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Toady posted:Pricing expectations in gaming are a bit screwed up. $20 is the price of a digital or Blu-Ray film, and this lasts longer than most movies. Movies are also too expensive V  V
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Feb 16, 2016 18:57
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| # ? May 28, 2024 17:20 |
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I really like the new wave of indie games charging what they're actually worth rather than what the industry's told them they're worth. When smaller, shorter experiences are cheaper you end up with the mobile game market, which loving sucks.
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Feb 16, 2016 19:04
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I would not pay $20 for a Blu-ray either.
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Feb 16, 2016 19:08
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Hakkesshu posted:I enjoyed Monument Valley a lot and thought it was more than worth the money, but I wasn't that happy with Firewatch hey yo what's up Until someone else goes through with the effort of making their own venn diagram I refuse to believe this assertion 
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Feb 16, 2016 19:32
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Toady posted:Pricing expectations in gaming are a bit screwed up. $20 is the price of a digital or Blu-Ray film, and this lasts longer than most movies. I don't think dollars spent per unit time is a good metric. I'm not looking to have my time filled. If a work could give me the same experience in less time, I'd pay more for that. I also don't think there's really anything useful about the general statements about whether something is 'worth the price' . That's a very personal thing that requires knowledge of what $20 dollars is worth to you and also what the game is worth to you. Really, such statements should be accompanied by a description of your financial situation. The only sort of universal way to talk about it is in terms of whether a different price would have given more profit, but that's a terrible discussion, so let's not have it. Or, if we want something productive, everyone list your max price at which you would buy the game so we can approximate a demand curve. I would spend 43.97 on this game.
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Feb 16, 2016 19:52
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Dr. Stab posted:I don't think dollars spent per unit time is a good metric. I'm not looking to have my time filled. If a work could give me the same experience in less time, I'd pay more for that. I'd spend £25 if it came with the soundtrack and I got to have a little cuddle with Chris Remo.
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Feb 16, 2016 19:54
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I haven't finished reading the thread yet but I really want to comment on the story. Especially because many people say it goes nowhere. I really enjoyed the story. This is a story about how people respond to loss. Henry runs away from his tragically collapsing marriage and his dying wife. Delilah is running away from a failed relationship but really more from her guilt about Brian's death. Brian's father is running away from his guilt over Brian's death as well. The thing I really liked was it seems the player is given a lot of choice in how to react to what is going on. Just like the intro sets you up with some choices, so does the ending. We are given Henry, a guy who basically runs away from a lovely situation. I can't entirely blame him because I've never been in a similar one. The three principle characters are all guilty of this to some degree, and you could even argue the son is also engaged in some kind of escapism from the lovely climbing his dad is pushing him into. Someone earlier mentioned that the characters don't grow, or at least Henry doesn't. I think that's very possible depending on the dialogue selections you make. In my play though, Henry leaves with a greater resolve to face the tragedy of his wife. When I arrived in Delilah's tower and we had the conversation about where to go next. I choose the dialogue where Henry voices that he is going back to his wife. It felt appropriate. Henry going into the cave to find out what the hell was going on was the (maybe a little on the nose ) moment where he finally confronts his tendency to flee difficult situations.. Maybe for other players, the ending was that Henry forgets about his wife and hopes that he and Delilah will become an item. In the end she cant commit and that Henry is left feeling stuck between abandonment of his wife and abandonment from Delilah. That's a downer of a narrative, but that's more frequently how life goes. People aren't always heroes and they often make lovely choices. I feel like a lot of this game is developed through how you interact and the degree to which you interact. The discovery of the body felt like an emotional climax to me especially after finding the kid's hideaway and reading all his little notes. You most certainly don't have to climb up that last rope and you certainly might miss the fathers hideaway. If you don't see the fathers photos of his son in his hideaway, maybe you do indeed believe he killed him. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. I really like that the game leaves this open to interpretation. I can see why people might dislike that ambiguity in their narratives. I'm surrounded by heavily formalist narratives enough in gaming that I can appreciate a more realist story. Overall I loved this game and I really loved the story. I'm a a sucker for realism in my narratives and this story really connected with me. Great job guys.
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Feb 16, 2016 21:32
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Mr Scumbag posted:I've been trying to be patient while reading the thread, but it seems more and more likely that the answer is that a lot of people have very little experience outside of typical movie and videogame stories/narrative and expect everything to be neat and tidy, perfectly explained and to have exciting resolution to everything. This is so assumptive and pretentious man, why do you assume anyone who didn't like this game is just an idiot? Is it only smart people who agree with you? I mean it's fine to attack their criticism if you don't think it's up to snuff, but you're just plugging your ears as soon as you start saying the reason someone disagrees with you, or dislikes something you do, is because they're just not as smart as you.
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Feb 16, 2016 23:51
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Megaspel posted:This is so assumptive and pretentious man, why do you assume anyone who didn't like this game is just an idiot? Is it only smart people who agree with you? I mean it's fine to attack their criticism if you don't think it's up to snuff, but you're just plugging your ears as soon as you start saying the reason someone disagrees with you, or dislikes something you do, is because they're just not as smart as you. I've posted a fair amount in this thread and have addressed a lot of things. I've also been careful to say that I'm basing a lot of my observations on all of the criticism I've seen (not just the stuff in this thread). Basically, the problem I have is with people trying to say that the ending is "objectively" bad (or as near to objective that can be determined in a subjective medium) because they don't like it. I've also said that if you simply don't like it and say so, that's perfectly fine and don't see how anyone could even have a problem with that. Mostly, I'm interested in whether or not a good reason can be determined for why the divergence in opinion is so great, and the best I could come up with was the post you quoted. I don't know where the stuff about me thinking I'm smarter than others or that people who don't like it are "idiots", though. All I said was that I thought that a lot of people might have little experience outside of their preferred niches and that it might have an effect on their expectations and therefore, on their opinion of the end off the game. It doesn't seem like a bizarre theory to me. I don't know how intellect comes into that at all.
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Feb 17, 2016 01:31
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nessin posted:The one loose end I haven't been able to figure out is early on Delilah has a conversation on a phone with the radio keyed that you can listen to, and she says some stuff that seems suspicious (I forget the exact lines, but stuff like "he doesn't know", and that she is keeping an eye out), which could just be completely random stuff the writer threw in to make you start thinking conspiracy theory or, down that same path, it could have even been Ned playing with you as part of his plan to pit you two against each other. Either way I never saw anything to explain that or an option to ask Delilah about it at some point. I seem to have lost the note in my save game but I think in Ned's faked personality dossiers of Henry and Delilah, he notes that Delilah has a boyfriend Javier but has been seeing other people. I think that's true based on her drunk call to Henry, and Ned put it in the dossier because he'd overheard her talking about it. I think she was talking to one of those people or another lookout friend about it and saying Javier doesn't know.
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Feb 17, 2016 02:40
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Tommofork posted:I seem to have lost the note in my save game but I think in Ned's faked personality dossiers of Henry and Delilah, he notes that Delilah has a boyfriend Javier but has been seeing other people. I think that's true based on her drunk call to Henry, and Ned put it in the dossier because he'd overheard her talking about it. I think she was talking to one of those people or another lookout friend about it and saying Javier doesn't know.
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Feb 17, 2016 02:53
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Accordion Man posted:No, Ned made that up so Henry would start doubting her. Delilah's problem is that she's a drunk that runs away from responsibility, so she left Javier because she couldn't commit. I didn't get that dialogue in my play through. 
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Feb 17, 2016 03:08
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Not dialogue (that I'm aware of) but context clues.
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Feb 17, 2016 03:59
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gently caress you if you didn't pick bucket. #TeamBucket
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Feb 17, 2016 04:29
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Firewatch might be one of my favorite games of the past few years, simply because it's the first time (that I can think of) the occupation of wildland fire has been displayed prominently in gaming. I've waited a long time for someone to even remotely capture that feeling of walking around in the forest knowing that a giant blaze is right over the hill.
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Feb 17, 2016 04:31
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Is this a thing with which you're familiar or just a fan of? In my extremely limited exposure to such things I don't know of any books or movies that do wildfires either. Seems like a neat subject.
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Feb 17, 2016 04:40
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Jim Silly-Balls posted:gently caress you if you didn't pick bucket. #TeamBucket Best part of bucket is when he gets kicked by the mugger. Choose the best pet instead: Turt Reynolds
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Feb 17, 2016 05:48
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Dark_Swordmaster posted:Is this a thing with which you're familiar or just a fan of? In my extremely limited exposure to such things I don't know of any books or movies that do wildfires either. Seems like a neat subject. It's my occupation. I've worked in wildland fire on hand crews for the past six years. There are books, but they are all written by people in the field and most of it ends up being too dry or full of insider reference.
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Feb 17, 2016 07:41
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Soma Soma Soma posted:There are books, but they are all written by people in the field and most of it ends up being too dry or full of insider reference. They of all people, should know that's dangerous! Yeah, okay i'll get my coat.
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Feb 17, 2016 07:53
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Anyone else think that Brian's meteor reflecting HAM radio science project was going to go somewhere? When you put the headset on I was sure you were going to end up talking to your wife.
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Feb 17, 2016 13:42
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Nope. The game felt FAR too grounded for any of that.
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Feb 17, 2016 15:45
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This game felt very much like an early X-Files episode. Lots of build up for conspiracy then a fairly sensible explanation. It was fun to play through one sitting but now I need to play again so I don't have 18 photos of evidence to print out. Really don't want kid bones sent to me in the mail.
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Feb 17, 2016 16:25
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After the game is complete they should let you free roam and continue to soak it in. Even just making that fishing rod functional would be awesome
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Feb 17, 2016 17:53
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I wanna fish that stereo back out.
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Feb 17, 2016 22:51
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Copper Vein posted:I wanna fish that stereo back out. Ned already did that. Check his workbench next time you play.
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Feb 18, 2016 00:40
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I carried the boombox all the way to my tower blasting that song on loop. It wasn't there day 2, unlike most other things.
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Feb 18, 2016 05:26
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I wanna blast "Fight the Power" from a ghettoblaster for 77 loving days.
Copper Vein fucked around with this message at 07:13 on Feb 18, 2016 |
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Feb 18, 2016 07:09
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Copper Vein posted:I wanna blast "Fight the Power" from a ghettoblaster for 77 loving days.
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Feb 18, 2016 08:29
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Man, this game was a disappointment. It really has problems with the way it balances how you're able to frame Henry as a character from your perspective and the actual, unchangeable events of the game. Just the relationship between Delilah and Henry never really felt that connected, and the descent into paranoia felt so forced. It just seems like a game that's saying, "hey, people run away from their problems" without really strongly saying anything "about" that. I think there's a difference between letting players think for themselves and build out their own ideas about characters, and kind of blandly rolling out character attributes and stakes and making like the player is choosing those from a list. It also feels like the fire at the end is just a convenient method to keep the characters from having to deal with the actual implications of what's happened, so the whole thing is just an emotional exercise. I'm not sure how much I actually believe in what I just said, but I'm throwing it out there anyway. It is funny though to see people trying to concoct elaborate theories about character relationships to try and keep some sort of mystery or conspiracy going. Like some people trying to say Delilah knew everything Ned was doing and was working with him. They list out all these reasons how that's plausible, but never why that could be true at all or what it would actually mean about the characters.
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Feb 18, 2016 09:38
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Does the meat of the plot change depending on your choices? Because I feel like I mr. magoo'ed my way into picking a perfect final four bracket. Or the game tailors the plot to your choices like a glove. I mean i click on my radio and i pick paranoid answers and suddenly paranoid things are true. Then I feel like I am going insane, I am an insane person, but I don't want to be an insane person so I pick calming answers. It was just an accident. It was a coincidence. And now these things are also true. Canonically by the end of the game I have always been right. And I don't want to hike through the whole goddamn game again to find out if I can be a teen murderer unreliable narrator being experimented on by the puppet mistress Delilah, which felt like it could have been true had I picked more paranoid answers and stuck with them.
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Feb 18, 2016 12:31
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The plot is fixed, your decisions don't affect anything significant about it. Some details in the world will change is the most that'll happen.
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Feb 18, 2016 12:35
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Regarding plot flexibility and stuff like that. I got through day 2 and had the impression everything was way open ended by the look of the map. When I got the compass, it really rubbed me the wrong way because I'm an idiot who is weird about open world games and barely play them. I can read a map and compass, but I really don't want to do navigation. So I stopped. I blame MMORPGs for making me allergic to open worlds. Why did I buy it in the first place? Because it looks pretty. Still though, I loved the setting and characters. In the end, I watched someone else play through it. It's not that open ended in hindsight, and I would have stuck with it had I known this. I really enjoyed the game even as an observer. The radio banter was brilliant, Henry kicks rear end, Delilah is delightful, and my only rational complaint is that you don't get to see Delilah. I felt that they deserved to meet at the end. I will buy and play Firewatch 2 - Watch Harder or whatever else they make next. Attack on Princess fucked around with this message at 14:05 on Feb 18, 2016 |
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Feb 18, 2016 14:03
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Donnerberg posted:and my only rational complaint is that you don't get to see Delilah. I felt that they deserved to meet at the end. I'm sure it's been posted in this thread but look up "firewatch 3rd person" and be thankful Delilah never has to see... that coming at her.
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Feb 18, 2016 21:41
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Pretty good game, but the ending landed juuuust short of great for me. I love Coens films like Burn After Reading, so it's not that don't enjoy endings that subvert your expectations of a "cinematic experience" or a "video gamey" experience, it just felt like in the specific case of Firewatch's plot, the bait and switch didn't make enough sense. I think what would've saved it for me would be dropping the "Ned faking the research" part at the science camp. It just didn't make a lot of sense why he would go to the trouble, even though I understand that they gave him the idea by being paranoid at first. It just felt too... elaborate for Ol' Man Clampett to break in and plant fake research. I didn't believe in that. It felt like a contrivance where the teen girl subplot felt much more organic and its anticlimax felt earned and solid. It would've been better to leave the deer science center in, but have no direct evidence that Hank and Delilah were being surveilled there. Then you let their paranoia show them things that aren't there in a much more organic way. There was a better way to explore isolation and paranoia, I just think the plot got too fancy, tried to juggle too many balls, and overextended itself. Ending nitpicks aside, very pretty game, amazingly crisp, organic dialogue, beautiful, and soulful. I'm excited for this team to put out some more work. I do think it will suffer coming on the heels of Undertale, if only because that game had a unparalleled measure of reactivity whereas Firewatch is more about nudging relationships slightly. If you temper your expectations about how branching it will be (which is not much at all), you'll enjoy the organic feel of it more, I think. That Dang Dad fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Feb 19, 2016 |
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Feb 19, 2016 15:32
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Looks like Firewatch 1.02 dropped for ps4, any experiences with frame rate from anyone?
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Feb 19, 2016 15:46
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Anal Surgery posted:I do think it will suffer coming on the heels of Undertale, if only because that game had a unparalleled measure of reactivity whereas Firewatch is more about nudging relationships slightly. If you temper your expectations about how branching it will be (which is not much at all), you'll enjoy the organic feel of it more, I think. Re: pricing discussions, I would happily switch the amounts of money I paid for Undertale and Firewatch. I definitely got more out of the former.
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Feb 20, 2016 04:08
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https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/02/19/firewatch-ethics/
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Feb 20, 2016 20:45
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I just finished the ending and wow was it predictable and unentertaining. It felt like the game had nothing to say about anything. At first, Firewatch was rather charming, a first person story game with an interesting environment to explore while listening to some dialogue, but it's only downhill from there, the dialogue drags on, characters make annoying choices to further the narrative, and the same canned animations are repeated hundreds of times, in particular, climbing down rocks was super boring, especially multiple rocks which required the same slow animation to be played several times in a row, and rappelling, which is literally just staring at nothing but dirt for about 10 seconds. The environment gets stale after about an hour, and I found myself regretting asking the woman person anything on the radio when she started delivering her boring line. If you enjoyed it, more power to you, but man, was this not the game for me.
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Feb 21, 2016 22:25
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You could look around while rappelling hth
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Feb 22, 2016 03:09
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| # ? May 28, 2024 17:20 |
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I didn't read any of that.
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Feb 22, 2016 09:56
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