Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor's Orcs Are Dumber on Last Gen Systems

[Starke]

Well PC version will have it, no cut content on my platform, once again.

I didn't actually see that. I looked, but they're only talking about the PS4 and XBONE getting this. I could certainly see them classing the PC as "Last-Gen" just to try to drive sales on the consoles...

I sure hope not, considering how stupid it would be to think that. But you can never underestimate a gaming companies opinion of PC gamers and their PCs. Cough Infinity Ward cough.

This is also the same publisher that said "fixing a broken game is less important than selling you DLC" and "let's just randomly swap out developers on franchises, because that's a good idea." So, stupid would be their middle name if it wasn't literally "bros".

 

[oliver.begg]

I didn't actually see that. I looked, but they're only talking about the PS4 and XBONE getting this. I could certainly see them classing the PC as "Last-Gen" just to try to drive sales on the consoles...

Compared to the PC, the PS4 and Xbone qualify as last gen.

I really hope this Nemesis system is as cool as it sounds, and not some scripting they wrote specifically for the tech demo.

What I saw in the demo was a system where you have a string of possible modifiers that could be applied to any boss grade NPC. Which sounds really cool, but the demo was trying to make it sound like it was a lot more emergent then the system could actually be.

So you encounter an NPC, and kill them, all of their subordinates now get the "player has killed my boss" experience. Then you encounter one of them and burn them, and they get the "player has hurt me (burned)" experience. Then you blackmail them, and you get the "player is blackmailing me" experience...

Also, remember, all of those experience modules have associated recorded dialog, so while there could be a couple hundred, it is still a finite supply.

It sounds really cool, and in implementation it could be great, but, it shouldn't be any more processor intensive than, say, Skyrim or Diablo 3.

its not processor intesive. its mempry intensive. the PS3 only has 256mbs of ram, and theirs pelenty of stories of the massive hacks required to let games remeber with it (or failing, see skyrim, and why no new boderlands 2 DLC)

the 360 isn't any better

 

[Starke]

I didn't actually see that. I looked, but they're only talking about the PS4 and XBONE getting this. I could certainly see them classing the PC as "Last-Gen" just to try to drive sales on the consoles...

Compared to the PC, the PS4 and Xbone qualify as last gen.

I really hope this Nemesis system is as cool as it sounds, and not some scripting they wrote specifically for the tech demo.

What I saw in the demo was a system where you have a string of possible modifiers that could be applied to any boss grade NPC. Which sounds really cool, but the demo was trying to make it sound like it was a lot more emergent then the system could actually be.

So you encounter an NPC, and kill them, all of their subordinates now get the "player has killed my boss" experience. Then you encounter one of them and burn them, and they get the "player has hurt me (burned)" experience. Then you blackmail them, and you get the "player is blackmailing me" experience...

Also, remember, all of those experience modules have associated recorded dialog, so while there could be a couple hundred, it is still a finite supply.

It sounds really cool, and in implementation it could be great, but, it shouldn't be any more processor intensive than, say, Skyrim or Diablo 3.

its not processor intesive. its mempry intensive. the PS3 only has 256mbs of ram, and theirs pelenty of stories of the massive hacks required to let games remeber with it (or failing, see skyrim, and why no new boderlands 2 DLC)

the 360 isn't any better

Yeah, not that memory intensive either, unless they're being really stupid with their code, which is possible. Worst case, each boss NPC will chew up a couple megs of memory while they're onscreen. If they're keeping all of the Nemesis characters in memory at all times, that could cause problems, it would also be incredibly stupid. If you have a character on the other side of the map, you don't need them in active memory.

The only possibilities are that it's running this package for every NPC enemy, which, is also stupid, and could easily result in massive save files, they're keeping info they don't need in memory, or they're storing these experience modules in a ridiculously inefficient way. Until we actually see the system at play it'll be a little hard to know which is the case.

 

[VladG]

I call bullshit. In the vein of SimCity's "Simulation". Thy just want to say "ooh, look at our game, it's TOTALLY next-gen"

 

[black_knight1337]

When I first heard of the Nemesis system I wondered if this was going to be the case. I knew it would be impossible to achieve on the last-gen systems, mostly because of their RAM problem and the aging CPU. Mass Effect 3 for example had to ditch the freakin' holster function because the consoles didn't have enough RAM to handle the extra animation it required. I just wasn't sure if they were going to dumb this down just for the last-gen or simply overhype the entire thing. This is good news.

Couldn't agree with this more. It's making it seem a lot more likely that this is going to live up to, at least some, of it's hype. Plus, it's nice that there's such a big focus on the AI rather than just putting all the resources into shinier visuals.

 

[svenjl]

Seems to be a lot of shallow hypothesis and assumptions regarding the Nemesis system! How about taking the dev's word for it? After all, with the combined install base of the 360 and PS3, it would be silly to curtail this aspect of the game if they didn't have to. As some have posted, there was always going to be a tipping point, and for this particular game they have reached it. Is that hard to believe?

 

[Mister Chippy]

I know jack shit about the technical requirements of this game, or how complicated their AI system actually is. I also don't really have a hard time believing that last gen consoles aren't able to do something, seeing as they're really ancient. I'm gonna believe the dev with their fairly believable story that 2005 hardware isn't able to do something designed for today's hardware instead of coming up with some silly conspiracy theory that both Microsoft and Sony teamed up to get this dev to cripple their game to try to sell new consoles.

 

[tehroc]

So much for MS claims that they've got a system for people with online connectivity issues. The 360 will be dead by 2015. MS is abandoning it like red headed step child.

 

[Berling's Beard]

If true, this is totally disappointing. Where can us 'last-gen'ers start complaining about this to start the social media revolution?

 

[DEAD34345]

That's... odd. Nothing I've seen of the "Nemesis System" sounds particularly demanding in terms of hardware. Cool and interesting sure, but I really don't see anything that wouldn't work on an Xbox 360 or PS3, or even earlier consoles. Is there some big feature of the system I'm unaware of?

Most likely RAM.

The system's biggest sin is not enough RAM. I'd imagine that high res textures, high end models, and a tracker of an entire chain of command with advanced AI isn't doable.

Keep in mind this is 2005 tech. It wasn't meant to last forever.

I don't know, that still sounds unlikely. I mean games like Skyrim and Oblivion track far, far more than a few binary "Event X Happened" (He burned my face >:/) or "Event Y Happened" (He killed my boss >:/) flags for each and every character you meet in the world[footnote]Off the top of my head: Health, Mana, Stamina, Gender, Race, Vampire?, List of AI "factions" it belongs to, equipped items, held items, durability for each item, Opinion of player, 'Honour' (decides whether or not it will report crimes), known spells and skill level of each skill in the game. There's probably a lot more, but the point is that a couple of extra true/false flags wouldn't make a difference at all.[/footnote]. That type of data is so small compared to textures and the like that it barely needs to be taken into account at all. I still think either the spokesperson is wrong, or the nemesis system does something else that hasn't been mentioned yet.

 

[LiMaSaRe]

I would decide to just not release this game on last-gen consoles. Its going to be less good, but in a difficult to perceive way. People who didnt catch this memo are just going to say "the Nemesis thing I heard about was bullshit! the AI sucks and so does the game." So any amount of extra sales from the other consoles are going to be lost twice over due to bad word-of-mouth.

 

[LiMaSaRe]

If true, this is totally disappointing. Where can us 'last-gen'ers start complaining about this to start the social media revolution?

Complaining that your old system isnt good enough to run a new game? Should the entire industry stop progressing so that you arent left behind?