In the changing room tunnel of an inconspicuous minor league arena, the expanded narrative of NBA 2K21 On PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, you think you made the wrong choice and went straight from high school to a pro.
Your world-weary coach mumbles about the garbage hockey players left behind the night before. You could start, but he expects you to start earning your playtime from the next game on. Then meet your teammates: the Tracy Morgan-style Sheldon “ATM” Middleton; Shammy Wells, who would shoot a four-pointer if she had a line for it; a Nosferatu-looking guy named Vlad the Impaler; and of course Jackson Ellis, a hype man in his own right.
All of these names are familiar to longtime NBA 2K players. They were the antagonists of the career narrative NBA 2K14
Getting to know this yo-yo was all it took me to know I did this correct Choice with a “selection contract” for the bus trips and taco campaigns of the G League. I’ve played all 10 games with a big smile, even the first one where I think the game is rocking all your attributes to get off to a bad start which is key to the player’s personal journey.
Ellis skipped NBA 2K20
All of these guys are back with their original actors on the mic. As a fan put it on RedditIt seems like Visual Concepts wrote a sentimental goodbye note to NBA 2K on last generation consoles.
Love letter or winning round, Visual Concepts deserves it. 2K Sports’ in-house studio turned to these fictional enemies after their attempts to mentor the player with real NBA stars did some embarrassing language work (Look at you, Eric Gordon) to the NBA 2K14 and 2K15. Spike Lee directed a mentorless story for NBA 2K16;; Michael B. Jordan also starred in Justice Young as a player character NBA 2K17;; and teammates returned to the cutscene dialog NBA 2K18 with actor Cameron Bedford as Shammy Wells.
At that point, the MyCareer story got much more exciting. In addition, the series’ writers discovered a formula for success: take an antagonist, turn them in your face, and now you have a character that players will walk on the mattresses for. in the NBA 2K20it was training partner Axel Walden (Blondy Baruti); In the end, he manages the league with the player character in an honestly heartwarming final on the pitch. in the NBA 2K21Hendrixx Cobb (Vince Washington) is the alleged number 1 and rival of the player, but after graduating from college the two develop a very close friendship that culminates in some lighthearted antics before the draft.
Of course, if you take the G League route in the extended, you’ll miss a lot of that arc with Cobb NBA 2K21. (Cobb and the player still part ways on a happy, mutually supportive note.) But it’s well worth missing out on college to take the bus as Vlad Freestyle. celebrating ATM and Jackson making it back to the NBA on 10-day contracts, and then getting back together for a two-game final whose opposing team I just can’t get myself to indulge in. Long time players, however, should be able to figure out the roster.
NBA 2K21, Like the three previous games, it has intelligently written dialogue and well-acted scenes that are on top of story modes tried (and abandoned) by other sports video games. I sense that Visual Concepts has stuck with storytelling because its writers understand the absolute truth about sports video game career modes: you to have to give the player a character to admire, someone they want to be, or someone they care about when they are not on the screen themselves.
Visual concepts and NBA 2K21 does more than that; They give the players character friends they care about too.
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