Finally tackled all the new unlocks this Season had to offer.
Firstly, I’m very surprised IOI “blew their load” and released everything basically at once.
That being said it looks like our next Roadmap is slated at some point in January.
The Splitter was a fun repurposed scrapped ET and a Celeb-ET target done right. I’m eager to see what IOI has in store since it seems they still got some stuff in the pipeline before this game is said and done.
I think the one thing I disagree with about this Roadmap is the Support a Creator unlock. While the concept is great, the unlock is paywalled effectively making it inaccessible to people who can’t afford a Twitch subscription. I hope IO steers away from this in the future and just have these Twitch drops tied to view time of streamer with Drops enabled.
Other than that, it’s been awhile since I played Hitman 3 and I’m glad this season was pretty solid.
I wouldn’t mind the “Support a Streamer” idea so much if it was simultaneously announced that on the following set of Drops it will be a standard drop where you only have to watch a stream to earn it.
That way you can choose to support a streamer and get the unlock “early”, or you can choose to wait a few months and get it then.
There is a way to do B-movie acting, voice acting and general cheese-factor, but JCVD’s voice acting is all over the damn place! There’s barely any cohesion with his voice between one sentence to the next. Maybe his accent is tripping me up, I have a similar issue with Vegas, but this ET is actively annoying to listen to on repeat playthroughs, unlike Vegas, which just makes him sound bored, rather than grating.
I know people have said above that the lines being odd is intentional, and while I believe that JCVD is meant to sound like a card-carrying-B-movie villain who is larger than life, I don’t think that quite excuses the poor direction he was given, or how sentences sound so disjointed and out of place from one another even in the same conversation. That’s bad voice direction on IO’s part, pure and simple.
This is also true of Angus Pritchards’ VA too; Richard Stemp. While he sounds fine most of the time, he repeats the same “Gotta admit, I’m impressed” twice in less than two minutes (first time at the crusher, second time at the shooting range). The script-writing for this just feels… weird. Like it needed a once-over to make sure there was no repetition.
A DLC pack that costs £4.49, contains one suit and where only 60% of the revenue goes to the streamer. Not exactly the best deal in the world.
If IO wanted to support streamers, then they should’ve made a dedicated cosmetics DLC pack and posted them on store platforms. It would’ve been easier to set a lower cost, or, at the very least, the money would’ve gone to better places, not to mention that they wouldn’t need to rely on a predatory FOMO tactic players are unhappy with, to put it mildly, as the DLC would be more permanently available. Several games have done this, the Yogscast have their own kart in Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing Transformed, just as an example.
I don’t know about you, but Jeff Bezos doesn’t need more money from me, even if it’s only 40% of £4.49
See I think what the Sub Drop should’ve done is give you ALL the Purple Streak items as soon as you buy it, maybe even forward dating so you get the new ones theyll do automatically too. Because then that’s a decent value, youre essentially buying a DLC pack of purple items plus ensuring ones you missed or were about to miss get added to your loadout
Well I liked it and thought they did it well. JCVD just isnt a very good actor, but the material they gave him was campy and fun and i felt his accent made the lines funnier. “They got zhuh best genes. Not to brahag, but they dew”
He’s a half-decent actor, he’s just not a very good voice actor, or at the very least, the lines and direction IO gave him don’t paint him as such.
I get that, and I won’t deny I got a few giggles from a few of his lines because of this. But the most laughter that came from me was from his infamous scream, and that’s because I was laughing at its inclusion, not as if I enjoyed it.
Aside from the money, there’s also the waste of 60 minutes.
You can’t mute, you can’t minimize, the only thing you can do is leave your device, go to another room and hope you have a second one.
It’s absurd.
Actually you can mute it, all you have to do is right click the tab and click “mute site”, this bypasses anything that restricts you getting the drop if you click mute on the site video
I forgot to add you also have to go through the hoops of downloading and registering for Twitch, giving your data to an organization that ordinarily you wouldn’t be interested in.
Time + data + money + download volume + space on your device + electricity + mental processing
And the drop system itself isn’t intuitive at all and requires meticulous double checking.
With regards to JCVD: I am a big fan. It hurts to see him being thrown into the B-actor pool. He had a certain niche of movies, but his acting was more than decent, not to mention his obvious world-class talent in body language: martial arts, dance, acrobatics.
He lived many years in the states and improved his accent, but even in his movies you hear it’s less French sounding than what’s in-game. It’s 100% on purpose, note that they added some French words and phrases like carrotte and n’est-ce pas.
But poor directing: yes. And my guess is JCVD didn’t come cheap, so everything had to be done in one take.
In closing, maybe watch this again before showing a lack of respect:
(Disclaimer: of course you can criticize him, but I am a fanboy, can’t be helped. The fact that this legend agreed to be part of my favorite game in itself is just beyond me. It’s difficult to accept people shitting all over that. It’s a dream I didn’t know I had come true people! I’m even glad I failed the ET: JCVD got me by surprise and kicked my ass. Good!)
I should probably say that one of my fave parts of this ET is the mocap work. The briefing was good, the splits was good, everything about that was really well implemented.
I can see how people will say there’s similarities, but the differences between DLC Pack and Twitch Subscription Incentives are apparent.
DLC Packs or the current iteration of said thing simply hold more value and “Bang For Your Buck” which in most cases people can justify purchasing.
Suit
3x Items
Freelancer Cosmetics
and if it’s an Celeb-ET Target permanent access to said Target via ETA.
The Twitch Subscription Incentive is just a Reskinned Splitter Boxing Suit with nuances removed that were on the original Suit in the premium DLC. Not everyone can freely spend five dollars just to have an item in the color purple. And on top of that it’s not just a paywalled item, it’s a paywalled item that has an expiration date.
I simply feel it’s best for IOI going forward to just keep these unlocks tied to view time making it accessible for everyone. Have two rewards run concurrently with each other, just make their stretch goals different. 1 Hour for ICA Pistol, 2 Hours for Suit.
Sure, i agree that the value isnt great at all. I simply responded to the paywall part, which is still true.
Couple of things they could do for the future is provide more value by adding more unlocks to it, so the money feels more justified.
On top of that, have these unlocks become available a few months later as a dlc pack, so people can choose when and where to get it from.
This would remove the limited time issue, and the issue where some people simply dont want to hassle with all the Twitch stuff, while streamers are still getting some nice extra support.
On my first playthrough, I followed the story route to see what the plot was, listen to the dialogue etc. and yeah as soon as Max started speaking I was like “is that even Van Damme? Is he supposed to be French?” It was definitely a bit discombobulating if you haven’t heard him since the '90s.
But as you listen more, you pick up that it’s him, and on repeat runs it definitely wasn’t as distracting to me.
Also, if you listen to the clones, the “prime” versions of Max, they actually do sound more like the Hollywood JCVD we’re accustomed to, so I think maybe his voice is intentionally exaggerated to differentiate Max from the clones.
I’m one of the few that doesn’t mind the sub drop for itself. In isolate, it’s a dumb suit you can easily do without, and if you want to perk it up, you can.
Especially since I kinda expect the items to end up being released by the end of it all. Other games have done so. Not for a bit though. And not something announced, or even planned in advance.
The unequal attitude towards, apparent contempt, regular players is what gets me. Streamers and influencers are above all, and cared for.
We had to constantly ask for the coin for two years before it was released in the laziest way, completely missing the larger opportunities it offered. Didn’t even updated the description.Same for the Safehouse decorations. In parallel, making a custom model of a wedding cake in Paris for you was no factor.
And as pure symbolism, until the patch, it messed up the gameplay experience in Freelancer of regular folks.
Now we are asked to be grateful to give 5 bucks to you.
In a best case scenario, we would have both. And then I wouldn’t mind. The same way I didn’t mind paying for the cosmetic Makeshift Pack and Street Art Pack when Freelancer was released for free. But we don’t.
I hope better in Year 5. Care for the puzzle game I liked.
I think they will. There are good indicators.
But currently, we are still in Year 4.
So immediately, in my point of view IOI are in overall negative, and I perceive it accordingly.
