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Philip's avatar

Obscure No Man's Sky fact

Initially the way No Man's Sky was designed, it was very difficult to find and interact with other players. Getting from where you were to where someone else was could require hundreds of hyperdrive jumps to navigate across the galaxy.

Though portals were introduced, there was a feature called Portal Interference that prevented players from leaving the star system they portalled to except by returning back through the portal you came in through. Portal Interference also prevented players from building bases on planets they visited. They had to arrive there manually for that privilege.

Anyway the Black Hole Suns project arose from many players desire to interact and build player civilizations together.

It was discovered that Black Holes in the game would consistently warp you to the same destination system. Players began to submit Black Hole locations and their destination systems into the Black Hole Suns database and gradually a network formed so that players could use the website that was created to input their starting point and the destination they wanted to go to and the program would give directions through a few dozen black holes so a player could get anywhere in the galaxy.

So instead of hundreds of warps in a straight line, players could do a few dozen hops through a sequence of black holes - bouncing all different ways across the galaxy to arrive at their destination.

These days the Portal Interference is gone, so players are able to portal directly to their destination and build bases and exit that system with no issue.

New players have no idea the lengths that older players went to in order to interact with one another.

Alp's avatar

This is a brilliant bit of video game history. Thanks for chronicling it!

Lanah Tyra's avatar

Love this so much. Very interesting and shows some true gaming spirit❤️

Schadsquatch's avatar

In Red Alert, there is a 20% chance that you can create a moving vortex (like a wormhole) that will destroy everything in its path each time you use the Chronosphere!

Ford James's avatar

Hah, this sounds hilarious - I have never played C&C, but I believe Rich is a big fan.

Seán 's avatar

Carrie Fisher voiced the Speakers shouting propaganda in Dishonored. To unlock this you have to kill the person that makes the announcements. When you do Carrie steps in their places.

Ford James's avatar

And Dunwall gets even cooler. What an icon. RIP.

Letitia Lemon's avatar

This one is more of an "if you know, you can never unsee it" kind of fact. So, in the original Ratchet and Clank, there's a big turret on one of the levels that instead of shooting radiant missiles into the sky, it shoots T-posing enemies from the same level. This was due to limitations with the PS2 and how much memory the game/level were taking up so, to cut corners, they used T-posing robots instead. I recently was replaying this game on stream and wanted to show off all these random facts and secrets that I know about it and this one was one that either the hardcore fans knew or the casual players were just oblivious to notice, but ever since I found out about it, my eyeballs can never unsee it. Here's a clip of it so you can see for yourself!

https://www.twitch.tv/letitialemon/clip/NiceSavoryOctopusThunBeast-0eTjc3KNJ1SDxbSD

Ford James's avatar

This is fantastic, played the heck outta the OG Ratchet & Clank when I was younger but never knew this! They should've kept that for the PS4 remake...

Letitia Lemon's avatar

It's a funny one, that's for sure! I just had a blast taking my chat on a little nostalgia trip and showing off loads of random little facts that I know about the game. There are a few more very obvious ones like the hoverboard girl's "love of flips", the infinite bolts tricks, and the accidental versa target left on the Metropolis level but I figured the T-posing robot one was probably only known about by the hardcore fans who watched every behind the scenes interview.

Lanah Tyra's avatar

Final Fantasy XIV - A long forgotten Limit Break (LB)

FFXIV went through many changes since the release of 2.0. You'll hear veteran players talk about all sorts of relics of the past which they loved or hated about the game.

If you have played any Final Fantasy game, you might be familiar with the Limit Break ability. A special gauge fills up and then you can use it on some epic move. In FFXIV there are different Limit Break abilities depending on the job who uses it. The bar which you see fills for the whole group, not for every player individually, so only one person gets to use it, most likely it will be a dps but there are certain fights which require a tank LB for defence or a healer LB for healing everyone up from 1 HP to max.

There are 3 bars in the Limit Break gauge, and depending how many bars are full when you use it, you will get bigger damage, mitigation or heals. The healer LB when 3 bars are full will also raise everyone, so it's a very powerful tool to save a fight when too many people are down.

But what if I told you that originally it was not just healers who had this Limit Break? In A Realm Reborn bard had it too. Hard to find such old footage on Youtube, but here is one for you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhRjNbJHvl0

Ford James's avatar

You are an absolute bastion of FFXIV knowledge, ha! One quick Q on this one to add some context when I come to write up the curated content - does the fact essentially boil down to "Bards used to have the same Limit Break ability that Healers now have"? And if so, do Bards now have their own unique LB ability? Or do they go without a Limit Break now?

Lanah Tyra's avatar

Had too much time on my hands during lockdown to play XD

Yes you summed it up right, Bard used to have the same LB as Healers with the resurrection feature. Now they have the Ranged Physical DPS Limit Break which is a line aoe damage. Each job has their own unique animation for it to match the characteristics of the job, but the effect is the same by role, so the line aoe for Ranged Physical DPS.

Caster has circle aoe and melee dps has a big one target damage. Tanks have a big mitigation against lethal damage for the whole party.

Samuel's avatar

**Obscure Minecraft fact:**Creepers were born from a coding bug whilst Notch was trying to make pigs! **Another couple of random ones thrown out here:

Final Fantasy** was named that way because Squaresoft was planning on shutting up shop, and Final Fantasy was their last final attempt

Fallout 3's President John Eden was supposed to be voiced by Former President Bill Clinton

Mortal Kombat's first fatality was discovered by a 12-year-old boy at the original Mortal Kombat test location.

Ford James's avatar

Love these - that Minecraft one is an absolute classic, I remember that doing the rounds for the first time years and years ago.

I did a little dive into that Fallout 3 one because I'm a huge Fallout fan but hadn't heard that before, and it turns out that while Bill Clinton was approached for the role, apparently it didn't get the sign off from Bethesda! Clinton declined anyway, but the voice casting agency essentially went rogue and reached out to Clinton's representatives before running it past Bethesda themselves, lol. Source:

Source: https://www.digitalspy.com/videogames/a156971/clinton-not-sought-for-fallout-3/

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