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I think the thing that drags a lot of games down when people talk about story telling is that most people don't have a loving grasp on interactive story telling. A lot of people apparently think that instead of watching someone else shoot the man, you shoot the man. Which it isn't. Good video game stories should let you have no small amount of control over things that happen. it doesn't have to be every single action. The story can even be pretty linear. You have to get the Water Chip, you have to defeat the BBEG, you have to save the world. That's fine. That's how stories work. The issue is that you usually have little to no choice in other things to do or places to go. This is a complete waste, because the main point of having an interactive story, is that you, y'know, interact with it. Preferably by a means other than violence and murder. Multiple solutions are important, but that's not even what I'm talking about. What I mean is that games that are open world can be linear in their main story, because when you have a properly done open world game, the other things you do that aren't directly the main quest, the side quests help you progress the main quest. The Fallout games are a great example of this. Especially 1/2, which had the clever trick of placing neat things between where you are and where you're going. You step out of Vault 13 with the directions to Vault 15, and half way there you stumble into Shady Sands, where you're free (and more or less encouraged to faff about in Shady Sands. Learn about the wasteland, meet new people, become friends, solve problems, shoot bugs, blow poo poo up. Quests you're given frequently lead you to other places or along the critical path that ultimately progress you to your goal. New Vegas is fantastic for this. Each quest along the critical path leads you to finding out more information about Benny, or to provide direction for where to go. The critical path is in fact so good at guiding you to Vegas that many people are unaware that are other ways to Vegas. This is good. It allows the player to carry on with the original design, or gently caress off it and wind up at Vegas of their own accord. Where things carry on as normal because Benny is already there. You can go back and do all the other quests because they still exist and won't resolve on their own. Which is good. Once you've reached Vegas, and entered the 38 and recovered the chip, the game starts to open up proper. Everyone wants you to work for them, and you're, in essence, given a series of quests in parallel. There are a number of things that everyone wants you to do, which lets you play everyone against the middle well for a bit, until you hit a breaking point where you must pick a side. Of course, the pacing still (more or less) allows you run around and explore and do different things. The Second Battle of Hoover Dam will (somewhat conveniently) wait for you to be ready to commence. It's on the horizon, but far enough away that you're not worried about being late because you're exploring a vault or Zion or whatever. This is good. The main story of the game is still there. You can't "finish" the game without it. The story shifts from just "the main story" to "All the things the courier did in, during, and around chasing benny/getting the chip/taking over the This is a thing more games need, instead of being focused on making cinematic action setpieces where you get to be Jason Statham or Bruce Willis or whatever.
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Aug 6, 2014 20:52
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SpookyLizard posted:This is a thing more games need, instead of being focused on making cinematic action setpieces where you get to be Jason Statham or Bruce Willis or whatever. Not really. Not every game has to be open world. Some on-rails, set piece to set piece games can be really, really good games. Just look at Bulletstorm. Different strokes for different folks.
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Aug 6, 2014 21:09
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And those folks and their strokes are wrong < >
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Aug 6, 2014 21:23
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Alhazred posted:I experienced that during the fight with the last colossus in Shadow of the Colossus. At a point in the fight I took a look down and realized that holy gently caress that's a long way down. For some reason, the only game that's ever done that for me with regard to heights has been Saboteur. Nothing else. No idea why.
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Aug 6, 2014 21:25
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I'm another one of those strange people who doesn't seem to mind Oblivion's setting. I'm not really all that big into fantasy (I know, I know, bear with me), and while I know the European parallel Tolkien-inspired stuff wears thin on a lot of people, it feels a little more comfortable to me. Skingrad in particular is how I've pictured some European towns at various times, the style of the villages can still be felt in some of the more rural English areas I know well, and walking through the expanses is like a more imaginative take on walks I've actually taken. Skyrim has some similar joys for me (The Reach in particular feels Welsh, and I know I'm not the first to think that). I wonder just how much of this is dependent on me being a European. Morrowind's setting is like a more potent dream in some of its extreme fantasy elements (like the Telvanni wizards living in giant mushrooms), and that's great. The problem for me is - and this is largely down to me not having a computer with which to mod the game and boost the graphics - much of its landscape feels really dull. I've probably mentioned it before (in this very thread even), but Azura's Coast and Sheogorad are the worst offenders for me. Of course, this is also due to the age of the game, but I came to after Oblivion and Skyrim and there's nothing I can do about that! I agree with the folks posting that Oblivion has better quests - and Morrowind has better characters - than Skyrim. They're still not great for the most part, mind. I've read someone on here, in a derogatory way, referring to the Elder Scrolls as "armchair games" before... to an extent I can see that approach, I don't necessarily play them for the writing but to pass time by going out into a certain world and doing this and that. The only thing I can add to what's already been said about Oblivion guild quests versus Skyrim guild quests is that Oblivion's Thieves' Guild has stealing as a part of the story, and said story is pretty coherent too. Skyrim's Thieves' Guild quests... well, the main ones don't feel like they were designed for thieves at all.
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Aug 6, 2014 22:06
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Skyrim is a stunningly beautiful game to me, in terms of how the world is actually put together with its use of cliffs and valleys and structures and everything. Like, the composition is really really good, and just wandering around and taking in the sights and scenery was absolutely the height of the game for me. Morrowind is a more interesting game in terms of the setting and backstory and whatever, but it is hideously ugly, and honestly most of Vvardenfell is pretty awfully designed, aside from the obvious cool parts like Balmora and the Telvanni towers.
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Aug 6, 2014 22:39
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Skyrim is the Obama of the Elder Scrolls series. It's not great. It's not bad. Lots of people hate it just because it's the most recent.
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Aug 6, 2014 22:41
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I love Oblivion, I get nostalgic for it but it's got a lot of flaws. The dungeons are insanely boring (never even bothered with them unless if it was for a quest), the faces are hideous, there was a glitch in my game that prevented me from getting the Anvil mansion, NPCs would get killed out in the wild for no reason, there weren't enough voice actors and magic is just terrible. People complained about different characters in Skyrim having the same voices but it was a hell of a lot better than Oblivion having like 8. In a game with hundreds of NPCs, of course there's going to be identical voices. One thing that Oblivion has over Skyrim is The Shivering Isles. It was fantastic.
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Aug 6, 2014 22:50
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One thing that always bugs me about games is when people market them by saying stuff like "It's got x km in it! That's x times the size of <recently-released-large-open-world-game>!" Doesn't matter how big a world is if it has a ton of open space with nothing in it. Heck, did you know that Daggerfall is still by and large the largest landmass ever in a video game?
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Aug 6, 2014 23:15
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JebanyPedal posted:Snip I thought this was very interesting and well put. Have you ever seen that one egoraptor video where he goes into classic Zelda and current Zelda and the implications of plot vs gameplay? I'm on my phone, so I can't link it right now, but I'll link it in later. Give it a watch if you get a moment. Content: the current trend in games where it sends like game designers are more concerned with making their games pretty than actually making it fun or engaging to play. I'm not saying I don't like beautiful games- I do. I'm mostly just tired of games that are more about "look what we can do with the graphics engine! " than actual fun.
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Aug 6, 2014 23:37
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Sociopastry posted:Content: the current trend in games where it sends like game designers are more concerned with making their games pretty than actually making it fun or engaging to play. I'm not saying I don't like beautiful games- I do. I'm mostly just tired of games that are more about "look what we can do with the graphics engine! " than actual fun. This is pretty much what Xenoblade didn't do that allowed them to cram so much poo poo into a game on the Wii of all consoles. edit: Graphic quality has always been a competition among consoles and games and the like. Games today want to be playable live-action films these days, and maybe that was the goal along or something idk. All I know is that games start to lose visual identity after awhile, most human characters in games all look like they could be from the same game. scarycave has a new favorite as of 00:05 on Aug 7, 2014 |
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Aug 6, 2014 23:41
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scarycave posted:This is pretty much what Xenoblade didn't do that allowed them to cram so much poo poo into a game on the Wii of all consoles. Except that Xenoblade somehow ended up having some of the best graphics on the Wii, with a remarkable draw distance to boot. No idea what the developers needed to do to pull as much power from that as they did.
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Aug 7, 2014 00:20
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Morpheus posted:One thing that always bugs me about games is when people market them by saying stuff like "It's got x km in it! That's x times the size of <recently-released-large-open-world-game>!" And the size and amount of content has nothing on the quality of content. So theres that too. Personally I found Skyrim to just be more polished oblivion, and oblivion filled me up on TES games for basically ever.
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Aug 7, 2014 00:21
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When I was a kid I had years of fun exploring Daggerfalls nothingness.
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Aug 7, 2014 00:29
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Morpheus posted:Except that Xenoblade somehow ended up having some of the best graphics on the Wii, with a remarkable draw distance to boot. No idea what the developers needed to do to pull as much power from that as they did. I think a big part is that it didn't really have any fancy lighting effects, they pretty much stuck to basic effects - you've got sunrise to nightfall shading, and the rest is really glowy textures and stuff. And really that's all you need in my book. I really could do without super fancy lighting/effects if its going to make the game lag like crazy. I'm looking at you Desert Sahagin from Lighting the game, starring Lighting. He pretty much lags the game tremendously every-time he does a sand based attack.
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Aug 7, 2014 01:02
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I got Bound By Flame off of gamefly and i'm trying to play through it. I actually have enjoyed it so far and i'm at the end. Maybe its just me but I can not beat the final boss. I have gotten sort of close, I even had him down to about 10% health before I ran out of stuff. Theres no way to get any more and from what i'm reading online basically the only option it seems that I have is restarting from scratch and speccing better. I am not sure if I have the fortitude to do that though and i'm debating just sending it back.
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Aug 7, 2014 04:14
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RenegadeStyle1 posted:I got Bound By Flame off of gamefly and i'm trying to play through it. I actually have enjoyed it so far and i'm at the end. Maybe its just me but I can not beat the final boss. I have gotten sort of close, I even had him down to about 10% health before I ran out of stuff. Theres no way to get any more and from what i'm reading online basically the only option it seems that I have is restarting from scratch and speccing better. I am not sure if I have the fortitude to do that though and i'm debating just sending it back. As I was saying in the other thread, you may want to just drop the difficulty down to easy and tank your way through it. After playing that I wondered how anyone could ever beat that boss on the hardest difficulty so I looked up some Youtube videos. You basically have to spam him with about 600 arrows for 20 minutes.
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Aug 7, 2014 04:22
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J-Spot posted:As I was saying in the other thread, you may want to just drop the difficulty down to easy and tank your way through it. After playing that I wondered how anyone could ever beat that boss on the hardest difficulty so I looked up some Youtube videos. You basically have to spam him with about 600 arrows for 20 minutes. Embarassingly enough I already did that, I think really I just didn't prepare, I only have enough supplies to make about a total of 50 arrows and 18 potions.
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Aug 7, 2014 04:36
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RenegadeStyle1 posted:I got Bound By Flame off of gamefly and i'm trying to play through it. I actually have enjoyed it so far and i'm at the end. Maybe its just me but I can not beat the final boss. I have gotten sort of close, I even had him down to about 10% health before I ran out of stuff. Theres no way to get any more and from what i'm reading online basically the only option it seems that I have is restarting from scratch and speccing better. I am not sure if I have the fortitude to do that though and i'm debating just sending it back. Cheatengine it?
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Aug 7, 2014 05:29
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Cat Army 
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Celery Face posted:I love Oblivion, I get nostalgic for it but it's got a lot of flaws. The dungeons are insanely boring (never even bothered with them unless if it was for a quest), the faces are hideous, there was a glitch in my game that prevented me from getting the Anvil mansion, NPCs would get killed out in the wild for no reason, there weren't enough voice actors and magic is just terrible. People complained about different characters in Skyrim having the same voices but it was a hell of a lot better than Oblivion having like 8. In a game with hundreds of NPCs, of course there's going to be identical voices. A big thing with dungeons I'd say Skyrim has over Oblivion and Morrowind is that a good number of dungeons have their own stories to live out. They're still repetitive (probably not quite as much as Oblivion's), but a little plot can distract you from that. There is one dungeon I can think of in Oblivion that's set aside like this, and not only is it massively out the way, but the boss (and therefore climax of the story) doesn't spawn until you reach a higher level... and if you go there too early, it apparently never spawns! As for Oblivion's faces and voice acting, I just have to post this video. I might have posted it before but it's still a classic.
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Aug 7, 2014 07:10
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In my opinion Skyrim would have been 500 times better if it had gotten rid of like 90% of the dungeons. They created this big and beautiful world with dozens of cities but didn't really fill them with that much content. Instead the game expects me to wander trough dozens of copy&paste caves and catacombs. 
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Aug 7, 2014 07:56
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Finally getting around to playing Nanashi no Game, and man is the control scheme complete rear end. And you walk slooooow. Great atmosphere, and the cursed game parts manage to actually be pretty unsettling even with NES style graphics, but I don't know if I can put up with the granny with a walker level speed you move at.
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Aug 7, 2014 08:30
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SpookyLizard posted:And those folks and their strokes are wrong < Not every game can be New Vegas and I am okay with that. 
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Aug 7, 2014 08:39
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Xoidanor posted:In my opinion Skyrim would have been 500 times better if it had gotten rid of like 90% of the dungeons. They created this big and beautiful world with dozens of cities but didn't really fill them with that much content. Instead the game expects me to wander trough dozens of copy&paste caves and catacombs. I actually think Skyrim would be better if they removed the minor cities and moved those characters and building just outside of the hold capitals. It would give the remaining cities a much more realistic feeling of urban sprawl and make the rest of the world seem more untamed and dangerous.
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Aug 7, 2014 08:42
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Lord Lambeth posted:Not every game can be New Vegas and I am okay with that. I would be okay with it if people would be more aware of why and how it's good instead of it getting glossed over for other, less good video games.
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Aug 7, 2014 10:02
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grittyreboot posted:I actually think Skyrim would be better if they removed the minor cities and moved those characters and building just outside of the hold capitals. It would give the remaining cities a much more realistic feeling of urban sprawl and make the rest of the world seem more untamed and dangerous. Yeah, that's one thing I much preferred in Oblivion. In Skyrim I never felt like I was really deep in the wilderness, far away from anything more civilised than a campsite. The vertical emphasis might have had something to do with it, splitting the world into regions in such a way that you always know where you are. Parts of Oblivion, though, especially in the east had a way of making you feel miles from the nearest road. That said, I've also heard people say the exact opposite so it might just be me.
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Aug 7, 2014 13:54
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AngryRobotsInc posted:Finally getting around to playing Nanashi no Game, and man is the control scheme complete rear end. And you walk slooooow. Great atmosphere, and the cursed game parts manage to actually be pretty unsettling even with NES style graphics, but I don't know if I can put up with the granny with a walker level speed you move at. I remember watching an LP of this game, and even with the player speeding up the walking parts of the video, it felt pretty drat slow. I imagine it's to heighten tension when you're being chased, but it just feels incredibly artificial.
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Aug 7, 2014 14:13
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Strategic Tea posted:Yeah, that's one thing I much preferred in Oblivion. In Skyrim I never felt like I was really deep in the wilderness, far away from anything more civilised than a campsite. The vertical emphasis might have had something to do with it, splitting the world into regions in such a way that you always know where you are. Parts of Oblivion, though, especially in the east had a way of making you feel miles from the nearest road. That might be the design choice of 'White-Gold Tower is almost always visible' in action. No matter where you are in Cyrodiil, you can usually see White-Gold Tower and work out your way from there; I think it's a really neat way to design an open world, although I've heard plenty of people complain that it made the world feel small, since you can see this one building from everywhere. Fallout 3 and New Vegas did much the same thing with the DC skyline and Lucky 38 respectively, and of the three I've only seen New Vegas escape this criticism. It could also be the fact that most of Cyrodiil's fairly densely forested. You go the exact same distance out from the road in Skyrim and Oblivion, and then try to find your way back, and you'll probably have a harder time in Oblivion since there's more in your way. And then it combines with that earlier design choice; when you go into that forest, you're going to lose White-Gold Tower in the trees. And with that ever-present landmark gone from your view, you feel a lot more lost than if you never had it in the first place.
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Aug 7, 2014 14:13
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SpookyLizard posted:I would be okay with it if people would be more aware of why and how it's good instead of it getting glossed over for other, less good video games. Yeah, Fallout New Vegas sure is a game that didn't have a lot of success...
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Aug 7, 2014 14:47
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grittyreboot posted:I actually think Skyrim would be better if they removed the minor cities and moved those characters and building just outside of the hold capitals. It would give the remaining cities a much more realistic feeling of urban sprawl and make the rest of the world seem more untamed and dangerous. The game that did this best, I think, was Dragon's Dogma. Its world had a lot of flaws, sure (fixed spawns for the interesting enemies and zero level scaling, for example) but nothing compares to the first time you spent too long outside of the city, when it got REALLY REALLY loving DARK and there are wolves and zombies running around and there's nothing you can do but survive until dawn. And your lamp oil is running dry. 
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Aug 7, 2014 17:08
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kazil posted:Yeah, Fallout New Vegas sure is a game that didn't have a lot of success... That is not what I said nor what I meant and your sarcasm is only helping you to miss the point.
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Aug 7, 2014 18:07
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ninjahedgehog posted:The game that did this best, I think, was Dragon's Dogma. Its world had a lot of flaws, sure (fixed spawns for the interesting enemies and zero level scaling, for example) but nothing compares to the first time you spent too long outside of the city, when it got REALLY REALLY loving DARK and there are wolves and zombies running around and there's nothing you can do but survive until dawn. And your lamp oil is running dry. I started walking towards that tower in the north east (I think) at about noon - it started getting really dark just as I hit the canyon, and there was no point in heading back. Christ that was a long night filled with attacks. That game does it so well though. That, and STALKER: SoC with the Oblivion Lost mod.
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Aug 7, 2014 18:08
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SpookyLizard posted:That is not what I said nor what I meant and your sarcasm is only helping you to miss the point. FO:NV is the perfect game for story telling and all other games should aspire to be just like it we get it.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:13
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kazil posted:FO:NV is the perfect game for story telling and all other games should aspire to be just like it we get it. People are allowed to like games and think they're good, bro. This is nowhere near the levels of fellating that Dark Souls got in this thread's last incarnation.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:18
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kazil posted:FO:NV is the perfect game for story telling and all other games should aspire to be just like it we get it. indeed please go the polar extreme ah yes exactly what i wanted and meant
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Aug 7, 2014 19:59
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Spooky Lizard I don't think a single person here disagrees with, or even doesn't already know, what you said about New Vegas. The contentious part is "more games should be like this instead of action set-pieces" and it's like, why, in what way are these things competing with each other, why shouldn't they be able to coexist
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Aug 7, 2014 21:16
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One of the things I enjoyed about the God of War was the attention paid to little details. It was nice because it showed the developers at least took the time to familiarize themselves with Greek mythology before hopping on the crazy train. So I was peeved when after consistently using the Greek names, in GoWIII they went with the Romanized 'Hercules' instead of 'Heracles.' 
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Aug 7, 2014 23:22
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Fallout 3 and New Vegas' gameplay drag them down. 1 and 2 weren't great but at least they had less travel time.Tunicate posted:That's the 'Lavos is splicing in DNA to force human evolution' nonsense, right? What's the deal with that?
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Aug 8, 2014 00:29
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As its come up again, and this is the "dragging this game down" thread, I'll go ahead and say it; The storytelling in FO:NV did nothing whatsoever for me. You start the game with a simple goal; Kill the rat bastard that shot you, and finish your delivery. You track him down through a J shaped linear corridor, with certain stopping points where you are allowed to go off piste for a side quest. Go wandering in an area that has not been secretly designated "low level sidequest zone" and you get bugfucked by poisonous beasties. Alright, fine. Gives you areas to explore when you are higher level. Not an elegant solution, but I see why they did it. Maybe could have scaled it a little better so that the weaker insects are close to the path ramping up as you get further away instead of "I wonder what those windmills are <take 3 steps past the abandoned rest stop> making GBS threads HELL HOW MANY CAZADDORES LIVE HERE?". Anyway, you get to the fabled city of New Vegas which all the NPCs have told/warned you about, and after paying the toll, you enter. Actually, as an aside, they wasted a lot of effort there. There are like 3 optional quest chains that give you ways into Vegas without paying the toll. Thats a cool idea, freedom to the player and all that. Except the cost to get in is set really low. The first time I played the game I didnt know there would be a cost and still had easily enough money to hand just from collecting and selling stuff from dead enemies/stealing stuff that I thought looked more valuable than it was heavy. Because of that I think a lot of players wouldnt ever have explored the other options for getting in and at least one of them was fun. Anyway, you walk into vegas proper and find... The place is a shithole. There are about 4 or 5 casinos, across 2 zones with a loading screen in between, and thats about it. Going into the casinos is made more annoying because they take your weapons off you (fair enough) then give them back when you leave, which for a well armed character can lead to a solid 2 minutes of "grenade added to inventory. Knife added to inventory. Pistol added to inventory" messages, and loasing them means its forgotten your quickkey weapon selections, so you have to set those again. So feeling distinctly underwhelmed with vegas, I proceed to my quest marker and after a short series of objectives I find and kill Benny, the rat bastard who shot me in the prologue. Which was something of a suprise because hhe was voiced by chandler from friends and it felt like that really should have taken longer than it did. Then I deliver the chip to its destination (2 casinos over) and claim the fee. At that point it really feels like the story of the courier is over. You are then asked basically to decide which faction gets control of new vegas. The thing is the game did a piss poor job of giving me any personal reason to care which group of assholes controls vegas (which as a settlement doesnt seem massively more impressive than any of the small towns in the game). Now, for the record I liked New Vegas a whole lot, I put probably 150+ hours into the game, have all the achievements apart from the stuff they added with the weapon packs (because some of those would basically require a 4th playthrough). It has a lot of mechanical improvements over FO3, the companion AI is better, the companion wheel is a good idea, the rebalancing of the skills broadly makes sense, some of the sidequests are very well done with multiple possible solutions. The Survival skill and Hardcore mode were interesting additions although once you learned how to manage hunger and thirst it didntt add that much. But the main story did nothing for me at all. It feels like the main story is over about 5 hours in (guesstimate of time, its a while since I played it) and then you are just given 3 options for what to do in free roam. There are maybe 2 memorable villains in the game, and Benny is gone very early on and Caesar isnt a physical threat to you (and if you go against him you fight some lieutenant of his in the final battle instead). I honestly preferred the (admittedly ham handed) story in FO3 because it gave your character a personal stake. Find father, avenge father. I think part of the problem is the attempt to go "All the factions are shades of grey!" because it meant that even the good guys come off like dicks who you wouldnt go out of your way to help. And yes, the NPR are the good guys, because if there are 2 factions fighting and one faction is made up of slave owning rapists, the other side are the good guys more or less by default. Which is fine for the record, you can have your character side with the bad guys in this kind of game, thats not my issue. My issue is mainly that helping the bad guys felt depressing and helping the good guys... Felt more or less as depressing. I also thought the environments in FO3 did a better job of setting out little vignettes which told a story, but part of that was because the washington ruins featured a lot of areas which apparently had been inexplicably undisturbed since the bombs fell until you came along whereas nevada seemed to have been more well travelled. I know a lot of people prefered the story in NV, but I am not one of them.
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Aug 8, 2014 00:33
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Anatharon posted:Fallout 3 and New Vegas' gameplay drag them down. 1 and 2 weren't great but at least they had less travel time. The combat in 1 + 2 did get old pretty fast though. Especially if you decided to start some poo poo in a town. Now everyone and their grandma has to take a turn moving several feet away from the conflict going on.
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Aug 8, 2014 01:31
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