Really I just miss games that are intensely and deeply “written”…Like Arcanum, Morrowind, or Disco Elysium. I want a game that is actually several books encased in game software. BG3 is close, but I want something even denser. I’ll be so gratified if Larian is on the same page.
I know what you mean. Disco was such a treat in that respect yeah. I love those kinds of literary games, where you can feel an author reaching out across the medium and actually trying to communicate something to you. Like there is a message in the game other than just supporting gameplay or engagement.
I thought you could already. I mean you can select your build and voice and genitals all independent of eachother. Not sure why they’d go back on that.
Always feel Talos Principle 1 and 2 deserve more praise than it gets.
Ignoring the complete insanity that this is from the Serious Sam developers: Talos Principle (1 in particular) is one of those rare puzzle games where things “make sense”. Mechanics are introduced and the vast majority (I want to say all, but it has been a minute) of interactions and “tools” come from that. Rather than “oh, but you see, if you had noticed the way this one picture on the wall looks you would have found the secret tool you needed” wanking.
And the story is interesting enough to motivate progress but not so vital that you feel bad about taking a day or two off before going back to the puzzle.
Baba Is You has some of the “ha, its a secret trick” nonsense but, by and large, is a similar vibe and approach to puzzle solving.
Any others you recommend? I enjoyed this and the witness, and love a story driven mystery game like obra dinn too but I really suck at physically using a controller so I can’t really do games where you have to have actual video game skills
The Witness is the other one that I’d compare then too. Other than this series and that game, nothing else of the same level comes to mind. There’s a DLC for TTP1 if you haven’t tried it. There’s also obviously the Portal series too.
Antichamber fits with these I think, and maybe Baba is You, though I only have like 15m in that so I can’t comment in how good it is. I think that’s pretty much it.
I agree, except for some of the bonus puzzles (particularly in 1) requires some out-of-the-box thinking, sometimes literally by breaking out of the puzzle you’re in taking puzzle pieces with you. All the basic puzzles I agree are straightforward, but some of the bonus tings require you to look for extra details that may not be part of the puzzle exactly. I think this is done particularly well in 1, as the story is about thinking for yourself so you have to start thinking about the puzzles in a different way. In 2 most of the bonus things are done exactly the same each level and you just need to figure out how to connect them to other things in the map. Usually they don’t require “breaking” the puzzles to complete, even though this is still possible and allows for other options to solve some puzzles.
Even those are generally “obvious” as level design makes it obvious there are interactables not inside a puzzle or that use tools that aren’t part of that specific puzzle. The narrative is what pushes you to think “… what if I take this out of the puzzle room?” but many puzzles outright teach you those skills with the kill fields.
As opposed to “You should have looked to the left while walking between these areas and realized that if you lined up the level geometry it would make an arrow”
I’ve been following this for years and I’m super stoked that it has a date… and it’s within a month!
Annoyingly it clashes with my end-of-year studies, but maybe I’ll leave it for a few weeks. I picked up South of the Circle on day one and it had some bugs and glitches that took the shine off the experience, even though that was brilliant too.
Harold Halibut and Still Wakes The Deep are top of my summer list this year.
I got overloaded by the puzzles in the first game, so I didn’t even consider the second. Yes, it iterated on interesting ideas around the blocks, but just after resolving one, I’d feel exhausted from the enormous sequence of movements and actions I’d need to do to get through the exit - and just be thrown into another mess of them. I really preferred something like Portal, where it’s just small executions of simple ideas that may require one act of ingenuity to use them right.
I also can’t really bring myself to care much about story in any game that’s so far post-apocalypse.
That’s fair, I got a little puzzle fatigue myself in the first game. I did find the story to be quite compelling, maybe it’s worth a watch instead of a play? Though I think that misses out on all the messages between other AI’s and terminals in the game, which add significant world building.
This is just my opinion and I don’t know if everyone will agree, but I found 2 significantly easier than 1. I 100%'d 2 and I think only one of the bonus puzzles really took me much time. I didn’t get the achievement for taking 20 or 30m, whatever it is, until one of the final bonus puzzles I was doing. You can play 2 without having completed 1 also, but knowing the story of 1 (and the DLC) does enrich 2. It might be worth a try.
(Your experience of 2 might be totally different. I love puzzle games and completed all of the bonus challenges of vanilla 1 and 2. I may have just thought 2 was easy from having experience or even that the puzzles clicked for me better. Just take any opinion of puzzle difficulties with a grain of salt. Everyone’s brain works differently.)
I love this series. They are puzzle games, but I’d say the biggest draw (at least for me) is the philosophy. The puzzles give you something to do on your journey, but they aren’t the real thing you take away from the games when you’re done.
That said, I found 2 much easier than 1. If you want challenging puzzles, the DLC for 1 is really where you want to look. All of this series is worth playing though. My biggest disappointment is we probably won’t get a 3 if I had to guess. I do hope we get other games that ask the player to think outside of the game though. I love philosophy, and this series prompts the player to think about so many good topics.
Funny thing is while I’m decent at platforming I’m terrible at pvp. The most fun I’ve had in pvp was a medic for my brother when he was a heavy in TF2. Has so much fun keeping him alive while he was mowing people down. Need to do that again some day…
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