What Are You Playing Right Now, Part 2: Daggerfall

[Zevox]

Still playing a lot of BBTag - the big 2.0 update has really been a great excuse to rekindle my love of this game. I've started just doing different teams every night or two, since there's so many characters I want to play. I think I finally settled on Naoto (from Persona 4) as my preferred partner for Neo, after trying out several. Unfortunate that the two don't have a unique intro together, but eh, the gameplay works well, and I like both characters. Naoto even got some nice changes in this balance patch, too, so she's been even more fun to play than before.

And I think I've finally, after more than a year with the game, decided on my preferred partner for my favorite character, Yang. After watching Shinku win major tournaments like Evo and ArcRevo America with Yang/Ruby, I finally went back and tried that team again for the first time since, well, basically since Yang was released, and am finding I love it. I really haven't touched Ruby much since quite early in the game's lifespan, so getting ahold of her and seeing the things she can do with the new gunblast cancels has been fun - and Yang's change to allow her to cancel j.C into special moves on landing has fixed the issue that made me avoid pairing them earlier on, the awkward spacing that Ruby's assists created in combos, by allowing Yang some much easier combos after an assist extension from Ruby. And hey, team Sisters, unique interactions, can't beat that.

Thinking of trying a team with Adachi next - seeing other people play him has me even more interested than before, even if only for his line as he does one of his supers ("You think you're so cool - but it's all bull****!"). Might actually pair him with Ruby too, they strangely enough have a fun intro together.

[Anonymouswizard]

Huh, I was kind of the opposite in terms of preference. SR2 was such a GTA clone, and so dark at times, I didn't much care for it. The goofiness of 3 & 4 really won me over and made me like the series.

I've never played a GTA game, so that boy didn't really mayer to me, but SR3 just didn't know what it wanted to be. It was a wacky fun times game with an attempted gritty gangster plot, when it really should have either played up the supervillain/illuminati angle with the Syndicate or gone for the SR2 style of 'stores main plot, silly side missions'.

Spoiler

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Plus I feel like Gat's death was handled poorly compared to Carlos's from the second game. Sure Gat had has two whole games to get established as a character, but the game doesn't want to remind me of the parts of his character that I actually find interesting. No grieving over the woman he loved, SR3 wants me to remember him as a one dimensional badass based on ebay they establish.

Plus he dies too early for the boss's reaction to really be impact full. With Carlos we get to see the boss get more vicious as a reaction to her protégé's death.

Plus, well, in SR2 if I buy a hoodie I can pick hood up or down when I put it on, SR3 makes that two separate items of clothing (plus ditches the undershirt/overshirt/jacket system, which allowed a lot more control of your looks*).

I feel like SR3 is the awkward middle step between 'serious yet comedic gangster game' and 'over the top science fiction'. There are great things about the game, such as the art style and changing the Boss from a The Dark Knight trilogy Batman villain to a cross between an anti-hero and a 1960s TV show Batman villain, but I tend to find that the tone clashes with the grounded aspects. I still enjoy the game, but it was a letdown for me after 2.

SR2 I find almost as good as the second game, partially because I feel like the less grounded nature of the plot makes it feel more serious. Plus superhero sandboxes are just fun, the only thing I really want the game to have is a more in depth system for melee combat, a bunch of different timing-based combos and lock-on based moves or the like, but the gunplay is still satisfying.

* can we say formal suit jacket with a Saint's branded pool shirt? Or how about a dress shirt worn under a rugby jersey?

[factotum]

I dunno, I thought the disconnect between tone and storyline was already well established in SR2--we're talking a game where Gat's girlfriend is brutally murdered by one of the bad guy gangs, and where the protagonist puts the girlfriend of another gang boss in the boot of a car that's then run over by the guy in his monster truck, yet which also includes a minigame where you have to spray sewage over people's houses. I actually preferred SR3 because I think the balance between goofy and serious was better pitched to avoid the screeching "we're serious now!" gearchanges that happened in 2.

[Yora]

I started playing Mass Effect again yesterday.

When I first got it in 2011, I replayed it one or twice per year for the next couple of years. Probably played trough 1 and 2 six times now, but somehow I never got back to playing it again for the last five years. I wasn't quite sure if I am feeling really as excited about it now as I used to, and I mostly started it now out of boredom. But just like the first time, I was already hooked again at the title screen.

[GloatingSwine]

Huh, I was kind of the opposite in terms of preference. SR2 was such a GTA clone, and so dark at times, I didn't much care for it. The goofiness of 3 & 4 really won me over and made me like the series.

I thought SR2 pulled off the darker aspects pretty well, it puts due weight on them in the narrative because, compared to SR3, it's relatively decompressed giving each gang 6-8 missions plus some strongholds. (I'd recommend running the gangs in order Samedi>Ronin>Brotherhood, as that leads to a consistent progression of the Boss getting darker and nastier as the game goes on)

SR3 suffers from still having the three gangs structure but tying them all to one relatively short narrative, meaning that everything goes past super quickly and nothing lands with any weight, and there's no connection to the antagonist characters because they only get one go in the spotlight each and so no animosity against them from the player.

(Plus Steelport doesn't have as much character as Stillwater)

[LibraryOgre]

With a new computer and a catastrophic ID-10-T error with Dragon Age: Origins, I'm playing Mass Effect: Andromeda. I restarted yesterday, after about 6 hours of play (mostly finished the first run at Eos), and rebuilt more or less the same character, but hopefully making fewer mistakes.

Things I hate? The hair. I actually restarted after a few minutes to play a black girl with cornrows, with my brother being bald, so I did not have to look at hair animations.

I also hate the save system. If I have to backtrack, they are a royal PITA.

Generally, though, I am liking the game, and the character creation/customization system.

[warty goblin]

So Halo Reach dropped for PC yesterday. I am enjoying this to an unseemly degree.

I had forgotten just how altogether excellent Halo is as a shooter, and there's so little guff, chaff, or nonsense in the design. No leveling up, no grinding for gear, no open world. Just nicely sized levels full of cool objectives, fun weapons and enjoyable enemies to shoot. It's something like 60 degrees out of phase with most modern games, and I love it to absolute bits. The guns all feel great, there's a nice variety to them, the art direction is fantastic (the background landscapes look mindblowingly good), and the music is naturally just the top. That these are dropping on the regular for the next while fills me with joy.

I had forgotten what absolute bastards highly shielded energy sword elites are though.

[Triaxx]

Master class in Sticky Nades, that's the way to deal with Elites.

[Zombimode]

So Halo Reach dropped for PC yesterday. I am enjoying this to an unseemly degree.

I had forgotten just how altogether excellent Halo is as a shooter, and there's so little guff, chaff, or nonsense in the design. No leveling up, no grinding for gear, no open world. Just nicely sized levels full of cool objectives, fun weapons and enjoyable enemies to shoot. It's something like 60 degrees out of phase with most modern games, and I love it to absolute bits. The guns all feel great, there's a nice variety to them, the art direction is fantastic (the background landscapes look mindblowingly good), and the music is naturally just the top. That these are dropping on the regular for the next while fills me with joy.

I had forgotten what absolute bastards highly shielded energy sword elites are though.

Yeah, I also bought it on tuesday. I'm in the endgame of Divinity OS2 so that need to finished first, but I'm quite hyped about Halo Reach.

Halo for PC is actually something I'm waiting for 15 years!

[GloatingSwine]

Master class in Sticky Nades, that's the way to deal with Elites.

Fully charged plasma pistol then magnum* headshot. Two shots per elite, and grunts are always eager to deliver more plasma pistols.


* DMR, Battle Rifle, and Carbine also apply.

[Yora]

I remember Hunters being a particular pain in the ass in that game.

[oxybe]

Mario Maker 2 jus dropped with a new update.

a few new enemies, like Spike and Pokey the cactus, alongside variants like the snowball spike and snowman pokey.

They've added a "ninji Spedrun" where you run against timetrial ghosts of other players.

And finally, a new powerup. The Master Sword. This isn't just a costume that makes Mario look like Link, but changes how Mario works, giving him access to Link's sword, shield, bow and bombs... all while functioning like a super mushroom but keeping him at small mario size.

[warty goblin]

I remember Hunters being a particular pain in the ass in that game.

That certainly was my impression when I ran into the first two last night. The last Halo I really played was the PC port of Combat Evolved, but I definitely don't remember them surviving point blank shotgun blasts to the back before.

On the other hand, some of their armor seems to be destructible now, so that's cool.

Also cool, varied encounter design! It's really impressive how many different sorts of combat encounter the designers can wring out of different level designs and enemy placement and equipment.

Really this is further evidence for my thesis that RPG mechanics are the worst thing to ever happen to the FPS

[Yora]

I even am of the opinion that stats and equipment progressions are the weakest parts of RPGs. I think Mass Effect 2 become such a better RPG by massively simplifying the level progression system and the weapon selection. Instead of dozens of basically identical weapons with slightly different stats, the weapons are different from each other in their handling, such as accuracy and rate of fire.
I spend so much less time in equipment and level up screens, which lets me spend more of my time actually being in the game. When I am in a menu screen, I don't feel like I am playing the game. I am doing homework to be able to continue playing the game effectively.

[LibraryOgre]

I even am of the opinion that stats and equipment progressions are the weakest parts of RPGs. I think Mass Effect 2 become such a better RPG by massively simplifying the level progression system and the weapon selection. Instead of dozens of basically identical weapons with slightly different stats, the weapons are different from each other in their handling, such as accuracy and rate of fire.
I spend so much less time in equipment and level up screens, which lets me spend more of my time actually being in the game. When I am in a menu screen, I don't feel like I am playing the game. I am doing homework to be able to continue playing the game effectively.

Gods, this is so true. I joked that, in Mass Effect 1, Shepherd's Secondary MOS must have been Quartermaster. I don't WANT to get a +1 sword than trade it in six weeks later for a +2 sword.

[Man_Over_Game]

I even am of the opinion that stats and equipment progressions are the weakest parts of RPGs. I think Mass Effect 2 become such a better RPG by massively simplifying the level progression system and the weapon selection. Instead of dozens of basically identical weapons with slightly different stats, the weapons are different from each other in their handling, such as accuracy and rate of fire.
I spend so much less time in equipment and level up screens, which lets me spend more of my time actually being in the game. When I am in a menu screen, I don't feel like I am playing the game. I am doing homework to be able to continue playing the game effectively.

Gotta be careful with RPGs in that regard, including even Mass Effect (which handles its shooting elements more like a RPG than a FPS with aggressive aim-assist). You're effectively duplicating the same problem, with the illusion that it's different. Doesn't matter much if you deal 2 damage every 4 seconds, or 4 damage every seconds. Not without additional complex mechanics (like ammo efficiency), which will cause the exact same micro-managing problem that you're wanting to avoid.

Interestingly enough, the new Diablo game is taking a new extreme on this topic: 3 stats for everyone.

You have Damage, Health, and Defense. Every class uses the same stats, but some gear is locked to specific classes (so a Barbarian can't use a wand, for instance).

[Triaxx]

No better way to kill hunters than a tank shot to the face, but those aren't always around.

[Erloas]

I don't remember ME having aim assist. At least on PC, though I think it was an option in the settings that I didn't use.

I also wouldn't say any given mechanic is good or bad, but there are plenty of mechanics used in places where they don't add, and sometimes detract from certain games.

I think for instance that Fallout 3+ are more FPSs* than RPGs, but they're trying to hard to act like RPGs that they make the combat clunky and painful and act like it's now an RPG.
*FPS is such a generic term now that it almost doesn't mean anything, it's perspective more than genre but both developers and consumers use it to mean both or neither of those things freely. But there are not really any better term(s) that are used with any consistency.

Diablo for instance, changing the stats is really going to change how people view the game. I think if their focus is on start to finish story then 3 stats and simplified loot is perfectly fine. But that doesn't at all work for a looter game, which is a big part of what the previous games were. I'm not going to say one is universally better, but I'm going to bet that the majority of Diablo's most faithful fans are really going to be upset by such a fundamental change to the game. There is 100% room in the market for both styles of games, but one game can't successfully be both.

I also couldn't see a game like Wastelands working well without leveling and progression mechanics. I mean, it could be done, but I don't think the game would be improved because of it. I also don't see Diablo being improved by removing levels. But then some games like Bioshock are perfectly fine without levels. I also don't think your COD style of games are improved in any way with those additions. The overabundance of gimmicks and leveling/progression has killed a lot of my interest in some games like the Tom Clancy games.



So I just finished XCOM: EW. I enjoyed it but it felt like I was missing some things. I think there were some options/strategies I had that were just never really made clear. Like it seemed like I was always out of money and couldn't ever afford to do much of anything with gene enhancements (I think I had 2 soldiers with some really cheap ones) and never had a single SHIV (being too broke meant starting up a new tech branch didn't seem like a great option). Of course once I was done I found I could have sold a lot more stuff on the grey market without any risk of not having enough parts/corpses for research or builds. I was out of things to research quite a bit before the game was over and still hadn't done much of anything in the foundry.
While I seldom replay games, I think I'll actually come back to XCOM later and try again with mods or higher difficulties. But first I think I'll go back and finish Shadowrun HK.

[warty goblin]

To be clear I'm not complaining about the existence of RPGs in general. My beef is pretty much limited to dumping RPG mechanics into anything and everything, particularly with action driven titles like FPS games.

My position is that a good shooter is about maximal connection between player and virtual gun, or more broadly player and their direct simulated impact on the gameworld. This is why the actual player character can so often be a nonentity; they really don't actually matter to engaging portion of playing the game, i.e. shooting things.

Adding a bunch of character levels and enemy levels and weapon levels and activated abilities just messes with this, mostly because these things are usually very visible and highly abstracted systems removed from the immediately discernible gameworld simulation. Activating a character ability that lets me do an extra 25% damage with fire based weapons for the next 30 seconds is quite abstract, in the sense that it's re-imposing the separation between player, character, and world; notably we would call that a character ability, rather than player skill. Having high level enemies be weirdly immune to getting shot in the head makes this divide abundantly and often comically obvious. It's not that I lack the skill to beat this enemy, it's that my character doesn't have large enough numbers yet. RPG mechanics also tend to reorient the game towards extrinsic rewards, rather than intrinsic. The 'reward' for shooting an Elite in Halo is that Elites are relatively hard to kill and dangerous enemies within the gameworld itself. Getting an XP reward just emphases character ability at the expense of player skill, since it's basically just there so that my numbers will eventually be large enough to kill some enemy with bigger numbers than I can currently kill.

(As a further, more concrete complaint, adding RPG mechanics tends to screw the difficulty curve six ways from Sunday. The hardest parts of an FPS should be at the end, if you build your characters right the hardest parts of an RPG are at the beginning.)

This is also incidentally one of the reasons that 'immersive sim' games have never done much for me, because the character progression feels at the expense of player progression. Put simply, I'd much rather have a game make getting through a door a challenge using real time gameplay of some sort than whether or not I put enough points in Door Opening Skill A. Also, for some reason immersive sims seem to always have like three different door opening skills, which just seems excessively boring skill design.

[Triaxx]

Of course they did exactly that with Fallout 4, and it went horribly wrong. The focus on superior shooting really hurt the rest of the game.

[warty goblin]

I'm forced to conclude that the combined depredations of age and years of more modern FPSs have withered my 1337 ski11z, because Reach is kicking my ass, and I'm only playing on Veteran.

Of course they did exactly that with Fallout 4, and it went horribly wrong. The focus on superior shooting really hurt the rest of the game.

I think the Bethesda Fallouts are more a case of an FPS happening to an RPG than an RPG happening to an FPS, combined with the franchise catching a roaring case of Bethesda Game Design.

[Zevox]

So, something I haven't mentioned in a long time is that I've been slowly playing through Persona Q2 ever since it came out in June - 3DS games like it are perfect for playing on lunch break at work. And I'm finally getting towards the end of the game, and have reached the point where my team's main Personas can finally change into their, for lack of a better term, evolved forms. And after seeing those it dawned on me that it's an interesting thing that two of the three major lead characters of the Persona franchise have ultimate Personas that are mythologically diametrically opposed: the P3 protagonist* has Messiah, while Joker from P5 has Satanael (which, on the off chance it isn't obvious, is just an alternate name for Satan). Both of which make complete sense for their respective stories. And in this game, the two meet, become friends, and work together as part of the same team. Have to say, I quite like the irony.

*The female version, specifically, in PQ2 - her male counterpart gets an enhanced version of Orpheus, their starting Persona, instead. Which was a surprise to me, but one I quite liked. I've very much enjoyed getting to see Minako again in this one and have basically never taken her out of my team, so her getting the cooler ultimate Persona is a nice touch for me.

[factotum]

Of course they did exactly that with Fallout 4, and it went horribly wrong. The focus on superior shooting really hurt the rest of the game.

I don't think it was the concentration on the shooting mechanics that really hurt Fallout 4, to be honest. The same shooting mechanics exist in the Far Harbor DLC and that plays like a Fallout game should.

Interestingly enough, the new Diablo game is taking a new extreme on this topic: 3 stats for everyone.

You have Damage, Health, and Defense. Every class uses the same stats, but some gear is locked to specific classes (so a Barbarian can't use a wand, for instance).

I've never played Diablo 3, but Diablo 2 was hardly more complicated than that--you only had four stats (Strength, Dexterity, Vitality and Energy), and 99% of the time you wanted to be pumping Vitality for health while keeping the other stats at the minimum possible values for whatever class and equipment you were using.

[Brookshw]

Halo for PC is actually something I'm waiting for 15 years!

Absolutely! Picked the Collection up asap and don't regret it for a second.

Of course they did exactly that with Fallout 4, and it went horribly wrong. The focus on superior shooting really hurt the rest of the game.

Disagree. Improving the shooting isn't mutually exclusive from developing the story and RPG elements. Rather, the emphasis on passive rather than active story telling was inconsistent with past Fallout games and jarring or overlooked by many players (also the constrained nature of the quests). For example, if you look at the interactions and stories between the various raider gangs, e.g., kidnappings, leaders getting rabies, etc, you'll find there's actually a lot of interesting story going on. However, it's never an active story the player interacts via quests (e.g., investigating the kidnapping, finding a cure for the rabies or assisting with a transition of power, etc). It's lost opportunity, but, it does show that (some of) the elements of the game people bemoan the loss of were actually present. Subsequently, improving the shooting has nothing to do with the issue at hand, rather that people don't like the implementation of other elements.

[Razade]

Been trading off between Pokemon Sword and Dragon Quest Builders 2. Both games have been fun for the most part, frustrating in their own distinct ways and two games I wouldn't recommend to anyone who isn't a fan of either series.

Pokemon Sword is pretty standard as far as Pokemon goes. Not much to say. It's frusrating that there's a level cap on catching Pokemon because the game just had to have an Open World. I think Open World RPGs are going to, in the near future, be to the 2010+ that indie Roguelikes were to the 2000's. Something that got popular because a few people did it well but then everyone started doing it and oh gods please move on.

Dragon Quest Builders 2 is, similarly, open world...to an extent. It's a lot more gated than a lot of Open World games are and it's also a game I've got a lot of opinions on. The game, as a Dragon Quest spinoff, gets a lot of points for using familiar enemies and concepts and lore to build off of. It does it pretty well too, if cliche though Dragon Quest has never been a series (with 11 main games and tons of spin offs) to break from the conventions it helped make the rock steady basis of the JRPG. The characters are as good as you're going to get from a traditional JRPG like Dragon Quest and a few of them I actually came to not only enjoy but actually have strong feelings for on an emotional level. A few of them are spoilers so

Spoiler: Moonbrook

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Anessa and Warwick are probably the two best non-core NPCs that I actually came to like even though Warwick was clearly the traitor they hit you over the head with. His heel face turn was...not great but I at least totally understand where he was coming from. Anessa also has her own heel face turn though in its own interesting way and her constant charm offensive made her stand out from the rest. Malroth's incarceration was bunk and I really felt conflicted over it and him not being around to help afterwards really drives the fight home.

The game is split into three core islands with you returning to your home base to put into practice what you learn in the story to use. The first island teachers you farming, which is good since food is a big deal in this game, the second gets you all the mining and metal you're going to need and the third gets you...well. Not a whole lot really. Mostly just puts the other lessons you've learned to the test. Which is for the best as it's got the strongest story of the three I feel and easily the best characters, as mentioned in the spoiler. The other characters from the other islands aren't bad per say but they're easily forgettable compared to Moonbrook. Unfortunately Island 3 is where the game's cracks really start to show.

For as nice as the game looks there's a lot of small things that add up to big problems. The aforementioned cliche JRPG story and "Thou must!" events where you just are totally on rails has been mentioned but by Island 3...it just sorta makes the game a slough. I've gotten around it by, as mentioned above, playing other games between. The combat is crazy basic as well and you as the Player are kind of crap at it until late into the game which means you're going to be leaning on Malroth, your NPC helper, for the heavy hitting. Until they take him from you, which we'll get to, and you're on your own. Enemies do a ton of damage, you don't have a lot of HP and spamming healing items isn't a fix for an otherwise very threadbare combat system. Your NPC helpers also have...not great path finding so GL with them. They at least know when to get out of the way of huge attacks so they're not actually useless. As long as you equip them well, they'll do the trick eventually.

I say eventually because enemies have buckets of HP. Even basic enemies take time to whittle away at and it's just not a fun experience by the time you hit late game. This is compounded by the fact that enemies like to destroy your base. You mostly fight these big waves of enemies in particular story moments and the NPCs fix your base to the way it was before...until you get to Moonbrook where wave after wave of enemy just spawns out of the blue and wrecks your crap and it's on you to fix. This is the biggest complain of Island 3 for me really. Not only is Island 3 really long with lots to do, enemies randomly will spawn in waves. As the story progresses these enemies have fun new ways to ignore the weapons and towers you put up as the game sort of becomes a Tower Defense game only there's no pathing and nothing you do really matters. These enemies especially are just made of hit points.

The boss battles are at least inventive and fun and I wish there were more fights like them instead of just fighting waves of progressively larger hit point pools.

The controls are...janky. I love Minecraft and I love to build in that game...on PC. On a controller I find you just don't have as good of control and this carries over to Dragon Quest Builder 2. Placing things where you want can be a pain in the ass and the way things are set, you need some fairly specific things to make rooms ping as rooms. I spent two hours trying to pass a single quest all because the block placement I had wasn't correct to ping a giant room as said giant room. I do like how adding furniture and other items into rooms changes their function, it's a neat concept and I like getting to carefully build my bases with that in mind. Besides having troubles with the actual building, the controller mapping is utter pants. Interacting with NPCs and items is the same as changing your tool around so if you're trying to change the tool you're using and Malroth runs ahead of you, you'll have to endure his dialog box and move to change your item. Which is annoying when you're trying to build things. This goes especially double in bases which generally are a bit cramped. Want to change your hammer to something else? Too bad, you opened a chest!! Ugh.

The largest glaring issue with building however is...there's no point to it outside the mandatory stuff. Going back to your base and building is just vanity. All the things you need to build can be handled (and really should be since with how annoying the controls can be is going to be an exercise in frustration at best) by the NPCs. There's a thing for vanity I guess but I just can't get too excited with DQB2 in the same way as I can with Minecraft. Which is a shame because of the two, I find all the extra bits and bobs that DQB2 has makes it way more fun to build random rooms to fill with things. I can make a Japanese style bathhouse in DQB2. Why, other than NPCs need to bathe or they'll whine, would I do that? Why not? It looks awesome. I can't do that in Minecraft without some mods.

They're all small-ish complaints but they add up. I've got one last story island to go, the final showdown, and I'll probably never touch the game again. I got 50ish hours of enjoyment out of it at least so I don't feel like I wanted the money or the time but Dragon Quest Builders 2 falls firmly into the "I played it and won't play it again" camp of games.

[Zombimode]

So, after the first mission of Halo: Reach, my impression is... meh. It really is a horrible start to the series. Imagine Reach as the first Halo game you play: there is no exposition, no context.
From the intro to the first mission you know the following:
- it is the 26th century
- you are "the new guy" to a team of some kind of elite soldiers
- you're on a mission to a place called "Reach" (it may refer to a planet, but that is not made explicit)
- your mission is to look into a disturbance that may be caused by some "rebells"
- Reach is somehow "important"
- your record has many blacked-out parts, and your past behaviour was a bit lone-wolfish

But who are you excatly?
What is the state of humanity?
Who are those "rebells"?
What exactly is Reach?
What is the state of the human-covenant relationship?

And the fist mission itself does little to answer those questions. Well, it establishes that humans and covenant are at war, but the state of this war is left a mystery.
Give me some exposition, game!
Is there some intro cinematic that was left out of the MCC?

The first mission itself is as generic as it can get. Contrast this with the opening of the original Halo. Not only it establishes the context well enough, first mission istantly grabs your attention and provides tension and urgency.

The music is also quite forgettable which really surprises me.

The voice acting is terrible. Everyone sounds as if half-asleep and with no real sense of what is going on.

There is also a frightening amount of really low-res textures - unfitting for a AAA game of 2010.


I will play it further, of course. Maybe it's just the first mission is mediocre but the rest is good.

[GloatingSwine]

I've never played Diablo 3, but Diablo 2 was hardly more complicated than that--you only had four stats (Strength, Dexterity, Vitality and Energy), and 99% of the time you wanted to be pumping Vitality for health while keeping the other stats at the minimum possible values for whatever class and equipment you were using.

That's exactly why they made the change they did in Diablo 3. Because stats were presented as a choice but they weren't, they were a test to see if you knew that the only correct way of building a character (unless energy shield) was "just enough strength for your gear, just enough dex for decent block chance, and everything else in vitality".

Which I think is one of the underlying problems behind Yora saying that gear and stats are often the weakest part of an RPG. Because they're a place where this sort of false choice can rear its ugly head very easily, they're very often not a choice at all, there's very often an extremely narrow range of best options and everything else is just the wrong answer. Like Mass Effect was mentioned, and in ME1 you had all sorts of different available armours but Colossus was always better, and all sorts of different ammo but Shredder was always better because organic enemies got much much more health and damage resistance than any other.

But it's presented as a choice.

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

Having a system with relatively few player facing options also means that the player is going to have to invest effort into mastery of the options they do have, so they learn to apply the same tools in lots of different situations and so become better at using them with a deeper understanding of all the things they can do.

[warty goblin]

So, after the first mission of Halo: Reach, my impression is... meh. It really is a horrible start to the series. Imagine Reach as the first Halo game you play: there is no exposition, no context.
From the intro to the first mission you know the following:
- it is the 26th century
- you are "the new guy" to a team of some kind of elite soldiers
- you're on a mission to a place called "Reach" (it may refer to a planet, but that is not made explicit)
- your mission is to look into a disturbance that may be caused by some "rebells"
- Reach is somehow "important"
- your record has many blacked-out parts, and your past behaviour was a bit lone-wolfish

I mean, it's not like a lot of people would start the series with the fifth game released? It's basically Halo: Fanservice: The Game. I also found it to give pretty much enough context to be getting on with:
1) You are a soldier.
2) You are going to die by the end of the game
3) The aliens are the bad guys.

Beyond that, I really don't see what I'd actually want to know.

That's exactly why they made the change they did in Diablo 3. Because stats were presented as a choice but they weren't, they were a test to see if you knew that the only correct way of building a character (unless energy shield) was "just enough strength for your gear, just enough dex for decent block chance, and everything else in vitality".

Which I think is one of the underlying problems behind Yora saying that gear and stats are often the weakest part of an RPG. Because they're a place where this sort of false choice can rear its ugly head very easily, they're very often not a choice at all, there's very often an extremely narrow range of best options and everything else is just the wrong answer. Like Mass Effect was mentioned, and in ME1 you had all sorts of different available armours but Colossus was always better, and all sorts of different ammo but Shredder was always better because organic enemies got much much more health and damage resistance than any other.

But it's presented as a choice.

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

Having a system with relatively few player facing options also means that the player is going to have to invest effort into mastery of the options they do have, so they learn to apply the same tools in lots of different situations and so become better at using them with a deeper understanding of all the things they can do.

If you don't tie things like skill checks or dialog options to stats, is there much point to having them be more complicated than Health/Damage/Mana? Even Obsidian's more recent RPGs - which do tie noncombat mechanics to stats - are getting pretty close to this, which I think is generally a smart move, unless you're doing some sort of really stripped down oldschool sort of thing that cares deeply about carrying capacity.

[Zombimode]

I mean, it's not like a lot of people would start the series with the fifth game released?

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

It's basically Halo: Fanservice: The Game. I also found it to give pretty much enough context to be getting on with:
1) You are a soldier.
2) You are going to die by the end of the game
3) The aliens are the bad guys.

Beyond that, I really don't see what I'd actually want to know.

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

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

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

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

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



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

[GloatingSwine]

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