Chapter 4: Redundant, Redundant

As I said earlier before, I am, in fact, completing all quests that are available to me. Now since I'm still in the mode of just trying to get past Act 3, because that's all we were limited to in alpha/beta, I decided to take my time while turning in a quest to see the rewards being offered. When I actually took a good look, I was surprised.

Oh, you mean of the three items you can offer me, all I can take is the rifle? Hmm, well, ok. Oh, how about that. It's infinitely inferior to the one I have now. Well, you don't leave me with much choice. I'll just take the palladium. Wait, you're only giving me 120 palladium? Oh...ok...Do you have any more equally rewarding quests you want to offer me? You do? Splendid!

Yeah, apparently the majority of the rewards I've been getting on these side quests (which you're always stuck with only one item because the other two are for the other two factions, which you can't use as they aren't class compatible) have actually been completely worthless. To add insult to injury, the palladium they offer as a reward wasn't even half of what I recovered when I embarked on the journey to get what they asked for. So, in the end, the only thing you're really working on when you do these side quests are reputation runs. Of course, what's even better is that reputation actually does squat for you as well (I maxed out the reputation at Covent Garden Station and prices haven't dropped at the shop--Heck, I didn't even get a pat on the back).

So basically the side quests are there to fool you into thinking you're embarking on something the developers actually spent considerable amount of time setting up for you to do when all they've done is add one of the item graphics already in use for the game, preset it to a specific enemy in a specific area, and then added a drop table for how frequent those items drop before you decide to drop dead of exhaustion of doing the same thing over and over again. I mean, if Flagship Studios is talking about bringing in new quests, I hope they aren't anything like this, because, so far, of all the quest reward items I've gotten, I haven't bothered to keep a single one.

Speaking of that lovely rifle I have, it's always good to know that the mods that I have equipped to the gun help it considerably to continue to be useful to me even at higher levels. For instance, if I didn't have three scope mods attached to it, it wouldn't look as ridiculous as it does now.

Well, the scope on the right is fer' seein' stuff, the one on the top is a kaleidoscope, and the one on the left is fer' lookin' at nekkid demon chicks.

I've seen a few players with three ammo clips to one rifle as well. It looks God-awful ridiculous. I mean, wouldn't it just be easier to keep the gun at its main texture preset instead of having it littered with mods? I mean, sure, some of the clips do add some fancy aesthetical value to some weapons, but some designs look down-right ridiculous (including that scope that is more of a broken iron sight). When I see something like this the word "redundant" definitely comes to mind. Speaking of which, let's touch up on some of the loading screens, shall we?

Now that is some insightful information I did not know.

I believe the example above really hits home with what I'm saying. Honestly, I think it would be much better if nothing was said at all during loading screens, as they don't actually offer any sort of real tips that isn't already common knowledge. I mean, really. I wonder how a LV50 player feels when he sees, "Press I to open your inventory" when he's doing a boss run of some sort. "Oh, geez, is that how you do it? And all this time I've been using the same equipment! Thanks for the heads up!"

And it's not like this is the only bit of copy and paste tactics. For instance, if there is one thing you can count on on any level you are on, you're always going to find a legendary enemy. Of course, legendary enemies are just regular enemies on steroids. It's not like they look any different from their counterpart of what their standard MO is. But you would think the "unique" names would at least try and give that sort of feeling. However, when the majority of the "unique" names are just adjectives of what the enemy does, it's not like it's any sort of legendary at all.

C'mon boys and girls...come a little closer...I'm the Reanimator...

What's worse is that this is still a repeating pattern and I fear it will continue to be as much until the very end of the game. Where's the variety? Where's the change of things? A simple recolor of an enemy doesn't make him new and the same thing goes for weapons as well. When they are still performing the same actions, emitting the same sounds, and not doing anything new, then it just becomes a copy and paste game through and through.

You and me both, bub.