Mirificus posted:

VealCutlet posted:

https://i.imgur.com/Zdl1ugC.gifv

XK posted:

When you make an open world sandbox game, the thing that makes it feel good is when the player always has the choice between playing the game story, or playing the world. I can't count how many locations I've come across in GTA games where I wondered why that area was there. No story line poo poo ever happened there, and there was nothing important, but I could punch a dude, start a fight, have cops show up, steal a bike, ride into the ocean, grab a yacht, 30 minutes later I'm hunting in the woods or dive bombing a 747 at a military base.

It's not an easy thing to pull off, though. You have to explicitly make it part of the design process. GTA4 was probably the worst of the GTA series at it. There were too many completely dead areas where it was completely obvious they never came up with anything to throw into them. The highways on the north end of the map, and all the northwest neighborhoods, and the east, and pretty much all over. The living locations were scattershot, and most of them involved high speed driving to have fun. I think that's the reason why GTA4 often is called the weakest entry in the series. There just weren't enough opportunities to play the world.

I remember spending hours in the second to top floor of a parking garage in GTA3, sniping cops with a rocket launcher, then trying to escape. I think I spent more time doing that than playing the storyline.

Still no Linkedin mail. Irritated.

Sillybones posted:

He has been known for decades, so he is no conman.
Except for Gizmondo where everyone but him went to jail. And then there was the 'creative accounting' thing where everyone but him was jailed. Oh, and the whole Star Citizen thing. Anyway, as I was saying, definitely not a conman; remember Freelancer?

Space Crabs posted:

The extended trailer was a really stupid idea that retroactively ruined Star Lancer by just blowing it all up and ruining Freelancer before it started by beating you over the head with something it dramatically hides and reveals late in the game.

AP posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Btj9VbDt0m0&t=323s

Sillybones posted:

Chris Roberts personal snuff film collection about to be stumbled upon.

Bargearse posted:

When the Freelancer sequel rumours were going around, I thought it would be an interesting idea to reestablish contact with Earth and see what developed there since the colony ships left. Then I saw that extended intro.

I still think the best thing that could possibly come out of this would be for EA to reboot Wing Commander, for it to be good, and to see how Ben Lesnick manages to fit that into his world view.

AP posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Btj9VbDt0m0&t=323s

Space Crabs posted:

Let me tell you, I played the everloving poo poo out of some StarLancer and FreeLancer.

Freelancer is good but when you spend enough time watching this Star Citizen clusterfuck you start to understand how some things felt "off" about the game.

You have a bunch of different types of shields and weapons and loot but none of it really matters and there are quests and missions but they seem kinda incidental I guess is the best way to put it. The universe is actually interesting but you don't really get to interact with it very much at all. Something feels like it's missing.

But boy do you have to navigate through multiple step communication requests to dock somewhere, and there are elaborate landing and taking off animations. Purchasing modules for your ship sends you to a ship showroom where all the modules are laid out on tables and your current ship is wheeled in. Every ship, planet and station has a Bar you go get drinks in and there are dozens of places to dock, see ship showrooms, and trade the cargo like minerals you don't need for anything else other than selling and you don't even need the money either.

All of the dozens of planets, stations and capital ships are just bars you dock at. He was focused on weird details and pointless minutiae of making ship showrooms, bartenders, table cleaners, news networks, drinking animations that he forgot to actually make these places places. They exist as collections of the details he thought was important and sacrificed everything else to make.

It totally makes sense why they had to kick him off the project and FreeLancer feels like it's the last 2/3rds of a game because Chris Roberts couldn't or wouldn't work on the basic 1/3rd first.

You start to get a great idea of how Chris Roberts works. Star Lancer was a good game and his biggest successes were the similar Wing Commander games where the primary focus is the scripted missions that you can run over with a microscope to fine tune. Some scripted AI and you are done, the player does most of the work. But when he tries to spread out into living universes he is a giant autist that doesn't understand human interaction and fails completely by breaking out an electron microscope on poo poo like proper docking procedures or what the intergalactic news cycle should be.

All of which would be fine if he eventually got around to the other things, but as he has admitted himself and has been proven by his removal from other projects, he will not get to the other things. He will run right into the ground with his terrible ideas if people let him, and nobody can stop him now.

So Star Citizen, of course, should be well worth the $75,000 some people are purchasing it for.

I'm sure the 3+ years of motion capture work for 300+ speaking roles making tens of hours of finished footage with orchestral score and hollywood actors totally didn't take away from the basics of the game in time and budget. You see I know all of these basics are done because

Space Crabs posted:

He was focused on weird details and pointless minutiae of making ship showrooms, bartenders, table cleaners, news networks, drinking animations that he forgot to actually make these places places. They exist as collections of the details he thought was important and sacrificed everything else to make.

SelenicMartian posted:

The best thing for Freelancer was the mod that made your normal flight speed several times faster than warping between systems.

Beet Wagon posted:

Nah man I don't kill sharks I pet them. Goin down to the Keys soon to shoot some fat fuckin hogfish though!

Lime Tonics posted:

https://i.imgur.com/BdYj33I.gifv

Lime Tonics posted:

https://i.imgur.com/BdYj33I.gifv

DapperDon posted:

This is why I spend a lot of my time and money volunteering with a couple of animal rescues.

Space Crabs posted:

loving exactly

I always wondered what would happen between Earth and Sirius.

Would the whole Allies Vs Coalition world war 2 stuff still apply after hundreds of years? Would the coalition guys have stagnated or progressed technologically once they won the Sol System? Would you have ultra advanced or alien-like evolved humans after thousands of years show up and leave the Allied colonies at a huge disadvantage due to their transit time in the colony ships?

It's the same concept in EvE Online that might be an interesting storyline one day. (EvE Story is that humanity discovered a FTL jumpgate to an incredibly distant part of the universe, then spread out through it. One day the "EvE Gate" collapses cutting off Earth from the game area for thousands of years so far by game lore)

But nope, apparently the entire solar system was instantly destroyed by the badguys revealed at the end of the game

Ramadu posted:

Did you ever play a series called Colony Wars on the playstation or hear of it? Thats sorta the plot in general. It's pretty great.

They ruled and never get enough love for being hella fun.