I’ve played this briefly when it launched, but was annoyed that for people playing solo the map outside your bases fully resets every time you save and load, I’d prefer if the areas I cleared of the fog would stay cleared. I get that in a multiplayer setting it’s better to reset because then everyone has the same opportunities to get loot/xp, but my map-clearing goblin brain was disappointed.
Unless they’ve changed it, but last I’ve heard there were no plans for that.
Other than that it was a lot of fun already at EA launch, probably got even better by now.
When I first started playing, when lore was just a small thing you could piece together by reading bits of scrolls and journals scattered around the world, I theorized that The Shroud was keeping the world trapped in stasis. That’s why, no matter how much you changed, it’d always reset back to its original state after you left the area for 30 minutes (or logged out and back in again).
The Flame Altars kept The Shroud out, so you could enact permanent change near them. And your own Flameborn soul ensured nothing changed while you stuck nearby. But no changes would stick anywhere else in the world.
Of course, now there is tons of new lore in the game and my theory is practically debunked. But it’s still my little fan theory. I’m hoping that the final game will have an endgame plot to rid the land of The Shroud permanently. But I’ve been playing so long now, I’m kind of used to it perpetually being around and I’m not all that concerned with its tenacity now.
This looks pretty amazing, but it also looks huge, and for a game this big I would need assurances that I won’t lose my progress if it leaves early access. Have the devs said anything about their completion timeline? I’ve never played anything in early access, because I frankly don’t trust devs to respect my time. Thoughts?
I haven’t heard anything specific from the developers about wiping gameplay for a final product, but I will say that I’ve been playing since it released and I’ve never once had my progress wiped. The devs have been pretty good about upgrading your progress to match the current build so you don’t need to start over. Even with radical changes, your base building is left untouched.
A friend and I spent weeks building a massive pyramid and temple on an empty hill once. One day, we logged in and found that a new village had been added to the game, near the top of that hill. Our base was completely untouched; everything we changed in our build area stayed the same.
It was weird to see a village spawned right up to our build area, then get cut off right at the border. But we were glad to see that our progress was left untouched.
Even stuff like XP and leveling has been progressing instead of resetting. I maxed out my character’s level and gear and spent months just exploring the game and building stuff, not worrying about character progression. Then when the latest zone unlocked for exploration, I noticed I could level up even higher and upgrade even more abilities in my skill tree. None of my progress was reset for the new zone.
Heck, even with a formally maxed out character, the new zone was surprisingly challenging and I had to work to progress my character’s stats and equipment even more in order to survive there.
The helicopter is a helicopter. After about a week, it arrives and if it spots you, it follows/observes you for nonspecific reasons.
The helicopter is also extremely loud, drawing zombies from a huge distance to you. The best way to deal with it is by being inside, so it doesn’t spot you. Then it’ll just fly around and not do much.
it's a random event that happens sometime in the beginning of any new game — in story, it's a military black hawk helicopter flying over the Knox County area looking for survivors.
The effect in-game is that the zombies in the world all gather around to follow the noise source, which controls and drives a gigantic crowd of zombies around where you're at. It can be very overwhelming, especially when you're just starting out and don't have much by way of structures built.
It’s a random event that spawns. I believe in lore it’s scientists or reporters or something. The only effect really is that if you’re outside the Helicopter follows you and all the noise calls Zombies to your location. I’ve seen a few mods that add different helicopter types though
Karateka, along with everything else Jordan Meschner did following it, starting the Prince of Persia series.
It’s a nice evolution of personal style.
I’ve more or less dropped out of mainstream gaming so have no idea how the more recent Prince of Persia games play, nor if he has any involvement… but anyone who knew the original games should understand that these games did something foundational with movement and interface, helping the player to feel involved in the action.
the last prince of persia Meschner directly worked on was Sands of Time, which is imho well worth playing.
the other 3d Prince of Persias by ubisoft upto two thrones are still good games, but they lost a bit of the 1001 nights feel. The darker parts where there in sands of time, but warrior within goes all in on dark and edgy and just loses a bit of that timeless flair and is very much a mid 2000s game.
can’t talk about ubisofts prince output after two thrones, they never found their way into my collection.
So I did a class on the art of the video game and MoMA (museum of modern art) has a number of them in their collection. There is even a Wikipedia article on it. Wikipedia Article
Eve Online and The Sims are excellent additions. But they are not RPGs.
I would personally include VTMB or Deus Ex, but from a broader perspective probably one of the Ultimas (6 or 7 are considered the best I believe) would be more appropriate.
Don’t play jRPGs, but from my understanding FF7 is considered the “best in genre” release.
Of course they are role-playing games, you completely assume the role of a character in another world, even with stat sheets. What kind of role-playing game is Deus Ex, where you play a pre-defined character in a pre-defined plot? The Masquarade is certainly a janky fan favourite, but hardly revolutionary. CRPGs made a shift, from being tabletop simulators and dungeon crawlers (with MOMA contenders like Rogue, Wizardry, or as you suggested Ultima) to games about narrative manifolds. Disco Elysium would be my pick.
With Deus Ex you definitely can play very different characters with a broad spectrum of personalities and narrative decisions. Although I do agree that an argument can be made it’s not an RPG.
Eve is a sandbox MMO and The Sims is lifeim, don’t really see how they are RPGs.
Very few RPGs execute the role playing component so well as VTMB IMO.
EVE is described by its publisher as an MMORPG and yeah, you have stats and individual ressources and interact with the world and other players. You play a character, a role, the very definition of a role-playing game. Same with The Sims, but offline for yourself and less geopolitical. RPGs are not only games where you directly control a single character or a group of characters and kill stuff, and sometimes pick a lock or something.
My current favorite is Tetris Plus, the versus mode with the little professor guy trying to get the treasure while a spiked ceiling keeps falling is fun. When one player fills 2 or more lines it adds random junk to the other player’s board.
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