warframe used to be. but it’s near-impossible now to start & get through even the first major ‘holyshit’ moment without having it at least partially spoiled before hand.
TBF, Warframe was far from a free-to-play tier experience, at least back when I played it. The Second Dream is still my favorite story quest in any game I’ve ever played
Seconding this. It’s really an exception to the rule in every way. Pretty much an exception to every rule really for better or worse, the game barely tries to be liked or to even make itself comprehensible.
You have warframes, the tenno, flying wings that attach to your character in space and in the open worlds, capital ship combat, the necromechs, the hoverboards, fishing, rougelike world, pets, soon also the protoframes with their AK-47s, an insane story involving truly Kojima-esque named characters like The Man In The Wall and maybe gay love(?) and some character choices like the one with the hole for a face, bird, or brutalism.
You don’t even have to play it multiplayer either. You can solo just about everything.
Such a lousy multiplayer game though. It was designed to give the better player handicap so their lead only increased over time, since you were awarded with more lemmings for the next level if you won the previous one.
Baldur’s Gate 3. Hands down. Red Dead Redemption 2 is probably number 2. That said, I have more hours in World of Warcraft than every other game combined. It was an entire lifestyle for a few years back in the day. But WoW was good because of the people, not because of the gameplay.
I always felt like the game was originally never meant to be an open-world game, it’s as if they were going for a mission-to-mission corridor kind of game and wrapped up a world around it to walk around in at a later phase. And many things in the game actually reinforce that idea.
I played the game at launch and the game was absolutely infested with stupid and annoying bugs, so eventually I just skipped all side stuff and just wrapped up the main story, I think that was about half-way through. Back then the open-world most definitely felt like an afterthought.
No events were happening in the world, there were entire parts of the city that were dead and empty. There were even areas blocked off by doors that were “locked” and implied there was something behind it, but some of those places I could just clip through and fall through the world because there was literally nothing behind the door.
There were few things that made it seem like an actual living world, NPCs were just wandering aimlessly, doing nothing. Just making a cool looking area and then dropping a load of copy/paste NPC clones in there doesn’t make a good open-world. If you comitted a crime the police would just spawn behind you, wherever you were. While in contrast some of the story areas seemed more detailed and have more “scripted” things happening, which is part of why I think the game wasn’t originally open-world.
Gameplay wise it was not that special either, gunplay was okay, melee felt quite unsatisfying, and outside of combat there was practically nothing to do other than just driving around. The choices you make at the beginning of the game don’t ever felt like they mattered, like they make it appear it’s a huge backstory thing that would play a role throughout the game. Nope, after the first 15 minutes it’s never mentioned again. The whole cutscene thing with Jackie after the intro feels like it was supposed to be actual gameplay, but was just cut out and changed to a cutscene to skip time.
Also the skill tree barely mattered, there were even skills like being able to breathe underwater longer, even though there wasn’t any underwater content, aside from one Judy mission I believe (which I didn’t get because she wasn’t accessible as a romance option to my character).
The only saving grace of this game was that parts of the story and characters were somewhat interesting, I liked the concept and style of the game. But it felt like a bad game when it came to actual gameplay. And some characters barely got any time to actually become interesting enough to care about.
I’ve been trying to get back in the game a couple of times, but it often just feels so lifeless and lacks any depth.
I always felt like the game was originally never meant to be an open-world game, it’s as if they were going for a mission-to-mission corridor kind of game and wrapped up a world around it to walk around in at a later phase.
That’s my take on it too. The story they wanted to tell does not mesh well with an open world game, but since the people loudly wanted something like “RDR 2 but Cyberpunk” they felt obliged to attempt to shoehorn it in.
The whole cutscene thing with Jackie after the intro feels like it was supposed to be actual gameplay, but was just cut out and changed to a cutscene to skip time.
Completely agree. I think having you play through that part would have made a huge impact on how you connect with Jackie. Maybe they felt it would have pushed the Keanu introduction too deep into the game?
I’ve been trying to get back in the game a couple of times, but it often just feels so lifeless and lacks any depth.
They’ve added some touches to the open world, but I think it was too fundamentally broken to be easily patched. The new skill tree from 2.0 is actually good though and I think the combat is pretty fun in its current state, even without going to mods.
Maybe they felt it would have pushed the Keanu introduction too deep into the game?
I was thinking that too. I think during development it might’ve shifted, since I think Keanu originally wasn’t in the game, and they wanted to make him part of the game quite early on.
I would’ve liked if they had extended the Jackie chapter and moved the Silverhand arc to a later act. It would’ve meant that people would just be dropped in the game and let them explore the world carelessly before the story kicks up to next gear. But they probably realised that the game wasn’t good enough to pull off the open-world part, so they decided to get on with the main story right off the start.
Could be, could be. I think your suggestion would make for a better game with less conflict between what the main story is saying and what the game is presenting in the open world. Having the story emphasize how fast V is dying, only for the player to then fuck around with car races and random merc contracts and whatnot really doesn’t work all that well as far as immersion goes.
Jackie’s death would have also been much more impactful if we’d have spent all that time with him playing through those six months.
There is no chance it wasn’t meant to be an open world. The witcher 3 was a very successful open world they made.
Also, CP77 actually is in the style of elden ring that was praised for it, but CP77 came long before it. Most critiques of CP77 missed that part because the game doesn’t throw it at your face.
I think the “breath underwater” perk in a game with literally no missions where you need to touch water except one - where you have a divesuit anyways - is the best example of how shallow the game is.
I played launch version which had it. I didn’t unlock all perks this time around. There really isn’t a major diff between launch and current when it comes to the things discussed in my post except for the insane number of bugs removed.
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