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It might be possible that they would extend human trafficking and corruption plot in the later mission packs. At least ending looks like that is the intention, but I would not have high hopes about that until all the basics are in reliably working state.
If they do that with the engine update, I might rise my hopes a little.
Oh my, shouldn't the basic have been ready with 1.0? (rhetorical question)
I think what aggravates me most about these pseudo-linked campaign missions is that they are exactly that: they only appear to be connected, promising a bigger picture, but there is really no meat to this idea. Either flesh it out or ditch it altogether and make the missions more like "A day in the life of a SWAT team..." I.e. instead of having that pompous, underdelivered, lukewarm big narrative, tone it down a bit and make it more like a simulator game.
And having no ending whatsoever (not even a little bit of text) was really a slap in the face.
My understanding, that updating engine and using update to resolve issues turned out easier than trying to fix everything as it is.
Overall 1.0 seems like kind of "make what we can kind of finish from all the stuff we started but didn't finish" kind of release.
I can make connections between some missions and it seems like human trafficking plot is a main one, but it clearly ends on a cliffhanger with player character suddenly arguing and being overridden. But that is kind of thing that starts the plot, not end is, so it does not look like a thought-out concept.
They did promise some updates with NPCs in the police station, so that might open chance to tie narrative together by talking to the police chief and detectives, or something like that, but this is mostly my personal speculation at this moment.
Oh, don't get me wrong. I've found the game very enjoyable as well (except for the nerfing of enemy AI and boosting the health of your protagonist).
You put that better than I did.
It would be nice to hear something about their plans. Their overlong devlogs reveal nothing of interest to me and it seems like they keep pretending that the game is finished as is except for some QoL and bugfixes and from now on there will be paid content without going back. Maybe that's not their plan at all but if they want to ask for more money, they should maybe tell us what we're in for.
I didn't have the game before it, and from my point of view issues are not with AI having slow reaction times or poor aim, but with how "flat" different effects and reactions are balanced. Unless player significantly change their actions, AI would demonstrate very similar reactions, which results in a feel that AI has only one course of actions.
At the same time, I don't feel like they are completely incompetent, I got killed in several missions more than once before I managed to do them properly. Ides of March, Greased Palms and Neon Tomb probably most of all.
Previously, the AI didn't rush you as quickly as they do now. With 1.0, I sometimes ended a mission within 3 minutes because the AI rushed to me. I think this was the dev's answer to the vocal minority who hates to be patient in a game like this.
Much worse though, the AI was a bit "on crack" in previous iterations of the game. Some people loved it (me), some hated it. There are arguments to be made for both sides. Yes, an addict maybe isn't that good with a gun. Then again, he is high on drugs (basically the same German soldiers used in WW2, aka meth) which is exactly why he will be very much on edge and shoot on first sight.
One example that really aggravated people was the fact that the AI just shot through doors or wooden walls. But you can watch realistic movies, read authentic reports or just use common sense: of course a tweaker and especially a hired gun or a terrorist will shoot through the door when they know cops with big guns are standing on the other side.
In the end, they should have given us the option to choose between the two AIs. One more missed opportunity to make both camps happy.
Oh, and btw: I did die a lot as well but that was mostly because the AI rushed me and stood suddenly in front of me which prevented me using my gun but curiously not prevented them using their assault rifle... Other times my teammates blocked me and killed me indirectly.
But that's beside the point anyways. The AI can still be challenging now because of its aggressiveness, and because their numbers were increased significantly, especially on the new or reworked maps. So much so that it is a bit ridiculous for 5 SWAT officers to be stacked against those many enemy combatants (just another logical error for the pile). I just prefer the old AI for its unpredictability though. E.g. I played the Sullivan's Slope mission a lot before 1.0 and it always played differently. Now I played it a lot of times, too, and it was basically always the same. AI didn't move around the house anymore, they were loud and the opposite of sneaky. Oh well...
That makes sensible context for some of opinions about AI.
I think that game need more AI behavior profiles and some increase in reactions variety. Also would make replaying same missions more fun, once you completed them. Will see, how the patch would be, I have half a mind of attempting to mod some stuff around, if update will not be a disaster.
Also, AI still shoots through the walls (it seems protesting veterans doing that most), and I agree that they should. every time it happened to me I could pinpoint how i was spotted.
There are actually many connections between the maps, but some are hard to spot/understand. The biggest problem is, that the campaign is (intentionally) not in chronological order. You can check the boxes in the evidence room to get the ingame dates, which make much more sense. This also puts some of the hardest maps very early, which may be why it got changed.
If I remember correctly the final map is actually one of the very first in the timeline.
I'm not sure if there is a real overall arc, but you can split the game into mini-campaigns with their own topics/leads. The achievements give a hint:
"The Exploited"
1. 23 Megabytes
2. Sinuous Trail
3. The Spider
4. Valley of the Dolls
"The War"
1. Thank You, Come Again
2. Twisted Nerve
3. Rust Belt
...and so on
It would be great, if they improved on the campaign, but I highly doubt it regarding the missions, since it seems intentionally in the wrong order. Maybe they could explain the weird order, if they added cutscenes where you "flashback" to these missions, but then you still have some problem with the station changing afterwards.
It seems messed up.
Strangely, it seems to be that there once had been many more AI behaviours (like what I said about the Sullivan's Slope mission).
Great to hear you agree on suspects shooting through walls. And you're mentioning a very important point: knowing afterwards (or in the very same moment) how you got spotted. Still, people came stampeding in here claiming the AI shot them from the other side of the map. Yet none of them were able to deliver any proof of that specific AI behaviour. And some of them simply refused to acknowledge that the AI mod they've installed two years ago does now weird things with the current game version. And all that lead us too nerfs and simplifications, I think.
Holy moly, the scenarios are not in chronological order. I wasn't even able to pick up on that! The campaign now becomes even worse in hindsight.
Narratively speaking, the campaign is a mess and the missions are out of chronological order. The team roster system just looks as if it was tacked on for the sake of, ie a gimmick. The police station/precinct serves no purpose whatsoever other than window dressing.
At this point, honestly speaking, I don't think the dev's really had any idea what kind of game they wanted to make.
However, evidence boxes before importer are filled in by Thomas Rudes. After that by Alana Chan, so I have reason to suspect, that elephant happened between those two mission. Last boxes for the port raid are filled by Agent Grant Rank, who I suspect is a FBI investigating or covering international human trafficking case.
Interestingly, gas station and port are on their places, but everything you can look for yourself:
02/03/2025 gas (thank you, come again)
02/19/2025 club (neon tomb)
05/08/2025 hospital (relapse)
06/01/2025 farm (carriers of the vine)
08/20/2025 ridgeline (a lethal obsession)
09/29/2025 meth (twisted nerve)
10/01/2025 penthouse (ideas of march)
10/02/2025 sins (sins of the father)
10/15/2025 coyote (rust belt)
elephant?
10/25/2025 importer (greased palms)
12/03/2025 beachfront (ends of earth)
12/05/2025 (printed date) datacenter (sinuous trail)
12/08/2025 streamer (23 megabytes a second)
12/15/2025 (wtitten date) datacenter (sinuous trail)
12/21/2025 agency (the Spider)
01/05/2026 valley (valley of the dools)
02/10/2026 dealer (buy cheap, buy twice)
02/18/2026 port (hide an seek)
Some things are very confusing. I thought that evidence found at streamer apartment led to data center raid, but somehow it's the other way around, despite that steamer briefing is about active shooter. Or how gas station attack is so far away from meth house raid.
UPD: Thanks to DetCord12B and BadKarMa, there are another date for datacenter raid, so that might work better with timeline.
The datacenter box actually has two dates on it. 12/05/2025 (printed) and 12/15/2025 (handwriting). I guess for maximum confusion they added a misprint to the boxes and the handwriting shows the real date.
Personally it feels more and more like different people had different ideas about the game, and then, they all left simultaneously in different direction, while people who before that were just following directions and learning gamedev, left scrambling to make something remotely finished without vision and without enough skill in game design and engine knowledge. Or community management to that matter.
Guess we will see tomorrow if they managed to catch up enough of that.