Stupidity, affects all people; all races, genders, ages, independently from access to food, water, heat, proper sanitation, technology and medicines. The first recorded case of stupidity was lost in time, and the earliest ones can easily be found in the oldest historical records.

This disease also affects both very, brilliantly intelligent people, and as well very unintelligent people at various times, rates and severity. Which can lead from mild physical or mental injury to severe ones, including death.

Animals, including household pets have shown hints of stupidity, and similar results. Yet we are worried about ebola, the flu, and cancer.

Their new announced title is a disappointment. Not in terms of gameplay, story, or the elements that maybe will make it an enjoyable game. Overwatch seems to tackle onto a really specific genre dominated by few games, most particularly by Team Fortess 2, which is the closest thing to the genre of FPS.

The disappointment I am talking about is... That's not Blizzard. Certainly the characters can have fascinating personalities, and maybe they can be meaningful to play as. However, who would have seen Blizzard doing this kind of thing before?

Nobody would have guessed. Blizzard makes epic fantasy or science fiction games. One way or another, they made this kind of thing for almost a decade and have gathered a mixed, loyal player base that went to Blizzcon to witness the announcement of Overwatch...

Which wasn't directly aimed at them. Overwatch isn't aiming to the players of StarCraft 2, it's not aiming to the players of World of Warcraft, but it's aimed exclusively to teenagers. I do get that image just simply by looking at the graphics, the lines, and the presentation.

I am disappointed, that in effect, Blizzard gave the middle finger to fans who may have been over the years, excitedly awaiting for a new epic story, or maybe something from Blizzard and are met with a Team Fortress 2, Dota 2, and Pixar hybrid.

It may not be a bad game, but many loyal players have been excluded, and cast completely aside. All the time of enjoying Blizzard games, buying, reading the books, comics and extended stories that were made thanks to WarCraft, StarCraft, and Diablo... All cast aside for gag humor, and a completely different audience.

Does anyone share a similar feeling, or any kind of thought that agrees or disagrees?

This topic has been moved to News.

http://sep7agon.net/index.php?topic=11236.0

This topic has been moved to Penguin Party.

http://sep7agon.net/index.php?topic=10332.0

I am at the second year of my studies, but it feels wholly pointless. There are nice things, the place's great, the people are nice, and the professors quite good and supportive to strive to do more work...

But it's also filled with moronic idiots that I'd rather wipe my hands with them before even dealing with them, the students from the US tend to be mostly stereotypical and always within in their social circles meanwhile they spout some nonsense about getting out of your comfortable area when they have a huge student loan to pay their "vacation" to a semester in a US college in Greece.

The Greek students... There are two kinds of them; those who do study, and the huge number of people who are there, drinking coffee in the cafeteria and wasting their parent's money at a private institution. Without having some kind of realistic ambition, interest in a craft or maybe talent in some cases. (The lot of them also get quite a huge number of financial aid, too)

I'll sound like a bitch, but I do have talent, I do have interest in what I do and I love it, but college is just making me more arrogant as the assignments feel like leg work. They are not challenging, and it feels idiotic to do "group assignments" just to deal with the fact that the other person will fuck up things and whatever happens I will have to gather the pieces to put things back together. The programming course was in Java, it was nice, but there was no challenge there either.

I want challenge, I want the brutal kind of challenge with competition, and to actually feel the A slapped onto my courses worth my time and effort. Whenever I am slapped with a grade, it only leaves a bad taste, a sense of disappointment and lack of achievement.

What's the point? It's not challenging, it feels like legwork, and it lacks any kind of fascination as the challenge didn't get any good after my first year. Whenever I talk about video game development I am met with lack of expertise, interest and misunderstanding.

Well, there you go.

Since we are working onto improving the overall experience with Sep7agon, and with Cheat's permission, I have decided to take a survey. All the entries are anonymous, you are not obliged to answer at all questions, and after submitting one may be able to come back and edit their answers.

The survey ends October, 18th 2014 at 5 PM GMT.

The survey has ended, thanks for participating!

---

There's a fascination in being a secret agent. Something that perhaps started from the stories of espionage between secret agencies of one nation against another. In truth, Metal Gear Solid is a series that focuses on infiltration, and effectively completing a mission.

However, it's much more than that. Metal Gear Solid games tend to touch sci-fi, paranormal, fantasy themes even, letting the player to have a broad exposure to many subjects. One solid example is secrecy in Metal Gear Solid, in Metal Gear Solid 2 is about information, data and its gathering, Metal Gear Solid 3 tackles a more cold war theme about weapon advancement, and loyalty, Peace Walker about nuclear deterrence and Metal Gear Solid 4 is more akin to the grand awaited finale to an action-packed story filled with many interesting characters that can only be compared to hollywood due to its focus on cutscenes. (Which people criticized for taking up plenty of the game, but that's another story)

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain features a battle-scarred, rough-looking, and vengeance-driven Big Boss. Since the events of Ground Zeroes— where Mother Base has been destroyed, all the great feelings that came from building it in Peace Walker, gathering many people under your wing, and driven by the same goal; freedom, a place to be, is slowly destroyed. It can only be compared to taking a great painting and desaturating it, and then staining it with blood and images of horror.

There's quite a theme. Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes actually also covers rape in one of its darker shades. Of course, such a sensible subject was met with plenty of criticism. After all, it's not that easy to portray such a traumatizing event, but at the same time avoid the player from dropping the controller from mere disgust.

Did anyone ever want a game that traditionally featured a darker theme return to its origins? Metal Gear Solid was quite dark as a game, but the mood became brighter in the following titles. When someone is met with Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is met with not only questions— as Kojima enjoys pitching different theories and fantasies, but surprise.

Surprise of a character's deep change. Personalities change over the year. Some events make us better people, other events... Make us worse. Big Boss, Kazuhira Miller, and Quiet are actually examples of such dramatic personality changes. How is it to play a game which over the years featured characters whose personalities were one way, but due to the events in the story they changed?

Quiet was met with the most criticism out of those three. The reason is that she's a female, but also goes around with her torso exposed. Personally, I don't see an issue. She's not a “babe” kind of character, which is shown easily from the trailer, but there is a solid point in that; if Kojima Productions doesn't give a proper and cohesive story about her personality, and clothing choice then it will only add validity to the idea that she was made that way to appeal to the male audience.

Returning to Big Boss, he now trains children to war which he only did that a little in the past, but now he does it actively, and is unending loyal to his fallen comrade-at-arms. His lust for vengeance against Cypher slowly takes over, turning him, his loyal friend, Kaz, and all of Mother Base into devils.

The intent was to show such a dramatic change. To let the player play as the villain. Effectivelly and practically from what one can witness from the game's release material, Big Boss is the anti-hero of the story, including all the main characters that are featured.

Being a villain can be enjoyable, but only if the right triggers are pressed towards the player. Someone who blatantly becomes “the bad guy” without a reason, or expresses emotions, feelings and thoughts that have no reasoning behind them will not be a fun character to play as. Instead, one with a story, and reacts with emotion, feelings and proper dialogue is likely to be successful in delivering the message.

What do you think about characters changing personalities in games? How do you think that a change in personality affects your enjoyment of a character such as Big Boss?

---

Food for Thought is a series of critical outlooks on games written by Isara exclusively for Sep7agon.net. Metal Gear Solid, Konami, Konami.jp, and the Konami logo are trademarks of Konami in Japan and other countries.

« Assassin's Creed III: Black Flag

---

The next step of Sep7agon's website is being developed. Unlike what has occured on Bungie.net with the latest updates which drove off most of the community, my objective is to instead cater towards the community.

Community driven content, from news posts, reviews, other articles, to spotify, youtube, and so on are to be given a focus whenever someone visits the main page. Links and profiles reworked to look sleek, clean and showcase your participation in the forum, and gaming profiles.

The plan is quite straightforward. What I hope to achieve in the following months from October is to create a more engaging, cool, and unique website based on what was liked, and what is currently favorable in the community.

• October 2014
  Initial sketches, designs and interactive versions.
• November 2014
  The design is implemented to the current forum software in a testing ground.
• December 2014
  At some point in this month the new version is released.

---

Now, the purpose of this thread is for me to share the ongoing progress to exchange feedback actively with users and staff. I encourage everyone to leave their thoughts to each new submission, elaborate ones, simple ones, that will help with shaping what's being worked on.

---

I love pirates. I actually enjoy all sorts of games that have to do with pirates. Sailing the seven seas (usually it's just the Caribbean though) with my ship and crew as we lay waste to merchants and militants alike, finding treasures in the land, skirmishing against gentle entrepreneurs such as us, and sacking towns.

So, why is it enjoyable to play as the pirate? Maybe as I said above, it's the fascinating and unique capability that era can offer for adventure. Certainly sailing a ship at the time wasn't such a pleasure, some voyages tended to be long, sometimes food shortages or abusive captains, and also the worry that someone might attack one at any point must have been something harsh to live with.

Yet, in a game like Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, you can play as a pirate freely. Explore the land that is available to you through the open world, go into towns and explore them as they are quite open for exploration with unique locations and events.

This leads us to the main character, and star of the game's plot, Edward Kenway. A no-good sailor who resorts to the wild life of a privateer to satisfy his greed, and lust for success. He's neither a Templar nor Assassin at the beginning of the game, yet he piques both sides throughout the game and eventually joins one side as the story develops.

Where's the enjoyment in playing a character such as Kenway? Well, the answer basically lies within the concept of fun as playing as a pirate. Kenway's life, shaped out of foppery and whim, followed by his ambitions is one that suits perfectly with the role. A more shy, or less brave and bold character wouldn't have suited such a story, because during reckless and insane stunts Kenway pulls of, chances are that they would have backed out.

Therefore, it's a game that has done right to create a character such as Kenway, in that specific setting and location and even era. However, there's the plot outside the “historical simulation” that talks about another main character, who was recently employed by Abstergo Entertainment.

Abstergo Entertainment in the story is one of the many companies owned by Abstergo – or the Templars, if you will. After the events of Assassin's Creed III, they were able to take the memories of Desmond Miles and then they plan to use them to produce entertainment devices which conveniently cover exciting bits of certain bloodlines for the player to enjoy.

So yes, a player finds oneself playing a game within a game. Where you are living the life as a Caribbean pirate, and then as some geek in an office. This part of the game with Abstergo Entertainment holds the major role for the “today” part of the story as there are returning characters who play an interesting role or two.

However, for those who have played through Assassin's Creed III and know what happened, why does Ubisoft continue the same plot? By all means, since Desmond Miles does not appear in the modern story anymore, does it mean that the story has found stagnation? A more conclusive answer will hopefully come with the release of Assassin's Creed Unity on that matter.

Skimming through the internet to read the reception, and sales of the game were a quite good. Reviewers and players went forward to praise the game as superior to Assassin's Creed III. Why is Black Flag received better than Assassin's Creed III?

Maybe the answer is not really that complicated. The nature of the story of Assassin's Creed III is one full of political intrigues, and the main customer base in the US maybe was affected not only by the story, and the context, but a main character that did not live up to the role of an Assassin. Previously it has been covered as to which Connor's issues may be in the game, but the narration of the game perhaps also played a more important long term effect than what one would normally assume.

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag is a fun, exciting and adventurous game to play, for those who seek the life of a pirate, and those who seek adventure in the Caribbean or simply want to experience the next step in the story will always find what they are looking for.

What do you think about Black Flag, and do you think that it truly stands out as superior when compared to the previous title— Assassin's Creed III? And, what does it mean for you to play as a pirate?

---

Food for Thought is a series of critical outlooks on games written by Isara exclusively for Sep7agon.net. Assassin's Creed, Ubisoft, Ubi.com, and the Ubisoft logo are trademarks of Ubisoft Entertainment in the U.S. and/or other countries.

« Assassin's Creed III

|

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain »

I think the forum images should be closer to what they looked in older Bungie.net. The current images are nice, but they feel very casual with the unique style of the community.

 Here's an example of what I am talking about.