Say Goodbye To Single Player - #21

On the show? Well, look at Mica. 

Uncharted and Dishonored were the two recent ones.  I liked what they did, making true expansions rather than just DLC, but the lack of any kind of mass public support (from what I could see) means it's probably not going to become the norm.

@LHprs I didn't play either, but if they have entirely new locations and new player characters, and are released separately, are they really expansions, or just spinoffs? Is Halo ODST just a Halo 3 expansion? I wouldn't say so. I'm talking Dragon Age Awakening or Diablo: Reaper of Souls or even Mass Effect 3 Citadel. Something with a new hub world and a ton of sidequests and takes 10 hours, and requires the core game to play.

Perfectly valid way of looking at it.  I'd almost say Dishonored fit the mold of a spinoff more than Uncharted, but only because all of the characters in Uncharted had a much larger presence in the main game than those of Dishonored.  The line is a bit blurry.

The same issue of vocabulary crops up in another comparison, the old stalwart "episodic gaming" (Half Life 2, and (because I haven't played them) whatever Telltale is doing) and the move to story DLC.  As far as requiring the original game to play, I'm fine with either.  If I'm buying an expansion I've obviously bought the original it's based off of, but if I can play it standalone without the hassle of needing the base game installed on my HDD, that's cool too.

As maligned as it was, I think Mass Effect 2 really kind of nailed a good feel for DLC- $10-$15 main story chunks, along with $2-$5(ish) weapons and cosmetics that, while nice, weren't REQUIRED.  But, the way the loot system worked, you weren't getting large numbers of random arbitrary "scrap" that, if you bought more of would help you play the game better and get too microtransactiony.  But larger chunks of expanded semi-sequels, like Uncharted and Dishonored, so long as they are priced accordingly, are actually something I can kind of get behind.

@LHprs Are you sure you're not thinking of Mass Effect 3? 2 didn't have multiplayer or loot boxes. Unless I'm reading wrong and you're actually talking about the arc projector and stuff.

Revelations did that for me. Granted, I always though of the modern stuff as a frame for the story rather then anything actually relevant. Though that might be because they established in the first game that the Templars had basically won the war by that point.

The jump from Revelations to 3 was a weird one for me.  Personally, I'm not a fan of flashback, prequels, whatever.  The journey is awesome, but the point of the journey is the destination.  Why intentionally lose half of that equation by already spoiling what's going to happen?

The modern day stuff was always the most compelling for me.  The setup in 1 was utterly fantastic, and the expansion in 2 had me hooked.  The whole series was like an Indiana Jones adventure- unlocking clues and memories to get to that final, overarching goal.  Even Brotherhood expanded upon and progressed the modern story, and the twist at the end was better than ANYTHING in Ezio's story.

Then Revelations hit the brakes, but I was okay with that.  The return to the modern story in 3 made me really, REALLY happy- right until that LAST MINUTE BULLSHIT CHOICE THAT DID NOTHING AND KILLED DESMOND FOR NO REASON.

But I digress.  The modern/past story integration in 2 was fantastic- they fed off each other, related to each other, and thematically made sense.  Ubisoft made the mistake of taking all the "set dressing" (aside comments and facts that were great for flavor, but didn't impact the story too much) and tried to incorporate ALL of it, rather than just keeping the narrative tight.  It got out of control, so they axed everything.

I don't know, man.  Assassin's Creed used to be my baby, and it just stabbed me in the back.

Fitting, perhaps.

Interesting way of looking at it. My issue with Revelation is that the Desmond flashbacks contradicted what he claimed in 1, namely that he was careful to make sure no one knew who he was, apparently except when he's hitting on women. Like I said though, 1 killed the present day stuff for me by making it clear that the Templar's were winning. I'm like the idea of the setting for Origins, but I'm not happy with the controls changing again.

Revelations as a whole was pretty much "why does this exist?" for me.  Really felt like a half-sequel, half-expansion pack that could be completely excised from the series and you don't lose anything.  The modern day story went nowhere, and I don't even remember the main thrust of the past story- Ezio needed to relive Altiar's memories for... reasons?  Brotherhood at least wrapped of the Borgia story from 2, and most of the closure for Ezio's overall story you got from the animated short film later.

Sad to say I bought that one day 1, payed full price, and was a bit disappointed.

"Granted, I always though of the modern stuff as a frame for the story rather then anything actually relevant."  -@DarkTempler7

But this right here is my point- they could've MADE IT RELEVANT.  It was in 2.  It almost was in 3.  The main trust of the whole series (in my predictions and hopes at the time) was setting up for a fully modern day sequel where, barring the Assassins winning, at least find a Deus Ex Machina to knock the Templars down to an even playing field.  Which even sort of happens in 3!  But they HALF.  ASSED.  IT.  Too many people complained about the modern day story, so the took the truly inspired decision of making it MORE complicated (JUNO!  FLARES!  DESMOND = NEW JESUS?) and took a torch to the whole thing (Desmond dies, everything you worked for just kept the status quo, and now Juno, whoever she is, is now a lame combination of SHODAN and Reddit who lives in the internet now).  

It never got the love it deserved, and people hated it for it.  So it never got any love.  A vicious cycle which ended in mediocrity.  And don't get me STARTED on the modern-day, Black Flag "You play as yourself!" bullshit.....

TL:DR- I thought about this way too much.

I think one effect we might see is larger games akin to Witcher or Bethesda RPG's could start moving away from the high end, photorealistic graphics towards more styalized look. That's my hope at least since those games tend to age better. That honestly feels like the best way to lower costs without lowering quality.

Everybody seems to forget that this EA shit started years ago with Bf4, half of the customization options for guns and vehicles can't even be progressed towards, you just have to hope that out of the boxes they give you they drop the one specific attachment or camo you want. Not nearly as bad as what they're trying to do now but it's still my biggest issue with the game overall.