Disco Elysium, such interesting and complex world building beneath the drunken detective murder mystery. Shame ZA/UM ruined everything with the devs and we probably won’t get anything else out of it.
Nah, Fromsoft has great vibes. But the worldbuilding and story is all deliberately obscured because of Miyazaki’s love of sci-fi he couldn’t properly read. That makes it a trove for obsessives but it can’t really be called good.
It’s definitely good and it is done in a way that can only be done in video games. Too many video games depend on passive exposition instead of finding actual lore in the world.
Do you consider it being “spoonfed” to you when you read a book and the plot and everything is just written down?
Do you consider it positive that you have to “work for it” if every fifth word is written in Chinese and you have to translate them?
Making it hard to understand does not make it good. Making it easy does not make it bad. Is there an aspect of it you like that isn’t just that it’s hard to understand? Because that’s all you mentioned.
Right, so if making the plot and lore obvious in a book is fine, it’s also fine in a game. Using pejoratives like “spoonfeeding” criticises this without giving any reason.
From games are particularly bad because most of the lore is on item descriptions that are often themselves locked behind random drops and easily missed questlines. This is not good world building, this is purposefully obscure world building. People mistake “hard to put together” for quality, but it’s the opposite - making this stuff harder to get makes it worse, because players are less likely to get it! If you feel too communicate the lore to most players, that’s not good!
I hope you don’t mean Baldur‘s Gate when you say Larian and BioWare. edit: downvotes seem to forget that the Forgotten Realms worldbuilding wasn’t done by the licensed games.
Anachronox always stood out to me, really underrated game. I’m not sure about particulars since it’s been so many years, but the combination of the graphics style, the script and the humor in it, the characters and the design of the world all fell together really well, along with the great sound design and music. It felt authentic.
They write so much shit down in making the games, but the player barely gets to scratch the surface with what they actually present in-game. This is actually really awesome because it lets you piece it all together without straight up telling you every detail.
I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted. I don’t think I ever got so invested in figuring out a story than with Elden Ring. I thoroughly enjoyed following each character’s progression as they all head for the tree. I’m still bummed that I stalled out in the DLC because of the stupid commander Gaius fight. Game was cake up until his gatekeeping ass. Fuck that guy… Someday I’ll feel like trying again.
Underrated because the game itself was often kind of lacking in terms of solid foundational RPG systems…
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura
Pretty good attempt at putting a Middle Earth type world ahead a few hundred years in the midst of an Industrial Revolution.
Really thoughtful stuff like the labor exploitation of certain races like orcs, with quests like a half-orc you can help start a labor union or help the shop boss shut down the nascent union.
Mass Effect completely blew me away when it came out. Loved the overall lore about the Reaper threat and how the different species were connected to each other.
Horizon: Zero Dawn was also great in that regard, and the world felt really well put together, even though the lore wasn’t quite as deep.
343 hired people that hate Halo when they were developing Halo 4. I believe it was Frank O’Connor that said this himself in a video interview around that time. 343 literally could not wait to make Halo into something it was not. They tried for three games and each failed spectacularly. They failed so badly that their studio reputation had become so bad they needed to rebrand as “Halo Studios” to trick consumers into buying their next game.
Now that 343 has destroyed Halo’s future, theyre going to destroy its past. As George Orwell said “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” By remaking Combat Evolved and changing that game, they can distort the playerbase into thinking it was always supposed to be that way.
343 is literally attempting to come in and add new additions to the Mona Lisa painting. Or chiseling new stuff onto the David sculpture. Literal vandalism. The original was already perfect, and only needed a visual upgrade. CE Anniversary did that so badly they need to do it again, but seem convinved it is impossible to make a new Halo game without sprint or other features that mean level geometry and bullet speeds need fundamental redesigns.
In case you couldn’t tell, I have a lot of contempt for 343. They could not have mishandled such a monumental franchise any worse. They ruined one of my favorite franchises, and it was literally so easy for them not to.
In CE Anniversary, they reused a lot of Halo Reach assets and generally destroyed the art style of the original game.
In what they have shown of Campaign Evolved (actually comically stupid name), they have added Sprint (which hilariously their own gameplay showcases that sprint causes the player to miss a music cue that Martin O’Donnell specifically placed), removed Health Packs in favor of recharging health, removed the tree that prevented the Warthog from being used to fight the two hunters completely trivializing the fight, and they reused a lot of assets from Halo Infinite as well, which I really hope are placeholders but I fear they are not. Also the forerunner tech is too clean and shiny.
From just 13 minutes of gameplay, I already see a lot of problems.
After playing the story through a few times, it’s hard to actually stay invested in it anymore, I also did all side quests one run too, and I’m not keen on repeating that. However, 2077 is the only game where I will start it up just to drive around and listen to some music, whether in game or something I pick myself, and then just turn it off. Usuallt for 30-45 minutes. And I played many of the GTAs and all but the first Saints Rows. But only 2077 will I drive around just for the hell of it.
Yeah, that is a great classic example. There’s a lot of environmental storytelling so you can get an idea of what’s going on, and what it is is very interesting, but it doesn’t get in the way of the game or its story.
This one is it for me. The game really does so much with so little. The reality of the game is that it is a roughly linear sequence of closed levels (with some hub levels thrown in) that feels like a cohesive, connected world. It’s absolutely incredible!
Yes, I go back and replay the game every few years. Its grittiness is definitely a bit silly to me now, but when I was a kid, I was enchanted by it. While the Jensen games did not have the charm of the OG, the first was still decent, and it’s a shame Square Enix drove it into the ground with the second Jensen title.
DX:MD is one of the most fun stealth games, it’s just unfortunate they put vent shafts everywhere. Absolutely tragic what Square Enix did with the preorder bullshit.
bin.pol.social
Gorące