…Uh, what? Writers do it because fans who like those characters demand that characters return, consequences of the plot or story be damned, which they then try and do with the ways I describe. Comic books, more than most other mediums, tend to lean more into their regular readers’ desires because that’s what makes them money, especially before the internet where the only form of distribution was a comic book store. In essence, the vocal minority controlled comic book lore, in a sense.
That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t do it! X does it, why can’t Y? F&F does it because, as I mentioned, executives know that the celebrities are a big draw to it, and are very much incentivised to keep the actors alive between films, meaning there’s very little story-wise to gain. Nobody dies, very little of consequence happens, and anything bad that does happen gets reverted in the following films.
Spoilers for No Time to Die:
Bond being killed off at the end was quite refreshing as no other Bond movie had done that before then. There’s finally some consequences, he isn’t as superhuman as many portray him as. And while MGM are obviously going to replace Craig (It’s a franchise after all), the fact they decided to end the movie this way really does help give a nice end to his era, instead of going the very easy route of keeping him alive and merely “out there in the world and/ or retired”.
Of course, listening to your readers is usually a good idea, sometimes writers can very much fuck up a story (see: The Incredible Hulk 2008 film and its very inconsistent tone and writing, or hell Thor: The Dark World where its tone clashed with past and future entries, and messed up Thors’ characterisation), but a mark of a good writing team is managing audience expectations, and keeping the course of the narrative, without screwing up. You shouldn’t have to avert course for the vocal minority; it’s only when the rest of the fanbase protests, only then you should consider changing course.
And unless I’ve missed something, I’ve not seen many protests outside this forum of the ICA being destroyed.
I wonder if Silent Assassin rating will be pivotal around here to get some extras or isn’t even taken in count, given some challenges ask you to eliminate guards. You know, others than the target.
I think the guards are still targets, but optional, and if you kill them in the SA way you will get SA rating for the mission. But you are right it remains to be seen how the SA concept will impact the gameplay and the rewards.
I feel like if you lose a mission you’ll lose what you brought in and your arsenal at the safehouse will remain untouched however if you lose a showdown, your campaign will be reset and anything you gained from that run will be lost. If you win, all the stuff that you’ve gathered will persist to the next campaign. That’s the way I would do it, to have consequences for losing while not making building up a collection of weaponry and tools pointless.
Really the entire franchise is one big escalation by those standards. When did escalation become a swear word meaning “bad content”? Theyre just a variant on contracts, which are beloved
Bros i feel like this can somehow lead to the hitman 1&2 suits being unlockables. I’d love that
As of lately I have been playing in more non-SA ways to see the variety of playstyle titles there are and has been pretty fun! So I’m eager to see how all this translates to Freelancer.
I don’t think anyone is saying escalations are bad content, only that this mode is similar to them.
There’s a good chance that there won’t be any rankings, at least not like the main campaign, like SA and such. My reasoning for that is, in one of the data mined sections showing info on the mode before Freelancer was even announced, there is an optional objective in some missions to leave the body of the target in order to send a message. Such is not really compatible with SA ranking, except with accidents and such. Also, during the gameplay trailer, some optional objectives mention to not get spotted, and cut-aways to later parts of the mission show that at some point that was lost, indicating that, rather than being part of the ranking at the end of the mission, stealthy play like going SA or suit only will be part of the optional objectives that determine how many Merces you get. Personally, I’d be fine with this, because that means such things are at the client’s request, and 47 always follows the client’s requests, so if they ask him to do something that is ordinarily against SA, that means that any action other than the optional objective would invalidate SA, and we won’t need a rank to tell us that, because by now we know in our hearts if we did an SA run or not.
So if Freelancer is doing away with the ranking system as we’ve known it and is basing it solely on objectives, I can make do with that, and adjust my parameters of perfection accordingly.
I maintain a lot of the data core sequence can be considered canon information, but there is some really weird oddities (why is Zoe and Sophia in the list; they were never Sanctioned Targets!), the lack of Wazir Kale or Sniper Assassin targets is a little odd as TLY got referenced fairly often. It’s just strange.
It also needs updating due to SITW as Crest and Akka were targets too.
I maintain that IOI just put in all the images they could of WoA targets just to make that list seem long, and that it was never meant to be paid close attention to, or paused to see who all is in it and take it seriously. They were trying to pad the list; the ones that we can clearly see from the trilogy’s main campaign are ones that really happened and belong there, while ETs and targets that were not ICA sanctioned are just there to extend the list. Agree that at least Akka needs to be added; we don’t know if ICA knows Crest was taken out in that mission, too, they were kinda just going off of whatever Diana told them.
I feel like comparing it to escalations to me seems spurious and moreso a way of expressing cynicism the mode will be good and implying IOI doesnt change or listen to criticism. Them being obsessed with escalations peaked in ET arcade, which already has original target routines and multiple locations but I can see the criticism that it is an escalation. This? We’ll see. I’d recommend we hold our tongues on the E word unless it’s especially shitty and escalation-y. I still need to remind people that escalations are just variants on contracts, and the entire trilogy was built on contracts mode as a live service
Well, escalations do suck, but the comparison to escalations in this case is just basically going “hey, know those things where you play the mission with special requirements, then you do it again but it’s harder? This is gonna be a similar in structure, even though there’s more stuff, so just be ready for that.”
I wouldnt say we have special requirements tho since theyre all optional and them getting harder is subjective. It gets harder if we fail them sure and the Showdowns are intended to be hard but that’s a standard difficulty curve. Spelunky is my favorite escalation by those standards
That would be a great solution / design!
The Hitman II source red sky was so pretty itd be cool to see it again. I still prefer the 2017 / present source we have and always will because it’s pretty but the red sky is a cool look for something
The creators of the upcoming Harry Potter game must’ve somehow found a way to legally compel IOI into delaying release of Freelancer to January because the game in question was also delayed for around the same timeframe. Basically to prevent their competitors from benefiting from the delay.
unless the client’s request is stupid… like wearing a specific outfit when you kill someone…
And before you argue that, consider:
- According to the canon of the game, 47 should always complete his missions as a “Silent Assassin”.
- Being a silent assassin, the only time he should ever be spotted is potentially by the person he’s killing, while in the actual act of killing them.
- Even #2 is questionable since his kills are almost always accidents so no one should ever spot him doing anything.
- If he’s never spotted, it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever what he wears.
If the client wanted to throw people off by having the target killed by some weirdo wearing a shark costume with a pink tu-tu, and that was part of the contract, and 47 accepted it, it would mean he was agreeing to find a shark suit and a pink tu-tu to do the job in. If he didn’t want to do something so stupid, he’d reject the contract.
I guess in my head-canon he rejects any contract that stipulates an outfit then. This isn’t an anti-suit rant, mind you, it’s an anti-telling me what to wear rant.