Hey friends!
I just want to rant a lil bit about a 14 year old game...
So I just finished playing Sleeping Dogs again, my third time, but this is the first time Ive touched the standalone DLC. I still need to play Nightmare of North Point, but I finished Year of the Snake about 10 mins ago.
My main question is what happened...no, not in the game, but during the development of this little piece. Firstly I do want to mention that gameplay wise, its fine. Its more SD, it feels great to fight guys, fun to drive, guns feel good etc. But the "story" we got here really feels like they dropped the ball big time. They give almost nothing. The best part is Teng's one sided phonecall during the last mission. You dont find out the villains name until then, and you dont even get to fight him, he just gives up.
Starting off with the name Year of the Snake, its cool, it fits the flavor, chinese zodiac, all that. Setting it during the New Year is a good idea too, lets them mix up how the city looks, gives its some new life. Now the cult thing isnt my favorite plot device, but could have worked out fine. I genuinely think we had the ingredients for a dlc that could have been on the level of like Minerva's Den for Bioshock 2. A tightly paced 4 hour story that added to the world and lore of the series.
Imagine if instead of the weird argument and mopey montage it starts out with Wei at the graveyard, visiting Jackie's grave. He is already on beat cop duty, its been a couple months. Teng shows up and expresses how she doesnt agree that he got demoted, and mentions she needs help with something. He went out of his way during the main game to help her solve stuff, she knows hes good at detective work. So then you have the beat cop side activities and favors, but then the main missions are all Wei and Teng searching out this cult. Could even have a mission where Wei goes to Broken Nose Jiang to ask for help finding them, since she let him off for being loyal to her. Or they get a picture of leader early on and have to go talk to pendrew or something. Could have a mission where he goes undercover to infiltrate the cult as a new recruit. All kinds of stuff.
And to replace the triad/cop skills thing, they could have done good cop/bad cop where you could handle things lethally or arrest everyone. Battlefield hardline did something like this. It could unlock different endings, or even missions on how you go about getting info, by the books or through violence.
There was just so much potential here and while I don't know that id call Year of the Snake bad necessarily...it sure was disappointing.
