Connectivity
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
Agreed with everything here. My biggest personal gripe with ME2 though is that it brings in all those annoying Gears of War mechanics of cover based gameplay and regenerating health, so you could always tell when a fight was coming because of the sudden and convenient appearance of chest-high walls.Geoffrey42 said:
As for the ultimate space game: mixing Freespace 2 with Escape Velocity: Nova. Which is kind of what Microsoft tried to do and failed with in Freelancer.
When you make a game that is about the entire Galaxy, developers can't help but make it feel small. I mean consider it for a minute, how could they possibly make it anything but small by comparison? I mean how long do people want it to take to get from one system to another, 10 minute? 20 minutes? 5 minutes? That is all much too long for me especially when you travel around so often. When I flew around in the mini space shop deciding where i wanted to go, I wasn't envisioning some weird conspiracy or crazy elevator altering the outside world. I was thinking, ok I'm going to fly in a straight line to the mass relay, hit it to the other system then manually fly to whatever planet I wanted to go to. That's how I'd want it to be. If I was the Commander, and in this case I am, I wouldn't be concerned with how I got from where I was to where I wanted to go, the pilot is in charge of that, I say go here and he does as fast as he can. It doesn't make it any less connective cutting out massive amounts of walking around or flying around, it makes it more engaging and faster to get to the best part of the game, the story and the combat.
Agreed. On that note I have a game that MIGHT be what you are looking for. Unfortunately, it is an MMO and you don't care for those much. It does give you First person controlled flight, and a literally infinite universe. Sadly, it is still in development. I would say it resembles Eve online which I know you hate, but it is flying around yourself with you at the controls, not 3rd person point and click. Collisions matter, you can dodge missiles and gunfire etc. Fine heres the dang link.
http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/
http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/
Unless you feel such simplification takes away from the game.... you can only dumb it down so much before the gaping holes in the over all game become that much more apparent... options mean you split the difference you can do it the slow way and find more stuff or do it the fast way and get the abridged but not really missing anything important version.kaizen2468 said:
I loved the "watch this space" comment right at the end of the article. That made my day.
And, yes, I am easily amused.
And, yes, I am easily amused.
They tried to connect the dots with the loading screens but it still didn't quite feel as connected as it could have been. mass effect 2 has got the necessary hooks in and has probably sold alot of copies of mass effect 1 by association, they have enough pull to be able to experiment with mass effect 3 without upsetting anyone I think.
I totally thought the same thing about walking to the door of your ship and back to get to the docks, and how every story mission was like a seperate location from the city you docked at that you enter via loading screen and can never again return to.
I also missed missions where you actually landed a safe distance from the target and then drove up to it. (The less shitty mako sections that were part of the main story)
They ARE bringing in a new driving vehicle in with dlc but who knows when that will be and how much it will involve.
I totally thought the same thing about walking to the door of your ship and back to get to the docks, and how every story mission was like a seperate location from the city you docked at that you enter via loading screen and can never again return to.
I also missed missions where you actually landed a safe distance from the target and then drove up to it. (The less shitty mako sections that were part of the main story)
They ARE bringing in a new driving vehicle in with dlc but who knows when that will be and how much it will involve.
I would say that the game with the best continuity and immersion in this vein that I've played is Star Wars: X Wing Alliance. Admittedly it's quite old, and the graphics are typical of the era, however, to get to the missions, you actually had to fly through space to get there, taking almost the majority of the time of the mission. Once you have completed the objective, you had to make your way back again, and perform all the docking manoeuvres yourself. The controls were clunky, but so are most flight sims, and it required a joystick to play (!), but it was the most immersive game I've ever played, mainly because of the continuity.
I must admit, the original Mass Effect did -feel- a lot bigger, even though it probably isn't.
Oh well. Good article, Yahtzee.
Oh well. Good article, Yahtzee.
One of the reason I love Fallout 3, the transportation sucks, and there for you really get a scale of where you are and where you're going as you travel everywhere on foot.
Oh and hey Ben, If you ever need a modeler let me know, I'm at a school to become a game designer.
Good luck with programing though, that's always a *****....0o
Oh and hey Ben, If you ever need a modeler let me know, I'm at a school to become a game designer.
Good luck with programing though, that's always a *****....0o
If there is a Brit out there that hasn't read a book by Douglas Adams, I haven't heard of him. HHGttG must be part of the school curriculum up there.
...Made me wish I grew up in the UK.
...Made me wish I grew up in the UK.
Space is big...and mostly empty. I'd rather have the developers spend time optimizing the enjoyable bits than waste it on trying to make the vast expanses I must traverse to get there more interesting.
While I'm on board with your debarkation point (walking to the door did bring a sense of connectivity), I'm skeptical of the viability of that EVE Online/Mass Effect 2 mashup. And this is coming from someone who rather enjoys EVE.
While I'm on board with your debarkation point (walking to the door did bring a sense of connectivity), I'm skeptical of the viability of that EVE Online/Mass Effect 2 mashup. And this is coming from someone who rather enjoys EVE.