A bard/artist game that really makes use of the creative potential of music/painting. A great example of a “tech demo” of what I’d like is the magic system in Tchia. You got a ukulele that you can play super freely (possibly the most realistic thing if you don’t play it irl), but depending on what notes you play, you unleash different spells (kinda like in the old Zelda games with the ocarina).
I would absolutely love if the creative spell freedom of Magicka (or Fictorum) was combined with the freeform instrument play of Tchia.
You have some items that are not lost upon death (either by them being special and “blessed” or by you paying some in game gold to insure them (costing you every time you die), but everything else? On your corpse, ready to be taken by the nearest player and even humanoid enemy. More than once have I seen a lich just grab some of my stuff and cackle off back into the dungeon.
Aside from being able to lose stuff on death, there are actual Thievery skills ranging from sneaking to pickpocketing and lockpicking (for stealing from player homes or when you unearth treasure chests). There is a “safe overworld” but many popular private servers have removed that. You might go about your daily business to grab some stuff from the bank teller and next thing you know, a grandmaster thief took your precious sword from your backpack (there are a lot of skill checks involved depending on how many possible witnesses there are (player and NPC), if the thief is invisible, how heavy the item is and such).
I really hope people don’t get over this just because Unity went “we’re sorry we got called out for trying to screw you”. Unfortunately, like with how little effect the Reddit blackout had, I fear most will just accept it because Unity is what they’re already used to.
Well that sure is an article I never expected to read.
But I also think Jagex should have given it a more firm “No”. Or at least a “Please don’t”. Depending on how long it takes to grind mining and what the potential reward is, I can see one or two people going for this without having their appendages removed for actual medical reasons.
Fair point. I would agree to say there should be a healthy middle ground. I think coming across theme park-like spectacle around every corner would remove a lot of immersion and most authenticity (specifically trying not to default to “realism” because then we’d specifically want 99,999% of areas to be lifeless rock) not only from Starfield but many many games. Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Red Dead Redemption and the Metal Gear series would be incredibly different games, if it was just from one action sequence to another and then a beautiful story cutscene immediately and with only loading screens separating them from each other.
I guess I’m trying to say that immersion into and attachment to a game is increased if you give opportunity for (or sometimes force) the player to calm down. Red Dead 2, for example, does this masterfully by its generally slow and deliberate pace for most actions (cooking steak by actually making you hold the meat over fire for a couple seconds, making you walk/ride for long passages to get somewhere even during missions, etc.) and by sprinkling in quite a number of relaxing quests, like watching a movie with your girlfriend, in a game that’s mainly known for shooty tooty cowboy action.
To wrap up that wall of text, I guess I’ll see if the ratio of interesting tidbit for every dull landscape is too low for me in Starfield once I get my hands on it c:
Update: Game’s good, if your expectation was “Space game made by Bethesda”. I like it and am very happy with the amount of barren planets for every lush world. Sure, they lack the “discover flora and fauna” activities but there’s still plenty fun stuff to do.
I haven’t played Starfield yet. That being said, I think I will enjoy most planets being rather dull (as long as you still occasionally have reason to go there). I very much love the stance of “When everything/everyone is remarkable, nothing/noone is.” One of the bigger reasons (aside the gameplay usually not being quite to my liking) why I don’t play MMOs anymore is, because about every MMO culminates in 80% of the people wearing “the armor of fabled legends” and being “Slayer of Demonlord and Demigod Sckholzhlak”.
Thanks for the post. I’m happy that it’s being worked on, but I have no expectations. Not even the expectation that it gets released.
But if it releases and is decent at conveying that special World of Darkness feeling, I’m ready to forgive quite a number of technical flaws (after all, Bloodlines 1 is littered with technical problems and still the most amazing vampire RPG).
Please don’t apologize for the tangent. It’s giving me high hopes that I’m going to like the game despite the flaws and (probably mostly legit) criticism of reviewers.
Does anyone remember Driver on the, I think, PS1? I mean the tutorial wasn’t awful because it’s irrelevant but because it’s notoriously difficult to beat.
My man, that’s so not funky of you! If you skedaddle into this far out place called internet, you have to expect to come across new terms that are slammin and radical to some people. Instead of giving them hairy eyeballs and going “No can do”, how about you say “Word, brother”? Every generation invents its own gnarly slang and that’s pretty fly, actually. Like, what makes your slang groovy and theirs bogus?
You can be pretty sure that they have legalese in the eula that says that your right to use the software expires with non-use.
It’s not even in legalese. I’m on my phone right now and thus have no motivation to look through a couple EULAs but I did read the interesting parts of a handful of software EULAs. A couple straight up state that they can revoke your access for any reason (usually followed by “including x, y, z”). And especially for multiplayer games, I understand why you would prefer your wording as such instead of having to list and define every “bad behaviour” like cheating, cracking the game, being an asshole to the community (including the moderators), etc.
The decision makers at Ubisoft, I imagine, just went ahead and said “How about we take this ‘for any reason’ to the absurd? If just 1% of the deleted accounts is remade and buys their games again, we make a lot of free money.”
A game with a truly completely fluid magic weaving system where you can casually levitate spoons around the corner and then liquify that spoon into a pool of metal and finally having a spoon-elemental emerge. Magicka comes really close, but even there you have pre-defined spells with specific effects in addition to the “3 stone 1 fire 1 arcane” stuff. I can’t just magically slap on a conjured knife onto my fire elemental.
Bonus points if the magic system is gesture-based like in Arx Fatalis.