Some suggestions from a long time fan.

[Ouroboros-]

 

So I've seen the demo and the trailer you released and I've some initial thoughts. I have made suggestions for you before and so I know you listen. I actually suggested the hardcore switch for New Vegas back in the day on the Bethesda forums. I think I went by a different handle though. I've been following your work and buying all your games since then. Please make Chris write some books. I digress.

 

First I think that the faces all look too similar. It's a problem you had with New Vegas as well. I believe the problem is that you start from a base model and sculpt them. (Eventually since you now have the backing, you should get into mocap. Just look at how good it can be with Tomb Raider's Camilla Ludington who became Laura. They double as the model for the characters in this way. It's possible Microsoft already has a studio for this. Another option is to take the resident evil two remake route where they hired different VA and models to base the characters on. You see the trick is to use real people.) Until then I'd recommend playing around with the eye depth, check bones position, the laugh lines, freckles, facial hair, moles, eyebrows, npc heights, and builds (athletic/heavy set/bulky/etc). These are relatively minor changes that modders have been doing to Bethesda games for years.

 

The other thing that bothers me is the camera. You are a disembodied arm that's only about a foot long. It's either your field of view slider or the camera position. It would be nice to have some arms and legs with good shadows. This is something that would be cheap to fix as well. It would be good prep for if you ever decided to rerelease as a vr game.

 

The shadows themselves seemed to me to need work. They seem to be lower resolution maps and quite static. You're a space game. It would be cool if you came up with planetary rotations, moon cycles, and solar cycles that are all unique for e planet. The day night cycle and star type might mean a different cast of shadows and set a different mood. Imagine being on planet that orbits a red dwarf. It would have to be quite close to the star to be in the habitable zone. Maybe it's just barely in the zone and as such is quite cold, frigid, and dry. Or perhaps the planet is low mass and is tidally locked to the star. Which would create a permanent day and night cycle with extreme biomes. Lots of fun with weather and lighting are possible and there's much here you could do too add to the atmosphere and story of a place.

 

The controls look okay, but it would be nice if switching to melee wasn't necessary. Just have a melee button. If you don't have a melee weapon equip, it could be a weapon bash or nothing. I think this would be more fluid to combat. And if there's a heavy and light attack for melee you could just make a hold vs press deal.

 

Your companions sometimes get killcams I noticednoticed, but I hope this is optional. In nv you gave three options as I recall. None, within field of view, and cinematic. I always used the within fov. It would also be nice if we could toggle the floating damage text. It breaks immersion to me and I always turn it off. I noticed you don't really give a lotlot of orders to them. The a.I. Could be a bit smarter. In nv we had the companion wheel and that allowed us to control their distance, aggression, weapon type, and other tactics.

 

The game could use a cover system. The solution I gave Bethesda that was cheap was to use the animation the npc's use and have it to where when you go up to a wall and aim you do that. Although obviously Deus Ex is what you want to aim for.

 

That's all I could tell without guessing as to content. Like weapon mods, weapon & armor degradation/maintenance, etc. Hope this helps and I'm rooting for you. And please don't let Microsoft steal your soul! Lol.

Edited December 14, 2018 by Ouroboros-

[daven]

I didn't read everything but I imagine this isn't the final version of the game and there's plenty of work to be done.

[Ouroboros-]

Of course. Which is why I've made my suggestions. They're mostly simple things they could fix now or after release. From what I saw they're in QA phase.

[Wormerine]

I did read through it and certainly some worthy suggestions but some of those ask for developing new technology/functionality which is no small feat.

 

I am a big fan of seeing your own body in FPS. In video it does seem like a floating hand with a gun. That said, if I remember well, dishonoured protagonist don’t have a body and it works just fine.

 

OW is a sf RPG but it’s no starcitizen. While some cool flavours for planets and locations would be nice, I don’t expect them to be anything more that had made maps which you travel inbetween using map, ala Mass Effect.and I don’t think they need to be anything more than that.

 

Yhh, ok time to disagree. Cover system. While the combat doesn’t look too interesting so far, I certainly don’t long for a cover system. Cover in FPview could be alright, new Deus Ex cover is bad bad bad (and so is switching between FPS and TPS for no reason). Hope so see some cooler things in combat but inspecting texture resolution on boxes and walls isn’t on of them. Deployable shields, gravity bombs that kind of stuff.

[SonicMage117]

Yeah, the combat is horrid looking but isn't it supposed to? I mean, it's a Fallout-ish game but I doubt the cimbat will be as good as Fallout 4's even in the final version.

[Fenixp]

Yhh, ok time to disagree. Cover system. While the combat doesn’t look too interesting so far, I certainly don’t long for a cover system. Cover in FPview could be alright, new Deus Ex cover is bad bad bad (and so is switching between FPS and TPS for no reason). Hope so see some cooler things in combat but inspecting texture resolution on boxes and walls isn’t on of them. Deployable shields, gravity bombs that kind of stuff.

Yeah, the conver system in Deus Ex was pretty terrible. Constantly switching from FPP to TPP is just... Jarring and immersion-breaking. There is a cover systems I want all FPS games to have tho, the one contained in Crysis 2 or Far Cry 3 - when you look at a corner you're standing next to or and edge you're ducked below and hold down aim down sights button, the character would peek from behind the cover - you'd then be able to control how much you want to peek (thus how voulnerable you become). It's rather difficult to describe to a person who's not seen it in action. ... Oh, there's a video

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiusboSJgUc

 

[SonicMage117]

Actually Red Dead Redemption 2's cover system in first person mode is phenomenal so if done properly, it could work.

 

Oh, there's a video...

[Wormerine]

Yeah, the combat is horrid looking but isn't it supposed to? I mean, it's a Fallout-ish game but I doubt the cimbat will be as good as Fallout 4's even in the final version.

I don't think it's supposed to be. I don't think it is as important as allowing character builds to differ from each other, but the better the combat the more fun the experience. 

 

I don't hate combat as much as other people, but so far enemies look dull and combat seems like a snooze fest. It doesn't turn me off, as I play RPGs for RPGing. I treat combat in those as an element of overall experience, not as the main focus. I am curious to see if there is more to it. It is just the first demo. 

[TucoMerc]

Yeah, the combat is horrid looking but isn't it supposed to? I mean, it's a Fallout-ish game but I doubt the cimbat will be as good as Fallout 4's even in the final version.

Bethesda got much help from ID (FPS oriented studio) so the combat is quite fluent and organic and thus enjoyable (even more so with AI mods) but they took it so far that they developed the combat aspect in favor of a roleplaying.

[Chairchucker]

Their impending ownership by Microsoft might not necessarily have any bearing on their budget, given Take Two are publishing this one.

[Kristy]

While all great ideas, what you're suggesting simply isn't in the budget for a 'AA' title, especially the planetary rotation. The optimization needed to make that work would be costly in and of itself, which would leave them with less money to finish implementing the important things like choice and consequence. They aren't receiving any funding from Microsoft on this project, since it is part of a pre-existing contract with Take-Two Interactive's publishing label Private Division. At this point the budget is set in stone, they have to stick to their plan.

Edited December 16, 2018 by Kristy