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There was also a good talk from some Obsidian folks about Alpha Protocol and what went into putting that together and the design philosophy involved. Not linking because it prominently features Avellone, but if you're interested you can search "But Thou Must Obsidian" on youtube and it should pop up.
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Sep 22, 2020 17:37
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If I remember right the general idea was that for satisfying consequences they wanted to have an immediate consequence(ie something in the current mission), an intermediate consequence(something in a later mission) and a long-term consequence(something you could see at the end of the game, or a permanent status effect or something)
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Sep 22, 2020 17:49
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Acebuckeye13 posted:I gotcha pal: https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1015758/Do-Say-The-Right-Thing The videos are down but I put the slides here: https://www.scribd.com/document/425729458/Death-and-the-High-Cost-of-Killing-Everyone
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Sep 22, 2020 17:55
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Bethesda doesn't have that approach, and I think it's part of the way the studio is structured. When designing games, they seem to break down into different teams of designers that focus on different areas, and have a lot of leeway within those areas to create quests and NPCs. However, because their design process is less rigid, it means that creating reactivity between areas designed by different teams is harder, and they rely more heavily on Essential NPCs to ensure that quests don't get hosed up when someone dies (Which is also one of the biggest differences between Obsidian and Bethesda—Bethesda in their recent games is near-laser focused on allowing players to see and do nearly everything in the game across a single playthrough and is loathe to lock players out of content, while Obsidian is more willing to allow players to miss things or rely on multiple playthroughs to see everything). I always found it odd that Bethesda added things like the Alias system to their codebase for Skyrim's iteration of the engine. Which would for example make handling the death of NPC during a questline a lot easier, compared to in New Vegas' version of the engine. But then never utilized it during their questlines. Instead it's used for little background stuff most player's will probably never notice (like when an innkeeper dies, another NPC can step into the role of innkeeper).
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Sep 22, 2020 17:56
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Digital Osmosis posted:Part of it, yeah, must be built into the organizational culture of Obsidian. For example, they have something I'm probably misremembering as the "flamethrower rule" for all of their games which is basically "assume the PC is holding down the trigger of a flamethrower at all NPCs at all times." So if they really, really don't want you to kill an NPC -- say, Caesar before you deal with Benny -- they just straight up won't let you meet him. The second you do meet him you can kill him and the game will react. It's a core design choice in all of their games and I have to figure at this point the people who work there long-term have those choices built in like reflexes, and are probably better than most designers at anticipating the sheer amount of massive work required to pull off that design choice. That is, unless you've been relatively professional in other places in the game, in which case he recognizes that you're trying to bait him into doing something stupid by acting like an idiot. 
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Sep 22, 2020 18:11
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for better or worse Bethesda is just more interested in different kinds of experiences, e.g. teaming up with an NPC to fight through a dungeon together, character arcs that interweave with the main plot - stuff that requires Essential NPCs and strictly controlled quest sequences. compare to New Vegas where individual characters are not only disposable but also fairly static or at times even flat, because the focus is on using them to develop larger scale concepts like the setting's politics, history, the war, the economy etc. rather than Bethesda's human-scale dramas
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Sep 22, 2020 18:17
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Another good Marburg thing is if he survives the game then at the very end Leland will say "not so fast agent Thorton... Conrad, dispose of this worm" and Marburg just kind of grunts and leaves. You can still get shot by Scarlet right after that as well E: how do spoiler tags work again 2house2fly fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Sep 22, 2020 |
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Sep 22, 2020 18:30
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Well gently caress looks like I’m reinstalling Alpha Protocol again. Thanks goons!
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Sep 22, 2020 18:41
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Lt. Danger posted:compare to New Vegas where individual characters are not only disposable but also fairly static or at times even flat
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Sep 22, 2020 18:54
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Yea, 4 has by far the best companions Bethesda ever made but the average character in almost any Obsidian game eclipses them in every category.
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Sep 22, 2020 19:10
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yeah that was good too but... rope kid posted:I gave the talk at Graz Game Dev Days and GIC in Poznań, Poland. is the one. you're good at giving these types of presentations, ropekid. outside of ars technicas war stories series they're the only game dev discussion/talks ive watched. ars should have you do a war stories on pillars. bet theres something rad there.
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Sep 22, 2020 19:48
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TheLoneStar posted:Compared to 3 or 4? Not a chance. New Vegas felt like it was filled with a lot more real people than either Bethesda title. Even throwaway characters felt like they had a history and thought-out past, even if it couldn't be fully explored. to be clear I'm not just using synonyms for good/bad here but trying to describe what the writers are doing with the characters. House, Caesar, Benny, the various NCR representatives don't change across the course of the story because (in addition to the flamethrower proviso) New Vegas deliberately sets its scope at a level above individual actors. these characters are static: their role is to explain/demonstrate the values of their faction and operate as mission control for the game's Act 2 questlines, their character development is exploring the nuances of their existing personality and beliefs. compare them to New Vegas' own companions, where each companion has a personal quest that changes their outlook and endgame outcome
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Sep 22, 2020 20:17
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Caesar's outlook certainly changed when his eyes landed at two opposite ends of his tent
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Sep 22, 2020 20:20
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Xander77 posted:That seems really short. Honestly I feel like all of the Fallout games vastly underestimate the ability of populations to move around, because realistically, radioactive temperate climates are way better to live in than a radioactive desert.
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Sep 22, 2020 20:29
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Basic Chunnel posted:They planned it from the start as a fundamental element of the game’s design. Expendable casts / sequence breaking are a part of almost all their games.
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Sep 22, 2020 20:48
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The guy who designed Beyond The Beef also designed Vault 11, and commented in one interview about the difference in how hard each was to implement vs how much attention each got
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Sep 22, 2020 21:27
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Beyond the Beef was kind of a mess - I don't think it really succeeded. The most obvious way to pass it (the way that seems like the best ending) requires you to hide from NPCs in a weird way and duck behind a counter until exactly the right trigger happens or else you'll aggro an entire room full of people. It just didn't really work and was imo an example of trying to simulate too much player freedom when the mechanics of the casino didn't actually allow for it. Vault 11 was a total success and just plain works with how video games work. The player doesn't really do anything to determine the outcome of the plot though, it's ultimately linear. No Wave fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Sep 22, 2020 |
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Sep 22, 2020 21:34
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Vault 11 was more about a linear narrative experience. The hardest part of it (IIRC) was scripting the ending slides + reveal. Everything else was just planning and good storytelling.
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Sep 22, 2020 21:54
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The best part about Vault 11 is that immediately after hearing that the vault was sadistically set up to demand sacrifice, they didn't dig up some powerless schlub to be their scapegoat, they all chose to kill the overseer. And considering the overseers we've seen, he probably deserved it.
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Sep 22, 2020 22:22
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rope kid posted:Vault 11 was more about a linear narrative experience. The hardest part of it (IIRC) was scripting the ending slides + reveal. Everything else was just planning and good storytelling. How much care was put into where each propaganda poster appeared and in what frequency? Because I seem to recall that the first time I played it, the holotape I was listening to and the wall I was staring at made everything click in a big HOLY poo poo kind of way all at once.
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Sep 22, 2020 22:26
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I’m always glad to see some Alpha Protocol chat. I know everyone, myself included, wants a new obsidian fallout but if I’m being honest with myself I’d be just as excited about an Alpha Protocol sequel. Or Archer Protocol, that would just print money. Who do I need to tweet for this?
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Sep 22, 2020 23:33
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Sega to demand they give up the IP.
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Sep 22, 2020 23:45
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Arcsquad12 posted:Sega to demand they give up the IP.
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Sep 22, 2020 23:48
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So tell Microsoft to buy Sega next, got it.
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Sep 23, 2020 00:12
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Ahh, the "flamethrower approach" explains a lot. I figured that allowing almost every NPC to die at any time was a major design decision right from the start, or otherwise it would be impossible to execute in a game with so little dev time. Having not played any other Obsidian title, I didn't know it was a quality they're famous for.
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Sep 23, 2020 01:30
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The exact moment that I realised that F4 with a crushing disappointment after New Vegas was when the game absolutely forces you to kill Kellogg when you meet him. They made a bit of headway with making you understand his motivations in the quests before but when you meet him your only options are "time to die" in four different variants
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Sep 23, 2020 03:32
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For me it was the quest with the DJ, seemingly always ending in violence.
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Sep 23, 2020 04:04
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The DJ quest is the worst for taking one of the game's best characters and replacing his charm with an awful radio personality voice. Nervous Wreck Travis is amazing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho9WfuMo39E Arc Hammer fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Sep 23, 2020 |
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Sep 23, 2020 04:20
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See, if it was a FNV quest you'd make him more nervous, replace him with the angry assholes who are plants with different style music or force the psuedo Russian dude to somehow turn the radio station into a Happy Dude scam quest while drinking from the skull of said DJ.
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Sep 23, 2020 04:27
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I got mad when my character realized they had been frozen for 200 years but was still asking people if they had seen a missing baby recently. Because obviously there’s no way a lot of time had passed since then.
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Sep 23, 2020 04:38
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Father is certainly one of the more blander place holder villains of the franchise. President Eden was dumb, but he had a killer VA.
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Sep 23, 2020 04:46
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"why did you kidnap, murder and replace people with Synths?" Father: "You wouldn't understand" It's like they decided a synth plot required replacement for the cool tension that provides (synth hater Danse is a synth himself is a Good Plot), but then later in development decided the institute would be a morally grey, logical faction and couldn't reconscile the two so they just threw that line in as a band-aid. You compare this to the complex motivations of Caeser that allow a criminally insane sociopathic fascist to be, at least, a thought-worthy choice for control of the Mojave. His speech on Hegelian Dialectics is excellent and catches you off guard when you go to The Fort ready to meet cartoony video game evil.
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Sep 23, 2020 05:47
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I think everyone can agree the writing in 4 was extremely bad.
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Sep 23, 2020 05:48
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BurritoJustice posted:You compare this to the complex motivations of Caeser that allow a criminally insane sociopathic fascist to be, at least, a thought-worthy choice for control of the Mojave. His speech on Hegelian Dialectics is excellent and catches you off guard when you go to The Fort ready to meet cartoony video game evil. I was expecting a blood gargling psychopath (more in the Legate Lanius vein) but I meet Caesar and he's a somewhat soft-spoken nerd utilizing a flawed interpretation of history and philosophy to justify his atrocities and it was just so very real. Made it all the more satisfying when I introduced his thesis to the antithesis that was my cowboy repeater.
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Sep 23, 2020 05:59
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Wicked Them Beats posted:I was expecting a blood gargling psychopath (more in the Legate Lanius vein) but I meet Caesar and he's a somewhat soft-spoken nerd utilizing a flawed interpretation of history and philosophy to justify his atrocities and it was just so very real. Made it all the more satisfying when I introduced his thesis to the antithesis that was my cowboy repeater. Yeah I personally cripple his head with a spear (even a God-King can bleed), stab him to death with a knife (Et tu, brute?) and then cannibalize his corpse for the sweet Meat of Champions perk. Imo the canon ending is the courier eating all the heads of factions and running Vegas themselves
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Sep 23, 2020 06:25
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXlhIPThAoQ
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Sep 23, 2020 06:31
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUYuGNpOk5U&t=23s BurritoJustice posted:"why did you kidnap, murder and replace people with Synths?" Bethesda's narrative control is really lacking, leading to some really incoherent ideas getting made when they should really be left on a cutting room floor somewhere. See also the  idea that the PC is really a synth.
Mooktastical fucked around with this message at 07:52 on Sep 23, 2020 |
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Sep 23, 2020 07:45
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BurritoJustice posted:The exact moment that I realised that F4 with a crushing disappointment after New Vegas was when the game absolutely forces you to kill Kellogg when you meet him. They made a bit of headway with making you understand his motivations in the quests before but when you meet him your only options are "time to die" in four different variants Don't you reveal his motivations after you kill him?
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Sep 23, 2020 07:46
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I think Fallout 4 is mostly fine, narratively. SEAN!!! and the Institute don’t even really need valid reasons, scientists doing horrible genocidal things because they can is hardly an unworn trope, nor is it one particularly out of step with actual history. Rolling up on a dude in a standoff with his synth replacement was a really effective and memorable random encounter, too. That in itself more or less justified the vague reasons for the project. It’s just creepy. They at least did a lot better job with giving all the factions pretty significant flaws. Something they had to learn after NV knocked it out of the park.
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Sep 23, 2020 08:02
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PC being a new even more advanced synth with more human emotions would have been really cool.
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Sep 23, 2020 08:54
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