What Are You Playing Right Now, Part 2: Daggerfall

[factotum]

But it's presented as a choice.

Additionally, the more options there are the more chance there is of a degenerate outcome where some narrow combination is far better than all others because the more options there are the harder it is to test all the interactions.

Thing is, I'm not a power gamer. I don't especially care if whatever character I've built is the 100% most optimal way of getting through the game, so long as I enjoy myself. Which I suppose actually makes me a person who doesn't much care about stats, except inasmuch as they offer a way to unlock or use the skills that I want to use. However, stats can be used to make some actual substantive differences to the game--like in the older Fallout titles, or in The Outer Worlds, where picking a low intelligence score actually changes your dialog options.

Thinking about it, I reckon Grim Dawn does this about perfectly. You get some points to spend on your stats at level-ups, but you get far more stat boosts from equipment and from putting points into your masteries--the latter of which also unlocks new skills for you to use, so it's something you'd be doing anyway. Add to that the fact there's only 3 stats (Physique, Cunning and Spirit) and it's about as simple as it comes in that regard.

[Erloas]

It comes down to the design. With Diablo it's all about specific combos and quickly multiplying powers of a relatively small number of skills and most of the important bonuses are to skills. More classic P&P style RPGs where a stat makes a very large part of many different skills, and you're not expected to be good with all of them at once, then having more different stats is needed so you can't be good at everything. Of course there are also games without any stats but skills that function in all the ways other games use stats. As well as some games without any skills but stats that cover the same things. There is as much or as little distinction between them as a game designer wants.

[Gnoman]

I am not sure if you remember this but the original Halo gave you even less context for who anyone was and why multicoloured space gremlins were trying to kill you.

That was, however, in a context where you clearly aren't expected to know what's going on in any great detail. You're some sort of special forces trooper who woke up in a tube on a ship that was full of aliens trying to kill you and humans trying to die noisily to give the scene a sense of tragedy.

[Anteros]

I mean, does Halo have a story really? It's more of a backdrop to watch Master Chief be awesome than an actual story.

[Yora]

You leave the ship, go find the captain, split with the captain, go to find the captain again, and then go back to the ship. And in the meantime hear exposition about the Flood.

Yeah, not really a lot of plot.

Though I think Half-Life wasn't terribly more complicated either. And I think those were the shooters that were considered to have great stories around 2000.

[warty goblin]

Lets see:
- A newcomer to the series is not an unsual use case.
- The game is released on its own and should stand on its own
- Prequel which makes it an intuitive choice for newcomers

It's the fifth game in the series, which came out at a time when the series was riding very, very high. In the context the game released in, it would be a very odd place to start, particularly since all the previous Halo games were either available on 360, or were backwards compatible with it. Releasing it first on the PC is a bit weird, I think it's because they're releasing it as DLC for the XBox at the same time.

It's the barest minimum to give context to a shooting game, correct. A compelling narrative this is not. Oh, and point 2 was NOT obvious to me by the intro, so thanks for the spoiler there

I would not complain about this if Halo would be like Serious Sam: a game that actually does not have any more depth than "here be monsters, there is a gun, have fun!".
But the Halo games are not of this kind. There IS a setting that takes itself quite seriously.

It's pretty much exactly as much exposition as the first Halo gave you, and not much less than the second. Never played the third. The series has never been, to the best of my knowledge, long on the exposition. Sorry for the spoiler, I thought it was pretty much given away, since the intro cutscene is your broken helmet sitting in a blasted wasteland, right before cutting to you putting the helmet on. It's also sort of a given if one knows any of the universe's background; I'm pretty sure the fate of Reach is spoiled in the manual for Halo 1 even.

So Reach is a garden world comparable to earth (in the Epsilon Eridani system for us Freespace fans / astrology nerds), with hundreds of millions of inhabitants, and vital military installations? In that it would take a similar role to Mass Effect's Eden Prime or Freespace2's Capella.
And the war against the covenants rages for 20 years and humanity is definitely not winning?

Aha, that would actually interessting to know! It would establish what is at stake, put some perspective into things. And the player should not have to resort to fan-wikies for this kind of exposition.

The lack of exposition does not make the game unplayable, of course, but it IS a legitimate critique.

On a more positive note: the second mission is much more enjoyable than the first

I like the lack of exposition. There's a real virtue to not battering the player over the head with background information that doesn't really make any difference to the story the game is actually telling*. And later missions in the game do a reasonable amount to establish the sort of thing you're talking about, i.e. actually integrating information delivery into the course of the game.

*Know what I wouldn't mind never seeing ever again? An audio log.

[Triaxx]

Personally I think Halo takes itself a touch too seriously at times. I enjoyed the first because there was enough humor to keep the weight of the plot from dragging you down. IE: Here's a story about a super weapon intent on dooming all life in the universe. And here's a joke about elevator operators.

[Brookshw]

Kind of a bummer they're going to be released overtime, I would be happy to binge halo campaigns for a while.

[factotum]

I got Rage 2 and am currently playing through it. I can see why people weren't impressed with it--the combat is visceral and fun, but as soon as everything is dead you come to a screeching halt while you search around for the chests you need to find. You can also see the borrowings from the Mad Max game that came out a few years ago. Still, it's entertaining enough I'll probably stick with it.

I guess the biggest puzzle is, though: why does the game even exist? The original game was essentially an overlong tech demo for the new IDtech engine. This new one doesn't even use that engine--it uses the Avalanche Studios engine from Mad Max, Just Cause etc. Very odd.

[DigoDragon]

Though I think Half-Life wasn't terribly more complicated either. And I think those were the shooters that were considered to have great stories around 2000.

I don't remember there being much competition in 2000 for shooters with complex stories, so I can understand if these two games were considered deep in their space/time :3

[Brookshw]

I don't remember there being much competition in 2000 for shooters with complex stories, so I can understand if these two games were considered deep in their space/time :3

Doom 3 maybe? Which has less story? Counterstrike and Team Fortress?

[Cazero]

...Friggin' Deus Ex ?

[Zombimode]

You leave the ship, go find the captain, split with the captain, go to find the captain again, and then go back to the ship. And in the meantime hear exposition about the Flood.

Yeah, not really a lot of plot.

Well, you can always ridicule anything. It's neither hard to do nor terribly convincing.

Though I think Half-Life wasn't terribly more complicated either. And I think those were the shooters that were considered to have great stories around 2000.

I don't remember Half-Life being lauded for it's story. What made Half-Life stand out was a setting and narrative that was firmly on the serious side of things in contrast to the vast majority of Shooters that came before. And that it took great length to create an athmosphere and succeeded at doing so.

[factotum]

Doom 3 maybe?

Doom 3 didn't come out until 2004, so it's not very fair comparing it to Half-Life (1998) and Halo: Combat Evolved (2001).

[DigoDragon]

...Friggin' Deus Ex ?

That one is pretty old yeah. Good memory!

[Cespenar]

...Friggin' Deus Ex ?

Deus Ex is hardly a shooter, though.

[LibraryOgre]

So, I'm playing Andromeda and... I kind of like it? Like, everyone was so down on it but, once I changed by character to someone who didn't have hair physics (WTF were they thinking?), I'm not seeing these massive problems that everyone else seems to have had.

[heronbpv]

Strife, then. Or even Hexen I/II and Marathon I/II. These had complex enough stories for the time, I think.

[Brookshw]

Deus Ex is hardly a shooter, though.

Kind of a cult game too. Max Payne might be a contender. Then again, we should probably restrict the comparison to console games.

[Cespenar]

So, I'm playing Andromeda and... I kind of like it? Like, everyone was so down on it but, once I changed by character to someone who didn't have hair physics (WTF were they thinking?), I'm not seeing these massive problems that everyone else seems to have had.

Same here. I don't know if I got it so late that they had fixed all the issues by then, but it was a pretty okay Mass Effect game.

[factotum]

I think they did release a major patch to fix a lot of the more egregious animation fails that people were complaining about? Not actually played the game, might buy it and give it a try at some point.

[tonberrian]

Andromeda, aside from animation fails, was always Okay. The problem was that it wasn't nearly as excellent as, say, ME3, and there's a lot of places where it could have been a lot better.

[Eldan]

Finally picked up Disco Elysium. Played two hours and I'm totally hooked. Has to be the best RPG I've played in years. Best since Witcher 3, probaly. Painful to play, though, sometimes. I'm just such an utter scum bag.

[Erloas]

I think Andromeda's biggest problem was a failure of expectations, being that ME was one of the biggest RPG series in the last decade, so just "good" wasn't "good enough" for a lot of people. There were also a lot of people still complaining about the end of ME3 so they were going to complain about whatever was next regardless.

[Man_Over_Game]

Finally picked up Disco Elysium. Played two hours and I'm totally hooked. Has to be the best RPG I've played in years. Best since Witcher 3, probaly. Painful to play, though, sometimes. I'm just such an utter scum bag.

I've heard of Disco Elysium be compared to Planescape: Torment and Torment: Tides of Numenera. If you've played either of those, how do they compare?

Is your character a scum bag, or are the actions you're pushing them through make them one?

Lastly, how balanced do you feel the game is? From my experience, text-based storytelling RPGs benefit players who utilize magic moreso than weapons or sneakery, if only because Magic has more unique solutions to problems (leading into more dialogue/puzzles, leading into more rewards with fewer risks/costs).

[Eldan]

It compares to Torment in a lot of ways.

Mechanically, it's very Black Isle RPG. Skill checks, levelling, isometric camera, party, inventory.

The tone is a mix of somber and darkly humourous. It is not our world, though I'm not yet sure how different. Magic is hinted at, but does not yet seem present. The story is very political. Failed communist regime, international coalition occupation, megacorps, unionist rabblerousers, strikebreakers, drug trade, homeless veterans, wannabe artistes.

As for scumbag... another thing shared with Torment is the Amnesia, but it is handled quite differently. The starting point is given: you are a cop. You should have solved a murder. Instead, you went on a three-day bender and wake up in a trashed hotel room full of empty bottles with a monster hangover. You remember nothing at first, not even your name. At some points in the game, you remember stuff. But not to reveal backstory. The game lets you choose what you remember, to build your character. You are always a wreck, but in different ways.

The other thing is the skills. They have names like volition, authority, electrochemistry, shivers, conceptualization or esprit de corps. They are parts of your character, with their own (voice-acted) voices and putting points in them can give them power over you. It takes skill checks to do unusual things, like look in the mirror, because you are afraid of what you might see.

[warty goblin]

Andromeda, aside from animation fails, was always Okay. The problem was that it wasn't nearly as excellent as, say, ME3, and there's a lot of places where it could have been a lot better.

The only part of Andromeda that I found extremely difficult to enjoy was the writing, which very rarely achieved the lofty heights of only somewhat interesting, was mostly boring and at worst actually painful. In a lot of games bad writing would be a thing I don't even care about, but being a Bioware game, there's simply a lot of it. I finally gave up when I got shot to death in the middle of another extremely flaccid conversation with some rando quest giver.

Even aside from the writing though, it still had an enormous amount of wasted potential. Setting up new colonies is a fantastic hook, but the actual gameplay systems were entirely separate from that. I'm not scouting for materials to help the colony, I'm prospecting so I can build Space Gun Mk. 3, because Space Gun Mk. 2 no longer does enough damage to keep up with the rampant RPG number bloat. Fulfilling quests does tie into this, but only in the form of raising a meter, and the big reward for getting your meter full and doing the space magic terraforming dungeon is... the game removes some invisible walls and drops a new batch of fetch quests on you. And in an entirely new galaxy we're given what, two new species, which are Boring Space People and Boring Bad Space People, respectively.

[Erloas]

So I had played Shadowrun Hong Kong at the same time as one of the streams I regularly watched started a play through and I couldn't quite stay ahead so I put it down for a while. I knew I was close to the end, I didn't realize I was literally on the break before the last mission, so I come back to it and beat it in a couple hours.
Had recently finished Wasteland 2 and XCOM: EW too.

Not sure what to play now though. Wanted to check out some modded Minecraft, but the mods I'm thinking about haven't updated to 1.14 yet. Haven't played MechWarrior Online in a while. Thinking about Torment Tides of Numeria (purchased a long time ago, only played it a short time before). Try some more Rainbow Six Siege.

But nothing is really calling to me right now.

[factotum]

Torment: Tides of Numenera is quite short, so you might as well fire it up--you'll likely finish the story in about 20 hours, and then wonder what happened to the rest of it.

[Eldan]

Lastly, how balanced do you feel the game is? From my experience, text-based storytelling RPGs benefit players who utilize magic moreso than weapons or sneakery, if only because Magic has more unique solutions to problems (leading into more dialogue/puzzles, leading into more rewards with fewer risks/costs).

As for balance... honestly, I can't say yet? I've only put three or four hours into it. There's not "magic" as such, yet, only hints that there might be. Or maybe your main character is just able to believe in it. (I bought a book on Finnish-inspired ritual magic for making magical vodka that heals your liver if you drink it in a Sauna.) There's a few skills you can take that seem like magic sometimes (Shivers, which is the ability to have the city talk to you is one of them. I took it as my signature skill, I do things like look at walls and have them tell me stories, or taste the rain to reveal map sections I haven't been yet. But it might also just be prior knowledge and intuition put it in poetic language), but I think they aren't strictly better.

The closest equivalent, I think, is mental and physical stats. There's four, that basically map to charisma, intelligence, wisdom/dexterity and strength/constitution in D&D. In Torment, the mental stats were hilariously more important than the physical. In Disco Elysium, I've been in several events already where I desperately wished I hadn't totally tanked my physical stats. Like repeatedly failing my endurance check to examine the body of the murder victim and instead just vomiting every time, evne with the gloves, face mask and smelling salts. Or getting humiliated in every physical confrontation. I tried to punch a thug and he just grabbed my hand, watch me struggle for a bit and then made racist comments while his friends laughed.

It should also be mentioned again that every skill is also a mental aspect of your character. Having high reaction time means you can make quips in conversation. Half-light is a weird skill that's a mix of perception, intuition and reflexes, that's also used for intimidation. Putting points into it makes you high-strung and jumpy and that comes across in conversations, too. Composure and perception are physical, too.

It's difficult to judge, because if you don't have a skill - and some of mine are still at one point, while others are up at eight or nine - the options to use them don't show up in conversation, I think. While the skills you have really high sometimes just assert themselves in conversation. My cop is all about the charisma and perception skills and they come up a lot. But I couldn't tell you how much the really physical skills would come up, because I don't have them. Same with the purely intellectual stuff like encyclopedia or conceptualization.