Diogo Ribeiro
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Posts posted by Diogo Ribeiro
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Another example is difficulty. Fallout 3 is relatively easier than Fallouts 1 and 2. ...But that ease should be no less irritating than the completely capricious crits that were part and parcel of the first two Fallout games.
So, the reasoning is what - if the originals were less than stellar in a given aspect, then there's no reason why Fallout 3 should be better in that regard? It's no less irritating, but it's equally appaling.
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That's what all us uglies tell ourselves years later after being rejected by a hottie or hotties. Let's us sleep better at night if we cana rrogantly calim to take the 'high road' making us 'better' than them all.
I'm not like that. I know I'm ugly, broken, scarred. Sometimes with a mean streak. And I'm not saying *I* would be a better choice for them, or anyone else for that matter. I'm the last person to consider a moral high horse. I'm speaking from experience - many of them had pretenders, nearly all of them cast aside for not complying to their notions of beauty and virility. And the ones that they did choose, abused them and left them without ever looking back. I know this because almost all of us lived in the same neighbourhood; it was common knowledge.
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Dumbest thing ever? Can't really say. I *do* remember, once, having a crush on this girl named Eleanor. Being criminally shy and lacking in self-esteem, I couldn't muster the courage to tell her this. I could've kept quiet about it. But oh no, I had to screw it up. And gloriously at that, by offering her a ring. Of course, not having the courage to talk to her about it extended into offering her a present. So I asked my best friend at the time to do it for me. According to him, she held it for a while, thought about it but ultimately told him to give it back to me. This resulted in a strained relationship of sorts, along with the usual mockery by other female peers. Oh well.
The epilogue was, when we met again a few years later, for some reason which I'll never understand, she was awfully nice. Told me I was "different" (probably because I no longer looked like an unkempt piglet). Talked to me for a long while. Then said goodbye, smiling at me in a way she had never smiled before.
Never saw her again. And unrelatedly, all the girls who laughed and scoffed at me trying to offer the ring are nowadays sad, bloated has-beens who had all their romantic dreams and notions shattered. Maybe from chasing after the usual suspects and not paying attention to the ugly, but romantic, ducklings who would have probably treated them much better.
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Installing a Console game... It is the PCification of consoles!
It's a natural step after the consolification of PCs.
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And its is. It's just not as good as it could have been.
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I hate it when a review contains major spoilers but doesn't bother to post a warning at the top.
From what I read at the beginning, there were no major spoilers in there, at least for people who have followed the game's development for a while. He does warn of spoilers on another page, though, when talking of certain quests.
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I think a minimalist action soundtrack approach would be best, with strong elements of ambiance.
Agreed.
I suggest Samba.
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Add me and it's uber-hot!
Because you'd sponteaneously combust just by looking at them, amirite?
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Random review generators are so 90's.
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Invisible War comes to mind as a good example, as it had areas lockdown your weapons usage for security reasons (which actually tied in neatly to the setting without ruining suspension of disbelief or breaking "immersion").
I'm going to disagree. I can't use my crowbar or baton because someone flicked the 'lock-down' switch built into it. That makes no sense.
Concept vs. implementation.
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You guys can still be friends, just wait a year till you dont care what **** is inside her.
Coarse, but strangely true.
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I suspect the game will be akin to those SQUIDs from Strange Days. Now we can all experience being a hot, sweaty female.
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Today I've been wondering if it's just my imagination or is newc0253 nicer and calmer than before.
Pot. Kettle. Black. And all that.
I don't think I'm nicer. Just too old to pop a vein at people who type furiously at me over the internet. I mean, I can disagree without being a douche. You're calmer as well; I remember you used to lash out a bit at others
So I guess today I realized some people tend to mellow out with age. +2 to Obvious Rolls
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Today I've been wondering if it's just my imagination or is newc0253 nicer and calmer than before.
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I thought the whole "[series] is dead" thing referred to nothing good being done with the franchise for x amount of time, not that nothing good was ever done with it.
The whole "[series] is dead" can be many things; I just went with my gut feeling on what he may have meant. My apologies to him if he meant otherwise, but still, he seemed to be using financial success as a measure of sorts.
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This is what I mean when I say there is no right (good design) answer, and that arguing doing something one way is more immersive* will never get anywhere. I just can't agree with the above. All games have rules that must be followed, these rules need to exist for the player, but they don't need to be known by the character. Far Cry 2 could have thrown in a line about how mercs never attack one another unless on the battlefield in order to give an in-universe explanation as to why buddies can't be harmed in certain situations, but I'm glad it doesn't. That stuff always feels like hand holding and it irks me.
Wouldn't a character question the existence of invulnerable entities in a gameworld that requires you to protect or, at least, not harm them? In any case, I could use the same logic to describle invulnerable NPCs - hand holding to prevent players from screwing a game. If that explanation had existed in FC2, I certainly wouldn't mind since it provides two things I enjoy in games - effective build up of the setting and no out of character explanation of game rules. And also probably for the same reason you dislike initial tutorial areas (*) - hand holding.
I think it's more important that a game allows us to protect a character we have an attachment to, than it is to make that protection necessary. In Silent Hill 4 the player has an unkillable companion, and the amount of damage she receives from your failure to protect changes the ending. In Silent Hill 2, the amount of time we spend with another unkillable companion, for whatever reason (to protect her, to stare at her like a creep) can potentially change the ending.Perhaps, but in retrospect, it also facilitates the reverse. Players who want to see a different ending just don't need to care about the damage she receives at all.
*God, I can't even go to some forums now because anything folks don't like is dismissed as destroying immersion. "Third person? But that's not immersive!" Blergh.I don't argue for immersion or realism, really. Never have, never will. Which is why I actually used quotes for immersion - it's a bloated, misunderstood term; yet, it's taken a hold of general consensus as some arbitrary rule games must abide to. I decided to go preemptive strike before someone threw that in to the mix. If anything, I argue for consistency in setting and game rules.
(*) Erm, at least I think it was you.
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You might as well as why a house/building/castle had to burn down at the end of almost all the 50s and 60s Horror movies.
Hey, don't diss those movies. That's the kind of inspiration Michael Bay drew from, you know. Something has got to explode and burn during a movie. He just took it one step further and made entire movies about things burning and exploding all the time.
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Fallout 3 is the salvation of the Fallout series. It is selling fantastically. Fallout was a dead series before it came out.
If you want to argue that it wasn't a huge commercial success at the time, that's fine; even if it falls on the twisted logic that, unless it becomes a market anomaly like Baldur's Gate, then no other cRPG was selling well at the time which simply isn't true. But if it was dead as you said, there wouldn't be any interest in reviving it. To put your Beatles example to better use, if Fallout hadn't turn a profit, you wouldn't have Fallout 3 right now.
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For the most part, players don't want to kill characters they feel empathy for.
And they also try to protect them from harm. Which becomes pointless when they can't be harmed. Where's the emotional connection there.
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Gah, no! IW was horrible in that regard. Why does some scabby little bar possess weapon-locking technology that the rest of the major corporations don't? Tarsus could have saved themselves a whole lot of trouble. If you're going to have an in-universe reason for no weapon zones then it better be good, like Elysium in Bloodlines, whereas IW is just all over the place. In Far Cry 2 there are certain locations, like factions bases, the bar, and player safehouses, where upon entering the player put away his weapons, but an in-universe explanation is never given.
One lousy implementation - or rather, a potentially good one followed by a string of illogical absences - doesn't mean it's not a good idea in itself. The problem wasn't so much that a scabby bar had it, but that, as you say, large corporations didn't seem to. But the core concept is the same - invincible NPCs whose condition is explained by ingame context is much preferable.
I'm fine with unkillable characters for the reasons Nightshape has mentioned, so their inclusion in a game isn't an immersion issue for me at all. How it's handled is what matters more to me, like I prefer that Doom 3 doesn't allow you to attack non-hostile characters at all (crosshair changes and weapon lowers) compared to something like FEAR, where attacks on allies have no effect on them, and characters simply don't respond to your actions.I'm fine with HL2's system as well. It's a good compromise. But the minute you give players the choice to use a weapon against an NPC, but then negate any consequence of using it, is farcical (which is why Deus Ex, God bless all its other goodness, and similar titles get mentioned).
If the result of falling off a ledge is always going to result in death, is it better to let the player suffer the consequence of their (possibly accidental) action, being a reload or respawn, or use an invisible barrier and save them the trouble? I don't think there is a right answer because either way you'll annoy someone. Personally I'm happy with what's in Fable 2, you need to press a button to jump from any height, and you can't do it if there is nowhere to jump to safely. The players exploration isn't hindered, and they never need worry about a silly accident.Although I understand your point, that's not quite what I'm getting at. One thing are environmental hazards like cliffs; an invisible wall of sorts that prevents accidental collapse is fine. Not every game can be, or needs to be like Morrowind, STALKER, and so on. Another is, say, Jade Empire, where a jumping martial arts phenomenon can't even jump over a few pebbles and needs to go the long route around something to reach the intended destination. The first Fable also comes to mind in this regard. Haven't played the sequel yet, since I suspect it's going to be the same all over again.
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I never really cared much about killable/non-killable characters. Good designed games even don't let the player think about doing that. Or was the first thing you thought when you met Alyxx in HL2 to blow off her head?
Tell me again what happens in a game where your teammates have godmode on. What happens to challenge, story telling, "immersion"?
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I can't play and drink beer at the same time.
You might want to consider some beer goggles, MC
Don't think I really can add much to what's been said, though.
I disagree with unkillable NPCs on principle, since it shackles the player to antiquated design fetishes. However, if you can't really design the game any better, there are ways to integrate this more efficiently. If you want to make liberal use of these, create reasons and design areas that explain ingame why they are invulnerable. Invisible War comes to mind as a good example, as it had areas lockdown your weapons usage for security reasons (which actually tied in neatly to the setting without ruining suspension of disbelief or breaking "immersion"). Otherwise, just place random signposts with mandatory story or fetch quests, since at least there's the chance people will find it amusing rather than farcical.
Minigames. Not minigames themselves, but the way they are often a clear division of the remainder of the game. A minigame can - and should be - a game within a game, not a different game altogether. Why do I have to play a surreal version of Wheel of Fortune to dialogue with characters? Stronghold maintenance quests in Baldur's Gate 2 can be considered minigames; they are set within the gameworld you've been exploring for the last hours, operate under the same rules (which brings familiarity to players and largely means there's no point in coming up with akward new rules on how to play your newfangled Frogger remix, all of them eloquently explained to gamers with GIANT INDICATORS ALL OVER THE SCREEN), and are generally more satisfying than playing unrelated segments.
Romances. Don't. Or if you have to, don't.
Cutscenes. We get it. The Xbox is an awesome platform for crummy, low quality FMVs. However, sequences using an ingame engine are much less jarring and often produce equally good results, if not better - for the simple reason you won't be introducing stuff like character abilities that players can never have (like heroically jumping over chasms when you can't even use the Z axis).
Invisible Walls and unpassable design miscellanea. The mightiest hero can kill hundreds of demons but can't even jump - let alone walk over - a few pebbles. At least create environments that justify this, instead of creating exploration'em ups where you're playing the medieval equivalent of a corridor shooter like Doom - which actually *let* you fall over acidic pits.
Unlikely Armor Design. I know you have to pander to preteens who think a bikini is as good as full plate, but strive to dignify gender representation a bit more. A barbarian wearing nothing other than loincloth, a horned helm and some boots is as tasteless as a female warrior clad in a bikini and assorted bondage gear.
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What about a Scarlett Johansson Bond Babe??
Scarlett Johansson Bondage Babe?
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Well... Pictures are nice when you want to keep your hands busy, I'll grant you that.
Fallout 3
in Computer and Console
Posted
Fair enough. Although there's something to be said about how, for instance, some ammo being weightless lessens the importance of prepping up for combat, and how VATS mode reduces damage dealt to characters (which I noticed even in my limited playtime).