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I'm a couple hours in and I'm just not feeling it at all. The mystery isn't intriguing in the slightest and the gameplay is so loving dull, just watching repeated animations go through the same orange rocks forever while listening to bad dialogue between two characters now and again. Is this the whole schtick? I'm at the bit right now someone tries to trap you in the cave after you get the keys and holy poo poo is all of this so very boring and uninteresting.
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Feb 15, 2016 02:29
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I think the ending is going exactly where I expect it probably. I'm trying not to read any spoilers. Honestly I wasn't expecting anything going into this game, though I've just come from the Witness, a much better game. I'm probably just going to beat it, see if my concerns are warranted. The pacing in the game is just terrible though, all it is is a bunch of dialogue, then some incredibly minor plot progression, giving you a couple clues about the "mystery", then more walking simulator until it repeats, and you only really need to chew over the clues for a very short time before you've gotten all you can out of them, also really dumb decisions are made on part of that woman person, what's her name. It feels like walking through this somewhat cool environment is supposed to be the majority of the gameplay, but once you go through one path once, every subsequent return is just incredibly boring and tedious, especially with all the canned animations that slow you down, like having to rappel or climb repeatedly and sit through the same boring animation over and over again. At the beginning, the dialogue was really enjoyable for me, but the lack of any sort of actual gameplay really makes it into a boring sludgefest. If anyone asked me about this game, I'd say you'd have more fun listening to a better written audiobook while actually hiking. The Witness probably spoiled me for good environments, considering how god drat good the island there actually is. There's so much stuff to find, and perspective tricks to frame designed compositions and all this poo poo, it's just so nice, even though it rewards you for basically nothing, but the reward is actually getting to explore this cool environment. Additionally, The Witness was much more carefully designed over a longer time, and I imagine a lot was dedicated to the environment, which is probably what's required to make an environment as interesting as that. Big difference is that the Witness is designed very much aware it's a video game, so they do a bunch of fantastical yet unrealistic stuff which is interesting to explore, but Firewatch just feels like the worst part of any backtracking in any game except stretched out over an entire game with bad dialogue with two characters. I know it's probably bad comparing the two games, not only are they very different types of game, but they obviously exist in completely different scopes, but I still can't help The Witness from colouring my thoughts on the game I play immediately after. I can't say if I would have still liked Firewatch had I not played a much, much better game before it.
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Feb 15, 2016 13:07
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CJacobs posted:From a response from her in the comments: You seem pretty pissed off at this woman who said she doesn't like a game you like.
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Feb 16, 2016 01:58
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Mr Scumbag posted:I've been trying to be patient while reading the thread, but it seems more and more likely that the answer is that a lot of people have very little experience outside of typical movie and videogame stories/narrative and expect everything to be neat and tidy, perfectly explained and to have exciting resolution to everything. This is so assumptive and pretentious man, why do you assume anyone who didn't like this game is just an idiot? Is it only smart people who agree with you? I mean it's fine to attack their criticism if you don't think it's up to snuff, but you're just plugging your ears as soon as you start saying the reason someone disagrees with you, or dislikes something you do, is because they're just not as smart as you.
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Feb 16, 2016 23:51
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I just finished the ending and wow was it predictable and unentertaining. It felt like the game had nothing to say about anything. At first, Firewatch was rather charming, a first person story game with an interesting environment to explore while listening to some dialogue, but it's only downhill from there, the dialogue drags on, characters make annoying choices to further the narrative, and the same canned animations are repeated hundreds of times, in particular, climbing down rocks was super boring, especially multiple rocks which required the same slow animation to be played several times in a row, and rappelling, which is literally just staring at nothing but dirt for about 10 seconds. The environment gets stale after about an hour, and I found myself regretting asking the woman person anything on the radio when she started delivering her boring line. If you enjoyed it, more power to you, but man, was this not the game for me.
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Feb 21, 2016 22:25
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Jim Silly-Balls posted:You could look around while rappelling hth Look at what? More low-poly rocks?
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Feb 22, 2016 14:48
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PantsBandit posted:People defending the ending like to make the tired argument of "oh well there aren't always happy endings in real life." But that is not the issue. The issue is you ostensibly have this main character trying to come to terms with his own guilt and ultimately finding a way to connect to someone new. And those are the best parts of the game! When it's just Henry and Delilah chatting and acting like real people. And then they introduce all this stuff with the mysterious person(s) tailing you and from there every single interaction between the two is "OMG I'm so spooked what's going on?!" and it loses all of the appeal. Nah, I agree with this entirely. I'm glad the game did well enough to support them making whatever they want to next, but for the same reasons you mentioned, I did not enjoy this game. The mystery felt tacked on and it doesn't seem like any of the writers were writing from their own experiences, or at least they hadn't fully considered how someone would feel in the same situation and just kept to a generic "stay with your single partner until you die" message, which wasn't really explored much anyway.
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Feb 24, 2016 22:07
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Lt. Danger posted:A fair point, but: I feel like your second point is rather unfair, because if you compare anything to Galaxy Quest, it'll always be inferior. If I had to choose between destroying the cure for cancer and destroying every copy of Galaxy Quest, I'd blow up the cure for cancer without a second thought. uncurable mlady posted:I respect your position, and I agree on some level with your first point - Firewatch underutilizes it's medium if it's really trying to subvert the notion of a game. Looking at other 'art' games, though, I'm not sure if there's a better way to go about it. There's certainly exploration-based challenges; finding the other clues in the world, finding the animals, etc. The reward for completing those challenges, however, ultimately don't have any impact on the critical path (finding the turtle, for instance). There are a lot of subtle ways that you, playing the game, can interact with the narrative and shape your attachment to it. Would it have been a better game if there was a pop up at the end, TellTale style, showing your decisions and how many people chose the same? I'd argue that mechanics like that reinforce the way that there's a "right" and a "wrong" way to go through the story based on the wisdom of the crowd. Could there have been achievements for picking up all the beer cans, or stamping out fires? Maybe, but again, there's something to be said for the intrinsic motivation to do what's right when no one is looking, even when it doesn't matter. I think the problem is not the lack of artificial achievements or anything, but the lack of a reaction from the game. At the start I picked up the beer cans, thinking at the very least, someone might mention it off-hand in some dialogue at some point, but there was nothing, which sorta zapped my enthusiasm for interacting with the game like I would naturally in real life, so I stopped and just started being a video-game arsehole who threw the turtle under the bed and threw all the food off a cliff and all that jazz. What's great about the telltale games isn't the crappy data analytics you get to see, but the fact that they actually react to the little decisions you make. It doesn't have to unlock a new branch, or a new ending, or anything, but when the game reacts to you, it motivates you much more to interact with the game thinking your little choices actually make a difference, and it all adds up over the course of the game. What sucked was that Firewatch didn't react at all to my predictable actions, when I chucked all the food off the cliff, no one mentioned it, though later on the dude wrote that I consumed a lot of food, which I guess is triggered by simply interacting with other food, if it's not just there no matter what. I liked when it commented me throwing the boom box in the lake, because it was something I did instinctively without being prompted, and it rewarded me by having a consequence to my action, though later I worried that it would have ended up forcing me to do that anyway to progress, diminishing that little experience a little bit. I guess maybe I'd have liked the game better if they took the time and resources they spent developing the VR stuff and put it into all the little bits of polish that would've made the game good for me. Did anybody play Firewatch with a VR helmet by the way? I'm like 96% sure they spent a bunch of time on money on doing that, and it seems like a good game for VR. curse of flubber fucked around with this message at 16:55 on Feb 25, 2016 |
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Feb 25, 2016 16:44
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Accordion Man posted:It also fit the themes and narrative, Henry and Delilah are both a bunch of irresponsible flakes that are desperate for any sort of excitement in their miserable lives. Did no one else expect the ending right from the moment you see that mystery dude at the beginning and you can freak about it, but Delilah just says something about it being a public park that people can walk around in? I thought that pretty much foreshadowed the ending exactly, probably too much, because I was expecting the ending the entire time I was playing, which made some bits roll my eyes to hell and back. The only bit which made me doubt it for a second was the tent with all the monitoring equipment and charts and poo poo, which in retrospect is completely stupid, I don't believe a single dude could've or would've set all that poo poo up to gaslight people, bunch of heavy machinery and expensive poo poo in there. The ending feels really flat, I think, because absolutely no one learns a god drat thing. The characters have no arc, there's no story, there's only constant backstory exposited out at you for the entire game.
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Mar 2, 2016 03:06
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Accordion Man posted:This is all on you though, because they do change if you let them. As I've said my Henry decided to stop running away from his problems and Delilah sounded like she would start to too. That just seems like a very flimsy way of character development to me. Like the entire game is "I'm running away from my problems by being in this remote location away from people, by the way did we mention it's remote and away from people", then it's "okay I'll stop," the end. He didn't really change as a character, I said I would visit my brain-dead wife or whatever, but it didn't feel like anything really changed with the character. Plus, having "the good thing" for the protagonist to do be "okay I'll spend time with this woman who can't recognise me", is a pretty terrible message for anyone who actually has to go through that poo poo and is awfully pushy. Is there any other more interesting directions the ending can go besides "select this choice or you're a bad/unfulfilled person"? Do I only get to experience a good story if I choose everything the developer thinks is morally superior?
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Mar 2, 2016 05:15
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dmboogie posted:To be fair to the game, he explicitly didn't. All that poo poo's from an unrelated science thing, he just threw his fake files in there to freak you out. Ah right, that makes more sense. In retrospect that whole gaslighting bit makes more sense with that in mind. Still not a fan of all the other stuff I've mentioned, but you're right, that was an unfair criticism.
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Mar 3, 2016 14:59
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