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Mr. Funny Pants posted:"There's not really anything for him to do other than fight or run." Again, I know I've seen little of the game and not played it myself, so I very easily could be wrong on that count and welcome correction. Bugblatter posted:What you wrote kind of sounds like someone saying “I don’t get Horizons combat, you just walk into nature and shoot at things until they’re dead.” I don't personally consider the things in HFW to be "poorly written conversations" and my preference is for game to have a voiced protagonist as opposed to a spectral ghoul or silent fellow like Zelda BOTW but if people wanna be horny for Elden Ring that's fine just not looking forward to hearing it be the basis of comparison for all games for the next 10 years
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Aug 31, 2022 06:26
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Sivart13 posted:just not looking forward to hearing it be the basis of comparison for all games for the next 10 years No one who tried to do Half-Life 2 (or later, Half-Life 3) got it right. Only Valve could do Half-Life. Those games that took lessons from Half-Life and HL2 were still better for it.
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Aug 31, 2022 06:31
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Sivart13 posted:
Elden Ring was really successful so at least ten years is probably right. There hasn't been an Arkham game in over seven years and it's still going to be the gold standard for brawlers probably for seven more. Lobok fucked around with this message at 14:14 on Aug 31, 2022 |
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Aug 31, 2022 14:10
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Honestly, I was thankful Elden Ring took the spotlight of the "constantly mentioned groundbreaking open world game" crown from BotW, because I actually loved Elden Ring whereas I found BotW pretty overrated, my biggest surprise that year was liking HZD much more. I think ER and HFW are very different overall and I'm fine with and have problems with both approaches. I played them both back to back (ER first) and the thing that really stood out to me comparing the two was just how explicitly clear and well put together ER's world was. Horizon looks absolutely beautiful and incredibly detailed but it actually kind of works against it sometimes, I was constantly tapping my focus to find out what parts of the world were interactable, where I could actually climb, where these little holes in the wall were, and following the little ?'s on the map because they weren't clearly defined otherwise. You pretty much have to use the focus to explore at times, even with the yellow climb paint. Trying to find those loose rock walls underwater to open a hole had me stumped multiple times, even with the focus on
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Aug 31, 2022 17:25
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Bugblatter posted:You’ve got a fairly bad impression of how tactics and, exploration, and quests work in FromSoft games. What you wrote kind of sounds like someone saying “I don’t get Horizons combat, you just walk into nature and shoot at things until they’re dead.” All that applies to Horizon too. Horizon offers more variety if only because you can have multiple weapons on your wheel that you can switch to instantly, whose function is wildly different. Elden Ring would be a hell of a rad game if it had a tripcaster and let you set up kill zones. But I have to disagree with Elden Ring's "Quest" design. It's non-existent and not at all organic. Most people you meet disappear after you exhaust your conversation with they or the game ever giving you a hint as to where they go. Just to use an example: Millicent's questline is extremely hard to follow through without some wiki. Being vague about world details and the lore is fun but when it comes to guided quests, it's no good. Both are great games but they have their own unique problems that I hope the sequels iron out. Definitely could use some Elden Ring open world design in Horizon. The way the game does offer some guidance in that game is really good, with following ghosts steps and beacons of what look like reapers shooting light towards a crypt and other stuff like that. Horizon's world was far more interesting to me and if they let you just go out and explore it like From did in Elden Ring then it'd be perfect. Jimbot fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Aug 31, 2022 |
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Aug 31, 2022 17:39
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I enjoyed both games greatly but one thing that stood out was that I almost never wanted to be on foot in ER's open world because there's plenty of sparse stretches between locations, whereas I enjoyed exploring and taking my time from destination to destination in HFW so I'd never bother with mounts.
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Aug 31, 2022 17:53
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Spider-Man was a decent stab at it. Arkham Knight and City had a bit too many weapon greebles, iirc.
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Aug 31, 2022 18:21
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Yeah, I hate Elden Ring. But they got me again because everyone was saying how this one was different when I know, I *know*, I don't like fromsoft games. NeverKnowsBest just put out a video about all the things wrong with ER despite his enjoying the game that I largely agree with. But basically, I'm posting to agree with you that I don't understand the "ruining open world games" sentiment.
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Aug 31, 2022 18:52
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Soonmot posted:Yeah, I hate Elden Ring. But they got me again because everyone was saying how this one was different when I know, I *know*, I don't like fromsoft games. NeverKnowsBest just put out a video about all the things wrong with ER despite his enjoying the game that I largely agree with. I can't even say I "hate" it, I haven't played it and my exposure is limited. I have infinite respect for FS, they have a singular style and vision that they don't compromise on. I don't care for their aesthetic, but that's not a knock on their talent, just a difference of taste; they are obviously insanely talented artists and craftspeople. But yeah, to me it looks like largely aimless wandering. When I ask my son, who ostensibly is paying more attention than I am, what he's doing, he can't ever really give me an idea of what's going on. He doesn't have the greatest attention span, but in most games he can at least give me the gist of what he's trying to accomplish. The joy he's getting out the game appears to be entirely from the awesome enemy design and the challenge of the combat (to which I always helpfully contribute by yelling, "I'd go for this one's ankles."). Nothing wrong with either of those things of course, I just struggle to understand how it rewrites the rules or sets the standard for open world games. And again, I'm not saying that Horizon is the perfect template, it's got a long list of issues of its own.
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Aug 31, 2022 19:15
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No that's fair and hate is really too strong. I had fun with it, but it bounces real hard off the things I like in games. I want great stories, I want good action, I want choices to matter, I want clear direction into where to go. ER gave me none of those. I'm glad it's out there because there should be games for everyone, but I think a good deal of my dislike for the game is the extreme pushback you get when you say "hey, maybe there should be difficulty levels and accessibility options" and nerds start to rage that would dare sully the perfect game design of fromsoft. Or they try to do a gotcha with "what if other games had the option to turn off compasses and maps and quest markers" like I don't think that should also be an option for folks who want more of a challenge. FW had it's problems, I've posted a lot in this thread about ridiculous the weapon system is and how crafting is an actual chore, but it's a game I've beaten and one I'll go back to multiple times.
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Aug 31, 2022 21:30
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Mr. Funny Pants posted:I can't even say I "hate" it, I haven't played it and my exposure is limited. I have infinite respect for FS, they have a singular style and vision that they don't compromise on. I don't care for their aesthetic, but that's not a knock on their talent, just a difference of taste; they are obviously insanely talented artists and craftspeople. But yeah, to me it looks like largely aimless wandering. When I ask my son, who ostensibly is paying more attention than I am, what he's doing, he can't ever really give me an idea of what's going on. He doesn't have the greatest attention span, but in most games he can at least give me the gist of what he's trying to accomplish. The joy he's getting out the game appears to be entirely from the awesome enemy design and the challenge of the combat (to which I always helpfully contribute by yelling, "I'd go for this one's ankles."). Nothing wrong with either of those things of course, I just struggle to understand how it rewrites the rules or sets the standard for open world games. And again, I'm not saying that Horizon is the perfect template, it's got a long list of issues of its own. The main thing ER (and BotW) did that sets itself apart from ubisoft and most other open world games is how the exploration works. It's completely based on freedom. There are very few actual chokepoints that require you to do certain things to progress. You have side activities in Horizon, but to actually finish the game you have to do a long series of quests, things won't open up to you till you do other things, you have to sit through story sequences, everything is marked...it works, but ER and BotW have this quality to exploration that Horizon just doesn't have. You can wander wherever you want at any time and the joy is just turning a corner and finding something new and weird, and you found it organically, not because it had a ? On the map or a quest sent you there Horizon and the like can be better for setting up good story moments, but it's missing that freedom. I found a bunch of cool locations in Horizon that were just empty because I clearly was supposed to activate the quest to set up the encounter first. While I love FS games I will say they are...not interesting to watch other people play because it does look like aimless wandering and slow combat. A lot of the joy comes from how it feels to play. Horizon is a better watch Febreeze fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Aug 31, 2022 |
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Aug 31, 2022 21:31
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Yeah I couldn't get into ER as much as I wanted to. The exploration was fun and reminded me of playing BotW when it was new, but I just don't have the time or will to git gud (and google how to solve every quest). If they gave it an easy mode, I would explore every nook and cranny of that world. I will also say HFW didn't really wow me with any machine reveals. The Slitherfang was about it, and that was the tutorial. I still remember how tense I was in the leadup to the Deathbringer in HZD, just hearing the distant explosions and beeping getting clearer as I neared the arena.
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Aug 31, 2022 22:01
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The slaughterspine would have been a cool reveal in the cauldron, had I not already seen one while randomly wandering around The bat robot (forget the name) was the one I remember going “…wait what the poo poo is that”
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Aug 31, 2022 22:05
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haveblue posted:The slaughterspine would have been a cool reveal in the cauldron, had I not already seen one while randomly wandering around Coming across it in the wild without knowing anything about it was a hell of an experience though
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Aug 31, 2022 22:05
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So many epic battles were teased in Forbidden West but none of them ever happened. Zero Dawn had the mission where you race to All-Mother Mountain while the Eclipse march their giant ancient machines into your home, and obviously the excellent Meridian battle at the end. Those were high points in the series for me.
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Aug 31, 2022 22:07
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haveblue posted:The slaughterspine would have been a cool reveal in the cauldron, had I not already seen one while randomly wandering around It’s a little weird that the slaughterspine can be met in the wilds before it is dramatically revealed in that one quest. While some of the other new big machines: the slitherfang, dreadwing (kind of) and tremortusk can only be accessed in the wild after meeting it in a quest.
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Aug 31, 2022 22:47
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FilthyImp posted:Spider-Man was a decent stab at it. And that's just the first game up against people's memories and experiences of 4 full games. I'm expecting big things with Spider-Man 2.
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Aug 31, 2022 23:21
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The slitherfang boss fight in the drained area (trying not to spoil here) was hilarious because I got it down to about 3/4 health then it hit me far into the water. I swam back to the shore, then it hit me far into the water. It was like a really annoying stunlock or something. I never managed to get out of it, and it carried on for about three minutes of me swimming back and getting hit into the water again, until the npcs finished it off.
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Aug 31, 2022 23:40
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One respect where I like ER open world design more based on playing FW last night. I'd just done the embassy and decided to explore because this felt like the point where I'm in the Forbidden West now and can set out. But I wind up in an underwater cave and swim down and am told I cannot progress further at this point. I keep exploring and find a relic ruin and do it until I reach red crystals and am told I cannot deal with these yet. So why give me an open world at this point if they still want me on rails? By contrast ER has a clearly defined main path but you mostly aren't going to hit these walls if you set out your own way, which based on the difficulty of the first major boss you're encouraged to do until you've levelled up. And your exploration leads to rewards in the form of moments like discovering marvels like Siofra River and Caelid, two massive and stunning areas completely traversable from the jump. Exploring in FW, I know I'm not going to find anything like that.
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Sep 1, 2022 00:33
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That's fair, but I assume you dislike metroidvania's then too? It's not quite the same thing, but I don't think I'm being disingenuous. It's a device to get you to come back later. What I *do* dislike about it that there are so many different types of these. Thankfully not an issue in ng+ and I can clear all that poo poo once I come on it EDIT: I don't know what those things are you got excited for, but another place FW falls down is that there aren't very many set piece areas that stand out. The Quen island is cool. the lab complex, maybe? Vegas at night when you turn the lights back on, but that's basically it. Soonmot fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Sep 1, 2022 |
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Sep 1, 2022 01:01
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I love metroidvanias but they're not what I'd call open world. My expectations are different. They're more tightly designed maps, so whereas I will probably never return to the underwater cave I mentioned because I'll forget about it among the fog of dozens of other things, I typically recall most inaccessible areas in an MV because there aren't nearly as many.
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Sep 1, 2022 01:37
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Okay, yeah that makes more sense. You're still going through the same spots again in the open world but it feels less directed?
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Sep 1, 2022 01:40
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Soonmot posted:Okay, yeah that makes more sense. You're still going through the same spots again in the open world but it feels less directed? Whereas whenever I unlock whatever lets me swim deeper in FW, this area I'm talking about will by then be one icon among dozens of icons on the map, and having been unimpressed with similar side tracks I doubt I'll care enough to go back to it. It'll just be loot, or a log entry or a copy pasted enemy in there. That was also true of Elden Ring unfortunately, but there were enough surprises that I did wind up exploring near all of it.
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Sep 1, 2022 01:53
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oh yeah you brought up another common complaint in that there was nothign special or fun behind any of those locked doors, just more generic loot.
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Sep 1, 2022 02:59
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Unload into the butt coils and blast their rear end, got it.
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Sep 1, 2022 18:31
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Stoatbringer posted:Unload into the butt coils and blast their rear end, got it. Someone please change the thread title to this
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Sep 1, 2022 21:43
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For myself, I played both Forbidden West and Elden Ring, and I enjoyed both of them. But Forbidden West is the one that I completed, and Elden Ring is the one I got burned out on. And that's largely because Forbidden West had a coherent, central story-line, which I wanted to follow so I could see what happened next. In contrast, Elden Ring (like all FromSoft games) relies basically entirely on its gameplay to retain your interest, and once I had had my fill of that, there was nothing to keep me going.
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Sep 3, 2022 08:55
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The ambient soundtrack is amazing stuff.
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Sep 4, 2022 13:59
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I've settled into the game and don't mind it. I'm playing impatiently by skipping chunks of dialogue but am enjoying exploration somewhat. There are a bunch of small things that bug me, but mainly it's that so many human enemies wear helmets so you can't murder them all silently. I don't want a big messy fight, I want to be a cool assassin.
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Sep 8, 2022 05:25
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So I managed to stumble into Cauldron Kappa (and boy, the actual boss of the Cauldron is doing *a lot* of the heavy lifting with that recommended level range because the enemies were straightforward and the boss absolutely forced me to bring it down to Story difficulty because I didn’t want to have to redo that area). This game personally manages to be satisfying at times and very frustrating at others. Like, Cauldron Kappa was almost like “Aloy explores the Water Temple and gives her non-stop, backseat commentary in every room and puzzle” and I wasn’t angry, but just kind of exasperated with her. Like Aloy, please just stop backseat driving like I’m watching a video walkthrough. The boss itself seemed very intimidating and powerful with good music! But then the boss does stuff like changing direction mid-belly flop, insta-kill water streams, explosions to the right of Aloy ragdoll flinging her in the wrong direction, Aloy getting stuck on floor geometry, etc etc. The only way I can describe how I’m feeling is that it seems like the combat is trying to punch above its own weight like its trying to be a monster hunter title, but everyone is too tanky or too floaty where you got dudes with swords running through traps like the terminator and leaping across the level to hit Aloy like he’s Batman in the Arkham games MechaX fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Sep 8, 2022 |
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Sep 8, 2022 16:23
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Yeah, fighting Lapras is always more annoying and less fun than you'd hope
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Sep 8, 2022 16:35
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Just played one particular story segment in FW and yep, not surprised that an encore of "gently caress TED FARO" got me the most on the edge of my seat than anything else in this game period so far. Now having finished it, my loving god the devs are loving cowards for not showing Abomination Faro. I was "oh poo poo this poo poo is real good" to now "... you know what let me just go ahead and finish this game" levels of deflated. MechaX fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Sep 9, 2022 |
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Sep 9, 2022 05:10
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Ted just ended up a mass of replicating cancer cells. a literal tumor feeding off of the infinite heat of the planet's core that could never be satiated. lol at the concept that he just started AKIRA-ing out, living hundreds of years isolated and unable to leave the nurturing warmth that fed him, increasingly cut off from outside stimuli as his body grew and grew stretching his nerves over the course of miles so that he could never quite be sure where he ended. or just think that he ended up like a big teratoma because he couldn't stop being a miserable gently caress that needed to control everyone. Lols either way.
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Sep 9, 2022 05:29
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It was good that they didn't show him. You get a hint of his shape from the hologram but no full frontal 3D model would have been gross enough. I liked the noises though
haveblue fucked around with this message at 14:03 on Sep 9, 2022 |
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Sep 9, 2022 05:38
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haveblue posted:It was good that they didn't show him.
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Sep 9, 2022 06:40
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The ceo is a nice gag.
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Sep 9, 2022 10:12
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After sleeping on it, personally I don't think I'll ever think that not showing him was the best decision with how they handled it. Like, showing the hologram and the sounds were good steps in setting him up, but if they weren't going to show it, at least do something with that room itself rather than a mook going around a corner offscreen in a generic room. Maybe unnatural lighting in there, seeing at least some of the growth mass in the room without showing the main body itself, hell, I thought for a second they'd at least show a shadow or a tendril or something trying to get around the door before the cast is collectively like "nopenopenope". I was looking at discussions on this subject from other posters in the topic and I think this one summarizes my thoughts the best. Mr. Funny Pants posted:The story is in my positives but I do want to chime in on what I gather is the controversial handling of Ted Faro. I see people defending it with the, "It was good to leave it to the player's imagination," line. Bullshit. If you are Spielberg or Hitchcock, yeah, you can do that. Guerilla Games is neither. They don't have the narrative chops to pull that off. In my opinion, it was a mistake to include Faro at all; I suspect having him survive to the "current" day was pure fan service, giving in to the desire of so many to see Faro get his comeuppance. As I said, I don't think they should have done it at all, but if you are going to do it, you can't do it with such a ridiculous, clumsy, in-artful throwaway scene like that. Even if you don't want to go full on Resident Evil, there are ways to be suggestive, put him in silhouette, show us part of him, a series of focus holograms showing us the horrifying progression of his condition a la Cronenberg's The Fly, etc. Point is, you don't build up to that huge a moment only to dispose of it with a ten second off camera death. Awful.
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Sep 9, 2022 12:21
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Faro deserves nothing more than defiling himself to become an abomination, thinking he's the savior of humanity, only to be summarily executed off-screen by his spiritual successor the moment he becomes an inconvenience. Faro never considered anyone else, only himself, and so in the end he himself gets treated as a non-entity to be disposed of by a sociopath (and the game).
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Sep 9, 2022 12:53
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I suppose the one improvement that would have helped is the environment becoming more dilapidated and gross as you approach the door. Like upticks in humidity, broken panels, rust... and discovering logs where the main researcher comments on lab accidents with a sample, to eventually get the dumb pulsing walls effect that every horror game gets.
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Sep 9, 2022 14:38
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Klungar posted:Faro deserves nothing more than defiling himself to become an abomination, thinking he's the savior of humanity, only to be summarily executed off-screen by his spiritual successor the moment he becomes an inconvenience. Faro never considered anyone else, only himself, and so in the end he himself gets treated as a non-entity to be disposed of by a sociopath (and the game). Sure, but the player should loving get to see it. They gave us the fan service of him still being alive and in a tortured existence but failed to give the payoff of seeing his ultimate humiliation. It's ridiculous and the notion of, "Leaving it to the player's imagination," is bullshit.
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Sep 9, 2022 16:13
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