Posts by Radu

Quote from Pampers

20 minutes ago, Pampers said: and what is that? and do you disagree with it?

It's the story that we got and that he specifically wanted to tell, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But it clearly isn't what the fans of the original wanted. At the end of the day, he's in charge, it's his thing and he can take it in any direction he wants, but I think he should also take into consideration what the expectations of the fans are. And it's also true that you can't make everyone happy and that some expectations are just unrealistic. However, I would say that at some point you have a responsibility to your fans. You have to acknowledge that you are where you are because they've responded positively to what you made in the past.

It's a fine line to walk between the thing you want to create and the thing people expect you to make. It doesn't mean that you have to just produce the same thing over and over and over again, but you should be careful with the important details. In this case, it was the relationship between the main characters of the original.

Take the Alien series for instance. In Aliens we got a bunch of likeable characters, some of which survive to the end, like Newt and Hicks, which interact in a meaningful way with Ripley. The relationship that develops between Ripley and Newt is very similar to the one between Joel and Ellie in TLOU. Ripley and Joel are both finding a second chance at being a parent after having lost their own child. And people responded positively to that. Now, in Alien III, the first thing that's made clear is that Newt and Hicks have died off-screen... and people that were expecting to see the dynamic between the characters evolve were left being disappointed. Which is understandable. I personally like Alien III, especially the setting, but I can understand where some people are coming from. Funny thing is they could have made Alien III be some sort of spin-off and work without Ripley at all, while making a proper continuation to Aliens.

It's not that bad, but it disregards what the fans loved about the original in order to go in a different direction that feels like the director's personal agenda. People had certain expectations for the first game's characters and to see them not being fulfilled was disappointing. I've made this comparison myself, but so have other people, Part II is what Alien III was to Aliens. There's also some bad design decisions here and there, but nothing that wouldn't have been forgiven otherwise.

If you disregard the writing, everything else is pretty much top notch. I personally think the introduction was slower than it had to be, the story only picking up 2 hours into the game, but whatever. Other people have complained about the gameplay, which for the most part has remained the same as in 2013, but with some minor improvements. Overall, on a technical level, it's a well made game.

And out of all the critics, I think IGN Japan is the most objective:

”The Last of Us Part II tries too hard to differentiate itself from its predecessor. While astonishing cityscapes and more varied combat options are great evolutions, Part II lacks the poetic serenity that made the original road-movie-like epic such a masterpiece. On top of that, uninteresting new characters burden the story, making Ellie's journey feel conventional and not nearly as captivating as the original. - 7/10"

Quote from Squad

1 hour ago, Squad said: Very cool. How does one read a game though?

Maybe the teacher will play the game in class and narrate the actions or the students will each take turns to narrate it. Live performance Bastion.

"11 bit Studios' This War of Mine will be placed on the official reading list for schools in Poland, the first video game to be recognised in that way."

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-…ls-reading-list

I wonder how the devs are doing

I feel like the hype and expectations for this game have surpassed even that of Half-Life 3

Don't mind me, just adapting my favorite meme to this particular conversation.

Quote from will2k

16 hours ago, will2k said: [Blocked Image: https://i.imgur.com/5QiPd0Y.jpg]

I see you expanded on the previous idea with the football quest. Well played, well played!

I was listening to Noah Caldwell's critique of Survival Strategy games friday at work and I just had to stop at one point when he got to Frostpunk. It sounded so good that I wanted to discover it for myself. So when I got home, I bought the thing and started playing.. and that's pretty much what I did for the entire weekend aside from some errands. The way the narrative ties into the gameplay mechanics is done so well that you genuinely stop to consider the implications a bit, even though they're just purely mechanical. And the entire experience is topped off by the music that does such a great job at capturing the atmosphere.

Noah Caldwell's commentary:

Frostpunk:

Everyone will be about Demakes then

Quote from FMPONE

1 hour ago, FMPONE said: This looks incomprehensible and unsellable. Like an extra noisy Dishonored game

Maybe I need to see more footage, but the art style doesn’t seem very appealing IMO and the footage seems pretty clunky. What is with the people in random masks? Nothing seems to fit together

This could be proven wrong, but sometimes I think Arkane gets a little too “high concept” for gamers. Sometimes it’s great like Dishonored, but in a case like this I doubt it works out.

Honestly, I disagree. I think the 60-70s aesthetic that they're going for is pretty appealing nowadays, maybe even making a comeback similar to how the 80s have. If you've followed popular media in the recent years, we've had films like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman, The Nice Guys, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. etc. And in the games industry we've got titles like Wolfenstein: The New Order & The New Colossus, as well as the old classic No One Lives Forever. So there's definitely a high appeal for this period just like there is for the 50s or 80s, each with their own quirks.

Well, the game looks cool and it's not a common concept, but I don't know if it's THAT original. Dark Souls did the invading a decade ago. Even the recent Doom Eternal had some similar feature. But it definitely stood out from the crowd. Everything else in the show looked good too, but so generic (except Little Devil Inside of course and Stray). And a shit load of particles.

There's more details on Bethesda's website: https://bethesda.net/en/article/7u3…ext-gen-details

Ah, so here it is:

Ready for the kicker? Julianna is also a playable character. While you will experience the main campaign as Colt, you also have the option to infiltrate another player’s game as Julianna and do some hunting. But keep in mind, that means someone else could be lurking in your campaign, waiting for the chance to strike. This is Arkane’s approach to an immersive multiplayer experience, where the focus is still on the main story, but there is unpredictability around every corner. “We felt this style of multiplayer, where we give people the option to play as the main antagonist, is a great way to really ramp up the level of trickery, tension, chaos and just plain unpredictability that we love in games like this,” explains Bakaba. “We feel that our game systems uniquely position us to allow for the confrontation between two players to be one not just of skill, but of wits, creativity and an open display of your personality.” If this PvP element is disabled, Julianna will still appear your game from time to time, hunting you, but she will be AI-controlled. The developers at Arkane Lyon built this system with a hybrid approach in mind. “The focus is on the campaign and the story," Bakaba says. "And that campaign can be played with Julianna controlled only by the AI, or – and this is our recommendation – by a mix of A.I. and random players to experience the range of unpredictability and chaos that Julianna is capable of." Both Colt and Julianna will have access to a powerful range of customizable weapons and abilities, and you can outfit them to suit your preferred playstyle. According to Bakaba, “While both characters will have access to some of the same main tools, there are also some major differences between their abilities. While Colt can make use of hacking devices and the possibility of returning when he dies, Julianna can take on the appearance of any NPC, and all of the island’s inhabitants are on her side. Colt is trying to accomplish his goals, whatever it takes, and Julianna is there to have fun. She wants Colt to keep playing her game. Julianna is about playing with fire and flair, and cares more about enjoying the ‘game’ than about winning every encounter.”

Sounds like the scope of the project grew past the leads experience. When you find yourself pushing onto new grounds you're gonna have to improvise a bit, which is why they probably got devs saying the project is a "total mess". People get frustrated especially once they've poured time into something only to have it changed or removed. But that's the thing with any development environment. Most often than not, things change or are scrapped. However, I think someone with a good vision and experience can help mitigate those issues.

Quote from blackdog

22 hours ago, blackdog said: Thought I recognised that long street from the other screens. I’m a bit sad, I felt by looking at screens that the previous version was coming along well, artistically.

What’s this gonna be, the architecture makes me think of Spain/Italy.

Anyways looking forward for more @Radu ✌?

*Update

Theme change, but also some layout changes based on feedback from the hubs. It's gonna be released under a new name though.

With all the Arkane news recently, I rewatched the trailer and I might have figured it out or at least here's my theory:

So the obvious things are that the day is repeating over and over, but the characters retain their memories of every day even if they die... and as stated in the trailer, one is trying to break the cycle while the other is trying to protect it. We can also see in the trailer that one of the characters learned from their previous deaths and avoided the same scenario during the next try. But if things are gonna truly change in this loop, then there have to be some means of killing other characters/targets in a permanent way.

Now, my theory is that we're gonna play as both characters, Colt and Juliana, switching between them with every repeated day and then fighting against our own playthrough similarly to like a racing game where you can see your ghost car. Imagine you go about doing a mission as Colt, making certain moves, killing certain NPCs, basically a whole sequence of events... and then you play as the other character, Juliana, and a "recording" of the previous character, Colt, is used in the world and you can plan around what you did as that character. Then, when you switch characters again, you know that you used the other character, Juliana, to kill Colt during a specific point so you then have to avoid that. It's gonna be yourself vs yourself, but it does sound complicated.

I have no idea how you would go about structuring this. However, if the two characters can disrupt certain events in the day, this is the unexpected twist that we're going to experience when playing as the other. Or maybe I read into the trailer a bit too much and it's not like that at all.

"Valve has quietly dipped its toes into the waters of cloud gaming with the beta rollout of Steam Cloud Play, which introduces GeForce Now streaming integration, but may include other services in the future. For now, it allows publishers to opt into GeForce Now streaming for their games through the Steam backend."

https://www.pcgamer.com/steam-cloud-pl…rce-now-support

Some of the comments are raising some valid concerns like:

But with both Epic and Valve now supporting GeForce Now, it will be interesting to see how this evolves.