|
Random Stranger posted:I was going to use Bioshock as an example but for a completely different reason. I found Atlas to be so annoyingly pushy right off the bat that I resolved to do the exact opposite of what he said even before I got out of the bathesphere. He says go left, I go right. He says "Would you kindly move on" and I double check everything in the area to make sure I didn't miss anything. I poked at anything else until I had to go through their choke point to continue the game. So telling me that I've been an obedient puppet the whole time kind of fell flat since that was the opposite of my playing experience. Sort of proves the point though, doesn't it?
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2014 18:31
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 10, 2024 02:46 |
|
|
natedogcool posted:Majora's Mask? The world ends in 72 hours, let me waste time jamming on my sweet bass guitar and shooting gems in this shooting gallery. That's every time-loop story ever. Have you never seen Groundhog Day?
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2014 18:49
|
|
|
poptart_fairy posted:Twitter entries from the developer confirms his junk's intact. It might be intact, but they still removed it to tack it to his robot lower body.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2014 18:51
|
|
|
natedogcool posted:Zelda games always made me think about this. Majora's Mask? The world ends in 72 hours, let me waste time jamming on my sweet bass guitar and shooting gems in this shooting gallery.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2014 18:52
|
|
|
tin can made man posted:The post-3 Grand Theft Auto games all have a lot of thematic material on redemption and The American dream to chew on, sandwiched between missions where you slaughter bodyguards with a butcher knife to steal a rhyming dictionary or whatever GTA V was pretty good about this. The three mains regularly admit to being murderous psychopaths with mental problems, and the plot has nothing to do with any sort of higher moral redemption. They're just likable, if not awful, people forging a friendship and murdering a whole bunch of people along the way.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2014 18:52
|
|
|
mysterious frankie posted:GTA V was pretty good about this. The three mains regularly admit to being murderous psychopaths with mental problems, and the plot has nothing to do with any sort of higher moral redemption. They're just likable, if not awful, people forging a friendship and murdering a whole bunch of people along the way. This is one of the many reasons why I want Rockstar to make Agent. It's perfectly in character for a Cold War spy to be a murderous, morally bankrupt shell of a person. I'm glad open world games are finally getting away from protagonists who are just trying to go straight/get their kids back.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2014 19:03
|
|
|
Morpheus posted:See: every single RPG ever made. Yeah, they pretty much all have the "why is this godlike hero running everyone's dumb errands?" issue.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2014 19:14
|
|
|
natedogcool posted:Zelda games always made me think about this. Majora's Mask? The world ends in 72 hours, let me waste time jamming on my sweet bass guitar and shooting gems in this shooting gallery. To be fair, you have literally all the time in the world. 
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2014 19:18
|
|
|
Uncharted does a pretty good deal of this. The happy go-lucky indiana jones expy kills probably a small country population through the course of the game, and pretty much still acts like a lovable dick through-out and considers himself the 'good guy'.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2014 20:21
|
|
|
sticklefifer posted:This is like every NES game where they gave you a Yes/No answer, but you have to say Yes or you can't progress any further. There's an NES game called The Magic of Scherezhade that willingly punches you in the dick with these. Like it's full of But Thou Must questions, then on a certain sub-quest where you've had to do a bunch of fetch quests all over the world in order to recruit a dude into your party he asks you "Isn't it safer just to stay here?" and then haha you think, and say "YES". "Then in that case let's stay here and never leave!" GAME OVER. WHAT?! Hope you like doing all that work over again. And the game is just FULL of this sort of mind-breaking. Also, IIRC, Rambo had something special happen if you kept saying no.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2014 20:40
|
|
|
Luke Skywalker killed like a million people when he blew up the Death Star.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2014 20:46
|
|
|
mysterious frankie posted:GTA V was pretty good about this. The three mains regularly admit to being murderous psychopaths with mental problems, and the plot has nothing to do with any sort of higher moral redemption. They're just likable, if not awful, people forging a friendship and murdering a whole bunch of people along the way. I'd say that Vice City was good here too. You really are just a bad guy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time during a coke deal gone to poo poo. I don't think Tommy got any better as a person at all from the start of the game to the end.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2014 21:09
|
|
|
Majora's Mask actually brings up another really interesting point, with regards to the whole "endless time loop" thing. So the main reason to perform any sidequests is the reward of a mask, and sometimes a piece of heart as well. Others have their own rewards, like the Romani Ranch letting you get milk, which trivializes the entire fourth temple boss fight. But, otherwise, it's just the masks. These masks are one giant collection that Link carries around with him for various, questionable utilities. You get a mask that lets you check postboxes, a mask that lets you play your ocarina to lead a small troupe of animals, a mask that lets you explode yourself, a mask that lets you talk to Gossip Stones, and way, way more. None of the things you do actually matter, though. Link is accomplishing heroic deeds because he can fill out his Bomber's Notebook ("See! I helped you get a happy ending in a different timeline. That you can't have. Because this isn't that timeline.") and get masks. You are literally helping people for the feel-good sense of altruism it gives you, and a useless mask. But Link is this big heroic character that everybody fawns over. In reality, he's a mute psychopath with Hero Syndrome that wants to build a mask collection after a mask of pure and literal evil changes him into a Deku Scrub, which he later turns into a mask. Also, the first character you meet is a mask salesman with his own collection, who originally owned the Majora's Mask and makes it very clear throughout the entire game that he wants it back. Majora's Mask is hosed up.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2014 21:20
|
|
|
How many of the sidequests can you do while also beating the final boss on the same run anyway?
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2014 21:26
|
|
|
RatHat posted:How many of the sidequests can you do while also beating the final boss on the same run anyway? You have to choose between helping Kafei and helping the Bomb Shop lady, but if you can manage to find the time, I'm pretty sure you can do everything else. iirc the implication is that once you fix something, when the time loop is completed, everything you did stays done.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2014 22:25
|
|
|
Random Stranger posted:I was going to use Bioshock as an example but for a completely different reason. That's exactly what I did the first time through The Stanley Parable and the results were confusing and frightening. But that was the point of the game I suppose.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2014 22:29
|
|
|
I'm pretty sure everyone at least takes the blue door their first time through.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2014 22:36
|
|
|
The White Dragon posted:You have to choose between helping Kafei and helping the Bomb Shop lady, but if you can manage to find the time, I'm pretty sure you can do everything else. iirc the implication is that once you fix something, when the time loop is completed, everything you did stays done. I really doubt you can do everything. Some of the sidequests take quite a lot of time, like all the moo-moo farm stuff. Keep in mind you also have to go beat all 4 dungeon bosses to unlock the final boss.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2014 22:53
|
|
|
RatHat posted:Keep in mind you also have to go beat all 4 dungeon bosses to unlock the final boss. You don't, though? As long as you have their masks, you can get to the final boss just fine.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2014 23:06
|
|
|
Kimmalah posted:Yeah, they pretty much all have the "why is this godlike hero running everyone's dumb errands?" issue. Also, given that I'm the only person in the world capable of defeating the ultimate malevolent God Demon, why can't some of these loving shopkeepers at least give me a discount on my crystal sword or whatever?
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2014 23:08
|
|
|
I want them to make a TES game where there is the Nerevarine or the Dragonborne, and it finds your save file and you have to fight YOU. All that time you spent becoming godlike? Prepare to face that as the Nerevarine ended up going EVIL. Really any iteration based RPG game should do this ala Dragons Dogma. I always have a hard time with the dissonance in a lot of MMO games. I am taken out of the story so hard when Archerdude01 comes up next to me and Archerdude03, with a very similar looking loadout shows up too. We can't ALL be the best. This is why WoW: BC was so good. It was hard and kept the diversity there since the good items were hard to get. Now everyone looks the same and the world doesn't really progress.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2014 23:20
|
|
|
RatHat posted:Keep in mind you also have to go beat all 4 dungeon bosses to unlock the final boss. You don't have to beat the bosses all in one cycle, but you can  Once you've reached a temple, you have all the tools/warp points necessary to get back as soon as you restart the first day without doing any of the story stuff (and iirc some of it is unrepeatable), and there's a pedestal in the first room of every area that will teleport you straight to the boss. Take your Gilded Sword and the only thing that can bring the heat is that lovely whale boss.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2014 00:24
|
|
|
NoEyedSquareGuy posted:Also, given that I'm the only person in the world capable of defeating the ultimate malevolent God Demon, why can't some of these loving shopkeepers at least give me a discount on my crystal sword or whatever? MGS4 gives you a discount on the final act. Liquid Ocelot threatening the world with nuclear annihilation is worth 50% off.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2014 00:31
|
|
|
Jastiger posted:I always have a hard time with the dissonance in a lot of MMO games. I am taken out of the story so hard when Archerdude01 comes up next to me and Archerdude03, with a very similar looking loadout shows up too. We can't ALL be the best. This is why WoW: BC was so good. It was hard and kept the diversity there since the good items were hard to get. Now everyone looks the same and the world doesn't really progress. Huh, there's something like three more races and two more classes since then and all of them can where whatever the heck they care to farm up from any point in the game's history thanks to transmog. I do remember BC as being a time where I had to hang out in the druid channel and talk about how all three of us were wearing full T5 and had to be elves so we all looked identical, though. I'd say the obvious one with MMOs is that they can't really make your character the big hero for X players, so most of the cutscenes and big story elements are big world heroes doing amazing cinematic stuff and then deferring to you, the rear end collection expert.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2014 00:39
|
|
|
RatHat posted:I really doubt you can do everything. Some of the sidequests take quite a lot of time, like all the moo-moo farm stuff. Keep in mind you also have to go beat all 4 dungeon bosses to unlock the final boss. What he means is that when the credits play for every mask you got the game plays a short scene showing a resolution to the side quest tied to that mask. If you don't have the mask, said scene doesn't play. This implies that somehow once you beat the game everything good you did happens.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2014 00:39
|
|
|
The White Dragon posted:You don't have to beat the bosses all in one cycle, but you can I thought you still needed to beat the bosses before you can go to the Moon because the giants needed to be freed? RatHat has a new favorite as of 00:45 on Dec 9, 2014 |
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2014 00:41
|
|
|
MinistryofLard posted:GTA: San Andreas plays up CJ as a genuinely nice person who really doesn't want to be involved in his family's life of crime. This is juxtaposed with CJ being a GTA protagonist who runs people down for sport and beats people to death with an enormous purple dildo. poptart_fairy posted:That's not even getting into the entire plot being kicked off by CJ being blackmailed over the death of a cop. You can murder six dozen of the bloody things in a single rampage. One thing I've always loved in San Andreas is Cj and crew's whole endless song and dance about cleaning up the HOOD and getting the 'base out of the HOOD and yet taking over gang territories...makes you money...somehow? Hmmmmm
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2014 00:46
|
|
|
Don't forget the easiest way to make early money is by throwing packages of cocaine onto people's door step from a bicycle...
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2014 01:00
|
|
|
The White Dragon posted:You have to choose between helping Kafei and helping the Bomb Shop lady, but if you can manage to find the time, I'm pretty sure you can do everything else.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2014 01:02
|
|
|
RatHat posted:I thought you still needed to beat the bosses before you can go to the Moon because the giants needed to be freed? Nah, the excuse is that you can call the giant of each boss whose mask you've taken.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2014 06:34
|
|
|
Pope Guilty posted:Can't advisors basically mind control people? I thought the only reason you were able to kill one earlier in the game was because it was off-balance and too groggy to really go to town on the "You're done moving or resisting now" brain thing. Telekinesis, I thought. But yeah, any time you lose control of Gordon it's for some kind of contrived but plausible reason. theironjef posted:I'd say the obvious one with MMOs is that they can't really make your character the big hero for X players, so most of the cutscenes and big story elements are big world heroes doing amazing cinematic stuff and then deferring to you, the rear end collection expert. City of Heroes actually did this pretty well and made your character the focus of 95% of the story. The problem more came from the fact that it wasn't particularly hard to jump onto a team and encounter a duplicate of the mission you just did, with the same archvillain you just defeated. (It led to a lot of jokes about really good lawyers and revolving door prisons.) Also for a long time there wasn't really any phasing and since most of the content was instanced it could sometimes feel like you weren't really accomplishing anything. Though players would also get hilariously bent out of shape basically just because the signature characters existed at all. Because they represented the devs and were therefore the enemy, I suppose.  Edit: I suppose on that note, there was the fact that while you were sent to rescue the big cheese "main character" of CoH in a mission, and there was a flimsy excuse about a stasis field or something, once he's freed he proceeds to one-shot any remaining enemies with absurdly cranked damage numbers in the thousands. John Murdoch has a new favorite as of 09:18 on Dec 9, 2014 |
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2014 09:10
|
|
|
Jastiger posted:I want them to make a TES game where there is the Nerevarine or the Dragonborne, and it finds your save file and you have to fight YOU. Not really the same thing exactly, but in Skyrim if you somehow manage to keep playing long enough to hit level 80 (which used to basically be the cap before they patched it), a guy called the Ebony Warrior shows up and challenges you to a duel. He's pretty much specifically built to be a huge pain in the rear end for any player to kill. Besides depending on how canon you consider the Shivering Isles, you do meet the player character from Oblivion in the next game. 
Kimmalah has a new favorite as of 11:17 on Dec 9, 2014 |
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2014 11:09
|
|
|
Jastiger posted:I want them to make a TES game where there is the Nerevarine or the Dragonborne, and it finds your save file and you have to fight YOU. Ages ago, Maxis (or whoever) made a fun helicopter flight simulator called Sim Copter, where the maps used precisely the same format as Sim City 2000 saves. Meaning you could make some massive built up city in Sim City, then see how utterly horrible it was to try and fly a helicopter around trying to save people in your geometrically precise spergy urban metropolis with massive buildings in your face everywhere, then get bored and go off to find the military base to steal the gunship and reduce your lovingly designed city to a burning pile of ash. Then save the map and open it up in Sim City again and try to salvage the situation. Yeah the graphics were very low definition and the mechanics were choppy but I bought it for like a buck, and this was 20 years ago. Anyway, my issue is with Fallout: New Vegas. Yeah, I get that the world size is compressed, and that you can't casually walk from downtown Las Vegas to the Hoover Dam in five minutes, that's fine I know the map can't be too large. But the ultimate fight of the game is supposed to be this huge battle over the dam (that's not a spoiler, people mention it every second conversation right from the start). So why are there so few soldiers around, and so little real military buildup? I can stroll up to the biggest tyrant in two hundred years and there's maybe 20 people in his whole camp, three of which are kids. Some politician guy makes big speech for the troops and there are half a dozen people in the audience. And Odo from Deep Space Nine has a robot army, which is really little more than a platoon. Getting from being a nobody to become a super soldier in power armour wielding a rifle cannon with exploding bullets in a few hours is one thing, this is what RPGs are made of. But then using that might to face off against the enemy "army" of only a few people? The game can run with plenty more entities, maybe not all fighting each other at once but just being present, easy. It's less like a war and more like a lame fight between two rival gangs. It's still one of my favourite games, but it just seems Skyrim handled the whole "war" thing better, what with all the fort fights and the Whiterun battle. IronClaymore has a new favorite as of 17:32 on Dec 9, 2014 |
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2014 17:19
|
|
|
I actually thought the same thing about Skyrim - the fire and stuff looks really cool but then you get there and it's like 10 vs 10. I think Bethesda just has problems.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2014 18:33
|
|
|
I can't, off the top of my head, remember any games that had battles where they felt truly massive. Other than RTS games, of course.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2014 18:44
|
|
|
IronClaymore posted:Anyway, my issue is with Fallout: New Vegas. Yeah, I get that the world size is compressed, and that you can't casually walk from downtown Las Vegas to the Hoover Dam in five minutes, that's fine I know the map can't be too large. But the ultimate fight of the game is supposed to be this huge battle over the dam (that's not a spoiler, people mention it every second conversation right from the start). So why are there so few soldiers around, and so little real military buildup? I can stroll up to the biggest tyrant in two hundred years and there's maybe 20 people in his whole camp, three of which are kids. Some politician guy makes big speech for the troops and there are half a dozen people in the audience. And Odo from Deep Space Nine has a robot army, which is really little more than a platoon. Wizardry 8 suffered massively from this problem, possibly in large part because Sir-Tech ran out of money before they could finish it. Most of the "army" factions continually spawn troops so there's an impression of large forces being involved, but it breaks down when you get to the endgame and the climactic final battle against the bad guy army involves all of 20 enemies (this is not even an especially large battle by the game's standards--you can often find 20-30 enemies just milling around at certain points.) Actually Wiz8 has a lot of examples. A key milestone in one of the major plot quests involves getting to the other side of a bamboo fence which has bars that are easily spaced far enough apart for smaller races (possibly even an average human) to get through, to say nothing of simply hacking your way through it, but because a bamboo fence is a completely impenetrable barrier you have to complete several quests to get the key to get around to the other side. There are NPCs you can recruit to join your party who will fight alongside you, but each of them has an arbitrary list of locations they will refuse to visit. In theory this encourages you to rotate your party composition as you travel through the game, but in practice, the world is tiny and you're constantly crossing banned zones for various characters, none of which are all that good, so most people don't bother. A few of the zone restrictions do make sense--a central plot point is the war between the Umpani (rhino people) and T'rang (bug people), and naturally Umpani recruits won't willingly enter T'rang territory and vice versa. However, if you do manage to drag them inside enemy territory you can walk around in the midst of their mortal racial enemies with no repercussions beyond the standard stat/skill penalties NPCs suffer from being in an area they don't want to be in. There's a quest thread where you can play double agent between the Umpani and T'rang factions. There are already a couple of spies between the two and it is possible to (somewhat randomly) be discovered. However, even if you've tripped the mysterious "discovered as double agent" flag nothing actually happens until you go talk to certain specific characters, so it's possible to reload and go about your business without them ever taking action against you. (Enterprising players have figured out that you can actually circumvent the talk trigger on the one actually important quest-giver, allowing you to continue faction quests even when they know you're a traitor although that's a bug so it doesn't really count.)
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2014 18:54
|
|
|
Thoughtless posted:I can't, off the top of my head, remember any games that had battles where they felt truly massive. Other than RTS games, of course. Mount & Blade can have some massive battles, which makes you feel really insignificant when you're surrounded by hundreds of soldiers, all much stronger and more well equipped than you. Also, as with all problems regarding Skyrim: just mod it. There are mods that duplicate enemies, increase enemy spawn, or add additional spawn points 
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2014 19:38
|
|
|
IronClaymore posted:Anyway, my issue is with Fallout: New Vegas. Yeah, I get that the world size is compressed, and that you can't casually walk from downtown Las Vegas to the Hoover Dam in five minutes, that's fine I know the map can't be too large. But the ultimate fight of the game is supposed to be this huge battle over the dam (that's not a spoiler, people mention it every second conversation right from the start). So why are there so few soldiers around, and so little real military buildup? I can stroll up to the biggest tyrant in two hundred years and there's maybe 20 people in his whole camp, three of which are kids. Some politician guy makes big speech for the troops and there are half a dozen people in the audience. And Odo from Deep Space Nine has a robot army, which is really little more than a platoon. I feel like you have way too much confidence in the game's engine considering it crashes if you so much as breathe in the game's direction. And they were cool, but Skyrim's civil war battles were basically the same "kill bunches and bunches of random guys until you reach the objective." Say what you will about Hoover Dam, but I still feel like having the Boomers raining fire on the whole thing kind of saves it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2014 19:58
|
|
|
Big battles like that don't really work in open world games like Skyrim and New Vegas(at least not with current hardware). When there are out of bounds areas they can put low-res models in the distance to make it seem like a big battle is going on and you're just fighting in a small area.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2014 21:46
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 10, 2024 02:46 |
|
|
RatHat posted:Big battles like that don't really work in open world games like Skyrim and New Vegas(at least not with current hardware). When there are out of bounds areas they can put low-res models in the distance to make it seem like a big battle is going on and you're just fighting in a small area. For New Vegas in particular, the whole battle takes place on a bridge with guys behind cover (which I thought worked well) and inside buildings full of narrow corridors/stairways. The whole thing would be a nightmare to navigate with too many NPCs around.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2014 21:58
|
|