(D)evolution of Game Series/Franchises

[-Dragmire-]

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter

What is this perma death / count down timer thing in BoFQ? How can you get so stuck, you can no longer complete the game?

Part of the story is that you gain a power that makes you super strong when you use it. The downside is that the power is slowly taking you over. In-game, this manifests as a timer that counts toward how corrupted you are( probably not the exact phrasing but close enough). Once you are fully corrupted, it's game over.

Every nth amount of steps you take raises the corruption by about 0.01% (I may be off on the amount but it is a step counter that raises it by a small amount. The real boost to the counter is if you use the power in battle, you become very very strong but every move raises the corruption by about 3-5%(memory is fuzzy on the quantity here too). As far as I know, there is no way to get rid of corruption meaning if you use it too much too early you can fall into the problem of not being able to walk through the game without reaching 100% corruption. The only way to beat it then is to restart or load an old save where you didn't use the power as much.

It's been a long time since I've played it and I never beat it so take this info with a grain of salt.

Almost right. in dragon form each round costs an increased amount of corruption so using it for one round as a finisher is less costly then pecking at someone for three to four. In addition most of the actual powers cost a bit more. The dragon breath can technically kill you instantly as you can hold it for as long as you want in a single round but the longer it goes the more corruption (and damage) it causes.

The other point is that restarting isn't returning to zero. Your progression is rated and your character can rank up in the class system (the class system is basically how much dragon blood you have at first your character is like 1/243242 or some gibberish but you can increase it all the way up to 1/4 (this is increased through a bunch of rankings the game keeps track of through the game including in battle deaths d level time of completion ect) the higher your ranking the more areas you have access to which leads to more powerful items and a more complete story. In addition you gain special experience with every battle outside normal progression experience. This experience exists in a separate pool and can be given to anyone at any time. This experience also carries over, so you can make your characters a little more powerful as you progress or save it all for a massive level boost. At the start of your next game you also retain half your money and all your items and skills, so getting back to you were on a second run without using dragon powers once is fairly easy. The lowest I've heard you can go through is D level about 6 or 7% so there is a fairly huge margin for error but it's an easy trap the first time you play.

Ah, that makes more sense. It's not broken as I had first thought, I just lacked patience. I only tried one playthrough so I never experienced those aspects of the game.

 

[Something Amyss]

Saints Row: SRTT took any black humour and replaced it with a constant string of "dick and fart" jokes.

...ZANY!

Gone are the clever puzzles, replaced with more third person shooting because clearly there aren't enough third person shooters already. Gone is the platforming, replaced with waves of quick-time events.

I won't defend the QTE's, but there remains puzzles and platforming. To pretend otherwise is nonsense.

 

[4RM3D]

*snip*

Ah, that explains it. Still sounds like a cheap way to extend the playtime of the game.

 

[bug_of_war]

Give us a journal that is effective enough that it is reasonable to turn off the pointer. Bring back the massive dialogue options with every person that actually had impact with your social standing. Make the race you pick have real impact.

I do kinda miss the older games journal entries, but at the same time, I never really read most of them other than the main story line ones because I wanted to play more than read. As for the dialogue options, most of the people in Oblivion and Morrowind said the exact same thing to most questions, so I don't really mind that Skyrim's populace have little (or none) to say because really, not everyone is gonna stop to tell you everything, people have their own things to do. I also didn't mind that the race you picked did not hinder your play style, it felt more realistic in the sense that if you worked hard enough your character could master magic, or stealth, or front line bloody combat.

OT: Assassin's Creed is no longer an assassin game, it's more or less a game that explores time periods and says, "These people are secret underground Templars, those people are mildly kinda assassins". However I'm still very much hooked on the franchise, I liked all 3 ancestors and their stories, I'm looking forward to what Black Flag brings, and it'll be great to see where the series goes.

Mass Effect got better as the series progressed I feel, the first game was quite clunky and while had a good story, really was tough for me to get the motivation to finish. The second game felt much more polished, I preferred the streamlining of the RPG elements and thought the characters were WAY better than the ones from the first game (Garrus and Wrex were cool in ME1 tho). The controls were better, the story seemed fitting, and I really didn't mind the planet scanning, better than falling on a desolate planet, driving aimlessly in all directions to find some crap, only to realise I didn't bring enough skilled technicians to open the fucking thing. I loved the 3rd game, the graphics were great, the soundtrack was really fitting, the story felt like an epic climactic one, and I understood why they didn't do team mate missions and why everything was focused towards the main story. I thought the ending was fitting, and preferred the ambiguity to not knowing how my choices will effect the future of that universe.

Dragon Age is an awkward one though, there were things I liked in both games and things I wasn't to happy with. Dragon Age 2 improved on the combat and dialogue, I prefer having my character fully voiced rather than choosing long lines of text that instantly get transmitted from my character's brain to the other character's, it just seems more natural to have to people talking than one being a silent fuck who only speaks while in combat/gets selected to be played as. Dragon Age Origins however had a much more focused and well paced story, and whilst I didn't like levels such as the Deep Roads or the Fade, the Bracillian Forest and the end battle were so interesting and enjoyable.

 

[The Madman]

Gone are the clever puzzles, replaced with more third person shooting because clearly there aren't enough third person shooters already. Gone is the platforming, replaced with waves of quick-time events.

I won't defend the QTE's, but there remains puzzles and platforming. To pretend otherwise is nonsense.

You're right, I should have added the stipulation of being 'good' puzzles or platforming. From what I played of the new Tomb Raider I struggle to think of a single example of platforming that wasn't Uncharted style hand-holding, and if there are any decent puzzles in the game I didn't encounter them.

The new Tomb Raider is a shooter now, that's all there is to it. The other elements are just optional side-stuff at best akin to how you spend a lot of time driving and racing cars in GTA, yet no one calls that a racing sim.

 

[The_Scrivener]

Final Fantasy is the biggest offender because of its tenure. Zelda, Mario and the N bunch aren't so much devolving as rotting from the premise outward.

And yeah ME3. Terribad. Painful Escapists voted it for GOTY based on denial of how subpar it was. If that same poll took place in 2 years when ME fanboys have moved on, it'd have never won.

 

[Something Amyss]

The new Tomb Raider is a shooter now, that's all there is to it. The other elements are just optional side-stuff at best akin to how you spend a lot of time driving and racing cars in GTA, yet no one calls that a racing sim.

Nobody calls it a shooter, either. But I'm going to have to go with the aforementioned statement that The Last of Us must also be a third person shooter by these metrics.

 

[The Madman]

The new Tomb Raider is a shooter now, that's all there is to it. The other elements are just optional side-stuff at best akin to how you spend a lot of time driving and racing cars in GTA, yet no one calls that a racing sim.

Nobody calls it a shooter, either. But I'm going to have to go with the aforementioned statement that The Last of Us must also be a third person shooter by these metrics.

I wouldn't know, haven't played The Last of Us. Is the main gameplay element also to shoot and kill dozens of people with a variety of weapons? Because if so then yeah, I guess it might be a shooter. But again I haven't played it so I've no idea.

In the original Tomb Raider games (The good ones at least) puzzles, platforming, and exploration were the core gameplay elements. Shooting was an occasional diversion that acted more as an environmental danger (Oh crap, it's an bears den!) than anything else. As I stated before I'm just disappointed that's been done away with and replaced with third person killing as the main gameplay element in the new game. There are dozens if not hundreds of third person shooters out there, but there are no other new games coming out like the original Tomb Raider.