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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Lack of an in-game tutorial and/or an explanation of what the game mechanics actually are.
I really want to get into Morrowind but I can't because I don't know what any of my stat increases do. Or even how useful they are. E.g. what the heck does Mysticism do and why should I take it?
Tangentially related to the above: frustratingly obtuse puzzles that are necessary for progression. In Ocarina of Time, there's a Goron rolling around that you have to talk to in order to enter the Fire Temple, but the solution isn't to talk to him but rather to chuck a bomb at him and then talk to him. How exactly were we supposed to figure that one out?
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
mjp1050
Lack of an in-game tutorial and/or an explanation of what the game mechanics actually are.
I really want to get into Morrowind but I can't because I don't know what any of my stat increases do. Or even how useful they are. E.g. what the heck does Mysticism do and why should I take it?
Tangentially related to the above: frustratingly obtuse puzzles that are necessary for progression. In Ocarina of Time, there's a Goron rolling around that you have to talk to in order to enter the Fire Temple, but the solution isn't to talk to him but rather to [i]chuck a bomb at him[\i] and then talk to him. How exactly were we supposed to figure that one out?
Because he's not stoppable unless you bomb him, in that one, and he says he won't stop for anything, and there are bomb flowers around. It's fair to miss, and also is optional!
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Grind for the sake of grind to extend gameplay.
Case in point: Dragon Warrior on the NES. You can beat the whole game in under a half hour if you didn't have to constantly grind levels to be able to survive. A substantial majority of the gameplay is nothing more than grinding cash/xp.
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
ShneekeyTheLost
Grind for the sake of grind to extend gameplay.
Case in point: Dragon Warrior on the NES. You can beat the whole game in under a half hour if you didn't have to constantly grind levels to be able to survive. A substantial majority of the gameplay is nothing more than grinding cash/xp.
Sadly, this is still a thing in a lot of modern JRPGs as well. Heck, a lot of "sixty hour" games are only that long because they artificially pad the runtime with useless grindy quests.
I don't think we'll see the tail end of that one any time soon...
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
mjp1050
I really want to get into Morrowind but I can't because I don't know what any of my stat increases do. Or even how useful they are. E.g. what the heck does Mysticism do and why should I take it?
A fast explanation.
Morrowind has:
Basic stats:
Health: when you run out of it, you die.
Magicka: you consume it to cast spells.
Fatigue: you consume it when running, jumping, or striking with a weapon. As it drains, you become less successful at everything you do.
Attributes:
Strength: allows you to carry more (5 each point), makes you inflict more damage with weapons. Influences fatigue and starting health.
Agility: lets you hit and dodge more often. You can fall when hit during combat. Agility makes it less likely. Influences max fatigue.
Endurance: increases max HP and fatigue. Your fatigue drains slower.
Intelligence: increases your max magicka.
Willpower: Makes you cast spells more reliably, increases max fatigue and resistance to certain spells like paralyse.
Personality: People like you more. You are better at persuading and trading.
Luck: gives you a bonus at everything.
Speed: decides how fast you move.
Skills:
Skills make you better at a very selected kind of activities. In Morrowind, you often need to roll a virtual die that decides whether you succeed or not at what you are doing: will your strike connect? Will your spell fizzle? Skills make it more likely that you succeed.
Weapon skills make you better at using a certain kind of weapon, and increase how much damage you inflict and how often you hit.
Armour skills make you faster at moving in a certain kind of armour, using less fatigue while running, and increase your armour rating.
Spell-school skills let you cast spells in that school more reliably. These are destruction (mostly direct damage and debuff), mysticism (absorb from enemy, teleportation, detection spells, soul trap), alteration (lock, unlock, levitate, various shield spells, a number of travel spells), conjuration (summon creatures, weapons, and armour, or dominate creatures), illusion (invisibility, silence, night sight, combat-oriented mind-control), and restoration (healing).
Then there are some crafting skills: alchemy lets you create potions. You very often find ingredients. Each has four effects. With higher alchemy scores, more effects become visible. When you have an apparatus (which you carry in your inventory) you can use it to mix ingredients and create potions.
Enchant lets you create and recharge magic items more reliably, and use them more effectively. You need a spell (of any school), a soulgem filled with a soul, and an item to enchant. There are two kinds of enchanted items: some have their own magicka pool (which recharges over time) and let you cast their enchantment like a spell; others are always casting and represent a constant buff for yourself.
Armorer lets you use your hammers to repair your weapons and armour more reliably.
Athletics lets you run longer and faster.
Acrobatics lets you jump higher.
Mercantile lets you get better deals when trading.
Security lets you use lockpicks and probe for traps more reliably.
Sneak lets you sneak more reliably.
Speechcraft makes you better at persuading, bribing, or taunting.
Block lets you block with your shield more reliably. Blocking is automatic.
Every skill is governed by an attribute, which means that that attribute will give you better results when using that skill.
Every character has a class. Every class has major, minor, and miscellaneous skills. Major skills receive a large bonus at character creation, minor ones get a small one, misc. get no bonus. To gain levels, you need to raise your major and minor skills by a total of 10 points. When you level up, you get a bonus to health, magicka, and fatigue, and you can choose which attribute to raise. The attributes that govern the skills which you increased get a better increase, should you decide to raise them.
Governing attributes:
Strength: Acrobatics, Armorer, Axe, Blunt Weapon, and Long Blade.
Agility: Block, Light Armor, Marksman, and Sneak.
Endurance: Heavy Armor, Medium Armor, and Spear.
Intelligence: Alchemy, Conjuration, Enchant, and Security.
Personality: Illusion, Mercantile, and Speechcraft
Speed: Athletics, Hand-to-hand, Short Blade and Unarmored.
Willpower: Alteration, Destruction, Mysticism, and Restoration.
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
mjp1050
I really want to get into Morrowind but I can't because I don't know what any of my stat increases do. Or even how useful they are. E.g. what the heck does Mysticism do and why should I take it?
There's a character generation - minigame, you could call it - where you get interviewed, and the interviewer will suggest a class based on your answers. It's not a bad way to get started. If you decide to change later, once you've understood what's going on, there's nothing to stop you.
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
On weapon degradation, I will say I think it fit more into Fallout 3 than say Oblivion. Rusty junk that may or may not have been shot out of a Raiders hands, or sat out in a definitely non-watertight container for 200 years, should probably break more often than something relatively freshly forged. That said as with so many other things, Fallout New Vegas did it better with it's maintenance system. It works fine for the first 10-15 percent of it's condition, then begins to have a negative performance.
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Unskippable cutscenes. We've still got them, but they're becoming less & less prevalent.
One issue that seems to be getting worse over time: unnecessary number inflation. Health & damage & stat numbers being much larger than they need to be. Don't be doing 5400 damage to something with 37665 HP, please instead be doing 2 damage to something with 13 HP. Either way you're defeating the target in 7 hits, but latter is much easier to plan & strategize around. It's part of why Paper Mario 1&2 are one of my favourite turn-based games, the HP almost never leaves double-digits.
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Floogal
Unskippable cutscenes. We've still got them, but they're becoming less & less prevalent.
One issue that seems to be getting worse over time: unnecessary number inflation. Health & damage & stat numbers being much larger than they need to be. Don't be doing 5400 damage to something with 37665 HP, please instead be doing 2 damage to something with 13 HP. Either way you're defeating the target in 7 hits, but latter is much easier to plan & strategize around. It's part of why Paper Mario 1&2 are one of my favourite turn-based games, the HP almost never leaves double-digits.
In large part I agree, though I think there's room in there for some gradients.
Something having 30k+ HP is clearly absurd, 300 HP is a little less so. It leads to a bit more granularity where there can be a significant difference between doing 10 and 15 damage, but without arbitrary numbers inflation.
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Floogal
Unskippable cutscenes. We've still got them, but they're becoming less & less prevalent.
The PS4 FFX/X-2 remaster has this.
WHY!? It's a remaster!!!
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
veti
There's a character generation - minigame, you could call it - where you get interviewed, and the interviewer will suggest a class based on your answers. It's not a bad way to get started. If you decide to change later, once you've understood what's going on, there's nothing to stop you.
One thing I miss is intertwined with a thing I don't miss now that you mention Morrowind and magic: Utility magic. I simultaneously miss utility magic (and to an extent, crafting/engineering) in games. But a thing I do not miss is QoL improvements being hidden behind certain skills and builds.
My character runs faster when I take a perk for movement in Outer Worlds? Why WOULDN'T I? I am no speed runners but my time is valuable. I need mysticism for teleport spells which cut my travel times down in Morrowind? Dude, that is just a fancy way of fast travelling. My character can be an artisan locksmith with a whole dedicated tree to picking locks? Why not give wizards a 2nd level spell that works like a whole class feature in Baldur's Gate? Your blade will have almost game breaking power, but only if you invest in smithing? Sure, but you gotta smith 200 iron daggers first in Skyrim.
It is difficult to increase a character's toolbox with a certain side skill that does NOT spawn the occasional need to always go into the side skill. And games that are usually scared to take that risk have very very bland crafting or utility skills as a result. But it is a two-edged blade there.
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Floogal
Unskippable cutscenes. We've still got them, but they're becoming less & less prevalent.
Oh, I DESPISE those!
The worst offenders there are Skyrim and the Half-Life series. At least most other games' unskippable cutscenes have something going on other than the protagonist just sitting dumbly on a vehicle for half an hour.
(EDIT: granted, the scenes I'm referring to here aren't technically cutscenes because you can look in different directions, but these scenes lack gameplay and function similar to cutscenes so I'm counting them)
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Rynjin
In large part I agree, though I think there's room in there for some gradients.
Something having 30k+ HP is clearly absurd, 300 HP is a little less so. It leads to a bit more granularity where there can be a significant difference between doing 10 and 15 damage, but without arbitrary numbers inflation.
Eh. If a crazily simulationist system like D&D or Warhammer can make it work with a handful of hit points, there isn't really much excuse of not doing it. (Yes, D&D can reach 300s, but not for the most of the time).
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Floogal
Unskippable cutscenes. We've still got them, but they're becoming less & less prevalent.
I'll see your unskippable cutscenes and raise you checkpoints before the unskippable cutscene.
Hell, checkpoints before even skippable cutscenes are bad enough, I've recently gone back to the original Saint's Row, and it's chronic for no checkpoints in missions and putting the checkpoint before the cutscenes.
Quote:
One issue that seems to be getting worse over time: unnecessary number inflation. Health & damage & stat numbers being much larger than they need to be. Don't be doing 5400 damage to something with 37665 HP, please instead be doing 2 damage to something with 13 HP. Either way you're defeating the target in 7 hits, but latter is much easier to plan & strategize around. It's part of why Paper Mario 1&2 are one of my favourite turn-based games, the HP almost never leaves double-digits.
Conversely expanding the number scale gives you more scope for effects that change the amount of hits it takes without requiring the player to deal with fractions.
Like if you do 2 damage at a time you can't have an effect that gives you +25% damage unless you're willing to let the player do 2.5 damage, and even then .5 damage doesn't sound like a lot.
Whereas if you do 200 damage at a time you can because people will grasp the value of going from 200 to 250 damage and won't rebel about having to deal with half points of damage.
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
GloatingSwine
I'll see your unskippable cutscenes and raise you checkpoints before the unskippable cutscene.
Hell, checkpoints before even skippable cutscenes are bad enough, I've recently gone back to the original Saint's Row, and it's chronic for no checkpoints in missions and putting the checkpoint before the cutscenes.
Conversely expanding the number scale gives you more scope for effects that change the amount of hits it takes without requiring the player to deal with fractions.
Like if you do 2 damage at a time you can't have an effect that gives you +25% damage unless you're willing to let the player do 2.5 damage, and even then .5 damage doesn't sound like a lot.
Whereas if you do 200 damage at a time you can because people will grasp the value of going from 200 to 250 damage and won't rebel about having to deal with half points of damage.
I remember a game where the checkpoint was before the cutscene. The first time you went through it, it was unskippable. The second time, it was skippable.
Now that's convenience.
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
GloatingSwine
Conversely expanding the number scale gives you more scope for effects that change the amount of hits it takes without requiring the player to deal with fractions.
Like if you do 2 damage at a time you can't have an effect that gives you +25% damage unless you're willing to let the player do 2.5 damage, and even then .5 damage doesn't sound like a lot.
Whereas if you do 200 damage at a time you can because people will grasp the value of going from 200 to 250 damage and won't rebel about having to deal with half points of damage.
For games like Diablo as well, where there is significant character progression from start to max level, having the wide range of numbers is nice both from a design and a player standpoint. From a design standpoint, if youre only ever doing the same amount of damage the whole game, your gear treadmill goes all out of whack, because suddenly that weapon that did 10 damage 3 levels ago is now only doing 2 damage, so youre actively being punished for progressing. Its also nice from a player standpoint to see just how much more powerful you are then when you started.
I do think its possible to have absurd number bloat (Diablo 3's endgame is especially guilty of this, to stick within the same series) but that's not really the same issue.
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
While the topic is on unskippable cutscenes, does anyone else remember the arcane art of being able to pause a cutscene? I remember one occurrence in a AAA game somewhere in the past, but there could be more.
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Cespenar
While the topic is on unskippable cutscenes, does anyone else remember the arcane art of being able to pause a cutscene? I remember one occurrence in a AAA game somewhere in the past, but there could be more.
Parasite Eve has the ability to pause cutscenes, unskippable cutscenes, and a sequence where you have a lengthy cutscene, then a boss, then another cutscene, then a forced battle arena. Then you're allowed to save.
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
mjp1050
Lack of an in-game tutorial and/or an explanation of what the game mechanics actually are.
I really want to get into Morrowind but I can't because I don't know what any of my stat increases do. Or even how useful they are. E.g. what the heck does Mysticism do and why should I take it?
Tangentially related to the above: frustratingly obtuse puzzles that are necessary for progression. In Ocarina of Time, there's a Goron rolling around that you have to talk to in order to enter the Fire Temple, but the solution isn't to talk to him but rather to chuck a bomb at him and then talk to him. How exactly were we supposed to figure that one out?
The trick with Morrowind is to never sleep. If you can do that, where you put your skills and stats doesn't matter. I managed sll the game's content only sleeping twice.
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Starcraft II had the best version IMO, not only are cutscenes slippage, but you can rewatch them on a little between missions.
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
mjp1050
Tangentially related to the above: frustratingly obtuse puzzles that are necessary for progression. In Ocarina of Time, there's a Goron rolling around that you have to talk to in order to enter the Fire Temple, but the solution isn't to talk to him but rather to chuck a bomb at him and then talk to him. How exactly were we supposed to figure that one out?
It is Zelda to be fair, one of the main rules is that in case of doubt chuck bombs at anything that looks funny/set it everything on fire.
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Crow
The trick with Morrowind is to never sleep. If you can do that, where you put your skills and stats doesn't matter. I managed sll the game's content only sleeping twice.
Sounds unnecessarily painful. I sleep a lot in Morrowind, since it's the only natural way to recover health. Not sleeping just means you never level up, which is not nearly as useful in Morrowind as in Oblivion, and it deprives you of the chance of any stat or health gains.
What makes character generation - not very important in Morrowind is the simple mechanic that allows anyone to do anything. Bored of hitting things with a sword? - just buy some training, and start hitting things with fists or spears or spells instead.
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
"Oh, but thou must!"
I mean, used to be so common in JRPG's that it's become a Gaming Trope definition. Basically the 'not a choice' option, where picking the 'wrong' option just presented you the question again until you picked the 'right' one.
It is very nearly always used in a ham-handed manner, and extremely annoying if you don't want to or the 'correct' answer is the obviously dangerous or boss battle engaging option.
Dragon Warrior was the Trope Namer for this, but it's got examples all over the place. Fortunately, they seem to either be dialed way back, completely removed, or have a lampshade hung on them.
Basically, instead of offering you a non-option, most these days will simply do it in a cutscene with no player agency. Also annoying at times, but at least not as bad as literally saying 'you have two options, and one of them will not be accepted'.
It still happens, I mean almost all of Fallout 4 falls into this category, but it's not as common as it used to be.
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Crow
The trick with Morrowind is to never sleep. If you can do that, where you put your skills and stats doesn't matter. I managed sll the game's content only sleeping twice.
But why? Sleeping and resting allow you to refill both health and magicka at no price, so they let you spare money instead of consuming potions.
And they are needed for levelling. Did you install Tribunal immediately after Morrowind? Being ambushed by the Dark Brotherhood at lvl 1 is the only reason why I can imagine you'd avoid sleep (in spite of the fact that they are leveled npcs, they are more dangerous for newer characters). Otherwise, there are creatures that are substituted with stronger versions as you level up, but I don't think they are too challenging, while npcs are mostly static, and you are actively gimping yourself by avoiding sleep and leveling (since your health increases by 10% at each level, at level 10 you have twice the health you had at lvl 1).
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
ShneekeyTheLost
"Oh, but thou must!"
I mean, used to be so common in JRPG's that it's become a Gaming Trope definition. Basically the 'not a choice' option, where picking the 'wrong' option just presented you the question again until you picked the 'right' one.
It is very nearly always used in a ham-handed manner, and extremely annoying if you don't want to or the 'correct' answer is the obviously dangerous or boss battle engaging option.
Dragon Warrior was the Trope Namer for this, but it's got examples all over the place. Fortunately, they seem to either be dialed way back, completely removed, or have a lampshade hung on them.
Basically, instead of offering you a non-option, most these days will simply do it in a cutscene with no player agency. Also annoying at times, but at least not as bad as literally saying 'you have two options, and one of them will not be accepted'.
The first Golden Sun had an option after the first dungeon is finished and the plot really starts going of just refusing to go save the world.
The result is the game going "And so you spent some more time at the starting village before the whole world fell to ruin since there was nobody else to save things" for a non-standard game over.
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
@Veti @Vinyadan
Just try it and see, do a no sleep run. The attributes not increasing doesn't really hurt you at all, and you get the opportunity to raise your strength and con sky high once you contract the blight. The HP doesn't hurt you, because everything else is leveled. Even the Ash Disciples (or whatever they're called) have fewer HP.
I can't remember atm how I regained HP though. I figured something out though, and it clearly wasn't so burdensome as to leave much of an impression.
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Morrowind actually had a range for its level scaling in dungeons--e.g. you might specify 10-25, and the critters will always map to those ranges. This makes it actually harder to do those dungeons at level 1 because everything's level 10, whereas if you do it at level 30 it'd be easier because you're 5 levels higher than them.
Regarding the "Oh, thou must!" thing mentioned by Shneekey the Lost a minute ago, the version of that which annoys me most is the "meant to lose" fight--e.g. a fight which is deliberately designed to be so hard that you can't possibly win it. The game never actually tells you that you're just going through a glorified cutscene, though. Bonus points if the game designers never considered what would happen in the one in a million chance you actually do win the "meant to lose" fight and you leave the game in a broken state because of it!
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
ShneekeyTheLost
"Oh, but thou must!"
I mean, used to be so common in JRPG's that it's become a Gaming Trope definition. Basically the 'not a choice' option, where picking the 'wrong' option just presented you the question again until you picked the 'right' one.
It is very nearly always used in a ham-handed manner, and extremely annoying if you don't want to or the 'correct' answer is the obviously dangerous or boss battle engaging option.
Dragon Warrior was the Trope Namer for this, but it's got examples all over the place. Fortunately, they seem to either be dialed way back, completely removed, or have a lampshade hung on them.
Basically, instead of offering you a non-option, most these days will simply do it in a cutscene with no player agency. Also annoying at times, but at least not as bad as literally saying 'you have two options, and one of them will not be accepted'.
It still happens, I mean almost all of Fallout 4 falls into this category, but it's not as common as it used to be.
Dragon Quest 11 I think took it as a deliberate joke. So many "but thou must" times in game, often with special scenes you wouldn't otherwise see. Such as when a prince is asking for your help, and if you refuse he grunts as he falls to the floor begging, before asking again.
...and then I noticed the grunts were different. Each time I repeated it, the grunts were randomized. I don't know how many voice acted grunts they recorded for that scene.
Or when asked to help a mermaid, if you refuse one of your party members swings a high kick at the Hero's head, stopping just before. "Oh, I'm sorry, I felt the sudden need to stretch my legs, what was that you were saying?"
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
ShneekeyTheLost
"Oh, but thou must!"
I mean, used to be so common in JRPG's that it's become a Gaming Trope definition. Basically the 'not a choice' option, where picking the 'wrong' option just presented you the question again until you picked the 'right' one.
I am curious what you think about linear RPGs like Pokemon then.
"Do you want to join Team Rocket?"
Of course nowdays in a time of meta jokes they joke about that stuff themselves.
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Rynjin
Designated save points, hands down.
The original GTA had no save points. (As far as I was ever aware at least.)
It was technically divided into separate levels, after you finished one level it updated your high scores and if you won unlocked the next level. But those levels were pretty huge, given that this is one of the games that popularized the open game world idea, and could take hours to beat. Six of these levels made up the whole game. Clear your schedule for this afternoon, or you'll never make it to San Andreas part 2.