Posts by Sentura

I think it's a good thing people are being positive, but sometimes it just seems like that video - that people are being positive even when they might not believe it

Isn't this what most people do even if they aren't paid for it? =)

Given the publisher involved I have severe doubts that anything good will come out of this.

MTG is great, but to me it's always been a staple as a draft on a boardgame evening rather than something I'd spend my free time playing. There are much better online deckbuilders out there.

wow yeah, that is a really shitty thing to do

thanks for posting, that was an awesome... I guess documentary?

Really looking forward to this, been waiting for a game set in the american heartland. Really love that setting, hoping this will be a deliverance!

Quote from blackdog

6 hours ago, blackdog said:

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Apparently there will be a written pie e as well

Without spoiling anything, feels like the new Prey took that idea and made it better

Quote from laminutederire

9 hours ago, laminutederire said: Damn 7 min and 48 seconds to complete this game. That's some insanely glitchy way of playing it. How long is this game in a normal playthrough?

Took me about 28 hours or so. I just finished it basically.

On a closing note, the game is superb at almost every level. It asks the right questions, the gameplay is some of the best, the levels and environments are solid gold. Spacing walking was great, even if rolling around made me queasy. The only thing I would say is that the game desperately needed to add more mineral resources, because even at the end game when I had tons of other resources, there was just:

Quote from [HP]

48 minutes ago, [HP] said: that talk, way to go dude!

Also, seems like this game is getting a Netflix series?!

That's... actually a good idea?!?

Quote from FMPONE

11 hours ago, FMPONE said: My criticism of the combat reminds me of all the reasons they cut the water tentacle octopus things from HL2, that they were hard to track because you lose perspective when the tentacle flies at you. The enemies in Prey are just weird to fight, but that definitely has some upsides from a horror perspective

I get what you're saying and I agree to some extent. I don't think it's great when small enemies suddenly lash out with tentacles because it seems like their hitbox changes weirdly. I still don't think I've had many cases where small enemies have been an issue, mostly because I back off a bit and shoot them instead of letting them get the better of me in melee range.

I picked up this game yesterday and it's sick. It's everything I wanted from a AAA production. Love the architecture, love the themes, loved the intro. It's really what I was hoping Dishonored 2 would be I guess.

Quote from [HP]

On 5/12/2017 at 6:52 PM, [HP] said: Really loving the game, combat's mediocre so far, but I'd say as a whole package the game really delivers!

I personally really like how combat is structured. Even on normal enemies are hard to kill, so you have to find ways around to kill them. I usually sneak up on them from behind with a shotgun and unload in stealth for the bonus damage, but sometimes even that isn't enough. I've also used turret setups to bait enemies to attack me only to get destroyed by the turret. It's more of a puzzle than going straight into it guns blazing, which is much much better than any other shooter game where combat is one dimensional.

I'm not too sure about the enemies running from you at low health, but at the same time it does add another layer of tension while you try and figure where they went so you can finish them off.

goddamn I am hype for this. Trailer was pretty dope, dunno if they took inspiration from Deus Ex but I definitely felt a vibe coming on as well. Anyway this is gonna be awesome I'm sure

Quote from KoKo5oVaR

1 hour ago, KoKo5oVaR said: That's like having the choice between aids or cancer for the second turn. I don't want to see the scam of the far right leading the country, and i was out in the street 9 months ago when Macron was minister of the economy.

I have no idea what to do.

Tempted to go vote white, or pound what will do the less damage in the long term.

come back to britain?

I could have sworn this forum was for paid work only...?

Hah, I was gonna say the anomalies from Stalker.

But really, the best environment hazard in that game (and possibly ever) is the Zone Blowouts. Global event that kills everything not in some sort of solid cover/building. The entire game world starts panicking (even NPCs!) to scramble for cover. It gives you enough time to react and find a place to hide, and sometimes add the challenge of having to fight someone for it. It's even balancable by level design by creating less or more shelter locations. It's pretty much a given that every time it happens you'll be faced with a new unique challenge because of where you are in the world. Oh and it's beautiful to watch:

Quote from (HP)

4 hours ago, (HP) said: No, I'm glad we're talking about it man, this exact same topic has been on my mind countless times before, and i do have my probs with it. It's definitely an interesting discussion to have because it delves deep into what makes these kind of games fun.

In the end of the day, it's all down to choice. In the perfect world, if you do do opt to go all the way the pacifist route, it should probably be the harder way to beat the game, but it should also be possible.

One thing both Dishonored games did really well though, better than any game in this genre is that it doesn't necessarily penalize you too much for killing one NPC. In any other game, it's usually game over, you have to restart the level.

In Dishonored, at least the first one, if you start to rack up too many kills, the game will react to it, if my memory serves me right, you had thougher enemies and more rats. If you go pacifist then the game won't do that, but it also wont ruin your game if you do need to kill a guy or two per mission. I loved that about the game, I'm not sure Dishonored 2 does that since i only played it once, but I'm assuming it does.

This obviously doesn't apply if youre going for achievements, but who cares about those anyway.

Ok... I'll bite. I think if we have to talk about choice, we need to talk about stealth.

I assume we all know why stealth matters for player choice, but just be sure: Stealth creates a playable space that the player has more options in that one where players are forced to fight. But stealth comes with certain caveats that make it an inherently flawed mechanic. For instance, once you break stealth, getting back into a stealth state becomes near impossible, or at the very least time consuming, making things like save-scumming a more attractive choice for players. Most stealth games, perhaps with the possible exception of Hitman seem to encourage save-scumming, which I don't necessarily think is a good way forward. Why? Because save and load are meta actions that take players out of the game and push them out of being immersed in the game.

I think stealth is the reason designers have had to come up with the "powers" in the Dishonored series, as a means to get around breaking stealth at inopportune moments - but I think this approach is flawed because instead of allowing players to focus on understanding their own mistakes (e.g. what made them break stealth), it only allows players to deal with the situation that arises from breaking stealth. Usually that solution leads to killing/subduing the NPC that spotted you before any alarms are raised. It also causes other issues to arise, such as letting the player become vastly overpowered - which is the same as removing the fun of being challenged in the game. Because if you can solve almost every situation with a bullet (lethality optional), where does the challenge come from?

I kind of understand why the game was designed with this intention: It's attempting to hit the biggest demographic of players. Most players want to let loose with an arsenal, even if they make use of stealth a lot of the time. It's a kind of reward for being quiet all the time. Meanwhile, the players who would like to play the game on a "true" ghost setting (e.g., no friendly/enemy NPC interaction, no spots) are probably <1% of the playerbase, so it doesn't make sense from a financial and time perspective to account for them. Which is probably why the choices were eliminated.

Personally I think if the choices were there and stealth had better support for staying hidden without killing or subduing NPCs (for instance by cancelling out being detected), I think more people would attempt to stay stealthy, simply because it would offer a more reasonable challenge, with better pacing built into the mechanic. If you get spotted you aren't forced to reload the game or fight, but you can revert to your previous state and be a bit more catious for a while. Naturally that would also require the level design to follow suit and remake the spaces to fit this type of sandbox gameplay. Which is another topic in itself, and another production time reason we won't be seeing any changes to the gameplay in the next Dishonored... or for that matter, in most future stealth games.

I honestly didn't intend to start a discussion on this, the point of what a ghost playstyle is at best tangential to my gripes about the game.

Quote from (HP)

1 hour ago, (HP) said: You trying to beat the game without even using darts? I think you'd need some serious OCD and patience to do that lol, but it sounds feasible.

I think you're trying to use a way to play this game that it's not very fun and you're blaming the game for it. The game allows you to do that, but let's be honest even tho I'm sure the game was designed to let you do that, if you're not having fun doing it just play the game differently. I always do this in these kind of games (deusex, dishonored, etc) I start out sneaking then eventually I amassed such a bad-ass arsenal on me it'd be a shame not to use it! xD

EDIT: Accidentally posted too fast.

It's not so much a question of using darts or not using darts, it's more a question of considering nonlethal takedowns to still be too much - because really, what is the difference between killing a NPC or knocking them out in-game? The game might register them differently, but on the whole they're essentially the same type of playstyle.

Ideally a "ghost" playstyle should be not touching any NPCs (unless they are your objective) at any point. As far as I remember, this was possible in DX:HR and in the first Deus Ex. I even remember playing it like this in the newest Splinter Cell. I also remember playing the first Dishonored similarly, albeit with powers - so maybe you do need powers to be able to play like that.

I did cede and started to do nonlethal takedowns though, because I realized they probably took ghost to mean nonlethal takedowns. In the scenario I mentioned, I would have used sleeping darts if I had them available or if I could have found any in the area I was stuck in. I stuck around for a while and explored as much as I could, but there weren't any available and I had none left. In either case though, being forced into a playstyle like this - doesn't it basically break the game's promise of being able to play it your own way?

Quote from grapen

17 minutes ago, grapen said: No kills at all. Except mosquitoes. Those fuckers doesn't count

Sleep darts and generally just hiding in high up places. There are a lot of ledges and stuff that I imagine most players never even see.

Right ok, but you had to use sleep darts or knocking people unconscious (as in, nonlethal takedowns) to get through

Quote from grapen

9 minutes ago, grapen said: I finished the game with 100% ghost and 100% pacifist on no power mode. It is designed to be solved that way.

What i'm referring to is that I got stuck because I choose an initial path that lead me nowhere despite leading to a separate area, then basically closing the door on me once I went in. I get that you did something different, but that's not the point here. The point is getting stuck and having to get out by breaking playstyle in a game that rides on the mantra that every playstyle is possible isn't a situation that should happen. Even in the case that there was one specific solution for this type of playstyle, is almost not enough, because a game like this needs multiple ways to get through areas with multiple playstyles. If you have just one way of getting through with one specific playstyle then it's basically linear gameplay. I get that you experience with the game was positive, but that doesn't mean mine magically gets better with you telling me about it.

But I do have one question: By pacifist, does this mean you didn't perform any nonlethal takedowns whatsoever? I did complete the first few missions with ghost, but I had to do nonlethal takedowns in some situations to avoid getting spotted or use certain paths - again something I would have liked to avoid, but didn't seem possible.