What is going on with Nintendo?

So I haven't talked about the Nintendo E3 press conference, or digital event, as it's been a couple crazy weeks since then, but thought I would share some thoughts on what's gone on.

Mostly, I was pretty disappointed.

If you read this blog at all then you'd know that I am a big Nintendo fan. I'm a dad and just want nothing more than to play Nintendo games with my kids as they grow up, as I grew up on the games and love them and love the new games. I look forward to E3 time and seeing what is coming up from Nintendo, but sadly, there's not a lot really, especially for Wii U.

I know that they have stated that they don't like to show off games in the far off future like Sony or Microsoft do, and that's also probably because they're making games for the new system, the NX, and are more focused on that. But when you don't even show off anything to tease with the new Zelda game that they have insisted is still coming out next year, well I was pretty bummed.

The new Star Fox looks pretty underwhelming in my opinion. I'm sure it'll be fun, but when it comes out in November I'll be playing Battlefront more than likely. At least Xenoblade Chronicles X is out in December just after my birthday, which I am excited for. They did show off Yoshi's Wooly World, which looks cute, and for some reason is out all over the world except for North America. Guessing they wanted to stagger the release so they had some bigger titles for the fall, plus to give them time to make Yoshi amiibo for us? There was a new Animal Crossing party game teased but mostly looks to once again make use of amiibo, and gameplay wise looks like a less skilled version of Mario Party (so even more so based on chance than regular Mario Party). There was a lot more for 3DS, but the "Metroid" game looks pretty bland, and the new Zelda 3DS game is also not that interesting to me.

Not sure what I was really hoping for, but it just seemed that a number of the games were made to sell me amiibo, or were just some generic titles with IP slapped on it. I know that they are aware of the general disappointment that was in the air following the digital event, and have said they will do better to communicate better and create better experiences, and I believe them, but still after that event i'm still bummed about release calendar for Nintendo games for the rest of this year.

Maybe next year will be better.

On Destiny

I just went back and looked at what I had written about Destiny, after having played the Alpha and the Beta. It's been about ten months since the game came out, and while I have also picked up a number of games here and there, really the bulk of my time still goes into Destiny.

It has definitely not quite lived up to my original hype, and has fallen quite short as far as the story goes. There's hints of greatness still in the game, stories that are waiting to be told, but for whatever reason it just hasn't happened yet. The original lead writer on the game left a little bit before the game came out, and many have hypothesized that the original story that Bungie wanted to tell had some ambiguous greys in it and wasn't strictly a black and white affair with guardians of light versus the Darkness. The theories do make some sense and I can see having had that story scrapped and moving eventually towards something else happen, and the patch job was a bunch of grimoire cards that were hastily written up and tossed on the website.

Regardless, Destiny has been a great social experience and that is why I have put hundreds and hundreds of hours into the game. I've gotten to play and stay in touch with my brothers back in Alberta, my former coworkers, game with new coworkers, but mostly meet a ton of new friends in the clans I have been a part of, whether it be Dads of Destiny or my favourite Christian chums in Below the Cross. I have done countless raids, done my weeklies every week, even participated in a couple Iron Banner events even though I'm terrible at pvp, but I still have fun because of the people I play with.

Lately there's been a lot of controversy over the pricing of the upcoming expansion the Taken King, and especially the pricing of the legendary versions that have some exclusive items attached. I'm kind of interested in the class items but not for the money, and after the uproar and lashing back against Bungie I'm glad they have at least put the items up for sale, even if the price point is pretty steep, I think anyways. A lot of people are saying they are done with the game, have moved on, but I'm pretty sure i'll pick it up. Because it's about the social experience for me and I still have fun with the game. Just hoping that they start to fulfill on the game I had originally gotten excited for and add a great story, because the opportunity is there, and hopefully Taken King gets it back on track.

Ocarina Adventures

I have been enjoying Ocarina of Time 3D a lot more than I did the last time around. I'm still at the beginning of the game but am finding it much more enjoyable than my first time playing it. Yes, I know it's blasphemous that I haven't beaten the game, let alone made it very far in at all really, but I never had an N64 back in the day.

After my time with the SNES I made the jump over to the Playstation, mostly thanks to Square and their development for Sony's fledgling system. I make it no secret that FFVI is my all-time favourite game and all i wanted was FFVII, more than anything pretty much. When Nintendo started showing off the N64 I remember being wowed by Mario 64, and really interested in Wave Race, but there wasn't a ton that I wanted. However, Sony had lined up a great number of publishers for their new system and I eventually got one with Beyond the Beyond (a terrible game btw, stay far away from it). My good friend had an N64 and I would play Ocarina with him and really liked it, but it was never enough for me to warrant purchasing one.

That reminds me, I need to buy an N64.

Anyways, I've been enjoying Ocarina 3D. I really enjoy the areas and my first time going through that monstrous field is still as impressive as the first time I played it. It still feels epic, even after playing newer RPGs like Dragon Age: Inquisition. Looking forward to playing it some more this week, and perhaps Link Between Worlds if I can snag it for cheap.

A Recap of What's Going On

Well it has been a while since I posted on here, and I have decided to get things back on track. I will be writing more frequently about whatever I am playing, as I have quite a bit on the go and more coming up.

Mostly I have taken a bit of a breather on Destiny. I have one character, my Warlock, at level 32, my Hunter is level 31 and then my lowly Titan is level 4 (he was made mostly to store items on as my vault is full). I have beaten Crota on hard once, and normal many times, I have SUROS, Gjallarhorn, multiple Icebreakers and more now, so there isn't much for me to do, other than pop on tuesday mornings to do nightfall with my buddies, or raid on the weekend with my brothers and friends. The new dlc isn't coming out until late April or probably May so i'll just take it easy until then.

I have gotten back into Dragon Age Inquisition though and it's been great. Such a fantastic game. Amazing world, crazy environments and very memorable characters. I am technically halfway through the game though I have only put about 20 hours into it. I have also really only been to 3 of the 10 areas so I have a long ways to go. Multiplayer on that is also fantastic, I highly recommend it.

As for what's next, well I am still trying to track down a copy of Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. That game looks like so much fun and quite a few of my friends have been playing it. I however did just start Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and this time I am going to stick with it and actually get somewhere.

That's it for now, maybe i'll update on Zelda in a day or two. Cheers all!

Wrapping Up The End of The Year

Well the last couple of months have been pretty crazy for me. Me and my wife welcomed our second child into the world and thus life has been busy. I haven't had a ton of time to play, but when I have, well it's been Destiny. After almost 3 months and over 60 hours (which is a lot for me) I still come back to Destiny day after day. A lot of people have had issues with it and dropped it after weeks, but whenever I have friends online we are all over it, and if not then i'm just working on bounties and such. So i've been mostly playing Destiny, however I also picked up Dragon Age: Inquisition as well as Diablo 3 for the PS4 so I have quite a bit to play. I've been busy but I am going to start on my year end list pretty soon, just wanted to touch base on how life has been and what I have been enjoying.

Also, the Wii U has been out for 2 years now and I love it even more than when I first got it. I play Destiny a lot but as far as flat out fun games, and fun times when people are over, it's all about Nintendo and their system. If you don't have a Wii U, Mario Kart 8 and Smash Bros yet, well get on out there and pick one up. Trust me, you won't regret it. Best exclusive library and next year there are even more great titles coming out. Until next time, keep on gaming.

A Destiny repost from Reddit about missing content

I just saw this and after reading that the original post had been deleted, thought I would copy and save on here. Some interesting stuff about why Destiny is lacking in what was originally promised to the audience. I really like the game, but the story is so weak, thus this is pretty interesting. Original post is as follows:

"This thread is a collection of posts and my thoughts that show how Destiny's development changed DRASTICALLY within its last year.

It is the reason why the story is lacking, the missions are repetitive, and why there are grimoire cards. A lot of shady stuff went down during the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014.

Anyway, let's start off with what the Story was supposed to be like:

STORY: This reddit post from a deleted thread Here explains how Destiny's story was originally during E3 2013. Bungie.net user Diver2441 sums up all of this here:

(Key parts are BOLDED for the lazy)

So recently a Reddit thread came to light detailing what Destiny's narrative looked like in 2013, and it's very different from the ailing excuse for a story we're presented with today: the Traveler bringing the darkness, Crow, different progression through planets and even considerable cut areas. So it becomes apparent that between mid to late 2013 and launch, Bungie gutted the story. Now this is where it gets good, something else happened back in late 2013 before the story was gutted; Joe Staten, Bungie's former lead writer left. Some may think it coincidence, but I think not.

Now the Reddit thread (which has mysteriously disappeared) outlined a story sprawling across a considerably larger solar system, and including a number of characters and factions who never so much as appear in the full game. The prime example of this is Crow, the character/faction who was set out to expose the Traveler and Speaker for in fact bringing the darkness along with the Traveler, and not the Golden Age. A specific reference to Crow can be found in the above video at 1:01, where a mission would have you assist Crow in looting the Archive on venus for details on the Vex Gatelord (which is in fact a mission we end up doing in the main game, but Crow is clearly not a part of it). The Gatelord was said to contain a way to access a pre-Collapse AI construct who had the ability to expose the Traveler, and we can see this in the form of the inaccessible Bunker RAS2.

Even in the PvP, we see a reference to "faction wars" at 1:20 in the video, so it appears that justification and explanation for the different factions in the tower was cut as well.

Destiny's current half assed story starts to make a little more sense when we apply the context that the entire narrative was gutted less than a year before launch, and remade without Bungie's lead writer. Why Joe left, and why Bungie felt the need to completely gut the story of the game and cut huge areas is beyond me, but it's abundantly obvious that there's a lot more going on than meets the eye.

WHAT THE STORY WAS RE-WRITTEN INTO: Grimoire Cards. I'm currently trying to find the post where I discovered this Check Edit2 for Source, but basically back in February 2014, a man was hired to write all the Grimoire Cards. This was clearly the solution to trying to incorporate as much story as possible with what little story was actually in the game. This also is most likely the reason why there is no Grimoire UI in-game, because it was far too close to release to actually incorporate such a thing.

UNUSED LOCATIONS AND FEATURES:

Continuing from Diver2441's post, he mentions:

If we look at an article from 2013 and the reveal ViDoc, it becomes very obvious that the game we have today is vastly different from what it was as little as around a year ago. For starters there are references to areas such as Old Chicago, the ghost fleet in the rings of Saturn, Charlemagne's Vault, and others that very clearly never made it into the full game, despite being fully made and playable around a year ago. Additionally, at 3:24 in the video above, we see an in game location in The Reef, and from 3:43 - 3:51 we see a pine forested area in game that never saw the light of day as well. Even in our own back yard of Old Russia in the retail games, we have locked off areas such as King's Watch, the Jovian Complex, and the Seraphim Vault, none of which are even mentioned in the retail game today.

CUT CONTENT BEING RESOLD AS DLC (POSSIBLY):

This video shows that the majority of the first two expansions of DLC is potentially already on the disc! Even in the beta, areas such as the King's Watch and Seripham Vault were accessible through glitches and yet are not available in the full game (Actually, these places aren't even mentioned in the DLC either!) More proof about these areas can be shown through the data dumps athttp://db.destinytracker.com

I want to note here that this doesn't mean the content is actually finished, but the idea that it could be is annoying and makes sense given the amount of content that had already been cut.

ANOTHER COINCIDENCE: Along with Bungie's Lead Writer departing for unknown reasons, we can't forget about Marty O'Donnell being fired too. We're all aware that the situation had to do with salary, but when Marty left, there was a clear bitterness between him and Bungie. Bungie had changed, and the lead writer had recognized it too. Was it Activision? Probably. But we're not being told the full story and I don't expect us to find out unfortunately.

WHAT BUNGIE SHOULD DO: There are a variety of options Bungie can do to fix these problems.

1. GIVE US THE HELD-BACK CONTENT FOR FREE: Unfortunately, this isn't very likely given Activision's greed and contracts already settled in to sell this content later. Some could also argue that it's a good thing this content is being held-back so that the game will stay alive for much longer, although I personally disagree given the lack of content available at launch.
2. GIVE US JUST THE STORY MISSIONS FOR FREE: This is a bit more reasonable and would solve the overall complaint with Destiny. We know there is a story being held back greatly, and we should not let them sell this to us as DLC.
3. GIVE US A SCHEDULE AND COMMUNICATE BETTER: This is my final plea to Bungie. The game is already out; we don't need to be left in the dark anymore. They need to tell us when content is being released and what we can expect so that we can voice our opinions better and prevent them from making more mistakes.

THOUGHTS? I know this thread is extremely long in details, but I think it needs to be seen. The Destiny today is not the Destiny we were promised or the one Bungie had even imagined. Locations, ship customization, a real story, and other deleted content were all things planned/created before last year and are all gone now. Something must be done.

(I will continue to edit this post as more info comes along).

EDIT1: Source to Diver2441's post: http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/70651356/0/0

EDIT2: More details about the Grimoire cards and the fact that all of this "cutting out content" was very recent.

Posted by Reddit user /u/mrdabu:

...Moreover, basic game elements were removed - in the developer commentary for the gameplay reveal the bungie developer (Mike Zak, environment artist) says that the hunter could have gained his weapons and armor through trade with other players or a kind of gambling (8:12). this is not implemented in the release version. The video was released on july 8, 2013 on youtube. So the decision to cut these features out was made in the last year of a more than 5 year development period which is very uncommon.

Perhaps the story is so lame and such a mystery because of all the changes during the last year.

Then he talks about the grimoire cards which contain the story. in the forum of destiny.bungie.org a guy called general battuta says that the grimoire story was „mostly written and edited in one crazy spiny very close to launch“. (sept 14, 2014) On feb 13, 2014, he posted a thread in which he shared his excitement of being hired as a writer for bungie in seattle. this was 7 months before release.

EDIT3: Reddit user /u/PopeOwned gives a little bit more info about Bungie's Lead Writer, Joe Staten, leaving:http://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/2hk88o/spoiler_redditor_provides_insight_as_to_why/ckthwqk

EDIT4: Further proof that the story claimed by the reddit poster is TRUE: https://i.imgur.com/Xv02vmU.jpg (Thanks /u/martellus!)

EDIT5: I want to note that the demands listed are just things Bungie COULD do to fix all of this turmoil. I am not saying that we deserve anything from them, although it would be in their favor to at least communicate better with us on Destiny's future."

An Open Letter to Bungie

Dear Bungie,

I have been playing games for about two and a half decades, ever since our family got our first computer, a Commodore 64. I have put more hours than I can probably count into games and it's my favourite medium in regards to entertainment, enjoyment and engagement in storytelling. It's how games tell stories that really makes me love them more than almost anything else. I love a good RPG and really anything that has a solid story behind it. Generally I have no interest in shooters, CoD has ruined that for me probably. The stories always seem kind of tacked on and it's merely there to prep you for playing online. Not a lot of interest for this guy.

Then came something called Destiny.

Truth be told I only ever beat one of your Halo games, and that was Reach as I took it out of the library and plowed through the campaign in a few days. However, I loved the story, the characters, and the tragedy that was unfolding around me. Master Chief has always seemed too distant and I could never relate to him. However, this squad made me care about them and what was going to happen to them. That was when I really started to care about the games you guys make.

Back to Destiny.

I remember first hearing about it as the new IP that you were working on, and as more details started to surface I thought it looked pretty cool. I was down with the shoot and loot style of gameplay that has made Borderlands so popular, and the idea of MMO influences in a semi-open world shooter seemed pretty great. But once I started to read about the worlds, about the Traveller and the tragedy surrounding humanity I wanted to know more.

Then I played the Alpha, and Beta.

I was hooked.

I had so much fun playing with my family and friends, the game even convinced my one brother who had an Xbox One to sell it and get a PS4 to play with the rest of us. We even have a clan all set up for next week. This all comes down to right now, the game is a mere week away and I am so incredibly excited. I play a lot of games and get excited for some, but I have not been this excited since anticipating the end of Commander Shepard's journey in Mass Effect 3.

I'm excited to see the worlds, to explore other maps, to join up with my family members, friends and even new friends I have made in the burgeoning Destiny online community. I want to take on new Strikes, I want to get new gear, and most of all I want to take on the first Raid and see how me and my crew fare.

I love games, but this anticipation has grown greater than most other games that I have looked forward too. I highly doubt that this will let us down and I just wanted to say ahead of time thanks for the memories. I look forward to them.

Sincerely

PS4 Guardian- Virtute1979