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Post by ShadowAngel on Apr 24, 2017 20:03:29 GMT
It's a little premature to say anything published in 2015 is "one of the best RPGs of all time" Get back to me in a decade or two. Wait until the new and shiny wears off, the technology advances a bit, and tell me if it still holds up well. Almost no game remains an amazing experience 10+ years down the road. Especially these days where graphics and animations are such prominent features. I still consider ME1 the best in the trilogy but, man, the gameplay is a chore now... Games are all about how they play NOW. Our children will not understand what was so amazing about this butt-ugly combat abomination of a game that mom and dad loved so much. Don't really agree. The great ones are able to stand the test of time. Not to mention games made in the 90s aren't the same as today's. There's no game that plays like the old halo games, instead the newer halos follow trends and lost its unique identity that made it popular to begin with. Those are the games that hold up, the ones that had a great formula to them that get abandoned for no reason. Like, there's nothing that plays like Zelda ocarina of time if you ask me, that game looks like shit compared to today's games, but it has addicting and fun gameplay(which is what defines a game holding up, graphics will never hold up to a game ten years younger than what youre comparing to, and people are looking at it wrong if graphics are what they use to determine what holds up a game) that isn't replicated today. Same applies to the older X-com games and a few others if I thought it out. i really do prefer the older games to the newer ones, to many games follow trends rather than being unique that I just don't really care about the "now". Those olds games are great, because those kind of games are no longer being made.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 24, 2017 20:23:49 GMT
If they get the message that people like me just dislike open worlds... then they're getting the right message. TW3 is total crap in my mind... no better than ME:A as far as sidequests go. I'm waiting for an Andromeda patch, but in the meantime I thought I'd give TW3 a second chance. I've been plowing my way through Velen for hours now... can't even remember what the main story is... have TON of crap loot and crying widows all over the place. The side quests are every bit as bad as the basic fetch ones... go here, kill this, come back and get paid... BORING if you're at an acceptable level or you just die if you're not... and you can't tell from all the markers what is at your level or not... and all the reading of those bits of books and jumbled notes. I doubt I'll finish the game again this time. I'm really hoping Andromeda get another patch soon so I can at least get into a time period I enjoy. I don't yet know if they did a better job on the side quests;; but IMO, they couldn't do much worse than TW3. Please Bioware... give me some proper level gating any day of the week over all this "open world" (translation: only good for people who like being lost) shite. It's considered by many one of the best RPG's of all time and it made the studio something like $63 million in the first half of 2015. It's not "total crap" - it's simply a game and genre you dislike. Regardless, it doesn't really matter if you dislike open worlds because that was the direction Bioware went. It's a done deal and they'll more than likely continue in this direction for future Andromeda titles. Our focus should be on providing well-reasoned critique of what we liked/didn't like about this type of open world and how they can improve it in the future. TW3 suffers from all the same things people are complaining most heavily about with MET and MEA. There are loads of inconsequential fetch quests, there are major breaks in the continuity of the story (Bloody Baron's wife runs off AFTER miscarrying and gets grabbed by a fiend... but then according to Geralt, makes a pact witht he crones where that fiend drops her because she's carry a child she did want) and there are several very shallow "major" characters. Players don't have much range in defining the PC's character... the only consequences that really change are that this person dies or that one dies or this village gets wiped out or that one does. Shepard's character is far more changeable than Geralt's by far. On top of that, TW3 is just too damn long a game... too much reading of bits of this and that in letters and books... too many areas where one just encounters a group of enemies, kills them and does some looting, and too many "peasants" with "talk" flags above their heads that say nothing at all. I've seen lots of evidence people starting to play TW3 and not even finishing it... a number of YouTubers aborted their playthroughs. TW3 has animation bugs too - Eg. Hair blowing around all over the place, even indoors, yet candles are not flickering or being blown out by said "wind." Lots of times, Geralt appears to have some sort of "cape" growing out the side of his head (and I have to exit and reload to make it go away), and my horse regularly runs right through tree trunks and people just appear right in front of me (or disappear as the case may be). So, yeah, I will fully admit to prefer futuristic space stories to medieval ones... but as far as not liking the RPG genre... I'm of the view that Mass Effect Trilogy is more an RPG than TW3 because of the degree of which I can change Shepard's personality. When I get around to playing ME:A (and I will once they churn out another patch or two), I'm sure the Ryder twins are more individually definable than Geralt... even if though the range in which they can be defined is narrower than Shepard. Most of the dialogue "choices" in TW3 are really only decisions whether to say something that gives even more backstory or not (i.e. do I choose the white colored dialogue lines or just skip over them?) - There is seldom an actual choice of dialogue for Geralt to make and then usually it only amounts to choosing either to kill whoever he's talking to or not. Those don't really do anything to define, redefine or change his personality. Open worlds cause the story to become too piece-meal and fall apart. Character development doesn't take place because it needs at least of a bit of a linear storyline for that character development over the course of the story to have a proper impact on the story itself. Otherwise, at some point, you're just going to be parachuting the PC into the story to make a quick decision as to who lives or who dies (which is just what Geralt does). What Bioware was doing was allowing us to develop Shep's character by creating a "branching" linear RPG rather than an open-world RPG. They went open world with MEA and, low and behold, Ryder has less depth of character than Shep... which proves my point. I gave TW3 two honest chances to impress me... and it doesn't... so bite me. I like character development... and I think my argument IS well reasoned, FYI. (Perhaps you could also do a little better than just critiquing my critique.)
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Post by Kappa Neko on Apr 24, 2017 20:24:10 GMT
Almost no game remains an amazing experience 10+ years down the road. Especially these days where graphics and animations are such prominent features. I still consider ME1 the best in the trilogy but, man, the gameplay is a chore now... Games are all about how they play NOW. Our children will not understand what was so amazing about this butt-ugly combat abomination of a game that mom and dad loved so much. Not necessarily. My kid loves my old Nintendo games. Old Nintendo games are a bit different. Jump N Run games especially are so simple they can still be fun today. Super Nintendo games still look "good" to me. PS1 games on the other hand, oh god... Anything 3D where animations come into play looks terrible now imo. I really tried to play Witcher 1 but the gameplay is SO antiquated I didn't last long. DAO's gameplay is not fun anymore either to me. Quality of writing remains the same of course. But I personally can't stomach how these older games play and look anymore. All these games that looked amazing at the time... that feeling of awe when I first played Ocarina of Time, free to run around in a "big" world. It was mind-blowing, it cannot be reproduced anymore today. The game's map is super small by today's standards. Empty. Technology ages fast. And games suffer from this big time.
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Post by Kabraxal on Apr 24, 2017 20:47:20 GMT
Not necessarily. My kid loves my old Nintendo games. Old Nintendo games are a bit different. Jump N Run games especially are so simple they can still be fun today. Super Nintendo games still look "good" to me. PS1 games on the other hand, oh god... Anything 3D where animations come into play looks terrible now imo. I really tried to play Witcher 1 but the gameplay is SO antiquated I didn't last long. DAO's gameplay is not fun anymore either to me. Quality of writing remains the same of course. But I personally can't stomach how these older games play and look anymore. All these games that looked amazing at the time... that feeling of awe when I first played Ocarina of Time, free to run around in a "big" world. It was mind-blowing, it cannot be reproduced anymore today. The game's map is super small by today's standards. Empty. Technology ages fast. And games suffer from this big time. I don't put a whole lot of stock in graphics. FF7's lego people don't meke that game any less fun and engaging. But then, I still get those feelings of magic im gaming. Both Inquisition and Andromeda make me feel like a kid playing a huge, layered game for the first time. Hell, Ori and the Blind Forest and Yooka Laylee, and even Knack, were wondrous experiences despite being more of a call back than something new. I guess I am one of the few that has not become too jaded with the faming scene.
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Post by solomace on Apr 24, 2017 21:27:52 GMT
It's considered by many one of the best RPG's of all time and it made the studio something like $63 million in the first half of 2015. It's not "total crap" - it's simply a game and genre you dislike. Regardless, it doesn't really matter if you dislike open worlds because that was the direction Bioware went. It's a done deal and they'll more than likely continue in this direction for future Andromeda titles. Our focus should be on providing well-reasoned critique of what we liked/didn't like about this type of open world and how they can improve it in the future. It's a little premature to say anything published in 2015 is "one of the best RPGs of all time" Get back to me in a decade or two. Wait until the new and shiny wears off, the technology advances a bit, and tell me if it still holds up well. Secret of Monkey Island 1 and 2 Fall out 1 and 2 Wasteland Bards Tale Halflife FF7 FF6 Resident Evil (Barry Burton!!) Planescape Torment WoW Streets of Rage Metal Gear Solid Dungeon Master It Came From The Desert Might and Might Worlds of Xeen Heroes of Might and Magic I love shiny and new, but some games are just great no mater what era it came from, it's just some just cannot see past the graphics and miss out. At the moment I can understand why people think TW3 is the best RPG of all time. I don't agree, but it's definitely up their with Kotor 1 and 2 and MET.
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Post by Sylvius the Mad on Apr 24, 2017 22:05:11 GMT
I read this article this morning and agree 100%. It's not that I hate DA:I or ME:A, because I don't, I just really really want to play a true Bioware game, not some EA slog with the Bioware name slapped on it. In ME:A, I honestly feel like a robot, constantly scanning my journal for pointless tasks to do that have nothing to go with the story whatsoever. In the ME Trilogy, I don't recall ever having to open my journal, quests appeared and were completed organically. If they need to go back to a linear corridor shooter style of play in order to tell a good story, then do it. Going open world has done nothing but diminish the quality of the story IMO. I would argue that focusing on story has done nothing but diminish the quality and range of roleplaying opportunities available to the player. BioWare used to make these great big games with 80+ hours of content. Then they started making console games (KotOR), and voicing the protagonist (ME), and the games got smaller. They told much more focused stories, yes, but they were lesser roleplaying experiences. DAO was the last game in BioWare's old style, and because it launched the Dragon Age franchise there are always going to be these old-school RPG expectations associated with the series. But old-school RPG design is simply incompatible with these tightly-woven narratives. Forced to choose, I'll side with the RPG aspect every time. I'd be perfectly happy to see BioWare never attempt another short linear narrative ever again.
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Post by Sylvius the Mad on Apr 24, 2017 22:21:07 GMT
Secret of Monkey Island 1 and 2 Fall out 1 and 2 Wasteland Bards Tale Halflife FF7 FF6 Resident Evil (Barry Burton!!) Planescape Torment WoW Streets of Rage Metal Gear Solid Dungeon Master It Came From The Desert Might and Might Worlds of Xeen Heroes of Might and Magic I love shiny and new, but some games are just great no mater what era it came from, it's just some just cannot see past the graphics and miss out. At the moment I can understand why people think TW3 is the best RPG of all time. I don't agree, but it's definitely up their with Kotor 1 and 2 and MET. I played FF7 when it was new and I hated it, because I had no control over the protagonist's personality or interests or goals. Even dialogue was mostly just watching Cloud engage in conversations without any input from me. It was awful. And I would argue that the ME games and Witcher games fail in the same way. Ultima IV. That was a brilliant RPG. You know what modern game the kids play now that looks like these old free-roaming RPGs? Minecraft.
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Post by solomace on Apr 24, 2017 22:44:25 GMT
Secret of Monkey Island 1 and 2 Fall out 1 and 2 Wasteland Bards Tale Halflife FF7 FF6 Resident Evil (Barry Burton!!) Planescape Torment WoW Streets of Rage Metal Gear Solid Dungeon Master It Came From The Desert Might and Might Worlds of Xeen Heroes of Might and Magic I love shiny and new, but some games are just great no mater what era it came from, it's just some just cannot see past the graphics and miss out. At the moment I can understand why people think TW3 is the best RPG of all time. I don't agree, but it's definitely up their with Kotor 1 and 2 and MET. I played FF7 when it was new and I hated it, because I had no control over the protagonist's personality or interests or goals. Even dialogue was mostly just watching Cloud engage in conversations without any input from me. I t was awful. And I would argue that the ME games and Witcher games fail in the same way.Ultima IV. That was a brilliant RPG. You know what modern game the kids play now that looks like these old free-roaming RPGs? Minecraft. Sorry, but eh? What are you smoking bud. I read some stuff on these forums but this is right up there for head scratching. Good shout on Ultima and Minecraft but bud... come on.
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Post by simtam on Apr 25, 2017 0:33:16 GMT
Or, for a borderline example, Betrayal at Krondor - characters set by the book, still a lot of free-roaming
Yeah, I can see why it's on-topic (open-world versus rest of the world).
At least it's better than posting "major breaks to continuity of the story" without double-checking.
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Post by Steelcan on Apr 25, 2017 0:35:50 GMT
I read this article this morning and agree 100%. It's not that I hate DA:I or ME:A, because I don't, I just really really want to play a true Bioware game, not some EA slog with the Bioware name slapped on it. In ME:A, I honestly feel like a robot, constantly scanning my journal for pointless tasks to do that have nothing to go with the story whatsoever. In the ME Trilogy, I don't recall ever having to open my journal, quests appeared and were completed organically. If they need to go back to a linear corridor shooter style of play in order to tell a good story, then do it. Going open world has done nothing but diminish the quality of the story IMO. I would argue that focusing on story has done nothing but diminish the quality and range of roleplaying opportunities available to the player. BioWare used to make these great big games with 80+ hours of content. Then they started making console games (KotOR), and voicing the protagonist (ME), and the games got smaller. They told much more focused stories, yes, but they were lesser roleplaying experiences. DAO was the last game in BioWare's old style, and because it launched the Dragon Age franchise there are always going to be these old-school RPG expectations associated with the series. But old-school RPG design is simply incompatible with these tightly-woven narratives. Forced to choose, I'll side with the RPG aspect every time. I'd be perfectly happy to see BioWare never attempt another short linear narrative ever again. I think that DA:I and MEA are both attempts to break out of that linearity in terms of gameplay though. They are trying to provide more of a sandbox for players, but it does not work for a variety of reasons, namely the lack of RP possibilities in filling the worlds with fetch quests and mobs. Or were you referring to the linearity of the story? If so then yes I agree with you. The problem to me seem to be that BioWare wants the best of both world, the open world freedom to define your character ala old school RPG's (or more likely the wildly successful Skyrim) and the tighter linearity that made them a household name with KOTOR and ME. I know you have little nice to say about the latter, but I think the ship has sailed for BioWare.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 25, 2017 1:05:58 GMT
Or, for a borderline example, Betrayal at Krondor - characters set by the book, still a lot of free-roaming Yeah, I can see why it's on-topic (open-world versus rest of the world). At least it's better than posting "major breaks to continuity of the story" without double-checking. FYI - I gave an example of a break in continuity of the story that I had just finished playing in TW3 yesterday... i.e. I checked. Pregnant women do not miscarry and stay pregnant... which is what happens during the Bloody Baron's quest line in TW3 if the dialogue options are taken that describe it. If other dialogue options are taken, the issue probably doesn't come to light. As for other "breaks in continuity" - just the shear amount of distraction in the world of the Witcher 3 makes it difficult to keep even some of the side quest story lines straight... I've been constantly inadvertently triggering areas, killing of the enemies then later finding some scrap of paper that all of a sudden triggers a quest and the immediately triggers a quest complete because I already did the stuff needed to completely the quest before I even knew I was doing a side quest. This is a problem inherent with an open world unless one of three things are done 1) gating the quests so that the enemies in the area don't activate at all until the player finds the start point to that quest or 2) putting the entire quest into a single area of the world or 3) gating areas of the world in a way that the continuations of quests cannot be reached by the player until after the start of the quest is found. All of those options make the world less open. Open worlds, IMO, are for people who enjoy just being lost. Take the blinders off regarding TW3 and you'll see that open worlds cause complications and TW3 is affected by those complications as well. It's not the "perfect" game... if it was, everyone who started would have finished it... and there are a number of aborted playthroughs of TW3 evident on YouTube and a number of others that basically just started ignoring doing side quests to push the playthrough to some sort of completion.
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Post by alanc9 on Apr 25, 2017 1:30:37 GMT
At least it's better than posting "major breaks to continuity of the story" without double-checking. As for other "breaks in continuity" - just the shear amount of distraction in the world of the Witcher 3 makes it difficult to keep even some of the side quest story lines straight... I've been constantly inadvertently triggering areas, killing of the enemies then later finding some scrap of paper that all of a sudden triggers a quest and the immediately triggers a quest complete because I already did the stuff needed to completely the quest before I even knew I was doing a side quest. Is this actually a problem? Quests and journal entries are epiphenomena anyway; the game world itself is working just fine there.
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Post by Nightlife on Apr 25, 2017 2:14:58 GMT
OMG between this and the VG247 article - all the issues are covered!!! Man, these two article sum up all my grievances perfectly with Andromeda. I think EA must have pushed them into quantity over quality. That's fine, but it's not what I want in a Mass Effect game. I don't want open world. I want a tight, corridor-based rpg/shooter with better storytelling, characters and a soul.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 25, 2017 2:45:33 GMT
As for other "breaks in continuity" - just the shear amount of distraction in the world of the Witcher 3 makes it difficult to keep even some of the side quest story lines straight... I've been constantly inadvertently triggering areas, killing of the enemies then later finding some scrap of paper that all of a sudden triggers a quest and the immediately triggers a quest complete because I already did the stuff needed to completely the quest before I even knew I was doing a side quest. Is this actually a problem? Quests and journal entries are epiphenomena anyway; the game world itself is working just fine there. What's the point of insisting that the developer integrate a side quest into the story if merely doing stuff in a different order totally negates that side quests "story" - which is what happens in TW3... reducing it to "quest open" and "quest complete" signs coming up within a single second of each other? It's worse than a "fetch" quest. The shear volume of reading in TW3 is also ridiculous. If I want to read a book, I will read it from the front to the back... I don't rip out all the pages and give them a shuffle and read the little bits and pieces and expect to make sense of the story. Things like deeper character development and story tension suffer. Let CDPR do the open-world RPGs then... I won't buy them. Bioware should go back to what they did well in the Trilogy... and that was deeper personality development of the main character that was somewhat flexible within a more linear story.
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Post by simtam on Apr 25, 2017 3:17:37 GMT
Or, for a borderline example, Betrayal at Krondor - characters set by the book, still a lot of free-roaming Yeah, I can see why it's on-topic (open-world versus rest of the world). At least it's better than posting "major breaks to continuity of the story" without double-checking. FYI - I gave an example of a break in continuity of the story that I had just finished playing in TW3 yesterday... i.e. I checked. Pregnant women do not miscarry and stay pregnant... which is what happens during the Bloody Baron's quest line in TW3 if the dialogue options are taken that describe it. If other dialogue options are taken, the issue probably doesn't come to light. The backstory for Anna Strenger is such that she made the pact before running away, not after. I really can't see how you figured it otherwise, because the fiery mark on her hand was said to appear before her being kidnapped by the fiend. And since this is all is part of backstory and not the in-game events, I doubt any permutation of dialogue lines present it different.
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Post by R'Shara on Apr 25, 2017 5:23:21 GMT
I played Betrayal at Krondor and Returned to Krondor just a year or so back. Still great games, with horribly sucky graphics and controls Also replayed BG2 a few years before that and still liked it. Added some funny mods and somehow got Aerie preggers with my female character.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 25, 2017 11:46:49 GMT
FYI - I gave an example of a break in continuity of the story that I had just finished playing in TW3 yesterday... i.e. I checked. Pregnant women do not miscarry and stay pregnant... which is what happens during the Bloody Baron's quest line in TW3 if the dialogue options are taken that describe it. If other dialogue options are taken, the issue probably doesn't come to light. The backstory for Anna Strenger is such that she made the pact before running away, not after. I really can't see how you figured it otherwise, because the fiery mark on her hand was said to appear before her being kidnapped by the fiend. And since this is all is part of backstory and not the in-game events, I doubt any permutation of dialogue lines present it different. The in-game description I got did clearly present it in the order I described. You can go back and play the hours I did to get to that point to check it out for yourself if you wish. I'll happily give you all my choices in sequence... but somehow, I doubt that even you would be willing to invest that much time in replaying that game to do that... am I right?
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Post by simtam on Apr 25, 2017 13:14:40 GMT
Indeed, why would I burden myself with this. My nitpick was, after all, aimed at the clarity of your original comment. And anyone who remembers that quest have grounds to dismiss it. Wouldn't be so if you explained the nature of the issue to be confined to the journal entries. Even more, if you weren't complaining about too much reading and getting lost.
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Post by chawktrick on Apr 25, 2017 13:28:18 GMT
It's considered by many one of the best RPG's of all time and it made the studio something like $63 million in the first half of 2015. It's not "total crap" - it's simply a game and genre you dislike. Regardless, it doesn't really matter if you dislike open worlds because that was the direction Bioware went. It's a done deal and they'll more than likely continue in this direction for future Andromeda titles. Our focus should be on providing well-reasoned critique of what we liked/didn't like about this type of open world and how they can improve it in the future. It's a little premature to say anything published in 2015 is "one of the best RPGs of all time" Get back to me in a decade or two. Wait until the new and shiny wears off, the technology advances a bit, and tell me if it still holds up well. Why would technology advancements impact our perceptions of TW3? Will that somehow make the game less impressive? It's a great game for its era, much like Ocarina of Time and Diablo II were for their eras. Regardless, TW3 (like it or not) has become a popular measuring stick for current open world RPGs and video gaming in general, and that will likely continue for several years. I don't think its success needs another 10 years to be justified.
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Post by chawktrick on Apr 25, 2017 13:32:47 GMT
It's considered by many one of the best RPG's of all time and it made the studio something like $63 million in the first half of 2015. It's not "total crap" - it's simply a game and genre you dislike. Regardless, it doesn't really matter if you dislike open worlds because that was the direction Bioware went. It's a done deal and they'll more than likely continue in this direction for future Andromeda titles. Our focus should be on providing well-reasoned critique of what we liked/didn't like about this type of open world and how they can improve it in the future. I gave TW3 two honest chances to impress me... and it doesn't... so bite me. I like character development... and I think my argument IS well reasoned, FYI. (Perhaps you could also do a little better than just critiquing my critique.) Bite me? Are you 12? This is a message board. If you don't like people 'critiquing your critique,' perhaps you should step back and get some tougher skin. I happen to disagree with your opinions. Deal with it and stop acting like you're being persecuted. Welcome to the internet.
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Post by ShadowAngel on Apr 25, 2017 13:40:59 GMT
OMG between this and the VG247 article - all the issues are covered!!! Man, these two article sum up all my grievances perfectly with Andromeda. I think EA must have pushed them into quantity over quality. That's fine, but it's not what I want in a Mass Effect game. I don't want open world. I want a tight, corridor-based rpg/shooter with better storytelling, characters and a soul. Why does EA get the blame? 5 years of development time is more than most games get, then bioware even got a delay to the game which is a rarity from EA. If there's a "good guy" here, it's EA in this case. Bioware makes the game, not EA., I doubt EA asked bioware to butcher the character creator, remove emphasis on music, waste a year on a NMS approach, and I could go on. It all amounts to bioware mismanagement themselves. I'd love for them to make the open world style approach work out I didn't like ME2+3 deviating from the first going into corridors and killing the exploration aspect of the franchise.
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Post by Iakus on Apr 25, 2017 14:02:32 GMT
It's a little premature to say anything published in 2015 is "one of the best RPGs of all time" Get back to me in a decade or two. Wait until the new and shiny wears off, the technology advances a bit, and tell me if it still holds up well. Why would technology advancements impact our perceptions of TW3? Will that somehow make the game less impressive? It's a great game for its era, much like Ocarina of Time and Diablo II were for their eras. Regardless, TW3 (like it or not) has become a popular measuring stick for current open world RPGs and video gaming in general, and that will likely continue for several years. I don't think its success needs another 10 years to be justified. We weren't talking about simply being "successful" or even "impressive" We're talking "best of all time"
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Post by Deleted on Apr 25, 2017 14:52:17 GMT
Is this actually a problem? Quests and journal entries are epiphenomena anyway; the game world itself is working just fine there. What's the point of insisting that the developer integrate a side quest into the story if merely doing stuff in a different order totally negates that side quests "story" - which is what happens in TW3... reducing it to "quest open" and "quest complete" signs coming up within a single second of each other? It's worse than a "fetch" quest. The shear volume of reading in TW3 is also ridiculous. If I want to read a book, I will read it from the front to the back... I don't rip out all the pages and give them a shuffle and read the little bits and pieces and expect to make sense of the story. Things like deeper character development and story tension suffer. Let CDPR do the open-world RPGs then... I won't buy them. Bioware should go back to what they did well in the Trilogy... and that was deeper personality development of the main character that was somewhat flexible within a more linear story. May I suggest "modular" rather than "linear"? For me, the attraction of ME2/3 story line is that it is build of blocks, each with its own outcome, so you can rebuild the story to your liking every time you play. "linear" for me is that story that always unfolds exactly the same way, no matter how many times you play the game.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 25, 2017 15:06:14 GMT
I gave TW3 two honest chances to impress me... and it doesn't... so bite me. I like character development... and I think my argument IS well reasoned, FYI. (Perhaps you could also do a little better than just critiquing my critique.) Bite me? Are you 12? This is a message board. If you don't like people 'critiquing your critique,' perhaps you should step back and get some tougher skin. I happen to disagree with your opinions. Deal with it and stop acting like you're being persecuted. Welcome to the internet. My implication was that you could do better than merely critiquing my critique IF indeed you wanted to help Bioware make the game better... but you don't. I have two people going at me here merely defending TW3 on a Bioware forum because I dared to launch some criticisms against that so-called perfect game. The posts are adding nothing to the purpose of helping Bioware build a better game even though they purport to criticize me on that front as well. Am I upset... no... I'm not swearing at you, am I; and I can assure you that I am many, many decades older than 12... so "bite me." (and if that little phrase coming from me upsets you... welcome to the internet). I've stated why I feel open-world games sacrifice story and how they do that. TW3 went too far in a lot of areas, and IMO Bioware would be bettter advised to stop trying to just follow CDPR down that open-world path. There is a better balance to be struck here. TW3 is not a perfect game. It's far too long and it's design is a jumbled mess. The characters are immensely shallow, including the PC. The "love" people have to Geralt seems to come from the books that accompany the game... not from the game itself... which tries to present all that backstory in a jumbled mess of clips of books one finds in game (that if all read add hours to the playthrough). It also makes it very difficult for a newcomer to the series to makes any sense of... so, I lost interest in the story. As a result, the game becaumes generally boring and I find myself just going through the exercise of going to a marker, killing off some enemies (of which I get no warning as to their level or, at times, no entry in the Bestiary to tell me how to go about dealing with them. It bores me to death... and I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE (as evidenced on YouTube by a number of aborted playthroughs). Also, people complain about the planet to planet animations in ME:A... what about the retelling of the story thus far every time I hit up a fast travel point in the TW3. I'm getting so tired of hearing the same blurb over and over again. Please Bioware, find a way to vary what covers over a load screen better than CDPR did.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 25, 2017 15:17:05 GMT
What's the point of insisting that the developer integrate a side quest into the story if merely doing stuff in a different order totally negates that side quests "story" - which is what happens in TW3... reducing it to "quest open" and "quest complete" signs coming up within a single second of each other? It's worse than a "fetch" quest. The shear volume of reading in TW3 is also ridiculous. If I want to read a book, I will read it from the front to the back... I don't rip out all the pages and give them a shuffle and read the little bits and pieces and expect to make sense of the story. Things like deeper character development and story tension suffer. Let CDPR do the open-world RPGs then... I won't buy them. Bioware should go back to what they did well in the Trilogy... and that was deeper personality development of the main character that was somewhat flexible within a more linear story. May I suggest "modular" rather than "linear"? For me, the attraction of ME2/3 story line is that it is build of blocks, each with its own outcome, so you can rebuild the story to your liking every time you play. "linear" for me is that story that always unfolds exactly the same way, no matter how many times you play the game. If you prefer that terminology, go with it. I've never said "completely linear story" - I said "flexible within a more linear story." IMO, that means there should still a progression of the main story line that is somewhat fixed and gated accordingly. Even in ME2 and ME3 it wasn't totally linear, although extremist like to claim it was. There was gating, but you could scramble some of the missions to flop over different main missions. ME2 would have felt more open-worldy if they had just allowed players to go back to planets they had already visited to scour for additional loot or farm enemies for extra XP or to land on some other "scanning" planets just to find loot and farm enemies (because that's basically the purpose of most of the open world in TW3). Still, they should be careful not to make the games so inordinately long that the player can get bogged down in doing all those little "farming" activities. No doubt, some people enjoy that sort of thing... but it does detract from the main story.
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