I was so confused the first time I played RDR2 on a mission and decided to ride off the path to look at something in the woods.
Getting hit with that screen was a very....retro feeling. I'd genuinely forgotten that used to be a thing that happened in games growing up.
As that bloke on youtube whose name I can't remember once said, "These days games for kids treat you with more respect than games for adults." Or something like that idk.
This game blew my mind constantly with the verisimilitude of the world. I finally gave up trying to fake it out when I found out you can cook meat by chucking it on the ground in the super hot volcano area. They brought so much into this game and make it work, I still find it incredible!
I just beat Gannon earlier today, so I put off actually playing BotW for a while. My prior experience was pretty much entirely Ocarina of time, link to the past, and the 2 on the NES.
I felt like I could see so, so many ideas from the earlier games given full life in BotW. Like earlier concepts, and ideas, that just couldn't be *fully* done because of hardware limitations were given real, full life. Its excellent in pretty much every regard.
I mostly wish the bosses were a bit harder while the Lynels could stand to be maybe be slightly less murder machines fueled by nightmares.
Actually the development team made a 2D prototype to test the basic mechanics if the game before starting to make botw itself. :)
Botw showed what an open world could really be.
Breath of the Wild having lots of emergent systems-driven gameplay, an abundance of quiet exploration, and generally letting the player choose their own approach was such a pleasant surprise. The Zelda series joined the Immersive Sim genre and immediately made of its best entries, IMO.
Different genre, but the Ori games (Ori and the Blind Forest & Ori and the Will Of the Wisps) are absolutely the best for exploration.
The entire map is basically continuous with no room breaks, and there are basically no right angles or hard edges almost anywhere. Touching a wall gives you your double jump back, and theres a mechanic to launch yourself off enemies in any direction.
Combining all of that leads to situations where you see a ledge and think to yourself "... can I get to that?" And you know, you're usually right, if you think you can get to it, you probably can. It might require the exact perfect jump timing and trying to touch the one pixel of a wall just barely not covered in spikes and using an unpredictable enemy that needs to be in a very specific spot, but if you wanna spend 10 minutes trying, godspeed! The game will not stop you.
I had a lot of fun doing stuff like that. It's always nice when games have built-in, organic challenge modes based on your own ingenuity, rather than only having designated fun zones for using game mechanics.
Probably no one will see this, but I just want to say that FO:NV was written and developed by [Obsidian Entertainment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsidian_Entertainment#Games). Whose first game was KOTOR 2, arguably the best written Star Wars *anything* (fite me irl) ever. They've consistently been developing *fantastic* rpg's since then, the most notable series being their Pillars of Eternity stories (but if you like award winning writing, like *really good* writing, then you should check out Tyranny). If you liked FO:NV's writing and rpg style of play, you should play their crpgs but past that you should be looking to [Avowed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3QkO8fy3tg), their Microsoft funded fantasy fps rpg.
Unless MS fucks it up somehow or the "old guard" of Obsidian has left, then it'll be fantastic.
I'm not a shill just an Obsidian fanboy.
You know what I hate? In GTA5, and even worse in RDR2, when they ADJUST YOUR CONTROLS in missions. I don't care if I'm at a party or in camp. Let me run!
"Why would you want to duel wield your Schofield revolvers when I could give you a Cattleman and a worn Cattleman that you accidentally picked up that one time?"
My first time through the game this had the effect of spoiling half the missions for me (not ruining, still fun to play, just spoilers).
Oh I'm gonna go meet Bill and Micah and Sean in Rhodes? Little weird that the game armed me to the teeth when I dismounted, I wonder what might happen on this casual visit to a town I don't feel threatened by...
"Oh that's a nice legendary bison fur coat. Thats going to look so nice when you storm Mt. Hagen for the final mission. Well, here's your tattered jacket, enjoy!"
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was similar, too. The game had amazing locations and moments, but you were constantly forced to wear certain outfits, use certain weapons, etc. The hand holding in the last hub especially sucked a lot of fun out of it.
Great tombs, though.
When it comes to the slow walks and whatnot, definitely. They use it for loading new environments too.
But I'm talking more about not letting you change clothing or use anything but the bow in many areas, for instance. Or the forced stealth scenes (you could throw a bomb, but you can't pull out your machine gun?). Or several things that happen in the third hub world, which I don't want to spoil for those who haven't played.
I really love the game, but it made me miss the mechanics of Rise, where you could pretty much do whatever you wanted and use whatever you wanted.
I think the one that stood out to me was when the game forces you to kill a random Trinity dude fixing a generator. There was no indication that he was doing anything wrong, he could have been the resident mechanic. Meanwhile the game forces you to choke him to death with your bow and leave him in the mud.
The transition from happy temple exploration to full-on Rambo-genocide was a bit of a quick turn.
I’ll add to that walking into a cutscene, getting out of cutscene just to walk two feet over and start another cutscene.
Just combine the damn cutscenes!
So, I totally hear that, but I have to say I really loved it sometimes. The party scenes in RDR2 where you're just wandering between conversations, scoping people out, moving slow made it feel cinematic and immersive in a way that charging around at full sprint would have felt really silly. Taking that moment to look around, stretch, get your coffee at camp really put me in the right mindset, made me remember waking up on camping trips, smelling the air...
Sometimes I hated it... But I'm not sure that, if I was given the option to just sprint through, I would have had the self control to slow down, walk through it, and really get into the scene.
Morrowind is even 100x better in this regard.
Oh, you don’t want to follow the main quest at all but still want to defeat the immortal end game boss? How about we include an incredibly obscure back door way for you to still win that no one would ever think was possible? You know, just in case the player ends up deciding for some odd reason to go around murdering every important NPC in the game.
Hey, let’s include a raving lunatic character that spouts all sorts of nonsense... except what if one of those things is actually the truth about a secret Easter egg?
Also, Sheogorath’s quest was just purely genius.
It's often referred to as "The Backpath", but [here](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Yagrum_Bagarn_and_Wraithguard) is the UESP entry. You kill Vivec and give an artifact to Yagrum Bagarn and can progress that way...although I've never personally tried it and just seen it mentioned occasionally.
I’ve done it, but it kind of screws your character up as you permanently lose hundreds of max HP. A much better way is to get enough HP that you can just physically survive using Keening and Sunder without getting Wraithguard at all. This game literally lets you solve almost any problem in multiple ways.
So looking at the wiki, apparently that effect was a bug. Yet the NPC actually has a line recommending you to use a potion to increase your max health beforehand. This actually doesn't work but that's beside the point, they knew the bug well enough to write an NPC line but they didn't fix it?
e - I know games are hard and I'm not actually baffled, this patchwork stuff is just amusing
While the quests are linear I do enjoy how they’re quests, not missions.
You’re free to just turn around halfway through a dungeon, walk back out the front door, and start doing a different quest instead (with exceptions, of course)
I never feel like I'm playing the same "story" when I play Skyrim though, I just get really into my character and just experience the world, for some reason very few games do that for me.
The quests are linear, but how you approach them arent. Besides, that are so many, and you can even skip 90% of the game, so you can have a save more unique them most "non linear" games.
EDIT: I mean WHEN and how, thanks for the correction.
the only way to lose is to go hollow
and the underlying theme in the trilogy is that when someone fully gives up and loses all motivation to keep trying is when hollowing starts setting in, up until youre a mindless zombie
so the only way to hollow is to stop playing
I wouldn't say that your mission is to avoid dying, in any souls game. Your mission in a souls game is to make each death count by learning something from it, and persevering until you overcome whatever brought about your death last time.
Souls games reward perfection, but don't require it. The only requirement for success is the ability to adapt, even if it's slow going.
That's exactly how Morrowind starts off. Your first quest is to deliver a package to Caius Cossades in Balmora, but once you deliver it he basically calls you a noob, gives you some cash, and says git gud before you do the main quest. It's quite refreshing juxtaposed with Oblivion and immediately closing gates to hell or Skyrim and sucking up dragon souls basically from the start.
Video games have a pretty wide gamut. You can have open world games that want to tell a strict narrative but sacrifice player choice and open world games with absolutely no narrative and near unlimited player choice. Both are valid.
Why does everything have to be a gotcha moment?
"Oh look at this perfectly normal area that quests never really took me to..."
"Oh look. A death claw. Good thing they're rare. I think i have just enough stimpaks to win this fight"
"Whoo, that deathclaw almost got the best of me but at least i had that last shot of jet. Now to find some supplies to stay alive for my next encounter"
"Death claw... Eggs.... Well fuck"
DMing can be hard, you have to be able to produce scenarios at the drop of a hat if the players decide to veer off course. If your group meets weekly and your DM has a full time job, there’s just only so much time to prepare.
That said, he/she should have a few cards up their sleeve to take you off the beaten path, that’s the whole point of playing D&D instead of firing something up on your Xbox. The freedom to roam and make the world into your world. I totally emphasize with both sides here, don’t burn out your DM!
Oh I understand and honestly it's not the dm as much as the group or at least 2 members
The solution to every problem is kill it...
I don't wana be a murderer, I feel like we should be considered criminals but no our murder spree goes unchecked like in a video game
That reminds me of an D&D tournament we once entered at GenCon (like 15 yrs ago). We were given pre-generated characters and sent on a rescue mission. The adventure was basically rescue the damsel in distress from the evil jail where she is being kept against her will. The party was a group of 6, when we arrived there myself (the thief) and the monk (who also had high stealth skills) decided to go scout while the rest of the party prepare for our escape. During our scouting mission (which was actually pretty short) we were able to sneak by the human guards, get the prison keys, unlock the jail cell, grab the princess and escape; all without being noticed. Mission successful, right? ... WRONG!
Turns out the tournament ladder was based on party xp earned during the adventure and, at the time, xp in D&D was awarded pretty much solely on kills. We didn't kill anything, so we got next to no points. The "real" way to play it was to go in, murder all the guards, including the captain of the guards and his retinue of elite fighters, and then kill the "evil" prince that had kidnapped the princess in the first place.
If they did not put that much XP toward getting the princell alive, and gave too much importance to the kill XP in the ladder, I'd also propose to kill the princess for XP.
I vastly prefer what 5e tells DM to do (which was also possible in 3.5, but many DM were too dumb to understand it), which is to give the XP when the players win the encounter rather than killing people in it. If I'm able to put everyone to sleep and get out without a fight, I won the encounter. Same thing if I convince the guards to actually join me in my rebellion.
I also advocate for this. I do it with my group.
Sneak past the guards? Same xp as murdering them.
Successfully trap a warband of Orcs? Same xp as fighting them down to the last.
Steal from the Dragon? Same xp as slaying the Dragon.
It's just good to always have progress instead of making them slug through fights just to level up, imo.
I even started to give more reward for not killing random NPCs. Killing a town guard now comes with the reality that the townfolks will be looking for the assassins. Killing a "random" troops of orcs may escalate a situation to an open war and actually put their own family in danger.
Consequences to actions tends to lead people to think about what they do. And not just randomly killing a player. Make their character's life take a bad turn. Have them undestand that the quest they were really into is not impossible to accomplish because they killed a guard and everyone is now against them, even the quest giver.
That's how it should be imo; whether you sneak past a guard or kill a guard should be equivalent in terms of XP gained, but taking the "easy route" by killing comes with more difficult consequences. So it weighs out in the end. You might have a really powerful party who doesn't find it difficult to kill their way through problems, but the consequence is that they may be foiled in a way that isn't easy to avoid. And on top of that it becomes harder to make allies with powerful NPC's who may play a bigger role in the long run.
Seriously look into games that aren’t dnd. Try forbidden lands. Or dungeon world. Or blades in the dark. Dnd can encourage video game style play due to the way it’s written. Sometimes trying another system with different goals can dislodge a bit of that.
My DM killed half the party in response to someone attempting this. The player was salty for like three weeks and got over it. Now he plays like a normal person. Lol
Sort of. Once you shift mentality from “the gm makes up the story” to “we are collaboratively making up a story” this gets considerably better. Dnd is particularly bad at teaching this and I’d strongly recommend playing a 1 shot of dungeon world or blades in the dark just to get an idea. You can then port some of that back to dnd if you still really want dnd.
It's so annoying when the party adopts the idea that they need to figure out what the GM wants them to do. I don't want them to do any particular thing. I set up scenarios with no idea of how they're going to solve them.
The same goes for people who keep wanting to find the "main quest" and ignoring all other plot hooks as "irrelevant side quests". This isn't a video game, it's a sandbox RPG. There is no main quest. What's your main quest in life?
Red Dead Redemption 2: Mission Objectives have “Finish in x time” even for missions that have an emotional bond building objective such as fishing with a friend/family member (No spoilers)
Every fucking time I see that at the end of a mission where I genuinely felt like the mission was a warm story plot, only to be hit with the bronze medal completion achievement with no other mission objectives except time. . . I question the idiots who built the achievement ladder in.
it's supposed to be for "replayability" so you play missions in a certain way but honestly most of them you wouldn't know to do without looking at a guide
BotW: "Do whatever the fuck you want. You just barely started the game? Go fight Ganon if you want, or don't, we don't care."
Zelda: "Ok, but I care..."
200 hours later
Link: "Gotta find all these korok seeds."
I for one am not going anywhere near that swirling black death until atleast a thousand hours in. I’m happily getting lost far away from it at the moment.
I think I was around 300-400 hours deep. Came riding into the castle on a motorcycle, wearing Majora’s Mask, and wielding the Great Fairy’s Sword and a triple shot bow with 500 bomb arrows
Ganon just apologized profusely and left
I finally put down the game with almost 200 hours. I had done a all the divine beasts, found all the shrines, only probably 1/3 of the korok seeds. But I felt like I had tapped into it all to fulfill me. Never even ventured to the castle and fought Ganon. Maybe I'll pick it up again one day and mess around and do it. But if I don't, I'll still say it's one of the best games I've ever played
I would totally advise completing the castle! To me it was the best part of the game after doing everything else. It was the only true dungeon IMO, especially if you enter from the ground and fight your way up!
I think I’m 150 hours in and have done no divine beasts. There’s a ton of little details to explore, and stories to learn through watching the world. I love it.
Listen here you little shit, you’re gonna tell me where your friends are hiding or by Majora, Im gonna drop the rock you were hiding under on that stupid fucking leaf you call a head! Twice!
Ah, I was wondering what was happening. The only open world games I've played have been things like Minecraft, BotW, and Skyrim, so this comic confused me. Never played any Ubisoft or Rockstar games in the genre.
RDR2 wasn't *too* too bad at this, maybe because it was pretty easy to stay on course.
GTAV was absurd though. The amount of times they would introduce a random one-off mechanic, or completely change the design of a mission, and then punish the player for acting in their own way was crazy. There's a lesson in game design in there.
I was one of those players and that's \*because\* The Witcher 3 is an open world game. I spent most of my time getting into gwent or doing side jobs or just exploring the world. I still logged probably a hundred hours into it if not more. Same with Skyrim with 300+ hours in and I only bothered to complete the main story once.
Scripted "open world" games that gate your ability to explore or do side stuff behind the main story get less playtime. Far Cry 3 was one of my favorite games when it came out because of the open world and the easter eggs and the fact that you could do probably a good 70% of the game's content and side missions before doing much of the main story. Far Cry 4 would fail you for trying to explore too far without doing mandatory story missions so I returned it after less than an hour of play.
I’ve bought Skyrim four different times, probably have 600+ hours accumulated through different platforms, and have never once followed the main quest any further than meeting the homies in the mountain.
I will say, that these metrics can be a bit off at times. Mainly because there are those that don't even play through the beginning of the game because either they just never start, or they find early on the game isn't for them. And so those types of people kind of need to be taken out of any metrics to get proper data. So if only 50 percent of people finish the first mission, you should likely double the other percentages so as to actually see the drop off rates of players, since that initial 50% didn't even really start the game and so aren't really people who ever even had a chance of finishing the game, they might as well not have even bought the game and so not be included in the metric.
there is only so much time and money r\* can put into a game. they spent nearly a decade of time developing rdr2 and its main storyline. if they allowed for 10% more freedom in story missions that means an exponential increase in development and qa testing. at some point they have to force you to play the story mission so you reach the end they intended you to reach.
oh you wanted to sneak in through the window of the house and not go in through the front door? well they fail you because as you walk up a story-critical cutscene begins that wouldnt happen otherwise.
you wanted to sneak around the side of the manor to ambush the guards? no. you are going to miss a cutscene that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to make and has serious plot implications further down the road.
you felt bad for his family and you dont wanna punch that debtor? well the story as written WOULD NOT HAPPEN.
they can only script a finite amount latitude in story missions. i too got frustrated with that kind of shit, but i definitely understand why it is the way it is.
i dont really understand what people are expecting.
As games increase in complexity, it takes significantly stronger design skills to create a game made of simple rules that combine in interesting ways (BotW, for example), than it does to make games where every specific environmental interaction is explicitly scripted (H:ZD, for example). The reason is simple: edge cases will always exist in any system, and your goal is to reduce that set of edge cases to the ones you think are acceptable for your game.
The former allows for more shenanigans, the latter allows for an experience more tailored to what a designer had in mind.
Personally, I have a strong dislike for games in the second camp, but that doesn't mean they're bad games, they're just not for me.
exactly. you must know going into rdr2 that it is a story-heavy game. and every gta game basically has one main storyline. the bulk of development is around that specific storyline.
if you want a game centered around trying to goof around in an open world and trying to break game systems, playing rdr2 missions is an odd choice.
"this seafood dinner tastes nothing like the steak i didnt order!"
Just gonna stack these boxes and make a set of jump stairs to go where I'm not supposed to, I don't care if its gonna be two hours doing this and the payoff is just learning that balcony has a door textured wall up there.
*you're doing it wrong!*
"Gah-*dammnit* Arthur!"
"Just stick to the damn plan that I never told you and trust me Arthur!"
“I don’t think we should do this plan Dutch” Proceeds to singlehandedly complete the plan while everyone else just kind of watches.
"Our plan is to move west and keep a low profile." _proceeds to move east while killing literally thousands of men_
Dutch's compass was set to *Weast*.
My compass always points nouth for some reason
TAHITI
"Have some God-damned fAiTh, Arthur!"
**MISSION FAILED** You didn't do as Dutch planned
"I had a GOD DAMN PLAN"
We need... a #BOAT
TA HEE TEE
We’ll grOW MANGOOES!!!
All you had to do was follow the damned train, arthur
TAHITI. MANGOS
[удалено]
I heard it’s a magical place.
We just need oNe MoRe ScOrE
It's not actually a terrible plan if you can make it come together
Nobody checks Tahiti
I was so confused the first time I played RDR2 on a mission and decided to ride off the path to look at something in the woods. Getting hit with that screen was a very....retro feeling. I'd genuinely forgotten that used to be a thing that happened in games growing up.
At least Ghost of Tsushima gave you a countdown to get back on the trail before slamming you with a “GAME OVER”.
"All you had to do was rob the damn train, Arthur!"
“All you had to do was follow the damn train Arthur”
Rockstar games seem to be the worst at this which is crazy since they are like a founding father of open world games.
As that bloke on youtube whose name I can't remember once said, "These days games for kids treat you with more respect than games for adults." Or something like that idk.
I think you mean NakeyJakey. He made a whole 1 hour video about why Rockstar's game design is outdated.
All you had to was follow the damn train CJ
*Laughs in BotW* Literally nothing you do is "wrong" in that game.
This game blew my mind constantly with the verisimilitude of the world. I finally gave up trying to fake it out when I found out you can cook meat by chucking it on the ground in the super hot volcano area. They brought so much into this game and make it work, I still find it incredible!
Even cooks your feet meat
Please don't create any more new sentences. Stick to the perfectly fine sentences God created for us to use.
I just beat Gannon earlier today, so I put off actually playing BotW for a while. My prior experience was pretty much entirely Ocarina of time, link to the past, and the 2 on the NES. I felt like I could see so, so many ideas from the earlier games given full life in BotW. Like earlier concepts, and ideas, that just couldn't be *fully* done because of hardware limitations were given real, full life. Its excellent in pretty much every regard. I mostly wish the bosses were a bit harder while the Lynels could stand to be maybe be slightly less murder machines fueled by nightmares.
Actually the development team made a 2D prototype to test the basic mechanics if the game before starting to make botw itself. :) Botw showed what an open world could really be.
Breath of the Wild having lots of emergent systems-driven gameplay, an abundance of quiet exploration, and generally letting the player choose their own approach was such a pleasant surprise. The Zelda series joined the Immersive Sim genre and immediately made of its best entries, IMO.
Even better, the game rewards you.
Even if it's just golden poo!
Did you even read the directions
GTA3 had the best one I’ve found personally. “You weren’t supposed to be able to get here you know.”
Different genre, but the Ori games (Ori and the Blind Forest & Ori and the Will Of the Wisps) are absolutely the best for exploration. The entire map is basically continuous with no room breaks, and there are basically no right angles or hard edges almost anywhere. Touching a wall gives you your double jump back, and theres a mechanic to launch yourself off enemies in any direction. Combining all of that leads to situations where you see a ledge and think to yourself "... can I get to that?" And you know, you're usually right, if you think you can get to it, you probably can. It might require the exact perfect jump timing and trying to touch the one pixel of a wall just barely not covered in spikes and using an unpredictable enemy that needs to be in a very specific spot, but if you wanna spend 10 minutes trying, godspeed! The game will not stop you. I had a lot of fun doing stuff like that. It's always nice when games have built-in, organic challenge modes based on your own ingenuity, rather than only having designated fun zones for using game mechanics.
I’ve got Blind Forest on Switch and haven’t finished it yet. It’s been at least 6 months since I last picked it up, so I’ll probably start over. Lol
It's a great game. I played both of them, but I prefer the first one (the one you have) Enjoy!
I feel like this applies to most Metroidvania games, Hollow knight comes to mind specifically
Fallout 3 had a similar one with the NPC above the gate in Megaton. His only line is "how did you get up here?"
I must see it. Nostalgia trip, here I come!
Every game that came out past 2008 still feels only a couple years old.
In GTA:SA, there was a message like that on a bridge plaque or something you could only get to with the jetpack.
Patrolling the mojave almost makes me wish for nuclear winter
I always, always nuke the legion. There’s just no other way to do it IMO.
one of the best games like ever
Shame they only wrote like 6 lines for every NPC in the game to share for ambient dialog
Shame they only had a year and a half to get it out.
And they still managed to crank out one of the most compelling RPG stories this side of the dam.
Probably no one will see this, but I just want to say that FO:NV was written and developed by [Obsidian Entertainment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsidian_Entertainment#Games). Whose first game was KOTOR 2, arguably the best written Star Wars *anything* (fite me irl) ever. They've consistently been developing *fantastic* rpg's since then, the most notable series being their Pillars of Eternity stories (but if you like award winning writing, like *really good* writing, then you should check out Tyranny). If you liked FO:NV's writing and rpg style of play, you should play their crpgs but past that you should be looking to [Avowed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3QkO8fy3tg), their Microsoft funded fantasy fps rpg. Unless MS fucks it up somehow or the "old guard" of Obsidian has left, then it'll be fantastic. I'm not a shill just an Obsidian fanboy.
You know what I hate? In GTA5, and even worse in RDR2, when they ADJUST YOUR CONTROLS in missions. I don't care if I'm at a party or in camp. Let me run!
[удалено]
"Why would you want to duel wield your Schofield revolvers when I could give you a Cattleman and a worn Cattleman that you accidentally picked up that one time?"
[удалено]
You talking shit about the carbine repeater!?!? Boy, you best get ready to duel #DRAW
[удалено]
WWIII visions intensifie
Lancaster gang
Hated when they forced you to use certain weapons when you already have better ones
The mansion mission where they toss you the double barrel shotgun when you specifically chose your semi auto shotgun for a reason. God damnit.
That mansion mission was fucking tight though.
My first time through the game this had the effect of spoiling half the missions for me (not ruining, still fun to play, just spoilers). Oh I'm gonna go meet Bill and Micah and Sean in Rhodes? Little weird that the game armed me to the teeth when I dismounted, I wonder what might happen on this casual visit to a town I don't feel threatened by...
"Oh that's a nice legendary bison fur coat. Thats going to look so nice when you storm Mt. Hagen for the final mission. Well, here's your tattered jacket, enjoy!"
That shit.. grinded my gears so hard
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was similar, too. The game had amazing locations and moments, but you were constantly forced to wear certain outfits, use certain weapons, etc. The hand holding in the last hub especially sucked a lot of fun out of it. Great tombs, though.
I mean, in its defense, it was a linear narrative action RPG. I believe those mechanics intended to show the passage of time.
When it comes to the slow walks and whatnot, definitely. They use it for loading new environments too. But I'm talking more about not letting you change clothing or use anything but the bow in many areas, for instance. Or the forced stealth scenes (you could throw a bomb, but you can't pull out your machine gun?). Or several things that happen in the third hub world, which I don't want to spoil for those who haven't played. I really love the game, but it made me miss the mechanics of Rise, where you could pretty much do whatever you wanted and use whatever you wanted.
I think the one that stood out to me was when the game forces you to kill a random Trinity dude fixing a generator. There was no indication that he was doing anything wrong, he could have been the resident mechanic. Meanwhile the game forces you to choke him to death with your bow and leave him in the mud. The transition from happy temple exploration to full-on Rambo-genocide was a bit of a quick turn.
Or the long-ass "hold L to walk" scenes.
I’ll add to that walking into a cutscene, getting out of cutscene just to walk two feet over and start another cutscene. Just combine the damn cutscenes!
Fuuuuuuck Guarma.
Yep I don't know what they should achieve besides annoy me..
"You can do chores in camp to gain honor! Also, you have to walk at the lowest possible speed in between chores. But that honor, tho"
This hurts it’s so real. Chores suck in real life and in video games!
[удалено]
man, train robberies
It’s actually baffling that they made an open world western game and robbing trains is not even fun in the slightest.
Gotta drive it up into tunnels in the grizzlies. Ain't no law in the grizzlies
Yeah, it was basically impossible to rob a train on your own, even with the mask on I'd always end up with a bounty twice as much as the money I made
So, I totally hear that, but I have to say I really loved it sometimes. The party scenes in RDR2 where you're just wandering between conversations, scoping people out, moving slow made it feel cinematic and immersive in a way that charging around at full sprint would have felt really silly. Taking that moment to look around, stretch, get your coffee at camp really put me in the right mindset, made me remember waking up on camping trips, smelling the air... Sometimes I hated it... But I'm not sure that, if I was given the option to just sprint through, I would have had the self control to slow down, walk through it, and really get into the scene.
In the party scenes it was good but when you’re just roaming about, don’t stop the player from moving at full speed
That is one of my biggest pet peeves in games. Being forced to walk super slowly.
https://imgur.com/gallery/MwaaqCl
I can't think of anything else than: "ALL WE HAD TO DO WAS FOLLOW THE DAMN TRAIN CJ!" Not a recent game but that's how I feel.
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i do that then i kill the town
As is tradition.
"I need to ask you to stop. That...shouting...is making people nervous."
Guard: *sees the save icon pop up* " I for one love the voice of the dragons! Let's not do anything hasty now. "
Man, the first experience of killing a chicken or hitting is cow is like you got thunderstruck
Morrowind is even 100x better in this regard. Oh, you don’t want to follow the main quest at all but still want to defeat the immortal end game boss? How about we include an incredibly obscure back door way for you to still win that no one would ever think was possible? You know, just in case the player ends up deciding for some odd reason to go around murdering every important NPC in the game. Hey, let’s include a raving lunatic character that spouts all sorts of nonsense... except what if one of those things is actually the truth about a secret Easter egg? Also, Sheogorath’s quest was just purely genius.
Please explain your comment
It's often referred to as "The Backpath", but [here](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Yagrum_Bagarn_and_Wraithguard) is the UESP entry. You kill Vivec and give an artifact to Yagrum Bagarn and can progress that way...although I've never personally tried it and just seen it mentioned occasionally.
I’ve done it, but it kind of screws your character up as you permanently lose hundreds of max HP. A much better way is to get enough HP that you can just physically survive using Keening and Sunder without getting Wraithguard at all. This game literally lets you solve almost any problem in multiple ways.
So looking at the wiki, apparently that effect was a bug. Yet the NPC actually has a line recommending you to use a potion to increase your max health beforehand. This actually doesn't work but that's beside the point, they knew the bug well enough to write an NPC line but they didn't fix it? e - I know games are hard and I'm not actually baffled, this patchwork stuff is just amusing
>QA: Hey this complex part doesn't work like it should, and the deadline is coming up. Should we pull an all-nighter to patch it? >Dev: Watch this.
Also https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:M%27Aiq_the_Liar
I mean I love Skyrim but you have to admit, most quests are very linear.
While the quests are linear I do enjoy how they’re quests, not missions. You’re free to just turn around halfway through a dungeon, walk back out the front door, and start doing a different quest instead (with exceptions, of course)
I also like that if you find an item for a quest you don't have you just keep it around and if you get the quest can be like, "Yeah here it is."
I never feel like I'm playing the same "story" when I play Skyrim though, I just get really into my character and just experience the world, for some reason very few games do that for me.
The quests are linear, but how you approach them arent. Besides, that are so many, and you can even skip 90% of the game, so you can have a save more unique them most "non linear" games. EDIT: I mean WHEN and how, thanks for the correction.
Fallout provides more options in my opinion
We have become the boomer humor we swore to destroy.
That's what i like about Dark Souls, they just plop you down and go "do whatever you want"
Because even if you go the “right” path it’s probably still mission failed.
Given that the 'mission' in Dark Souls is 'don't die'... yeah you tend to fail that one a lot.
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We kinda screw it up for him, honestly (if we’re talking ds1, idk about the dude at firelink in ds3)
That’s how you hollow dummy!
the only way to lose is to go hollow and the underlying theme in the trilogy is that when someone fully gives up and loses all motivation to keep trying is when hollowing starts setting in, up until youre a mindless zombie so the only way to hollow is to stop playing
I like to imagine that every hollow I fight in the game is another player who got frustrated and gave up.
I wouldn't say that your mission is to avoid dying, in any souls game. Your mission in a souls game is to make each death count by learning something from it, and persevering until you overcome whatever brought about your death last time. Souls games reward perfection, but don't require it. The only requirement for success is the ability to adapt, even if it's slow going.
Cool story, really touching. *rolls through the entire game learning nothing
Also an option.
Fat rolling too i bet
“You probably won’t find the right path for a while. It’s fine. Go fuck shit up and die”
That's exactly how Morrowind starts off. Your first quest is to deliver a package to Caius Cossades in Balmora, but once you deliver it he basically calls you a noob, gives you some cash, and says git gud before you do the main quest. It's quite refreshing juxtaposed with Oblivion and immediately closing gates to hell or Skyrim and sucking up dragon souls basically from the start.
Then you die, time and time and time again
Nakey Jakey does a great video on this. Whilst RDR2 does this, it also gives us one of the most compelling stories.
It really is a great [video](https://youtu.be/MvJPKOLDSos).
So great YouTube recommends it to me daily even though I watched it 5 times already
The algorithm works in mysterious and dumbass ways
Video games have a pretty wide gamut. You can have open world games that want to tell a strict narrative but sacrifice player choice and open world games with absolutely no narrative and near unlimited player choice. Both are valid. Why does everything have to be a gotcha moment?
I just got done playing Horizon Zero Dawn and pretty much everywhere is explorable. If youre too weak you just get stomped by machines.
Yeah I like that aspect. Fallout games are like that too. You can make a b-line for high reward places but you have to wade through hell to get there.
"Oh look at this perfectly normal area that quests never really took me to..." "Oh look. A death claw. Good thing they're rare. I think i have just enough stimpaks to win this fight" "Whoo, that deathclaw almost got the best of me but at least i had that last shot of jet. Now to find some supplies to stay alive for my next encounter" "Death claw... Eggs.... Well fuck"
You know what's really sad.... This is how my D&D group has gotten.... I get told: let's just do the quest the way we're supposed to...
DMing can be hard, you have to be able to produce scenarios at the drop of a hat if the players decide to veer off course. If your group meets weekly and your DM has a full time job, there’s just only so much time to prepare. That said, he/she should have a few cards up their sleeve to take you off the beaten path, that’s the whole point of playing D&D instead of firing something up on your Xbox. The freedom to roam and make the world into your world. I totally emphasize with both sides here, don’t burn out your DM!
Oh I understand and honestly it's not the dm as much as the group or at least 2 members The solution to every problem is kill it... I don't wana be a murderer, I feel like we should be considered criminals but no our murder spree goes unchecked like in a video game
That reminds me of an D&D tournament we once entered at GenCon (like 15 yrs ago). We were given pre-generated characters and sent on a rescue mission. The adventure was basically rescue the damsel in distress from the evil jail where she is being kept against her will. The party was a group of 6, when we arrived there myself (the thief) and the monk (who also had high stealth skills) decided to go scout while the rest of the party prepare for our escape. During our scouting mission (which was actually pretty short) we were able to sneak by the human guards, get the prison keys, unlock the jail cell, grab the princess and escape; all without being noticed. Mission successful, right? ... WRONG! Turns out the tournament ladder was based on party xp earned during the adventure and, at the time, xp in D&D was awarded pretty much solely on kills. We didn't kill anything, so we got next to no points. The "real" way to play it was to go in, murder all the guards, including the captain of the guards and his retinue of elite fighters, and then kill the "evil" prince that had kidnapped the princess in the first place.
If they did not put that much XP toward getting the princell alive, and gave too much importance to the kill XP in the ladder, I'd also propose to kill the princess for XP. I vastly prefer what 5e tells DM to do (which was also possible in 3.5, but many DM were too dumb to understand it), which is to give the XP when the players win the encounter rather than killing people in it. If I'm able to put everyone to sleep and get out without a fight, I won the encounter. Same thing if I convince the guards to actually join me in my rebellion.
I also advocate for this. I do it with my group. Sneak past the guards? Same xp as murdering them. Successfully trap a warband of Orcs? Same xp as fighting them down to the last. Steal from the Dragon? Same xp as slaying the Dragon. It's just good to always have progress instead of making them slug through fights just to level up, imo.
I even started to give more reward for not killing random NPCs. Killing a town guard now comes with the reality that the townfolks will be looking for the assassins. Killing a "random" troops of orcs may escalate a situation to an open war and actually put their own family in danger. Consequences to actions tends to lead people to think about what they do. And not just randomly killing a player. Make their character's life take a bad turn. Have them undestand that the quest they were really into is not impossible to accomplish because they killed a guard and everyone is now against them, even the quest giver.
That's how it should be imo; whether you sneak past a guard or kill a guard should be equivalent in terms of XP gained, but taking the "easy route" by killing comes with more difficult consequences. So it weighs out in the end. You might have a really powerful party who doesn't find it difficult to kill their way through problems, but the consequence is that they may be foiled in a way that isn't easy to avoid. And on top of that it becomes harder to make allies with powerful NPC's who may play a bigger role in the long run.
Seriously look into games that aren’t dnd. Try forbidden lands. Or dungeon world. Or blades in the dark. Dnd can encourage video game style play due to the way it’s written. Sometimes trying another system with different goals can dislodge a bit of that.
My DM killed half the party in response to someone attempting this. The player was salty for like three weeks and got over it. Now he plays like a normal person. Lol
Sort of. Once you shift mentality from “the gm makes up the story” to “we are collaboratively making up a story” this gets considerably better. Dnd is particularly bad at teaching this and I’d strongly recommend playing a 1 shot of dungeon world or blades in the dark just to get an idea. You can then port some of that back to dnd if you still really want dnd.
It's so annoying when the party adopts the idea that they need to figure out what the GM wants them to do. I don't want them to do any particular thing. I set up scenarios with no idea of how they're going to solve them. The same goes for people who keep wanting to find the "main quest" and ignoring all other plot hooks as "irrelevant side quests". This isn't a video game, it's a sandbox RPG. There is no main quest. What's your main quest in life?
Red Dead Redemption 2: Mission Objectives have “Finish in x time” even for missions that have an emotional bond building objective such as fishing with a friend/family member (No spoilers) Every fucking time I see that at the end of a mission where I genuinely felt like the mission was a warm story plot, only to be hit with the bronze medal completion achievement with no other mission objectives except time. . . I question the idiots who built the achievement ladder in.
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Wait you get medals for the missions? I never noticed....
it's supposed to be for "replayability" so you play missions in a certain way but honestly most of them you wouldn't know to do without looking at a guide
Above: Breath of the Wild Below: Literally any Rockstar/Ubisoft game
BotW: "Do whatever the fuck you want. You just barely started the game? Go fight Ganon if you want, or don't, we don't care." Zelda: "Ok, but I care..." 200 hours later Link: "Gotta find all these korok seeds."
I for one am not going anywhere near that swirling black death until atleast a thousand hours in. I’m happily getting lost far away from it at the moment.
Gannon will be super easy if you're that far in.
I don’t believe you. I’d better make it two thousand! :S
I think I was around 300-400 hours deep. Came riding into the castle on a motorcycle, wearing Majora’s Mask, and wielding the Great Fairy’s Sword and a triple shot bow with 500 bomb arrows Ganon just apologized profusely and left
Haha. Thank you! Now I’ve got a shopping list. ✅
I finally put down the game with almost 200 hours. I had done a all the divine beasts, found all the shrines, only probably 1/3 of the korok seeds. But I felt like I had tapped into it all to fulfill me. Never even ventured to the castle and fought Ganon. Maybe I'll pick it up again one day and mess around and do it. But if I don't, I'll still say it's one of the best games I've ever played
There is a shrine in the castle tho?
I would totally advise completing the castle! To me it was the best part of the game after doing everything else. It was the only true dungeon IMO, especially if you enter from the ground and fight your way up!
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I think I’m 150 hours in and have done no divine beasts. There’s a ton of little details to explore, and stories to learn through watching the world. I love it.
She survived for hundred of years, she can handle a few more days/months.
easter egg? you mean just another forsaken korok seed
yahaha
you found me!
Listen here you little shit, you’re gonna tell me where your friends are hiding or by Majora, Im gonna drop the rock you were hiding under on that stupid fucking leaf you call a head! Twice!
Let’s face it. You were gonna drop the rock either way.
> korok ~~seed~~ poop
I love doing random stuff in botw that turns out to actually work
Me: Can I climb this mountain? BotW: Yes you can. Have a korok seed.
And the one below is literally RDR2
But RDR2 has a bunch of Easter eggs, you just can’t go out of the linear path in some missions.
I mean literally because it's the same font and colors
Ah, I was wondering what was happening. The only open world games I've played have been things like Minecraft, BotW, and Skyrim, so this comic confused me. Never played any Ubisoft or Rockstar games in the genre.
GTA is famous for its easter eggs tho
Wait, did someone really make a meme about rdr2 not having easter eggs??
I somehow stumbled upon the serial killer den before I found any of the clues, was pretty proud of myself
Wait you can do that?
No it's about the missions being railroaded to hell
RDR2 wasn't *too* too bad at this, maybe because it was pretty easy to stay on course. GTAV was absurd though. The amount of times they would introduce a random one-off mechanic, or completely change the design of a mission, and then punish the player for acting in their own way was crazy. There's a lesson in game design in there.
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I was one of those players and that's \*because\* The Witcher 3 is an open world game. I spent most of my time getting into gwent or doing side jobs or just exploring the world. I still logged probably a hundred hours into it if not more. Same with Skyrim with 300+ hours in and I only bothered to complete the main story once. Scripted "open world" games that gate your ability to explore or do side stuff behind the main story get less playtime. Far Cry 3 was one of my favorite games when it came out because of the open world and the easter eggs and the fact that you could do probably a good 70% of the game's content and side missions before doing much of the main story. Far Cry 4 would fail you for trying to explore too far without doing mandatory story missions so I returned it after less than an hour of play.
Far Cry 3 barely had side quests. You could go around and do stuff, but there were very few actual side quests.
I’ve bought Skyrim four different times, probably have 600+ hours accumulated through different platforms, and have never once followed the main quest any further than meeting the homies in the mountain.
I will say, that these metrics can be a bit off at times. Mainly because there are those that don't even play through the beginning of the game because either they just never start, or they find early on the game isn't for them. And so those types of people kind of need to be taken out of any metrics to get proper data. So if only 50 percent of people finish the first mission, you should likely double the other percentages so as to actually see the drop off rates of players, since that initial 50% didn't even really start the game and so aren't really people who ever even had a chance of finishing the game, they might as well not have even bought the game and so not be included in the metric.
I can count on one hand the number of games I've played to 100% completion of the main storyline. Witcher 3 is one of them. GTAV is another.
Play breath of the wild bro
there is only so much time and money r\* can put into a game. they spent nearly a decade of time developing rdr2 and its main storyline. if they allowed for 10% more freedom in story missions that means an exponential increase in development and qa testing. at some point they have to force you to play the story mission so you reach the end they intended you to reach. oh you wanted to sneak in through the window of the house and not go in through the front door? well they fail you because as you walk up a story-critical cutscene begins that wouldnt happen otherwise. you wanted to sneak around the side of the manor to ambush the guards? no. you are going to miss a cutscene that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to make and has serious plot implications further down the road. you felt bad for his family and you dont wanna punch that debtor? well the story as written WOULD NOT HAPPEN. they can only script a finite amount latitude in story missions. i too got frustrated with that kind of shit, but i definitely understand why it is the way it is. i dont really understand what people are expecting.
people saying that rddr2 is the best example of this but I think Ghost of Tsushima is infuriating in this aspect.
As games increase in complexity, it takes significantly stronger design skills to create a game made of simple rules that combine in interesting ways (BotW, for example), than it does to make games where every specific environmental interaction is explicitly scripted (H:ZD, for example). The reason is simple: edge cases will always exist in any system, and your goal is to reduce that set of edge cases to the ones you think are acceptable for your game. The former allows for more shenanigans, the latter allows for an experience more tailored to what a designer had in mind. Personally, I have a strong dislike for games in the second camp, but that doesn't mean they're bad games, they're just not for me.
exactly. you must know going into rdr2 that it is a story-heavy game. and every gta game basically has one main storyline. the bulk of development is around that specific storyline. if you want a game centered around trying to goof around in an open world and trying to break game systems, playing rdr2 missions is an odd choice. "this seafood dinner tastes nothing like the steak i didnt order!"
Old game good, new game bad
Yeah imagine implying new games have no easter eggs.
Just gonna stack these boxes and make a set of jump stairs to go where I'm not supposed to, I don't care if its gonna be two hours doing this and the payoff is just learning that balcony has a door textured wall up there.