What are you playing now - the plays the thing

[pmp10]

The amount of "I'd like to kill NPC [X]" threads that come up make me go "huh?"

 

I think some have this idea that if some party members can be killed, then ALL party members should be killable, and that if a party member annoys a person they feel justified in wanting to kill that character off in some way.

If you are going to force companions on the player then in the very least you should make sure they are not annoying.

Not everyone looks forward to delving into a myriad of parenting-issues or care about building their virtual-harem.

[Bokishi]

Hitman Absolution

 

I can vouch for this. How many times your name popped up in Steam makes me wonder if there is stability issues

 

haha yeah been giving me out of memory errors when I try to run it in triple screen

[melkathi]

Devs should not force companions on players, true. But it is rather worrying that, even if it is a virtual world, so many people see annoyance as a valid reason for the death penalty.

[WorstUsernameEver]

I just figure we'll find out in DA3 that Leliana is Andraste and thus her being killed near Andraste's ashes ... well, space magic err... fantasy magic and voila, she's resurrected by her own ashes and thus, explanation for why she's back.

 

Well, at this point it'd probably be best to not come up with any strange explanation for why she is back and just ignore the fact that she can get decapitated in the first.

 

It kind of confuses me why choices like that were given in the first place if the devs weren't planning on following on them. It wasn't just some accidental death stuff like in Baldur's Gate 1, they were pivotal, scripted moments where you were given the specific choice of whether you wanted to kill a character or not.

 

And then the writing team just sort of decided "we actually love those characters and will keep them alive anyway". It feels very grating.

[Drowsy Emperor]

A character is a resource, in this case a complete and useful one into which substantial money was dumped. Most games are so pathetically low on content due to how much they cost to produce that cutting anything for good would be complete lunacy (from a business perspective).

 

As always, story and immersion have to take a back seat to economic logic.

Edited November 20, 2012 by Drowsy Emperor

[Ravine Blackrose]

Was playing WoW and Diablo 3....getting very annoyed with constant changes with both....so leaving them alone and checking in from time to time.

 

Currently playing Guild Wars 2 and poking around in Perfect World, Sword Girls and Aion.....MMO-wise at least, that's what I have.

 

A few Facebook games....because I have the extra random few minutes here and there in my day.

 

Been wanting to get a gaming console ( Xbox 360 ) but that's kinda not in the cards for us right now.

[Malcador]

Devs should not force companions on players, true. But it is rather worrying that, even if it is a virtual world, so many people see annoyance as a valid reason for the death penalty.

 

How's that worrying ?

 

Oh, and Bokishi - how is Absolution ?

Edited November 20, 2012 by Malcador

[Oner]

Yes, lets complain about the fact that a company is trying to make money off the game they spent hundreds of millions of dollars producing.

Honestly? They "wasted" most of it on VA. What makes it even worse is that IIRC every ...what do they call those? ...Data something.

Anyway, both in ME and DA about 80% of players skipped the voice over, if memory serves.

 

It's best to not make assumptions over how much money was spent on VA (or even the total budget of the project), nor make up numbers over how many people skip the voice overs in our other games.

http://herocomplex.l...dlvrit=63378#/0

I'm sure those voice actors were happy to work for Hungarian minimal wage. (~300 euros)

And I said IIRC, twice.

Edited November 20, 2012 by Oner

[Oner]

Man I still haven't seen an MMO that didn't feel exactly like every other MMO.

 

Never tried EVE ? GW2 is a different feel from WoW, even Rift had that of sorts. TOR really could have lost VA for the non-class story and be no worse for wear. And the protocol droid could lose his voice as well.

 

I'm talking about the feeling that the game could play itself, but it needs me to grind its numbers the same way people need monkeys in a zoo. To see something swing on a tire for entertainment.

GW2 requires user input (unless you are playing Warrior with lots of health regen ) or you're dead and there's only as much grinding as you are prepared to do. I crafted my high-end armor without too much hassle.

[SadExchange]

Devs should not force companions on players, true. But it is rather worrying that, even if it is a virtual world, so many people see annoyance as a valid reason for the death penalty.

 

How's that worrying ?

 

Oh, and Bokishi - how is Absolution ?

 

I don't know how Bokishi feels, but I've completed the first couple of missions and have been enjoying it. The levels are heavily detailed and after going through a couple missions, I can see the replay value as you have some different options. The levels don't seem as large as Blood Money, but I still feel that they give you enough options. I will say that the first couple of missions can be completed quite quickly, even as a Silent Assassin, if you know what you're doing, but the collectibles and atmosphere and character conversations within the levels definitely have me taking my time with each level.

[GhostofAnakin]

Well, at this point it'd probably be best to not come up with any strange explanation for why she is back and just ignore the fact that she can get decapitated in the first.

 

So I'm on the right track with my Leliana/Andraste theory, aren't I.

 

It kind of confuses me why choices like that were given in the first place if the devs weren't planning on following on them. It wasn't just some accidental death stuff like in Baldur's Gate 1, they were pivotal, scripted moments where you were given the specific choice of whether you wanted to kill a character or not.

 

And then the writing team just sort of decided "we actually love those characters and will keep them alive anyway". It feels very grating.

 

This is why it confuses me as well. If the writing team wanted to keep Leliana around for DA2 (and presumably the entire series), why even have the option to kill her? If it was to give players the illusion that their choices matter, it's kind of short-term anyway since the writer's made that choice irrelevant by bringing her back for DA2.

 

IMO, it's worse to make characters killable and then bring them back anyway than to make characters unkillable in the first place. The latter may frustrate some folks who seem to like killing their party members, but the former is just plain nonsensical and breaks story immersion.

[Bokishi]

Yeah i like Hitman so far, just not too cool with the police pursuing you missions, that's not how I remember how Hitman plays. Hitman does all the chasing damit lol

[alanschu]

It kind of confuses me why choices like that were given in the first place if the devs weren't planning on following on them. It wasn't just some accidental death stuff like in Baldur's Gate 1, they were pivotal, scripted moments where you were given the specific choice of whether you wanted to kill a character or not.

 

If you look at DAO it can be seen that there are aspects of the game that aren't really sequel friendly. Though at the same time, the game was expensive to make and much more of an unknown for how successful it would be. So there are choices in the game that really don't lend itself to happy times for sequel production.

 

When making a sequel, we do have to decide on what level of canon we have in our games. For BG2, for example, everything was assumed canon and the starting party was basically made up of the most popular group make up (Imoen, Minsc, Jaheira, Khalid, Dynaheir) and other NPCs that could be dead typically had "But I killed you" dialogues to which the NPC would respond "Aha! You thought so but I wasn't" or something similar (thinking of Xzar here).

 

So with Leliana survive, my presumption (I haven't taken part in the writing meetings for DA2, and don't particular care to waste their time talking about old news at this point) is that Leliana was seen as a character that could be used as an interesting tie in because:

 

1) Defiling the ashes was a rare event. Most people didn't do it, and it's possible they did it without Leliana present to boot.

2) It can be rationalized that she was simply left for dead, not outright killed. This is where the "whoops, we forgot that our system had deathblows in it so people would see that Leliana had her head cutoff" becomes an issue, however. (Although I think some people actually figured we kept a different plot state based upon whether or not she was deathblowed which is a bit silly...)

 

 

The issue really comes in that we wanted to try a plot import. It was something being considered that ended up seeing a reasonable about of positive feedback from ME2's release. There's a lot of people that feel that if we don't provide such a feature, it makes them feel that their choices in the previous games are irrelevant (this is not a perspective I believe though, for the record. I have no issues replaying Fallout 1 knowing that Fallout 2 has a set canon). I think if it's done really well, it could be very interesting. I don't think BioWare has done it very well yet though.

 

The big hurdle is, of course, the same hurdle we get within a confined game: how do we reconcile branching narratives and reconverge the storyline at some point. The big advantage of Fallout is that you can make these extreme decisions that ultimately would have very different ramifications if done, and for the sequels they can just go "Well canon is this." This opens up the various "I have destroyed everything and everyone" types of playthroughs. Dragon Age intrinsically cannot do that, since reconciling that branch would be pretty fundamentally impossible.

 

There are pros and cons to each, and frankly depending on the mood you catch me in I would probably say I prefer one or the other. Although if it were entirely up to me, I'd probably go with "choose a canon" and not do imports. Not out of spite for previous player choices, but because I do miss some of the more out there types of choices you could make in other games. Brotherhood of Steel completely wiped out? That's cool! Was fun to boot! And so forth.

 

That said though, I think a well done "import" process is a better ideal. Whether or not it is achievable is a different question I suppose. But it's not inconsisent of me to think that's a better ideal, because I think the ideal RPG would be one that doesn't bother with reconciling player's choices and actually allows a more free flowing narrative. The idea of mutually exclusive choice is one I love, and even if the basic plot points sitll all get achieved, I'm okay with the concept of showing very different aspects of the plot based upon player choices, I do understand that it poses very serious scope risks.

[GhostofAnakin]

Gah. My screw up when I overwrote my save file in BG2 has sapped me of playing it. To get to the point I was at would take dozens of hours of replaying the same areas I'd *just* played, and I just don't have the motivation to do it.

[Gorth]

Finished off a game of ME2 that had been on a "slow burner" for a while, mostly paying attention to the DLC's (and rushing through everything else). Impressions range from sort of Ok (Genesis, which is good if you can't be bothered to play ME1) over good (Overlord) to great (Lair of the Shadowbroker). Only real "Meh!" one was Arrival. But hey, 3 out of 4 is not too bad. Currently playing 'Leviathan' in a new game of ME3 (using my previous ME2 game as a starting point).

[Tale]

Since I just grabbed Resonance on GOG's Black Friday, I'll probably start that up in a bit. Or Soul Reaver.

 

If I don't get distracted by writing.

[Nepenthe]

Picked up Blops2 and Absolution, today. Probably gonna kickstart my gaming with blops, see if I can find the motivation to enjoy something slightly more intellectually demanding in Dishonored... And Absolution I had preordered the day they became available, so that was that.

Yeah i like Hitman so far, just not too cool with the police pursuing you missions, that's not how I remember how Hitman plays. Hitman does all the chasing damit lol

You've forgotten the last mission of Contracts, then...

[WorstUsernameEver]

The big hurdle is, of course, the same hurdle we get within a confined game: how do we reconcile branching narratives and reconverge the storyline at some point. The big advantage of Fallout is that you can make these extreme decisions that ultimately would have very different ramifications if done, and for the sequels they can just go "Well canon is this." This opens up the various "I have destroyed everything and everyone" types of playthroughs. Dragon Age intrinsically cannot do that, since reconciling that branch would be pretty fundamentally impossible.

 

I'm kind of unconvinced by the need to reconcile much about Dragon Age: Origins and II's narrative, since they picked different timelines in different places. I mean, sure, some people would have been annoyed by stuff not being referenced/not having a dramatic impact, but it's difficult to argue about your choices of companions not having an impact when those people are either dead or conceivably somewhere else. I can understand it might be more complicated with some other choices/later sequels, but it was the writer's own choice to bring back some characters (often by changing them completely, which makes you wonder why new characters weren't made in the same place) by ignoring the player's choices, and that, again, was done after putting the players in the condition of thinking that those choices would matter.

 

What's done is done anyway, and that's hardly the worst problem BioWare is facing with DAIII in terms of story/dialogue writing and choices and consequences.

[melkathi]

Not playing anything (other than a bit of this and that) but extremly happy that I am NOT playing the Sims. I just saw that they have a Katy Perry DLC...

*shudder*

[Humanoid]

Not just Katy Perry DLC but a whole Katy Perry-edition full-blown expansion!

[Yes Man]

Not playing anything (other than a bit of this and that) but extremly happy that I am NOT playing the Sims. I just saw that they have a Katy Perry DLC...

*shudder*

 

And thus I stick happily with my copy of The Sims 2 and all of the packs that add worthwhile content.

 

"Stuff" packs are the most blatant cash grabs EA has ever done. It's like they were sitting down one day and said "Hey, let's not only sell expansion packs for The Sims that are almost exactly like the expansions from the last one, let's also take a ton of pointless content and sell that separately, too!"

Edited November 21, 2012 by Yes Man

[WorstUsernameEver]

I've recently finished Bulletstorm, since I got a free month of Playstation Plus and it was one of the free games available. I rarely play shooters, so I can't exactly compare it to the other stuff on the market, but I mostly enjoyed it.

 

Right now I'm switching randomly between Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, a random Ratchet and Clank game which was free and frankly doesn't seem all that good and Costume Quest.

 

EDIT: Ah, there's also the occasional match with The Banner Saga: Factions beta, which so far has been very enjoyable and comes very recommended. I backed it though, so this opinion might be considered inherently biased.

Edited November 21, 2012 by WorstUsernameEver

[Guest Slinky]

Since I just grabbed Resonance on GOG's Black Friday, I'll probably start that up in a bit. Or Soul Reaver.

 

If I don't get distracted by writing.

 

I remember playing Soul Reaver on ps1, got pretty far twice but stopped for some reason on both times. Might have been because of those teleporter thingies got too rare or something.

 

That said, the second Soul Reaver 2 goes on sale it goes to my catalog. Never was that impressed of it's gameplay but the story and dialog is awesome.

[alanschu]

@WorstUserName

 

It's important to note the specifics of your statement. "It kind of confuses me why choices like that were given in the first place if the devs weren't planning on following on them. It wasn't just some accidental death stuff like in Baldur's Gate 1, they were pivotal, scripted moments where you were given the specific choice of whether you wanted to kill a character or not."

 

You can be unconvinced if you'd like, but you've literally asked "why were choices even given in the first [emphasis mine] place." I think it's very clear by many of the decisions in DAO that ultimately full on following through with them was going to be impossible. Part of the reason why DA2 is in a different location is that it distances us from that. But based on your statement, which is what I responded to, we were either doomed to enforce canon (which leads to you being confused why those choices were given since we're not following up on them), or doomed to react appropriately to all choices (scarcity sucks).

 

Your statement refers to decisions we made for DAO. Since your statement implies that enforcing canon (to the extent of Fallout 2 or something) is inappropriate, any thoughts on what you would have preferred we did differently for DAO?

[alanschu]

Also, just finished The Walking Dead.

 

 

First game I can remember that actually resulted in a genuine tear going down my cheek. I've been choked up at times before, but never actually teared up.