Wormerine

Discussion here? Or in wider media?

I have been playing a bit of Spider-Man - it’s sort of really good? Spider-Man is doing very well a type of game I don’t care much for. All of it is decent - swinging, combat, stealth, open world activities. However, it is just an open world collectathon. I wish it had some more substantial narratively driven dungeons like Arkham Games. As it is, Spidey is heavily skewed toward open world box ticking, but at the same time it’s doing it very well. It’s like Pringles. One I start it up, I struggle to stop playing but after a gaming session I feel empty and a little bit sick. there is a something very disturbing about facial animation - Peter’s and MJ creepy smiles freak me out. I am also distracted by Thaos voicing Dr. Oc and many Edérs of the New York City.

Yup. Tried to play Gromrock2 couple times, and it just never continues. I really liked the original. Maybe the sequel is just too big. Grimrock1 had a comforting simplicity in just delving deeper and deeper into the dungeon.

It is! I could point to all the things it is not doing well, but it won't change how much fun I had and am having with this game. If there is one thing I would praise above anything else, is Solasta making D&D combat effortlessly engaging. The issue I have with every other D&D and D&D like RPG (Infinity Engine games, PoEs, BG3, Pathfinder) is that I find it difficult to connect with actual mechanics - you have layer of presentation, which doesn't communicate what is happening under the hood, and one needs to dive into combat log to figure out what is going on. Solasta's brief on screen dice rolls I found so... welcoming. They constantly tell me what I rolled, what my chances to hit are, how my damage in claculated without me having to spend time doing research. There is also a more immediate feedback - upcasting a spell and seeing an extra die provides feedback that a flat number simply can't provide. I think this is first D&D game that asks: "how can we well adapt the system" rather then "how can we make a game looking silimar to other games people like, and also make it D&D".

Nah, that’s pretty much the game. Pick a quest, follow the mark, smooth-shoot-shoot enemies, if there is choice to be made pick one. There are quests allowing for more approaches, but rarely anything that will impress an RPG veteran. Still, game is fun! It’s brief enough for the shallowness to become a chore (well, I thought DLCs made the game too long).

Any comparison to NV is a very surface level one. I think a better comparison would be Bioware title - multiple self-contained worlds that can be completed in any order and with couple outcomes to choose from. It’s a bit more complex then that but not by much.

Yup. Edit. One a side note, I recommend checking out the interviews they do one the podcast. Recently they did one with XBOX Studio boss, and earlier there was a very cool one with showrunner of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. All cool stuff. Well interviewed interesting people working on interesting projects.

Hopefully it will stay that way for a while, and Microsoft will keep indulging their teams after the honeymoon period finishes. Company owners disagreed . It is definitely nice, but no, not necessary.

An inXile D&D would be cool. Hopefully not the Torment. They tried once, leave it alone. Narrative ain’t your thing. If Bethesda was open to someone doing a Fallout game, inXile is a usual suspect as well.

Interview starts around 58 mark:

No kidding, I took couple days off Pentiment just to process what I have done in act1. I might get back to it tonight.

Usually it's textures (the higher the resolution the bigger they are), sounds etc. Raycevick made a good video on that subject. Why an Owlcat game take so much space though, I have no clue. Will it have full VO? 4k textures? It could be just the result of weaker optimisation then AAA titles.

It's been acknowledged by JS as an issue: https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/1592932677577244672?s=20&t=LQF6bkxhgjpdOZ_tjljiZw On a side note, the issue persist in later acts. I am here because a friend of mine who is in act2 has information of things yet to come. So be wary and avoid the feature until patched.

I think @MrBrownmight have meant the overall tone and shallow, quippy characters. I must say Chosen really try my patience on every playthough. When I criticised XCOM2 world map for being empty and shallow I didn't mean aliens talking at me everytime I enter it. WotC was a superb expansion though. Chimera Squad was fine for what I paid for it. As to Suns - I don't know, I am open to new mechanics, but I always found digital card games awkward. Even if mechanically sound it just feels to artificial for me. It is just one of those things that should stay in physical realm. I might pick it up on deep sale, but definitely not interested right now. Edit. About WotC. I have it installed for a while now, and am planning to do another playthrough. Thanks to Covid I became Trekkie and I have to say that extensive use of TGN cast made WotC even more cringy for me.

Uuu, you manage to do things that I didn’t.

I played a bunch more and finished act1. Ha! Nice to see Disco Elysium reputation put to good use. JS didn't gush over it for nothing. I failed every single one of those.... :-( Actual spoilers below so be weary:

Enjoying it as well, though only finished the first day. Went with workoholic Flanders. I find it rather natural that artist wouldn't want to anger church, as they tended (and still tend) to be major source of work. He has some ideas, but is careful when and to whom he voices them. The game already passed a very important quality test:

I suppose that is true. I am thinking of live performances - one performance of Hamlet or Beethoven will vary greatly from another but those are differences in actors/musicians interpretation, or characteristics of a venue rather then consumers participation. I can also think of some pieces of music with random element (pages can be played on any order) but that's more of an Avant Garde and still strictly in control of composer/performers. Thanks for the conversation.

Interactivity in a narrative is a funny thing - I do think I have been liking Obsidian's work more then the competition partially because at some point they managed to figure out how to incorporate player choice into the core of the narrative (I don't feel that way about BioWare games - I don't think watching those would be that much different then playing them). Your opening point, though, is very thought provoking. I do question, though, how much input players really have. I don't think player's input have transformative quality - everyone's experience of playing the game will be unique, but not different - in the same way people may take out different things from a book/film/music but they all experience the same thing. Is playing a game truly that much different then consuming other medium? I honestly, don't have a stance now. Will be thinking of it as I play.

Indeed. I expressed myself poorly. Original post edited. There is something I have been thinking for a while now and would be curious what you folks think. In previous post I suggested that if games learn to better tell stories it would be better as an artform. What I am asking myself is if storytelling is game's strength. While a lot of art does focus on some form of storytelling not all does. Music, for example, is mostly a non-narrative medium. Music CAN tell a story - Strauss' Symphonic Poems are an obvious example, and there are of course songs, which music is written to enhance usually already written poem. There are also Operas which have plot, but I think it is safe to say that if one judged those by the quality of their "writing" in a literaturaly sense they wouldn't have gained much acclaim. Most of music is plot free - it doesn't mean it's not expressive nor doesn't say anything, quite the opposite, but story, plot or settings are just not things music really benefits from due to its nature. What I am wondering is if gaming is similar. Sure good writing and nicely directed cutscenes can be compelling but is it really doing what games are best at? Isn't it how the game plays that is (and should?) be a primary way of communication? I think that while a well chosen theme for a game can make it easier to engage (the same way modern composers will often add titles these days which may/may not have actual relevance to pieces creation, in attempt to make it easier for the audience to connect with their piece) how much significance does a setting, theme or story really has? That line of thinking might of course lead to conclusion that games like Pentiment are bad as their way of communicating doesn't come from gameplay - though at the same time act of watching a game is still a unique experience, different from watching a film. So perhaps it's a bit more complicated as that - "old" arts (plays, writing, music, paintings) are much more focused though even in those one can see attempts to merge arts together. Perhaps games are just a melting pot of different artforms, and games can lean into whatever they find useful.

Or a real life scenario in general. Though I suspect it is mechanical flexibility which comes with fiction (edit. Read: fictional settings) that makes fiction (edit: them) so common. I think the trick is that if you base your game on history/part of real life you need to look at it's real life counterpart and then find a way to gamify it, rather then come up with mechanics and then slap a theme on it. Not that it is something not worth exploring - art is about communication, so I think games could only benefit from finding way to express new stories and concepts rather then adjusting the stories they tell to their gameplay they already came up with.

Elden Ring is even up for the best narrative... which leaves me rather confused. Don't get me wrong, I like the kind of storytelling FromSoftware has been using, but my impression has been that Elden Ring seems far less coherent then their previous titles.

Same. After reading some reviews I was worried that ascetic nature of the presentation will make it difficult to get into, but I was fully drawn in. It helps that as some raised on European history and an art degree at least a decent amount of stuff rings a bell, or it at least is conceptually familiar. It's been also much funnier then I expected. There are also a detail that I am wondering if I am getting it right - all titles refering to god/trinity (God, Lord, Christ) seem to be left blank and then filled in as if for players benefit. I am wondering if it's refering to a long tradition of not using God's name and the subsequent erasure of the tetragram from the written scriptures.

I think NV isn’t great in moral grey area stuff. It sometimes is, but a lot of choices feel difficult to justify.