all-knight-party @ all-knight-party @kbin.cafe

video games and music sure are neat... i am currently "moving" this account

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2 yr. ago

I think it does make sense to expect that up until you realize how much of a technical undertaking it'd be to do so and whether that payoff seems worth it to them. Seamless transitions seem to me to still be in a category to show off if you have it, so that they didn't should be a red flag, but if you didn't watch all the footage then you wouldn't realize that, which I get, and I dont expect everybody to watch both the showcases like I did, thats probably over an hour of footage.

I can see why you'd expect a similar seamless experience due to their previous maps, but implementing that is completely different due to the style of game and requires new engine features to do so unlike their previous games which were already capable of it since Morrowind. You could expect them to consider doing it, but it wouldn't be a given

They're very specifically influenced by From Soft's game Bloodborne more than Dark Souls. It's interesting to see them use Pinocchio as an anchor point for the world. The game looks quite polished and as derivative as it seems it looks like it'll be pretty fun.

I'd really love that, though I'm on Kbin. This is one of the most lacking features currently, a way to consolidate feeds between different sorts of larger interests you're subscribed to.

I can understand the link between seamless exteriors and the equivalent of what that would mean in the context of a space game for Bethesda, but the technological implications of having a galactic system flight mode and seamless planet to space transitions are both completely new ideas to Bethesda and are also technically complex to implement in a game already knee deep in new tech and systems only from what we'd been shown.

There's a reason things like seamless planet transitions are only something you might be able to expect in recent years. While Bethesda could totally make that happen, it's not where I'd expect them to put their money, or they'd have probably dropped a line showing it off in the pre release footage.

At once, I understand why you might've expected that, but expecting anything not explicitly shown is never a good idea when it comes to tempering expectations.

Expecting anything that particularly in-depth without being shown explicit pre-release footage of it is an expectation trap. Bethesda was never going to make a space sim, any space sim features are a bonus and were far from guaranteed.

Yeah, Ive followed Jeff for a long time and he's absolutely not afraid to say a game isn't good, and his tastes can be fickle and particular, if I were a publisher cynically selecting who to send advance codes to to manufacture a good score he would not be one of them.

As a consumer, I love him because he has integrity, likes what he likes, and says what he means, and I even can tell sometimes when he dislikes a game that I'd still like.

I remember when GTA 5 hit PC in 2015 and was around 90 gigs. Seems like we've finally hit the point where most AAA games are around its size. How time flies...

I think the effort towards changing that starting with Fallout 4 shows, it seems like it's now a priority for them. Their engine has always been their greatest asset in terms of gameplay possibility, world object physics, immersion through radiant AI scheduling, an open and very moddable design, and it's obvious specialization towards open world format (less of a big deal for an engine nowadays).

It's also been one of their greatest weaknesses, with stiff and awkward animation and movement/combat on both NPCs and the player, the inability for crouching to allow you to pass under certain objects, poor pathfinding and scripting on NPCs in combat and for your followers who constantly get lost or hung up on geometry, the radiant AI which through complication of scripting can cause quest NPCs to be in the wrong locations or be missing the correct dialogue.

Ever since the creation engine rebrand I partially lamented that they didn't scrap the engine, but over time I've come to accept that it's not just Bethesda that makes Bethesda games, it's the gamebryo engine. To remake an engine with their unique systems, mechanics, moddable format, and familiar console commands would be an enormous undertaking and I understand why theyve chosen to dig in and modify it further instead and their acceptance of those pros and cons.

I think any true lover of Bethesda games has to understand what they're really good at, and what they're really bad at, and you have to want them to get better, or else that's not love at all.

I found Fallout 4's shooting night and day better than NV and 3's. It's a shame you didn't feel that. It's still definitely RPG shooter territory which is a lot harder to make feel satisfying than a conventional FPS, but the movement still didn't feel very good, certainly.

Moment to moment feel is definitely a strong issue from previous Bethesda titles. I'm confident Starfield will feel better, but how much better is impossible to tell until we can get our hands on it or there can be some common discussion about it after release. The manicured, manufactured movements of pre release gameplay make it very hard to tell how that stuff has changed aside from their claims of redone animations systems.

I suppose I'd call one form of that "household chores"

Noah is one of my favorite games analysts of all time. An excellent, excellent writer.

Uhh, nah I totally meant that they're queueing up their skeptical looks. Yeah, totally on purpose.

It seems like English is not their first language. What I think they were saying is that escaping from a difficult living situation doesn't always guarantee a better one since anyone you live with could be monstrously shitty, even if they arent your parents.

They believe that you can make do where you are because life is hell and "what's the point?" Not that I believe that absolutely dire worldview, but that seems to be their point.

Sometimes physics bugs can be funny, but I'd rather it not be buggy because I always hated things like getting hung up on geometry, having a physics enabled object kill me because I happened to touch it, or worst of all, realizing I haven't seen my companion in the last ten minutes, somehow they got lost somewhere and only showed up after I manually teleported them to me with console commands.

The first two of those Bethesda seemed to nip in the bud by Fallout 4, but the bugs are not always charming.

I'm imagining you going into wal mart, arriving at checkout with all those items in a row. Queue very skeptical look from the cashier.

Of course, and things like John Carpenter's soundtracks. Basically... 80s

Yeah I think saying it's a must have for any gamer is a bit too much, no game is for literally everyone. Disco Elysium's humor doesn't strike me as overly humorous anyway, it's not really a comedic game, more of a dry chuckle now and then.

And the fun is really just reading/hearing any of the dialogue or descriptions, it is very well written. You get a lot of different choices depending on the "build" stuff, but it's really mostly all well written and should be enjoyable if you're into the style at all

Bethesda's "good stories" have always been moreso the player's stories of cobbled together mechanics as a a result of their playstyle/current abilities, gear, and motivation.

Most of the time it might be rote open world questing with some enjoyable grind loop, but there are a lot of particular memories I love, like robbing the Red Diamond jewelry store in Oblivion's Imperial City, "casing" the place by day as a customer and purchasing a necklace, purely to experience the joy of breaking in at 3 AM and robbing it blind.

The joy and hilarity I felt when I came back the day after I'll always remember. Entering the store to see the shopkeep, beaming at his new customer, all of his shelves and cases completely fucking empty, as he vacantly grinned at me, buck naked as id stolen the clothes right out of his sleeping pockets.

I've stolen a lot of shit in that game, but that one was good. It's incredibly rare for me to remember Bethesda's actual character moments that fondly, as they've always come off plastic and rehearsed in some combination of writing, voice acting, and rigid animation. Sometimes they almost reach a good story, like some popular side quest chains, or Paladin Danse's personal quests.

So, I think these two games tell their best culminational "stories" in different fundamental ways, and I think it's neat how each one's best potential narrative, whether written or otherwise, is a marriage of the game's possibilities and the player's motivation and intent. But you're probably right, BG3 can tell a lot more, better stories than my idiotic repetitive Bethesda adventures, but I do like some pulp.

A little bit ago I used to watch the AI Sponge live streams for all their horribly AI voiced shenanigans.

It wasn't super eventful a lot of the time, but sometimes they'd just have humorously absurd short "storylines". It was really a sad day when they got taken down by Paramount, I had actually found it to be a soothing comfort food type of stream.