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Telltale TWD games suffer from the same problem as the TV show - it's so set to be grim dark that it becomes painfully predictable and uninteresting. After playing for a bit you just know that the story and characters are not allowed to have a moment of respite, god forbid happiness. So instead of following a story and wondering how it's going to turn out, you know ahead of time that all characters are going to die, all places are going to get overrun etc., etc. There's no real development, no arc, just an endless stream of contrivances with which the writers reset the whole thing every time it starts to get interesting.
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# ? Jun 26, 2017 17:18 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 06:09 |
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steinrokkan posted:Telltale TWD games suffer from the same problem as the TV show - it's so set to be grim dark that it becomes painfully predictable and uninteresting. After playing for a bit you just know that the story and characters are not allowed to have a moment of respite, god forbid happiness. So instead of following a story and wondering how it's going to turn out, you know ahead of time that all characters are going to die, all places are going to get overrun etc., etc. There's no real development, no arc, just an endless stream of contrivances with which the writers reset the whole thing every time it starts to get interesting. This is my problem with Game of Thrones/Song of Ice and Fire. And, to a lesser extent, with some of Obsidian Entertainment's darker outings like Mask of the Betrayer and Knights of the Old Republic 2. Not to mention Bloodborne. Dark settings, in my opinion, really do need meaningful points of light to work effectively.
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# ? Jun 26, 2017 17:36 |
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PubicMice posted:This looks like the most boring loving game I have ever seen. They just stand in one place and mash attack while the boss refuses to react. And this demo video is supposed to make the game look good? Yeah it turns out a lot of the charm of Symphony of the Night et al. is in the sprite work. Replace it with a bunch of lame models and it loses all the character.
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# ? Jun 26, 2017 18:05 |
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MrJacobs posted:also having a weird relationship seeing as how she cared for him for like 5 years when he was comatose. "My name's Anya, and I'm here to bone ya "
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# ? Jun 26, 2017 18:45 |
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Morpheus posted:I've stopped being interested in those games because they are all extremely railroaded, but try to pretend that they aren't. I just stopped caring about any of the plots or choices because no matter what, everything will stay the same except for the one time where you need to make a 'who lives, who dies' choice, which is pretty drat obvious when it comes up. The best TTG game is also the most railroaded, Tales from the Borderlands, but that game had the characters and writing to back it up and make it a great adventure, something the other games simply don't have. I can understand why they do this, since if the story could actually branch each successive episode would have to be exponentially bigger to accommodate all possibilities, it's just dumb that they lie about it. e: Cythereal posted:Bloodborne PubicMice has a new favorite as of 18:50 on Jun 26, 2017 |
# ? Jun 26, 2017 18:45 |
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Twitch posted:Witcher 3 mostly works because it's a relationship set up in years of books, because doing that poo poo in the span of a game usually doesn't turn out well. But Kai Leng got clowned on constantly ("Tell him he was fought off by a dying Drell."), and he straight up whines when Shepard mocks him over being a loser.
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# ? Jun 26, 2017 18:59 |
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PubicMice posted:Boodborne has a ton of things to break the mood. The Messengers are dorks, the Doll is cute, player messages are an art form unto themselves, and you can kill most enemies by shoving your arm up their rear end. If you say so. I returned it the moment I figured out the game was trying to be a Cthulu-esque setting. No, thank you.
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# ? Jun 26, 2017 19:00 |
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But the point of that game, unlike Cthulu stuff, is that you actually can beat the thing that's causing all the problems. You can't win in a Cthulu universe, but in Bloodborne, you absolutely can. Bad things happen to people along the way, but in the end you can make the nightmare end. Or you can make it continue. Or you can become one of the inhuman things that causes these problems, escaping the cycle by abandoning reality and your humanity. Dark Souls has more of a "you can never actually win, only prolong the inevitable" message than Bloodborne.
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# ? Jun 26, 2017 19:20 |
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Cythereal posted:If you say so. I returned it the moment I figured out the game was trying to be a Cthulu-esque setting. No, thank you. Bloodborne is pretty much the only game I've ever played that has done Lovecraftian horror really well. I can't believe that someone actually went from boring rear end werewolves to hosed-up extradimensional alien horrors and at that point thought it was trite and overdone enough to return but woooooow.
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# ? Jun 26, 2017 19:33 |
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marshmallow creep posted:But the point of that game, unlike Cthulu stuff, is that you actually can beat the thing that's causing all the problems. You can't win in a Cthulu universe, but in Bloodborne, you absolutely can. Bad things happen to people along the way, but in the end you can make the nightmare end. Or you can make it continue. Or you can become one of the inhuman things that causes these problems, escaping the cycle by abandoning reality and your humanity. I like the boss in Dark Souls 3 who simply tells you whats up. Before the fight he tries to reason with you, begging you to just let the flame die.
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# ? Jun 26, 2017 19:37 |
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Guy Mann posted:The footage they showed at E3 this year looked awful, it's really slow and generic and the 2.5d graphics look like something out of an asset factory. There's one part in particular where a giant bell falls from the ceiling and turns into what appears to be chunks of delicious milk chocolate upon hitting the ground that made me while watching. Yeah. I feel pretty good about how the Pathologic remake's going (the only other thing I've ever kickstarted), but Bloodstained's looking kinda bad so far.
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# ? Jun 26, 2017 19:44 |
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Brazilianpeanutwar posted:Romance in games is something that needs to die, like yesterday, who the gently caress decided people want romance options? I mean if you want a game about romance buy a dating game or something lol. People wanna roleplay, dude. The appeal of new Bioware RPGs is more in how you get to define your character by your decisions than in the gameplay, I think. But then you get this whiplash effect where the character can be mega inconsistent and nobody seems to notice. Shep's personality can do a 180 and everyone will just act like that's what was up the whole time. The two best solutions I have seen to this are in: 1) Witcher 3: You can make Geralt handle things differently but you can't change his personality. In the very first tavern there's a pretentious scholar who wants to write like The Greate And Nobyle Historie Of My Lord's Armies Stomping Everyone's Balles. And you can either reproach him, or seem to encourage him while subtly pushing your viewpoint ("good, tell everyone what war is really like, murder, rape, horror"). Of course, in the second case, he doesn't follow ("rape and murder are but jewels upon the gown of history" or something) but hey you tried. I thought that was cool. 2) Alpha Protocol: They tell you up front that Mike is some kind of sociopath chosen for the mission because he's good at manipulating people with his bizarre behavior lol
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# ? Jun 26, 2017 21:05 |
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Roleplaying is fine, but in Bioware and Bethesda games the creators seemingly go out of their way to take that possibility away from the player. I don't think the romance plots in Mass Effect games really connect to your main decisions in any meaningful way. Or if you try to roleplay as a renegade, you can at most be a petulant dick who whines but goes along with the flow anyway. Or in Bethesda games - you can blow up a town, or pretty much do anything you want to anybody in FO4, and the world refuses to change, to adapt to your attempts at being evil, even acknowledge it with more than maybe couple sentences if you are lucky. It feels like some sort of Christian parable almost, no matter how hard you hit the game world, it still turns the other cheek. So ultimately roleplaying boils down to a series of isolated incidents, the most notable of which are often romance threads.
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# ? Jun 26, 2017 21:11 |
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steinrokkan posted:Roleplaying is fine, but in Bioware and Bethesda games the creators seemingly go out of their way to take that possibility away from the player. I don't think the romance plots in Mass Effect games really connect to your main decisions in any meaningful way. Or if you try to roleplay as a renegade, you can at most be a petulant dick who whines but goes along with the flow anyway. Or in Bethesda games - you can blow up a town, or pretty much do anything you want to anybody in FO4, and the world refuses to change, to adapt to your attempts at being evil, even acknowledge it with more than maybe couple sentences if you are lucky. It feels like some sort of Christian parable almost, no matter how hard you hit the game world, it still turns the other cheek. I thought it was actually funny that Moira in FO3 was still your friend after you nuke her town and turn her into a ghoul. Like, for real? Can't let actions have consequences, now can we?
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# ? Jun 26, 2017 21:14 |
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Moira's whole thing is to be relentlessly chirpy and oblivious. Like it's a valid point about choice and consequence, but quite possibly the worst example in the entire game.
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# ? Jun 26, 2017 21:16 |
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Aleph Null posted:I thought it was actually funny that Moira in FO3 was still your friend after you nuke her town and turn her into a ghoul. Like, for real? Can't let actions have consequences, now can we? Hey, it's a learning experience. Now not only can she observe the effects of severe radiation sickness first hand, she can now go anywhere in the wasteland without worrying about radiation! Imagine where she could explore thanks to you!
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# ? Jun 26, 2017 21:16 |
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steinrokkan posted:It feels like some sort of Christian parable almost, no matter how hard you hit the game world, it still turns the other cheek. Haha yeah I made an extremely long and prodromal post in the Little Things In Games thread about this so i'll spare yall. But i first noticed this playing Fable 2; the game LETS you kill everyone in town, but it can't adapt the plot to that in any meaningful way. It's just like, well, you're glowing with evil now and a bunch of the questgivers are gone. Whereas a Bioware protagonist's sex life is small and socially contained enough that it really can turn out differently from one playthrough to another.
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# ? Jun 26, 2017 21:24 |
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swamp waste posted:The Binding Of Isaac runs are too long and too random. I hate to say it cause it's part of what appealed to me about the game at first, that there was this insanely sprawling christian guilt hell world that could turn out TOTALLY DIFFERENT, EVERY TIME The latest expansion was pretty bad too. You could tell they ran out of steam with the last one because the only ideas they could think of were " this item is just like item X but it activates when you get hurt" and portals that spawn infinite amounts of enemies. The new "Chapter" is just one giant level that has random rooms and the boss is just a pallete swap of every other boss in them game except he can teleport anywhere on the map with no way to dodge. There are waaaaay too many useless items. You could cut out at least 50 items and not even notice. I know not every run can be a Guppy Brimstone run but there's nothing worse than being on the womb with 5.0 damage because all the items you got were beans and soy milk. The Devil/Angel room system is a great idea on paper but in reality there is no reason at all to even try for Angel Rooms unless you're trying to get to Mega Satan. The way it works is if you don't take damage you have a chance at the end of a floor to get a Devil or Angel room to spawn. The Devil Room has very powerful items but you have to permanently trade health for them. The Angel rooms have much better items and they are free, but they have less than half the chance of spawning and even if they do more than likely you'll just get 3 spirit hearts or a permanent heart, so it's rarely worth the trouble. I think that's the biggest problem with BoI, there are lots of ways you can go, but there's no point in doing most of them because there are way harder and nowhere near as fun, so every run becomes " Devil Room-Cathedral-Chest". Now if you'll excuse me I have to go get " Real Platinum God" for the second time. Your Gay Uncle has a new favorite as of 22:17 on Jun 26, 2017 |
# ? Jun 26, 2017 22:12 |
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poptart_fairy posted:Moira's whole thing is to be relentlessly chirpy and oblivious. A better example would probably be your dad or the Brotherhood, who absolutely know what you've done and chide you for it, but it doesn't go beyond a verbal slap on the wrist and then it's back to business as usual. At least Fallout 4 will let you burn bridges with most of its organizations permanently, but the Minutemen will always be there for you no matter how monstrous you are.
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# ? Jun 26, 2017 22:15 |
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"You nuked an entire town full of innocent people and now it's nothing but a smoldering radioactive hole? oh son I am dissapointed"
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# ? Jun 26, 2017 22:20 |
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Your Gay Uncle posted:The latest expansion was pretty bad too. You could tell they ran out of steam with the last one because the only ideas they could think of were " this item is just like item X but it activates when you get hurt" and portals that spawn infinite amounts of enemies. The new "Chapter" is just one giant level that has random rooms and the boss is just a pallete swap of every other boss in them game except he can teleport anywhere on the map with no way to dodge. I didn't even buy the latest one. I heard about that stuff, and felt like i would not like it. I'm feelin pretty done with Isaac. Ed is working on some other projects and I hope he doesn't keep getting dragged back to wring more money out of the sure thing.
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# ? Jun 26, 2017 22:25 |
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marshmallow creep posted:A better example would probably be your dad or the Brotherhood, who absolutely know what you've done and chide you for it, but it doesn't go beyond a verbal slap on the wrist and then it's back to business as usual. Monstrous or not, there will always be a settlement that needs your help. Here, I'll mark it on your map.
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# ? Jun 26, 2017 22:32 |
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Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance loving Kicks rear end But i have one objection to it. There are 2 ways to refill your health: Zandatsu (the awesome zen precision one-hit-kill mode) and boring ol health pickups, which work like energy tanks in Metroid: if you die with one equipped, it's spent to refill your health meter. OK so here is my issue: on hard difficulties, enemies do more damage, but the amount of health tanks you get and can carry is the same. Shouldn't this be the other way around? Because the way it is, on the hardest mode, Zandatsu doesn't matter as much, and the main arbiter of each fight's difficulty is how many health tanks you brought into it, because each hit will probably cost you one. I feel it should be the opposite. Please vote for me for emperor of Japan so we can avoid this kind of oversight in the future. Thanks
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# ? Jun 26, 2017 22:51 |
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BioEnchanted posted:I like the boss in Dark Souls 3 who simply tells you whats up. Before the fight he tries to reason with you, begging you to just let the flame die. Of course, Dark Souls 2 is all about how that's ultimately futile anyway. Vendrick refused to link the fire and it just meant that someone else would come by (you), killing and eating everyone for more power, and then linking the flame anyway. The fact that Dark Souls 2 and 3 even exist is proof that this happens to you in DaS1 if you refused to link the flame. It's why I really liked that there was only one ending in the second game. It doesn't actually matter what you choose to do, the cycles will continue. My thing dragging down Scholar of the First Sin is they caved to people whining and added a second ending.
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# ? Jun 26, 2017 23:14 |
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I'm guessing when Destiny first launched it didn't have all these vestigial quest branches that are gated by DLC purchasing. I dunno if it's meant to entice me to fork over for content, but seeing walled off content puts me off. I'd rather they didn't appear in the base game at all until you buy the corresponding DLC.
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# ? Jun 26, 2017 23:18 |
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Action Tortoise posted:I'm guessing when Destiny first launched it didn't have all these vestigial quest branches that are gated by DLC purchasing. I dunno if it's meant to entice me to fork over for content, but seeing walled off content puts me off. I'd rather they didn't appear in the base game at all until you buy the corresponding DLC. The first Dragon Age had this as well, and everybody hated it then. I'm not sure what compels games companies to keep repeating this sin. It must actually sell DLCs, I guess.
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# ? Jun 26, 2017 23:24 |
Action Tortoise posted:I'm guessing when Destiny first launched it didn't have all these vestigial quest branches that are gated by DLC purchasing. I dunno if it's meant to entice me to fork over for content, but seeing walled off content puts me off. I'd rather they didn't appear in the base game at all until you buy the corresponding DLC. It's really weird because now you can do quests that talk about Crota being dead, go eat his soul so you can murder his double-dead dad (because btw you killed him too even though you just got brought back to life by your ghost buddy) but then do a quest line where everyone freaks out that Crota's not actually turbo-dead, only regular dead and now you have to go into his ghost town and murder his ghost. Which you already did according the plot, because you needed to eat his soul to go fight his dad.
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# ? Jun 26, 2017 23:35 |
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Nuebot posted:It's really weird because now you can do quests that talk about Crota being dead, go eat his soul so you can murder his double-dead dad (because btw you killed him too even though you just got brought back to life by your ghost buddy) but then do a quest line where everyone freaks out that Crota's not actually turbo-dead, only regular dead and now you have to go into his ghost town and murder his ghost. Which you already did according the plot, because you needed to eat his soul to go fight his dad. This is what happens when you have a linear story that makes sense, only it's broken up into DLC that can be played in any order. New Vegas had an arc across it's DLC that made thematic sense if you saved the final DLC for last, because otherwise you get a lot of ominous foreshadowing about a dude you kicked off a cliff hours ago.
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# ? Jun 27, 2017 00:00 |
Inspector Gesicht posted:This is what happens when you have a linear story that makes sense, only it's broken up into DLC that can be played in any order. New Vegas had an arc across it's DLC that made thematic sense if you saved the final DLC for last, because otherwise you get a lot of ominous foreshadowing about a dude you kicked off a cliff hours ago. Except like, in Destiny you might not have actually done that. Because you don't kill Oryx until the end of the third DLC's story, and you don't double-kill him until the raid of the same DLC. But because the raid exists, and has been beaten you are canonically considered the guy who killed oryx forever and can embark on the fourth DLC's content. When I got the game, it was really weird that all the NPCs kept calling me Crota's Bane because I had no idea who, or what, Crota was. In fact I didn't kill him until long after I'd eaten his soul and double murdered his dad. So it's kind of like if in New Vegas everyone kept talking about how you won the battle at the dam even though you never completed the main storyline.
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# ? Jun 27, 2017 00:06 |
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Moria's definitely one of the better characters in Fallout 3 imo. If I remember correctly though, wasn't it possible for three dog to praise you for some good deed you've done, and then immediately say your a bad person because of your karma?
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# ? Jun 27, 2017 00:11 |
Three Dog was the worst in Fallout 3 because of that poo poo. Especially since some of the choices, like the ghouls vs. rich assholes at tenpenny tower, are kind of stupid.
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# ? Jun 27, 2017 00:13 |
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steinrokkan posted:Telltale TWD games suffer from the same problem as the TV show - it's so set to be grim dark that it becomes painfully predictable and uninteresting. After playing for a bit you just know that the story and characters are not allowed to have a moment of respite, god forbid happiness. So instead of following a story and wondering how it's going to turn out, you know ahead of time that all characters are going to die, all places are going to get overrun etc., etc. There's no real development, no arc, just an endless stream of contrivances with which the writers reset the whole thing every time it starts to get interesting. The problem with The Walking Dead franchise is that they won't just loving say zombie. Or maybe they have by now, I don't know.
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# ? Jun 27, 2017 00:17 |
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New Butt Order posted:The first Dragon Age had this as well, and everybody hated it then. I'm not sure what compels games companies to keep repeating this sin. It must actually sell DLCs, I guess. It's probably easier on the eyes to see where your paid content will be in the game world than reading an article and having it be a bullet point in a list of new quests. swamp waste posted:Haha yeah Huh, Fable 2 was also the first game to put me off when I saw how limited the game was at responding to my actions. I slaughtered a good portion of Bowerstone and earned a vile nickname from the town. Five minutes later I had everyone laughing by spamming the shart emote. steinrokkan posted:Roleplaying is fine, but in Bioware and Bethesda games the creators seemingly go out of their way to take that possibility away from the player. I don't think the romance plots in Mass Effect games really connect to your main decisions in any meaningful way. Or if you try to roleplay as a renegade, you can at most be a petulant dick who whines but goes along with the flow anyway. Or in Bethesda games - you can blow up a town, or pretty much do anything you want to anybody in FO4, and the world refuses to change, to adapt to your attempts at being evil, even acknowledge it with more than maybe couple sentences if you are lucky. It feels like some sort of Christian parable almost, no matter how hard you hit the game world, it still turns the other cheek. I think cinematic RPGs have a harder time at offering multiple and meaningful choices over isometric RPGs because the former have to put a lot more effort in looking consistently good for like 60+ hours while trying to offer the same kind of experience that the latter can supply by just having some decent looking sprites and stellar writing. The simpler-looking RPG can focus more on deeper quest structures, more varied dialog and combat options. Immersive RPGs have to present a believable world every second and at every possible angle the player can see while still providing the same kind of combat, dialog, and puzzle solving you'd expect from an RPG. Most of the time they need a narrative structure and that's why Deus Ex will always have you breaking off from UNATCO and fighting the same three bosses no matter how you play and it's why Alpha Protocol will always have you splintering off from Alpha Protocol to take down Alpha Protocol while still operating under Alpha Protocol. Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's a waste of time if an RPG wants to be a big immersive experience and also put some detail and effort in its quests. The Witcher 2 and 3 games are impressive to me because they are that kind of RPG. At least on your first run, it feels like the things you do will affect the people around you. Like the world is turning and you're at the fulcrum. Second and third runs do reveal how shallow the pool really is, but the initial feeling you get in TW2 when you side with Vernon Roche only to later murder King Henselt yourself and ironically prove your accusations true makes you wonder how drastically different things could be if you chose to work with Iorveth instead.
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# ? Jun 27, 2017 00:35 |
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Nuebot posted:Three Dog was the worst in Fallout 3 because of that poo poo. Especially since some of the choices, like the ghouls vs. rich assholes at tenpenny tower, are kind of stupid. I actually like what happens at the end of the Tenpenny story if you broker peace. I got the "Sometimes people are just lovely no matter the situation" moral the game was trying to convey. My problem with it was that it didn't feel like the game was intentionally conveying that message because you can't talk to the ghouls after they slaughter the residents. Being a Bethesda game, I just thought the AI bugged out in the background and the sides went hostile because of some janked scripting.
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# ? Jun 27, 2017 00:40 |
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The Moon Monster posted:The problem with The Walking Dead franchise is that they won't just loving say zombie. Or maybe they have by now, I don't know. The Wolf Among Us had that problem too, when you have The Big Bad Wolf and Snow White roughing up Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum for information in a day-glow comic book noire you're well past the point of silliness where you should feel like having to use titles like Fables because calling them fairy tale creatures is beneath you. Granted it's not just a video game problem, genre ficton in general seems to have a real problem with it. Even teenybopper Twilight knockoffs are full of titles like "casters" and "trylls" because Sexy Witches and Sexy Trolls are concepts that need to have gravity.
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# ? Jun 27, 2017 00:45 |
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Action Tortoise posted:I actually like what happens at the end of the Tenpenny story if you broker peace. I got the "Sometimes people are just lovely no matter the situation" moral the game was trying to convey. Killing that eff-star-star-oval office Roy Philips nets you negative-karma, which is where the game loses people. The developer calls the player a bad person for killing someone indiscriminately worse than most players will ever be. Geralt of Rivia never had an angel on his shoulder telling him killing that rapist will put future-babies in jeopardy.
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# ? Jun 27, 2017 01:02 |
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Ah I never even noticed the karma loss at the time. What the hell is Roy's deal? I just thought he was casually racist to his ghoul sidekick in the radio dramas.
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# ? Jun 27, 2017 01:13 |
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Action Tortoise posted:Ah I never even noticed the karma loss at the time. What the hell is Roy's deal? I just thought he was casually racist to his ghoul sidekick in the radio dramas. Roy is the leader of the ghouls, your thinking of dashwood and his ghoul manservant argyle.
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# ? Jun 27, 2017 01:17 |
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Action Tortoise posted:My problem with it was that it didn't feel like the game was intentionally conveying that message because you can't talk to the ghouls after they slaughter the residents. Being a Bethesda game, I just thought the AI bugged out in the background and the sides went hostile because of some janked scripting. You might have been bugged, actually. The Ghouls should have been peaceful and gloating about how they got rid of the snobby smoothskins and can live in peace now. The "twist" at end of the Tenpenny Tower quest is really only catches people because video games have conditioned players into assuming that any third compromise option is inherently going to be the best way to end the quest. That route forces two groups who hate and fear each other to live in close quarters together, and one group has a significant advantage in firepower. There's only one way that ends.
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# ? Jun 27, 2017 01:26 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 06:09 |
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scarycave posted:Roy is the leader of the ghouls, your thinking of dashwood and his ghoul manservant argyle. drat, how long's it been since i've played a fallout? New Butt Order posted:You might have been bugged, actually. The Ghouls should have been peaceful and gloating about how they got rid of the snobby smoothskins and can live in peace now. Nah, I got those soundbytes. That never felt like a good enough ending for the quest. Should have had at least one more Oblivion zoom in for at least Roy to gloat over taking over the tower.
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# ? Jun 27, 2017 01:33 |