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DoombatINC posted:That, and just body language in general. The last two big single player games I played before Starfield were Witcher 3 and Red Dead Redemption 2, and the one I played immediately after was Cyberpunk 2077. In those games people pace, they shift, they fidget, they sit down and stand up, they talk with their hands and eyes, they occupy their setting. Just having someone walk across a room to get something or take a bite of food between sentences goes a long way towards making things feel more immersive, and makes the characters feel more human and less like robots that just serve to vomit exposition. This isn't just a video game thing either, having people do stuff makes conversations more visually interesting. It's why every Law and Order episode has someone unpacking a truck or moving boxes when they get interviewed by the detectives.
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Feb 27, 2024 19:28
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Ra Ra Rasputin posted:Do you think people are starting to get combat fatigue in RPG's where the story is disjointed from the literal mountains of corpses you leave in your wake? small countries worth of dead people, entire ecosystems of wildlife killed and skinned and whatever monsters or one of a kind entities slain and hardly anyone in the game acknowledges it or the story shoehorns in a "all life is precious! murder is wrong!" morale dilemma ignoring the trail of dead you left just from the front door to there just because they had a red nametag so it was okay or treating you like you aren't a super powered demi-god of murder that could (and have) taken on armies alone. Not really- it honestly has to do with what we've got well-developed mechanics for as an industry. We can't really gamify the other stuff that much, so violence is where it lives. Games have absolutely tried to critique the ultraviolence they've engaged in, especially RPGS, but it just comes off as unwelcome when your options to do anything else amount to CYOA paragraph-games.
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Feb 27, 2024 19:29
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Panzeh posted:Not really- it honestly has to do with what we've got well-developed mechanics for as an industry. We can't really gamify the other stuff that much, so violence is where it lives. Games have absolutely tried to critique the ultraviolence they've engaged in, especially RPGS, but it just comes off as unwelcome when your options to do anything else amount to CYOA paragraph-games. It’s interesting as P&P rpgs have some good structured social mechanics (Genesys comes to mind) but they kind of rely on having a GM who can arbitrate things.
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Feb 27, 2024 23:09
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they figured out how to do it in deus ex in like 1998 im pretty sure starfield can react to whether you accomplished a mission via ultraviolence or not, they just dont
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Feb 27, 2024 23:29
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Ra Ra Rasputin posted:Do you think people are starting to get combat fatigue in RPG's where the story is disjointed from the literal mountains of corpses you leave in your wake? small countries worth of dead people, entire ecosystems of wildlife killed and skinned and whatever monsters or one of a kind entities slain and hardly anyone in the game acknowledges it or the story shoehorns in a "all life is precious! murder is wrong!" morale dilemma ignoring the trail of dead you left just from the front door to there just because they had a red nametag so it was okay or treating you like you aren't a super powered demi-god of murder that could (and have) taken on armies alone. I'm just thinking about RE6 and the Ultimate Horror Entertainment thing again-- which is to say, the gameplay mechanisms of mowing down a mountain of enemies is frequently, mechanically, fun. Now whether you ignore the element of dissonance outright (like any game where 9,999 kills don't matter but the 1 named character during a dialogue choice does), or give a morality-neutral target (whatever zombie flavor of the week), or lean into the "yes you are the baddies, have fun" in the text of the game itself (like Helldivers 2 sounds like it does, or like Spec Ops The Line did), all of those are options but not requirements-- you are Allowed to make a game that's a fun game with RPG elements and choices that doesn't involve or require mechanically fun murder between dialogues. The problem is that when you put both of those things individually on the table, mechanically fun murder is nearly always going to be the More Popular Gameplay, so as a studio who desires money there's always going to be a pretty hefty encouragement to say "if we're going to err on one side, err on the side of fun murder" and treat whatever other aspect (be it meaningful RPG or, in RE's case, tense survival horror) as "nice to have" instead of the actual focus-- and trying to lean back away from that framing is difficult if you're an established IP that now has A Reputation for delivering fun murder over the secondary genre. Deus Ex is another fun example to put on the table because DX:HR rendered the options down and made the shooting mechanically fun out of the box and made a bunch more money despite previous DX fans saying "why is this even a DX game, this is nothing like the original" Anyways yeah upshot is I'm not expecting Bethesda to change their formula any time soon, hope you like mountains of bandit corpses for ES6
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Feb 28, 2024 00:27
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half the conversations in cyberpunk are like a West Wing walk and talk shot but CJ is slightly faster than Josh so has to stop every few feet to let him catch up
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Feb 28, 2024 00:52
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Unnecessary killing CAN be jarring, but to me it's going to depend heavily on the game and the overall tone. Uncharted is sometimes brought up when Nathan is being his loveable ol' jokester self after mowing down hundreds of goons. Then you have settings where death is omnipresent and just a stones throw away - bandits, draugr, dragons etc. in Skyrim, drugs, corpos, gangs, cyberpsychos in CP2077. You kind of expect it there. Then there's Starfield where a faction has you infiltrate their own HQ to test their security, and you can straight murder a hundred of their workers and all you get told is 'that was very naughty, here is a slightly smaller reward'.
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Feb 28, 2024 00:53
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Punished Ape posted:Then there's Starfield where a faction has you infiltrate their own HQ to test their security, and you can straight murder a hundred of their workers and all you get told is 'that was very naughty, here is a slightly smaller reward'. Bethesda just really hates consequences for anything. Why even bother with choices when none of the choices have consequences.
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Feb 28, 2024 01:02
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Ursine Catastrophe posted:I'm just thinking about RE6 and the Ultimate Horror Entertainment thing again-- which is to say, the gameplay mechanisms of mowing down a mountain of enemies is frequently, mechanically, fun. Now whether you ignore the element of dissonance outright (like any game where 9,999 kills don't matter but the 1 named character during a dialogue choice does), or give a morality-neutral target (whatever zombie flavor of the week), or lean into the "yes you are the baddies, have fun" in the text of the game itself (like Helldivers 2 sounds like it does, or like Spec Ops The Line did), all of those are options but not requirements-- you are Allowed to make a game that's a fun game with RPG elements and choices that doesn't involve or require mechanically fun murder between dialogues. Part of the issue with killing in video games is just genre conventions. You can find plenty of games that don't have killing, but they're different kinds of games and have different sets of goals. E.g. something like Stardew Valley or Cities Skylines. Hell, you can even point to the assorted dating sim porn games. At the end of the day a lot of games are action-focused because action is fun and it lends itself easily to impressive visuals. It's as simple as that, a lot of AAA gaming is basically the video game equivalent of Michael Bay movies. edit: RPGs tend to gravitate towards violence for the same reasons as above, namely that action packed adventure stories are entertaining, but there are also mechanical reasons for it. Kill a thing - > get exp -> level up and get more powerful is a pretty basic gameplay loop that's been around in one form or another ever since D&D 1st Edition. Are there ways around it? Sure. But it's a bog simple formula and one that the genre as a whole leans heavily on. One series of games that I think tweaks that in interesting ways are Age of Decadence and Colony Ship. Well "series" in the loosest sense. They're made by the same devs and a lot of the systems are the same, even though the settings are profoundly different. In both of them combat is an option but it is incredibly risky and the consequences are very real. There are entire playthroughs and builds that are based on getting really good at negotiation or sneaking etc. and trying to avoid combat as much as possible because, you know, getting stabbed sucks and is bad for you. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Feb 28, 2024 |
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Feb 28, 2024 02:51
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DoombatINC posted:That, and just body language in general. The last two big single player games I played before Starfield were Witcher 3 and Red Dead Redemption 2, and the one I played immediately after was Cyberpunk 2077. In those games people pace, they shift, they fidget, they sit down and stand up, they talk with their hands and eyes, they occupy their setting. Just having someone walk across a room to get something or take a bite of food between sentences goes a long way towards making things feel more immersive, and makes the characters feel more human and less like robots that just serve to vomit exposition. One of my absolute favourite character animations is from Red Dead 2, in one of the random encounters. I dunno how to do timestamps, but skip to about 4 minutes and watch Arthur’s eyes as the revelation dawns on him https://youtu.be/P-8wgCLk3pk Honestly though, I think the face issues are way more noticeable playing in first-person. I played all of Starfield from the third-person view, so the face issues weren’t as obvious.
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Feb 28, 2024 03:26
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Trillhouse posted:This isn't just a video game thing either, having people do stuff makes conversations more visually interesting. It's why every Law and Order episode has someone unpacking a truck or moving boxes when they get interviewed by the detectives. And the boobs and butts during exposition sexposition scenes in Game of Thrones. 
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Feb 28, 2024 05:21
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Is there another thread where the people posting in it hate the game as much as this game/thread?
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Feb 28, 2024 05:50
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Star Citizen comes immediately to mind, New World before the thread was permacanned, there's probably several others Any bad game with enough players eventually turns into a mock thread tbh, especially if it started good enough (or overhyped enough) that a lot of people jumped in day 1
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Feb 28, 2024 05:52
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EDIT: Double post
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Feb 28, 2024 05:56
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Would anyone say Starfield has dampened their expectations for ES6? has it gone from a instant pre-order to a wait and see the reviews situation for anyone?
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Feb 28, 2024 06:15
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I don't know anyone who was in the "instant preorder" camp for ES6 even before this, tbh That said I don't know anyone who preordered Starfield either, or at least admits to it in public
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Feb 28, 2024 06:36
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The Cyberpunk thread eventually turned into a love the game thread who knows what the future holds.Ursine Catastrophe posted:I don't know anyone who was in the "instant preorder" camp for ES6 even before this, tbh I preordered it because I knew I was going to play it anyway good or bad, and the Gamepass version would have crippled modding. After playing their past games for literally thousands of hours I was resigned to my fate.
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Feb 28, 2024 06:44
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I got my Starfield code off a family member who happened to be building a new PC during the AMD promotional deals but doesn't play this kind of game. Don't know if I would have put my own money into preordering if that wasn't the case. Gamepass is undoubtedly still going to be a thing so anyone feeling cautious always has that option. Even if TES6 ends up another disaster there's everything else in that catalogue to occupy your time.
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Feb 28, 2024 06:44
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Flowing Thot posted:The Cyberpunk thread eventually turned into a love the game thread who knows what the future holds. CDPR made the gameplay great with patches after the fact, and the story and characters were always killer. Starfield doesn't quite compare, and Bethesda doesn't act the same way with their broken nonsense.
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Feb 28, 2024 07:33
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Philippe posted:CDPR made the gameplay great with patches after the fact, and the story and characters were always killer. Starfield doesn't quite compare, and Bethesda doesn't act the same way with their broken nonsense. also cdpr and beth are on the opposite sides of the humility scale
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Feb 28, 2024 08:12
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Jack B Nimble posted:I'm always surprised to see folks hate on the faces in this game, I always thought they looked quite good, a real jump in quality that placed Starfield on par with any of the other AAA releases, but other people seem to think they're still trash, so I may just be out on a limb on this. I mean yeah. If its the only video game you've ever played they might look okay. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjNaq1ctcaE
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Feb 28, 2024 10:25
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Also it's not just an aesthetic thing - the faces really undermine the voice acting. Sarah comes across much more warmly if you make her wear a face-hiding helmet
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Feb 28, 2024 10:35
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Ra Ra Rasputin posted:Would anyone say Starfield has dampened their expectations for ES6? has it gone from a instant pre-order to a wait and see the reviews situation for anyone? Yeah my expectations sank like a rock. I no longer believe Bethesda has the project management capability to put out a good game.
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Feb 28, 2024 13:31
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Ursine Catastrophe posted:Star Citizen comes immediately to mind, New World before the thread was permacanned, there's probably several others Yup. I pre ordered for the same reasons described up thread and lol see way I’m not waiting a least a month maybe two on TES6 to see how the reviews change after everyone finishes it.
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Feb 28, 2024 13:45
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Ra Ra Rasputin posted:Would anyone say Starfield has dampened their expectations for ES6? has it gone from a instant pre-order to a wait and see the reviews situation for anyone? Yeah, absolutely for the first question. Now, I'll still pick it up straight away because I still like the genre and I'll get my money's worth even from a single playthrough, but I went from "get this done already so you can finally focus on TES6" to just accepting that a likely very mediocre TES6 will come out at some point. That said, I have aged a lot since Arena, so my personal feelings aren't exactly representative of that of the teenagers for whom TES6 will be their introduction to the franchise. I think that the fantasy setting is inherently more fitting to the Bethesda style (small scale and onipresent violence don't feel as jarring) so it might work out just fine for a new generation.
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Feb 28, 2024 13:55
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DancingShade posted:I mean yeah. If its the only video game you've ever played they might look okay. there's an old lady face copypasted across so many nameless NPCs, when it turns and stares at you it's so loving disturbing
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Feb 28, 2024 14:08
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Ra Ra Rasputin posted:Would anyone say Starfield has dampened their expectations for ES6? has it gone from a instant pre-order to a wait and see the reviews situation for anyone? There was a time when I would have, but after FO76 and now SF I will probably wait.
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Feb 28, 2024 14:33
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Punished Ape posted:There was a time when I would have, but after FO76 and now SF I will probably wait. I was actually willing to give a little bit of the benefit of the doubt after FO76. Don't get me wrong, it was bad. But a lot of it being terrible could be laid at the feet of them chasing GAAS money and trying to make what is fundamentally a hand crafted single player experience into multiplayer. I didn't like it, but you could make the argument that they were way out of their comfort zone and the project got hosed up from jump by executives wanting FO flavored Destiny. Fine. Whatever. But Starfield is where they've really, really cocked up. Not only is the game bad, but they've hosed up their core competency without the excuse of MBA brained multiplayer/GAAS bullshit AND they did so in a way where it's not even bad because of bugs and technical issues but because of fundamental design problems that are frequently a step back form poo poo they were doing a decade ago.
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Feb 28, 2024 14:53
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Ursine Catastrophe posted:
I’m pretty sure if you went to the “posts in thread” for anyone that’s still posting in here you’d find positive early impressions. Not me, but that’s only because I wasn’t posting on SA during the ~1-2 weeks that I was playing Starfield. I absolutely would have posted some hyped poo poo about the UC Vanguard storyline if I was though. The game had enough there that people engaged with it enough to really understand why it doesn’t work and that’s why even though I think the game is dogshit I like talking about it- it’s rare to find a bad game where people have their critiques so well thought out, and it’s because the game doesn’t slap you in the face with the badness as much as it gives you a gilded turd where you end up spending the time and having the poo poo slowly dawn on you. It’s also why it’s more frustrating that a lot of other bad games, since with those you’re just out some money. With this I spent a lot of time thinking it would improve and it absolutely did not.
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Feb 28, 2024 15:12
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Ugly In The Morning posted:I’m pretty sure if you went to the “posts in thread” for anyone that’s still posting in here you’d find positive early impressions. Yep. I know I basically just hang out in here to laugh and beat the dead horse, but here's my first post: Cyrano4747 posted:Intro might be the weakest one of any Bethesda game, ever, going back to like loving Morrowind. There's a moment in it where you are pretty much going "wait, what, we're doing this now? Seriously?" When the inevitable alternate start mods come out that just plop you wherever not only won't there be much of a gameplay difference, the narrative difference will be non-existent. I mean, say what you will about the intros to Skyrim, FO4, Oblivion, etc. but at least they tied into the story in a way that was deeper than "yo you work for me now."
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Feb 28, 2024 15:29
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I apparently didn't post much once the game was out until I was in the end game because I wanted to experience it for myself, but checking my posts did reveal this piece of pre release foreshadowing:Jack B Nimble before playing posted:I am constantly returning to a truth about the elder scrolls games, and what it means for games about large open worlds more generally:
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Feb 28, 2024 15:32
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the Diablo 4 thread is the same, because it's a very similar situation. both are ok for the first few hours, and the problems with both of them obviously come from bad management and bad corporate culture
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Feb 28, 2024 15:33
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The Elite Dangerous thread is basically what's left of the bitter vets that keep playing while resenting half the game, and the occasional amazed new player loving every second who hasn't yet clocked in enough hours to reach bitter vet status. The cracks end up showing over time, but the first 40-60h are so good that even when you're fully aware of them, you still crave some more. And like in all those kind of threads, there's a not-insignificant resentment at the company behind the game with players blaming them for a perceived what-could-have-been missed opportunity in the direction the game took post-launch.
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Feb 28, 2024 15:42
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TES6 will be fine because they won't have to make up lore and they'll be limited to one map. Bethesda sucks at being creative but they're usually good at making maps interesting. My big fear is how much they'll use procedurally made dungeons vs all the good environmental storytelling they've been known for until this game.
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Feb 28, 2024 15:44
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Robobot posted:TES6 will be fine because they won't have to make up lore and they'll be limited to one map. Bethesda sucks at being creative but they're usually good at making maps interesting. *points at the non-procgen, hand crafted parts of Starfield maps* Uhhhhhhh, about that . . .
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Feb 28, 2024 16:14
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Cyrano4747 posted:I was actually willing to give a little bit of the benefit of the doubt after FO76. Don't get me wrong, it was bad. But a lot of it being terrible could be laid at the feet of them chasing GAAS money and trying to make what is fundamentally a hand crafted single player experience into multiplayer. I didn't like it, but you could make the argument that they were way out of their comfort zone and the project got hosed up from jump by executives wanting FO flavored Destiny. I just want to know why the game that Todd Howard says he always dreamed of making feels like it's an amalgamation of spitballed, first draft ideas. I guess it was all marketing. Todd: "Alright, so there's this cult, right?" Designer: "Classic." T: "They worship... an apocalyptic snake god." D: "Spooky." T: "But you never see the snake god." D: "Leave it up to the imagination, right? Is it real or isn't it?" T: "Exactly. Also, you never see the cult." Punished Ape fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Feb 28, 2024 |
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Feb 28, 2024 16:23
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When I think of New Atlantis, one thing that jumps out to me is how poorly defined the spaces inside it are. The way the bit in front of MAST HQ kind of bleeds into sort of park like area, and some shops, and some residences, and the embassies. But it's all just so poorly marked. It's like it needs one of those feng shui make overs to move the couch or the bed, but for urban planning. I think it could have used a lot more verticality. I don't mean dizzying heights, but just moving up or down a level with terraces and stuff would have helped a lot.
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Feb 28, 2024 16:29
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Jack B Nimble posted:When I think of New Atlantis, one thing that jumps out to me is how poorly defined the spaces inside it are. The way the bit in front of MAST HQ kind of bleeds into sort of park like area, and some shops, and some residences, and the embassies. But it's all just so poorly marked. I got lost as hell in any major city because none of them feel like real places so you can’t get any sense of the space at all. There’s zero logic to what’s where, how to get from point A to B, or any of it. It makes it all incredibly bland and samey which is both boring and a navigational nightmare.
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Feb 28, 2024 16:36
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What jumps out at me about New Atlantis as how it doesn't feel at all like the capital of an interstellar society and the first extrasolar city that's existed for the last 200 years. It's incredibly small and there's hardly any residential space or signs of civilization at least diffusing more across the planet's surface area. It feels like a section of EPCOT, not the future EPCOT tried to predict or promise.
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Feb 28, 2024 16:41
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Ironslave posted:What jumps out at me about New Atlantis as how it doesn't feel at all like the capital of an interstellar society and the first extrasolar city that's existed for the last 200 years. It's incredibly small and there's hardly any residential space or signs of civilization at least diffusing more across the planet's surface area. It feels like a section of EPCOT, not the future EPCOT tried to predict or promise. Goodsprings in FNV feels bigger to me even if it objectively is far, far smaller, because there’s greater detail that gives you more things for your brain to hold onto. Doc Mitchell’s house feels different from the saloon which feels different from the schoolhouse full of mantis’ which feels different from the area by the graveyard. There’s quests that actually relate to Goodsprings, which makes it feel like a place. Most of New Atlantis’ quest related stuff is for quests that take place elsewhere, which makes it feel more like padding or a gas station than an actual city. And that’s Goodsprings, which is written to be an absolute nowhere town that has a population of like six people and a stray cat.
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Feb 28, 2024 16:44
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