setsneedtofeed

setsneedtofeed, 10 months ago

Both games do environmental storytelling, but with vastly different goals.

Obsidian approach is very constantly supporting a consistent tone and overarching setting. It is more desolate and feels more desolate because that’s what a lot of these in-between little areas are supposed to be. But the details in each area that are there so tell a story about what the area is like and how it function, they give a history to what you are seeing but it often isn’t over the top and full of little cute mini-stories you can follow. It isn’t bad storytelling, it’s telling a story you’re not into.

The Bethesda approach is often much more varied. Each settlement or location can have all these environmental stories, often will little miniature running plots. The variety extends to tone, and type of story. This does come at the expense of some coherence if you step back and start putting a critical eye to everything as a whole.

They are trying to give players different experiences. FNV a player can travel through a bleak desert, maybe only with hostile encounters as the Jungle Jangle radio plays until they finally hit a settlement and it feels like an actual refuge from the sun and rad scorpions to the player. The desolation builds that. Fallout 3 and especially 4 don’t want the player getting bored, so there is something interesting and different every ten feet to check out.

I suppose it says a lot about me that my Fallout 4 modlist turns the world into an extremely dangerous, ghoul filled place with dark nights, and rad storms. All of which makes travel on the overworld terrifying, and settlements feel extra secure in contrast.

setsneedtofeed, 10 months ago

The atmosphere, taken moment to moment, or at individual locations was good. The coherency of the explanations behind a lot of things and the coherency of the world as a whole was pretty disjointed.

setsneedtofeed, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

Designing coherent spaces is useful for game world designers to think about, but it could have been 5 minutes long and gotten the point across.

setsneedtofeed, 1 year ago

It’s a different kind of beast.

NMS released. They put it in a box and said “This is the finished game”. It was then torn to shreds and the long road of updates was a redemption story for an already released product.

Star Citizen will NEVER be done. It will always exist in some weird development alpha-beta limbo. It’s never going to go on Steam or shelves as a finished product. This allows the developers cover to always say the game is in development as a shield against any and all criticism. From their perspective it’s kind of perfect. Fans throw money at it endlessly and the development never really needs to reach a coherent state of being finished. Why would they ever want to actually release a finished game?

setsneedtofeed, 1 year ago

I dunno, seems incredibly competent to me.

setsneedtofeed, 1 year ago

Fluff is what zoomers would call “lore”.

setsneedtofeed, 1 year ago

Good news is best delivered piece by piece, bad news all at once.

The outrage against Reddit is already at its peak, may as well use it as cover to do more anti-user stuff.

setsneedtofeed, 1 year ago

That is my feeling. I want Lemmy to be good, so I hope a lot of quality users jump ship from Reddit, but if Reddit retains the millions of passive users, then I’m happy for Reddit to keep them. One part of Reddit’s issue was the diluted quality of posts and comments, so let it continue to exist to filter people who want that experience. ___

setsneedtofeed, 1 year ago

I’m kind of in a spur of playing or replaying older games. Replayed Fallout 1 recently and I’m doing a low intelligence build for the first time ever.

Debating playing VTM Bloodlines or the original Deus Ex, because this is a sin- I’ve never played either.

setsneedtofeed, 1 year ago

So far I am locked out of the Killian/Gizmo quest because both characters think I’m too dumb and dismiss me.

And big problem: I’m too stupid to use a slot machine. I had planned on using gambling as my money maker so this is a problem. Even with Mentats I’m still too dumb to gamble.