I have the question of how to make an immortal character a viable rpg element stuck in my head. I did a little looking around and found this article that expresses some of my feelings but not all of them. In particular I'm wondering how to make it an RPG element. Lost Odyssey is, I feel, an example of a failed attempt at this. Your character is essentially immortal, but it is mechanically useless. Your characters still die and this will result in failure if they don't happen to get back up before everyone is down. However, I'm convinced that an infinite revive system isn't the way to go. I hated Bioshock when I used the Vita chambers as I felt no connection to the well being of my character. Of course Borderlands uses a similar system, but they were smart enough to add a cost to it- mainly a significant amount of money. Two other tracts to take are using it simply as a story mechanic- the character has everlasting life, but can be killed- or adding on an extreme resiliency such as Wolverine's healing factor. Of course, those don't really answer my question.
My current idea is that something else must be at stake. Some other character's life must be threatened or some objective where time is the obstacle. Of course, in the context I'm thinking of this- mainly turn-based RPGs- time isn't a really big obstacle since you have all the time in the world to pick your attacks (adding a real time timer is not a valid solution in my opinion unless the entire game is real time) and having someone else be in danger might only change who's HP you have to watch.
I want to think I've seen this mechanic in other games, but I can't think of where. I know I've heard of robots simply creating a copy and downloading the memory. Any suggestions on how you would handle this conundrum would be interesting to hear, for any genre really.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Monday, June 6, 2011
Reaching for Replayability
The Halo series is incredibly popular, and like many others I've enjoyed countless hours playing it. However ever since the final installment (by Bungie, at least) came out something's been bugging me about it. I finally figured out why: it lacks replay value. I look back at all the other Halo games and can point to various missions that I played over and over just because they were fun. I didn't have online play until the third installment, so multiplayer wasn't really an option early on, and even once it was I still enjoyed just going back and playing some levels.
Reach doesn't have that. The only time I go back to it now is when I'm playing through with a friend or completing a challenge. Otherwise I don't even look at it. The whole thing just feels rushed through, with some character's deaths just being laughable.The epic feel is lost and I feel little more than contempt for the characters of Halo Reach.
Reach doesn't have that. The only time I go back to it now is when I'm playing through with a friend or completing a challenge. Otherwise I don't even look at it. The whole thing just feels rushed through, with some character's deaths just being laughable.The epic feel is lost and I feel little more than contempt for the characters of Halo Reach.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Review: Mass Effect
Ouch, it's been two months since my last post. For a while there I had schoolwork and finals as an excuse. After that was done with I really didn't have any, well except maybe that I picked up Mass Effect and have put a good 58 hours into it. Twenty of which I had to do over after my computer got infected. Anyway, on to the review. I know I've had a few requests for this since I started this, so it makes it a good place to restart it.
Mass Effect is a rpg/third person shooter from Bioware. No doubt you've heard of them. Assuming you have, you should already have some idea about the game. Bioware is known for their RPGs which generally offer the player the choice of going down the path of good or evil. Mass Effect changes that up a bit by giving your character one goal with several ways of going about completing it. You have the Paragon path and the Renegade path. Both paths lead to a similar end- saving the galaxy- but one stops to help people along the way, while the other bowls over anyone who gets between you and the big bad. In my opinion this is a change for the better. In games that give you the choice to be good or evil it can be difficult to present a story that works coming at it from both angles. Another change in the usual set-up is that Paragon and Renegade don't nullify each other. Generally an situation will offer Paragon points or Renegade points depending on how you tackle it, but otherwise they don't interact. Instead each one allows you to increase your charm or intimidate skills respectively. This actually makes a lot of sense. You are effectively a rising star in the galaxy as the first human Spectre and as you gain a reputation for kindness or violence people become more willing to listen to you if you use those approaches. Of course half the time I picked the intimidate option when it appeared but still ended up getting 75% of the Paragon points and probably only half of the Renegade points. I'm just not good at being mean.
Still following the tradition of a Bioware game Mass Effect drops you off in the middle of a galaxy full of planets to explore. There are roughly a dozen different star clusters each with two or three solar systems and each solar system has a planet that you can land on or a ship to investigate. The majority of the other planets can also be surveyed to find resources or artifacts. Of course, the downside to this is the fact that most of the planetary exploration is fairly generic. Every planet but the story specific ones consists of mountainous terrain which you attempt to navigate around in your Mako looking for points of interest. Generally you come across a crashed probe or such that will grant you items or artifacts, a couple of resource deposits, and maybe a sidequest base. The latter comes in three varieties: underground ruin, military complex, and warehouse. So you'll be shooting up essentially the same three buildings over and over. Same goes for spaceships, except there's only one variety of them. I've decided that they mass produce the buildings which is why they all look the same. Of course why a civilian ship and a military freighter looks the same is anyone's guess. That aside, the very unbalanced number of necessary and unnecessary planets makes for rather uneven pacing. There are four required planets plus the end game one and I'd wager a score of unnecessary planets. If you ignored all of those you could probably beat the game in 20 hours. Might not be easy, what with all the missed experience, but could probably be done (then again, after a certain level your skill growth drops by half so if you can at least reach that point it might not be a huge issue).
As I mentioned at the start, the action is handled in a 3rd person shooter style. However, you shouldn't jump into this expecting anything on par with Gears of War. The cover system is fickle and often not all that great. Most of the time I only used cover while in the Mako and that doesn't actually have a cover system. Most enemies will go down quickly between the barrage of gunfire you and your allies unleash and the blasts of various tech and biotic powers. The only problems will generally come from instant kills (snipers and rockets) and melee enemies as you don't have much to keep them at bay and they generally hurt. Of course, game lacks a checkpoint system so be sure to save often. Nothing sucks more than landing on a planet, doing half the stuff on it and then getting one-shot killed and having to start over from touchdown. The Mako points are similarly frustrating, just if you took all the aiming and movement problems and doubled them. As mentioned above, EVERY map is full of mountains that you will have to climb at some point if you want to grab everything and while the Mako is the ultimate ATV, even it can't handle the mountains the game throws at you. It gets even worse when you're expected to fight. Movement and aiming are handled completely separately. Going forward, backwards and turning is dependent on which way the Mako is facing and ignores where you're aiming. This is a horrible idea. Especially when you decide to zoom in so you can't see which way you're facing and have to start dodging missiles. Then again, on normal the Mako is nigh indestructible unless you come across a Thresher Maw. In which case all you can do is keep moving an pray it doesn't pop up under you.
And now it's story time. The basic premise is that it's a hundred or two hundred years in the future and we've mastered interstellar travel after finding the ruins of a highly advanced civilization on Mars. We are now part of a galactic civilization ruled over by a council of the three most prominent races and trying to get a human to become a fourth member. The game opens with you going to Eden Prime to discover it being attacked by a race of machines being led by a rogue Spectre named Saren. Spectres being about what you'd get if you crossed a jedi with Boba Fett. They're tasked with keeping the galaxy safe, but have access to all kinds of special equipment and don't have to follow the laws as long as they get the job done. Anyway, after convincing the Council of this threat you become the first human Spectre and are sent out after Saren. The story's pretty solid and, when you're actually progressing it, it moves fairly quickly. Of course you do have the horrible pacing I mentioned earlier if you visit the "extra" planets.
Characters, for the most part, fairly interesting. You've got girl from a nomadic race of aliens on a traditional quest to prove herself, a merc from a race of warriors infected with a genetic disease to drastically slow their reproduction, an alien cop from the government center called the Citadel who is tired of playing by the rules and joins up with you to actually stop criminals, the daughter of one of your enemies (not a spoiler since you're told that about her right after becoming a Spectre), and then a pair of humans. The humans are honestly the weakest part of your crew. Kaiden is a TERRIBLE character because they took all of his character development and threw it out the window. Sure you can talk to him and hear about it, but it's all in a nearly deadpan voice that made me want to kick him off the ship. I honestly expected him to die within the first hour of playing the game. Didn't help that he was the same class as me so I had no reason to use him. Ashely isn't as bad, as she at least is obviously a character and actually has a few issues that come up. However, I just couldn't stand her due to her tenancy to try and suck-up to you. The aliens were just a lot more interesting, so I ended up leaving my humans on the ship. Kind of seemed like it undermined one of the game's themes. Though I did have a minor problem with the alien designs: they all have three fingers. The only exception is the race that's basically blue-skinned women, so they've got five. Would it have killed Bioware to throw a fourth finger in there somewhere for variety?
All-in-all it's you're standard Bioware game. It fixes a few things, breaks a few others, and throws some new elements into the mix, but it's got most of what you'd expect from Bioware by this point. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go play Mass Effect 2.
Final Scoring: 8/10
(yeah, screw my reasoning)
Mass Effect is a rpg/third person shooter from Bioware. No doubt you've heard of them. Assuming you have, you should already have some idea about the game. Bioware is known for their RPGs which generally offer the player the choice of going down the path of good or evil. Mass Effect changes that up a bit by giving your character one goal with several ways of going about completing it. You have the Paragon path and the Renegade path. Both paths lead to a similar end- saving the galaxy- but one stops to help people along the way, while the other bowls over anyone who gets between you and the big bad. In my opinion this is a change for the better. In games that give you the choice to be good or evil it can be difficult to present a story that works coming at it from both angles. Another change in the usual set-up is that Paragon and Renegade don't nullify each other. Generally an situation will offer Paragon points or Renegade points depending on how you tackle it, but otherwise they don't interact. Instead each one allows you to increase your charm or intimidate skills respectively. This actually makes a lot of sense. You are effectively a rising star in the galaxy as the first human Spectre and as you gain a reputation for kindness or violence people become more willing to listen to you if you use those approaches. Of course half the time I picked the intimidate option when it appeared but still ended up getting 75% of the Paragon points and probably only half of the Renegade points. I'm just not good at being mean.
Still following the tradition of a Bioware game Mass Effect drops you off in the middle of a galaxy full of planets to explore. There are roughly a dozen different star clusters each with two or three solar systems and each solar system has a planet that you can land on or a ship to investigate. The majority of the other planets can also be surveyed to find resources or artifacts. Of course, the downside to this is the fact that most of the planetary exploration is fairly generic. Every planet but the story specific ones consists of mountainous terrain which you attempt to navigate around in your Mako looking for points of interest. Generally you come across a crashed probe or such that will grant you items or artifacts, a couple of resource deposits, and maybe a sidequest base. The latter comes in three varieties: underground ruin, military complex, and warehouse. So you'll be shooting up essentially the same three buildings over and over. Same goes for spaceships, except there's only one variety of them. I've decided that they mass produce the buildings which is why they all look the same. Of course why a civilian ship and a military freighter looks the same is anyone's guess. That aside, the very unbalanced number of necessary and unnecessary planets makes for rather uneven pacing. There are four required planets plus the end game one and I'd wager a score of unnecessary planets. If you ignored all of those you could probably beat the game in 20 hours. Might not be easy, what with all the missed experience, but could probably be done (then again, after a certain level your skill growth drops by half so if you can at least reach that point it might not be a huge issue).
As I mentioned at the start, the action is handled in a 3rd person shooter style. However, you shouldn't jump into this expecting anything on par with Gears of War. The cover system is fickle and often not all that great. Most of the time I only used cover while in the Mako and that doesn't actually have a cover system. Most enemies will go down quickly between the barrage of gunfire you and your allies unleash and the blasts of various tech and biotic powers. The only problems will generally come from instant kills (snipers and rockets) and melee enemies as you don't have much to keep them at bay and they generally hurt. Of course, game lacks a checkpoint system so be sure to save often. Nothing sucks more than landing on a planet, doing half the stuff on it and then getting one-shot killed and having to start over from touchdown. The Mako points are similarly frustrating, just if you took all the aiming and movement problems and doubled them. As mentioned above, EVERY map is full of mountains that you will have to climb at some point if you want to grab everything and while the Mako is the ultimate ATV, even it can't handle the mountains the game throws at you. It gets even worse when you're expected to fight. Movement and aiming are handled completely separately. Going forward, backwards and turning is dependent on which way the Mako is facing and ignores where you're aiming. This is a horrible idea. Especially when you decide to zoom in so you can't see which way you're facing and have to start dodging missiles. Then again, on normal the Mako is nigh indestructible unless you come across a Thresher Maw. In which case all you can do is keep moving an pray it doesn't pop up under you.
And now it's story time. The basic premise is that it's a hundred or two hundred years in the future and we've mastered interstellar travel after finding the ruins of a highly advanced civilization on Mars. We are now part of a galactic civilization ruled over by a council of the three most prominent races and trying to get a human to become a fourth member. The game opens with you going to Eden Prime to discover it being attacked by a race of machines being led by a rogue Spectre named Saren. Spectres being about what you'd get if you crossed a jedi with Boba Fett. They're tasked with keeping the galaxy safe, but have access to all kinds of special equipment and don't have to follow the laws as long as they get the job done. Anyway, after convincing the Council of this threat you become the first human Spectre and are sent out after Saren. The story's pretty solid and, when you're actually progressing it, it moves fairly quickly. Of course you do have the horrible pacing I mentioned earlier if you visit the "extra" planets.
Characters, for the most part, fairly interesting. You've got girl from a nomadic race of aliens on a traditional quest to prove herself, a merc from a race of warriors infected with a genetic disease to drastically slow their reproduction, an alien cop from the government center called the Citadel who is tired of playing by the rules and joins up with you to actually stop criminals, the daughter of one of your enemies (not a spoiler since you're told that about her right after becoming a Spectre), and then a pair of humans. The humans are honestly the weakest part of your crew. Kaiden is a TERRIBLE character because they took all of his character development and threw it out the window. Sure you can talk to him and hear about it, but it's all in a nearly deadpan voice that made me want to kick him off the ship. I honestly expected him to die within the first hour of playing the game. Didn't help that he was the same class as me so I had no reason to use him. Ashely isn't as bad, as she at least is obviously a character and actually has a few issues that come up. However, I just couldn't stand her due to her tenancy to try and suck-up to you. The aliens were just a lot more interesting, so I ended up leaving my humans on the ship. Kind of seemed like it undermined one of the game's themes. Though I did have a minor problem with the alien designs: they all have three fingers. The only exception is the race that's basically blue-skinned women, so they've got five. Would it have killed Bioware to throw a fourth finger in there somewhere for variety?
All-in-all it's you're standard Bioware game. It fixes a few things, breaks a few others, and throws some new elements into the mix, but it's got most of what you'd expect from Bioware by this point. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go play Mass Effect 2.
Final Scoring: 8/10
(yeah, screw my reasoning)
"We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything."
Thomas A. Edison
Friday, March 25, 2011
League of Legends
Alright, so I've been gone for at least a week. Admittedly not a good way to start up a blog, but considering the content I think it's understandable. A lot of my time has gone into playing games and giving me fuel for this. Now if I can just find time to put it all into text for you people. However, my weekdays are generally booked, so I'll probably try to update two or three times on weekends instead of just going for that typical M/W/F spread.
Anyway, first off on the list of games I will be ranting about this weekend will be League of Legends which I have no clue what it would fall under for classification. It's a free to play PvP game with a top down set-up that gives you a champion, a team of four other people, and an unending supply of minions and sends you up against another team with the goal of killing them and breaking their stuff. Pretty simple concept all told. Your minions come in several varieties (melee, mage, cannoneer, and super), go out in waves along various paths and attempt to kill anything of the opposing color they should encounter. This generally doesn't end well for them, but what do you expect? They're minions. They're cannon fodder for the most part, the real game revolving around the Champions.
Champions come in a number of flavors, roughly defined as Tank, Mage, Assassin, and Support. Of course, if you go to that champ's info you'll likely find a few more tags like Bruiser, Ranged, Carry, Juggler, and Recommended. The latter are difficult to find should you actually be looking for them however as most of them don't appear on filters (except for Recommended). Moving on. All champs have 5 abilities: one innate, three general, and an ultimate. You then use these to kill minions and level up until the enemy gives you the chance to end them. As I said earlier- pretty simple. Things start to get complicated when you start buying items, selecting masteries, and equipping runes.
Once you get into the game is where I start being conflicted.The game's pretty fun, but there are a few issues that kind of make it annoying. Dying is very easy, and sometimes getting a kill is rather hard if you don't know what you're doing. Death timers can reach at least a full minute at near the end of a match and if you die often you can easily spend more time dead than alive. It'd be nice if they introduced a modifier that adjusted your time based on your kill/death ratio (perhaps something along the lines of kills=2, assists=1, [kills+assists] - deaths = modifier, if modifier = negative reduce death time). It'd also be nice if you could set your own shopping list. The game gives you a "recommended" set-up for each champion whenever you visit the store, but a lot of builds only use a few of the items on that list. It'd be nice if you could replace them with your own so that you can quickly and easily get what you want and get back to killing stuff.
I have a few more complaints but I think I'm more to blame for them than anyone else. I'm still a little shaky with mouse and keyboard controls and I don't exactly have a great mouse. I would highly recommend trying it out. I'm all in favor of free to play games and think they deserve all the support they can get, especially if they're actually good.
Wolfgang out.
Anyway, first off on the list of games I will be ranting about this weekend will be League of Legends which I have no clue what it would fall under for classification. It's a free to play PvP game with a top down set-up that gives you a champion, a team of four other people, and an unending supply of minions and sends you up against another team with the goal of killing them and breaking their stuff. Pretty simple concept all told. Your minions come in several varieties (melee, mage, cannoneer, and super), go out in waves along various paths and attempt to kill anything of the opposing color they should encounter. This generally doesn't end well for them, but what do you expect? They're minions. They're cannon fodder for the most part, the real game revolving around the Champions.
Champions come in a number of flavors, roughly defined as Tank, Mage, Assassin, and Support. Of course, if you go to that champ's info you'll likely find a few more tags like Bruiser, Ranged, Carry, Juggler, and Recommended. The latter are difficult to find should you actually be looking for them however as most of them don't appear on filters (except for Recommended). Moving on. All champs have 5 abilities: one innate, three general, and an ultimate. You then use these to kill minions and level up until the enemy gives you the chance to end them. As I said earlier- pretty simple. Things start to get complicated when you start buying items, selecting masteries, and equipping runes.
Once you get into the game is where I start being conflicted.The game's pretty fun, but there are a few issues that kind of make it annoying. Dying is very easy, and sometimes getting a kill is rather hard if you don't know what you're doing. Death timers can reach at least a full minute at near the end of a match and if you die often you can easily spend more time dead than alive. It'd be nice if they introduced a modifier that adjusted your time based on your kill/death ratio (perhaps something along the lines of kills=2, assists=1, [kills+assists] - deaths = modifier, if modifier = negative reduce death time). It'd also be nice if you could set your own shopping list. The game gives you a "recommended" set-up for each champion whenever you visit the store, but a lot of builds only use a few of the items on that list. It'd be nice if you could replace them with your own so that you can quickly and easily get what you want and get back to killing stuff.
I have a few more complaints but I think I'm more to blame for them than anyone else. I'm still a little shaky with mouse and keyboard controls and I don't exactly have a great mouse. I would highly recommend trying it out. I'm all in favor of free to play games and think they deserve all the support they can get, especially if they're actually good.
Wolfgang out.
When a naked man is chasing a woman through an alley
with a knife and hard-on, I figure he isn't
out collecting for the Red Cross.
-Clint Eastwood
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Thoughts: Pokemon Black and White
This isn't a full review as I haven't beaten the games and I'm only working on the second gym leader, but I must say, I'm not very fond of this generation so far. First of all I'm not overly fond of many of the new pokemon. Some of them look passable, others are just silly. For example, we've got a dove as our new Pidgey and a meerkat with crazy red eyes as our Ratatta. They recycled the Fire/Fighting set up for the second time now and I refuse to touch it on principle. I've been waiting for four generations for a Fire/Grass but instead I get three starter Fire/Fighting. It was old the second time you did it GameFreak! That left me with the snooty looking grass type and the meh looking water. At least the final evolution of the water starter looks decent, so I went with that.
Another major problem is with the battles themselves. I'm not sure if I'm just imagining all this but it seems a fair bit more difficult just fighting random pokemon. Admittedly I'm training more pokemon than I usually take on and it's been a while, but it just seems like everything hits harder. It also appears that the critical hit rate got a booster shot. I seem to notice a critical hit almost every battle. Maybe something's up, maybe it's just me. It's hard to say. I can say that battles now have a weird moving camera that adds nothing. It's like you're playing the game FPS style but your character is getting bored and starting to look around for something more interesting. They also seem a little sluggish in execution.
They seemed to have upped the encounter rate as well, but that might be another instance of not having played for a while. Using the PC has gotten a serious downgrade. We went from 18 or so boxes (I know I had enough for every type, plus an extra one for my team/HM Slaves/Nature Hunters/Breeders) to 8. So now I'll have to combine two types per box or abandon all hope of organization. This is another instance where things seem a little sluggish. It's hard to explain all the little annoyances I seem to have with this. The Battle Box is just plain silly. I guess you can put a team of pokemon into a hard to access box (you have to first deposit them and then move them from the storage box to the battle box) in order to use them in place of your current team when battling friends. Of course why you would bother is beyond me. If I'm going to be using a PC anyway I'll just switch my pokemon up for a better team before we start. My friends can wait the extra two minutes that will take (maybe less if I the game doesn't cause me any difficulties).
Overall I wouldn't really recommend getting these. Maybe you'll have better luck, but it seems like GameFreak just kind of gave up and said "how many gimmicks can with throw in this?" Actually... it might not even be that. Diamond and Pearl might have been equally gimmicky and I still enjoyed them. This game just feels awkward. Especially with the evil team going on about freeing pokemon so they can be our equals and then repeatedly kicking a pokemon to get it to spew mist for them.
Another major problem is with the battles themselves. I'm not sure if I'm just imagining all this but it seems a fair bit more difficult just fighting random pokemon. Admittedly I'm training more pokemon than I usually take on and it's been a while, but it just seems like everything hits harder. It also appears that the critical hit rate got a booster shot. I seem to notice a critical hit almost every battle. Maybe something's up, maybe it's just me. It's hard to say. I can say that battles now have a weird moving camera that adds nothing. It's like you're playing the game FPS style but your character is getting bored and starting to look around for something more interesting. They also seem a little sluggish in execution.
They seemed to have upped the encounter rate as well, but that might be another instance of not having played for a while. Using the PC has gotten a serious downgrade. We went from 18 or so boxes (I know I had enough for every type, plus an extra one for my team/HM Slaves/Nature Hunters/Breeders) to 8. So now I'll have to combine two types per box or abandon all hope of organization. This is another instance where things seem a little sluggish. It's hard to explain all the little annoyances I seem to have with this. The Battle Box is just plain silly. I guess you can put a team of pokemon into a hard to access box (you have to first deposit them and then move them from the storage box to the battle box) in order to use them in place of your current team when battling friends. Of course why you would bother is beyond me. If I'm going to be using a PC anyway I'll just switch my pokemon up for a better team before we start. My friends can wait the extra two minutes that will take (maybe less if I the game doesn't cause me any difficulties).
Overall I wouldn't really recommend getting these. Maybe you'll have better luck, but it seems like GameFreak just kind of gave up and said "how many gimmicks can with throw in this?" Actually... it might not even be that. Diamond and Pearl might have been equally gimmicky and I still enjoyed them. This game just feels awkward. Especially with the evil team going on about freeing pokemon so they can be our equals and then repeatedly kicking a pokemon to get it to spew mist for them.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Preview: Skyrim
Alright last night I gave you the rundown of my history with the Elder Scrolls so now let us turn out eyes to the future. All of my information is based on what I’ve read in GameInformer’s article (from the looks there’s probably more there than I’ve seen so I may fail to mention something) and what I can glean from the gameplay trailer released a week or two ago (when I mention things from the trailer I may provide timestamps, your best bet will be to use the previous link to find them). So if you happen to have more information feel free to let me know.
Let’s start with the basic premise. Two hundred years have passed since the end of Oblivion. The Empire is in pretty sorry shape, and the Elder Scrolls predict the return of dragons into the world, the events of the previous games apparently being signs pointing towards it. Apparently most of the fuss is about a big nasty guy by the name of Alduin, the World Eater. Wait... didn’t WoW just do something similar to that with Cataclysm? Nice, Bethesda. Anyway, giving them the benefit of the doubt and moving on. Skyrim is apparently on the brink of civil war and as usual your character is destined for greatness and in prison at the start of the game. Tamriel really has a great parole system; they let someone out of prison and they go save the world. You supposedly are the last of the dragonborn (the same line as the Emperor and Martin from Oblivion) a group that expelled dragons long ago (of course it’s a bloodline but you can be any race, how will that work out?). You can learn the dragon’s language and then use it in “dragon shouts” that have a myriad of affects. As an aside- I have no idea how these will work in game, but the way they’re presented in the gameplay trailer (around 1:07) is freaking AWESOME!
On the gameplay front there looks like a lot of new stuff. First up is the leveling system. They’re removing the class system and major and minor skill setup. Instead you’ll level up based on how many skills you’ve leveled up out of the whole and more value will be assigned to higher level skills. For example: Blade is at 37 and Destruction is at 12. You raise each one, but the Blade level will contribute more towards your next level than the level in Destruction. It kind of reminds me of Runescape. You leveled your various skills and then your level was calculated out of those levels. If we’re lucky perhaps Skyrim will put more weight in general behind combat skills and less behind less combat ready skills (so in leveling Blade and Speechcraft each from 37 to 38 you would get more value from the Blade skill) since I see a point to those skills, but in the end the game is about fighting and skills that don’t help you with that aren’t doing much for you in the end (you can’t slay dragons with Speechcraft and Mercantilism and I somehow don’t see diplomacy as an option). They’re also adding some new leveling options, allowing you to pick between an upgrade to health, stamina, or magicka each level (in addition to a health upgrade each level) and added a list of perks to choose from.
It also looks like they’ve pulled the spellcrafting feature from the game as in the GameInformer article they were able to give a specific number of spells that will be available (85) to “dedicated collectors.” Of course, it also looks like they could be going the way of Fable III and allowing you to have one spell equipped to each hand. GameInformer also mentions combining spells. Whether that means using two spells at once for fancy effects (like the AoE fire spell shown in the trailer) or just using them in conjunction with each other, I can’t tell you. I have also not heard anything about enchanting, so it’s unclear what they’ll do with that. What I’d like to see would be something resembling the sigil stones from Oblivion. Give us the various enchantments and just let us choose where to put them. Not sure if it would be an improvement, but it might be an interesting way of doing things.
Combat seems to be getting a bit of an upgrade as well. They’ve confirmed the addition of two weapon fighting along with the above mentioned two spells at once (though I’m a little worried that we’ll go back to Morrowind’s “magic or weapon” system rather than keep with Oblivion’s system which let you have a weapon out and still cast spells). Also, it looks like they may have added stealth kills finally. Around 1:32 of the gameplay trailer it looks like we see a player character grabbing another and slitting their neck. One of my biggest annoyances when playing stealth is sneak attacking someone and having them turn around and start attack me. Hopefully this means they’ll be putting an end to that.
There was also a bit of information about interfaces and conversations, but I’ll leave that for you to look into; it didn’t seem important enough for me to comment on. For the most part the game looks great and if they can actually pull it off what they’re going for it’ll no doubt give Bethesda another Game of the Year under their belt. Here’s hoping.
Wolfgang out.
Let’s start with the basic premise. Two hundred years have passed since the end of Oblivion. The Empire is in pretty sorry shape, and the Elder Scrolls predict the return of dragons into the world, the events of the previous games apparently being signs pointing towards it. Apparently most of the fuss is about a big nasty guy by the name of Alduin, the World Eater. Wait... didn’t WoW just do something similar to that with Cataclysm? Nice, Bethesda. Anyway, giving them the benefit of the doubt and moving on. Skyrim is apparently on the brink of civil war and as usual your character is destined for greatness and in prison at the start of the game. Tamriel really has a great parole system; they let someone out of prison and they go save the world. You supposedly are the last of the dragonborn (the same line as the Emperor and Martin from Oblivion) a group that expelled dragons long ago (of course it’s a bloodline but you can be any race, how will that work out?). You can learn the dragon’s language and then use it in “dragon shouts” that have a myriad of affects. As an aside- I have no idea how these will work in game, but the way they’re presented in the gameplay trailer (around 1:07) is freaking AWESOME!
On the gameplay front there looks like a lot of new stuff. First up is the leveling system. They’re removing the class system and major and minor skill setup. Instead you’ll level up based on how many skills you’ve leveled up out of the whole and more value will be assigned to higher level skills. For example: Blade is at 37 and Destruction is at 12. You raise each one, but the Blade level will contribute more towards your next level than the level in Destruction. It kind of reminds me of Runescape. You leveled your various skills and then your level was calculated out of those levels. If we’re lucky perhaps Skyrim will put more weight in general behind combat skills and less behind less combat ready skills (so in leveling Blade and Speechcraft each from 37 to 38 you would get more value from the Blade skill) since I see a point to those skills, but in the end the game is about fighting and skills that don’t help you with that aren’t doing much for you in the end (you can’t slay dragons with Speechcraft and Mercantilism and I somehow don’t see diplomacy as an option). They’re also adding some new leveling options, allowing you to pick between an upgrade to health, stamina, or magicka each level (in addition to a health upgrade each level) and added a list of perks to choose from.
It also looks like they’ve pulled the spellcrafting feature from the game as in the GameInformer article they were able to give a specific number of spells that will be available (85) to “dedicated collectors.” Of course, it also looks like they could be going the way of Fable III and allowing you to have one spell equipped to each hand. GameInformer also mentions combining spells. Whether that means using two spells at once for fancy effects (like the AoE fire spell shown in the trailer) or just using them in conjunction with each other, I can’t tell you. I have also not heard anything about enchanting, so it’s unclear what they’ll do with that. What I’d like to see would be something resembling the sigil stones from Oblivion. Give us the various enchantments and just let us choose where to put them. Not sure if it would be an improvement, but it might be an interesting way of doing things.
Combat seems to be getting a bit of an upgrade as well. They’ve confirmed the addition of two weapon fighting along with the above mentioned two spells at once (though I’m a little worried that we’ll go back to Morrowind’s “magic or weapon” system rather than keep with Oblivion’s system which let you have a weapon out and still cast spells). Also, it looks like they may have added stealth kills finally. Around 1:32 of the gameplay trailer it looks like we see a player character grabbing another and slitting their neck. One of my biggest annoyances when playing stealth is sneak attacking someone and having them turn around and start attack me. Hopefully this means they’ll be putting an end to that.
There was also a bit of information about interfaces and conversations, but I’ll leave that for you to look into; it didn’t seem important enough for me to comment on. For the most part the game looks great and if they can actually pull it off what they’re going for it’ll no doubt give Bethesda another Game of the Year under their belt. Here’s hoping.
Wolfgang out.
“Tragedy is when I cut my finger.
Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.”
-Mel Brooks
Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.”
-Mel Brooks
Friday, March 4, 2011
The Elder Scrolls Rant
Well, I wanted to post something the last two days, since I wanted to get three posts a week on your standard Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule, but I've been busy. Thankfully my spring break started yesterday so I should have 10 days free to maybe start up a back-log. Now on to the important stuff.
As you may or may not be aware (if you have your head under a rock or just don't follow gaming news) Bethesda is coming out with the fifth installment in their popular Elder Scrolls game series. So far, there's not much out about it but I'll give you what I know and what I think about it tomorrow. But first, it's back story time. As with Dragon Age II I feel it's important to understanding where I'm coming from before hearing my opinion on the game. However this will take a little bit longer than Dragon Age: Origins did, plus I'm actually playing Oblivion at the moment so I can rant much more effectively on it.
Of course, I have to take another step back first. I started playing The Elder Scrolls with Morrowind. That was fun, but it took a while to find something I could actually play. I started out with a mage, but the fact that your magicka didn't replenish on its own kinda killed that for me. I then tried a stealth approach, but that bombed as I was a little too sucky at the start and didn't have the patience to work my way all the way up to master thief. So instead I went through a long list of mixed and matched characters until I had the first couple hours of gameplay memorized. Eventually though I finally started up a heavy armor/long blade fighter and actually got around to playing through the game. Of course, once I actually got into the game I still had to periodically forget that I was in a sandbox and just buckle down to doing something.
Oblivion came out and they made a few changes, some good some bad. They condensed some skills, removed others, added blocking and manipulation of your surroundings, simplified enchanting (though made it a pain to get to), made enemies scale with your character, and had magicka regenerate. With the exception of the first and last items on the list, I'm not sure I like most of the changes. Enchanting especially irks me. While they did fix “on strike” enchantments on bows and made constant effects more accessible they also greatly limited what was possible. No longer could you create a ring to let you shoot fireballs or walk on air (technically that's a removed spell, but I still miss it). You can only create "On Strike" weapons and "Constant Effect" armors/clothing and the constant effect list is much shorter. This removes a lot of options like my armbands of regeneration I was fond of in Morrowind and does nothing to fix the 100% chameleon trick which still pretty much breaks the game.
Anyway I’m still working my way through Oblivion as for a good year I couldn’t find a character and a play style to suit me. You see, Oblivion’s scaling enemies presents a bit of a problem. As you become more powerful you have to contend with more powerful creatures. You can circumvent this however if you level the right way. Unfortunately that way is very tedious. So it’s a balance between cash, level, and combat ability. Do I want to/can I find a combination that lets me just play straight and see what happens? Or try to get around the level scaling by grinding to death. Currently I’m trying the former, again, but I’ve managed to set something up that’s not TOO bad. Helps that I can abuse the crap out of invisibility spells. So far stealth is the only thing I can stand. Straight up fighting is far too messy, requiring too many health potions or healing spells (blocking only reduces damage rather than actually preventing it) and magic just tends to add Magicka and current spell to the list of crap you need to keep track of which means either opening your menu a lot or hoping hotkeys work (I’m playing on the 360 and I’ve decided it was a bad decision as the control is slugish and I get four reliable hotkeys and four that are much less so). So I’m left with stealth, which seems fairly effective for dealing with most everything now that I’ve reached a significant level with the right skills (and spells).
One of the big issues is that magic is both overpowered and underpowered at the same time. It can do just about anything with enough Magicka behind it and is insanely easy to train. However, on the other hand you need to get enough to then support all those spells you need to use. Morrowind solved this problem with the use of the Enchant skill and enchanted items. You could put pretty much any spell as an enchantment and cast it from there. This would circumvent any problems you had from being a fighter or thief as long as you could soul trap (which was pretty easy to shove onto a weapon or on another enchanted item). This could get very expensive as enchanting items yourself was fairly risky business. However, Morrowind once again had a solution: it allowed you to bundle purchases and sales together so you could trade with merchants and get the full amount for your items (if they only had 1k gold you sell a 5k item and buy 4k worth of merchandise, you could then come back tomorrow and another 1k back to them, repeat till you don’t have anything to sell). Oblivion, however, uses an instant sell/buy function so at best you’re getting 2k gold (the best merchants in the game have 1k gold and you can add 1k to their available gold at 100 Mercantilism) for items worth several times that. Of course they’ll still charge you full price for that enchanted necklace worth 8k gold when they bought it off of you for only 1k or 2k gold.
Another problem I’ve run across in Oblivion is a combination of the level scaling an quick travel options. From the very start of the game you can instantly travel from one side of Cyrodiil to the other. To me this is a problem, as one of the big draws of the game is the beautiful landscapes and the opportunity to explore them. However, why should I bother when I can instantly warp wherever I like? Admittedly you often have to do some exploring to find most of the quest locations and you can’t warp to places outside of a city or town until you’ve found them. I just can’t shake the feeling that Cyrodiil is smaller than Vvardenfell, despite claims to the contrary. Maybe it has something to do with the rocky, volcanic, and alien qualities of the latter, but I think the work involved also had a big effect on it. As they say: The journey is just as important as the destination. Oblivion just doesn’t give you much incentive to actually make that journey. In fact, with the new horses it’s almost discouraged. It takes approximately 2 seconds to get on and off of a horse and while you’re riding across the country you’ll encounter quite a number of creatures that want to kill you for one reason or another. Unless you’ve got some mad perception or a lot of detect life enchantments equipped you’re likely to be caught either on your horse or in mid dismount. Which is plenty of time for your new friend to rip a few holes in your hide before you can reciprocate the gesture. So you’re options are: travel manually by horse and take some additional damage while dismounting, travel by foot and take even longer to get somewhere, or fast travel and miss everything.
Bah, now I want to stop playing Oblivion and pick Morrowind back up, but I need to finish the thing sometime before November and the sooner the better. Tomorrow I will take a look at Skyrim. Hopefully I’ll have it up earlier too.
Wolfgang out.
Of course, I have to take another step back first. I started playing The Elder Scrolls with Morrowind. That was fun, but it took a while to find something I could actually play. I started out with a mage, but the fact that your magicka didn't replenish on its own kinda killed that for me. I then tried a stealth approach, but that bombed as I was a little too sucky at the start and didn't have the patience to work my way all the way up to master thief. So instead I went through a long list of mixed and matched characters until I had the first couple hours of gameplay memorized. Eventually though I finally started up a heavy armor/long blade fighter and actually got around to playing through the game. Of course, once I actually got into the game I still had to periodically forget that I was in a sandbox and just buckle down to doing something.
Oblivion came out and they made a few changes, some good some bad. They condensed some skills, removed others, added blocking and manipulation of your surroundings, simplified enchanting (though made it a pain to get to), made enemies scale with your character, and had magicka regenerate. With the exception of the first and last items on the list, I'm not sure I like most of the changes. Enchanting especially irks me. While they did fix “on strike” enchantments on bows and made constant effects more accessible they also greatly limited what was possible. No longer could you create a ring to let you shoot fireballs or walk on air (technically that's a removed spell, but I still miss it). You can only create "On Strike" weapons and "Constant Effect" armors/clothing and the constant effect list is much shorter. This removes a lot of options like my armbands of regeneration I was fond of in Morrowind and does nothing to fix the 100% chameleon trick which still pretty much breaks the game.
Anyway I’m still working my way through Oblivion as for a good year I couldn’t find a character and a play style to suit me. You see, Oblivion’s scaling enemies presents a bit of a problem. As you become more powerful you have to contend with more powerful creatures. You can circumvent this however if you level the right way. Unfortunately that way is very tedious. So it’s a balance between cash, level, and combat ability. Do I want to/can I find a combination that lets me just play straight and see what happens? Or try to get around the level scaling by grinding to death. Currently I’m trying the former, again, but I’ve managed to set something up that’s not TOO bad. Helps that I can abuse the crap out of invisibility spells. So far stealth is the only thing I can stand. Straight up fighting is far too messy, requiring too many health potions or healing spells (blocking only reduces damage rather than actually preventing it) and magic just tends to add Magicka and current spell to the list of crap you need to keep track of which means either opening your menu a lot or hoping hotkeys work (I’m playing on the 360 and I’ve decided it was a bad decision as the control is slugish and I get four reliable hotkeys and four that are much less so). So I’m left with stealth, which seems fairly effective for dealing with most everything now that I’ve reached a significant level with the right skills (and spells).
One of the big issues is that magic is both overpowered and underpowered at the same time. It can do just about anything with enough Magicka behind it and is insanely easy to train. However, on the other hand you need to get enough to then support all those spells you need to use. Morrowind solved this problem with the use of the Enchant skill and enchanted items. You could put pretty much any spell as an enchantment and cast it from there. This would circumvent any problems you had from being a fighter or thief as long as you could soul trap (which was pretty easy to shove onto a weapon or on another enchanted item). This could get very expensive as enchanting items yourself was fairly risky business. However, Morrowind once again had a solution: it allowed you to bundle purchases and sales together so you could trade with merchants and get the full amount for your items (if they only had 1k gold you sell a 5k item and buy 4k worth of merchandise, you could then come back tomorrow and another 1k back to them, repeat till you don’t have anything to sell). Oblivion, however, uses an instant sell/buy function so at best you’re getting 2k gold (the best merchants in the game have 1k gold and you can add 1k to their available gold at 100 Mercantilism) for items worth several times that. Of course they’ll still charge you full price for that enchanted necklace worth 8k gold when they bought it off of you for only 1k or 2k gold.
Another problem I’ve run across in Oblivion is a combination of the level scaling an quick travel options. From the very start of the game you can instantly travel from one side of Cyrodiil to the other. To me this is a problem, as one of the big draws of the game is the beautiful landscapes and the opportunity to explore them. However, why should I bother when I can instantly warp wherever I like? Admittedly you often have to do some exploring to find most of the quest locations and you can’t warp to places outside of a city or town until you’ve found them. I just can’t shake the feeling that Cyrodiil is smaller than Vvardenfell, despite claims to the contrary. Maybe it has something to do with the rocky, volcanic, and alien qualities of the latter, but I think the work involved also had a big effect on it. As they say: The journey is just as important as the destination. Oblivion just doesn’t give you much incentive to actually make that journey. In fact, with the new horses it’s almost discouraged. It takes approximately 2 seconds to get on and off of a horse and while you’re riding across the country you’ll encounter quite a number of creatures that want to kill you for one reason or another. Unless you’ve got some mad perception or a lot of detect life enchantments equipped you’re likely to be caught either on your horse or in mid dismount. Which is plenty of time for your new friend to rip a few holes in your hide before you can reciprocate the gesture. So you’re options are: travel manually by horse and take some additional damage while dismounting, travel by foot and take even longer to get somewhere, or fast travel and miss everything.
Bah, now I want to stop playing Oblivion and pick Morrowind back up, but I need to finish the thing sometime before November and the sooner the better. Tomorrow I will take a look at Skyrim. Hopefully I’ll have it up earlier too.
Wolfgang out.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
-Albert Einstein
-Albert Einstein
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