What are you currently playing?

[BrawlMan]

Back on topic: I am quitting Hong Kong Massacre. I can't pass the boss with shotgun that functions more like an auto-shotgun. Even though the weapon model is clear regular ass shotgun! The boss has way too much health is practically an aim bot. I am glad I got this for $2 on eShop. I've installed RE4Remake and will be playing later.

 

[Hawki]

Absolutely every diablo-like ever (Dungeon Quest, Sacred, etc). RPGs like Neverwinter Nights, the Elder Scrolls, Icewind Dale, Dragon Age, Kotor, Fable, etc... Most of them are formulaic as hell, and it doesn't matter (let's call it "classic"). Oh noes my mentor Beardaf is dead, oh noes evil is descending on the world, must find the Sword of Jewels of The Ring Of Staffs before Warlockor the Warlock, if I do it with a party let's hope Maidena won't be captured or turned to the dark side because that twist would unexpectedly raise the stakes.

Apart from a bit of Fable, I haven't played any of the RPGs on that list. Well, unless you include Diablo as a Diablo-like, in which case, that's debatable. It's arguably true for D1 and DI, not really true for D2 or D3.

But to get to your original point, your statement was:

Including in RPGs, where the "plot" is most often as generic as possible, already known from the start to the end (mguffin hunt cause monsters everywhere cause evil wizard yadda), and a pretext to hack and also slash.

How many RPG plots are there where the plot is used as an excuse, and where you can guess the end from the outset? Because off the top of my head, I can name various games where that isn't the case, including:

-Final Fantasy X
-Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade
-Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
-Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
-Golden Sun (all three of them)
-Mass Effect
-Mass Effect: Andromeda
-Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood
-Xenoblade Chronicles
-Xenoblade Chronicles 2

I'm not even the biggest RPG player in the world, but I haven't encountered many where an excuse plot is used. I can name a few (Phantasy Star, Torchlight), and there's certainly tie-in RPGs where the ending is known by definition (so the LotR RPGs I've played for instance), but if we're talking about original properties? Not really.

But most importantly, that's not the point. What is, is the difference in players more than the difference in RPGs. Because you can have an excellent story that gets ignored by a player, or a ridiculous one that gets passionately followed. It depends on the people, their mood, their history, etc. Within a same game, people can be attentive or skippy depending on the quest or depending on the day. People can be thrilled by a new story, or be bored by its "yeah, been there done that", or be thrilled again by a return to a classic formula. People can find slight variations fascinating, others can simply see it as samey as a whole. The story is just a component of the game that players decide to find important or not. They can launch the game to be told a tale, they can launch the game to behead gnolls, they can launch the game to stroll in its cool environment, they can launch a game to scrutinize its lore and geek out infinitely about it. There is no rule, and there is no correct way (and even the most derivative plot is new, or new enough, to some). Games tend to maximize the spectrum of enjoyability.

Um, I mostly agree, but I think whether a player cares about story or not is generally going to influence what type/series of RPGs they play. For instance, it's common in ARPGs for players to declare that they don't care about story, whereas on the other hand, I've never seen anyone say the same for something like Final Fantasy.

 

[Absent]

-Final Fantasy X
-Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade
-Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
-Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
-Golden Sun (all three of them)
-Mass Effect
-Mass Effect: Andromeda
-Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood
-Xenoblade Chronicles
-Xenoblade Chronicles 2

I have played only Mass Effect of all these. I don't do jRPGs, for mere stylistic reasons. But they have indeed the reputation to be more story-driven than western RPGs, so maybe this allows for more novel-like variety, whereas the more (somewhat)open world(ish) western RPGs reduce the plot and characterizations to more formulaic formulaes because they matter less than exploration. Heck, even Fallout has its fun macguffins (the eden kit, the water chip) as mere pretexts to hurl you into its world. Does anyone even care about the daddy thing in Fallout 3 ? Or even remember it ?

That said, their endings are generally as obvious as a james bond movie's. Spoiler for the game if you intended to play it (any which one, doesn't matter) : at the end you gather the magical artefacts and also you defeat the big baddie's underling and also you defeat the big baddie and also the realm is saved because you were actually the hero of the prophecy all along. That was the plot. It had many cutscenes and flavour texts to inform you of how different from that other game it was.

All this to say that designers shouldn't be too surprised if the seasonnd player skips the five minutes it takes for the innkeeper to explain why bringing him 157 rat whiskers is terribly important tonight, or for the duke to tell you that he really really doesn't understand why zombies have started pouring out of the cemetary. Players are often more interested in the dungeon cleansing, the loot and the levelling (and the visual effects) than the narrative flavor.

Actually :

 

[Hawki]

I have played only Mass Effect of all these.

Quoting this for reference.

That said, their endings are generally as obvious as a james bond movie's. Spoiler for the game if you intended to play it (any which one, doesn't matter) : at the end you gather the magical artefacts and also you defeat the big baddie's underling and also you defeat the big baddie and also the realm is saved because you were actually the hero of the prophecy all along. That was the plot. It had many cutscenes and flavour texts to inform you of how different from that other game it was.

Which is "their" in this case? WRPGs or JRPGs? Because if it's the former, nothing about what you've said applies to Mass Effect - Shepard doesn't really hunt down any McGuffins, calling Saren "the big baddie" is highly reductive, (and if Sovereign is, who went into ME1 blind and and Shepard isn't a hero of prophecy (nor is anyone else).

If it's the latter, there's not a single character in that list who's a hero of prophecy, and going in blind, I'm highly skeptical that anyone could guess the ending from the outset. The only one that comes close to the formula you've listed is The Sacred Stones, since McGuffins arguably drive the plot (the titular stones), and you can guess who the big baddie is from the outset (the Demon King). However, I'd challenge anyone going in from the outset to guess correctly that Virigarde isn't actually the one being controlled by Formotis, but:

Spoiler

Lyon is

Maybe I'm a dirty pleb, but having played in FE8 back in the day, the revelation that (spoiler) was actually the instigator of everything was a mindscrew back in the day.

Also, no-one's a hero of prophecy. There's technically a prophecy in FE8, but it's in the background, none of it applies to the heroes, and the ending leaves it ambiguous as to whether it's self-fulfilling prophecy, divine judgement, or a natural disaster that was going to happen regardless of anything.

All this to say that designers shouldn't be too surprised if the seasonnd player skips the five minutes it takes for the innkeeper to explain why bringing him 157 rat whiskers is terribly important tonight, or for the duke to tell you that he really really doesn't understand why zombies have started pouring out of the cemetary. Players are often more interested in the dungeon cleansing, the loot and the levelling (and the visual effects) than the narrative flavor.

I wouldn't be too surprised either (even if I'm the type of person who reads quest text every time), but all of that sounds like side quests. The 'meat' of the story is another, um, story.

 

[BrawlMan]

Resident Evil 4 Remake - Started playing I am a little ways into Chapter 3.Just after the tower explodes and you have to find a way around while dealing with the wolves. I haven't died yet, but Normal is still not a walk in the park. I know the dynamic difficulty is part of the challenge. I got the handgun, shotgun, and rifle on me right now. I'm thinking about the TMP gun, but I am gonna hold off on that. I did upgrade my knife's durability, and I will put it at max. Handgun power I upgraded once.

I am liking all of the improvements made to the game. Being able to suplex villagers never gets old, nor does the ole Van Damme roundhouse kicks after a successful parry! I already like this game more than the original. It does suck you can't buy ammo anymore, because of the crafting system. That should have stayed. I'll play more at a later time, as I will be busy this weekend unfortunately.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

What’s funny is I’ve had no problem sitting through hours and hours of cutscenes in every MGS game; even MGS4, and the only time I’d skip them was for a Big Boss emblem. I liked the interactive stuff with flashbacks, hidden camera angles, etc. Kojima is a diva but knows how to extract extra value from the medium. GoW/Rag share a somewhat similar admiration, but because it’s woven seamlessly into the framework of gameplay. Other times there's just simply really cool looking shit happening in cutscenes, which lends to a rewatchable factor. So there can be exceptions, but it really depends on the game, and how well done they are.

 

[sXeth]

Finished out Monster Hunter Rise (til Sunbreak hits playstation I suppose), wasn't a big fan of the final final no really final boss or eitheer of its prior incarnations, but thats a general theme in monster hunters to be fair (Zorah Magdaros was also garbage, as was Shara Ishvalada in World, and Xenojiiva was just kind of vaguely less annoying by being a more or less regular fight)


Been working on getting some of my lesser use Warframes into some sort of usable shape, since Duviri randomizes your options and I don't trust the developers "loaner build" option lol.


As the RPG discussion there goes, uh, I'd say JRPGs if anything tend to have a consistent recycling of nigh identical themes. Prettysure I literally have a post in the Elden Ring thread commenting on it and speculating its some sort of post-WW2 cultural trauma event in Japan that created the narrative.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

It does suck you can't buy ammo anymore, because of the crafting system. That should have stayed.

You were never able to buy ammo in the original game either. It may have been a thing on Easy, which I've never played, but definitely not on Normal or Professional.
(Edit: It occurs to me that you probably meant getting a free full reload when you buy ammo capacity upgrades.)

OT: Gonna start REm4ke myself tonight probably, if I don't get swarmed by distractions.

 

[BrawlMan]

You were never able to buy ammo in the original game either. It may have been a thing on Easy, which I've never played, but definitely not on Normal or Professional.
(Edit: It occurs to me that you probably meant getting a free full reload when you buy ammo capacity upgrades.)

OT: Gonna start REm4ke myself tonight probably, if I don't get swarmed by distractions.

Good to know. You can probably tell, but I rarely played og RE4 that often.

 

[Absent]

nothing about what you've said applies to Mass Effect

Yeah, Mass Effect is an original game in that respect, it really felt differently. You could also have played Planescape Torment and remark it doesn't ressemble much to anything else (in fact it's often been likened to jRPGs in narration), despite relying a lot on the very very extremely horribly tired cliché of amnesic protagonist. The Geneforge games are also another case of RPGs with their very own voices (though the games within series don't seem to differ much from each others). I could also mention Ultima IV, or Inquisitor. There's a few of them. They're not the bulk of it.

And again, my point is that even in these games, a huge lot of players click fast through narration to get to interaction. I suspect that few players in Planescape have read everything. Which is possibly a shame as much as a fact.

 

[Absent]

Still Mafia 3. Still mildly irritated by pedestrians deciding to jump and lie down in front of your car's trajectory when they feel anxious, by the logic of "the slower you hit an obstacle the more it damages your health, your car and your bulletproof vest", and by the rock-hard little bushes (they really feel like the old gag of hiding a brick under a hat on the pavement to watch those who'll try to kick it).

But still impressed by everything else, and still spending too much time waiting for a song on the radio to be over before exiting the car. Also noticing that the radio sounds bad when you drive in tunels or parking lots. Fun touch.

Anyway. Just picked another playboy magazine collectible and found a long 1960s interview of Ralph Nader, discussing his book on car safety. That is so awesome. Alas, only like 10% of these playboy collectibles feature interviews, which make their hunt a bit frustrating. But still, these interviews are really oddly great, this game has the weird effect to make me take almost seriously those who claimed to get playboy magazines "for the interviews". The 60s were really a strange era.

Also, didn't expect that from a game named Mafia, but I feel most of it is dedicated to fighting various groups of white supremacists. Can't claim it isn't a fun aspect.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

Finished out Monster Hunter Rise (til Sunbreak hits playstation I suppose), wasn't a big fan of the final final no really final boss or eitheer of its prior incarnations, but thats a general theme in monster hunters to be fair (Zorah Magdaros was also garbage, as was Shara Ishvalada in World, and Xenojiiva was just kind of vaguely less annoying by being a more or less regular fight)

It's weird, isn't it? Monster Hunter makes some truly thrilling monster fights, but for some reason, few of the final bosses are ever all that fun to go up against. I think part of the problem is cause they are almost always really huge, hulking, visually intimidating creatures that have slow and gigantic wind-ups with nearly every attack. It's cool when said attacks fill most of the arena, but, even then...

 

[meiam]

Started playing enderal, a total conversion mod for skyrim, if you ever feel like playing more skyrim but tired of the same map/story its really nice for that.

It also has two very nice feature over the base game:

Every healing spell/potion increase your "arcane sickness" which give you debuff if it gets too high, reducing it is non trivial so you actually have to be somewhat conservative with it. Food also only restore health out of combat, so no more infinite healing mid fight.

They change the way levelling work, instead of getting skill point from doing action you the game use a traditional leveling system which give you a few skill point every level, the catch is you need to use special book for every point you want to spend, which stop the player from B-lining a skill to 100 and breaking the game and also act as a serious gold sink. There's also an okay skill tree you can use perk point on, its fine but a lot of it is suprisngly not that useful, there's also some special class combination if you fill 2 branch of the tree which give you class appropriate bonus (say battle mage for mage + fighter) but there's only a couple combination and some don't have any which is a bit of a shame. They also stoped player from combining alchemy and crafting to make ever better equipment.

Some downside, the voice acting is decent for important character, but everyone else is atrocious since they probably just grabbed rando volunteer to do them. They sound awful and I'd rather they had not bothered. Stealth seem broken in the overworld map, enemy can tell you"re there no matter what once you get close enough. There's also some weird decision, like there's a branch of spell that drain your health and mana to deal damage, but they do less damage than the regular fire/ice/ligthing one and don't have as many way to be improved, making them pretty worthless.

 

[Gergar12]

I beat Titanfall 2. It made me feel like a badass. We need more games with wall running.

 

[sXeth]

It's weird, isn't it? Monster Hunter makes some truly thrilling monster fights, but for some reason, few of the final bosses are ever all that fun to go up against. I think part of the problem is cause they are almost always really huge, hulking, visually intimidating creatures that have slow and gigantic wind-ups with nearly every attack. It's cool when said attacks fill most of the arena, but, even then...

Well for Rise, the Wind Serpent, Thunder Serpent and the eventual pairing of both they're expecting you to use wirebugs a lot, clearly. But not every weapon has the applicable wirebugs for the tasks involved so you end up having to sheathe weapons a ton to do evasive moves, which then means you either need quick sheathing skills which may otherwise mess up your build to squeeze in or it drags out forever.


Zorah Magdaros problem was the mission was basically impossible to fail (until they finally made the super "hard" (bloated health) one way later on, the NPCs would always defeat it for you essentially, and repeated twice. Shara Ishvalda had a whole silly first phase where you were smaking rocks before it broke out of its casing for its true form, a task entirely weighted to using blunt weapons (which is uh, 2/14 possible), and the "reveal" is only good the first time. If the repeat version of the quest had started at phase 2 it might've been tolerable to farm.


Xeno'jiivas thing was more that is was massive and would run across the arena in a single attack, so you'd be chasing it more often then fighting it (ironically also the problem with Astel in Elden Ring, who is basically a homework copy of Xeno but with actual teleporting lol)

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

I spent quite a few hours with the Diable 4 open beta yesterday (on XBox, I think via GamePass).
I think the last Diable I played was... the second, maybe, at a friend's dorm or something? So this whole aRPG looting thing ain't my jam but I wanted to dive and try it out and it was interesting.

Basically, the experience is that I just went around button mashing and everything around me died. It is a super easy game. Yes when given the difficulty options at start I chose the easier one. Also, I wonder how much my choices of class and weapons/skill matter. I chose the Necromancer which lets me turn corpses into allied soldiers, and then when I added a ranged attack and an ability to explode corpses, by the time I got to level 12 or so I was just range killing, exploding and resurrecting corpses, and smashed anything that managed to come near with a 2-handed sword. Easy-peasy.

For a few hours, this was rewarding and it was kind of fun to progress. The game is pretty and leans into its try-hard satan goth style. Corny as hell but I also like 80s metal so who am I to complain about corny devil stuff. It's the kind of anesthetizing fun, where there are no highs or lows, just constant minor brain rewards, like eating junk food. Then after a while, it got boring and I felt like I was wasting my time, like eating too much junk food.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

Snip

I'm not 100% sure if Sunbreak's final boss does a ton to mitigate all of this, but I at least found it more engaging than the others... but then again, it's been awhile since I've fought it. At the very least I felt it was a bit more threatening

 

[Drathnoxis]

Started playing enderal, a total conversion mod for skyrim, if you ever feel like playing more skyrim but tired of the same map/story its really nice for that.

It also has two very nice feature over the base game:

Every healing spell/potion increase your "arcane sickness" which give you debuff if it gets too high, reducing it is non trivial so you actually have to be somewhat conservative with it. Food also only restore health out of combat, so no more infinite healing mid fight.

They change the way levelling work, instead of getting skill point from doing action you the game use a traditional leveling system which give you a few skill point every level, the catch is you need to use special book for every point you want to spend, which stop the player from B-lining a skill to 100 and breaking the game and also act as a serious gold sink. There's also an okay skill tree you can use perk point on, its fine but a lot of it is suprisngly not that useful, there's also some special class combination if you fill 2 branch of the tree which give you class appropriate bonus (say battle mage for mage + fighter) but there's only a couple combination and some don't have any which is a bit of a shame. They also stoped player from combining alchemy and crafting to make ever better equipment.

Some downside, the voice acting is decent for important character, but everyone else is atrocious since they probably just grabbed rando volunteer to do them. They sound awful and I'd rather they had not bothered. Stealth seem broken in the overworld map, enemy can tell you"re there no matter what once you get close enough. There's also some weird decision, like there's a branch of spell that drain your health and mana to deal damage, but they do less damage than the regular fire/ice/ligthing one and don't have as many way to be improved, making them pretty worthless.

I played Nehrim for about an hour a couple years ago and wasn't really impressed with it at all. Sounds like the sequel is pretty much the same.

 

[meiam]

I played Nehrim for about an hour a couple years ago and wasn't really impressed with it at all. Sounds like the sequel is pretty much the same.

Can't compare since I never played Nehrim, but ultimately its just a skyrim game with another story/world but plays much the same (if somewhat improved) I don't think someone who doesn't like skyrim will like this but it scratch the same itch since apparently bethesda decided the correct move after releasing one of the most successful game ever was to not bother releasing a sequel for close to a decade.

 

[Hawki]

FIRE EMBLEM HEROES

Spoiler

So I beat Book 1 and...sorry, I really don't care. Yes, there's a number of plot twists towards the end about the whole Bruno/Zacharias thing, but again, none of it is really engaging. It really doesn't help that due to the limitations of the game, there's no real sense of geography for either Askr or Embla, and that this whole conflict is based on "I dunno, Embla's evil I guess." Maybe later books do a better job of storytelling, but as I'm nearly at the end of Path of Radiance, I don't see the point of starting Book 2 anytime soon...

...which is what I said when I started writing this, before I started playing Book II. And, look, don't get me wrong, Book II isn't the best thing since sliced bread, but I'll give credit where it's due, the narrative is slightly better. Instead of a war between Embla and Askr, now Askr's at war with Muspelheim, which has already conquered/destroyed the ice kingdom of Nifelheim, whose princess has joined up with the Order of Heroes, opposing the likes of Sutur and Loki. Yes, Heroes is going full in on Norse mythology, but when I say "full in," I only mean that in the sense of taking terminology wholesale and not doing anything interesting with it. Gameplay's simple as ever (I often just set it to auto-battle while doing something else), and overall, things are still banal. But it's a slight improvement over Book II, I'll give it that much.

WORLD OF WARCRAFT

Spoiler

So, this happened.

I teamed up with a small group that had us enter Stonewatch Keep. The TL, DR version for those unaware is that it's been taken over by orcs, you need to do some bounties, so get in there and kill stuff. While I was the highest levelled player, the leader clearly knew what he was doing, so we managed to get through okay.

What really sealed the deal is that as we came out, we saw another group of players fighting their way through orcs outside, cutting down the brutes that we'd otherwise have to kill ourselves due to respawning. It was one of those weird, idiosyncratic moments where a moment of gameplay works perfectly as a narrative conciet. We go on, take out the orcs, come back, see the "cavalry" arrive at the last moment to relieve us, having been battered and bloodied. It's something that WOW (and other MMOs, though the only other one I've played to any real extent is LOTRO) has done excellently, because as tedious as the grind can be, it's the serendipity of player interactions that makes it worthwhile (least while I'm using up the month of my subscription).

On a more downer note, I need to get into the watchtower near the keep, but hanging around the area, haven't been able to find anyone high enough or willing enough to help me. What's ironic is that the quest that relies me to get in is marked green (so, easy, right), but no matter your level, it's pretty much impossible to take them by your lonesome - certainly not anything beyond one on one.

Update: Managed to do the watchtower with another player. I've pretty much done all the quests I can in Redridge for now, so I'm back in Darkshire. Events of note include:

-Killing worgen.

-Killing more worgen.

-Dying from worgen.

-Reviving and killing worgen.

-Getting rewarded for killing worgen.

-Trying to kill Eliza, but she's an elite, and no-one wants to help me.

-Get some people to agree to help me kill Eliza, but someone else kills her, and the people who agreed run off.

-Giving up on Eliza, and going to Stalvan Mistmantle. I meet a group outside his manor, we team up, we kill him in 5-10 seconds.

-The group boots me for some reason.

-I go back to Eliza and find someone willing to help me. Eliza is killed, but the quest doesn't count as completed. Either it glitched, or another person who was there got the kill (which I think is more likely).

Yeah, it's a love-hate thing with this game.

FIRE EMBLEM: PATH OF RADIANCE

Spoiler

I did a mammoth play session, and at this time of writing, I'm up to the game's penultimate mission. As usual, general points and thoughts:

-Finally beat the bridge mission, and without any casualties this time.

-I pumped Rhys full of XP so that he's now a bishop and can use light-based magic. Alas, he got killed by a ballista late into the second mission. At this point, didn't have it in me to restart, so I plouged on.

-So, I've commented quite a few times how easy PoR is, and the latest batch of characters kind of reinforces my point. Bastian is now my second most powerful sage (after Calil), which means I rarely use Soren now. I rarely use swordmasters/myrmidons, but Lucia's better than both Stefan and Mia. Geoffrey is the one exception in that I have paladins who are stronger (Titania, Astrid), but also weaker (Oscar, Malakov).

-Did the next mission and lost Soothe, poor kid. Still, had enough door/chest keys left to get by.

-Couldn't kill the Black Knight with Ike, and I stupidly didn't give Mia a mend staff, so Ikie is losing health faster than Mist can restore it, he didn't have Aether (my fault), and yeah, didn't kill the Black Knight. As such, the castle collapsed, and someone said "okay, we'll call it a draw."

-Got through 30 mins of the Gritnea Tower mission, but my Gamecube glitched out (again), and lost all progress. I really hope that this is due to the disc and not the machine, because if it's the latter, then I'm kinda boned bar forking over the cash for a new one. I mean, if Nintendo released more than a handful of games on its e-platforms that would be great, but Nintendon't do what every other sensible publisher does in this regard.

-I haven't commented much on plot in this entry, mainly because there's not really anything in this set of missions that really stands out for better or worse. Elincia's slightly more than a doormat now, so that's a bit nice, but it's really too little, too late for me to start liking her as a character. Gritnea Tower is a bit weird - since this is inside Crimea, I assume Daein appropriated it for its experiments, but if so, it's never explained. Marcia's still adorkable in her base conversation with Tanith and Elincia, and...yeah, I don't really have anything to add at this point.

-There's the wyvern in the room to deal with that this is the easiest Fire Emblem I've ever played bar Heroes, and some of it has to do with game design - bonus XP, allied units - for instance, in the Gritnea Tower mission, Tibarn is an allied unit, and as far as I can tell, functionally invincible, so while you can keep him out of the way if you need XP, the game provides you with a very sturdy crutch. Also, think I've mentioned this before, but at this point, my army's pretty much a death machine. Usually I can just send my paladins out into the field and by the time infantry's caught up with them, they've done most of the work. What's more, the game's actually gotten easier, not harder, overall, which is a bizzare progression of difficulty, and no, I don't think I can attribute this to me being just that awesome (but if you thought so, thanks). Yes, I know this is normal difficulty, and yes, hard difficulty is no doubt, well, harder, but even so, I feel I should be fighting for my life this late in the game, but instead, I'm just blazing through. Really, glitches and having to restart missions have set me further back than me actually losing too many units (mostly).