The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth patch nerfs items, will be fixed
Dev claims fan speculation about missing content was off the mark.
The Binding of Isaac's latest patch for its new DLC, Afterbirth, has nerfed a few of the game's items in a way the developer hadn't intended.
As spotted on Reddit by user Ashmedai1, "Azazel's damage is almost halved and charge time increased. Box of Friends is four charges which makes the item kinda bad. Glass Canon destroys spirit hearts so it's completely unusable."
These changes may not sound like much to those who've not played Edmund McMillen's comically gory action-roguelike, but they make a big difference.
McMillen assured folks on Twitter that these changes weren't intentional, and a fix is coming. "The AZ nerf didn't come out as intended and it will be fixed in the next patch along with any other existing bugs," the developer stated.
That explains these particular gripes players are having, but there's another confusing matter surrounding the Afterbirth DLC: The add-on promised 120 new items, but initially only 74 of them could be found until this latest patch arrived. A popular theory was that McMillen intentionally held them off in a post-launch patch, just so players couldn't datamine its secrets from the get-go.
There's a lengthy Reddit thread about this and Kotaku's got a pretty extensive round-up on the mounting evidence or coincidences leading some to believe this theory. Basically, it's believed that it took 109 hours for dataminers to discover the incredibly hidden bonus character The Lost in The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. A common theory was that McMillen was waiting 109 hours to add the missing content into Afterbirth, a theory corroborated by a series of possible coincidences surrounding the number 109 (seeing it in a Steam code giveaway, the sale price being $10.99, an official stream of the gaming crashing at 10.09pm, etc).
Sure enough, the missing content did arrive in a patch after about four and a half days, but McMillen is adamant that this theory is poppycock.
"I'm starting to realise what the tin foil hats are telling some people. Now to break a 4th wall... There was no time gate," McMillen said on Twitter.
"No one was upset at anyone at all there were was just a launch bug that caused missing items due to a 'thing' that I can't talk about now," he added. "I realise a lot of you have no idea what's going on :) but it's akin to that Twilight [Zone] episode The Monsters on Maple Street." That's the one where panic surrounding an alien invasion causes humanity to destroy itself while the real aliens haven't even touched down on earth yet and merely spectate as everything falls apart without their aid.
There is still some mystery surrounding the staggered release of Afterbirth content. What is this "thing" that McMillen is talking about? On Monday he stated, "I'm hiding the remaining content beyond a series of micro-transactions that I'm calling an ARG." McMillen finally said he'd eventually clarify everything in a blog post that "is going to blow your freaking minds".
It sounds like McMillen wasn't intentionally gating content away, but he was up to something sneaky. What could it be?"