Here, 343 had a wonderful opportunity to tell a narrative about once enemies banding their forces (which still should've been hurting from the war) to fight off a common foe.
Instead, the Covenant turn bad again for some bullshit contrived reason just so the player could shoot some more grunts.
In a nice twist, though, the humans are the ones who release the super baddie instead of the elites once again blundering into it.
Your problem with Halo 4 was the narrative?
4 was the first Halo game that had a well written story. It was also the first one that wasn't fun to play, but that's hardly 343's fault, it's hard to live up to Bungie quality.
To have a problem with Halo 4's writing, out of ALL the Halo games is weird. (no offense}
The narrative of Halo 4 relies entirely upon the player having read the books for it to make sense. This is not good writing. A good narrative doesn't expect the player to do some outside homework in order to get invested in what's going on.
I'm sure there's a very good reason why the Elites are suddenly so eager to skin the Chief alive; in fact, several people (including some in this thread) have told me that it has to do with the books. But I'll never know, since 343's writers are too lazy to include even a touch of back story, instead just pointing out a dusty pile of old books.
I mean, sure, some of the characters are well rounded, and Chief showing actual human emotion over the fate of Cortana is really nice. But that's it.
The idea was solid. I love the concept of a more personalized rpg story with a tighter focus on a singular location and smaller cast of characters, then having the game take place over time so that you can see how your decisions made throughout the game play out. Seeing the characters change over time and the locations be altered, it's brilliant story mechanic and something Bioware should have considered doing age ago considering while their writing isn't always the best their skill at making sympathetic and enjoyable characters is undeniable, so making a character driven adventure seems obvious. Then add in the unreliable narrator trick with various events as you play them being one characters perspective on certain events and it seems like DA2 should have been the most well thought out and most clever Bioware game to date.
Yet somehow they just completely messed it up. The characters, normally Bioware's strong suit, are a wretched inconsistent lot. The story is a jumbled incoherent mess. The visuals are bland and boring, made even moreso by the lack of variety in locations which never really change as you'd think they should. The gameplay was just a tedious mess. And the way the entire story just sort of crumbles is pathetic, especially seeing as the vast majority of your choices as it turns out are absolutely meaningless.
Worse yet is that because of DA2's failure it's unlikely Bioware are going to try any of those clever ideas mentioned in the first paragraph again, already with DA3 we see they're going back to the old 'save the world' trope.
actually some good news for you all reports are (and from my own experience at pax seem to be true) that they are keeping the smaller cast and having it be more personal for your character then it was in origins.
OT: yeah gonna second Too Human, I mean future Vikings gods kicking ass? who would of thought you could actually crew that concept up?
Also going to put Tales of Symphonia dawn of the new world here too. though I suspect that the new one for the PS3 is going to be enjoyable for me when I get to that part, the wii version was just god awful and a waste of my money.
I've been playing Two Worlds recently and I can see all the components of what could have been a really good game. Unfortunately due to what I can only assume was budget or time limitations it ended up buggy, unbalanced, bland in the combat and with terrible voice acting. It can certainly still be a fairly enjoyable game, but I think that it could have been so much more.
Ah Two Worlds. The worst game I've ever thoroughly enjoyed. I loved the freedom in that game. For whatever reason, I one day decided to massacre the one southern city. After, I realized that several important NPCs had been killed in my wake of destruction (green death beams from the sky were my weapon of choice). Since NPC deaths are permanent in this game, I ended up having to learn and master a whole new school of magic so that I could resurrect everyone in the city.
I also liked the huge variety of landscapes there were. This game got compared to Oblivion a lot and if there's one thing this game did a lot better, it's have a varied world. Desserts, forests, plains, dead forests, bamboo forests, mountains, crazy black rock evil area.
Now if only the game had had a decent story, competent writing and voice acting (oh my were some of those lines terrible in their actual content and in their delivery), was finished (there's an entire Dwarven city that you can't go to since the devs never finished that part of the game), and had a combat system that didn't require you to simply run in circles away from enemies in the early game due to everything being able to murder you easily. Only game I've ever played where you start off so weak that it takes about fifty hits to kill a bear and yet you can become so godly that you can one-shot the final boss and be pretty much impervious to all damage.
The narrative of Halo 4 relies entirely upon the player having read the books for it to make sense. This is not good writing. A good narrative doesn't expect the player to do some outside homework in order to get invested in what's going on.
I'm sure there's a very good reason why the Elites are suddenly so eager to skin the Chief alive; in fact, several people (including some in this thread) have told me that it has to do with the books. But I'll never know, since 343's writers are too lazy to include even a touch of back story, instead just pointing out a dusty pile of old books.
I did see Forward Unto Dawn, which did help me get invested in what was going on. But the actor who played Lasky did such a good job I doubt knowing his backstory was 100% necessary to enjoy the story.
and Chief showing actual human emotion over the fate of Cortana is really nice. But that's it.
Yeah it was amusing to see Steve Downs pretend he was a human. My favorite part of the writing was the amount of long stoic silences they gave Master Chief while Cortana had both sides of the conversation. They did try to give him a line which is probably the worst line reading in recorded history. If it weren't for the great music and Jen Taylor's excellent performance that scene would have been hilarious. (Despite the acting the scene was well written)
To me the real meat of the story wasn't so much the stuff going on with the Didact or the Covenant but Cortana's breakdown and her coping with her mortality. The Machine programed to behave like a human and the human programed to behave like a machine dichotomy was explored and realized extremely well (which is something that Bungie never had the balls to tackle)
My problem with the first 3 Halo games is that they relied completely on the lore to keep you invested.
The actual games were about some boring guy and generic military types trying to stop a universe wide disaster.
So the only possible connection you can make to any of the characters or events is "OMFG I live in a universe!" in 4 there's a personal story about grief and accepting loss. So it's really easy to get emotionally invested and actually care about what happens next.
I reckon SSB Brawl would have been one of the greatest games ever if they sharpened the mechanics like the guy focused so much on in Melee. I really just want to expand on Melee with more characters, levels and everything else. Gah!! It drives me nuts.
Building you own custom fighter based on moves done by actual Virtual Fighter characters? What could go wrong, right??
Too bad Soul Calibur 4 and 5 did that concept "slightly" better years later...
Other than that, it could of had more sequels to this spin-off of the Virtual Fighter series... (I think that's what the game's story was trying to do...)
Remember Remember Me (heh.)? I thought the memory control thing could have been really cool if it was an actual gameplay mechanic intead of just a story-based interactive cutscene. Yahtzee had an Extra Punctuation on his ideas once.
Yeah, that was the first one I thought of. It had the potential to make it into a great open-world (or even semi-open) game in the vein of the first Assassin's Creed. Through the entire game, I desperately wished for a more open section, to explore neo-Paris a bit more, but NOPE! Every two steps the door would close behind me to keep me progressing through an extremely narrow corridor, sometimes with the most obnoxious kind of invisible wall (i.e. an actually invisible one, without even an effort to paint a handrail in there). All the memory thingies could have been something like the "plan your assassination" minigames in AC1.
But instead we got a short game which wanted to be Oni, marred by terrible dialogue and an occasional plot-hole.
lacktheknack said:
Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness had so much going for it.
The animation was way ahead of its time (stair-climbing that actually matches the stairs? Ladders with the hands in the right places? MADNESS!), it had a risky but awesome plot hook (did she kill Von Croy or not?), the locations were quite well designed, and some of the situations Lara got into were cool and not seen before (the police chase, breaking into the Louvre, interacting with people in the Parisian slums...).
But no. We got glitchy controls river-dancing us through an increasingly insane plot (it acquires Indigo Prophecy Syndrome less than halfway into the game) and badly designed fights through increasingly ridiculous locations (Biodome of man-eating flytraps and shark-plants, anyone?) with awkward design choices and numerous pacing issues... Ugh.
Plus, I think she was a KK cup at this point. If Crystal Dynamics didn't tone her down from Legend and onwards, she'd have knee-knockers at this point.
Hah, I almost forgot about that one. I think the weirdest thing was that it seemed like they poured all their resources into the first area of the game (with dialogue interactions and the shop which I ended up using once and never again), and then had to make the rest on a few pinecones and a piece of string. I particularly remember that the second playable character wasn't able to do something like climb ladders or jump (it's been a while), and that was really annoying. Plus, the game crashed constantly (although eventually the patches improved it to the point of playability).
So yeah, could have been a great revival of the TR series, instead it sent Core down the drain and eventually led to the Crystal Dynamics games, which I enjoyed, but felt more like "people like Prince of Persia, let's make something like that! Oh oh, and now that we're done with the trilogy, let's do an Uncharted!" instead of a new vision for the series.
I agree with this. It could have been a good game if they had put more work into it. I'm thinking the same thing about XCOM Declassified . I liked the stuff they showed before they scrapped everything and made it into the game that they released. Finding tech on the battlefield and researching it, resource management inside and outside of combat missions, tactical combat. It could have been really good. I also don't think most people would flame a shooter spin-off if it was really good. I love the old XCOM titles but I found the idea of making a shooter in that universe quite interesting.
But I guess the game (at least for me) with the largest amount of wasted potential in recent times was Skyrim. The dark brotherhood missions were really well done, but then they suddenly end with you sitting in a cold ugly cave doing randomly generated missions and nothing has changed in the slightest.
You killed the emperor! I mean someone should realize that their emperor is dead, right? But everyone just goes on with their stuff.
The civil war is the same. The initial battle for Whiterun is really cool with catapults shooting at the walls, archers everywhere etc. . The final battle against Solitude? You storm the fortified city with 3 soldiers destroy maybe 3 barricades and kill 5 soldiers or something like that on your way to the enemy leader. Then you kill him and...nothing. No one cares. All NPCs are standing around looking blankly at you until you leave. The whole game feels completely unfinished.
Also they should have learned more from the world design of Fallout. They did some nice random quests and some of the ruins etc. had some interesting back story. But most of the time you plunder generic cave A oder generic grave B.
Damn it. And here I thought I had a game in mind nobody had said already. Well, since you only said one sentence I guess I can add to that and put my own opinion into this discussion. That works.
I haven't played the game to be fair, but I have seen A LOT of it and as I mention in this discussion [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.842302-Poll-Knowing-how-youll-feel-about-a-game-without-playing-it-first] (I find it kind of funny the discussion I'm linking to further links to another discussion, even if just for a reference point) when I've seen enough of a game, even without playing it, I am almost 100% right on how I'll feel especially when I go against my judgment, for whatever reason, and play the game anyway.
The messages from the head developers just ensured it wouldn't live up to the potential it had. When questioned why Batman had all his gadgets in a PREQUEL looking just as good if not even more advanced than previous games, one head developer in a Reddit AMA made a lame excuse that Batman carries what he needs with him for the time. So, at some points he might have everything or airdrop everything as he did in Arkham City a couple times and at other points he'll not have everything for reasons like too many gadgets weighing him down outweighing any benefits. The excuse came off just so ridiculously lazy and could easily be debunked. Good thing this guy didn't have to defend the look of the GUI, the suits, some environment shinyness upgrade because that definitely can't be defended. The game looks like it should be in the future. His comment on how it's a mystery why James Bond doesn't carry everything over to the next movie was kind of a funny comparison though, I will admit.
To be fair, he also said they didn't want to sacrifice gameplay or continuity but gameplay was a priority, to which I wish I could have redirected him to this [http://www.vg247.com/2013/06/16/batman-arkham-origins-a-dissonance-between-gameplay-and-narrative/] and this [http://kotaku.com/here-s-what-s-bothering-me-about-batman-arkham-origins-509775263], early looks at the game explaining a prequel can feel like a prequel and still have just as fun gameplay. I wouldn't be surprised if this particular head developer just redirected to me to the PR comment on how fans should have high expectations and be cynical, but WILL change their minds when they play the game. That's the other thing that bothered me: Even their good comments were presented in an offensive way. Unlike the Titanfall people saying if it doesn't hold up don't buy it period, Mr. Eric Holmes of Warner Bros Montreal here had to do it kind of arrogantly and say there's little chance the game couldn't persuade them. Considering where the head honchos of Respawn are coming from (formally being under EA's leash and all) it is ironic that Warner Bros. Montreal would do a worse job in preventing premature criticism. It could have been something different, interesting, and quite the accomplishment considering how many prequel games fail to come off as a prequel.
Them being new developers does not mean they can't hold up; I find that defense silly too especially considering they said they'd do their best to hold up and that fans should hold them up as if they were Rocksteady. My favorite Crash Bandicoot game, Crash Twinsanity isn't even made by Naughty Dog, so it's not as though it's not been done before. Though I really never played the original 3 outside of very small snippets to be fair, just the gameboy one, in which you team up with Spyro, Crash Team Racing, Crash Nitro Kart, and Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex. In other words, I've only really played one Naughty Dog Crash game, at least it's the only one I managed to finish over just playing a little bit of, so maybe not the best example. But I'm getting off track....Bottom line is I came up with ways to make this game work when I first heard about it before release. If I can come up with new gameplay mechanics, indeed a new enough but familiar enough combat system, for a prequel in this series, I think professional developers can.
Origins definitely fails in this regard; I don't even need to play to know for sure. I'm not even sure it fits in the Arkham lineup the way the story is setup. Universe, sure, but lineup? It's not about being a locked off area nor is it about a threat of established villains with a history and their danger when grouped together. The only story similarities I can think of at the moment are that Origins does take place in one night like the others and one major villain steals the show and controls the overall situation. The thing is everything is organized by one guy with a single goal directed almost entirely to Batman and that group is small (8? most deadly assassins versus the entirety of a high security Asylum and then a walled off part of a city acting as a pseudo prison) while in the other games the one guy or arguably 2 or 3 main guys controlling the situation have a larger goal in mind than just Batman even if they do focus a large part of their effort on him. This new game is all about origins, these villains aren't yet established within continuity of the series. It's more of a Year One deal. It can be in the universe, but having the Arkham name doesn't sit right with me. I mean, yeah, (knowing pretty much the entire plot at this point)
the end of the game sees Arkham Asylum being reopened and setting up the setting for the next two games
, but that alone does not make it feel enough like an Arkham game to have the name. Staying in continuity and keeping part of a title aren't necessarily intertwined.
I will say this about Origins, the marketing was pretty "Wow". For the most part, it's pretty damn good and not necessarily just in a flashy way either. They often have this charm or cool factor about them in a good way. Black Mask's presentation in marketing definitely had a businessman/gang member charm to it that looked like it would work well with such a character. It was great to watch. And if this isn't one of the most well done under 50 seconds teasers I've ever seen I don't know what is. Yeah, it's flashy, doesn't say much, and it's short, but the inclusion of "Auld Lang Syne" is perfect and not something you'd see in a less substantial teaser. It says enough. A teaser doesn't need to have the same kind of oomph as a full on trailer anyway...not that DLC really needs a full blown trailer.
The civil war is the same. The initial battle for Whiterun is really cool with catapults shooting at the walls, archers everywhere etc. . The final battle against Solitude? You storm the fortified city with 3 soldiers destroy maybe 3 barricades and kill 5 soldiers or something like that on your way to the enemy leader. Then you kill him and...nothing. No one cares. All NPCs are standing around looking blankly at you until you leave. The whole game feels completely unfinished.
Also they should have learned more from the world design of Fallout. They did some nice random quests and some of the ruins etc. had some interesting back story. But most of the time you plunder generic cave A oder generic grave B.
There's a mod for that! [http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/37216/?] (Yeah, that is basically the catch-phrase for every single issue with Skyrim...)
Yeah, apparently the Civil War in Skyrim was originally completely dynamic, with settlements changing hands depending on who you help (or don't help, as the two sides attack each other whether you are there or not) and your side can actually lose the war if you mess around too much with those skinny draugh girls and boys in their damp holes instead of helping the war effort. This particular mod restores most of that.
You could call that wasted potential, I call it realized potential, as we wouldn1t have it even now if Bethesda wasn't swell enough to hand over the dev-kit to the fans as usual.
There's a mod for that! [http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/37216/?] (Yeah, that is basically the catch-phrase for every single issue with Skyrim...)
You could call that wasted potential, I call it realized potential, as we wouldn1t have it even now if Bethesda wasn't swell enough to hand over the dev-kit to the fans as usual.
My main problem with this is that Bethesda is too reliant on their fans to fix their stuff (*looks at the 64hz bug*). They did quite a lot of stuff right for Skyrim especially compared to Oblivion but stopped halfway through all of their new ideas and that's the main reason I would call it wasted potential. The civil war was a great idea but they only did the first part of it filled the rest with some kind of placeholder battles and left it to modders to pick up the pieces. It could have been a really great feature, especially if they implemented it the way they said in interviews before release. Maybe it now is a great feature, but I wouldn't give credit to Bethesda for that. I think Skyrim could have become a great game even without extensive modding with some more work applied here and there. With which I don't want to say that I dislike modding! I only think that the basic game should work pretty well without modding and that modding should be used for changing the game or adding to it in varying ways. Obviously there are fix mods for many games (old infinity engine for example) but I think no other game company relies on their modding community to this extent.
Champions Online and Metroid: Other M are at the top of my list. Champions suffered from neglect and Jack Emmett's heavy handed approach to balance (ie, nerf anything that works without buffing anything) while Metroid: Other M has plenty of good and workable ideas but horrendous execution.
Tera.
Innovative combat THAT ACTUALLY WORKS but rest of the game is kinda meh. I blame EU distributor tho. Tera is allegedly pretty good in Korea. Sadly it "had to be" westernized for EU (by which i don't mean translation). And sadly they screwed all aspects of the game including the micro-transactions store. So much waste in so promising game.
Unless you are a big fan of Gauntlet, which is what it plays out to be. This game was not what I was expecting, and it feels like a step or 3 backwards from Diablo 2. And I am still pissed about always having to be connected online (which I'm not) and that should have been a deal-breaker for me. Oh well, last game I'll ever pre-order. It's a solid game, in that the mechanics work. But looking at it now, it's so obvious they weakened much of Diablo 2's strong points for the sake of DRM and the Auction Houses. They may already have my money, but they're not getting any more.
Darkest of Days- Such a refreshing shooter, this could have easily been a great RPG, or driven story FPS that would have shine without multiplayer... which would have been fun too- time traveling meant endless ways to improve it.
ME3- Pea shooter guns, horrible, and bland multiplayer with a crap store system, wasted space combat, wasted allot by not letting as in many planets, The ending was NOT just the only reason... the game was just so lacking. It could have been a great game easily if they just put in the work, and not rushed it. Had very few RPG elements, and even fewer missions compare to ME1.
Deus Ex- There should be more bullets, and better controls.
X Rebirth- Release it on consoles jerks. Also lag, and glitches everywhere.
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