River saying something to the effect that I looked lonely on the spreadsheet so he decided my guess was as good as any. Now that said I did have some logic behind my guess, I was not just randomly picking numbers. My general theory was that we would not see a World of Warcraft expansion until after Blizzcon. So knowing the Blizzcon dates I figured they would want to take advantage of the Blizzcon-Bump but get product out there before Thanksgiving and the holiday madness begins. I apparently was right but Blizzard threw everyone for a loop by making the release a Thursday. I don’t think anyone was expecting that.

Once again the good folks at Blizzard have managed to craft together a really awesome cinematic. Were I a horde player I would probably be cheering the awesome orc action. Instead it just seems like another really awesomely animated feature explaining the premise of the expansion. The events play out a little different than I would have thought. All along I thought that Garrosh would actually stop Grommash from drinking the blood, but it seems like good ole Grom was already making that decision. Garrosh however just gave him the backup he needed to defeat Mannorath. I feel like the events of this expansion will serve to set up for the long fabled Burning Legion expansion, since we obviously screw with the way things were supposed to work out. I figure you can’t kill a demon like Mannorath without having some pretty negative repercussions.

Overwhelming Meh

Like I said, were I a horde player I would likely be heralding in yet another overwhelmingly horde focused expansion. Thing is I am not, and I have never cared a single bit about any of the horde lore. It was just that faction filled with monstrous humanoids and a handful of people that I cared enough about to roll alts to be able to play with. Nothing about the horde is really my thing, apart from the whole “everything has spikes” aspect. I expected yesterdays event and subsequent trailer to pump me up and prepare me for what was inevitable, my temporary return to World of Warcraft. The thing is it seems to have had the opposite effect. I am even less interested in the expansion than I was going into the day, and I can’t really put my finger on the why.

I have been in Alpha/Beta for some time now, and all in total I have played somewhere between six and eight hours. During that time I have just felt like I was forcing myself to play the game. I felt obligated to test the content since friends had gotten me into it. Nothing I was doing however really did it for me, and even with the existence of some interesting ideas like the Garrisons, it all felt rehashed. The Burning Crusade was one of the most exciting expansions for me, and it was the era of so many cool things for me as a raider. I expected to be wrapped up in this whirlwind of nostalgia upon returning to it… albeit in a pre-destruction state. While Draenor is gorgeous and I can see the underpinnings of the areas I used to love… it all just feels really old at this point.

This expansion is going to be amazing for those players that are currently enthralled with the game. There are going to be a handful of other players that maybe quit wow but didn’t really play other games in the meantime… that will return and fall back in love again. However I fear for those of us who have gone nomadic and played every game that has come down the pipe… the overall game is just starting to feel its age. The systems don’t quite work as well as other games on the market, it isn’t the culmination of the best ideas any longer. Instead it is a combination of what they could get to work within the existing framework of the game. It will definitely breathe new life into the game a whole and introduce a bunch of new doodads for the players to get involved with, but so far it has all felt very hollow to me. As much as I want to be excited, I am wondering if I have actually truly outgrown the game. I had more fun doing Godmother’s survey than I have had actually playing the game in a very long time… so that tells me I was pretty much living off nostalgia to this point, and maybe that font has been exhausted.

Labyrinth of the Ancients

August 14, 2014 by Belghast

Manderville With Friends

Yesterday I had a bit of a rough day at work from the mental and emotional sanity standpoint. So I was pretty much bummed throughout the day and this carried on to coming home that night. I did have a weird sequence of events happen that lead to me meeting a new friend. When I play a game on a specific server I have gotten in the habit of creating a column in tweetdeck with the server name and the game name in it, just to see what happens to be going on in that community on social media. When I came back to Final Fantasy XIV I did that and created a column that said “FFXIV Cactuar” giving me any FFXIV posts related to Cactuar. It has been less than amazing considering that it also catches all posts about the cactuar creatures… and as a result I had gotten out of the habit at looking at it.

When I looked yesterday however there were a bunch of posts from a seemingly friendly person playing on our server. In fact there were pictures posted of the mists housing district, and I thought wow… wouldn’t it be a crazy coincidence if we ended up virtual neighbors. Turns out she is in ward 1 of the Mists which pretty much means “we bought housing the second it was available”. We friended each other in game and next thing I know she is coming to visit our house in the ward. What do you do when you have guests over? Dance the manderville of course. After a bit I got a few guildies in on the act, and she even taught us what happens when you get a bunch of Moogle pets together. After a short period of time they apparently start dancing in a circle together. With some experimentation it seems like lots of pets interact with others of the same type. When you summon a Pudgy Puk for example, all the other Puks rush over to greet the newcomer. It is little details like this that make the game so amazingly charming.

The awesome side effect of all of this madness however is that through twitter we all met a new friend. As the evening progressed she pulled two of my guildies into Syrcus tower and I think they had a pretty good time. She on the other hand seems super excited to actually know some people on during the EDT primetime. She hails from a huge guild on the server, that apparently at one point was one of the highest progressed guilds, otherwise I would totally try and steal her into the guild. It might still happen because her group is not active at all, as for whatever reason most of them went missing posts patch 2.2. In any case it was a pretty awesome random happening, and I think its always great to meet more awesome people on the server I play on.

Labyrinth of the Ancients

As far as my evening, my wife and I walked a mile and some change to dinner and when I got back everyone was otherwise engaged. So I decided to take the plunge and queue for the first of the crystal tower instances. Labyrinth of the Ancients is essentially the Final Fantasy XIV version of the WoW LFR system. You queue up individually or as a group and are matched up with other players forming three groups of 8 or 24 in total. Each “alliance” as they call it works as a team to make its way through the tower, and often times has to split apart so that each time covers a specific mechanic. The first part of the dungeon drops ilvl 80 gear, and has no loot restrictions, which makes it a pretty popular place to grind out some basic gear. Additionally each run through rewards both kinds of “bookrocks” making it a decent way to get some currency.

In total I made two runs last night through the raid. The first run seemed to be going really smoothly with us one-shotting the first boss encounter. However there was a portion that involved us splitting up into three teams and our team kept failing. I am not really sure what was happening as my role in the fight was super focused on burning down the “boss” at the end of the platform. Apparently however the adds were not getting handled and the ranged dps that is supposed to burn them down failed to do so. The end result was a slow cascade of players leaving the group until finally the game asked us if we wanted to abandon the duty since there really was no shot in hell of getting fillins. Unlike World of Warcraft the Final Fantasy duty system allows you to say “I only want fresh raids” and this is the default option…. so for the most part it is very hard to get people to join your group. In future runs I might just flag myself as a fillin to see if the queue goes any faster, as each time I have queued it took around thirty minutes.

Second Chances and Onion Knights

I took a break, stretched my legs and got a drink and then sat down to queue for Crystal Tower again when my group failed out. It was roughly thirty minutes again when I got a brand new group. At first I was wondering if this would be a repeat of the last group when we struggled to defeat the Bone Dragon encounter. However from that point onwards everything else went pretty flawlessly, and in no time at all we were through the dungeon and I was on to being flagged for Syrccus tower. Most of the look was meaningless for me, however form the Behemoth encounter a lancer hat dropped. I mostly rolled on it for the cosmetic look and that I was the only lancer in my sub team. When loot drops, it drops for your 8 man group and not for the 24 man raid instance as a whole. This means you are only really in competition against a handful of players, and so far I have been the only dragoon on each time.

I was able to scrounge up a picture of what the completed Onion Knight set looks like, so yeah I totally rolled for cosmetic purposes. In truth I would really like to get all of the pieces of the Wolfram set because I am really digging the appearance there. I seem to have lucked into the chest and helmet. The Chest was 66,000 gil and the Helmet was 80,000 gil on the Market Board, and since then I have not seen ANY piece of Wolfram gear cheaper than 150,000 to 200,000 gil. I am sure the crafter that posted them that cheaply is kicking themselves, but as a result I have some really awesome ilvl 90 gear. I will have to ask some of my crafter friends what exactly it takes to make more pieces because yeah… I could totally use some more of it. In any case I had a fun time checking out the raid instance. I think it is all of our hopes to be able to do Binding Coil of Bahamut at some point as a guild, especially since that is only an 8 man raid. I really like the encounters in this game so far, and I look forward to seeing what more of the raids look like.

#FFXIV #Cactuar #CrystalTower

On Exclusivity and Microsoft

August 13, 2014 by Belghast

GamesCom Bombshell

Yesterday was the first day of the GamesCom conference in Cologne Germany, and generally speaking during past conferences we have for the most part seen a repeat of what was just announced at E3 a few months before. This year however we got quite the bomb shell dropped during the Microsoft press conference, in the form that they claim that Rise of the Tomb Raider is going to be an Xbox One exclusive title. This of course caused a wave of outrage through the community in part because up until this point all signs pointed to this being yet another Square Enix multiplatform title. In fact during the E3 event, this appeared as part of the Sony PS4 press conference and was not even shown during the Microsoft event. The outrage that I see so far is far less about Xbone vs PS4 but the fact that at least on initial pass it seemed like it would not be coming to PC either.

If you dissect the message that was delivered you can see something subtle happening. Every single time they mentioned that this was exclusive they played with the words a bit. They kept repeating the carefully constructed phrase “coming exclusive for holiday 2015”. Over and over at least four separate times they used that exact same wording. So that screams to me that they are putting a lot of hype behind something that may or may not be the case. There are always a number of 100% platform dependant titles on a console. The best example of these are the classic titles that you can only get on a Nintendo console like Zelda, Mario, Metroid, Kirby and Kid Icarus to make a few. Then there are titles that come out first one a given console, but later on ship on every other console.

On Exclusivity and Microsoft

This is after all a card Microsoft has played for years, trumping the supposed exclusivity of a given title that then not only comes out but in part becomes far more famous on another platform. If you remember both Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect were XBox exclusives, yet in both cases the franchises came out on the PC and with Mass Effect it now exists on all of the consoles and was a massive sales juggernaut. Similarly even during this generation both Dead Rising 3 and Ryse: Son of Rome were supposedly platform exclusive titles but in both cases they are being released on the PC. There was even the situation of Ninja Gaiden II that was a platform exclusive, and then later Tecmo released the game as Ninja Gaiden Sigma II so that they could break their exclusivity agreement. All of this leads me to believe that this is just more marketing chicanery from Microsoft and not actually a platform exclusive title.

Ultimately games are developed to make money, and right now with 5 million Xbox One units being dwarfed by 10 million Playstation 4 units, it simply does not make sense to ignore the larger platform. Ultimately this was a master stroke on the part of Microsoft however if they manage to pull it off. I wouldn’t exactly call Rise of the Tomb Raider a platform selling title, but it certainly helps to buff up a console that has floundered a bit in its first year. A good friend of mine has this rule that he refuses to buy a console before there are five titles that he wants to play on it that he cannot get anywhere else. I personally have found this to be a pretty good rule so far, and ultimately this lead me to purchase my PS4. If I reached a point where I had five titles for the Xbox One… I would consider getting one, but for the time being I just don’t have any interest.

Results of Poor Messaging

Microsoft has reached this point out of some phenomenally poor messaging. When the console was announced they made a series of blunders in trying to guess exactly what their console buyers would want. All of the touting of its television features really lost me in the process. I barely watch television, and when I do it tends to be for a specific purpose… to watch one show and then move on to the next thing. The only channel I watch with any frequency is Cartoon Network, more specifically Adult Swim. Even then the last time I sat down in front of the television to actually watch television on purpose was well over a week ago. So the focus on the initial marketing message of the console by demonstrating all of the admittedly interesting things it can do with television… really landed off in left field.

Since then he has been struggling to out message Sony who has quite frankly dominated the news cycle with some pretty innovative features. For sake of fairness I personally own right now 2 Xbox 360s, a Playstation 3, a Playstation Vita and a Playstation 4. So I am not exactly an unbiased observer here. I have clearly chosen the Sony Platform over the Microsoft one in part because all of these consoles work so well together. The other thing is that Sony has focused in with laser precision on a very specific message. “This is a console about video gaming, and we want to provide you an awesome gaming experience.” So far this message has worked and resounded with folks looking for a next generation gaming console and not necessarily a next generation media pc.

It’s About the Value

The primary reason why I jumped allegiance during the last generation is admittedly just how amazing of a value Playstation Plus is, or more so how disappointing a value Xbox Gold was. PS Plus is a $50 dollar a year subscription that gives you tons of free content as a result. I just made a list of titles I have gotten in the two years I have been subscribed to the program.

Dust 514, DC Universe Online, Ratchet and Clank Collection, Dead Nation, Unit 13, Gravity Rush, Wipeout 2048, Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Hitman: Absolution, Outlast, Resogun, Pinball Arcade, Infamous 2 , Little Big Planet 2, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One, Malicious, LIttle Big Planet Karting, Uncharted 3, Mod Nation Racers: Road Trip, Thomas Was Alone, Stealth Inc: A Clone in the Dark, Lone Survivor: The Directors Cut, Zen Pinball 2, Worms: Battle Island, Labrynth Legends, Zombie Tycoon II, Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee HD, Hotline Miami, Grid 2, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, Payday 2, Metro: Last Light, Closure, Knytt Underground, Dyad, Bioshock Infinite, Darksiders, Saints Row: The Third, Batman: Arkham City, BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Extend, Poker Night 2, Joe Danger 2: The Movie, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Borderlands 2, Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny, Tekken 6, Galaga Legions, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, Castle of Illusion, Jet Set Radio, Binary Domain, Vanquish, The Cave, Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, Street Fighter X Tekken, Dragon’s Dogman: Dark Arisen, Remember Me, DmC Devil May Cry, Resident Evil Chronicles HD Collection, Mega Man 9&10 Combo, Tomb Raider, Pro Evolution Soccer 2014, Battlefield 3, Sleeping Dogs, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, Trine 2, PixelJunk Shooter, PIxelJunk Monsters , Velocity Ultra, Soul Sacrifice, Stick it to the Man, Limbo, Puppeteer, Surge Deluxe, NBA 2K14, Warframe, Flower, Strider, Towerfall Ascension, Doki-Doki Universe, Terraria, Muramasa Rebirth, Vessel, Dead Space 3, Fez, Dragon’s Crown, Metrico, Rogue Legacy, Proteus, Road Not Taken, Crysis 3

That is 94 individual titles that I have gotten for free through either the console itself or the Playstation Plus service. In many cases those titles are available on multiple platforms and as a result I get a copy for every platform it is avaialble for. This is a huge deal for me, and not only do most of the titles have what Sony calls “cross buy” where if you buy a copy for any platform you get it on ALL platforms… you also get “cross save” on the newer games. Lately I have been playing quite a bit of Rogue Legacy, and I can start a game on my Vita and then pick it up later upstairs on my Playstation 4. On top of that if I have a game I want to play on my PS4 I can pick up the Vita and use it as a remote screen and even play it remotely. Admittedly playing from your PS4 while not on the same network is a bit laggy, but the simple fact that it exists is mind boggling to me.

Now I realize that “Games With Gold” is a thing that exists now and they have been fighting to catch up, but at this point there have been 35 titles to Playstation Plus that has released 148 PS3 titles, 14 PS4 titles, 48 PS Vita titles and 87 psp/psone/minis titles. I am admittedly bitter however for having paid for years of Xbox Gold subscription for what amounted to the permission to play games online and watch Netflix. Since then they have reversed this decision and made Netflix a free software, but when I initially got my Xbox 360 you had to have the full gold subscription to use it. Sony is just as much of a corporate monstrosity as Microsoft, but they have been doing a much better job of disguising that fact and giving me warm fuzzies along the way. Since I still have all three of their most recent platforms, and even a PSP if we want to go back that far… they are doing an awesome job of giving me reasons to care about each and every platform and more specifically the interoperability between them.

Share Play

Hands down the most interesting thing to come out of GamesCom for me was the announcement of Share Play. The Playstation Now game streaming service has been announced for some time, and it is currently happening playable in beta, but for the time being it just is a poor value. What Share Play does is take that same game streaming technology but flip it around to make it extremely useful. Right now if you want to play with a friend, you both have to own the same game and log into it at the same time to meet up and play. What Share Play proposes is that you can be sitting on your couch and your friend on theirs, but be virtually playing the same copy of the game together. The idea is that you send your PlayStation network friend an invite to join your current game session. At this point the game is then streamed to their console and you are playing together in the same session.

I have no clue what the ramifications of this technology will be and what sort of internet connection you will need to make it work. Thankfully however most of my friends that I hang out with on a nightly basis also have some pretty beefy internet connections. So I can see us getting a lot of play out of this feature. Want to try out a new game, awesome… pop in my game and play with me and see if you like it. Want to work together on some achievement, awesome… let me send you an invite and we will work on it together. That is the thing I like the best about the PS4 experience so far is that it feels very socially connected as I am constantly able to see what my friends are playing and especially during the Destiny betas we have been able to pop around freely. The only negative I have so far is that the voice chat system is horrible, and as a result I still prefer to use teamspeak.

Wrapping Up

I realize that I am not an unbiased voice about the whole Microsoft versus Sony debate. In truth there really isn’t much of a debate to be had in either direction. Buy whatever console has the games you want to play on it and ignore everyone that is spouting off about your choice. I made my choice based on the fact that it had more games that I wanted to play on it, and with the Playstation Plus service from the day I brought my PS4 home I already had a half dozen titles to play on it that night. PS Plus and all the other consoles do an amazing job justifying the purchase of MORE Sony Consoles. As far as Rise of the Tomb Raider, I am taking a wait and see attitude. I think right now that this exclusive agreement is just a carefully marketed and cleverly worded announcement. Will it ship on Xbox One first? More than likely… but will it be followed up within six months to a year on every other platform? Almost assuredly so, because so far if it is popular and demanded enough most Xbox titles see a PC release… I am looking at your KOTOR, Mass Effect, Fable, Dead Rising and I imagine every other blockbuster that gets released for a Microsoft Console.

#XboxOne #PS4 #RiseoftheTombRaider