Travel is gonna become boring if you have to travel the same road multiple times in the course of the game even if you have a bunch of cool stuff along that road. Eventually, I won’t give a shit about that stuff since I’ve seen it a million times. So I would hope there is still some kind of fast travel to go between places I have already been if the world is super big. Otherwise it’s just gonna feel like you’re padding the game for time to inflate a 10 hour story to take 40 hours to finish.
I think the better way to help fix this issue is random encounters, spawns, and a world that changes as the game moves along.
Moving along the same road can be made interesting if different things are happening every so often as you come through. New friendly encounters, new fights with different enemies, maybe randomly spawning treasure or scripted puzzle sequences that can appear dynamically around the whole world. Add to that a world that becomes modified by story events, maybe that road gets blocked and a different passage opens up that takes you to the same end destination, but with a new path and things to explore.
It's not an unsolvable problem, but it is something that goes by the wayside often.
One thing to consider too is scheduled events. Imagine a couple towns get together and throw a fair along a route that connects them, and you get to see celebrations and games and vendors who might sell trinkets that are hard to track down otherwise. Perhaps the local monarch goes on a hunt with the massive party of servants and knights that might entail, with different practices for different cultures. A band of cultists clears an area for several days leading up to their yearly ritual. It’s migration season for a certain species of animal/monster. There are so many possibilities!
Even just vendors passing through can be made more interesting. Do they carry their wares via backpack or cart? Are they being attacked by bandits? Wild animals? Are they trying to smuggle goods or services somewhere?
It all has to be programmed of course, which is the main holdup on what makes it so hard to flesh out those parts of the world.
I do also see weight in the idea that, past a certain point, traveling is just boring, especially if the only thing of importance is the Main Story Quest. Travel is also often boring in real life too but we can tune it out, or find little ways to pass the time and entertain ourselves during the more mundane moments. We’re not frequently afforded that luxury in games. When you’re playing a game and dealing with the downtime going from point A to B, often there is literally nothing to do except hold down the movement keys and deal with the occasional path change/obstacle.
The point of games is to be engaging, and if there’s nothing to do while traveling but look at the scenery and surroundings it will eventually get boring. Even if the travel gets interrupted occasionally for an encounter, I think it’s arguable to say that the content is literally not travel anymore and in fact papering over a bad travel system (if the only thing interesting is the stuff you find that you have to stop and take care of). Adding more unique/transient stuff along routes is only half of the battle; work has to be put in to make traveling enjoyable in and of itself for players to want to do it instead of skip it.
But as always, the best solution to our problem is to simply add more trains.
To add to this, DD1 has quite a number of NPC's that travel between regions and you can come across them. As you progress through the game their patterns and locations change.
I actually am ambivalent on the latter mechanic as it really makes it a pain sometimes, but it still has lots of ways that it can work well.
Depends on the reason for traveling. If you are headed down the road to a goal and keep getting sidetracked by random encounters in a way that is distracting you from the thing you want to do then they just make travel tedious.
It all comes down to why am I traveling and why are encounters on the road more engaging than the reason for being on the road in the first place.
And for the record, Itsuno does say that he thinks fast travel is “convenient” and “good” when done right.
Based on Dragon’s Dogma 1’s use of Ferrystones, as well as this mechanic returning along with oxcarts in the sequel, I think this director understands that there needs to be a balance. It’s good when it’s both properly implemented and has a purpose. You’re right that nobody wants to run up and down the same roads countless times, but it’s up to the devs implementing limited fast travel to make sure you won’t have to. Then it’s up to the player to decide whether fast travel is worth it for any given situation. Knowing when to use your fast travel and how to maximize it is a skill that you develop and should be rewarded for mastering.
But it also needs to have a purpose. In more arcadey games, I don’t like worrying about resources like that. But in more grueling games like Dragon’s Dogma, where the journey is often a very intentional part of the gameplay loop if not the main challenge itself, it fits right at home.
So the CEO makes a shit decision, quits and leaves with his millions of dollars and now a bunch of employees get to lose their job. Capitalism is so disgusting.
I watched two of the three, and really enjoyed them. Sure, I'd much rather see more gameplay, and they didn't do anything to sell me on the game itself, but they were enjoyable nonetheless
Give it to him now? Like, I know he’s doing his own thing with death stranding, but for me a Kojima story and gameplay might be the best way to continue the meta-matrix world post resurrections. Doesn’t have to be an MMO.
I mean, Hideo Kojima tells stories that are a little convoluted and has layers of metaphor in them… Kinda like The Matrix, so he’d have been a perfect fit.
Did anyone else know the reason Morpheus is “reborn” in an odd way in Resurrection is because he canonically dies in the MMORPG? I remember wanting to play that as a kid…probably didn’t miss much though.
Well the Wachowskis have said in the past that The Matrix Online is canon as they wanted to hand the story of The Matrix over to the fans/players to do with it as they wished. They approved of Morpheus’ death in the game so I suppose that’s why it’s kinda vague in Resurrections as to how he died. Either because of the events of the game where he was killed by an assassin or simply from old age.
As far as how he was reborn in the movie he was basically “coded in” to a “Matrix Modal” by Neo and the Machines. Resurrections Morpheus was like a hybrid of Morpheus and Agent Smith. The whole explanation was the machines needed Neo to kind of remember but not quite fully remember that he was the One because it generated a lot of power for them combined with keeping Trinity in close proximity. So the Machines were kind of constantly dangling a carrot in front of Neos face. They also had to keep constantly changing his DSI (Digital Self Image) so the humans would have a hard time finding him.
So the Morpheus in Resurrections wasn’t the “real” morpheus but a program that had Morpheus’ “code”. that’s why he didn’t have a body in the real world because unlike Neo and Trinity there was no body to put him in.
I certainly thought I wanted to play Enter the Matrix but as Neo, but I felt Path of Neo jumped the shark with things like MC Escher, fire ants, and giant Smith.
And these are just a few off the top of my head that I’ve played.
Although to be fair, I guess we could just as easily reel off a list of garbage equivalents, but I think the throwaway that licensed games suck is a misconception.
KOTOR is such an amazing game… I’ve replayed it recently hoping it would ruin my childhood recollection of it being god tier. It didn’t, it’s still an amazing game after all these years
I wouldn’t put the LEGO games on that list. Traveller’s Tales just basically copy-pasted most games, to the point 3 were releasing within the same year.
If you’ve played one, you want to play another. There’s not a ton of gameplay differences between them, but that’s not what I play them for, I like the silly take on the story, the puzzles can be fun and satisfying, and the collectibles are fun to find.
If you’ve played one, you want to play another. There’s not a ton of gameplay differences between them, but that’s not what I play them for, I like the silly take on the story, the puzzles can be fun and satisfying, and the collectibles are fun to find.
LEGO games are the comfort food of games IMO, you know exactly what you’re getting and it’s satisfying.
Rushed games suck. Movie tie in games tended to be made with tight deadline and budgeting. On top of that, the developers were supposed to make a game of a movie that don’t exist yet.
Thankfully, the trend of making movie tie in games stopped.
The trend has stopped for modern films, but tons of releases are retroactively showing how it could have been done. Games that capture the creative intent of great films really well like pretty much any of the Alien games from the last decade, those terminator and robocop ones, even Dead by Daylight directly invokes specific director’s visions on characters, scenes, and even campy acting.
All of which are not rushed and who’s scope have appropriately matched their budget.
Usually. Enter The Matrix was one of the rare exceptions. That game genuinely slapped. The gameplay was crazy fun; it took all the slow-mo coolness of Max Payne and added wall-running, super jumps and martial arts. The combat was lots of fun, and the story was all written by the Wachowski’s to tie in with the second and third movie, including actual scenes that they filmed as part of the process. They took it really seriously, to them it was an essential part of the story.
Obviously the whole Matrix 2 & 3 saga has some problems, it’s not the Wachowski’s best work (how could it have been, they had a plot for one movie that they were told to expand into two), but the game is still a really fun entry in their ouvre.
A great game. Played it through till the end and we had great laughter.
Only downside is that the developers don’t plan on further developing the game.
Shame cause it has great potential and is unique. Wrote a bunch of things that I thought it lacked and maybe things that should be added to improve the game experience. How it looks now, they won’t be continuing to develop the game as its ‘done’. Only game breaking bugs are fixed ^^
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