Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #126: Fallout 4 Hype, Spoopy Houses, Mailbag”
Combat in Arena means the player flicks the mouse to roll a die. Combat in Daggerfall is that, but bafflingly clunkier on top of being both reliant on and very poorly served by the player’s lukewarm mouselook. In Morrowind the graphics are just good enough to show you that you shouldn’t be missing all the time. At the time of Oblivion‘s development, combat had been been both a staple of and pretty consistently the worst part of the franchise. It was clear something had to be done.
Oblivion was the first Elder Scrolls game to introduce a clean action-oriented combat system where attacks hit where they’re aimed and do set amounts of damage. The game introduces special moves, attack rhythms, active blocking, and staggering mechanics with the goal of creating something that wasn’t just functional and modern, but a genuinely engaging, immersive set of play mechanics.
Oblivion has the worst combat in the series.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Altered Scrolls, Part 12: Violence is Bad”
Link (YouTube) |
If you’re reading the comments, then you know there’s a pronounced and constant debate on KOTOR vs. KOTOR II, which is actually a proxy of the larger debate of Obsidian vs. Other RPG Developers.
BioWare – especially pre-EA BioWare – really likes their black and white morality, their lighthearted adventure, and their happy endings. Obsidian is more of a moral quagmire / combative relationships / complex ending kind of place. Fans of either style have been slugging it out for years:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Knights of the Old Republic EP24: Great Paladin”
I spend a lot of time looking at this site. Statistically, you stop by once or twice a day, but I’m here all day, every day. On one hand, it’s really important to keep the site consistent, because nothing drives people crazy like change. On the other hand, every once in a while the monotony gets to me and I have to change SOMETHING.
Guess what we’re doing today?
Rationale:
So that’s what I’m doing / have done.
This post is just a catch-all for feedback so we don’t clutter up Mass Effect and KOTOR comments with discussions on typography.
Link (YouTube) |
In this episode we talk about one of my great problems as an RPG fan, which is that the game style I like doesn’t actually exist, and so everything is a compromise. I’m picky about gameplay, and this genre really doesn’t have a lot of room for people who are picky about gameplay.
The preferred paradigm is the “turn-based realtime”, where you pause, issue orders to the whole party, then un-pause for a second, then pause and repeat. For me it’s like trying to play chess but stopping to watch five seconds of a movie fight scene after every move. It ruins both experiences. The action distracts me from concentrating on the strategy, and the pausing breaks the flow of the action.
Hate.
Hate.
HATE IT.
My ideal games commit to either one or the other. Give me full-on turn-based like Fallout 1 / XCom, or embrace the action gameplay of (say) the Witcher 3 or the later Mass Effects. And whatever you do, don’t ask me to control a party. I’m here because I want to play a character, not manage a murder committee.
Which… fine. So go play action games, right?
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Knights of the Old Republic EP23: You Must Gather Your Party”
Before we resume talking about our new squad-mates, let’s back up and talk about the one that joined us at the start of the game:
Miranda is a disaster of conflicting purposes. We’re supposed to believe that this lady is a brilliant medical researcher, and a badass merc, and a super-biotic, and the leader of the research project that CURED DEATH, and a natural team leader, and she barely looks thirty. Even Wesley Crusher wasn’t that big of a miracle child. And then on top of this she’s got this ongoing sob story about growing up fabulously rich and having high expectations placed on her. So on top of her amazing abilities and her insufferable smugness, she’s got this horrible case of daddy issues and first-world problems.
And then she has the nerve to be an asshole towards Jack, who was literally tortured as a child by Cerberus. The moment Jack gets on the ship, Miranda starts antagonizing her in the most childish, highschool-drama-bullshit kind of way. If Miranda is so smart, then why would she support the idea of recruiting an unstable psycho killer for a serious mission? And even if we buy that, how stupid and childish is it to deliberately provoke and taunt her like this? If Miranda is such an awesome leader, then why is she doing the thing most likely to make Jack freak out and cause problems? (And it does indeed cause problems later.)
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Mass Effect Retrospective 19: The Importance of Peasants”
Link (YouTube) |
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Translated:
These Wookie audio samples are too long.
A videogame that judges its audience, criticizes its genre, and hates its premise. How did this thing get made?
Crunch-mode game development isn't good, but sometimes it happens for good reasons.
Why is internet news so bad, why do people prefer celebrity fluff, and how could it be made better?
Small changes to the animations can have a huge impact on how the audience interprets a scene.
The plot of this game isn't just dumb, it's actively hostile to the player. This game hates you and thinks you are stupid.
A screencap comic that poked fun at videogames and the industry. The comic has ended, but there's plenty of archives for you to binge on.
A big chunk of the internet went down in October of 2016. What happened? Was it a hack?
This is why shopping for graphics cards is so stupid and miserable.
I write a program to simulate different strategies in Starcraft 2, to see how they compare.
The comments on most sites are a sewer of hate, because we're moderating with the wrong goals in mind.
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