Your video game hot take(s) thread

BrawlMan

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Every fighting game should have a brawler mode or spin-off game a la Guilty Gear Judgement or Tekken Force. The lack of Tekken Force in Tekken 7 fills me with so much disappointment and despair. Fuck Death by Degrees! Does not count!
 

Gordon_4

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Outside of a few examples with a canon backstory reason, silent protagonists in games where everyone else talks are annoying as shit and should go away.
 
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hanselthecaretaker

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I guess that might be the appeal of Dark Souls' implementation of player choice; you often have NO idea you've made a substantive "choice," and can gate off significant portions of the game. So choices are actually a bit more... realistic?

Point in case: Pyromancy in DS1. The first Pyromancer [most] people encounter is an amicable chap who offers you the pyromancers flame for nothing. Fast-forward a bit, and you might find a pyromancy he'd never seen before from a specific place; talk to him again and he'll ask essentially "Oh, where'd you find that?" Since he's the nicest guy you've met in world of horrors rife with cackling psychos, most people will tell him. Doing so sends him on a quest to search the area you mention, and he goes hollow, becomes aggressive and you're forced to kill him and lose access to everything he sells, but you're never told outright that your casual, affirmative response perhaps HOURS earlier put this chain of events into motion.

And the most powerful pyromancer in the game is gated behind seemingly unrelated criteria, and even then, you're never told that your particular choices have "unlocked" her. Hell, it's not even suggested that she exists or that certain actions/choices might reveal her. Once the criteria are met, she just pops up in a remote spot of the least desirable area of the entire game meaning most people won't return there after completing it without a very specific reason so will never know she exists with researching online.

I've always hated that about DS "quest lines;" even when you know they're there, you don't know what actions at which points will potentially end or continue them, i.e.: talking to person X before beating boss Y, or vice versa, has substantive consequences... maybe... perhaps... I think... I dunno.

Imagine how much more offput you’d be if the game laid all the parameters of its choices out for you from the onset. *Insert Jackie Chan confused face meme* > *uninstalls*
 
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Xprimentyl

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Imagine how much more offput you’d be if the game laid all the parameters of its choices out for you from the onset. *Insert Jackie Chan confused face meme* > *uninstalls*
Perhaps "hate" is too strong a word. I'm not so much offput as I am completely baffled by the lack of intuitive cause/effect correlations, how a seemingly innocuous action "now" somehow effects something entirely unrelated HOURS "later." Like Seigmeyer's questline; how am I to know he has to survive our final encounter with +50% health, and THEN how would I guess to return to Ash Lake, a place I might not have even found (and even if I did, there's no reason to return there,) to complete the quest?? It all just feels so random.

No, I wouldn't prefer I be TOLD what causes what, but some more sensical connectivity would be welcomed.
 

BrawlMan

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Quality of the content is separate in my opinion, I'm just talking about her motivation. They try to make her out to be an anti-hero, conflicted villain, but good enough that we empathize with her, and silently root for her to win, even if it means Spidey loses. Or, for her to finally take that last step to be a full Hero, because she's Really Not That Bad. But intentionally playing on Peter's sense of responsibility, and traumatic homelife (which I don't know if she knows about or not depending on the iteration), JUST to make money? Sorry but no. I mean she knows Peter well enough that even just mentioning a child would be enough for him to turn the city upside down to help, adding that it's maybe his is just cold and callous. Especially when she just galavants away after the reveal, laughing, and everyone just treats it like it's a funny joke.
This has become a problem in a lot of media; TV and anime especially. Anime lately seems to have complex of making anti-heroes who fail on both scales and are anti-hero in name only due to bad writing and not being intentional. Or the protagonist(s) is/are such jerks early on and you're forced to like or find sympathetic, it all fails hard. Video games have kinda gotta better about this in some regard, but it still pops up time to time. LOUS Pt. II. Though everyone is unlikeable and unsympathetic in that one.
 
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happyninja42

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This has become a problem in a lot of media; TV and anime especially. Anime lately seems to have complex of making anti-heroes who fail on both scales and are anti-hero in name only due to bad writing and not being intentional. Or the protagonist(s) is/are such jerks early on and you're forced to like or find sympathetic, it all fails hard. Video games have kinda gotta better about this in some regard, but it still pops up time to time. LOUS Pt. II. Though everyone is unlikeable and unsympathetic in that one.
Yeah, I don't mind if the whole arc is about them starting out an asshole, and learning to not be an asshole. While I've never seen it, that's the entire setup for The Emperor's New Groove, which a lot of people love. So it CAN work, if done well. And I can even empathize with a villain/anti-hero if the time is taken to justify their actions and motivations. The problem is they usually don't bother with that, so you get 1 dimensional, paper-thin motivations and rationalizations for why a bad guy is a bad guy, and I don't have any sympathy, or empathy for their situation.

It's why I really loved Scizzo from Days Gone, as his stated motivations, were NOT bad ones, though I think he was falsely framed as the villain. In fact, he very often, agreed with the protagonist, and would help him. TIme and time again, the protag would be talking with someone, and the other person wanted to do Plan A, the protag would often openly state "Plan A is a bad idea, we should do Plan B." He would be overruled, but would go along. Then Scizzo would show up and be like "hey, we both know Plan A is a bad idea (and often it WAS a bad idea), if we don't do Plan B, people will die. I know how we can get the stuff we need to do Plan B." He very rarely was trying to persuade the protag to make a choice he didn't WANT to do. More often than not, he would be "I agree, Plan B is the better plan, with fewer casualties. I want to help you do it." And then boom, into the mission where they do that. Everyone disliked him, for reasons I don't actually know why, because he never really DID anything villainous. He's introduced as being suspicious of the protag for previous actions, which, were actually entirely justified. The leader of the community Scizzo was with, had actually BANISHED the protag, because he had previously been doing shady shit, that they didn't want to participate in.
I think it's because he was your typcial "White guy gangsta" stereotype, and the protag and his best friend saw him as a poser, worthy of mockery. But, I mean they were usually on the same page about how to try and survive, and protect the community. I was genuinely annoyed when they made him go full villain, as I didn't think it was really fair, based on how he was shown acting. I mean he stated why, and in some capacity I can understand it, and it would make sense, it just felt out of left field a bit to me. He was still very well done overall.
 
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Gyrobot

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I agree with this statement from a fellow Breadtuber


We have never lived in an industry more blessed and woke despite the last 4 years being a living hell of conservatives and alt right trying to turn back the clock and fail miserably. Now we have more down to earth designs, games like Disco Elysium and TLOU2 has gone woke and became bespoke despite being dragged down ny detractors and the weebs are forced out of the PlayStation as it tries to shed it's shameful past of games like Neptunia and Criminal Girls.
 

meiam

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I agree with this statement from a fellow Breadtuber


We have never lived in an industry more blessed and woke despite the last 4 years being a living hell of conservatives and alt right trying to turn back the clock and fail miserably. Now we have more down to earth designs, games like Disco Elysium and TLOU2 has gone woke and became bespoke despite being dragged down ny detractors and the weebs are forced out of the PlayStation as it tries to shed it's shameful past of games like Neptunia and Criminal Girls.
I legit can't tell if both the tweet and the post are sarcasm or not...
 

Gyrobot

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I legit can't tell if both the tweet and the post are sarcasm or not...
It is genuine, Shaun is a known Breadtuber.

 

Phoenixmgs

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I don't think I've played a game yet where decisions and branching paths actually paid off (at least in AAA, I'm not an indie game kinda guy). Either the decisions end up not really mattering (Mass Effect) or they matter too much and you begin to feel like you're missing out by not choosing certain options (The Witcher).

I don't know, I just don't think its worth the effort at all. And these days, where the silent protagonist is rarer than ever, the effort needed is ridiculous. Just give me well crafted story and good characters, I make plenty enough bad decisions in real life.
I think you just gotta accept MAIN branching paths aren't really something that is very doable. You can do major decisions that occur on a branching path (outside the main plotline) that do affect the main plotline with minor differences. I think Mass Effect did this well most of the time. Anyone thinking the ending was going to to branch out in like a million different ways based on all your decisions was basically pie-in-the-sky thinking. You gotta bring everyone to a certain point, even GMs in pen and paper games do that. One thing I do feel you're overlooking is the role-playing of said decisions. Everyone's Shepard was different, it was their Shepard built upon all the dialogue decisions and choices along the way, it's why people were obsessed with recreating their physical appearance just right every game, it's also why people were a lot more adamant about the ending than other games with shit endings that happened that very year (like AssCred 3). You can say the same thing about the Telltale games with regards to role-playing even if they had even less illusion with regards to story choice than Mass Effect.
 
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meiam

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I think you just gotta accept MAIN branching paths aren't really something that is very doable. You can do major decisions that occur on a branching path (outside the main plotline) that do affect the main plotline with minor differences. I think Mass Effect did this well most of the time. Anyone thinking the ending was going to to branch out in like a million different ways based on all your decisions was basically pie-in-the-sky thinking. You gotta bring everyone to a certain point, even GMs in pen and paper games do that. One thing I do feel you're overlooking is the role-playing of said decisions. Everyone's Shepard was different, it was their Shepard built upon all the dialogue decisions and choices along the way, it's why people were obsessed with recreating their physical appearance just right every game, it's also why people were a lot more adamant about the ending than other games with shit endings that happened that very year (like AssCred 3). You can say the same thing about the Telltale games with regards to role-playing even if they had even less illusion with regards to story choice than Mass Effect.
So there's this weird example of branching path. In front mission 3 (PS1) in the first hour of the game your asked an innocuous question (a friend of the MC ask him to help him with some chore). Depending on how you answer this question you go down two completely different paths, each lasting close to 40 hours (essentially you play as either side in a conflict). This was possible because the game was before voice acting and didn't feature fancy cutscenes, instead doing cutscene with in game engine model.

So I think it's possible to do big difference in branch, but you need to accept big loses on things that would be time consuming for the dev to do.
 
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happyninja42

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So there's this weird example of branching path. In front mission 3 (PS1) in the first hour of the game your asked an innocuous question (a friend of the MC ask him to help him with some chore). Depending on how you answer this question you go down two completely different paths, each lasting close to 40 hours (essentially you play as either side in a conflict). This was possible because the game was before voice acting and didn't feature fancy cutscenes, instead doing cutscene with in game engine model.

So I think it's possible to do big difference in branch, but you need to accept big loses on things that would be time consuming for the dev to do.
That's the catch with multiple pathing, especially with voice work. You have to account and record all those variable dialogue options. With text games, or at least text communication, it's WAY easier to allow for tons of optional dialogue, when it's just text files, instead of hours of voice recordings with minimal variations.

Good luck getting most gamers to try and think reasonably about some negative quality in a game though. Especially ME. The level of butt hurt raging about that ending was ridiculous.
 

BrawlMan

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Gergar12

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Elders Scroll 6 will not have that many modded custom animations. Bethesda will likely use outside tools like Havok like did thy with Fallout 4 which won't stop the source code from being released but will stop many mods from being added.

There needs to be a game made from the ground up to accept mods that are 3rd person, open world, and have a good character creator.
 
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hanselthecaretaker

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I think I’m done with open world games, at least until they can do something truly revolutionary. After I finish The Witcher 3 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance, that’s it for me. These games (and certainly others...I’ve played through at least one recent Ubisoft game as well as most of Rockstar’s) are just too massive, and more importantly most of the content used to justify these worlds is too often trivial filler. It also causes some consternation considering Elden Ring, which is a game I’m really, or at least was really looking forward to. Based on what’s been said so far, I have a bad feeling FROM might just be chasing that once-lauded checkbox near the tail end of the current trend.

After pretty much exhausting RDR2 and experimenting with the limits of its massively detailed world and inhabitants, I’m not sure how much more is currently possible, or in the foreseeable future. I mean, as it is that game took Rockstar’s combined teams of over two thousand people eight years to make, and aside from often feeling bogged down in simulated minutiae the other big complaint was that it still felt limited.

From an interview -
GamesBeat: I really liked this game. I played all 105 missions. I had a colleague who felt like he wanted it to be more like Hitman 2, where you can go and do anything, tackle your target through many kinds of means. It seems to me that approach is not what you wanted to do or tried to do. Do you have a view on how you balanced this sort of directed story versus the openness of the world and the missions?

Nelson: I think all of us feel like we want to approach any situation, anything, in any way we want and have it be credible. But that’s a big, big challenge. To do that and have it feel — it’s a big world and a big story, and I think it needed to be a big world and a big story for what we set out to do. But yes, we explored a lot of different avenues early in development, like more procedural approaches to things. Hey, it’d be great if this camp could totally grow and you could hire people from towns and come back and add to your camp. We explored, at one point, if you could take anybody fishing that you wanted at any time.

But what that ended up doing was a very procedural-feeling game. You’d write a bit of dialogue, beta a bit of dialogue, and go and make these AI-type behaviors. It didn’t feel like you’re on a thing with Pearson and Bill, or you’re on a thing with Javier and John. It felt like you were on a thing with AI that just looked like those people, but they didn’t behave like those people.

Unfortunately there’s no procedural system yet that we’re happy enough with to make the worlds we make. Our worlds are handmade. Our artists will use certain procedural tools, but they’re all curated by the artists. It’s the same for the content we make. For it to make you feel anything, it has to be made by humans. It has to be written and designed and shot and acted and processed and put into place very carefully. For things that happen in the world, we have to very selectively know when they’re going to happen.

It would be great if this was all open, but people have to make this stuff happen at some point. It has to be scripted so that it all feels right. I don’t think there are procedural tools that will make it feel real.

This game largely avoided the trappings of most open worlds by making it feel lived in with everything having a sense of place. Where you can discover the free roam stuff whenever or however you wanted without being blasted with map icons or feel like the main storyline needed your constant attention. Although even for all its detail and hand crafting it still had glaring flaws in how its world operated. Random encounters often repeated themselves in odd, immersion-breaking frequency, a town you might’ve spent all night shooting up to hell reverts back to normal after sleeping or loading a save, which kinda juxtaposed the immersion factor of inhabitants remembering what you did. Things you felt like you should be able to affect were still ultimately scripted.

Which brings me back to the question of what the revolutionary alternative might be. There is currently a finite limit to what can be done in a believable way. A game’s map could be smaller while retaining an open world design, but the extra space would still need to somehow be justifiable. If Elden Ring is simply going to be Dark Souls ”now with open world!”, then I’d have to ask how that will enhance FROM’s already-proven design.
 
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Specter Von Baren

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I agree with this statement from a fellow Breadtuber


We have never lived in an industry more blessed and woke despite the last 4 years being a living hell of conservatives and alt right trying to turn back the clock and fail miserably. Now we have more down to earth designs, games like Disco Elysium and TLOU2 has gone woke and became bespoke despite being dragged down ny detractors and the weebs are forced out of the PlayStation as it tries to shed it's shameful past of games like Neptunia and Criminal Girls.
Now that IS a hot take.
 

EvilRoy

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I swear, 3D games can be great. Eventually. Right now you're pretty much going to be playing in VR to see acceptable to good games without braincrunching eyestrain. But its improving right? I own a 3DS and I hate the 3D, but I own an Oculus and I kind of like that 3D. So... come two or three more decades maybe no pain to play?
 

BrawlMan

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I swear, 3D games can be great. Eventually. Right now you're pretty much going to be playing in VR to see acceptable to good games without braincrunching eyestrain. But its improving right? I own a 3DS and I hate the 3D, but I own an Oculus and I kind of like that 3D. So... come two or three more decades maybe no pain to play?
3D will always be a niche thing, even in two or three more decades. Because at the end of the day, the common gamer just want to sit on their ass and play with a regular ass controller.
 
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EvilRoy

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3D will always be a niche thing, even in two or three more decades. Because at the end of the day, the common gamer just want to sit on their ass and play with a regular ass controller.
I'm cool with that. I fully recognize that being willing to put physical effort into playing a game is a hard sell for anybody - I was using beatsaber + wrist weights as a substantial workout for a while there and it was honest to god putting some definition on my shoulders, so its clear that this is not for chilling after work.

I just want the technology to come to a point where it doesn't hurt to use it.
 
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