Well, that’s the nice thing about using AI for this, she can have unlimited dialogue - as can anyone else in the game. You can talk to anyone and have full conversations with them, and they have a working memory too. Your companions have unique personalities and unique random backstories and even some character development.
Well, I guess Hip is a named character so she will have a fixed, lore-accurate backstory.
I didn’t realise you were an Anomaly enjoyer! I love that game too, between the mood and the atmosphere, the hunger/thirst/sleep system along with the FDDA animations and of course Alife I think Anomaly is one of the most immersive games for me.
I’ve actually been working on a mod lately that uses AI to produce dynamic dialogue for NPCs in Anomaly, which leads to even more immersion.
Immersion is tricky, because it is an incredibly subjective thing. At the end of the day, what immersion means (I think) is that the “veil” separating you from the game is incredibly thin and transparent. Think of it as wearing glasses: if a game is un-immersive the lenses are dirty and scratched. You can still see whatever is in front of you, but you’re constantly aware of the fact that you’re wearing glasses. An immersive game is like wearing perfectly pristine glasses: you forget you’re wearing glasses at all and can just take in what’s in front of you.
An immersive game to me is something that successfully manages to both suspend disbelief and sustain the illusion of a living world, letting you mostly forget that it’s a pre-programmed game you’re interacting with. I always found something like the STALKER games great for this, with their dynamic A-life AI scheduling really selling the whole living world feeling.
They’ve done it forever, it’s been part of their initial concept for ages. Lots of the actual old games on there (as the name Good Old Games is derived from) are pre-patched to work on modern machines without setup, often also including community patches if there are any.
I mean, I agree with you in principle - domain names can matter. I remember people were similarly concerned about lemmy.zip back when it launched since .zip links on the internet can be… not so great.
In this case though I don’t see it, I think indie-ver.se is a great name and super fitting.
I remember watching one of the early gameplay trailers for the first Division and thinking it looked like the coolest game ever. Wonder if third time is the charm for the series.
EDIT: trailer I was thinking about for those who haven’t seen it, E3 2013 trailer.. 13 years ago, fuck me.
I really hate the trope of having a mission around the 50-75% mark where you are stripped of all your gear and unlocked abilities. I know it must be popular because it keeps popping up in games but I just don’t enjoy it personally.
That’s part of it sure, but it just… doesn’t feel right. Someone else pointed out how it is almost an “alternate universe Max Payne 2” with how it feels narratively like a more follow-up to the first game than the second. It also just has a very different tone and style in the writing. It doesn’t have that Remedy vibe. Everything from the characters and main story to the TV bits, which feel very different compared to Lords and Ladies and Adress Unknown.
It’s by no means a bad game, and the action bits are awesome. It just doesn’t feel like a Max Payne game to me.
Remedy are doing a connected universe, kind of like the Marvel Cinematic Universe. People are calling it the Remedyverse. They’ve started blending their IPs into each other, even IPs they no longer own like Max Payne and Quantum Break (where they just change the names pretty much so “Alex Casey” becomes “legally distinct Max Payne”). It’s very cool and really comes to its head in Alan Wake 2, which really is enhanced quite a bit by playing the other Remedy games in order first.
Max Payne 3 isn’t bad at all - it’s a very tight 3rd person shooter. It’s just that it was made by Rockstar and not Remedy (Rockstar had bought the IP after Max Payne 2). So Max Payne 3 doesn’t really “feel” like a Max Payne game. It’s still a good game though, I just kind of wish it was independent of the Max Payne franchise.
Man, old paper magazine PC Gamer… Strong nostalgia overload. Getting a copy was always the highlight of the month, that era of like 1995-2009 was really the golden age of PC gaming.
It definitely is time for Max Payne! Well, unless you want to wait for the RTC Remix mod. And it’s the first step into the wonderful Remedyverse too, culminating in the fantastic Alan Wake 2!
Both MP 1&2 are honestly amazing, and they are very short games too so not really a huge commitment compared to some modern titles. The comic book style slideshow used instead of cutscenes was also ingenious as it has let the game age incredibly gracefully.
Do it! The story and writing is still great and the gameplay holds up surprisingly well for such an old game (not that it will feel modern, but it’s not a chore to play).