What Are You Playing 5: New Thread+

[LibraryOgre]

Man, Owlcats really just cut like 4-5 hexes worth of map out of the Stolen Lands, huh?

[Taevyr]

Man, Owlcats really just cut like 4-5 hexes worth of map out of the Stolen Lands, huh?

....I think I'm missing some context to this, was there an update or something?

[LibraryOgre]

....I think I'm missing some context to this, was there an update or something?

No, I was looking at some maps of Kingmaker, and also looked at some from the TTRPG version. In the tabletop map, between the Dire Narlmarches and Pitax is the Slough... basically, it seems, more marshes.

[NRSASD]

Playing more Deep Rock Galactic and Rimworld. The new weapons and enemies in Deep Rock are things of beauty, especially the scout’s plasma carbine. The way I’ve modified mine, it’s an assault rifle with minimal recoil and a 1050 shot magazine, but a previous iteration was a long range flamethrower. It’s a really fun weapon.

[Rynjin]

I should play more, all the mods I've got kinda suck.

I was especially disappointed by the ricochet rounds for the Minigun.

[Taevyr]

No, I was looking at some maps of Kingmaker, and also looked at some from the TTRPG version. In the tabletop map, between the Dire Narlmarches and Pitax is the Slough... basically, it seems, more marshes.

Doesn't sound like that much of a loss, honestly. Not to mention that the game is long enough as it is; another area might've dragged things out a bit too much, though it might've worked as a "breather episode" between chapter 5 and 6.

[Anonymouswizard]

To be fair there are some fairly strict constraints on the level of complexity and nuance involved when an enemy comes with the requirement of 'play must be able to murder hundreds of X guilt free.' ME1 leaned heavily on alien mind control (not just the Geth, but also the Thorian and even the Rachni since the drones aren't actually sapient), ME2 leaned into the 'they're mercenaries, so it's fine' angle, and ME3 just turned everyone into space zombies. By the time ME:A rolled around most of the good options had already been used with the series (I mean, the Kett are basically Collectors redux anyway).

Honestly, I wouldn't have any problem with them using 'the Kett are just xenophobes' if they were just more interesting. As it is we'd be in a more interesting conflict of the primary enemies were Milky Way races who left the Nexus due to differences in vision for the new society.

While ME:A certainly doesn't win any points for innovation and the Kett are genuinely bland, a lot of the overall issue is tied to the broader problem of trying to build a complex science fiction universe in which the only way the play interacts with the world is to shoot, throw, or explode stuff. Additionally the game's commitment to mixed teams outside of the loyalty missions means that none of the missions can have objectives that require the specialized skills of anyone at all, which basically reduces everything to button-push McGuffin quests. The loyalty mission, which don't have that problem and can be built around specific characters are not surprisingly the best part of the game (and I think one of the reasons ME2 is generally the most loved is that it's basically built entirely in this character-specific fashion).

Honestly, I still think that the best parts of the gameplay have been the (admittedly easy) platforming challenges. I'd argue that the game would have worked better moving away from combat and more into exploration. Maybe actually design missions so that I can't bring my favourites on as many as possible (currently Drack and Peebee), or adding optional side areas that require abilities only certain squamates have.

[warty goblin]

To be fair there are some fairly strict constraints on the level of complexity and nuance involved when an enemy comes with the requirement of 'play must be able to murder hundreds of X guilt free.' ME1 leaned heavily on alien mind control (not just the Geth, but also the Thorian and even the Rachni since the drones aren't actually sapient), ME2 leaned into the 'they're mercenaries, so it's fine' angle, and ME3 just turned everyone into space zombies. By the time ME:A rolled around most of the good options had already been used with the series (I mean, the Kett are basically Collectors redux anyway).

While ME:A certainly doesn't win any points for innovation and the Kett are genuinely bland, a lot of the overall issue is tied to the broader problem of trying to build a complex science fiction universe in which the only way the play interacts with the world is to shoot, throw, or explode stuff. Additionally the game's commitment to mixed teams outside of the loyalty missions means that none of the missions can have objectives that require the specialized skills of anyone at all, which basically reduces everything to button-push McGuffin quests. The loyalty mission, which don't have that problem and can be built around specific characters are not surprisingly the best part of the game (and I think one of the reasons ME2 is generally the most loved is that it's basically built entirely in this character-specific fashion).

That is true, they did need a good disposable enemy, but that doesn't necessarily require them to be that utterly boring. It's not like people were feeling bad about mowing down the Covenant in droves, and Halo's enemies were fun to fight and had lots of personality. A lot of that does come down to AI, and nobody has ever accused Bioware of writing an AI better than sorta OK, but there's also things like voice barks, animation, a non-godawful art design, and having abilities that made them actually enjoyable to fight, and yes OK a lot of this is very tightly linked to AI. But given the Kett's whole schtick, shouldn't they have some cool abilities that actually matter for gameplay, like spewing acid or regenerating super fast or literally anything?

As an aside, I've found the need for combat in games to really burn me out on story heavy titles. The constraint of 'must be fun to play' usually means that I need to be able to kill like 3000 dudes and not even think about it for a second, and that's a super tight constraint to force a story into. It's not undoable, but it rules out just huge sets of possible stories and characters, and at this point I've been a space badass who saves the day by shooting hundreds of space-dudes and a fantasy badass who's saved the day by stabbing hundreds of fantasy dudes and an ironized alternate future badass who's saved the day by shooting hundreds of dudes but with charmingly retro guns, and I just don't care anymore. Shooting dudes is fine, I'm exhausted by the bits where in between shooting dudes I have to listen to characters babble about how serious all of this or, or worse fall into the realm of pointing out how totally ridiculous it is which is super original writing I definitely haven't seen dozens of times already. I've kind of reached the depressing point where if the game gives me an objective and some interesting mechanics to accomplish it, I'm happier the less time it spends yammering about its story.

Honestly, I still think that the best parts of the gameplay have been the (admittedly easy) platforming challenges. I'd argue that the game would have worked better moving away from combat and more into exploration. Maybe actually design missions so that I can't bring my favourites on as many as possible (currently Drack and Peebee), or adding optional side areas that require abilities only certain squamates have.

Jetpack platforming is good. Alas, original puzzle design is really not in this game's wheelhouse. Brace for Sudoku. That somehow your super-intelligent AI is utterly flummoxed by.

[IthilanorStPete]

Jetpack platforming is good. Alas, original puzzle design is really not in this game's wheelhouse. Brace for Sudoku. That somehow your super-intelligent AI is utterly flummoxed by.

It could be worse. It could be the Towers of Hanoi.

...please don't tell me that's in ME:A as well...

[LibraryOgre]

So, I picked up a game Aven Colony, which Epic has for free until the 11th. It's a PvE, colony-building game. Very pretty, and on Normal, it's been engaging, though not hard... which is more or less what I want.

[Mechalich]

That is true, they did need a good disposable enemy, but that doesn't necessarily require them to be that utterly boring. It's not like people were feeling bad about mowing down the Covenant in droves, and Halo's enemies were fun to fight and had lots of personality. A lot of that does come down to AI, and nobody has ever accused Bioware of writing an AI better than sorta OK, but there's also things like voice barks, animation, a non-godawful art design, and having abilities that made them actually enjoyable to fight, and yes OK a lot of this is very tightly linked to AI. But given the Kett's whole schtick, shouldn't they have some cool abilities that actually matter for gameplay, like spewing acid or regenerating super fast or literally anything?

There are some Kett enemies that do have some variance in abilities and require at least a slight change in strategy, though I recall they were quite rare and mostly showed up in big boss encounters. I feel like, from a purely gameplay perspective, the robotic remnant worked a lot better as enemies, since they had more design variation and different unit types. There was probably supposed to be more Kett variability, but it was lost due to the extremely truncated nature of the ME:A production cycle.

As an aside, I've found the need for combat in games to really burn me out on story heavy titles. The constraint of 'must be fun to play' usually means that I need to be able to kill like 3000 dudes and not even think about it for a second, and that's a super tight constraint to force a story into. It's not undoable, but it rules out just huge sets of possible stories and characters, and at this point I've been a space badass who saves the day by shooting hundreds of space-dudes and a fantasy badass who's saved the day by stabbing hundreds of fantasy dudes and an ironized alternate future badass who's saved the day by shooting hundreds of dudes but with charmingly retro guns, and I just don't care anymore. Shooting dudes is fine, I'm exhausted by the bits where in between shooting dudes I have to listen to characters babble about how serious all of this or, or worse fall into the realm of pointing out how totally ridiculous it is which is super original writing I definitely haven't seen dozens of times already. I've kind of reached the depressing point where if the game gives me an objective and some interesting mechanics to accomplish it, I'm happier the less time it spends yammering about its story.

In many ways I agree. Story-driven action-RPGs are in kind of a weird place these days. They tend to be divided between dialog and action set pieces and the relationships between the two is limited - Mass Effect, as a franchise, was actually considered innovative for the whole 'interrupts' bit with the Paragon/Renegade system. Basically characters can talk to people and they can fight stuff and that's about it. And, at the same time the 'open world' nature of the environments makes it feel like all that fighting is meaningless, because enemies just respawn. ME:A's viability system was something of an attempt to let the world change as you did stuff, but for the most part it doesn't work very well (though if you make peace with the 'pirate queen' lady on the one outlaw planet her loyalists actually stop attacking you which I recall was very surprising the first time round).

[Rynjin]

Having just(and very belatedly) finished the 2017 Prey...reboot? Remake In Name Only? Whatever it was, it was a good game, and exemplifies how you can have very solid combat without it getting too tiresome or interrupting the story (or vice versa) and it's not the only game of its kind. Immersive sims in general (like Deus Ex) have always known how to intersperse the action and quiet moments, and other genres could easily take cues from that (especially since the genre is so nebulously defined to begin with).

Not every game (or arguably "not any game") needs proper cutscenes when you can have the action speak for itself and dynamic scenes primarily play out with the player having full or partial control the whole time.

While I have some minor gripes with some of the choices Prey made (not having any player dialogue at all actually makes certain choice segments awkward; such as not being able to confront multiple impostors with proof of their own duplicity) it's overall a really great example of how to meld all the disparate elements of the FPS and RPG genres into something cohesive, fun, and engaging just like the games (primarily System Shock) that inspired it.

The silent protagonist thing just came off as a very odd choice given that your character can canonically speak, and does "speak" several times throughout the game...just never in the present, only in audio logs.

[Cespenar]

As an aside, I've found the need for combat in games to really burn me out on story heavy titles. The constraint of 'must be fun to play' usually means that I need to be able to kill like 3000 dudes and not even think about it for a second, and that's a super tight constraint to force a story into. It's not undoable, but it rules out just huge sets of possible stories and characters, and at this point I've been a space badass who saves the day by shooting hundreds of space-dudes and a fantasy badass who's saved the day by stabbing hundreds of fantasy dudes and an ironized alternate future badass who's saved the day by shooting hundreds of dudes but with charmingly retro guns, and I just don't care anymore. Shooting dudes is fine, I'm exhausted by the bits where in between shooting dudes I have to listen to characters babble about how serious all of this or, or worse fall into the realm of pointing out how totally ridiculous it is which is super original writing I definitely haven't seen dozens of times already. I've kind of reached the depressing point where if the game gives me an objective and some interesting mechanics to accomplish it, I'm happier the less time it spends yammering about its story.

Sad but true. I feel like Bioware is somewhat responsible for this, since while they made good RPGs in their own rights since the Black Isle days, they clung on to the wrong things about that genre, and now every story heavy RPG has to have COMBAT as their secondary (or primary, even) gameplay.

It almost took all the way up to Disco Elysium for people to remember that you could also do the classic style RPGs without fighting space aliens/evil gods.

In that sense, by the way, I'm reminded of Gamedec, which is a somewhat worse but pretty enjoyable cyberpunk Disco-like. It's being slept on pretty bad, IMHO.

[Anonymouswizard]

Sad but true. I feel like Bioware is somewhat responsible for this, since while they made good RPGs in their own rights since the Black Isle days, they clang on to the wrong things about that genre, and now every story heavy RPG has to have COMBAT as their secondary (or primary, even) gameplay.

It almost took all the way up to Disco Elysium for people to remember that you could also do the classic style RPGs without fighting space aliens/evil gods.

In that sense, by the way, I'm reminded of Gamedec, which is a somewhat worse but pretty enjoyable cyberpunk Disco-like. It's being slept on pretty bad, IMHO.

I've come to think of Obsidian as Bioware, but focusing on the bits I actually like. Although they do also have an unfortunate tendency to focus on combat.

[factotum]

I've come to think of Obsidian as Bioware, but focusing on the bits I actually like. Although they do also have an unfortunate tendency to focus on combat.

And bugs. Don't forget the bugs...

[Lord Raziere]

It almost took all the way up to Disco Elysium for people to remember that you could also do the classic style RPGs without fighting space aliens/evil gods.

Personally I love combat, so rpgs having a combat focus isn't a problem for me.

my problem with Disco Elysium though really is that its basically Depression: The Game. and is also that annoying direction for it to be top-down isometric. I understand it for strategy games, but rpgs going back to that pov just makes me scratch my head. give me a third person bioware game any day over Disco Elysium.

[Anonymouswizard]

And bugs. Don't forget the bugs...

Honestly, I personally tend to encounter them just as much in both Bioware and Obsidian games. But I'll admit that it's true.

Personally I love combat, so rpgs having a combat focus isn't a problem for me.

my problem with Disco Elysium though really is that its basically Depression: The Game. and is also that annoying direction for it to be top-down isometric. I understand it for strategy games, but rpgs going back to that pov just makes me scratch my head. give me a third person bioware game any day over Disco Elysium.

I actually really like the isometric perspective. It might have something to do with me growing up with Baldur's Gate, or Planescape: Torment being my favourite game, but I find that being able to look around is really helpful. Plus it makes strategising in party based games much easier, Dragon Age 2 was a nightmare due to the lack of any kind of top down camera.

[Lord Raziere]

I actually really like the isometric perspective. It might have something to do with me growing up with Baldur's Gate, or Planescape: Torment being my favourite game, but I find that being able to look around is really helpful. Plus it makes strategising in party based games much easier, Dragon Age 2 was a nightmare due to the lack of any kind of top down camera.

Makes sense.

I didn't though, I grew with Bioware and prefer them and Obsidian stuff because its a more personal touch. like isometric doesn't make me feel as if I'm playing a roleplaying game, just an oddly limited strategy game. like the camera is too zoomed out to get a good look at the characters while I'm talking to them. dialogue on like an isometric perspective just ends up being too much menu, not enough game for my liking and if I want to play out personal scale adventures I prefer a more personal scale perspective because an actual adventurer wouldn't HAVE a top-down perspective for it.

[Gnoman]

That comment brings up a really old memory. Long ago, I picked up a game called Rage of Mages on a whim from Walmart, and couldn't make heads or tails of it - because the isometric perspective made it look like a real fancy RTS, and I couldn't get that concept out of my head.


Really need to figure out a way to play that and see if it was actually decent.

[GloatingSwine]

That comment brings up a really old memory. Long ago, I picked up a game called Rage of Mages on a whim from Walmart, and couldn't make heads or tails of it - because the isometric perspective made it look like a real fancy RTS, and I couldn't get that concept out of my head.


Really need to figure out a way to play that and see if it was actually decent.

As with any old PC game, the way to play that is "get it off GoG".

[Eldan]

Personally I love combat, so rpgs having a combat focus isn't a problem for me.

my problem with Disco Elysium though really is that its basically Depression: The Game. and is also that annoying direction for it to be top-down isometric. I understand it for strategy games, but rpgs going back to that pov just makes me scratch my head. give me a third person bioware game any day over Disco Elysium.

Budget question almost entirely for Disco Elysium, I'd assume. It's a tiny indy studio and the game has like ten animations beyond just walking. They could make fantastic looking flat painted backgrounds, but they couldn't make an animated first or third person over the shoulder game.

As for Obsidian and combat focus... yeah. I don't have the patience for it anymore and I don't find most of it interesting? I never finished Tyranny because at some point, it threw way too much combat at me and wanted me to care about micromanaging stats and party composition and so on and I just didn't care.

I mean, I remember liking games like that when I was a teenager. But I don't anymore.

[Anteros]

And bugs. Don't forget the bugs...

And the whole tendency to only release 3/4ths of a game and not actually finish it...

As for Obsidian and combat focus... yeah. I don't have the patience for it anymore and I don't find most of it interesting? I never finished Tyranny because at some point, it threw way too much combat at me and wanted me to care about micromanaging stats and party composition and so on and I just didn't care.

Odd, I don't remember Tyranny having much combat. I feel like you could talk your way out of most encounters. That's probably partly just my playstyle though.

[warty goblin]

In many ways I agree. Story-driven action-RPGs are in kind of a weird place these days. They tend to be divided between dialog and action set pieces and the relationships between the two is limited - Mass Effect, as a franchise, was actually considered innovative for the whole 'interrupts' bit with the Paragon/Renegade system. Basically characters can talk to people and they can fight stuff and that's about it. And, at the same time the 'open world' nature of the environments makes it feel like all that fighting is meaningless, because enemies just respawn. ME:A's viability system was something of an attempt to let the world change as you did stuff, but for the most part it doesn't work very well (though if you make peace with the 'pirate queen' lady on the one outlaw planet her loyalists actually stop attacking you which I recall was very surprising the first time round).

For me I think it's less the interruptions - although the tendency of the first town/quest hub absolutely murdering the pacing is definitely a thing in RPGs - and more the constraints that the huge amounts of consequence free violence places on the story. There's just a lot of stories you can't really tell in an RPG (or nearly any videogame) because the most engaging gameplay loop available is combat, and a lot of stories simply don't fit with the protagonist chainsaw-stabbing like fifteen dudes without consequence every five minutes. That pretty much limits you to stories about the professionally violent, and the sheer volume of violence your average game protagonist gets up to tilts the premise pretty solidly towards some variety of over the top fantastical badass story.

This isn't inherently a bad thing, I like quite a few stories involving fantastical badasses. But I find them a lot less appealing now than I did five or ten years ago. Potentially this is just because I'm getting older, and badassery seems a lot less important than it did a while ago. Potentially it's simply saturation; games are all about badasses, most movies are about badasses, and if you tend to read fantasy (which I do) every other protagonist is the best assassin ever or a super powered wizard out to end colonialism or whatever, and I'm getting more and more exhausted by the whole deal. It's all the sort of stuff I call fantasy nonsense, which is not necessarily a pejorative; I quite enjoy fantasy nonsense when it's weird or creative or just plain fun, but I don't want to wallow in oodles of super-serious stuff asking to take said fantasy nonsense seriously. In a game if the story is just there as a frame for the action I'm happy, but I find my soul kinda withering at the idea of another endless cutscene trying to get me super-invested in how only my character has enough destiny juice or whatever to stab the bad guy hard enough. This isn't creative at this point, it's just indulgent nonsense.

Sad but true. I feel like Bioware is somewhat responsible for this, since while they made good RPGs in their own rights since the Black Isle days, they clung on to the wrong things about that genre, and now every story heavy RPG has to have COMBAT as their secondary (or primary, even) gameplay.

It almost took all the way up to Disco Elysium for people to remember that you could also do the classic style RPGs without fighting space aliens/evil gods.

In that sense, by the way, I'm reminded of Gamedec, which is a somewhat worse but pretty enjoyable cyberpunk Disco-like. It's being slept on pretty bad, IMHO.

As much as I enjoy blaming Bioware for stuff, I don't think this can really be laid at their feet. RPGs - like most videogames - have been about combat since approximately forever, and I expect them to continue to be so. It's sort of a trap almost, we have so many engaging gameplay loops for combat it's very hard (not undoable but hard!) to imagine a character focused game not structured around combat.

As with any old PC game, the way to play that is "get it off GoG".

It also goes on sale not irregularly for mega-cheap. Not that it exactly breaks the bank at full price.

Budget question almost entirely for Disco Elysium, I'd assume. It's a tiny indy studio and the game has like ten animations beyond just walking. They could make fantastic looking flat painted backgrounds, but they couldn't make an animated first or third person over the shoulder game.

As for Obsidian and combat focus... yeah. I don't have the patience for it anymore and I don't find most of it interesting? I never finished Tyranny because at some point, it threw way too much combat at me and wanted me to care about micromanaging stats and party composition and so on and I just didn't care.

I mean, I remember liking games like that when I was a teenager. But I don't anymore.

Aging is a hell of a drug.

I think RPGs maybe get this problem worse than a lot of other genres, because they're supposed to have a big involving story and also a ton of combat and also take a huge number of hours. So if the combat is only partially engaging, or there's a load of trash encounters, or you really just want to get to the next story beat, there's just a lot of uninvolving blood to wade through. And chests to loot and items to tweak and at some point the number treadmill becomes painfully obvious and caring becomes very hard. Something like a shooter just needs about 12 hours of levels with interesting gimmicks and enough story to string the setpieces together.

[tonberrian]

Playing SRW 30 and having a blast. Hopefully we can continue having SRW games in the US from now on, it would make me very happy.

[Anteros]

Aging is a hell of a drug.

I think RPGs maybe get this problem worse than a lot of other genres, because they're supposed to have a big involving story and also a ton of combat and also take a huge number of hours. So if the combat is only partially engaging, or there's a load of trash encounters, or you really just want to get to the next story beat, there's just a lot of uninvolving blood to wade through. And chests to loot and items to tweak and at some point the number treadmill becomes painfully obvious and caring becomes very hard. Something like a shooter just needs about 12 hours of levels with interesting gimmicks and enough story to string the setpieces together.

It really just depends on the game and what it does well. For every game that makes me feel like I want to rush through the combat to get back to the story, there's another where I couldn't care less about the story and just want to get back to the gameplay. It's rare for a game to do both well, but it's not mutually exclusive.

[Anonymouswizard]

Honestly it's the reason I like Planescape: Torment (and Disco Elysium) so much. They're games where the primary loop isn't combat, but instead going around and talking to people. Disco Elysium resolves combat entirely through disclosure, whereas Torment has what, four or so events you have to fight (although in practice you'll probably fight like a hundred). It's a model I'd love to see more games take, although it does require very good writing to pull off.

I do have an idea for an RPG in a similar mold, casting the player in the role of somebody who has absolutely no combat skills. But sadly the progress I know who are also interested in making games aren't so into RPGs, so as of now it would have to be a passion solo project.

[Eldan]

And the whole tendency to only release 3/4ths of a game and not actually finish it...



Odd, I don't remember Tyranny having much combat. I feel like you could talk your way out of most encounters. That's probably partly just my playstyle though.

I did where I could, but I also remember unintelligent monsters? It's been a while.

[Anteros]

Honestly it's the reason I like Planescape: Torment (and Disco Elysium) so much. They're games where the primary loop isn't combat, but instead going around and talking to people. Disco Elysium resolves combat entirely through disclosure, whereas Torment has what, four or so events you have to fight (although in practice you'll probably fight like a hundred). It's a model I'd love to see more games take, although it does require very good writing to pull off.

I do have an idea for an RPG in a similar mold, casting the player in the role of somebody who has absolutely no combat skills. But sadly the progress I know who are also interested in making games aren't so into RPGs, so as of now it would have to be a passion solo project.

I mean, books are already a thing. If you want a game without combat, you need some sort of actual gameplay to replace it. Platforming, puzzles, something. There's a reason the telltale games studio went bankrupt.

[Rynjin]

TBF that was a combination of their relative niche appeal COMBINED with their insistence on paying out the ass for licensed properties.

If you go your own way you might not be amazingly successful but you probably won't crash and burn. It seems to work for David Cage and he has the writing skills of a 7th grader.

A resurgence in popularity for classic adventure games wouldn't be the MOST absurd weird comeback of a dead genre I've ever seen.

[Anonymouswizard]

I mean, books are already a thing. If you want a game without combat, you need some sort of actual gameplay to replace it. Platforming, puzzles, something. There's a reason the telltale games studio went bankrupt.

Eh, ideally I'd be going for more Disco Elysium/Planescape Torment style 'get to the information' route, I already have an idea for potential role-playing opportunities in it. But yes, books are a thing, which is why most of my ideas for stories aren't planned for games.

But this idea is very much planned as a game, because interactivity is important (although challenge may or may not be, depending on how the details develop). But yeah, an original setting, an overarching plot that makes exploration and conversation more meaningful to it than combat (which the main character can't participate in anyway, I may give them a physical impairment to highlight it), and an original our historical setting. So essentially the gameplay would be dialogue and exploration puzzles.