Replay

[InvaderSnarf]

I was wondering how they will go about letting us go back through an area.

 

From looking at all the toys in the game (Guns, gear, gadgets, sunglasses, turtlenecks ect.) and from all the money rolls the people in the demos seem to be looting from every guy they breath on, it would seem to me that the main story missions are just one way to earn the green.

 

So I was wondering how they are going to implement us going back through and playing an area? I doubt they will just let us walk out to a place and shoot stuff up. But I also doubt that this is going to be just one long trip on the main story. Not to mention how hard it would be to explain to the cops why you were walking around an enemy base in your free time.

 

So is it going to be wet work for oil companies or security work for diplomats?

[Orogun01]

Someone has a case of the need to know.

[InvaderSnarf]

Just saying they haven't said a thing about going back into mission areas, or even a free roam-ish area, to do the grind to get the new things.

 

And this being the most unusual RPG setting it could be really weird the way they do it, and this could very well make or break a good portion of the game.

[Tigranes]

Grinding won't be a big part of the game like it is in, say, Dragon Age - because you know, you can't just say "Mike here are 5 dungeons full of terrorists you can loot for cash".

 

I imagine there are a lot of things to do within hubs though, and since you can visit them in any order, you should be able to go back and forth some/most of the time.

[Pop]

I would imagine you can visit hubs at any point but specific areas with missions you've already passed will not be accessible. There might also be cases where you go through all the missions in one hub and then another mission comes up in that hub much farther down the line (ala Bloodlines)

[InvaderSnarf]

I guess having several HUB's that you go between to do missions is an alright system to do, but I would rather just get E-mails to do wet work or gathering intel for one person or the other.

 

If this is as big an RPG that they have so far lead me to believe, I expect side missions, and a ton of side missions.

 

Now I'm not sure if i'm contradicting myself or not from Pop's post but don't blame me, up until now I have never even heard of a game called Bloodlines.

[Zoraptor]

That would be Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines to give it its full title. Excellent RPG (be warned, it's not great as an action game) for PC from 2004, can be got fairly cheap off Steam if you're interested and since it's from 2004 has low system reqs for now. Also still has active development of enhancement/ bug fixing mods.

 

Relevant part if that it had four hubs but there was quite a lot of backtracking between them as the story progressed both in terms of plot critical and optional quests.

[Raithe]

My take on it (from what I've seen and read) is that you can travel back and forth between the hubs as you will.. but the missions / side-missions are more one off events. As in, you pick up a mission (via email, from handlers, or contacts etc) and then go off to that mission map.

 

You get to perform the mission in the style and manner of your choosing, with various routes (stealth, combat, different approaches to the map so it's not all the same "proceed down corridor x then take corner y") but once that mission is done, you probably won't get to go back to that specific map.

Which makes sense to a certain degree, why go back to the "scene of the crime" so to speak. You've raided an embassy (whether with big noise or like a ghost) , but there'll still be some repurcussion from that.. why would you go back to said embassy at a later point... Unless some other follow-on side mission that opens up only because you did that first mission that requires you to go back...

 

This isn't strictly speaking, an open sandbox, free-roaming game. The hubs, yes, you can go back and forth. You can choose to do them in a specific order, or go to one and do a couple of missions then go to another hub, do a mission, move back to the previous hub or move on to another..... But the hubs are basically your safehouse in each city..

 

And not all those "missions" will be maps that you casually wander around.. there was some mention as I recall that certain "missions" will be dialogue moments purely.... as in go to a bar to find a contact and the whole mission will be your conversation with the contact and how you try getting the info out of him. Charming them, being purely professional, a touch threatening.. or headslamming them against the bar top..

 

There will be missions that you choose to do purely to gain extra info on other missions, or npc's that will then provide other missions..

 

Throw in the whole aspect of "choice & consequences" that Obsidian have been touting, that missions will actually change depending on which order you do them in, what relationships you've formed, even relationships you happen to be unaware of.. (as in npc's will react to you on what they've heard about you - whether its true or not, but it will be based on how you've reacted in missions or to other npc's that they know...)

 

So I'm fairly sure we'll all be happy with the variety and number of potentials there..