|
It feels like the intro was done really, really early. They were showing it at shows like 2 years ago after all. Somewhere in between they probably had to cut their ambition and scope and so made an Uncharted clone. Which is fine, but I bet it basically _was_ the intro to a different game. And I'm still confused at how people think the gameplay matches the tone, or perhaps we are thinking about different things. She's not a naive, innocent girl or shirking violet or anything like that. But the tone of the story is one of harsh survival. The gameplay is such that unless you are outnumbered 10-1 you aren't in any danger at all. Those are two very different things. Rambo 1 is the survival story, and it's decidedly not an action movie. Rambo 3 is NOT a survival story and he kills 100s of dudes. This is much more Rambo 3 than Rambo 1, but the plot wants to be Rambo 1.
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2013 23:33
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 14:38 |
|
|
ImpAtom posted:Edit: I am reminded. Did anything actually come of the gollums in the caves? They just kinda... vanished. It's clarified that they're cast-down non-believers but aside from that, no. Spite posted:And I'm still confused at how people think the gameplay matches the tone, or perhaps we are thinking about different things. She's not a naive, innocent girl or shirking violet or anything like that. But the tone of the story is one of harsh survival. No, it really isn't. The setting is one of harsh survival, the story is an origin story about Lara triumphing over adversity and becoming the mass-murdering, enthusiast archaelogist archetype that's been around for decades and which she embodied a decade or two ago. Calling it just 'a survival story' is ignoring the huge swathes of the story that are dedicate to Lara not just surviving, but triumphing and becoming something more. Survival implies she's fighting to stay the same. A harsh survival story ends with the main characters coming to terms with what they did to survive, this story ends with Lara enthusiastically committing to further adventures. She's 'found herself', just like the marketing said, it's just not what the marketing implied. Shirkelton fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Mar 7, 2013 |
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2013 23:37
|
|
|
Dan Didio posted:It's clarified that they're cast-down non-believers but aside from that, no. That is really bizarre. It's a long way to go for a Descent homage.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2013 23:38
|
|
|
ImpAtom posted:That is really bizarre. It's a long way to go for a Descent homage. It is kind of wierd. I didn't really feel like it was out of place, though, I can see why it might throw people. I was completely caught up in the Apocalypse Now reference that I missed the blindingly obvious Descent imagery.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2013 23:39
|
|
|
Corin Tucker's Stalker posted:I'm talking about the tone that this video game story (and many others) tries to pull off in a broad sense. A convincing, meaningful story arc with a relateable character will never be accomplished when the body count is in the dozens. This is true of action movies as well as video games. This actually reminds me a lot of Spec Ops: The Line. It is a generic 3rd person shooter. But they tried to present it as some kind of introspective horrors of war commentary, which only worked in the cutscenes but was completely divorced from the game play. I am supposed to be horrified by all of the dead bodies and hanging corpses or whatever, but I just spent 20 minutes mowing through guys with my assault rifle and getting bonus points for head shots. I think it is fine for a video game to be a mindless shoot fest. But don't try to present a game to me as if it is a triumph of story telling when its gameplay ultimately falls into the generic tropes of every other game in the genre.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2013 23:40
|
|
|
ImpAtom posted:I really think the first two hours or so of the game really hurt it because they feel like a completely different game. Even little things (the cultist running after you shouting about how he wants to help you doesn't make any sense in the context of the rest of the game) and even the design feels like something divorced from the final product. You fight animals (which you don't really do after those first two hours), there's hints at a hunting mechanic which ends up being meaningless, stuff like that. If they revealed they kept the first two hours from an older version of the game before they reworked it I would completely believe it. I like to think that the guy in the cave was just someone who washed up on the shore and was just trying to help Laura, and got killed for his trouble.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2013 23:50
|
|
|
Dan Didio posted:No, it really isn't. The setting is one of harsh survival, the story is an origin story about Lara triumphing over adversity and becoming the mass-murdering, enthusiast archaelogist archetype that's been around for decades and which she embodied a decade or two ago. The game is constantly beating her up, showing her weary and tired and throwing "LOOK HOW HARSH THIS IS" in your face though. Sure, there's a definitely element of showing how much has happened, how much she's changed and all that. But they hammer the survival idea really hard in their plot. Hell, in the mandatory "Look at all the people you've killed." speech from Mathias, he says they are both just trying to survive. But the core disconnect is the same as Uncharted: she's still killing 500 dudes and is never in any real danger when you are controlling her. The sheer number and ease is the disconnect, at least for me.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2013 23:50
|
|
|
Spite posted:The game is constantly beating her up, showing her weary and tired and throwing "LOOK HOW HARSH THIS IS" in your face though. Sure, there's a definitely element of showing how much has happened, how much she's changed and all that. But they hammer the survival idea really hard in their plot. Hell, in the mandatory "Look at all the people you've killed." speech from Mathias, he says they are both just trying to survive. I think there's a difference between a story where a character survives and a story which is about survival. It's made pretty clear pretty quickly that her own survival is not the only reason Lara kills, in fact, the vast majority of the game is spent trying to save others. Mathias might say that, but that doesn't mean he's right, and in fact, the game goes to great lengths to show why he's wrong and Lara's different. As for the disconnect between the number of people you're killing and what the focus of the gameplay is, that's fair enough, I never felt it was excessive for what the game was doing, but obviously that's going to vary. I would have liked to see a few more optional tombs, a few more puzzles.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2013 23:52
|
|
|
Dan Didio posted:I think there's a difference between a story where a character survives and a story which is about survival. It's made pretty clear pretty quickly that her own survival is not the only reason Lara kills, in fact, the vast majority of the game is spent trying to save others. Mathias might say that, but that doesn't mean he's right, and in fact, the game goes to great lengths to show why he's wrong and Lara's different. The problem is that the game shifts too suddenly from survival to her being a rescuer. The first couple hours of the game feel completely disconnected from the rest. The amount of enemies is not only a disconnect plot wise, but it also ruins the pacing. they just kept coming in Shanty town. Then when you finally get to the other side, thinking you are about to get to do some puzzling or jumping you get swarmed by another poo poo ton of dudes. It is excessive and makes that whole section drag on.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2013 23:57
|
|
|
Fluffdaddy posted:The problem is that the game shifts too suddenly from survival to her being a rescuer. The first couple hours of the game feel completely disconnected from the rest. The game's easily over twelve hours long and the rescuer transition happens about midway, possibly longer if you really bother with the collectibles. As for 'disconnected'; for the first couple of hours Lara's largely on her own. I enjoyed that it had a sufficiently different tone to convey that mood.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2013 23:59
|
|
|
Dan Didio posted:The game's easily over twelve hours long and the rescuer transition happens about midway, possibly longer if you really bother with the collectibles. As for 'disconnected'; for the first couple of hours Lara's largely on her own. I enjoyed that it had a sufficiently different tone to convey that mood. There is a tonal shift at around the 2 hour mark, after she goes into the wolf den to get the radio transmitter. She has a big QTE with a big wolf, and from then on she becomes a murder machine for no real plot related reason.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2013 00:09
|
|
|
She becomes a 'murder machine' after her first human kill and it's very much for plot related reasons. She's quite literally forced into situations where she has to kill lots of people, by the plot.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2013 00:14
|
|
|
Dan Didio posted:She becomes a 'murder machine' after her first human kill and it's very much for plot related reasons. She's quite literally forced into situations where she has to kill lots of people, by the plot. edit: I just realized that you are going to argue in circles because thats what you do on the Game's forums, so I am just going to drop it at this point
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2013 00:16
|
|
|
Dan Didio posted:No, it really isn't. The setting is one of harsh survival, the story is an origin story about Lara triumphing over adversity and becoming the mass-murdering, enthusiast archaelogist archetype that's been around for decades and which she embodied a decade or two ago. Play the first Tomb Raider, will you? Also: "The problem was that we knew it would be really hard to put in lots of believable human characters because they'd be so immobile in comparison to Lara. I'm also not keen on just mindlessly killing humans in games anyway. So it had to be dangerous animals." Toby Gard, creator of Tomb Raider http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3292/interview_with_toby_gard.php
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2013 00:17
|
|
|
Fluffdaddy posted:edit: I just realized that you are going to argue in circles because thats what you do on the Game's forums, so I am just going to drop it at this point If you can't understand how it's plot related or why, for gameplay reasons, they need to add lots of guys to kill then maybe you shouldn't be playing games at all.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2013 00:21
|
|
|
I played the first Tomb Raider, it was a pretty bad game. Ignoring the fact that it's one game a series filled with Lara killing creatures, people, animal, etc. etc. Toby Gard's not a very authoritative voice on the subject given that Lara's been killing her way through tombs with impunity for the last six or so games now and he's no longer the sole 'creator' behind the Tomb Raider series. Lara's been a killer for a long time.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2013 00:22
|
|
|
The story in this game was stupid on multiple counts and the shooting wasn't all that great (melee was cool), but the climbing part of it was really nice, especially once you start getting a bunch of tools to move around, which is the sole reason I got the game so I'm happy. It's a shame that the tombs were so small, I would have killed for Underworld-like places or more setpieces like the finale.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2013 00:23
|
|
|
I didn't get to use the base camp just before the radio tower (Early game, 2 hours in maybe) because it said there were enemies nearby. Do I have to go to a previous camp and climb back there, or does it unlock on its own? I didn't reach somewhere with fast travel before I stopped playing so I couldn't check myself.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2013 00:30
|
|
|
Mr. Mallory posted:If you can't understand how it's plot related or why, for gameplay reasons, they need to add lots of guys to kill then maybe you shouldn't be playing games at all. Get the gently caress out of here with that dumb poo poo. The discussion is about how the plot does not bear out the gameplay, which is fine. However, they pushed the plot as some kind of piece of quality writing, which is what me and others in this thread are saying, is not. Everyone here posting about video games clearly likes video games. Bringing up things that we feel about those video games, negative or positive, does not invalidate that.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2013 00:32
|
|
|
Dan Didio posted:I played the first Tomb Raider, it was a pretty bad game. Ignoring the fact that it's one game a series filled with Lara killing creatures, people, animal, etc. etc. Toby Gard's not a very authoritative voice on the subject given that Lara's been killing her way through tombs with impunity for the last six or so games now and he's no longer the sole 'creator' behind the Tomb Raider series. Lara's been a killer for a long time. Could you be more pretentious? The original Tomb Raider was a bestseller flush with 90+/100 reviews that spawned a cross-media multibillion-dollar franchise. In addition, Toby Gard created Lara Croft. He designed the original Tomb Raider. He was the lead on the Legend reboot. He cowrote Underworld and directed all of the cutscenes. And Rosenberg, the executive producer of Tomb Raider, holds him in very high regard. I don't think you know what "authoritative" means.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2013 00:33
|
|
|
Adraeus posted:Could you be more pretentious? Yes, because the statement 'these games have always been fairly focused on mindlessly killing things' isn't very pretentious at all. Adraeus posted:The original Tomb Raider was a bestseller flush with 90+/100 reviews that spawned a cross-media multibillion-dollar franchise. In addition, Toby Gard created Lara Croft. He designed the original Tomb Raider. He was the lead on the Legend reboot. He cowrote Underworld and directed all of the cutscenes. And Rosenberg, the executive producer of Tomb Raider, holds him in very high regard. I don't think you know what "authoritative" means. I'm not disputing Gard's success or his influence, I like the series he built quite a lot, I don't however, believe he's the sole person responsible for it, nor do I believe his word should be taken above what the games themselves say.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2013 00:35
|
|
|
Despite Gard's insistence that he didn't care for killing people in games, you can't walk ten feet without having to mow down 20 guys by locking onto them in sequence and flipping around like an idiot in Legend in spite of his influence. And you do kill quite a few people in Underworld without Lara ever batting an eye. The first game may not have treated killing a person lightly, but the series has had 6 other games in which that just isn't the case. checkstock fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Mar 8, 2013 |
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2013 00:44
|
|
|
Bearing in mind that Gard was also against the idea that Lara Croft should be presented as a sex symbol, it's pretty obvious how he's not the only person with input on the character's presentation.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2013 00:54
|
|
|
The American Gladiator tennis ball cannon segments are my favorite.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2013 00:55
|
|
|
Yeah, it's weird that Lara goes from graduate student to Navy Seal after about two hours, but I think the bigger problem is that the gameplay is all over the place. I love the parts of the game where your just doing your own thing, exploring, finding relics, and doing puzzles, but you have to murder a small towns worth of cultists to get there. The actual tomb raiding is great though. There's a fun game here, and I'm really interested to see what they do with the sequel now that they've figured out a formula and seen what works and what doesn't.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2013 00:59
|
|
|
Ghetto Prince posted:Yeah, it's weird that Lara goes from graduate student to Navy Seal after about two hours, but I think the bigger problem is that the gameplay is all over the place. I love the parts of the game where your just doing your own thing, exploring, finding relics, and doing puzzles, but you have to murder a small towns worth of cultists to get there. The actual tomb raiding is great though. Roth and her father have been teaching her to fight/adventure her whole life. She hasn't had to kill people before and this was her first adventure with the training wheels off but the specifically mention them training her to climb and shoot with a bow and survive.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2013 01:03
|
|
|
Dan Didio posted:I'm not disputing Gard's success or his influence, I like the series he built quite a lot, I don't however, believe he's the sole person responsible for it, nor do I believe his word should be taken above what the games themselves say. Gard's word should be considered, however, when talking about how the new Tomb Raider which was billed as a reboot where we'd see Lara Croft find her strength, her courage, and her conviction (rather than her inner sociopath) as a young, inexperienced archaeologist trapped on the island from Lost forces you into playing Lara Croft as another Nathan Drake. You argued in favor of the status quo, "She's quite literally forced into situations where she has to kill lots of people, by the plot." But that's a bad thing! "She's quite literally forced into situations where she has to kill lots of people, by the plot." Only it's not Lara that's forced into those situations; it's us, the players. That Tomb Raider provides us with only a "destroy all humans" option in every encounter is a perfectly legitimate criticism. Is there no other way for Lara to resolve conflicts? Why can't she sneak by the bad guys? Why can't she use the environment in interesting ways? Why can't she (and by she I mean we) puzzle out how to defeat or circumvent her enemies? Look, I don't think any of us who are making that criticism are saying that Tomb Raider is a bad game. I'm really truly enjoying Tomb Raider. It's a great game! But I'm enjoying Tomb Raider as Crystal Dynamics' answer to Uncharted because the dramatic structure and pacing are all wrong for the origin story that they told us they were making.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2013 01:07
|
|
|
I think you guys will/should be really excited by The Last of Us. It's really pushing a realistic portrayal of a lone survivor(s) in a crazy world approach, with combat being very lethal and scary, especially any fight featuring guns.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2013 01:07
|
|
|
Megasabin posted:I think you guys will/should be really excited by The Last of Us. It's really pushing a realistic portrayal of a lone survivor(s) in a crazy world approach, with combat being very lethal and scary, especially any fight featuring guns. I really want to be, but I can't, because that's the sort of thing that this game was being billed as, and we saw how that goes. It's just hard for me to really get excited about games anymore, because everything's so goddamn samey.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2013 01:08
|
|
|
Crappy Jack posted:I really want to be, but I can't, because that's the sort of thing that this game was being billed as, and we saw how that goes. It's just hard for me to really get excited about games anymore, because everything's so goddamn samey. There plenty of indie games out there trying something new. Expecting not-safe innovation from 50+ million investment AAA games is a bit naive.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2013 01:13
|
|
|
Crappy Jack posted:I really want to be, but I can't, because that's the sort of thing that this game was being billed as, and we saw how that goes. It's just hard for me to really get excited about games anymore, because everything's so goddamn samey. Yeah, The Last of Us is all about killing zombies.  http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/games/8382770/Hands-on-The-Last-of-Us-PS3
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2013 01:14
|
|
|
socialsecurity posted:There plenty of indie games out there trying something new. Expecting not-safe innovation from 50+ million investment AAA games is a bit naive. I don't mind safe innovations. The sections where Lara got to sneak around and pick off baddies were my favorite sections of the game. Its just a shame they were so few of them relative to tedious Gears of War sections.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2013 01:17
|
|
|
socialsecurity posted:There plenty of indie games out there trying something new. Expecting not-safe innovation from 50+ million investment AAA games is a bit naive. Oh good, everybody on board the pedantic express, because I TOTALLY wasn't literally referring to how I can't get excited about The Last of Us because it's a 50+ million investment AAA game and expecting not-safe innovation would be a bit naive. Thank God you were here to say literally the exact same thing I just said.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2013 01:17
|
|
|
To that game's credit, I recently saw a demo run of that one hotel they keep showing where instead of what's already been shown, the player knocks one enemy out, then sneaks through an entirely different route to avoid combat entirely. It would be great if that's possible for the entire game even if I doubt it will be.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2013 01:26
|
|
|
So the first couple of days the game's running great, then today it crashes every 30 minutes. Then it crashes and tells me the save data is corrupted. Welp. I guess it's ol' Nvidia's fault, as always.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2013 01:28
|
|
|
Adraeus posted:Gard's word should be considered, however, when talking about how the new Tomb Raider which was billed as a reboot where we'd see Lara Croft find her strength, her courage, and her conviction (rather than her inner sociopath) as a young, inexperienced archaeologist trapped on the island from Lost forces you into playing Lara Croft as another Nathan Drake. You argued in favor of the status quo, "She's quite literally forced into situations where she has to kill lots of people, by the plot." But that's a bad thing! It's a familiar thing. Now, an argument for more variety in games I can understand, but criticizing the game for being similar to it's contemporaries is, I feel, an argument that ignores a great many things about the game; how it executes on those concepts, how it stands against it's contemporaries, etc. etc. It's an argument about what you'd like the game to be rather than what it is. Which is fine, and a perfectly interesting conversation to have, but it's a fairly broad and specific-less argumetnt that I don't think anyone's going to have a good response to besides us all sitting around and getting masturbatory about the nature of game development in this day and age. As for the status quo, I'm not arguing for that, I'm arguing for a game that happens to exist withint he status quo that I think is good regardless of it's origins. Adraeus posted:"She's quite literally forced into situations where she has to kill lots of people, by the plot." Only it's not Lara that's forced into those situations; it's us, the players. That Tomb Raider provides us with only a "destroy all humans" option in every encounter is a perfectly legitimate criticism. Is there no other way for Lara to resolve conflicts? Why can't she sneak by the bad guys? Why can't she use the environment in interesting ways? Why can't she (and by she I mean we) puzzle out how to defeat or circumvent her enemies? I should note she can sneak by the bad guys in more than a few of the combat situations, she can even run away from some fights after engaging enemies. Obviously, I've already addressed the other ideas you bring up, but I agree, those would be interesting aspects to play around with. I don't particularly agree that the game needed them as I've already explained why I feel the plot and the gameplay work well together. I think that could have been a very interesting game, possibly even a better game. But it would have been another game and I don't have any response to what is essentially speculation. I'd like to think that game would have been brilliant, but personally, I thik this game is brilliant and I'm not comfortable stating it would have been an inherently better game with those different options.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2013 01:29
|
|
|
Dan Didio posted:I should note she can sneak by the bad guys in more than a few of the combat situations, she can even run away from some fights after engaging enemies. This really isn't true. I replayed up to just exiting the radio tower and there's one section that you can 'stealth' through and even that it'd only a tiny part of the game (only 3 enemies). The game forces you to fight 90% of the time.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2013 01:36
|
|
|
4 Day Weekend posted:This really isn't true. I replayed up to just exiting the radio tower and there's one section that you can 'stealth' through and even that it'd only a tiny part of the game (only 3 enemies). The game forces you to fight 90% of the time. I got through quite a few encounters without killing anyone. I'm not saying the game's rife with opportunities, but they are there. It's largely the smaller encounters that happen on the way to the larger, setpiece encounters, though. You are right, though, it's not a focus.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2013 01:39
|
|
|
Adraeus posted:Yeah, The Last of Us is all about killing zombies. Ughhhh why can't there be one loving post-apocalyptic game that doesn't have zombies in some capacity? It's just so drat lazy.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2013 01:40
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 14:38 |
|
|
I agree with the people who think the accelerated character progression hurt the believability of her predicament, but at the same time, I think implementing that properly would have made for a game that was less fun to play. The writing was low-key and grounded enough that it didn't get in the way. I thought the pacing was very deliberate in giving you long breaks of exploration, traversal, and stealth, and it wasn't all just combat combat combat. I was getting the hang of the fighting around the same time as Lara, and by the time I had all the weapons kitted out and I wanted to use my toys, that's when game delivered combat in spades. And I suck at aiming with a controller so I died quite a few times, and the game never felt all that easy. So yeah, I didn't follow any of the marketing, didn't play the previous games and had no expectations coming in. I just knew SimCity was probably gonna suck and bought this instead, and to me it was shockingly fun beginning to end. Looking forward to the next one.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2013 01:58
|
|
