Very similar for me. It’s in Dark Souls and I can’t remember what it’s called but in Blightown, on the end opposite the boss, you climb a tree root and hit a dead end with a chest. Behind that is an illusory wall or two which leads to the inside hollow of a tree which eventually leads to a beach sort of place with almost nothing there but a bonfire and an NPC for a covenant.
I’m pretty sure the area is repurposed cut content but the “Holy shit!” Moment is realizing you just journeyed down the world tree/yggdrasil and now you can see all of the other world trees stretching as far as the eye (sky box) can see.
Then you realize you haven’t unlocked fast travel yet and you need to survive the trek back up.
The unfinished aspect made it feel out of place in a game and that lent to a very natural feeling that I just discovered something new.
Last night I was playing DND and when the DM had to go deal with a personal issue I challenged my non-IC affiliated friends to Arcade of Our Own. I won’t go over every selection, though there were some good ones, but one player guessed a game that had just one entry: Jet Force Gemini
I still have mild anxiety over the first time I said bishounen and bishoujo out loud in front of Japanese and Japanese speaking co-workers. Because FYI those words are not pronounced like bisexual.
For me, the biggest pronunciation “huh?” of the episode isn’t Pie-cross vs. Pic-ross but whether one uses a long i or long a vowel to say “Legaia.” Me, mostly in my head for 20+ years: “Luh-gay-ah.” Brandon in the episode: “Luh-guy-ah.” Worst part (and it’s not bad, but I need to take a moment and sit with it) is that I think Brandon’s right.
I found my way to Undead Asylum without previous knowledge, I think player messages on the ground probably hinted me to it. It was a neat experience. The place in Dark Souls that came to mind for me when the panel was talking about the subject - the place that made me think, “Whoa! This is bonkers.” was the tree/beach area underneath Blight Town that @Psinuxi mentioned. If I remember how it goes, I believe there was an illusory wall behind a chest that a message tipped me off to and then there was another chest and I just went ahead and tried whacking the wall behind that chest as well and it turned out to be a second illusory wall. I was in awe of how there was this huge area to explore that was so thoroughly hidden away.
I have seen this feedback a lot, and as the person who’s job it is to actually listen to the surprisingly large number of Horrible Buzzers sent to us, let me say:
you really, really don’t want what you’re asking for here. go in peace and return not to this line of thinking.
I tried to make a few horrible buzzers and I found it very difficult to give it that special “oomph”, that “fullness”, that a good buzzer needs. I don’t think volume is the issue; I think it’s something else that I don’t think I have the expertise to describe.
You probably need more low frequency content. It’s easy to make horrible butters horrible because they are too high-pitched and shrill with nothing on the bottom.
I have definitely been thinking about this if you know what I mean.
I think you’re right about the low frequencies, but getting them is a whole other story! I’ve tried inserting low frequency noise or tone and that just didn’t do it. My next idea is to hit something with a hammer, maybe a piece of wood or something, and stretch out that impact sound. I’m just over here finger-painting with sound, more or less. It’s fun and I have also resigned myself to the idea that I will never make a horrible buzzer I am satisfied with.
In the wake of The Great Insert Credit Divorce, I’m relieved that Ash is here to fill the void of tangent filled rants on very specific topics. It’s funny that two of my favourite moments in recent history on the show are a rant about Geoff Keighley’s bad suits, and a rant requesting Geoff Keighley to bring Chant Guy and Flute Guy together like some sort of supergroup.
I had never put it together before that Ash is short for Ashley and this feels just as earth-shattering as learning that Spinelli was an Ashley (iykyk)
I do all of this too and you have pointed out an important release date I need to go fix… thank you
Agree with this. Something like Shadow of the Erdtree (an FFXIV expansion, Persona 3: The Answer etc) is unique in that it offers designers the opportunity to make an essentially new game, interrogating a whole new set of mechanics, without needing to spend time educating new players from ground zero about how to play it. Certainly there is the tradeoff in needing to stick to the format of the game it’s based on, but that’s no reason to ignore the possibilities an expansion/Big DLC (BDLC) can offer. Imagine if you could run wild assuming all the foundational knowledge a player will have from playing the base game, the kind of thorny territory you could get into.
Sequels are designed keeping in mind that they will be the point of entry for a whole bunch of new people, so even if the story can continue from where the previous game left off, the sequel game “needs” to teach itself mechanically to new players (or players who haven’t played the first game in a while).
The practical reality is DLC is just as reined in by profit mandates as full sequels are, I know… but think about it!
If Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask were made today, Majora would be DLC.
Arcade of Our Own is such a good segment. My favorite part about this being a recurring segment is that it’s going to progressively get harder and harder. Strategies that are viable now will likely not be so viable in the future when we’ve exhausted all the Tenchu’s out there.
I’m not so sure about that. It could be, but it does feel like too much of the game’s world structure is changed. I know it re-uses a ton of assets and tech (even game systems tech like the ocarina), but it feels so different… I guess they could make it differently to be more in line with DLC? It feels like far more of a new game than ToTK does… Here’s a real bad take, I guess. Tears of the Kingdom could very well have been an expansion!
But I guess the real thing is… does it really matter? To me an expansion is something that takes the same storyline, the same world, and adds on it. New areas, changes to existing areas, but a coherent flow of story and game design/progress.
