Pacing Decisions

Feminina O'Ladybrain

Sep 26

Minor spoilers for Control DLC

Butch:

I am so over this kitchen bullshit. I am VERY over Nugget waking me up.

Didn't play last night because all these three hour nights of sleep caught up to me and I fell asleep.

Though, on games....

It occurred to me, the other night, that surge, which has been so key to my success at this game, was given to me during the Hartman AWE bit. As those Hiss were level 9 and the Foundation ones are level 7, I checked and, what do you know, AWE came out last. In the original game, and the original Foundation, there was no surge. No grenades.

That would've SUCKED. Game was hard enough with the grenades.

It's also another reason why it makes no sense to plop that DLC where they did. Not only is it hard, not only does it break narrative momentum, it gives the player a weapon that they wouldn't have had at all in the original iteration of the game.

Now that I've finished the main story, it makes no sense at all. Gotta admit, I was half expecting Jesse to die at the end of the main game because they plopped the DLC there. The only reason not to put included DLC at the end is that the protagonist dies at the end. If Jesse had died then, sure, you have to put the DLC somewhere in the main part of the story, but given that Jesse is alive and well (indeed, so alive and well that she's doing a whole DLC post game), why not just have her, after the main game, get a notice from Emily or something about something happening at the elevator and "can you go check it out, Director?" and boom?

Very strange decision to plop that DLC where they did.

Unless....wait.

Does she die at the end of Foundation?

Feminina:

No comment. But also, no.

I can't even keep up a coy lack of comment.

Butch:

Then, all the more silly they put that DLC there.

Shit, if anything, it would have worked better after all this. Do all the story, then have that as a weird segue into Alan Wake 2. It's hard to segue into the next thing halfway through the first thing. The whole "Is this a novel? Is Alan Wake doing this?" or even "Alan Wake? The fuck?" would have been a nice transition.

Unless she dies. But you said she didn't die.

I don't know. You have any rational reason why they plopped it there?

Feminina:

Maybe people complained about the later stages being hard, so they took this opportunity to throw a more powerful weapon form in there? (Tommasi WAS damn hard, man. I mean, he's optional, but it took me DAYS to finally get him down.)

Or maybe they didn't want to spring two expansions on people at once, so they thought it was more balanced to have one of them pop up earlier, and they had to put Foundation at the end because it depends on Jesse having Taken Control of the Bureau, so this one just went in the middle by default?

But that's just speculation.

Butch:

I certainly can see the complaints of difficulty. There were crazy hard bits. That fight in the Polaris chamber without surge? No.

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