|
Prey still looks pretty drat good, not sure it needs HDing. VR though, yeah. I haven't tried the prophunt game mode for VR that they made, but it seems like that means it should be possible.
|
#
¿
Jan 17, 2023 07:48
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 8, 2024 05:36 |
|
|
The writing was on the wall when Colantonio left/was forced out. He gave the boilerplate "Spend more time with my family, less time making games" statement then immediately founded a new studio to make games, which is not what a person who is leaving the profession behind does. I'd guess he was pushed out by Zenimax. While I doubt Prey was ever going to be a mega hit, the irony is that I think it could have done well but the marketing for the game was non-existent and the really stupid naming decision hosed the game over, hard. But these were decisions made by Zenimax, so in the end they made a mistake then punished the studio for it.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 2, 2023 10:30
|
|
|
I can't say what happened with Redfall, but I know at least sometimes both studios work on the same game together, and sometimes they work separately on different projects.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 3, 2023 21:59
|
|
|
I broadly speaking agree. I seem to recall that in addition to the chef's photo, you also need to listen to an audio log of him, and there are several more audio logs of him scattered around. It set off every alarm bell for me that this guy wasn't who he claimed he was and then I did what he asked anyway. Except also the freezer is full of goodies so who got the last laugh huh?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 5, 2023 01:24
|
|
|
Vivian Darkbloom posted:In the base game, is there evidence on the station alluding to what's really going on? I did December's mission to steal Alex's escape pod and the game over made it obvious Morgan was in another simulation. Are there other strong hints? Before that, I had a strong idea what was up after visiting the bridge and noticing the display it was a looking glass screen rather than a window. I don't think that was supposed to be a surprising reveal, but combined with all the other stuff about Morgan not being able to trust themselves, it seemed clear the simulation hadn't actually ended in the first act. There's also the log where Alex says basically hey we want to try experimenting on a typhon to see if we can make one have empathy and understand us, if only we had some way to train it so that it could have a link between our worlds. Almost everyone I know who guessed the twist did it there.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 14, 2023 09:28
|
|
|
I consider The Talos Principle to be a fairly high bar, at least as far as video game writing goes. I don't hold it against Prey for failing to clear that one, even if perhaps I should. I do have to agree that while I think there are good arguments to be made for what Prey wanted to do, and I even find some of those arguments compelling, when I first finished my gut reaction was dissatisfaction.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 19, 2023 10:19
|
|
|
Butterfly Valley posted:While totally hypothetical it's interesting to ponder how an Arkane-developed game in an established IP would sell. I think the wider gaming public enjoys immersive sim style gameplay a lot more than the sales for Dishonored, Prey etc would suggest - BotW and TotK scratching a lot of the same itches and being critical and commercial smashes, for example. Shame that a combination of original IP, poor marketing and publisher bullshit seems to have put paid to their future prospects. Not totally hypothetical - Arkane had a Half Life 2 expansion in development, but it was canned. There's a mini documentary on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMygnmB9Zw8
|
|
#
¿
Jun 19, 2023 23:07
|
|
|
Arc Light posted:Yeah, it was pretty clearly a coordinated attack by the Typhons, after enough of them were in place to overwhelm security procedures. One of the audio logs (or an email, I forget) describes a Weaver that was encountered by a maintenance worker during an EVA prior to the big breakout/attack. Obviously, the maintenance technician didn't know what a Weaver was, or even what a Typhon was, but the visual description and the inexplicable fear response made it unmistakable. quote:I keep having this... dream. I'm just staring into the black between the stars. There's something there. I know there is. I just can't see it... but it sees me. I can feel it... hate us. Always really liked this audio log. Same with the ones from Calvino and Kohl talking about the dreams of Typhon.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 20, 2023 10:15
|
|
|
The operator talk makes me wonder, because I too assumed that they're not Strong AI as we think of it, but then, when they get corrupted they seem to come up with novel phrases. Maybe that's an optimistic reading of things, but to me the fact that they come up with unique dialogue for being taken over as well as the fact that the typhon colonize them in the first place suggests some kind of intelligence.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 21, 2023 00:36
|
|
|
It's a shame that Spector's SS3 is dead in the water. Nightdive's SS1 reboot has done well for itself, it demonstrates that there is interest.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 21, 2023 09:25
|
|
|
Yeah but notice that SS's levels sprawl - in a cylindrical shape that roughly matches what the size of the exterior should be. Looking Glass cared enough about the immersive properties of the level that they constrained the shape and size of each floor to what Citadel's outline dictates it should be. Given the level design techniques of the day, obviously it falls flat on looking & feeling like a real place, and given that the remake wound up taking a traditionalist approach, it has the same limitations as a throughline (though I do agree, I liked what I saw in the approach they were taking that was a bit more interpretive). I think it's also worth remembering that a lot of SS1's reactivity at the time was in a different format than modern immsims take. Later entries do this via systemic interactions, which SS1 has but in a limited way. SS1 instead wanted SHODAN to feel like a reactive adversary with moments like Nice Jump Human, Welcome To My Death Machine, planting the C4 on the relays, etc. While it worked at the time, I don't think it stands the test of time quite so well.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2023 21:09
|
|
|
I don't hate the tetris inventory but I agree that it feels very limiting compared to SS1. SS2 limits how many guns you will realistically have because you don't specialize in everything, but SS1 expected you to have most of the arsenal at any given time and to use weapons until you found out what you liked. In the remake, you're so tight on inventory space so often that trying things out is disincentivized, and you can only take a handful of weapons at once.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 11, 2023 00:22
|
|
|
Yeah I wouldn't call A:I an immsim for the above mentioned reasons, but I think it's at least adjacent to one. Compared to something from Frictional like SOMA or what have you, it has a much heavier emphasis on systems. Ultimately it's willing to discard systems-based approaches at key junctions to make the game happen though, where I think true immersive sims won't. Sometimes A:I is forcing things to happen because it's a horror game and wants you to be afraid, whereas that kind of thing is fairly rare in a game like Deus Ex or Prey, which are perfectly happy for you to miss cool or climactic events because it's more important for the player to be in the game system loop than for a cinematic moment to happen. That said, I think the way it gates level progression behind tools, the way that objects interact with the world, the Alien's AI in normal play conditions, and a few other things all feel like strong systems-driven approaches to a game. You could probably make an immsim out of A:I if you reworked things.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 12, 2023 02:54
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 8, 2024 05:36 |
|
|
Combat focus is good but I have to agree, once you have the psychic water quest done and your psi is infinite & free, nothing beats dropping psychoshock/superthermal/electroshock/kinetic blast on something in rapid succession. Even the big bads don't stand up to that. The order is important too, psychoshock both stuns and makes them more vulnerable to further damage. I also think people sleep on Backlash. When you're fighting the most dangerous things on the station it is insanely good. Very low mana cost, the higher levels prevent multiple hits, and it gives the Typhon the same fear effect that you get when you hit a Weaver normally. I believe top level insulates you from three or four hits, and when the enemy spends most of the fight running away from you that means literally every hit gets blocked, so you can get through almost every single fight without a scratch. It doesn't work when you get ambushed of course, but most of the fights against bigger Typhon you have advanced warning.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 12, 2023 20:40
|
|