Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Alteisen
Jun 4, 2007

by FactsAreUseless

Inspector Gesicht posted:

Miyamoto seems to get a lot of flack for making the most recent Paper Mario bland and featureless. Had he any real input in the previous titles?

He has some input in all of them, he's just not directly involved.

To my understand he really hates the story in Mario games.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

FredMSloniker
Jan 2, 2008

Why, yes, I do like Kirby games.

Alteisen posted:

He has some input in all of them, he's just not directly involved.

To my understand he really hates the story in Mario games.
As in he thinks stories are bad, i.e. 'Mario is about jumping on things, and you shouldn't ask why'?

Chard
Aug 24, 2010




"gently caress that princess, man. I hate that stupid bitch." - Shigeru Miyamoto, 1983

...of SCIENCE!
Apr 26, 2008

by Fluffdaddy

FredMSloniker posted:

As in he thinks stories are bad, i.e. 'Mario is about jumping on things, and you shouldn't ask why'?

To be fair the unskippable, non-voice-acted 10-minute opening to Super Mario Galaxy was pretty bad.

scarycave
Oct 9, 2012

Dominic Beegan:
Exterminator For Hire

FredMSloniker posted:

As in he thinks stories are bad, i.e. 'Mario is about jumping on things, and you shouldn't ask why'?

That would be a fair argument if he didn't decide to that to a genre that usually depends on story telling and world building.
Paper Mario didn't have a lot of world building going on, but it had a lot of personality to the towns and some characters actually had some interesting back story and stuff (or at least enough for kid me anyways).

I liked the Boo Mansion the best. :3:

...of SCIENCE! posted:

To be fair the unskippable, non-voice-acted 10-minute opening to Super Mario Galaxy was pretty bad.

Everyone that's Mario or Peach you couldn't really care less about because they're boring.
Luigi on the other hand has an actual personality.

JK!
May 10, 2007

EZ-PZ!

bunnyofdoom posted:

Console too?

Yup. The first moment you get control after waking up from coming back to life you can make a save. Put the ME2 save onto your comp using a flash drive and the program USBXTAFGUI. Use Modio to open the save game and pick out the save you just made.

Use gibbed ME2 editor on save_01 or whatever and it'll open up everything to you. add a zero to the end of every mineral and you never have to mine at all. you can also give yourself all the money and make one shot kill guns which are great if you just want to replay the story and make different choices.

It'll also allow you to unlock Legion early and use him everywhere because he's the best. And has a lot of unique dialog. Taking him on Tali's loyalty mission is fantastic.

There's also an editor for ME3

Rockman Reserve
Oct 2, 2007

"Carbons? Purge? What are you talking about?!"

I'm at a point in The Secret World right now where I want to change zones frequently. Unfortunately, loading a new zone takes an ungodly long time, and that's if the game doesn't manage to crash somehow along the way.

JK! posted:

Yup. The first moment you get control after waking up from coming back to life you can make a save. Put the ME2 save onto your comp using a flash drive and the program USBXTAFGUI. Use Modio to open the save game and pick out the save you just made.

Use gibbed ME2 editor on save_01 or whatever and it'll open up everything to you. add a zero to the end of every mineral and you never have to mine at all. you can also give yourself all the money and make one shot kill guns which are great if you just want to replay the story and make different choices.

It'll also allow you to unlock Legion early and use him everywhere because he's the best. And has a lot of unique dialog. Taking him on Tali's loyalty mission is fantastic.

There's also an editor for ME3

Holy crap, I didn't know about this. Thanks.

...of SCIENCE!
Apr 26, 2008

by Fluffdaddy

JK! posted:

Yup. The first moment you get control after waking up from coming back to life you can make a save. Put the ME2 save onto your comp using a flash drive and the program USBXTAFGUI. Use Modio to open the save game and pick out the save you just made.

Use gibbed ME2 editor on save_01 or whatever and it'll open up everything to you. add a zero to the end of every mineral and you never have to mine at all. you can also give yourself all the money and make one shot kill guns which are great if you just want to replay the story and make different choices.

It'll also allow you to unlock Legion early and use him everywhere because he's the best. And has a lot of unique dialog. Taking him on Tali's loyalty mission is fantastic.

There's also an editor for ME3

So this proves that all the people saying that Legion only shows up later in the game due to console limitations are full of poo poo?

Great Metal Jesus
Jun 11, 2007

Got no use for psychiatry
I can talk to the voices
in my head for free
Mood swings like an axe
Into those around me
My tongue is a double agent

Cleretic posted:

(Oblivion is better than Skyrim, by the way)

You know, I actually want to hear your argument for this. Only at the same time I don't because it's probably going to lead to me spending hours downloading and feverishly modding Oblivion only to play it for about twenty minutes before throwing up my hands and going "This is bullshit!"

marshmallow creep
Dec 10, 2008

I've been sitting here for 5 mins trying to think of a joke to make but I just realised the animators of Mass Effect already did it for me

...of SCIENCE! posted:

So this proves that all the people saying that Legion only shows up later in the game due to console limitations are full of poo poo?

I'm presuming from all this that you still have to swap out disks for various story missions. The split for recruitments and story missions being on disk 1 or 2 was reportedly done to minimizing disk swapping, but the animations and recordings were already made before that decision was handed down. So if you unlock Legion before you do his recruitment mission (which was designated a major plot event later in development), you'll get to use him in earlier stuff that they made before they decided to split stuff between the disks.

edit: Basically, they might have put stuff for Tali to say in Jack's recruitment mission (or whatever, I haven't checked this stuff myself), but then later decided to have Jack's recruitment on disk one and Tali's on disk two, and then set a requirement that anything on disk two had to wait until all the stuff on disk one was finished, so while the content is on the disk you can't access it normally. They could have let you do Tali's mission first and then Jack's, but then you'd have to start with disk one, swap to disk two to get Tali, then swap to disk one to get Jack, etc. They decided they didn't want that.

marshmallow creep has a new favorite as of 02:34 on Aug 6, 2014

JK!
May 10, 2007

EZ-PZ!

Lotish posted:

I'm presuming from all this that you still have to swap out disks for various story missions. The split for recruitments and story missions being on disk 1 or 2 was reportedly done to minimizing disk swapping, but the animations and recordings were already made before that decision was handed down. So if you unlock Legion before you do his recruitment mission (which was designated a major plot event later in development), you'll get to use him in earlier stuff that they made before they decided to split stuff between the disks.

edit: Basically, they might have put stuff for Tali to say in Jack's recruitment mission (or whatever, I haven't checked this stuff myself), but then later decided to have Jack's recruitment on disk one and Tali's on disk two, and then set a requirement that anything on disk two had to wait until all the stuff on disk one was finished, so while the content is on the disk you can't access it normally. They could have let you do Tali's mission first and then Jack's, but then you'd have to start with disk one, swap to disk two to get Tali, then swap to disk one to get Jack, etc. They decided they didn't want that.

Everybody has lines for everything regardless of what order you get them in. But seriously edit the save and unlock Legion right off the bat. Can't use him until after the first mission where you're forced to take jacob and miranda. But when you can take him everywhere and talk to everyone because it is amazing. Especially on Tali's loyalty mission.

Morpheus
Apr 18, 2008

My favourite little monsters

AngryRobotsInc posted:

They changed something about Wander's grip in the HD port of Shadow of the Colossus, so now when a Colossus even thinks about moving, he flops around entirely too much and entirely too long. It is REALLY annoying. Especially since certain ones, like the third Colossus, start thrashing around almost nonstop when you get over their weakpoint(s).

From what I've heard, it has something to do with them porting a different version of the game for the HD release - I think it was the European(?) version, which was much tougher with stuff like that. I may be mistaken, and am entirely too lazy to look it up at the moment, but I remember thinking the same thing you did. They didn't change anything, it's just a different version than the one NA audiences are used to.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010


Ignore my posts!
I'm aggressively wrong about everything!

Great Metal Jesus posted:

You know, I actually want to hear your argument for this. Only at the same time I don't because it's probably going to lead to me spending hours downloading and feverishly modding Oblivion only to play it for about twenty minutes before throwing up my hands and going "This is bullshit!"

It's similar to the ME1/2 matchup for me, in that I enjoyed Skyrim well enough on its own terms; it's hardly a bad game. But while it's a more cohesive package than Oblivion, and probably a better game by objective standards, I just don't enjoy it nearly as much. It suffers sort of a 'death by a thousand cuts', where a lot of individual elements just aren't as good as Oblivion in terms of what I'd actually want from it.

-Oblivion Gates are far better for that sort of game than dragons. Dragons are big, demanding of immediate attention, and actually kind of unbalanced towards certain styles of play. Oblivion gates are a lot more passive; they're there, and they're big and obvious, but they're not urgent. You can mark them on your map and then go on your way. And since they're a dungeon, when you finally do want to take them on, they're pretty open in how you want to actually take them on; any approach will do.

-Enchanting is far less expansive. Spellcrafting is nonexistent.

-Related, but the magic reworking left it in a weird place. In Oblivion it's a sidearm, a separate thing that you run parallel to an actual weapon, so it doesn't exactly compete with them. That's good, because they run on a different scale, and can be exactly as powerful as you want them to be. But in Skyrim it does compete with actual weapons, and as much as I want them to, they just don't. Their progression is weird, uneven and ultimately inferior to just stabbing people, and thanks to the lack of spellcrafting you can't make up the difference yourself.

-Most of Skyrim's guild questlines suck. The Dark Brotherhood doesn't have nearly enough murder, the local Fighter's Guild turns into the local Werewolves' Guild on a dime and seems to just expect you to go along with that, and the local Mage's Guild is just the coalescing of all the 'guild questlines are short and unrealistic' problems with the 'magic system got hosed' problems. The only one that I'd say is superior to the Oblivion questlines (which aren't really great, but they deliver what they promise and have some good moments) is the Thieves' Guild, witht he College of Winterhold being given a consolation prize because it's not really its fault that it sucks. The total's still in Oblivion's favor.

-I just didn't like the region as much. I don't mean the usual chesnut of 'Bethesda dropped the ball with the interesting parts of their lore', because I'm pretty sure that Skyrim was always boring in the lore. I mean that I never found Skyrim all that interesting to traverse. While it had some nice landscapes, and the rare bit of interesting scenery, I just much preferred the lush greens of Cyrodiil, which are actually complemented very well by the bold reds of the Oblivion incursion. It was just a much more fun and colorful game to look at, NPCs notwithstanding (excepting the fact that I prefer how the armors look).

I'll grant that Skyrim gets some things pretty right; NPCs don't look as much like rear end, the main quest is better as is the general quality of the standalones, and probably the most important one is that the melee combat was heavily refined. That last part may be the root of a lot of problems for me; Skyrim clearly wants you to be the Big Burly Man-Hero with big armor and a big weapon, but as someone who hates those sorts of characters that just falls flat to me. So in the end, it comes out that while Skyrim put forward a lot and should rightly be considered a great game, I would just prefer to pick up Oblivion.

While each Elder Scrolls game is clearly standalone, all the ones since Morrowind (I haven't played Arena and Daggerfall) have been radically different, with different focuses. I sincerely hope that Summerset or whatever the sixth one is will be more geared towards my kind of playstyle, but it probably won't. I did try playing Morrowind last year, and found myself just running out of steam; as good as it is, and as strong as I could tell I'd get later on for my playstyle, it does lack a lot of really good changes that Oblivion made.

Punished Chuck
Dec 27, 2010

While I think anyone who prefers Oblivion to Skyrim must be crazy, I will say you've got a good point in the Oblivion gates vs. dragons thing. I think the thing I liked most about Oblivion gates compared to Skyrim's dragons were the fact that you had to trigger the gates by going to Kvatch. In Skyrim, if you want to make a sneaky thief character that focuses as little as possible on combat and just stealths her way through everything, you can still get a dragon fight forced on you out of nowhere because dragons are in the game from the very beginning. I'd definitely have preferred it if they made that mission where you go with Delphine and see Alduin reviving the other dragon from the burial mound happen earlier in the MQ and dragons don't start spawning until after that mission.

Also, now that I think about it, I do feel that Oblivion had more memorable quests. In my opinion Skyrim's quests were better overall but Oblivion had a handful of some standout great ones, like the "And Then There Were None" murder mansion or the one where you travel inside a painting. I'm having a hard time thinking of Skyrim missions that really stand out in my mind like that.

Great Metal Jesus
Jun 11, 2007

Got no use for psychiatry
I can talk to the voices
in my head for free
Mood swings like an axe
Into those around me
My tongue is a double agent
Huh. You know, I suppose that's fair. I always get incredibly burnt out on Oblivion because I'm really, really bad at managing the leveling system. A few hours in and my character is consistently hobbled and plinking away at impossible bandits. Aside from that I had the opposite feeling about the world where it just didn't draw me in quite as much as Skyrim's frigid north. While I had some issues with playing a spellsword in Skyrim I installed SPERG and was able to have a blast as a full on mage.

As for things dragging games I'm actually playing down right now, Baldur's Gate is making me tear my loving hair out. I've played (and loved) Planescape: Torment so it's less the combat and more the setting and party. I can't converse with any of the characters which just leaves them feeling kind of flat and lifeless. Also I wish when I found a new party member I could send them back to a nearby town or something instead of deciding who I want to leave in a hole in a dungeon in the absolute rear end end of the map so I can go kill legions of kobolds in a mine.

Heavy Lobster
Oct 24, 2010

:gowron::m10:

WeaponGradeSadness posted:

I think the thing I liked most about Oblivion gates compared to Skyrim's dragons were the fact that you had to trigger the gates by going to Kvatch. In Skyrim, if you want to make a sneaky thief character that focuses as little as possible on combat and just stealths her way through everything, you can still get a dragon fight forced on you out of nowhere because dragons are in the game from the very beginning. I'd definitely have preferred it if they made that mission where you go with Delphine and see Alduin reviving the other dragon from the burial mound happen earlier in the MQ and dragons don't start spawning until after that mission.

Dragons don't show up until you kill Mirmulnir at the watch tower, which takes you finishing Bleak Falls Barrow and returning to Whiterun to talk about it, after talking to the Jarl and court mage before about doing just that.

Punished Chuck
Dec 27, 2010

Heavy Lobster posted:

Dragons don't show up until you kill Mirmulnir at the watch tower, which takes you finishing Bleak Falls Barrow and returning to Whiterun to talk about it, after talking to the Jarl and court mage before about doing just that.

Hmm, I could have sworn I've been attacked by dragons without having done that. I guess I must have been remembering wrong. I think I still prefer the gates just because one of them won't suddenly open up at your feet while you're in the middle of something else, though.

SpookyLizard
Feb 17, 2009
I really enjoyed Mass Effect 1, it had a pretty neat Sci-Fi Space Opera plot, a neat-ish twist, where you've only tangentally connected the dude to being a bad guy. The twist ended up being somewhat promising, and I had been faced with a series of decisions that seemed to have some degree of promise in the sequels. The combat was pretty mediocre, especially in boss fights, but it's told well enough, even though you have to do quite a few "exhaust all exposition options" conversations which are pretty lame. The non-shooty powers were pretty neat, and the shooty powers seemed fairly pointless because they had absurd cool downs.

ME2 had a really cool at-first but then also pretty dumb intro. You sorta get introduced to bad guys, but not really at all and then you get to do a murder time fun time tutorial where you meet Cerberus who were these semi-nameless/faceless bad guys in the first game. Who are now crazy-pro-human group and no longer a spec-ops uni that went off the reservation. You get some new bad guys to fight, and there's an okay twist that was kinda obvious by the time it happens. Ultimately instead of really dealing with the big bads of the trilogy from the get go, you're sort of tangentally beating up their minions

You sorta have this neat suicide mission thing but it's kinda self-defeating because the game gives you no sense of urgency until the very end and if you do it any earlier you're only skipping content of the game. They also wait until the last minute to give you the best companion.

The gun play was dramatically improved, but the non-gunplay super powers really sucked, what with them feeling weak as poo poo and having one single cooldown.

ikanreed
Sep 25, 2009

I honestly I have no idea who cannibal[SIC] is and I do not know why I should know.

syq dude, just syq!

Great Metal Jesus posted:

Huh. You know, I suppose that's fair. I always get incredibly burnt out on Oblivion because I'm really, really bad at managing the leveling system. A few hours in and my character is consistently hobbled and plinking away at impossible bandits. Aside from that I had the opposite feeling about the world where it just didn't draw me in quite as much as Skyrim's frigid north. While I had some issues with playing a spellsword in Skyrim I installed SPERG and was able to have a blast as a full on mage.

As for things dragging games I'm actually playing down right now, Baldur's Gate is making me tear my loving hair out. I've played (and loved) Planescape: Torment so it's less the combat and more the setting and party. I can't converse with any of the characters which just leaves them feeling kind of flat and lifeless. Also I wish when I found a new party member I could send them back to a nearby town or something instead of deciding who I want to leave in a hole in a dungeon in the absolute rear end end of the map so I can go kill legions of kobolds in a mine.

This is because Baldur's Gate isn't Baldur's Gate 2. In baldur's gate, entire gigantic areas can be kinda pointless, with no one to talk to, no interesting puzzles, and only 1-2 kinds of encouners. I love the game for its battle system and occasionally perfect snippy dialog, but the Sequel realized these problems perfectly, so that there's scarcely not a screenful of any area that doesn't have at least one of: humorous encounter, challenging unique battle, intriguing unique dialog, or a puzzle to solve.

BG1 is just not as content rich as it needs to be. It's got atmosphere and battle system, and that's about all that holds it together.

Keep in mind, this is me describing one of my favorite childhood games.

Phobophilia
Apr 26, 2008

by Hand Knit
BG has THAC0, that's dragging the gently caress out of the game down.

Taeke
Feb 2, 2010


BG2 was one of the first big games that I loved and played, and it's still one of my all time favourites. Never got far in BG1 though, and for exactly those reasons.

Honestly, my advice is to just read up a bit on the events of BG1, skip actually playing the game, and move on to BG2. It seems like all your complaints are fixed in BG2.

Inspector Gesicht
Oct 26, 2012

500 Zeus a body.


A word of note for Baldur's Gate 2 is that you're best off using mods and cheats to get around some of the crappy parts of the game. A mod to skip the first dungeon, and cheats to give you proper stats and a bag of holding early on.

Content: A minor thing in Avadon that's an annoyance is that when you press a button to open a window, pressing it again doesn't close it, nor does pressing a different button open a new window over the old one. It's such a minor thing but it could be so easily fixed.

Mierenneuker
Apr 28, 2010


We're all going to experience changes in our life but only the best of us will qualify for front row seats.

Dungeon-Be-Gone is not something I'd recommend for people playing through Baldur's Gate 2 for the first time. Especially if you're skipping the first game.

Taeke
Feb 2, 2010


Yeah, the first dungeon is a slog if you're replaying the game, but there's nothing with it for a first run through. It's interesting, fun, reveals a lot of the characters you start out with and the overall storyline and introduces you to a lot of the basics you need to know in the rest of the game.

Cheating for proper stats and a bag of holding is unnecessary to in my opinion, especially since with the Throne of Bhaal expansion there's containers for every type of ammo, scrolls, jewelry, etc that you can get a hold of easily and quickly after finishing the dungeon.

e:
Check this link out:
http://beforeiplay.com/index.php?title=Baldur%27s_Gate_2

scarycave
Oct 9, 2012

Dominic Beegan:
Exterminator For Hire

WeaponGradeSadness posted:

Also, now that I think about it, I do feel that Oblivion had more memorable quests. In my opinion Skyrim's quests were better overall but Oblivion had a handful of some standout great ones, like the "And Then There Were None" murder mansion or the one where you travel inside a painting. I'm having a hard time thinking of Skyrim missions that really stand out in my mind like that.

While I still never got too finish the game, due to laptop heating issues and having to keep it on low-very low quality to compensate, Vanilla Oblivion isn't really as bad as a lot of people make it out to be. Granted the voice acting and faces are pretty bad - but I still had fun with my short time with it and some of the quests that really tried to think out of the box like the one where you go into somebodies dreams and what not or the one where you go in a painting world.

I really wish though that it was less-generic landscape wise. It just doesn't work well for me. The Oblivion worlds were great though, it was like Doom and Hexen poo poo. Shivering Isles on the other hand is worlds more interesting and I really wish more game developers would be more inventive in their fantasy worlds instead of just playing it safe and relying on the same European-Tolkien format.

Lil Swamp Booger Baby
Aug 1, 1981

I have more of a general complaint and that's the current obsession with overarching plot in RPGs these days.
I don't understand where people get the misconception that RPGs have always been about stories, because in the 80s and early 90s they rarely were, even games like the original Fallouts had really lackluster stories compared to the general quests and world-building, and the latter is primarily what RPGs have generally been about, world-building.

The original Wizardrys, Ultimas, Might & Magics, TES games (hell, even the new TES games, as in the few modern RPGs that understood what made the genre fun), all had one thing in common, and that was a focus in world building. Sosaria and Brittania in the Ultima series took center stage, and there was often significantly more material and kbytes dedicated towards telling the story of the world and its locations. That was because of technological limitations mostly, but there was also an important gameplay reason, simply that it made an open world more interesting, and made developing and growing your character in that world have more meaning because you were interacting with a place that was more fleshed out. Actually exploring the nooks and crannies of the world were more conducive towards the player discovering a story (his own) than actually following whatever contrived experience the developers had set up, simply because they couldn't really set up anything competent in that sense back then.
RPGs were generally about the adventure, not poorly written centrally important thematically shallow garbage, and the lore of the worlds were rather involved and told through additional material that often came with the game, it gave the games a sense of having a more real world, even with the technology they had back then.
Stuff like Mass Effect are just limited action games with RPG wrappers. I wouldn't care so much if it wasn't for the fact that that is the current trend, even The Witcher is a proponent of this trend, and the majority of the genre's effort seems to go into producing these dull rear end games.

The big issue with it is that the games still deign to provide you some form of freeform exploration, typically hacked down, tedious, and/or filler, but then attempt to tell some explosive normal plot at the same time, which doesn't make sense. There's already a general problem with open world and more freeform games where the plot is robbed of any sort of urgency whatsoever (as the Mass Effect games are) because you're often just given a ton of time to jerk around, which gives the impression of your character being given a mission of utmost importance and saying "Eh, whatever, I'll do it later."
It just doesn't make sense within the framework of the game or its plot.
Action games are better at telling stories than RPG, that's a fact, their pacing can provide for it, games like Spec Ops, and while I don't personally like their stories, they are still better paced, Bioshock: Infinite, The Last of Us, etc.
This is because the gameplay inbetween the story beats is generally directly tied in conflict and focus to what's actually happening, instead of just being a random smattering of poo poo between your next plot location.

In an action game, it's more of a direct line, the events between the story are obstacles the characters could potentially face realistically in their world, and there would be a reason for the story to be robbed of development because of these obstacles, both in the sense that it is more dramatically potent, and because it's directly linked to the conflict of the plot. In Mass Effect Shepard will literally just gently caress off for hours and scan the surface of planets or something or run back and forth on a space station like a headless chicken having aimless meandering conversation. Maybe you could contrive it to the point where you say he needs the funds or minerals, but it's still an incredibly retarded way to tell a story, since it's the amazing hero of the story playing space prospector whereas at least Joel is bashing people's skulls in, a far better storytelling mechanic (immediate violence) than looking at rocks.
Once again, and everyone always says this, but Alpha Protocol seemed to have a vague understanding of this, as you're always doing something mission relevant in the game, and everything you do ties into your mission.

Yet there are some ancient techniques that we still use in worldbuilding that we could have gotten rid of ages ago, namely massive stacks of written lore splurged out in the players face as an attempt to say "We're too lazy or incompetent to properly figure out how to flesh out and build our world dynamically, so here's a text dump." It's probably the laziest, most disconnected way of fleshing out your world, yet it's not much different from the way older games chucked all their poo poo into a manual and expected you to figure it out there, still, at least those games had the bright idea to actually make their lore present in the game, rather than have you in an extremely limited scope where you weren't likely to encounter or engage in any of it.
TES, for all its problems, does a fairly decent job of doing this right because it sticks a lot of its lore in books, and then has the incredible thought of making a lot of these books unreliable, giving it more a sense of real world history and bias.

The genre was never about storytelling, unless you count the middle and later era of JRPGS (and even the earlier ones were similar to western RPGs in their adventure focus) and now that they are, they kind of generally blow and don't have any sort of focused gameplay, a few RPGs, like the TES series, the earlier Gothic games, and Fallout: New Vegas, still get what makes the genre good and unique, and that's mostly that they give a world to gently caress around in and have your own adventure, versus an incredibly constrained experience that tries to force you to engage in a plot that if it doesn't engage you literally makes the game unfun to play. It's a flaw in the genre that so much of it is obsessed with storytelling, when the very nature of the genre prevents it from ever possibly having decent pacing or making a competent story out of its filler and inbetween moments.

Sephiroth_IRA
Mar 31, 2010
I wish someone could hack/remake Seiken Densetsu 3 so the game wouldn't pause when you use the ring menu in multiplayer. I understand why it's necessary in single player but it would be nice to play with two to three people without the constant pausing.

Based on what little I know of rom hacking and coding it seems like it would be possible.

Sephiroth_IRA has a new favorite as of 15:04 on Aug 6, 2014

Morpheus
Apr 18, 2008

My favourite little monsters
This is not really a fault with the games, but there are some sequences in the Kingdom Hearts where you're flying around big open areas during boss fights that I can't loving stand. Not because of controls or anything, I think it might be some sort of mild agoraphobia I have or something like that. The fights with Chernobog, Ursula, and that boss at the end of KH2 where you're fighting him on a platform in some swirling nebula that you need to fly to...I don't know, but every time I get knocked off that thing, something inside me twitches as I see this huge open space. The Ursual and Chernobog fights less so, but it still makes me a little nervous.

Weird though, I play space games like Freelancer, the X series, etc perfectly fine.

Oh! Except there's one level in Homeworld where you're in a ship graveyard, and you see a huge loving thing in the distance that looks like the remains of a dyson sphere or something. Also makes me feel a little weird.

dataisplural
Oct 27, 2013

a stream of poo and urine

Nostradingus posted:

I have an autistic friend who really likes Drive because it's juuuuust subtle enough for him to get it.

lol

Strategic Tea
Sep 1, 2012

I'd forgive all of Oblivion's gameplay flaws if it wasn't for the setting.

Pocket Guide to the Empire posted:

Akaviri dragon-motifs are found in all quarters, from the high minaret bridges of the Imperial City to the paper hako skiffs that villagers use to wing their dead down the rivers. Thousands of workers ply the rice fields after the floodings, or clear the foliage of the surrounding jungle in the alternate seasons. Above them are the merchant-nobility, the temple priests and cult leaders, and the age-old aristocracy of the battlemages. The Emperor watches over them all from the towers of the Imperial City, as dragons circle overhead...

From the shore it is hard to tell what is city and what is Palace, for it all rises from the islands of the lake towards the sky in a stretch of gold. Whole neighborhoods rest on the jeweled bridges that connect the islands together. Gondolas and river-ships sail along the watery avenues of its flooded lower dwellings. Moth-priests walk by in a cloud of ancestors; House Guards hold exceptionally long daikatanas crossed at intersections, adorned with ribbons and dragon-flags; and the newly arrived Western legionnaires sweat in the humid air. The river mouth is tainted red from the tinmi soil of the shore, and river dragons rust their hides in its waters. Across the lake the Imperial City continues, merging into the villages of the southern red river and ruins left from the Interregnum.

The Emperor's Palace is a crown of sun rays, surrounded by his magical gardens. One garden path is known as Green Emperor Road-here, topiaries of the heads of past Emperors have been shaped by sorcery and can speak. When one must advise Tiber Septim, birds are drawn to the hedgery head, using their songs as its voice and moving its branches for the needed expressions.

At one point, all of Elder Scrolls was weird and awesome like Morrowind. Now TESO spreads across what's left of the setting that we haven't seen and conforms that, no, it's just fantasy England or not-Arabia or Rivendell or whatever after all.
:goonsay:

Perestroika
Apr 8, 2010

After having it languishing in my steam backlog for ages, I've finally given Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising a try. While the basic engine and gameplay is pretty solid (if a bit janky, but that's to be expected), the campaign really doesn't make very good use of it. In the original Operation Flashpoint you really got the impression that you were just one small part of a big conflict, but in Dragon Rising it's really just a flash in a pan that's over before it begins, and the outcome in your favour never seems to be in any doubt. You also never get to drive anything bigger than a jeep, the only two player characters you get to control are infantry squadleader #1 and infantry squadleader #2. It still had some decent missions, but the scale seemed so very limited most of the time.

After Dragon Rising I tried Red River and :wtc:. The less said about that pile of a campaign the better.

im pooping!
Nov 17, 2006



Pretty insightful post, I tend to agree, especially with TES or Fallout. The modern games I've been rolling characters who collect obscure items. For example, in the two newest Fallout games I've traversed the wasteland collecting every pencil I could find. I don't sell them, I don't throw them away, I don't even put them in a drawer. I've made it my mission in those games to carry as many pencils in my pocket as I can find. Same goes with wooden spoons in Skyrim. I have around 50 so far and I just like to think my character is so crazy he would go out of his way, risking getting burned or stabbed to death just to increase his collection of spoons.

If Fallout comes to the MMO field, I will most likely open a pencil emporium.

AngryRobotsInc
Aug 2, 2011

RPG is kind of a very broad genre to try and pin down with being about this thing or that thing.

Eastern RPGs started trending toward being about the story very early in their history, being heavily influenced by the visual novel genre that's pretty much always been around on PCs in Japan. The late 80s is when it started to really pick up speed. Just look at the shift between Final Fantasy I and II, released about a year apart. Final Fantasy I has the same sort of bare bones story as Dragon Quest. II has a much more involved story, though it's still pretty RPG on the NES weak (baby steps). By the time the SNES rolls around, story driven games are the norm rather than the exception.

Western RPGs and Eastern RPGs might as well be completely different genres, especially when it comes to how and when stories started being important.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010


Ignore my posts!
I'm aggressively wrong about everything!
EDIT: ^^ The original Final Fantasy game was basically the result of people who didn't entirely know what an RPG was making an RPG. The entire JRPG subgenre (or just genre, if you prefer) was just a really weird game of telephone, deviating further and further from the original point while still being kind of internally consistent.

One of the reasons I think Dark Souls is really neat is that it's basically an attempt by Japanese developers to make a western RPG.

Strategic Tea posted:

I'd forgive all of Oblivion's gameplay flaws if it wasn't for the setting.


At one point, all of Elder Scrolls was weird and awesome like Morrowind. Now TESO spreads across what's left of the setting that we haven't seen and conforms that, no, it's just fantasy England or not-Arabia or Rivendell or whatever after all.
:goonsay:

Counterpoint: I just checked, and Skyrim was accurately depicted. Place is boring as poo poo even in the lore.

I don't even hold Bethesda not living up to their own lore against them anymore, personally. They wanna make pretty, realistic places, go ahead, it's probably a lot easier and a lot more profitable. Being as consistently batshit insane as Morrowind probably isn't worth the effort overall. It's why I'm betting on the next Elder Scrolls being in Summerset; on top of bieng foreshadowed in that janky Bethesda way during Skyrim, it's at about their level of comfort in setting. They were sure as poo poo never gonna make a Black Marsh game.

Cleretic has a new favorite as of 17:07 on Aug 6, 2014

...of SCIENCE!
Apr 26, 2008

by Fluffdaddy

Strategic Tea posted:

I'd forgive all of Oblivion's gameplay flaws if it wasn't for the setting.


At one point, all of Elder Scrolls was weird and awesome like Morrowind. Now TESO spreads across what's left of the setting that we haven't seen and conforms that, no, it's just fantasy England or not-Arabia or Rivendell or whatever after all.
:goonsay:

Even Morrowind ignored most of the game's lore in favor of more grounded stuff, unless I missed the base on the moon and the Redguard swords made of songs that were sharp enough to cause nuclear explosions from splitting atoms.

WickedHate
Aug 1, 2013

by Lowtax
Morrowind's big flaw is being too weird and awesome. Even without the more out there parts of the lore, it still has giant fleas and alien world-like landscapes. It's just Morrowind though. It was the first TES game for a lot of people, and it set them up for disappointment.

AngryRobotsInc
Aug 2, 2011

I think a lot of the weird lore in the background is sort of a hold over from ES's origins in tabletop RPGs. It's very easy to have this weird, awesome stuff when you're just describing it. Like the planes in D&D. Not so easy when you're trying to bring it across in a game.

Alhazred
Feb 16, 2011




Morpheus posted:

This is not really a fault with the games, but there are some sequences in the Kingdom Hearts where you're flying around big open areas during boss fights that I can't loving stand. Not because of controls or anything, I think it might be some sort of mild agoraphobia I have or something like that. The fights with Chernobog, Ursula, and that boss at the end of KH2 where you're fighting him on a platform in some swirling nebula that you need to fly to...I don't know, but every time I get knocked off that thing, something inside me twitches as I see this huge open space. The Ursual and Chernobog fights less so, but it still makes me a little nervous.

I experienced that during the fight with the last colossus in Shadow of the Colossus. At a point in the fight I took a look down and realized that holy gently caress that's a long way down.

Action Tortoise
Feb 18, 2012

A wolf howls.
I know how he feels.
I had the hardest time figuring out what to do with the 15th colossus and the one in the lake you can steer by hitting the horns on its head. They're more environmental puzzles while most of the other colossi were pretty direct in how you beat them.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

swamp waste
Nov 4, 2009

There is some very sensual touching going on in the cutscene there. i don't actually think it means anything sexual but it's cool how it contrasts with modern ideas of what bad ass stuff should be like. It even seems authentic to some kind of chivalric masculine touching from a tyme longe gone

That's a good post.

I played Ultima 2 and didn't love it but one thing I appreciated was how the gameplay objectives were mostly open from the start (there are, what, two real progress gates? Getting the ship and getting all the stuff to enter the final dungeon?) and the story unfolded basically as like... the story of what I did in the process of getting those Marks, you know? It didn't feel like Final Fantasy or something where "grinding mobs" was this disconnected busywork that the characters pursued in silence between dramatic beats. Brogue and roguelikes in general do the same thing. Shadow of the Colossus does too though that's not an RPG.

AngryRobotsInc posted:

I think a lot of the weird lore in the background is sort of a hold over from ES's origins in tabletop RPGs. It's very easy to have this weird, awesome stuff when you're just describing it. Like the planes in D&D. Not so easy when you're trying to bring it across in a game.

The lore that other guy just quoted was extremely visual and topographically descriptive though. It reads like it was written to guide game designers. Maybe it was, I mean whoever wrote that knew they were writing for a game.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply