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[AgentOtaku]

Some example small clips from the 1st mission I captured:

Gameplay One

Gameplay Two - Pretty sure they spotted my team here, hence shit went south real fast

Gameplay Three - Cutscene

Let me be clear, I was pretty turned the hell off after playing the Open Beta....
It was bland, too easy and the writing/overall tone was FUCKING AWFUL

...That being said, I still thought the premise/setup was awesome. I genuinely WANTED Wildlands to be Narcos - The Game™

So, it was on-sale this weekend via PSN and I said, eh, why not?
I started reading more impressions of things to try (as well as threads here on GAF) and I think I've found a pretty awesome, easy solution to this game's inconsistencies:

Audio Language - Latin American/Spanish
Difficutly - "Extreme"

That's it.

This brings about two things that fundamentally changes the game for the better, IMHO:

1st - The tone in general is now locked-in to what it should be (or what I feel at least), which is consistent and fairly serious. The VA is pretty great actually and whereas the English VA was overwrought with Uber-Broness and horrid jokes. The Spanish dialog has seemingly none of this.
Everyone in the narrative sounds like they presumably should (not to mention, you're in rural Bolivia, so yeah, people would probably mostly speak only Spanish anyway), which is inline with the context that they're in and from my observations thus far, the actual plot always has subtitles... you just sometimes miss ambient dialog and the radio stations... which, sucked anyways in english

2nd - On Extreme Difficutly, you're no longer John Matrix laying waste to everything in your path with little resistance.
Instead, you're forced to constantly be aware of your surroundings (the orange glow of general enemies locations is entirely gone), lest you quickly become overwhelmed by roaming Narcos.
Actual strongholds/emplacements now become a situation where you have to leverage your drone/reconnaissance and methodically take them apart, otherwise you'll get reinforcements called in on you and, once again, you'll become quickly overwhelmed and outgunned.... which, is honestly what would kind of happen with just 4 guys infiltrating a Narcos State

Mind you i'm playing this entirely on Solo and I'm honestly having a blast. There's even moments where I feel like I'm playing the original Ghost Recon, back on PC, where the stakes where very much high and you had to constantly stay frosty

 

[DaciaJC]

Watching your videos, I'm surprised at how much of a difference the Spanish voice acting actually makes. Far, far better than the crap I listened to in the beta.

Have you tried turning off target marking? It would seem appropriate if you're going for an extreme level of difficulty.

 

[Diancecht]

El bebé hace tres?

 

[Javier23]

El bebé hace tres?

Y tres son multitud.

Not a whole lot better The Spanish voiceover doesn't make any difference, writing's the same, quality's about the same. If it works for you though, great.

EDIT: Just watched the third video. Holy shit is the Spanish voiceover bad.

 

[Karspankey]

Very interesting, OP! I might get the game next week and I'll definitely try this as I felt the same about the beta.

 

[Coma Ecliptic]

The thing that drives me insane is the marking of enemies. If this is extreme difficulty why are you able to essentially 'Check Mark' your grocery list of kills for today. Marking enemies just makes the game appear that there's not really a challenge (I haven't played it since the open beta).

EDIT: I'd love to see a way to turn off all markers or have them disappear after 5 - 10 seconds.

EDIT2: Just read my response and it sounds like I'm criticizing the OP, I actually really like the videos you linked. They show that you're right about the feel and the dialog being way less cringey. I'm actually interested again.

 

[Corpekata]

Might have to try this, local dialect worked wonders for games like Stalker and Metro too.

 

[HvySky]

I played a couple hours of this with a buddy and found it reprehensible. Maybe I'll have to give it another shot with these settings.

 

[sn00zer]

I would advise the same thing for Crysis

 

[AgentOtaku]

Watching your videos, I'm surprised at how much of a difference the Spanish voice acting actually makes. Far, far better than the crap I listened to in the beta.

Have you tried turning off target marking? It would seem appropriate if you're going for an extreme level of difficulty.

The sync-shot I left on because it still makes sense in the context of the game. You're with 3 other highly trained operatives, so why wouldn't you be able to leverage said skill?
It's not like you can exploit it anyway (at least not that I've seen on extreme) as it has a cooldown of which won't refill in enough time before the other Narcos will realize what's going on

 

[AgentOtaku]

I would advise the same thing for Crysis

Absolutely

 

[LiveFromKyoto]

What's Spanish for "fuckstick"?

 

[Nightmare452]

As a native Spanish speaker, that's​ actually pretty good. Just the fact that the names of characters matches the language they are​ meant for (the spoken accent actually matches the pronunciation) makes that cutscene way better.

EDIT: Just watched the third video. Holy shit is the Spanish voiceover bad.

Yet still​ way better than the English one.

 

[Huge Succeeded]

hard modes that strip away all of a game's Batman Bullshit are usually the best way to play that game.
I'm not even a little bit surprised that a game like this is no exception, as an ArmA player.

 

[DaciaJC]

The sync-shot I left on because it still makes sense in the context of the game. You're with 3 other highly trained operatives, so why wouldn't you be able to leverage said skill?
It's not like you can exploit it anyway (at least not that I've seen on extreme) as it has a cooldown of which won't refill in enough time before the other Narcos will realize what's going on

Are the markers needed for sync shot to function? I'm more concerned with those markers acting as wallhacks - I think it would be more interesting if you had to mentally keep track of enemies rather than their position being visible from anywhere.

 

[Dervius]

Are the markers needed for sync shot to function? I'm more concerned with those markers acting as wallhacks - I think it would be more interesting if you had to mentally keep track of enemies rather than their position being visible from anywhere.

I normally play on Extreme with all HUD off except for markers. The problem is once you remove markers, the icons for other stuff such as Intel in your immediate proximity also disappear. This makes it veeery tiresome just to find a skill point or medal.

 

[DrFurbs]

Sorry for being thick but what if i don't speak Spanish? Surely some of the games mission details are spoken through voice over?

 

[hans_castorp]

The spanish voiceover is really bad.
I mean, is nice having accents, but the writing and acting is terrible.

 

[Carcetti]

Genius!

Wildlands writing is one of the worst I've ever heard so turning it to a language I can barely understand is a definite bonus.

 

[Ploid 3.0]

Getting a SOCOM itch. D:

 

[Abilidebob]

No Wagner Moura tho.

 

[DaciaJC]

I normally play on Extreme with all HUD off except for markers. The problem is once you remove markers, the icons for other stuff such as Intel in your immediate proximity also disappear. This makes it veeery tiresome just to find a skill point or medal.

Ohh. Yeah, that sounds like a pain.

 

[AgentOtaku]

Sorry for being thick but what if i don't speak Spanish? Surely some of the games mission details are spoken through voice over?

As I said in the OP, the majority of the actual plot/narrative has english subtitles. The only thing you won't hear is native ambiance from locals nor the radio chatter when driving

No Wagner Moura tho.

lol, indeed

 

[Keyser Soze]

El bebé hace tres

 

[SomTervo]

The game is so fucking good honestly.

It's legit hitting what i wanted from MGSV a lot of the time.

 

[Moose Biscuits]

This is a good trick to use in other games, too. In the Division, after a while the repetitive voice acting gets to you after a while, so I switched it to French. Suddenly it's about surviving in a desolate New York after a plague descends from the North that turns everyone into militant Quebecois.

(I was going to do Japanese and make it like one of my animes but the EU console version doesn't include it, which makes me sad)

I was also going to do it for For Honor, and switch it to German (because AMERICAN KNIGHTS LOL) but it only gives me the choice of English or Russian. What gives?

 

[JeremyEtcetera]

The game is so fucking good honestly.

It's legit hitting what i wanted from MGSV a lot of the time.

It's alright. It needs a dive or slide button. When holding crouch while moving, your character just awkwardly stops and plants on the ground.

 

[Louis Cyphre]

This is pretty cool, brings a whole new dynamic to the game and maybe it will teach me some Spanish in the meantime.

 

[backbreaker65]

Does this game have a single player?

 

[spekkeh]

That's not Paisa.

 

[Kyle549]

Does this game have a single player?

Yes, and it's pretty good too. Co-op is more fun - I usually play the larger missions co-op and pick off the smaller tasks when I'm playing solo.

 

[JP]

One of the things I dislike in games is that you often can't let the characters speak in their native tongue, I think there should always be an "indigenous" option when it comes to languages which then allows people to speak completely naturally, I feel that with that games do allow something along those lines it can really help in setting the scene.

Spoiler

It can also help to disguise terrible acting if I don;t speak the language, which can be a real bonus.

 

[backbreaker65]

Yes, and it's pretty good too. Co-op is more fun - I usually play the larger missions co-op and pick off the smaller tasks when I'm playing solo.

Thanks. I will be copping this one.

 

[Freeman76]

Nearly grabbed this but the 2.5/10 from Destructoid made me second guess my decision for the time being

 

[keltickennedy]

 

[Misuta]

This is a good trick to use in other games, too. In the Division, after a while the repetitive voice acting gets to you after a while, so I switched it to French. Suddenly it's about surviving in a desolate New York after a plague descends from the North that turns everyone into militant Quebecois.

(I was going to do Japanese and make it like one of my animes but the EU console version doesn't include it, which makes me sad)

The European PC version has Japanese audio.

 

[Basketball]

I have tried Japanese and Spanish so far

and both are better than the English VA

Both options gets rid of the shitty jokes

 

[RedSparrows]

The thing that drives me insane is the marking of enemies. If this is extreme difficulty why are you able to essentially 'Check Mark' your grocery list of kills for today. Marking enemies just makes the game appear that there's not really a challenge (I haven't played it since the open beta).

EDIT: I'd love to see a way to turn off all markers or have them disappear after 5 - 10 seconds.

EDIT2: Just read my response and it sounds like I'm criticizing the OP, I actually really like the videos you linked. They show that you're right about the feel and the dialog being way less cringey. I'm actually interested again.

You can turn off the markers.

 

[Foxxsoxx]

Redboxed it to try it out at release and really enjoyed it, going to buy it fully once it's 20 or 30 bucks. Ubisoft games have sales stupid fast and I can't justify 60 dollars when I know it'll be on sale a month from now.


I'll give it a try though OP, I was playing on the difficulty below extreme and it was a little too easy.

Also Narcos is awesome.