At the risk of offending people (not that it is my intention) can anyone please explain to me why the campaign feels like it was hastily thrown together without thought? Don't get me wrong, I like playing co-op campaign with a group of friends, but I'm really letting my imagination do the work for me here and I'm not seeing the point. It seems like the campaign is a sloppy version of some multiplayer team deathmatch where the enemy AI dominates the field tactically and the friendly AI zerg rushes with little effect.
The fact that I can continually respawn demotivates me from even trying and my friends and I typically resort to denigrating ourselves to the level of intelligence of our AI companions by butt rushing objectives with the hope that one of us will live. The friendly AI don't support us, they just litter the battle field with their bodies and get in the way of our bullets any time we do manage to get a target in sight.

Even if we can lock down a location effectively the clunky sensitivity and the [censored] aim assist make it difficult to get a bead on an enemy that zig zags, jumps, dives, and bounces off walks like some sort of battery was just shoved up his ass. I don't feel any attachment to the "campaign AI." If they were going for the whole "squad" feeling then their character development team failed miserably. I had no sense of purpose or cause.

Most times dropping someone into a plot in media res works wonderfully to increase the drama and keep the player going but in the case of this game it just increased the effect of me not wanting to delve into the "story" behind my character. In fact, my character just seems like the big hulking guy who just mastvrbates in the corner of every cut scene and contributes nothing in the way of actual progression apart from being another body to shoot at. I didn't get any sense of who my opponent was and it seemed like some stupid moustache twirling plot right out of a children’s novel anyway.

"MUHAHAHA! I HAVE A DIRT BOMB AND I'M GOING TO BLOW UP THE WORLD!" "CRIKEY, LET'S STOP HIM BOYS! JUSTICE! HUZZAH!" That's about the plot in a nut shell...

Bethesda... I love you to bits and will never lose faith in you... but what the [censored] is this?

Thanks for saying it, Why did SD think this game was so great?
It kills me to say it but there is No plot!
The main story doesn't really make sense and some one could explain the entire thing to you (with full detail) in about one minute, its that bad.
Bethesda.... I love you too, and i'll buy Skyrim the day it comes out, but please don't put your name on trash like Brink (a little harsh but so what! Brink got my hopes up and then disappointed me)

I actually thought the story of the campaign was rather good. Once I played through both sides of the story I was rather pleased with how it turned out and enjoy the feeling of knowing whats going on. As to the bots, yea they aren't the greatest but that really has nothing to do with the story. I think the story is rather sound and fairly realistic.

You could make an argument for the story, but compared to the absolute gems that Bethesda has pumped out prior to this you have to ask yourself, who the hell did they hire in their writing/story department? This seems far too streamlined for it to be associated with Bethesda.

The story was overly simplistic and seemed to have very little character development. I never got to know the characters intimately and my own character's involvement (plot-wise) seems less significant than any other character's and more akin to that of a piece of meat being thrown to a pack of hungry dogs.

I didn't get a sense of purpose nor was I attached to either cause. For me to have accumulated any sort of sympathy for either side it would have required a bite of history. Without a proper background or physical sense of prior involvement I find it very difficult to throw myself into the mind set of fighting for a side. Rather, I found myself choosing sides based on which uniforms looked cooler on my character. I mean come on, there are tons of examples of this kind of pseudo loyalty in history. Look at the Nazis after all! Do you think they would have sided with Hitler if he didn't give them such pretty uniforms?!

All jokes aside, I also find that the prospect of death in a game also motivates me more. It gives me a sense that each individual action is directed towards some end and that there is a reason to use tactics. If I have an actual fear of consequences for my character I am more likely to gain more than an acute sense of knowledge regarding my overall usefulness and I might even be motivated to live longer than 10 seconds in order to discover an actual plot. Instead, I am constantly dying and have little reason to think tactically since I have not the tools to control the tactics of my team anyway.

The world itself seems lifeless and static. I never got the sense that I was fighting for any specific political purpose, or against an imminent biological threat, or that there was any threat greater than the enemy right in front of me for that matter. I felt like a pawn on a chess board that could respawn an infinite number of times and successfully get nowhere. The distinct lack of openness and a population made me feel even less attached to the environment. The discontinuous nature of the story made it haphazard at best. I felt like I was thrown into some cheesy multiplayer mode that slapped together its objectives with half-assed cutscenes and [censored] dialogue.

The fact that there was no world to explore left me wondering what the actual state of the ark was. The environment doesn’t really lend itself to the “SMART” system as much as they hyped it up to, anyway. Rather, each map is filled with pre-determined routes and destinations and everything in between proves to be merely a preordained “obstacle” to play around with at your leisure but lacks any real purpose. I am hardly motivated to even look at the scene as I am wizzing by everything trying to spam the closest objective and it appears to me that most of the scenes contain more fluff than actual, interactive substance. How many times can I vault over the same damn barrier before I get sick of it?

I'm really not trying to troll here. I had such high expectations for this game and am really disappointed that it fell short of them. But I guess it's my fault for not doing enough research. I gave Bethesda the benefit of the doubt on this one. But we try and we learn. I'll consider this one a donation to support Bethesda and keep them in business with the hope of seeing more great stuff from them in the future. But this.. a total flop in my book. Keep trying Bethesda. :foodndrink:

It's the first game of it's kind though, you can't have everything when you're blending SP with MP. Basically an aquired gaming taste. Granted, the story could be better, but how would you expect to have a bigger story, finish it, and then blend it with MP? You can't unless it dropps off at some never ending conflict, and I can guarentee people will still be complaining, only they'd be complaining about the story dropoff instead.

Agreed. But my complaint has more to do with how the plot is so uninvolved (or uninvolving if that's a word). It has less to do with the length of the plot than it has to do with the quality. I am a firm believer that there is a middle ground which blends these two elements (SP and MP). And it seems counter productive to do as they did, if we follow your argument (not to sound rude--you made a good point). If you want to blend SP and MP then it seems logical to create a plot where each character feels like they have in some way contributed to the story and that they are working to resolve some unresolved struggle. That simply isn't present here. There is no concrete contribution made to any effort on either side and it seems like the resolution lacks the intimacy we all expect in a Bethesda quality game. But I guess I’m just splitting hairs. All in all I still have fun playing this with a small group of friends and I patiently await the newest addition to TES. I forgive you Bethesda. :celebration:

It's not made by Bethesda, it's made by Splash Damage, and is also a multiplayer-centric game. The story is better than any other multiplayer-focused game of late, and I would love to hear of a game with AI that is multiplayer focused that has better AI than Brink. It seems like you were all expecting a well-thought out complex plot akin to that of The Elder Scrolls. This game, as much as Splash Damage wants to deny it, is a multiplayer game with a fun (albeit forgettable) plot and amazing innovative gameplay.

Yeah it reminds me of Counter Strike, sorta has a story but not one worthy of praise or remembrance. In fact it felt so half assed that I pretty much started skipping videos after the first few.

The real point of the plot was to get background and give reason for those playing to fight. If you're buying Brink for the story, you've made a mistake.

I enjoyed the campaign though. More than BO's.

Well I'd say they failed then. The story wasn't even inspiring enough to do that.

I feel that a lot of the interesting bits is locked in the encrypted audio recordings.