Skyrim or Kingdom of Amalur? [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Calemyr

2012-10-19, 02:05 PM

KoA's fighting style is livelier, but the game caps out WAY too early. I had the best weapons I could craft before I hit the halfway point and the customization options are pretty poor for gear. Actually, it's a lot like an MMO in the way you build your character and gear.

The DLCs for KoA are gorgeous, but the gear does not are mid-grade in a game where you cap out in the first half of the game.

The plot is pretty good, and your partners are fairly cool, and the setting is frankly amazing, but the game feels (oddly) too linear and static. There's also the fact that the company that made it closed their doors, so nothing more will (likely) be coming from the franchise.

Skyrim is... well... Skyrim. It's Elder Scrolls in its finest form to date. The game world is huge and the main plot is a drop in the bucket for what the game offers (and it's really little more than an excuse to introduce dragons, in my book, which are darn good fights once you get the hang of them). You have a much larger non-combat presence than even in previous Elder Scrolls game (at least Morrowind and Oblivion), can get married, buy a home, earn titles and reputation, even adopt orphans (with the Hearthfire DLC).

The biggest problems with Oblivion are that the game sometimes feels a mile wide and an inch deep - you don't really form real deep bonds (even with your spouse) and everything just comes a little to easily to you. Like Oblivion, there are no inter-guild conflicts, so you can easily become the master of every guild in the game whether or not you have the skills associated with them. Additionally, the combat is a lot more lively than previous Elder Scroll games, but that's really not saying much. It still lacks the fluid and graceful style of KoA and none of the quick-time events that let you feel so badass in KoA.

Customization is a major part of Skyrim, and the modding community has done their level best to make it even grander. Nearly anything can be upgraded to end-game quality with the right tricks, and no style is truly unplayable, though Destruction mages might disagree.

The real things that Skyrim have going for it, however, are the fact that Bethesda isn't done with the game and that the Elders Scrolls modding community goes beyond words in their ability to make virtually anything into a reality (including an approximation of Super Mario Bros).

So my vote would be for Skyrim. It flags a bit in combat style and the characterization is pretty shallow - but that's a flaw for both games. In the end, however, Skyrim simply offers too much for there to be much contention.

The_Jackal

2012-10-19, 02:37 PM

Skyrim. Better graphics, better story, just more fun. Amalur has good combat, but the world and story are just paper-thin.

Divayth Fyr

2012-10-19, 02:49 PM

Skyrim. Better graphics, better story, just more fun. Amalur has good combat, but the world and story are just paper-thin.
This. Apart from combat there isn't a single thing I'd say KoA does better than Skyrim. Even unmodded, the game will give you tons of things to do - steam shows me I have spent something around 300 hours playing the game and I still find places I haven't seen before.

Erloas

2012-10-19, 03:14 PM

duh..then either someone has put the wrong sticker on my pc, or I've read the wrong number..because it's definitely not a laptop
Well a search for what you posted that is all that came up.
So without any additional information to go on there is only so much I can do for recommendations.
I will operate under 2 basic assumptions from dealing with pre-built PCs, that you probably have a fairly small power supply and there is a good chance you have a low-profile case.

The AMD 6670 runs about $65-70 in the USA, so a bit more then a game.
Its going to run decent if you are running resolutions less then 1080p (ie 1920x1080, if you are running a smaller monitor around 1680x1050 or less you should be ok.)
And next is the AMD 7750, which runs about $110-120. It will be the minimum you'll want to use if you are using a 1080p or higher monitor (or running a game at those resolutions anyway, can always run at less then the native resolution of the screen)
Neither are going to do amazing but they doesn't require any extra power (above what the PCI-E bus supplies, no extra cable) and they can both be found in a low-profile option.

There is a pretty good chance that anything more powerful then that will probably require you to update your power supply.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-10-19, 04:21 PM

Skyrim. Better graphics, better story, just more fun. Amalur has good combat, but the world and story are just paper-thin.

Eeh... I'd disagree with that, actually. The world is just fine, the problem is the game's quests and plot instead choose to follow predictable cliches while completely ignoring the hooks that the setting itself provides. It's like they were deliberately saving all the interesting stuff for the (now-defunct) Copernicus.

I also have to disagree with KOAR suffering from Consolitis, at least any more than Skyrim. KOAR's PC port is actually pretty damned good, all things considered; I've certainly seen a million times worse, especially from EA.

Finally, I have one more consideration: Have you ever played the earlier Elder Scrolls titles? One of Skyrim's major flaws is it assumes that you already care and understand a lot about Tamriel as a setting (mostly in subtle ways rather than big obvious ones). If you're already a huge Elder Scrolls fan (which you're probably not or you would have gotten Skyrim on release day) you won't notice but to a newbie this is quite jarring. KOAR is much friendlier to newcomers on the lore front.

Aside from that, I agree with what everyone else has been saying: KOAR is one of those games that really could have been great if only a few things had been done just slightly differently, but it doesn't hold up when you directly compare it to Skyrim.

The_Jackal

2012-10-19, 05:17 PM

Eeh... I'd disagree with that, actually. The world is just fine, the problem is the game's quests and plot instead choose to follow predictable cliches while completely ignoring the hooks that the setting itself provides. It's like they were deliberately saving all the interesting stuff for the (now-defunct) Copernicus.

Well, I'd have to say I don't share your enthusiasm for generic Feyworld of immense blandness, and once you remove the games quests and plot, there's not much world left, is there? I'll admit I didn't dig that deep into the game, but after 3 zones I was bored out of my skull.

I also have to disagree with KOAR suffering from Consolitis, at least any more than Skyrim. KOAR's PC port is actually pretty damned good, all things considered; I've certainly seen a million times worse, especially from EA.

I totally disagree. Skyrim is designed from the ground up as a PC game. Creation kit and mod support? For a console title? Get real. KoA:R wasn't a BAD console game, but it was still spending more time being Gaelic God of War, and less time delivering a fully-realized world.

Finally, I have one more consideration: Have you ever played the earlier Elder Scrolls titles? One of Skyrim's major flaws is it assumes that you already care and understand a lot about Tamriel as a setting (mostly in subtle ways rather than big obvious ones). If you're already a huge Elder Scrolls fan (which you're probably not or you would have gotten Skyrim on release day) you won't notice but to a newbie this is quite jarring. KOAR is much friendlier to newcomers on the lore front.

Only friendly like an unwashed hobo talking to you on the bus late at night. Skyrim's exposition on the world and your place in it is much better paced and presented. You're given the initial setup, asked to create your character, given a punchy intro with dragons, and do a well-scripted tutorial which walks you through the game's basics: Lockpicking, stealth, combat, etc.

KoA's fate mechanics, on the other hand, were so badly integrated with the story that they were totally un-intuitive, and thus required way too much blather. One of the nice things Skyrim does is it that it lets you get to grips with the world and run a dungeon or two before you get dragged into the 'Neo' moment. That winds up being a really important pacing decision, as you can get the combat fundamentals down before introducing the next gameplay concept, not to mention let you have some off-leash fun before springing you with another block of exposition blather.

KoA, by comparion has you in an uninterrupted tunnel of tutorial and exposition until you escape what's his diddle's lab, complete with a tragic death of someone you haven't known two seconds to learn to give a crap over.

Aside from that, I agree with what everyone else has been saying: KOAR is one of those games that really could have been great if only a few things had been done just slightly differently, but it doesn't hold up when you directly compare it to Skyrim.

KoA:R had one thing going for it: Fun combat. And that's a good thing. Someday someone's going to find the fairway on a arcade-like combat system with a proper RPG-style quest system, and it's going to be a total game changer. But that means you've got to execute on all fronts: Good combat, good story, good pacing, good quests, good crafting, good detail. KoA delivers one out of six.

Divayth Fyr

2012-10-19, 05:27 PM

I totally disagree. Skyrim is designed from the ground up as a PC game.
Not really - if the UI was designed for PC... the person responsible should be shot.

The_Jackal

2012-10-19, 05:31 PM

Not really - if the UI was designed for PC... the person responsible should be shot.

I won't deny they made compromises with the UI to accommodate console players. But it's definitely designed as a PC game and groomed for consoles, rather than just a port.

dehro

2012-10-19, 05:57 PM

@erloas..I'll look into the video cards you suggest..
as for the games.. I have played oblivion and shivering isles on xbox (bastards took the games with them too, when they nicked tv and xbox..left me with bloody fable 3, of all things :smallfurious:)

as much as I liked the main plot in oblivion.. and roaming around finding places and stuff.. after a while the whole notion that I can become an assassin guild master, a thief guild master, a templar a.. well..everything and anything.. it does start to grate on me.
from that pov, I preferred Dragon Age Origins, a great game, despite it being so that at the higher levels you're virtually indestructible, especially so in the awakening expansion (though dragon age 2 was terrible in the opposite way that whatever you did, you still ended up doing the same things, making any choice you make along the game utterly pointless)

reasons for not buying skyrim on release day were manifold..
1) I disliked the hype that was generated around it, I'm enough of a moron not to buy something I might like just because people are fan-obsessing over it and I don't want to join that particular crowd.
2) I refuse to pay 70 € for a game, no matter how brilliant
3) I had played oblivion on console and didn't have that anymore.. it didn't occur to me you can play it also on PC, mostly because I liked playing it on console, use my PC mostly for work and it's in my office..at my dad's place..only a couple of doors away, but still not comfortable.
4) I had a feeling my 'puter would implode if I tried..video card and such. turns out I was mostly right.. my computer can run it, but only just about..

Triaxx

2012-10-19, 07:39 PM

Skyrim isn't that bad. I play it on a 9600 GT. (Of course that might be far better or worse. I make no pretentions to understanding the insane naming scheme used.)

It's not hyper smooth, but it's still playable. (Presuming you don't run into issues with scripts slowing it down anyway.)

---

That said, Skyrim is tons of fun. I've played 18, 19 games, and I still run into things I missed.

And that's without mods like Moonpath to Elsewyr, and there's one being built on the Sommerset Isles. (Both linked to the world as it is.)

Yes, there's a lot of lore to Tamriel, but Skyrim does a good job of separating what you want to know about the world, from what you need to know to play. But there's still a lot about the lore of the world. Yes, there are an exceptionally large number of references older games but that happens in all sequels as a matter of course.

Yora

2012-10-21, 05:01 AM

I quite enjoy Skyrim even though I hate nonlinear open-world games. But Skyrim has the quality of area design and NPC behavior to make it work well. It does not feel like empty streets with the same people standing in the same empty square every day without doing anything, and unlike Morrowind people actually talk to you.
All open world games suffer from a lack of plot, but Skyrim has activity beyond the main storyline, so it isn't nearly as annoying.

Triaxx

2012-10-21, 07:23 AM

Agreed. And it's not just the cities. If you're a stealthy character, you'll hear the various chatter of the enemies.

For example, there's a cavern near Whiterun, where if you go running in, you'll miss two of the NPC's talking about training a wolf, over a dog. It's a surprisingly well thought out piece of story. It makes even the small areas much more interesting.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-10-21, 01:13 PM

I totally disagree. Skyrim is designed from the ground up as a PC game.

No. Skyrim was designed from the ground up as a console game, then very clumsily ported over.

A. The menus make no sense unless you're using an analog stick. Way too much scrolling up and down to find what you need. This is why SkyUI had to be made.

B. Playing a spellcaster, or indeed, any character who switches between multiple types of things in their hands in combat (like, say, switching your dagger for two axes), is total bull**** and requires far too much immersion-breaking pausing and unpausing. It only makes sense when you're using a console controller that's starved for buttons.

C. The dialogue system straight-up hates you if you're using a mouse and will often select entirely different options for you than the one you picked. I can't even count the times I've had to reload an old save so I could try again, but it works just fine if you use WASD to do it. Once again, very clearly designed with the assumption of the analog stick.

Only friendly like an unwashed hobo talking to you on the bus late at night. Skyrim's exposition on the world and your place in it is much better paced and presented. You're given the initial setup, asked to create your character, given a punchy intro with dragons, and do a well-scripted tutorial which walks you through the game's basics: Lockpicking, stealth, combat, etc.

That opening scene in the cart. Need I say more? I've been gently caressing each new TES title as it comes out for nearly a decade now and even I had no idea what the hell they were talking about.

There's also lots of other fan-wank that's indecipherable (or at least needlessly opaque) to people who aren't lore nuts. Queen Potema, the Gray Quarter, Sheogorath's quests, just about everything concerning the Dark Brotherhood and Winterhold. In some cases these are just bits of in-jokes and fanservice but in others they're major parts of the tone that section of the game is trying to set. When I first got to Winterhold I was absolutely heartbroken at what it had become. This was very clearly the intended reaction but there's no way someone could possibly have it if they aren't already deeply invested in the lore when they come in.

Yora

2012-10-21, 02:25 PM

The great thing is, it doesn't matter. If you don't know about certain things, some things don't have quite the punch they have to people who know the world inside out. But none of them are things the character would have to know, so you never miss anything important. Everything that is important is said in the game.

And it works the other way round as well: Not being familiar with the other games, I thought Barbas was just some guy turned into a dog by his wizard master. It was a fun quest that turned out to be very different from what I expected. Though people who knew Barbas before from other games would have known exactly what's been going on from the very beginning. :smallbiggrin:
Or learning about the Dark Brotherhood in Windhelm, or Hircine and the Bloodmoon. Those are great moments of the game if you don't know anything about those things before and only learn about them as they appear. But I guess they would also be quite great for people who know more about the context before and can enjoy the anticipation and recognition of encountering them in Skyrim.

I only play the game on console and I can say it works with those controlls very well.

Triaxx

2012-10-21, 09:13 PM

Yes, but on PC, the third time you hear Lydia inform you that she's 'Sworn to carry your burdens' because it's reading your click to leave conversation as inventory, you want to do some horrible things to the UI designer.

hobbitkniver

2012-10-21, 09:13 PM

As someone who's played both, I'd say Skyrim. No question. I got bored pretty quick in KoA. There's a reason Skyrim is so popular.

factotum

2012-10-22, 01:36 AM

That opening scene in the cart. Need I say more? I've been gently caressing each new TES title as it comes out for nearly a decade now and even I had no idea what the hell they were talking about.

The opening scene of Skyrim was rubbish, let's be honest. You're selling a game as this big, expansive open world, but the first thing you see is a narrow road between lines of trees, and the first time you get to see the world properly is a good hour or two into the game? Makes no sense. They did the same thing in Oblivion, too. At least Morrowind allowed you free access to all the weirdness of Vvardenfell within minutes of starting!

Yora

2012-10-22, 04:49 AM

Craft (Cheese)

2012-10-22, 02:14 PM

And that's a bad thing. If you're not a huge fan of open world games and already have played half a dozen, you need a couple of hours to figure things out. Giving 5 minutes of exposition and then just abandoning people to find their own entertainment is not a good practice.
Making it to Whiterun and fighting the first dragon should take about 2 to 4 hours and at that point you should already have picked up a couple of other quests you might "do quickly" before going to the Greybeards. I think that works quite well as pacing goes.

Morrowind does the same thing: Before you leave the census office you're given a package to deliver to Balmora. Only difference is Morrowind doesn't railroad you into a long, incomprehensible cutscene and a clunky tutorial dungeon before the point where you're allowed to start exploring.

Of course you can just ignore the package and start exploring to your heart's content, but in Skyrim you can just as easily skip Riverwood and go off on your own.

The_Jackal

2012-10-22, 02:54 PM

A. The menus make no sense unless you're using an analog stick. Way too much scrolling up and down to find what you need. This is why SkyUI had to be made.

My point is that if this was really a console port, the facility to MAKE SkyUI wouldn't exist. I will freely admit the menus are made to be accessed from the console, I said as much in my original post. But you don't get the ability to submit player-made content and UI customizations in a console game. PERIOD.

B. Playing a spellcaster, or indeed, any character who switches between multiple types of things in their hands in combat (like, say, switching your dagger for two axes), is total bull**** and requires far too much immersion-breaking pausing and unpausing. It only makes sense when you're using a console controller that's starved for buttons.

I don't have the console version, but I found the fast-swaps through the favourites menu to be perfectly adequate. I swap between my blades and my bow constantly. If you're on the PC, just favourite an item, then open the favourites menu with 'Q', then hover over the item you want to assign to a hotswitch, and press one of the number keys.

C. The dialogue system straight-up hates you if you're using a mouse and will often select entirely different options for you than the one you picked. I can't even count the times I've had to reload an old save so I could try again, but it works just fine if you use WASD to do it. Once again, very clearly designed with the assumption of the analog stick.

I'm pretty sure I use mouse wheel and 'e' to select.

That opening scene in the cart. Need I say more? I've been gently caressing each new TES title as it comes out for nearly a decade now and even I had no idea what the hell they were talking about.

Nobody knew what was going on. The point is they didn't just barf up a 3 paragraph exposition of the setting and the player's place in it. They set the premise that you've been captured along with a rebel, and start SHOWING you the story unfolding, instead of just sending you to talk to Yakky McBlatherpants and having him lecture you on how you're a unique snowflake. Far better executed than KoA:R's intro, by any measure you care to choose.

I'm not trying to make out like Skyrim is a perfectly, flawlessly executed game. It's just far, far better executed than KoA.

factotum

2012-10-22, 03:47 PM

Giving 5 minutes of exposition and then just abandoning people to find their own entertainment is not a good practice.

As Craft points out, that isn't what Morrowind did. Your first objective after being thrown into the open world was extremely clear; it's just you could choose to ignore it if you so desired. Skyrim should be giving you similar choices from the start. I mean, don't get me wrong here, Skyrim was and is an awesome game, but I wonder how many people got put off by the opening and never got to the good bit where the game opens out and starts to give you options.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-10-22, 04:09 PM

My point is that if this was really a console port, the facility to MAKE SkyUI wouldn't exist. I will freely admit the menus are made to be accessed from the console, I said as much in my original post. But you don't get the ability to submit player-made content and UI customizations in a console game. PERIOD.

It has publicly released modding tools, yes, but I don't think this is a substitute for the game being a decent port out of the box, without having to download mods.

I don't have the console version, but I found the fast-swaps through the favourites menu to be perfectly adequate. I swap between my blades and my bow constantly. If you're on the PC, just favourite an item, then open the favourites menu with 'Q', then hover over the item you want to assign to a hotswitch, and press one of the number keys.

It's not too bad for a primarily mundane character, it's when you throw spells into the mix that things get ridiculous.

Just from the destruction school, we have the following spells:

- Three single-target "beam" spells (Incinerate and family)

- Three short-ranged "gouge" spells (Flames, Frostbite, and Sparks, but to be fair these become completely worthless a short time after you get them)

- Three trap-like "rune" spells (that are actually your best DPS option for a long while)

- Three area-control "wall" spells (which I think are pretty fun and I like to use them)

- Three master-level "ultimate" spells (the frost and fire ones are worthless anyway but the lightning one is the best way to take down big opponents like dragons)

Assuming you ignore the gouge spells, the frost and fire master-level spells, and only use two of each other spell type, that's already seven of your 8 hotkey slots.

The problem is compounded if you try to play a more well-rounded spellcaster type and also want to use a gamut of Conjuration, Illusion, and Alteration spells. There's also the absolutely necessary Heal Self and Heal Other spells that no character can ever afford to be without, though the undead-damaging spells can be ignored. Heal Other can only be ignored if you have an immortal follower or you travel alone. It's compounded even further when you install mods that rebalance the magic system to make formerly worthless spells actually worth using, or mods that add new spells that are also interesting and fun.

Thank Azura for extended hotkey mods! That these weren't in the game to begin with is inexcusable.

I'm pretty sure I use mouse wheel and 'e' to select.

Problem comes when you try to select which option you want to say by clicking on it. There IS a trick to do it reliably but it's really, really counter-intuitive.

Nobody knew what was going on. The point is they didn't just barf up a 3 paragraph exposition of the setting and the player's place in it. They set the premise that you've been captured along with a rebel, and start SHOWING you the story unfolding, instead of just sending you to talk to Yakky McBlatherpants and having him lecture you on how you're a unique snowflake. Far better executed than KoA:R's intro, by any measure you care to choose.

I'm not trying to make out like Skyrim is a perfectly, flawlessly executed game. It's just far, far better executed than KoA.

To be perfectly honest, I like the opening of Amalur better than I like the opening of Skyrim.

For the record, I define the "opening" of Amalur to end when you fight the rock troll and escape Allestar Tower. I define the "opening" of Skyrim to end when you emerge from the caves under Helgen Keep. Yes, the scene with Agarth and Riverwood are both near the beginning but they aren't part of the "opening" because they're both after you're given free reign to explore the world, they're just the places the game points you toward first.

(Yes, Agarth and Alyn Shir are both terrible characters, and Fomorus Hughes's off-camera heroic sacrifice two minutes after you meet him was written with all the eloquence and subtly of a 5th-grader. Still, I prefer that to feeling confused and pointlessly being tugged around on a leash. I realize this is just personal preference, however.)

The_Jackal

2012-10-22, 07:09 PM

It has publicly released modding tools, yes, but I don't think this is a substitute for the game being a decent port out of the box, without having to download mods.

And I think Skyrim IS perfectly usable out of the box, it's just not innately optimized for using a QWERTY keyboard, for reasons that are pretty obvious. If you're suggesting that Skyrim was the worse for console integration, and that consoles are the canker on the privates of the Devil in Hell, then you're preaching to the choir. But the reality of the market is that there's more money to be made in the console market, and I'd rather have rich and successful developers than poor and idealistic ones.

It's not too bad for a primarily mundane character, it's when you throw spells into the mix that things get ridiculous.

Just from the destruction school, we have the following spells:

Yes, I can see how you'd get into a lot of UI management for a pure casterish character, but really you're complaining that they gave you too many options, and if you use them all, you're punished by having a complicated UI, or you can install a nice Mod to smooth your life out. Or, on the other hand, you can have Amalur, where you've got very few options, and STILL have an onerous and bad UI. Inventory management in that game was a NIGHTMARE, to the point where Vanilla Skyrim is like a dream by comparison.

There's also the absolutely necessary Heal Self and Heal Other spells that no character can ever afford to be without

Carry potions. They're dirt-cheap and have no cast time. It's not like money is hard to come by. Your companions can carry potions as well, just give them to him/her.

Thank Azura for extended hotkey mods! That these weren't in the game to begin with is inexcusable.

Again, reference my earlier comment about the way the market works. In order for Skyrim to be an economic success, it had to be ported to the console. It's not realistic for the game developer to effectively build two different games at launch, so yes, the UI was dumbed down for the console market. This is not in dispute. My contention is that had this been 'just a dumb console port', it would look like every other dumb console port out there: NO customization, NO mods, NO improved graphics support, just Halo for the PC.

To be perfectly honest, I like the opening of Amalur better than I like the opening of Skyrim.

Well, in structure, they're alarmingly similar. Both start you off 'in medias res' and funnel you quickly into a tutorial dungeon where you're shown basic gameplay concepts.

For the record, I define the "opening" of Amalur to end when you fight the rock troll and escape Allestar Tower. I define the "opening" of Skyrim to end when you emerge from the caves under Helgen Keep. Yes, the scene with Agarth and Riverwood are both near the beginning but they aren't part of the "opening" because they're both after you're given free reign to explore the world, they're just the places the game points you toward first.

Well, you define the Amalur opening as over at the point at which it completely falls apart: Please go talk to Ignibus Fatewanker where he can dump the game's premise on you. Yes, I suppose you COULD totally bypass him, but given that you're given no quest cues to do anything else, or indeed any connection to the larger world at all, there's little reason to suppose you might take wing into an intricate and detailed world of fantasy. And the way I know you won't is because there isn't one there, just a bunch of jackholes with question marks over their heads.

(Yes, Agarth and Alyn Shir are both terrible characters, and Fomorus Hughes's off-camera heroic sacrifice two minutes after you meet him was written with all the eloquence and subtly of a 5th-grader. Still, I prefer that to feeling confused and pointlessly being tugged around on a leash. I realize this is just personal preference, however.)

Both intros involve heavy use of the leash, until you escape Helgen/the Tower. That's really just an unhappy necessity of the tutorial phase. The difference is that once you're out of Helgen, you CAN go anywhere. The game will largely scale to your level as you scroll around the countryside having adventures. The problem with KoA:R is that the tunnel never really ends, it just widens a bit and has a few forks that loop off then head back to the main quest. It's really a far more linear game. Had the story and world been better executed, it might have been fun, but it sadly didn't deliver.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-10-22, 09:38 PM

Yes, I can see how you'd get into a lot of UI management for a pure casterish character, but really you're complaining that they gave you too many options, and if you use them all, you're punished by having a complicated UI, or you can install a nice Mod to smooth your life out. Or, on the other hand, you can have Amalur, where you've got very few options, and STILL have an onerous and bad UI. Inventory management in that game was a NIGHTMARE, to the point where Vanilla Skyrim is like a dream by comparison.

On inventory: Only if you horde things instead of playing it like a Diablo-like. Keep the weapons/armor that are better than the ones you already have (unlikely unless you ignore crafting), junk the rest. Sell all junk button at the store. Could have been implemented a bit better (like having a button to equip something straight from the container where you pick up up, shortcuts to repair tools, auto-sagecrafting, and a "junk all" button, just to name a few things) but I honestly think Skyrim is worse. It only becomes a nightmare when you try to make full use of alchemy and keep stocks of different potion types for different situations... in which case Skyrim has the exact same problem.

On options: Only if you play a highly specialized character who min-maxes a single tree instead of hybridizing. Which unfortunately is the most effective way to play the game (max out Sorc, spam Meteor), but I'm not saying Amalur is perfect.

Carry potions. They're dirt-cheap and have no cast time. It's not like money is hard to come by. Your companions can carry potions as well, just give them to him/her.

They still take up precious hotkey space and using potions means you have to run back to town every so often to restock, which I honestly don't like to do.

Again, reference my earlier comment about the way the market works. In order for Skyrim to be an economic success, it had to be ported to the console. It's not realistic for the game developer to effectively build two different games at launch, so yes, the UI was dumbed down for the console market. This is not in dispute. My contention is that had this been 'just a dumb console port', it would look like every other dumb console port out there: NO customization, NO mods, NO improved graphics support, just Halo for the PC.

You know what I would have been happy with?

- Let us use 9 and 0, not just 1-8

- Let us also bind shift+NUM. ctrl+NUM or alt+NUM would also be good but it's not strictly necessary.

That's it. 20-30 slots is good enough. Having so few hotkey slots just encourages you to run backwards spamming Incinerate, exactly the thing they promised Skyrim's magic system wouldn't encourage you to do this time around.

Well, in structure, they're alarmingly similar. Both start you off 'in medias res' and funnel you quickly into a tutorial dungeon where you're shown basic gameplay concepts.

Well, you define the Amalur opening as over at the point at which it completely falls apart: Please go talk to Ignibus Fatewanker where he can dump the game's premise on you. Yes, I suppose you COULD totally bypass him, but given that you're given no quest cues to do anything else, or indeed any connection to the larger world at all, there's little reason to suppose you might take wing into an intricate and detailed world of fantasy. And the way I know you won't is because there isn't one there, just a bunch of jackholes with question marks over their heads.

I would argue that Skyrim does the same thing: When you emerge from Helgen Keep, you have absolutely no objectives or connections to the world except "Go to Riverwood."

And Skyrim also gives you an exposition dump telling you how you're a special snowflake, you're just given it at High Hrothgar on the slopes of the Throat of the World, the tallest mountain in the world, from the mysterious, ancient order of the Greybeards instead of from a drunken, homeless idiot you meet on the side of the road.... Okay, so Skyrim wins there in terms of presentation, but I don't think it's fundamentally all that different.

Both intros involve heavy use of the leash, until you escape Helgen/the Tower. That's really just an unhappy necessity of the tutorial phase. The difference is that once you're out of Helgen, you CAN go anywhere. The game will largely scale to your level as you scroll around the countryside having adventures. The problem with KoA:R is that the tunnel never really ends, it just widens a bit and has a few forks that loop off then head back to the main quest. It's really a far more linear game. Had the story and world been better executed, it might have been fun, but it sadly didn't deliver.

Skyrim's leash is far more severe: I'm referring primarily to the whole "your hands are bound" bull that essentially means you spend Helgen doing nothing but going from place to place looking at things on fire, and you're literally on a leash until Alduin attacks, unable to do anything but turn the camera. Once you get into the keep things do get a lot better, but Amalur gives you the freedom to at least defend yourself as soon as the game starts. Also, Amalur's initial exposition dump telling you about the war with the Tuatha is entirely skippable! Granted I never did play Amalur a second time but that automatically makes it better than Skyrim's, at least on the second playthrough.

Also... the only bits of side content in Amalur you have to do the main quest in order to access are the quests in Ysa and those in Klurikon/Alabastra. The latter two are almost entirely barren anyway so it's not that much of a loss. You can explore all of Dalentarth, Erathell, and Detyr straight from the start... I think. I don't think there was anything stopping you from going to Erathell/Detyr but I made sure to do every last quest I could in Dalentarth before moving on, including the main quest, so I don't actually know that for certain. Yes, these are flaws, and gating off parts of the world until you've advanced the plot far enough is bullcrap. Point is though the game is nowhere near as linear as you describe, I played for about 10 hours doing everything I could in Dalentarth before I did any of the main quest.

One more thing... I'd just like to say, I don't really know what we're arguing about here. I agree with you that, overall, Skyrim is the better game, I just like Amalur better in a comparatively small set of respects. There's a few things Skyrim could have done better, and a ton of things Amalur could have done better.

Triaxx

2012-10-22, 10:59 PM

You're not the only person to feel that mages are one of those things that Bethesda forgot to add until the last minute. I do know of a companion mod called Cerwiden who's capable of keeping you and herself healed so you can concentrate on not getting dead.

Ultimately, they were trying to eliminate the cheats inherent in the Oblivion magic system and went a bit too far the other way.

The first time I got out of Helgen? I completely ignored Riverwood and by the time I finally got there, I was level 32, grandmaster of the thieves guild, and arch-mage of the college. Don't like the start? Like everything else, there's a mod for that. Random Alternate start.

Also, think you need more hotkeys now? Add Midas Magic, or Phenderix Magic System. You'll weep to have only 20-30.

On the intro: Yes, it's long, and yes the caves are a tutorial, but they are at least a well disguised one. It's also possible to get from the chopping block to the keep in under a minute and a half. You don't have to wait for the scripted sequences. You only have to sit through it cinematically once.

oblivion6

2012-10-22, 11:03 PM

Eeh... I'd disagree with that, actually. The world is just fine,

i agree with you here. i have not gotten very far into the game as of yet, but the world and all its lore was created by R.A Salvatore so it cant be that bad just based on my previous experience with his dozens of novels.

Driderman

2012-10-23, 01:44 AM

Craft (Cheese)

2012-10-23, 04:42 PM

Thing is, Kingdoms of Amalur isn't really an open-world sandbox per se. It was originally intended as an MMO and it shows: The game is still based on the same "rollercoaster" model of MMO games, taking you by the hand and leading you through the various set pieces of the game world, without you actually having any meaningful impact on said pieces.

I disagree, there's a lot of quests that leave the world impacted after you finish them:

- It's possible to end the Warsworn quest chain with all of its leaders dead, if you choose the stupid "BWAR HAR HAR I R EBULZ" choice at the end.

- Both the House of Ballads and the House of Sorrows questlines end with all of its members dead. Well, as dead as Fae can be, anyway.

- Depending on your choices it's possible to leave the village in webwood (Cassaroc?) completely destroyed and overrun by giant spiders.

- I think they actually did a passable job of showing you the consequences of your victory at Mel Senshir as you explore Klurikon... granted, you never get to see Klurikon before that, but still.

- There's the one village in Detyr (Whitewall?) with a quest chain that may or may not end with everyone dead.

That's just a few examples. Really, I think Amalur lets your actions have lasting consequences on the game world at least to the extent that Skyrim does. I mean, outside the main quest (I consider the civil war part of the main quest) the biggest change you get to make to anything in Skyrim is with the Dark Brotherhood.

warty goblin

2012-10-23, 06:06 PM

Ima buck the trend here and say Kingdoms of Amalur. It's got its problems, like fairly dull quests, and even Hard gets to be fairly easy pretty quickly. However the combat and movement are good fun.

Getting from A to B in Kingdoms is usually pretty easy. You've got unlimited sprint, and a good fast travel system. At least on a controller it's pretty precise too. Skyrim's isn't. It mostly feels like pushing a refrigerator carton on a trolley with slightly gummy wheels

Skyrim's combat sucks. If it's an improvement on Oblivion's, that improvement is very, very slight. Depending on your stance on getting yanked out of first person for really badly animated finishing moves during which you have no control, it's maybe a step backwards. Even when it's leaving your perspective alone, it mostly feels like a lot of uncoordinated flailing. Good first person melee is all about precision, aiming and movement, none of which Skyrim does well. Arx Fatalis had better first person combat than this, and it came out ten years ago.

Both have crafting. Crafting in both is boring. Crafting combines all the perks of being a total packrat and a neverending, excruciatingly dull fetch quest. Don't craft.

Also there are excellent eyebrow options in Kingdoms of Amalur, which manage to convey just the right level of sardonic amusement.

For some reason I found the lore in Kingdoms of Amalur considerably less tedious and much easier to suffer through than Skyrim's. Parts of it are actually slightly interesting, and most of it is very easy to ignore. What parts of Skyrim's tedious lore I could endure struck me as being ever so slightly worse than Weiss and Hickman's lower quality writing*, except without that slightly wry delivery that W&H usually manage. I think my brain actually tried to escape through my ears by the time I got to the whole dragonborn nonsense.

*Like second book of the Sovereign Stone trilogy bad. Kingdoms of Amalur sometimes approaches the Darksword trilogy.

Also I hate needing to recharge magic items. I don't recall King Arthur ever pausing to kill rabbits because Excalibur had run out of ammo soul juice, or Beowulf's sword crapping out because he hadn't got his dementor on in a while.

Between the two, go with Amalur. Neither is brilliant, but Amalur is cheesy popcorn fun. Skyrim is just tedious.

Or skip both and play Saint's Row the Third. Because it's always the right time to put an fursuit and beat people to death with a giant purple dildo. If for some reason sextoy based homicide isn't for you, or you find you are having trouble making your daily elf quota, try Drakensang: The River of Time. It's like being twelve and just discovering fantasy again, except with all the perks of not being twelve.

Dimonite

2012-10-23, 06:37 PM

Skyrim. Better graphics, better story, just more fun. Amalur has good combat, but the world and story are just paper-thin.

I'm sorry, what? :smallfurious: KoA is FAR shinier than Skyrim. Even if that wasn't obvious from playing both, the fact that dehro's system met the requirements for Skyrim and not KoA should make that clear. the world of Kingdoms of Amalur is incredibly in-depth, and the way a FRIKKIN' VIDEO GAME discusses the balance/conflict between free will and fate is masterful and beautiful. As for the gameplay - well, I think this just about sums it up:
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9whk3mZRT1qa64bjo1_500.png
http://i48.tinypic.com/34oydxz.jpg

So personally, I recommend KoA. But I know from past experience that that's probably just me.

Triaxx

2012-10-23, 08:29 PM

Warning: First of it's kind event, I disagree with Warty. ;)

Ahem. Yes, KoA is more precise. I've had a few occasions where I power attacked in Skyrim and went past my intended target. Is it fatal? No. Annoying? Yes. Do I care? No, because it's still fun. KoA felt too... tempermental. It's very precise and if you miss, you feel the penalty more. I'm not the worlds best gamer, and I freely admit it, so I want a game that's a bit more forgiving. (Yes, I played Demon Souls, not a lot, but I enjoyed what I did play.)

Warty hates crafting. Surprise, surprise, surprise. I happen to enjoy it, but it's completely unnecessary to be successful at either game.

Eyebrows are a great point for KoA. I find Skyrim's lack of good eyebrows disturbing. Mods haven't fixed it. Which is sad.

Skyrim has sequel issues. It's trying to hearken back to the first four games, five expansions and the history generated to get that far, and put it all in place for you to find. It's bloody hard to do. KoA doesn't have tons of other games, and backstory to try and put into your face, so it can do it in a more streamlined fashion.

I could comment about the story reasons and all the positives, but I find it just as annoying as you do.

I still say Skyrim, but with the corollary, that if you wait and upgrade before you get KoA, then when you play Skyrim, because you should, it will look that much better. I'd wait for the Game of the Year version of Skyrim, which will have all the DLC's.

And Skyrim is tedious only if you let it be. Skyrim is a sandbox, so you can do what ever you want. Be a traveling merchant, peddling wares, or a wandering rogue chopping up Thalmor and giving their gold to the masses.

warty goblin

2012-10-23, 09:07 PM

Warning: First of it's kind event, I disagree with Warty. ;)

This never happens. See our well documented 'agreement' that Fallout is bad.

Ahem. Yes, KoA is more precise. I've had a few occasions where I power attacked in Skyrim and went past my intended target. Is it fatal? No. Annoying? Yes. Do I care? No, because it's still fun. KoA felt too... tempermental. It's very precise and if you miss, you feel the penalty more. I'm not the worlds best gamer, and I freely admit it, so I want a game that's a bit more forgiving. (Yes, I played Demon Souls, not a lot, but I enjoyed what I did play.)
To be clear, I look for different things in third and first person melee combat. Third tends to work better for button-mashy combo based goodness, which KoA does pretty well. Because of the camera perspective you can't really control where you hit particularly well, and the usual movement convention makes small back and forth movement difficult or impossible*. First person tends to be its best when its about deliberate and precise strikes, and use of small movements for defense. See Dark Messiah for the final word in this, or Dead Island for something that almost got it right.

My issue with the combat in Skyrim (or Oblivion) isn't that it doesn't work like Kingdoms of Amalur's. It's that it's really terrible first person combat.

*Mount and Blade is an exception, obviously. But Mount and Blade is, essentially, a first person game that defaults to a third person camera. KoA is a third person game with a third person camera.

Warty hates crafting. Surprise, surprise, surprise. I happen to enjoy it, but it's completely unnecessary to be successful at either game.
I don't so much hate the idea of crafting, as the way its always implemented. The fun and challenge of making something is in the actual making of it, not assembling the pieces. But crafting in pretty much every videogame ever is all about the shopping list, not at all about the process. It's the difference between baking bread and buying flour.

(Dark Messiah again, weirdly enough, gets this right. Making stuff is actually a process you perform in the game world, not the lovechild of Microsoft Excel and a rummage sale.)

Eyebrows are a great point for KoA. I find Skyrim's lack of good eyebrows disturbing. Mods haven't fixed it. Which is sad.
Indeed, all of my KoA characters remain in a permanent state of sardonic bemusement, which renders everything more enjoyable.

Skyrim has sequel issues. It's trying to hearken back to the first four games, five expansions and the history generated to get that far, and put it all in place for you to find. It's bloody hard to do. KoA doesn't have tons of other games, and backstory to try and put into your face, so it can do it in a more streamlined fashion.

I could comment about the story reasons and all the positives, but I find it just as annoying as you do.
Thank heavens, there are moments when I suspect I'm the only person who doesn't see having a lot of made-up backstory as a sign of total genius and excellence.

I still say Skyrim, but with the corollary, that if you wait and upgrade before you get KoA, then when you play Skyrim, because you should, it will look that much better. I'd wait for the Game of the Year version of Skyrim, which will have all the DLC's.

And Skyrim is tedious only if you let it be. Skyrim is a sandbox, so you can do what ever you want. Be a traveling merchant, peddling wares, or a wandering rogue chopping up Thalmor and giving their gold to the masses.

The problem I have with this, and this is absolutely a personal problem, is that Skyrim lets me do a lot of stuff badly. It's basically Fable, but minus any sort of charm of sense of gaiety.

Essentially for me the weighted average of doing a lot of things badly is still bad. I've got more games than can be humanly justified at this point, I don't need one that does a poor job of many things when I have three others that do each of those things well. Although quantity has a quality all its own, a lot of crap is still just a lot of crap.

Misery Esquire

2012-10-23, 09:53 PM

See Dark Messiah...

Wait. Dark Messiah is your #1 pick for the FPSlasher? The game where kick-wait-throw dagger-repeat was pretty much the best thing, ever?

warty goblin

2012-10-23, 10:33 PM

Wait. Dark Messiah is your #1 pick for the FPSlasher? The game where kick-wait-throw dagger-repeat was pretty much the best thing, ever?

Absolutely. Nothing else has quite gotten the combination of solid first-person body awareness, physics, and precise melee attacks down right. Because the power attacks for swords could easily be aimed, and every body part had its own hitpoints, it's possible to play it as a game of carefully moving, blocking, occasionally kicking, and chopping off arms and heads.

Aiming attacks really is the big thing for me with first person melee. Swinging a weapon shouldn't just feel like a very short range area of effect, but the movement and collision of one entity in the game with another. Nobody just swings a sword, you make a specific strike for a specific purpose, and I like my games to get that across.

(Also, isn't throw dagger an adrenaline move? I always found it a waste, because a well used right or left adrenaline move can often get two insta-kills, while triggering the backwards power attack adrenaline finisher can often knock other enemies away from you. One of the things that Dark Messiah gets very right is that the finishing moves never cost you complete control, and are actual attacks, not just special animations.)

dehro

2012-10-23, 10:54 PM

update.. apparently that label I read had no business being there.
my PC is a HP P6610it (where I assume "it" stands for italy)

I am now looking to buy a somewhat more performing video card..around the 100 euro mark at the most.

If for some reason sextoy based homicide isn't for you, or you find you are having trouble making your daily elf quota, try Drakensang: The River of Time. It's like being twelve and just discovering fantasy again, except with all the perks of not being twelve.

funny you should say this.. the day I opened the thread, I spent 20 minutes in the shop trying to make up my mind between Skyrim and KoA..and ended up walking out of it with something I fished out of the.. leftovers?
the first Drakensang game: The Dark Eye.. which I'm now playing and which has a rather..old and not very well done feel, despite not being all that old after all.. yet still delivers quite nicely..and you can't ask for more, when you've paid 6 € for it. I'm having fun with it. if it stays fun until the end, I'll consider going for the River of Time.

as for Skyrim being a sandbox..I like it..to a point.
Oblivion was a lot of fun but also massively distracting and I got to a point where I kind of hated the complete lack of logic that goes in being able to lead pretty much every guild or organisation that means anything in the story... it really devalues the main plot..because let's face it..when you're able to be the master assassin, the master thief, the archmage and..half a dozen more things..you should be able to take on whatever the main plot throws at you..dragons or gods or whatever.
as much as I like roaming around and finding out all the little gems hidden in the tapestry of the game.. too much of the same becomes boring and makes only sense if you want to unlock achievements..something that I don't care for (is it even a thing?) on PC.
I'm kinda hoping that Skyrim is a tiny bit more plot driven...

and no, I won't buy the new sparkly edition when it comes out..because I really dislike the notion of paying 10-12 times as much as I paid for the aforementioned Drakensang, for something that basically is going to give the same kind of entertainment..albeit somewhat better. especially when it's already out there for half the "new" price or less. I can live withouth the extra content/fancy blade/special edition armour.

KoA sounds a bit more like Dragon Age Origin..a game that I have really loved.. (despite what they've done with the sequel and some pointless things in the expansion)..

so I guess I'll end up buying both skyrim and KoA..when I've done my upgrade thing...just to see for myself

Craft (Cheese)

2012-10-23, 11:44 PM

First person tends to be its best when its about deliberate and precise strikes, and use of small movements for defense. See Dark Messiah for the final word in this, or Dead Island for something that almost got it right.

Alright, someone brought up Dark Messiah. Now I have to rant about this game.

I actually don't think Dark Messiah's combat system would have worked in Skyrim if you ported it straight over, for a few reasons.

First, a lot of what makes Dark Messiah's combat work is the set design. The combat encounters are all deliberately designed and paced very carefully according to the player's (linear) progression through the level. In an open-ended game that relies on emergent moments like Skyrim, this kind of carefully-controlled pacing cannot possibly work. DM is not so much an RPG as it is an action-based run and gun (where you just use a sword instead of a gun) with a level-up system.

Second... look, I don't like Skyrim's magic system, but magic in Dark Messiah is way, way, way worse. If you wanna try to play a spellcaster character in Dark Messiah, you're just ****ed.

Finally... to be honest, I couldn't get into Dark Messiah. I'm actually not particularly into action games: I'm also not the kind of person who can just turn their brain off and ignore the story in a game. And as awful and insipid as the writing can be in KOAR and Skyrim both, Dark Messiah literally treats you like a child and respects neither your intelligence nor your agency as a player. I quit playing in disgust after I saw that "heartwrenching" scene where the guy you met for thirty seconds is dramatically killed by the villain while you're conveniently frozen in place by an ice spell (his daughter who is three feet away from where this is happening is not frozen because she is an NPC and thus the writers don't need to freeze her to have to stand there doing absolutely nothing while her father is murdered like a total retard).

EDIT: Oh yeah, since someone mentioned KOAR's main quest earlier, guess I should comment on that: I actually don't think KOAR uses its premise of exploring fate and free will very well. You can do things in different orders in the main quest but at no point are you ever allowed to actually take things off the rails, you just get things like "The siege at Mel Senshir is destined to never be broken!" and then you're all "Lol screw that."

They don't even use this irony to form a sort of meta-narrative about the nature of choice. Compare this to a game with an actually well-crafted narrative that deals with this very subject like Spec Ops: The Line or The Stanley Parable.

Really, if you want to know how much the whole Fateless One business amounts to in KOAR:

After you kill Tirnoch, fate breaks completely, making everyone fateless like you. Absolutely nothing changes because of this.

factotum

2012-10-24, 01:44 AM

because let's face it..when you're able to be the master assassin, the master thief, the archmage and..half a dozen more things..you should be able to take on whatever the main plot throws at you..dragons or gods or whatever.

In Oblivion you could, without much difficulty, become Archmage of the Mage's Guild without being able to cast the simplest of spells. Skyrim at least ensures that you have to cast spells a couple of times while going for the Archmage position...

Triaxx

2012-10-24, 08:38 AM

*sigh* Oblivion requires the casting of three spells. That you don't have to learn them is entirely a secondary concern.

---

Ah, yes, where you said Fallout was bad and I agreed you were wrong. :D

I don't mind the first person combat in Skyrim because most of the first person I do is bow, or spells, which require first person to be reasonably effective. Or stealth attacks.

The more combat potent characters I use tend to use third person, except in dungeons where the main combat hazard is the camera.

I have to say, I definitely prefer the opposite. Yes, I could spend hours crafting the stuff, doing each step to get the best result. But my fun comes from going out, and getting the materials. The sheer difficulty of locating enough of the necessary ore to create a full set of armor makes the journey to find the ingredients an integral part of the crafting. Okay, yes, not Iron or Steel armor, but for Orcish, or Ebony yes, those are harder to locate.

That was actually two separate comments. One on the story, where I grudgingly do admit I agree about the story.

The other was on the annoyance of recharging weapons where I totally agree.

The trouble is that too often you get distracted by all that you can do, rather than focusing on one thing. Rather than seeing it as a game where you can do many things badly, look at it as one where it gives you the freedom to do many things, but where you don't have to do them all at once.

I admit, my first couple characters did everything and you're right, it was decidedly unsatisfying. But by taking the next few characters, and creating some artificial restrictions on them, it was far more enjoyable. Where the first couple were basically acheivement bunnies to get all those out of the way, and had to multi-specialize to get to certain acheivements, like 100,00 gold, or level 50, I had much more fun with an Orc who's entire character focused around using heavy armor and a mace. He became Harbinger of the Companions. No thieves guild, no brotherhood, no mages college. He didn't even use a bow. He wore only armor he'd crafted himself. To the point that he didn't wear any armor in the first dungeon at all.

It was tons more fun. The thief who's whole purpose was to avoid getting seen during his robberies, spent his early levels out in the woods, sneaking around bears so he wouldn't be spotted while clearing out the houses. It was tremendous fun.

The second mage (my first character was my first), an Altmer who would go out of her way to expend her entire magical power killing Thalmor. To the point where she turned away from the dragon to engage the Thalmor who were engaging it as well.

I tend to pick and choose.

warty goblin

2012-10-24, 10:33 AM

Alright, someone brought up Dark Messiah. Now I have to rant about this game.

I actually don't think Dark Messiah's combat system would have worked in Skyrim if you ported it straight over, for a few reasons.

First, a lot of what makes Dark Messiah's combat work is the set design. The combat encounters are all deliberately designed and paced very carefully according to the player's (linear) progression through the level. In an open-ended game that relies on emergent moments like Skyrim, this kind of carefully-controlled pacing cannot possibly work. DM is not so much an RPG as it is an action-based run and gun (where you just use a sword instead of a gun) with a level-up system.

Second... look, I don't like Skyrim's magic system, but magic in Dark Messiah is way, way, way worse. If you wanna try to play a spellcaster character in Dark Messiah, you're just ****ed.

Yeah, magic does suck, and designing a combat system for an open worldy thing is different than a set-piece game. Doesn't change that Skyrim's melee combat is only slightly more advanced than Red Orchestra's, and your character moves like a tank. I'm not saying it wouldn't take work, but I don't think open world necessitates kludgy controls and combat.

Finally... to be honest, I couldn't get into Dark Messiah. I'm actually not particularly into action games: I'm also not the kind of person who can just turn their brain off and ignore the story in a game. And as awful and insipid as the writing can be in KOAR and Skyrim both, Dark Messiah literally treats you like a child and respects neither your intelligence nor your agency as a player. I quit playing in disgust after I saw that "heartwrenching" scene where the guy you met for thirty seconds is dramatically killed by the villain while you're conveniently frozen in place by an ice spell (his daughter who is three feet away from where this is happening is not frozen because she is an NPC and thus the writers don't need to freeze her to have to stand there doing absolutely nothing while her father is murdered like a total retard).
They seemed about equivalently bad to me, which is to say all three are renditions of the ancient RPG tradition of being the only competent person in the universe because these things only sell if they're blatant power fantasies Destiny! Well, KoA uses Not Destiny I guess, but it comes to the same thing.

funny you should say this.. the day I opened the thread, I spent 20 minutes in the shop trying to make up my mind between Skyrim and KoA..and ended up walking out of it with something I fished out of the.. leftovers?
the first Drakensang game: The Dark Eye.. which I'm now playing and which has a rather..old and not very well done feel, despite not being all that old after all.. yet still delivers quite nicely..and you can't ask for more, when you've paid 6 € for it. I'm having fun with it. if it stays fun until the end, I'll consider going for the River of Time.

KoA sounds a bit more like Dragon Age Origin..a game that I have really loved.. (despite what they've done with the sequel and some pointless things in the expansion)..

The original Drakensang is boring, in a pleasant, vanilla pudding sort of way. I recommend avoiding it unless you really, really like the Dark Eye ruleset. Drakensang: tRoT is actually a really well put together game though. It keeps everything that was cool about the original, namely art design and excellent system, and improves most of that. The story goes from boring to actually kinda fun if you like your adventures a little lower scale than saving the entire world way.

KoA is nothing like Dragon Age: Origins. There's no companions, the combat is straight up third person button mashing, and the gameworld isn't broken up into discrete, separate regions like Dragon Age is.

Ah, yes, where you said Fallout was bad and I agreed you were wrong. :D

Something like that, yeah.

I don't mind the first person combat in Skyrim because most of the first person I do is bow, or spells, which require first person to be reasonably effective. Or stealth attacks.

The more combat potent characters I use tend to use third person, except in dungeons where the main combat hazard is the camera.
I can't say the third person camera did much for me either. Then instead of being reminded I wasn't playing Dark Messiah I was wondering why I wasn't playing Mount & Blade.

I have to say, I definitely prefer the opposite. Yes, I could spend hours crafting the stuff, doing each step to get the best result. But my fun comes from going out, and getting the materials. The sheer difficulty of locating enough of the necessary ore to create a full set of armor makes the journey to find the ingredients an integral part of the crafting. Okay, yes, not Iron or Steel armor, but for Orcish, or Ebony yes, those are harder to locate.

Fair enough, I can sort of see that...I guess. I donno though, I never can really get into RNG induced artificial scarcity in games.

That was actually two separate comments. One on the story, where I grudgingly do admit I agree about the story.Ooops, sorry. Yeah, Spec Ops the story isn't. Which is probably good, because honestly I'm finding it hard to convince myself to game very much after Spec Ops. I think it may have broken me.

The other was on the annoyance of recharging weapons where I totally agree.Agreed, it is an annoying mechanic.

(Another pet peeve, magic items are way too common. I played Skyrim for about six hours before deciding that Saints Row 3 was a far better use of my leisure time, and I was swimming in them. Seriously folks, not all swords need to double as flamethrowers.)

The trouble is that too often you get distracted by all that you can do, rather than focusing on one thing. Rather than seeing it as a game where you can do many things badly, look at it as one where it gives you the freedom to do many things, but where you don't have to do them all at once.

I admit, my first couple characters did everything and you're right, it was decidedly unsatisfying. But by taking the next few characters, and creating some artificial restrictions on them, it was far more enjoyable. Where the first couple were basically acheivement bunnies to get all those out of the way, and had to multi-specialize to get to certain acheivements, like 100,00 gold, or level 50, I had much more fun with an Orc who's entire character focused around using heavy armor and a mace. He became Harbinger of the Companions. No thieves guild, no brotherhood, no mages college. He didn't even use a bow. He wore only armor he'd crafted himself. To the point that he didn't wear any armor in the first dungeon at all.

It was tons more fun. The thief who's whole purpose was to avoid getting seen during his robberies, spent his early levels out in the woods, sneaking around bears so he wouldn't be spotted while clearing out the houses. It was tremendous fun.

The second mage (my first character was my first), an Altmer who would go out of her way to expend her entire magical power killing Thalmor. To the point where she turned away from the dragon to engage the Thalmor who were engaging it as well.

I tend to pick and choose.
I think my problem is less distraction, more quality of individual components. For one thing I pretty much always play as a straight up sword fighting dude when given the chance. For another, even if I ignore a bunch of options in a game like Skyrim, it doesn't improve the subset I am using. Which then inevitably gets compared component-wise to other games I could be playing, where they will lose. As I said, if I want to sneak, I'll play Thief, which supports sneaking better.

Focus in a game isn't a bad thing.

Erloas

2012-10-24, 10:43 AM

update.. apparently that label I read had no business being there.
my PC is a HP P6610it (where I assume "it" stands for italy)

I am now looking to buy a somewhat more performing video card..around the 100 euro mark at the most.
A quick search of that model shows that I don't know how to read Italian.... However I could figure it out enough. Assuming you didn't upgrade from the base model you have an i3 550 processor, 4GB of RAM, a 300W power supply, and a full size motherboard and case.
The 300W power supply is your primary limiting factor. Both of the cards I listed earlier are still my recommendations. I don't know the exact conversion costs (because PC components seem to rarely follow standard currency conversion rates) but they should both be within your budget. Anything more powerful and expensive is going to require a new power supply for sure, and a (good quality) power supply runs about $40-60. The 7750 might even require a new power supply, it is kind of on the edge whether it will work or not mostly comes down to how good the power supply HP uses. (a lot of cheap power supplies won't actually run at their rated numbers and some get high rating by having high values in voltages that aren't used much)

Yora

2012-10-24, 12:32 PM

While power usually isn't an issue, 300W is really awfully low. My old one gave up a few weeks ago after 8 years of heavy work and it wasn't even a good one back when I bought it, and it still had 550W.
I would check if it's really a 300W inside your computer by looking at the model number that should say something like 300W, 500W, 580W, or something similar.
If it really is under 500W, I think it would be a good choice to invest into one if you want to add a relatively high performance graphic card.

pffh

2012-10-24, 04:50 PM

I don't know much about Kingdom of Amalur but I doubt it can match the power of a fully operational

http://i.imgur.com/QI4Zl.jpg

modded Skyrim.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-10-24, 09:59 PM

They seemed about equivalently bad to me, which is to say all three are renditions of the ancient RPG tradition of being the only competent person in the universe because these things only sell if they're blatant power fantasies Destiny! Well, KoA uses Not Destiny I guess, but it comes to the same thing.

You see, that's not really it. Dark Messiah's problem is chiefly that it doesn't understand pacing. It's like it's deathly afraid that its player base consists entirely of some stereotypical misrepresentation of ADHD and you'll turn off the game and demand a refund if they spend more than 2 seconds before tugging on your hand to pull you toward the next set of flashy lights.

Take for example the second mission in the game, not counting the tutorial level. Note that immediately in the previous cutscene you're introduced to this half-naked... female... thing (I think she's supposed to be a succubus but hell if I know) who possesses you and narrates your objectives in this sultry voice like a stereotypical phone sex hotline operator.

You ride up to the city on horseback to find people talking about the rumors of a necromancer army that's planning to attack. Literally less than 5 seconds after you hear these rumors, the zombies all show up and start wrecking the place.

You run into the city and start dashing around toward the ballistae... not really because you have any reason to go to the Ballistae, it's just the only place you're allowed to go, constantly sprinting through to avoid the enemies and the falling debris. Note that if you take too long to do something you get a game over because the zombies take over the city or something. There's very little margin for error, I got a game over several times my first time running through this level because I got turned around by accident and spent 5 seconds trying to collect my bearings.

Rush rush rush! Jump across this! Climb up that! Stab that zombie! Stab it! Stab it! Stab it! Move it! Move it! Pull that lever! Go! Go! Go!

It felt less like I was playing a game and more like I was at boot camp doing an obstacle course with the game shouting at me what I'm supposed to be doing.

After about 5 minutes of this you get up to the ballistae and you use it to target the great big zombie down below (that is of course invincible if you try to take it on yourself for no reason other than because they put those ballistae there and god dammit you're going to use them and you're going to like it). You shoot the zombie twice, the game takes control of the camera away from you to show you its death cutscene. Somehow killing this one big zombie (called a cyclops I think?) fended off the entire invading force, so you're a hero! Hooray for the hero!

You spend 10 seconds scaling back down the walls back into the city proper (complete with guards screaming at you if you stand around too long or turn into a place you're not supposed to go yet) and meet the wizard's apprentice/daughter/whatever. She also speaks to you in this sad imitation of a porno voice and makes every indication she wants in your pants. You then get screamed at by the succubus-lady-thing in your head, because she's horribly jealous that you're incredibly attracted to this girl you just met.

What the hell, game? First of all, do not tell me what feelings I'm supposed to have about a character. That's only one step higher than flashing the words "YOU ARE VERY SAD NOW" over a death scene, which they sadly almost do just a bit later. Secondly, do not scream at me and tell me how awful I am for supposedly having feelings about a character that you just told me to have!

Immediately after this, you meet her father/master/I don't know. It's a very rushed scene in general where they try to give you some exposition about this prophecy *chug* but the writers rush their own NPCs off the stage for no reason other than to make even more immature "jokes." Two seconds after that it's night and this giant group of evil baddies are attacking the manor! Yet another run-around-and-stab-things-someone-yells-at-you-to-stab fest but at least this time you don't get a game over if you try to feel around for secret hidden goodies (spoiler alert: There are none).

And... look, I can deal with a nonexistant bad story in a game. Contra's not exactly shakespeare but at least it doesn't get in the way of your enjoyment of shooting things. Dark Messiah shoves itself down your throat with a hammer and a ramrod, then uppercuts you in the stomache so you shoot it out as projectile vomit. It treats you like an old flintlock rifle rather than a human being.

warty goblin

2012-10-24, 11:44 PM

Triaxx

2012-10-25, 01:18 AM

Yeah, the camera is definitely one of those weakpoints. On the other hand, it's functional, which is more than can be said for other games.

Surprisingly, the RNG turns out to be a boon. You'll often find Ingots on various enemies. Without those, you wander around investigating all the mines to find out which one has the ore you need. And light armor users are essentially screwed because there's one mine that has moonstone and no mines for quicksilver, which are used in Elven Armor. It's easier to just push past to Glass, and forget all about Elven. It's annoying. At least there is a mine with Orichalcum, even if it's decidedly off the beaten track.

I do like a good story, but ultimately many years of bad ones mean I don't need a good story, just an excuse to go brutally murder my way across the world. The story I create around my character always becomes far more interesting than what's been laid out.

Strange, I only rarely find weapons enchanted with fire. I tend to find 6-7 ice weapons, then one wimpy fire weapon. I do think they're too common, but they seem to appear mostly on bosses, so I sort of avoid those early on.

I never had the chance to play thief. I bought it, just before a computer issue, and before I could get the computer up again, some big-footed idiot stepped on the case and snapped the first install disc.

The_Jackal

2012-10-25, 01:26 AM

factotum

2012-10-25, 01:54 AM

A perfect example being Minecraft, of course, which has no story to speak of and yet is awesomely fun to play. Mind you, I grew up in the early 80s, when the mere idea of a game actually having some sort of story integrated into it was usually laughable--apart from text adventures, any story you got was usually limited to the opening text/cutscene and the ending.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-10-25, 02:09 AM

You weren't kidding when you said you didn't like action games, were you? Because that's just kinda how action game stories roll. You go do the thing with the thing because it's the only thing you can do, and only you can do it. It's totally artificial sure, just like the conventions of quests in RPGs. Think of it as the buy-in for the genre.

Well, there are plenty of action games that I've played that I really liked. I really loved the first two Max Payne games (haven't played 3 yet, can't judge it), the old Quake and Unreal Tournament-style multiplayer FPSes, and a good deal of the huge number of sidescrolling shoot/beat-em-ups on the NES/SNES like Contra, Mega Man, or the old Castlevania games. I definitely prefer slower-paced, more narrative and exploration-focused stuff but there's nothing fundamentally wrong with action as a genre.

I don't think it's a coincidence that this list includes basically nothing released after 2004 or so, and what little it does contain are those games that are specifically designed to harken back to the olden days like Team Fortress 2 or The Binding of Isaac. But that's a discussion for another thread.

Action games, being, you know, rather about the action, also tend to start out with major setpieces. Dark Messiah definitely calms down later, there's quite a few sections that are far more platforming than combat, and the reliance on scripted victory methods goes way down.

I'm very happy to hear that, actually.

(Like I said, Spec Ops has left me very, very jaded. I'm really not sure I can go back to this sort of game after that. I still get how they're fun, and remember enjoying them. But there's something a little...pathetic(?) somehow about them now. I really don't know how to say this.)

Well, my experience of Spec Ops was probably a bit different from yours: I went into the game already having a disdain for the genre that Spec Ops was specifically setting out to deconstruct, but the ideas Spec Ops presents (or rather, the questions that it raises) are applicable far outside the tiny box of modern military shooters it directly criticizes, even far outside gaming itself.

I could write a long, long, long essay on this game. Its narrative encourages introspection of the deepest sort, and it indeed taught me a lot of things about myself I never knew before: That's part of what makes it a genuine piece of gaming art, in my mind.

But I think the most important thing to say about Spec Ops (and the most relevant, given the topic of discussion) is the response to its most common criticism: "I didn't have a choice. I *had* to do all of those things, because the game wouldn't allow me to progress to the end otherwise."

Well, you most certainly did have a choice. Spec Ops has one more ending aside from the standard 4, one you probably didn't even consider: The ending where you put the controller down, turn the game off, and don't play it anymore. It's not exactly a satisfying conclusion, but it's certainly a possibility.

The problem isn't that there wasn't a choice, the problem was none of the alternatives were good ones. Playing Spec Ops can't have the outcome that you want. You have to sacrifice something, in the end. If you chose to finish the game, as I did, you chose to sacrifice the imaginary people in the game world instead of your own entertainment.

Whether this choice (or its reverse) is objectively right or wrong is irrelevant for now, though it's not something Spec Ops has nothing to say about.

The next question is: When none of the alternatives given to you are satisfactory, who do you blame? The critics (and indeed, Walker himself) chose to blame the situation for not providing the heroic power fantasy that they/he wanted. You, on the other hand, have chosen to blame yourself for wanting that fantasy in the first place and striving to obtain it.

I've been thinking about this for a really long time, and honestly? I think you're both wrong here. You probably already know why the critics are wrong, so I'll just tell you why I think you're wrong here: Imagine how absolutely ****ed up this mindset would be if you applied it everywhere, not just to video games.

Let's say you just got your diploma and have just started working at the job of your dreams (let's say a doctor for ease of discussion), but unfortunately you weren't able to get all the scholarships you needed and now you are saddled with a not-insubstantial debt.

You respond by resenting your dream and blaming yourself: "If only I didn't want to be a doctor, this would not have happened. I should just hang up my coat and never practice medicine again."

I realize I'm literally attacking a strawman here, but, uhh, no. Yes, pursuing your dream of becoming a doctor led to some bad consequences (the debt). No, this does not make your ideal wrong, and it's certainly no reason to give up working at it any further. It's a problem, sure, but you can work past this problem.

My feelings about the heroic power fantasy are analogous. Yes, its blind pursual without thought to its implications have lead to some pretty sick, twisted, demented ****. But I think we as gamers can grow beyond this. Gaming as an art form, can grow beyond this. The existence of Spec Ops and the disgust at the bro-shooter genre even before Spec Ops's existence is a sign that this growth is already in progress. We can solve this problem, and the solution is definitely not the blind abandonment and suppression of our ingrained desire to feel like we're something better.

Triaxx

2012-10-25, 06:38 AM

That's a slightly strange comparison. There are consequences to being unable to pay the debt. There are no consequences to finishing the game other than feeling a little bad.

If you stop trying to be a doctor, you still have to deal with the crushing debt, now without the large sums brought in by being a medical professional. Once you start down that road, there is no turning back.

If you decide to stop playing the game, the only thing you're out is the $60 for the game, and that's an initial payout, and it doesn't grow. Once the debt occurs, it starts growing, and doesn't stop until you get to the end.

warty goblin

2012-10-25, 11:52 AM

Well, there are plenty of action games that I've played that I really liked. I really loved the first two Max Payne games (haven't played 3 yet, can't judge it), the old Quake and Unreal Tournament-style multiplayer FPSes, and a good deal of the huge number of sidescrolling shoot/beat-em-ups on the NES/SNES like Contra, Mega Man, or the old Castlevania games. I definitely prefer slower-paced, more narrative and exploration-focused stuff but there's nothing fundamentally wrong with action as a genre.

I don't think it's a coincidence that this list includes basically nothing released after 2004 or so, and what little it does contain are those games that are specifically designed to harken back to the olden days like Team Fortress 2 or The Binding of Isaac. But that's a discussion for another thread.
Fair point. Dark Messiah is definitely in a more modern mold than those games.

I'm very happy to hear that, actually.
Mind you it's still very much combat focused, but it does become much more about putting you in an environment with some enemies and letting things play out than the first level. IIRC there's only three or so enemies that you need to use scripted kills or ballistae on in the rest of the game, most of which make sense in context. It's hard to stab an airborne dragon to death after all.

Well, my experience of Spec Ops was probably a bit different from yours: I went into the game already having a disdain for the genre that Spec Ops was specifically setting out to deconstruct, but the ideas Spec Ops presents (or rather, the questions that it raises) are applicable far outside the tiny box of modern military shooters it directly criticizes, even far outside gaming itself.

I could write a long, long, long essay on this game. Its narrative encourages introspection of the deepest sort, and it indeed taught me a lot of things about myself I never knew before: That's part of what makes it a genuine piece of gaming art, in my mind.

I came to Spec Ops in the weird position that I played modern military shooters with reasonable frequency, and enjoyed doing so, but never felt 100% comfortable with that enjoyment. This may be why Spec Ops hit me like a freight train.

Also, thank you so much for actually engaging with what I said. I was expecting a lot of dismissive 'stop taking things so seriously, it's just a game' etc responses when I posted. I was really delightful to check back this morning and find your well thought out reply.

But I think the most important thing to say about Spec Ops (and the most relevant, given the topic of discussion) is the response to its most common criticism: "I didn't have a choice. I *had* to do all of those things, because the game wouldn't allow me to progress to the end otherwise."

Well, you most certainly did have a choice. Spec Ops has one more ending aside from the standard 4, one you probably didn't even consider: The ending where you put the controller down, turn the game off, and don't play it anymore. It's not exactly a satisfying conclusion, but it's certainly a possibility.
I did think about that option - mostly because I played the game several weeks after it had come out - and knew that it was one the developers more or less advocated at the White Phosphorous part. I kept playing, because I thought at that point it was more worthwhile to listen to everything the game had to say than do the comfortable thing and decide I was too good or too incapable of taking criticism to turn it off.

Now I just leave the game installed, and don't replay it. If I ever do play it again, it's not going to be anytime soon.

The problem isn't that there wasn't a choice, the problem was none of the alternatives were good ones. Playing Spec Ops can't have the outcome that you want. You have to sacrifice something, in the end. If you chose to finish the game, as I did, you chose to sacrifice the imaginary people in the game world instead of your own entertainment.

Whether this choice (or its reverse) is objectively right or wrong is irrelevant for now, though it's not something Spec Ops has nothing to say about.
That is probably the best summation of the game I've read. Once you buy the thing, you are committed to some form of bad outcome. Weirdly this is exactly why I bought it in the first place.

The next question is: When none of the alternatives given to you are satisfactory, who do you blame? The critics (and indeed, Walker himself) chose to blame the situation for not providing the heroic power fantasy that they/he wanted. You, on the other hand, have chosen to blame yourself for wanting that fantasy in the first place and striving to obtain it.

I've been thinking about this for a really long time, and honestly? I think you're both wrong here. You probably already know why the critics are wrong, so I'll just tell you why I think you're wrong here: Imagine how absolutely ****ed up this mindset would be if you applied it everywhere, not just to video games.
I wouldn't say I blame myself for wanting that fantasy. I would say that Spec Ops made me look at what is appealing about that fantasy in a much more honest way, and I really did not like what I saw. See, for me the most effective bit of Spec Ops was how it lifted the gameplay devices of first/third person shooters that are usually made to make the player feel good, and uses them to make me feel horrible.

That bit with the White Phosphorous? I've done that stuff in lots of other games, and those games have always told me I'm the best thing ever for doing it. Half the time I've felt like the best thing ever for doing it.

By taking that same section, but having the game tell it was horrible, and showing me it was horrible, it pointed something out to me. I can only feel good about that sort of thing in a game because the game is telling me I can feel good about it.The action itself is meaningless, it's just tapping a button a few times. All the meaning comes from the context provided by the game.

And by so easily flipping that context from heroism to horror, Spec Ops shoved my face in the fact that the context itself is completely arbitrary. It is entirely determined by the game makers, and means nothing about me. Which on the one hand means I don't have to feel like a war criminal for playing Spec Ops, but on the other means I can hardly feel great for playing anything else, either.

The other part of this is of course that by consistently showing violence as depraved and unheroic Spec Ops makes it hard for me to see violence in other games in its usual heroic and cool light. Because Spec Ops forced me to actually think about violence, it's hard not to do it in other games, which makes the arbitrary structures they use to lionize that violence all the more visible. The emperor has no clothes, because Spec Ops stole them.

And I don't think the emperor looks good naked. Without the clothes and make-up he's just a patched together automaton designed allow me to indulge my baser fantasies stripped of every possible negative consequence. What I was clumsily getting at when I said 'pathetic(?)' wasn't that wanting that fantasy was wrong, but that going back to it after having seen it striped bare would be, just a bit, pathetic on my part.

Except that of course they're all games anyway, just fun ways to pass the time. So maybe it isn't. I really don't know.

So no, I don't feel guilty or bad for wanting that fantasy. I don't think I can feel particularly good about seeking to indulge it anymore. Or particularly bad. I'll settle with confused.

(To be clear, this is entirely personal, which is to say please don't anybody get upset at how I'm calling them pathetic. I'm not, what you do for fun and how you think about that is entirely up to you and so long as nobody's hurt, I'm happy with it.)

Let's say you just got your diploma and have just started working at the job of your dreams (let's say a doctor for ease of discussion), but unfortunately you weren't able to get all the scholarships you needed and now you are saddled with a not-insubstantial debt.

You respond by resenting your dream and blaming yourself: "If only I didn't want to be a doctor, this would not have happened. I should just hang up my coat and never practice medicine again."

I realize I'm literally attacking a strawman here, but, uhh, no. Yes, pursuing your dream of becoming a doctor led to some bad consequences (the debt). No, this does not make your ideal wrong, and it's certainly no reason to give up working at it any further. It's a problem, sure, but you can work past this problem.

My feelings about the heroic power fantasy are analogous. Yes, its blind pursual without thought to its implications have lead to some pretty sick, twisted, demented ****. But I think we as gamers can grow beyond this. Gaming as an art form, can grow beyond this. The existence of Spec Ops and the disgust at the bro-shooter genre even before Spec Ops's existence is a sign that this growth is already in progress. We can solve this problem, and the solution is definitely not the blind abandonment and suppression of our ingrained desire to feel like we're something better.
As I said before, it's not that I blame myself for having the fantasy, it's that I'm not really sure I want to enact it anymore.

Mx.Silver

2012-10-25, 05:59 PM

Warty, you're falling prey to the fallacy of 'story as purpose', versus 'story as pretext'. Games aren't innately about narrative. Yes, narrative can be used to make a game more compelling and entertaining, but at the end of the day, good narrative can't fix bad gameplay, and bad gameplay can go a long way towards fixing bad narrative.

In the end, the only true merit of story in a game is how it informs and enriches gameplay.
Really? Because I have to wonder how exactly the entire genre of point & click adventure games would fit into that model of yours. Or the vast majority of JRPGs, for that matter. Spec Ops the line has come up a lot in this thread, pretty sure that game is not putting the gameplay ahead of narrative. If good narrative can't compensate for gameplay, than one also has to wonder why Planescape: Torment is regarded as positively as it is.

Yeah, some games aren't about the narrative or saying anything, no one is going to argue that. But that doesn't mean no games are mainly about the narrative, and arguing otherwise is akin to trying to argue that books aren't narratively-focussed because some of them are autobiographies. 'A game' isn't innately about narrative because 'a game' isn't innately about anything; what any individual game is about is determined by it's content.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-10-25, 06:17 PM

Also, thank you so much for actually engaging with what I said. I was expecting a lot of dismissive 'stop taking things so seriously, it's just a game' etc responses when I posted. I was really delightful to check back this morning and find your well thought out reply.

Reading this makes me smile.

I did think about that option - mostly because I played the game several weeks after it had come out - and knew that it was one the developers more or less advocated at the White Phosphorous part. I kept playing, because I thought at that point it was more worthwhile to listen to everything the game had to say than do the comfortable thing and decide I was too good or too incapable of taking criticism to turn it off.

My apologies, I was using the impersonal "you." I went into the game knowing nothing about it except that it supposedly had a groundbreaking and deeply thought-provoking story, so I took all these punches blind.

(I'm going a bit out of order here)

By taking that same section, but having the game tell it was horrible, and showing me it was horrible, it pointed something out to me. I can only feel good about that sort of thing in a game because the game is telling me I can feel good about it.The action itself is meaningless, it's just tapping a button a few times. All the meaning comes from the context provided by the game.

And by so easily flipping that context from heroism to horror, Spec Ops shoved my face in the fact that the context itself is completely arbitrary. It is entirely determined by the game makers, and means nothing about me.

This is precisely the reason why I care about the story in a video game: It's the context to our actions that gives these actions meaning. When the context is hastily slapped together by someone who clearly doesn't care about establishing it, it makes the meaning fall apart.

I wouldn't say I blame myself for wanting that fantasy. I would say that Spec Ops made me look at what is appealing about that fantasy in a much more honest way, and I really did not like what I saw. See, for me the most effective bit of Spec Ops was how it lifted the gameplay devices of first/third person shooters that are usually made to make the player feel good, and uses them to make me feel horrible.

That bit with the White Phosphorous? I've done that stuff in lots of other games, and those games have always told me I'm the best thing ever for doing it. Half the time I've felt like the best thing ever for doing it.

...

The other part of this is of course that by consistently showing violence as depraved and unheroic Spec Ops makes it hard for me to see violence in other games in its usual heroic and cool light. Because Spec Ops forced me to actually think about violence, it's hard not to do it in other games, which makes the arbitrary structures they use to lionize that violence all the more visible. The emperor has no clothes, because Spec Ops stole them.

And I don't think the emperor looks good naked. Without the clothes and make-up he's just a patched together automaton designed allow me to indulge my baser fantasies stripped of every possible negative consequence. What I was clumsily getting at when I said 'pathetic(?)' wasn't that wanting that fantasy was wrong, but that going back to it after having seen it striped bare would be, just a bit, pathetic on my part.

Except that of course they're all games anyway, just fun ways to pass the time. So maybe it isn't. I really don't know.

So no, I don't feel guilty or bad for wanting that fantasy. I don't think I can feel particularly good about seeking to indulge it anymore. Or particularly bad. I'll settle with confused.

(To be clear, this is entirely personal, which is to say please don't anybody get upset at how I'm calling them pathetic. I'm not, what you do for fun and how you think about that is entirely up to you and so long as nobody's hurt, I'm happy with it.)

As I said before, it's not that I blame myself for having the fantasy, it's that I'm not really sure I want to enact it anymore.

Ah, I misinterpreted your reaction to the game based on your earlier posts. My apologies.

As for this... well, I think Konrad himself says what I feel about it far more eloquently and concisely than I ever could. Note this is from the part of the game where the conversation stops being Konrad talking to Walker and starts being the developer talking directly to you, the player.

"Whatever comes next, don't be too hard on yourself. Even now, after all you've done, you can still go home. Lucky you."

Triaxx

2012-10-26, 07:46 AM

I think one of the big reasons that Spec Ops had the kind of punch it did, is that a lot of people who play military shooters are not students of military history. I am, being fascinated by it in all it's horrible glory, so I knew what White Phosporous was and why it was such an incomprehensibly horrifying weapon. And so I didn't have the blind gut punch. I understood the option.

The_Jackal

2012-10-26, 02:24 PM

Really? Because I have to wonder how exactly the entire genre of point & click adventure games would fit into that model of yours. Or the vast majority of JRPGs, for that matter. Spec Ops the line has come up a lot in this thread, pretty sure that game is not putting the gameplay ahead of narrative. If good narrative can't compensate for gameplay, than one also has to wonder why Planescape: Torment is regarded as positively as it is.

Point and click adventures are puzzle games. Myst, Zork, etc. Take away the puzzles, and you have no game, just narrative. JRPGs are really just turn-based RPGs in the vein of the old SSI games, or Wizardry, or Baldur's Gate. They differ aesthetically from those games, but not really mechanically.

While I never played Planescape: Torment, it's basically a Baldur's Gate clone, which, at the end of the day, is Dungeons and Dragons. Are you telling me that Dungeons and Dragons is a bad game? It's only the most popular RPG of all time, and the foundation of an entire genre of pen and paper and computer games.

Yeah, some games aren't about the narrative or saying anything, no one is going to argue that. But that doesn't mean no games are mainly about the narrative, and arguing otherwise is akin to trying to argue that books aren't narratively-focussed because some of them are autobiographies. 'A game' isn't innately about narrative because 'a game' isn't innately about anything; what any individual game is about is determined by it's content.

Autobiographies ARE narrative focused, the narrative is the life of the subject. On the other hand 'The Wealth of Nations' is a book that has NO narrative. But all this is besides the point: Books aren't games. Movies aren't games. Games are games. And games are meant to be played, not watched. A game without gameplay isn't a game. A game without narrative still is. Bad narrative plus good gameplay = Good game. The way I know this is true is that most game stories ARE bad. And you need look no further than the slew of incredibly dumb video game movies to know that I'm right.

Mx.Silver

2012-10-26, 05:18 PM

Point and click adventures are puzzle games. Myst, Zork, etc. Take away the puzzles, and you have no game, just narrative.
The problem here is that most point-and-click adventure don't really have that much of what most people would normally consider 'puzzles'. Myst does, yeah, but it's very much worth noting that at the time it was released Myst was considered a very big departure from how the genre normally worked, not least in how little it focusses on the narrative compared to, say, Gabriel Knight, Beneath A Steel Sky, Broken Sword, The Longest Journey etc.
More pertinently, the fact is most of the audience for adventure games aren't there because they enjoy trying to 'use' various objects on other objects, or hunting around a screen to find whatever spot it is that needs to be clicked on. The main draw for those games was the narrative, which was also generally where a lot of the actual development work went into. For the most part, it is a genre of games where narrative is considered the primary focus, with gameplay being used to inform said narrative rather than the reverse.

JRPGs are really just turn-based RPGs in the vein of the old SSI games, or Wizardry, or Baldur's Gate. They differ aesthetically from those games, but not really mechanically.
The thing about that though is that you get quite a few JRPGs (many of them quite well regarded) where the main 'draw' isn't really stemming from the gameplay but, again, the narrative. Traditionally, JRPGs have often been more concerned with telling a story than by using it to inform gameplay.

While I never played Planescape: Torment, it's basically a Baldur's Gate clone, which, at the end of the day, is Dungeons and Dragons. Are you telling me that Dungeons and Dragons is a bad game?
I'm not saying anything about D&D. What I am telling you is that the actual mechanics in Torment - particularly the combat mechanics (which is largely the stuff it's taken from Baldur's Gate or D&D), due to how they're implemented - are not the draw of that game. At all.
What Torment is remembered for - and why it's regarded as one of the best CRPGs - is its narrative and how it uses the medium of games (the gameplay, if you will) to enrich and inform said narrative. You may notice that is the reverse of your proposed model for how a game should approach narrative.

Nor is it by any means the only game to take this approach. Spec Ops: The Line, is an obvious example that's been discussed quite a bit in the thread.

Autobiographies ARE narrative focused, the narrative is the life of the subject.
True, but they aren't actually narrative works, for the simple reason that they're a related account of events rather than a created story (unless the writier is liying an awful lot, but you get the idea). A recording of a football match has a narrative to it as well, but is also not a narrative work. This discussion isn't that important to the matter at hand though.

But all this is besides the point: Books aren't games. Movies aren't games. Games are games. And games are meant to be played, not watched. A game without gameplay isn't a game. A game without narrative still is.
Ah, this old chestnut again. See, the thing about this argument is that you can apply it equally to books or films (how they aren't meant to be 'watched/read', a film without images isn't a film etc), which does in fact tie into the fundamental point: all are mediums that can be used to deliver narrative works. None of them have to be used for that - they will still continue to be what they are without it - and all of them will approach narrative in different ways should they contain it. Games will use interactivity (or gameplay, if you'd rather), books will use language and films will use visual spectacle.

I've never disputed that you can have good games which don't have a narrative*. My problem is that the fact that such a thing can and does happen does not mean that all games do (or should) adopt the same approach to narrative and gameplay and that trying to say that they do is incorrect. There is room for both in the medium, just as there's room for novels and textbooks in the medium of books.

*incidentally, it is actually possible to find novels and films that are considered good which also pay little attention to narrative, although these tend be on the more 'arty' end of the spectrum.

Bad narrative plus good gameplay = Good game.
Again, I'm not disputing that this can happen (see above). However, I'm not convinced this is an absolute rule either. Case in point, Metroid: Other M. To say this hasn't been well-received would be an understatement, but what's interesting is that almost all the flak the game has taken has been over it's story. In fact general consensus seems to be that the actual gameplay is pretty decent, yet very few people seem to be calling it a good game pretty much entirely on account of the story being bad. This would seem to suggest that a game can be bad even if the gameplay is fine.

The Mass Effect 3 ending controversy can also be seen as a smaller example of this. It may also be relevant that the main reasons I've seen why Metal Gear Solid 2 is not considered as good as other games in the series are based around narrative concerns rather than gameplay. This also seems to be true for why Bioshock 2 is not considered as good as Bioshock 1.

The_Jackal

2012-10-26, 05:41 PM

A narrative is a constructive format (as a work of speech, writing, song, film, television, video games, photography or theatre) that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events.

From wikipedia. So yes, an autobiography IS a narrative work.

Eh, I'm done arguing about the narrative thing: I've already said my piece, and I'm not changing my mind, and I'm evidently not changing yours. If I want to be told a story, I'll pop in a movie or read a book. I play games for gameplay. If the story is good, so much the better, but if the gameplay is bad, I don't care how awesome the story is, I'm not sold. YMMV.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-10-28, 12:12 AM

Well, I think the problem here is you're thinking about "Gameplay" and "Story" as if they're in separate little boxes. I think a better way of looking at games is to think about them in terms of experiences.

How does the game make you feel? Does it make your heart swell with pride and your eyes fill with tears? Does it leave you soul-crushingly depressed and guilty? Does it give you a wave of excitement and an adrenaline high? Or does it leave you deeply intrigued, cranking your mind at mysteries you didn't even know were there?

The best games (and not coincidentally, the best movies and books) are the ones that fill you with a rainbow of gripping emotions, twisting and undulating inside of you in a maelstrom of color.

But there's a lot of ways a game (or a movie for that matter) can affect you this way. The music, the sound effects, the shapes, the colors, the animation...

If you've never played it, LIMBO is a great example of a game that sells its atmosphere almost entirely with just how the characters move: Everything is a silhouette and all the sounds are just vague acoustic "things" rather than anything discernable.

The way the different parts of the world interact with one another (the mechanics) and the things the characters say (what we commonly think of as "the story" but this is quite a monolithic concept I'd break down into multiple parts) are just two small parts of the things that a great game uses to build the experience.

Yeah there are SOME games that put their parts in different boxes and don't really blend them together. Braid is a great example of this. I actually liked Braid a lot better when I skipped reading all the text the first time I played it. Then I went back and actually read all that stuff, and then I hated it. Spoiler Alert: What I thought was an ingenious look into the nature of perception and context was actually intended as this preachy, pretentious argument for nuclear deproliferation.

But in the best games the parts blend together into a seamless whole, each of them contributing to form the overall experiences while reinforcing each other. This is why knock-offs and clone games tend to suck: They copy the surface elements without really understanding how the parts fit with each other.

factotum

2012-10-28, 02:15 AM

Well, I think the problem here is you're thinking about "Gameplay" and "Story" as if they're in separate little boxes.

That's how most developers seem to see them, so is this a surprise? :smallwink:

As you say at the bottom, good games often blend the story and the game seamlessly. The best example I can think of that I've played recently is Bastion. However, there is a bit of a disconnect between the gaming side--which the player expects to be interactive and provide them with choices--and the story side, which is traditionally a linear experience with no choices to make. If the game concentrates too much on the story it can become too linear; I think this is why I like the Grand Theft Auto series, because, while the storyline missions themselves are a strictly linear progression, the game gives you plenty to do while you're not following the scripted story!

dehro

2012-10-28, 07:34 AM

Craft (Cheese)

2012-10-28, 08:10 AM

it seems to me that there are as many definitions of what makes a good game as there are reasons and ways one approaches gaming, or specific games.
whether you're in it for the art, the immersive experience, the hours of gameplay, the test of your gaming skills, the quality of the story, the technical innovations, the whole shebang or the mindless couple of hours a day of putting your daily chores and troubles out of your mind.. it changes how you look at a game and how you appreciate it's accomplishments and failings.
most of these angles aren't really compatible or overlapping..so I reckon there won't ever be a universal consensus about what makes a good game a good game.

...Or you could just admit that people play games for different reasons and what makes a "good game" depends on what your reasons are for playing it are.

This is why it's misleading to say things like "Planescape Torment has a good story but the combat sucks." I think the combat and equipment systems are actually very well designed in P:T if you consider it as an avenue for exploring the personality of the characters and the world rather than an end in and of itself. A more useful way to express what we mean here might be something like "If you come in to Planescape Torment expecting an epic dungeon crawler, you're going to be horribly disappointed."

Good design techniques when designing, say, a competitive PvP multiplayer FPS designed for a keyboard/mouse could totally cripple you if you used them when designing, say, a single-player puzzle game for the iPhone meant to be played for 5 minutes at a time on the bus or the subway or something. This should be surprising to no one.

dehro

2012-10-28, 10:09 AM

...Or you could just admit that people play games for different reasons and what makes a "good game" depends on what your reasons are for playing it are.

which is a short version of the same concept I was trying to convey

Mx.Silver

2012-10-28, 04:33 PM

...Or you could just admit that people play games for different reasons and what makes a "good game" depends on what your reasons are for playing it are.
Very true.

This is why it's misleading to say things like "Planescape Torment has a good story but the combat sucks."
Just to clarify: I wasn't trying to say the combat sucks, just that the mechanics in and of themselves won't provide entertainment in the same was as, say, Icewind Dale.

The_Jackal

2012-10-28, 10:13 PM

Edit: Evidently I'm stupid and forgot I said I was done.

Triaxx

2012-10-29, 02:21 AM

It's more proper to say Torment is more story focused than combat focused. The same as Icewind Dale is more combat focused than story. And that the BG games are the middle ground.

dehro

2012-11-07, 11:17 AM

Divayth Fyr

2012-11-07, 11:54 AM

You need to install and log into Origin (it could be called EA's version of Steam), but the game should let you install itself from the dvd (of course, there is the issue of downloading the patches).

Are you sure there was no info on the box? IIRC, the version sold in my country had it.

Erloas

2012-11-07, 11:59 AM

Well I haven't used Origins yet so I couldn't say for sure, but there are a couple ways they could have set it up. There are a lot of online services like that now where you have to sign in to play, it is just something you have to accept any more (or avoid playing a lot of games)
Now whether or not you actually have to download much from Origin, I don't really know. I know when you get a DVD version of a Steam controlled game, that it installs the game from the DVD and ties it to the Steam account and the only downloading you would do is expansions, patches, and updates. It is possible that even on a day-1 release the physical media needs a lot of patching right from the start, and now that the game has been out for a while its almost a guarantee. It could be one of those things where its relatively small and you only see a 10-50MB update but there are others where they could easily be 500-1GB of downloads (or more if there have been free expansion/DLC).

Which video card did you decide to go with?

warty goblin

2012-11-07, 01:19 PM

soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo...

I went and upgraded my video card, bought Drakensang the river of time, AND Kingdom of Amalur.

having played through drakensang the dark eye, I started up the river of time.. everything cool, it works just like the other one except I can't seem to make it run in a window and have to have it fullscreen whether I like it or not.
I can live with that.

now I'm sat here trying to instal KoA however, things are getting annoying.:furious:
apparently the dvd has downloaded some piece of software I don't know or want instead of the game, named Origin. I have no idea what that does other than letting me download the game.
it wants me to register and log in.. so I can download it, I reckon.
excuse me?
what did I go buy the dvd for then? at any given time I share my wireless connection with 2-4 other computers..and the game looks like it's not on the light side..
why is this not written on the cover of the game? why do I have to give them ( EA being "them") further personal info when I've already paid and brought home what I set out to buy? why do they bother giving me a DVD in the first place?
am I being angry and pissed off for no reason? should I just register and fuggeddabout it? can I then uninstall the stupid origin thing and still play?

I'm not happy...and I haven't even installed anything yet

AFAIK you need to have Origin installed to play KoA. However you can put it into offline mode after registering, and it'll basically be no additional hassle. And unlike Steam's offline mode, it'll work fine if you lose internet unexpectedly too. Less than ideal, but could be worse.

And these things almost always are written on the game box, usually on the back with all the system requirements. Generally the phrasing is something like "internet access and free on-line account required" or some malarky along those lines. Steam is just the same, and, except for EA and Ubisoft games, is pretty much ubiquitous across AAA titles anymore. As somebody who's gaming PC hasn't had internet for about three months now, you get really good at reading the backs of boxes.

(Ironically this means I mostly buy DRM free games online, download them to a flash drive, and move 'em over. GoG and GamersGate are godsends).