Author Topic: Videogame Discussion II: Snake's Revenge  (Read 306210 times)

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Videogame Discussion II: Snake's Revenge
« Reply #80 on: February 18, 2014, 02:14:42 PM »
My feeling was that the political conflict was not resolved in any real fashion.  But, maybe I just missed something.  It's been a long time, so maybe I'm just forgetting stuff.  I remember the peace conference, but that didn't seem to feel like any lasting end to the conflict.
The peace conference is an optional quest in case you don't solve the political situation before deciding to go after the final boss.

If you aren't in an hurry to save the world, you can go around conquering forts and cities for either faction until you kill their top leader, and then the other big leader makes a grand speech. Along the way earls and their courts and guards will have been replaced, all that will be left of the other faction are some scattered bases across the countryside, and you're told you can go wipe them out if you please, but they don't pose any real threat anymore to the current government.

Of course, that demands you actually worked up your ranks in either factions, so you may've missed that.

I'm not sure how I'd go about implementing all of that, maybe just late game questlines or something.  Or, a sequel, as noted above.  Or, a less atomized management of the IP, which I think is a real issue with Elder Scrolls, at least from what I've gathered.  But, the game seemed like it wanted to set itself apart in this regard, but it went through fairly standard (which isn't to say unenjoyable) quest lines to get you to various social positions, and then it was just off to the next set of fairly standard RPG questlines.  And, it probably doesn't help that it was all bookended by bog standard main questlines.

Well, I guess the problem here is that Skyrim isn't Mass Effect. Aka you're trapped in some forsaken frozen wasteland whose entire population consists of a few hundred dudes, and half the world is in ruins with the wilderness monsters out of control. You're not the high ranking officer of a capital ship that sits side by side with the most important dudes in the galaxy in the first couple of hours in the game, neither do you get to go around planets with a team of the best hand-picked warriors in existence.

Basicall, it's a matter of scale. You're not expected to worry about high politics in Skyrim, just like in Mass Effect you don't have to worry about dirt-covered raiders randomly trying to jump you in the street, or having to crawl around sewers killing rats with rusty weapons.

Indeed, you can always polish a program more. But eventually you have to release it to the public. There will be flaws, that may be corrected by others later on that have the extra free time for it, but the original developers of Skyrim had a deadline to meet. Some things will always slip trough the cracks.

It's kind of hard to sustain that argument when Skyrim uses the same engine Fallout does, and the game-breaking bugs stem from the way their engine handles things - which means some of those bugs go all the way back to Fallout 3.

Given they did not have to code the game FROM SCRATCH again, you'd think they'd dedicate SOME time to, y'know, fixing what they know would STILL be broken in the next game.

Granted, with the kind of community Bethesda games get, and their main attention being on PC consumers, I can see how that's not high on their priority list either...
Heh, Skyrim vanilla has a lot of bugs, but still less than Fallout 3. :p

Offline Unbeliever

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Re: Videogame Discussion II: Snake's Revenge
« Reply #81 on: February 18, 2014, 02:43:05 PM »
...
Basicall, it's a matter of scale. You're not expected to worry about high politics in Skyrim, just like in Mass Effect you don't have to worry about dirt-covered raiders randomly trying to jump you in the street, or having to crawl around sewers killing rats with rusty weapons.
...
I don't have the greatest of recollections of Skyrim's plots.  And, I guess I had forgotten how the political plot was resolved.  Maybe I was expecting to do more with that funky dragon crown. 

But, this statement strikes me as crazy.  You save the world.  I mean, isn't the main plotline apocalyptic?  You are the Hero of Destiny and Dragons have just returned and you deal with them extensively. 

Further, you can (optionally) become the lone Archmage in the entire realm where the game takes place, get at least partly along the way of doing something or other with the High King of, again, an entire realm (and the only realm that matters for the game).  And, deal with the vast Empire's continued dominance/control over this realm. 

How is this not high politics?  How can winning or losing the chilly equivalent of Vietnam not be a big deal?  How are the Harbingers or whatever they called not handpicked uber warriors? 

I guess if you view Skyrim as "I'm a no-name wandering guy in a taiga" then my comments will seem bizarre.  But, then Skyrim is "yet another RPG with scenery porn" and I wonder why they bothered creating all those factions/guilds for you to interact with in the first place. 
« Last Edit: February 18, 2014, 02:45:38 PM by Unbeliever »

Offline brujon

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Re: Videogame Discussion II: Snake's Revenge
« Reply #82 on: February 18, 2014, 02:54:17 PM »
One game that did the tracking-of-you-doing-stuff really well is Fable. In Fable the things you did really did have a major impact on what the NPC's had to say about you n' stuff.

For once, i don't know or have a mod that fixes that :P

lol, I remember in Fable once I got my attractiveness and reputation up pretty high all it took was simply talking to a single woman (or man) to get a heart over her head and start asking about a wedding ring.

Yeah, that's about it! And you could have one spouse per house, and many houses. It was fun.
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Offline X-Codes

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Re: Videogame Discussion II: Snake's Revenge
« Reply #83 on: February 18, 2014, 04:05:02 PM »
Indeed, you can always polish a program more. But eventually you have to release it to the public. There will be flaws, that may be corrected by others later on that have the extra free time for it, but the original developers of Skyrim had a deadline to meet. Some things will always slip trough the cracks.
Some things?  Skyrim for PC was almost beta quality on release with the battery of bugs present in the game, like rank 5 of the Light Fingers perk making it impossible to steal significant quantities of gold.  Look at the Patch History for the game to see some of the ridiculous stuff that had to be fixed after the game was released.  These don't even address a number of quest-breaking bugs that have to be picked up by the unofficial patches, instead.

Offline Nanshork

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Re: Videogame Discussion II: Snake's Revenge
« Reply #84 on: February 18, 2014, 04:20:29 PM »
...
Basicall, it's a matter of scale. You're not expected to worry about high politics in Skyrim, just like in Mass Effect you don't have to worry about dirt-covered raiders randomly trying to jump you in the street, or having to crawl around sewers killing rats with rusty weapons.
...
I don't have the greatest of recollections of Skyrim's plots.  And, I guess I had forgotten how the political plot was resolved.  Maybe I was expecting to do more with that funky dragon crown. 

But, this statement strikes me as crazy.  You save the world.  I mean, isn't the main plotline apocalyptic?  You are the Hero of Destiny and Dragons have just returned and you deal with them extensively. 

Further, you can (optionally) become the lone Archmage in the entire realm where the game takes place, get at least partly along the way of doing something or other with the High King of, again, an entire realm (and the only realm that matters for the game).  And, deal with the vast Empire's continued dominance/control over this realm. 

How is this not high politics?  How can winning or losing the chilly equivalent of Vietnam not be a big deal?  How are the Harbingers or whatever they called not handpicked uber warriors? 

I guess if you view Skyrim as "I'm a no-name wandering guy in a taiga" then my comments will seem bizarre.  But, then Skyrim is "yet another RPG with scenery porn" and I wonder why they bothered creating all those factions/guilds for you to interact with in the first place.

That's how Elder Scrolls games work. :P

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Videogame Discussion II: Snake's Revenge
« Reply #85 on: February 18, 2014, 04:27:56 PM »
But, this statement strikes me as crazy.  You save the world.  I mean, isn't the main plotline apocalyptic?  You are the Hero of Destiny and Dragons have just returned and you deal with them extensively. 
Oh, sure, the Skyrim storyline is epic, and you do save the world.

But in Mass Effect you save the freaking galaxy, which includes countless worlds. ;)

Further, you can (optionally) become the lone Archmage in the entire realm where the game takes place, get at least partly along the way of doing something or other with the High King of, again, an entire realm (and the only realm that matters for the game).  And, deal with the vast Empire's continued dominance/control over this realm. 

How is this not high politics?  How can winning or losing the chilly equivalent of Vietnam not be a big deal?  How are the Harbingers or whatever they called not handpicked uber warriors? 
Because no matter what you do in Skyrim, at the end of the day you still have a single follower that you can order around at a time. You don't even get your personal carriage or a personal palace.

I guess if you view Skyrim as "I'm a no-name wandering guy in a taiga" then my comments will seem bizarre.  But, then Skyrim is "yet another RPG with scenery porn" and I wonder why they bothered creating all those factions/guilds for you to interact with in the first place.
I see Skyrim as a no-name working himself a name. You start as a pennyless prisioner waiting to be executed, then you work your ass until you're somebody relatively important that gets some respect (altough some guards will always sneer at you, you can always sneak-attack them later). You may never become some super politic, but damn you'll have acess to the top products from the local factions/guilds and get to boss some of their people around.

So basically GTA-fantasy edition. You even get to steal horses! :p



Offline Nanshork

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Re: Videogame Discussion II: Snake's Revenge
« Reply #86 on: February 18, 2014, 04:40:40 PM »
Further, you can (optionally) become the lone Archmage in the entire realm where the game takes place, get at least partly along the way of doing something or other with the High King of, again, an entire realm (and the only realm that matters for the game).  And, deal with the vast Empire's continued dominance/control over this realm. 

How is this not high politics?  How can winning or losing the chilly equivalent of Vietnam not be a big deal?  How are the Harbingers or whatever they called not handpicked uber warriors? 
Because no matter what you do in Skyrim, at the end of the day you still have a single follower that you can order around at a time. You don't even get your personal carriage or a personal palace.

I've got a huge fucking house with a carriage sitting outside of it.  No mods, just DLC.  :p

Offline Nicklance

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Re: Videogame Discussion II: Snake's Revenge
« Reply #87 on: February 18, 2014, 04:57:55 PM »
So I just pre-ordered my copy of ESO: Imperial Edition today.  Anyone esle picked it up yet?
Dear god why?

I have been waiting for an Elder Scrolls MMO since Morrowind.  And most of the gameplay I have seen looks pretty good to me.  And I haven't been into anything heavy for a while.

I've got the Imperial Pre-Order as well.

I played the last beta and ESO is certainly an mmo I'd play if I had the money for it. It's kinda up there with FF realm reborn on my list. :P

I stopped right after I got my relic. I refuse to grind anymore.

You refuse to grind so you pre-ordered an MMO? O_o

Let's put it simply, when there are no longer any quests to run, dungeons to go into and content etc. When the only fun is to keep going back to AK, WP to collect non-currency to trade for "highest level gear" I stop.

I don't really mind if there are a hundred quests telling you to kill 10 rats, but running the same dungeons daily can put me to sleep.
Will add later

Offline Kuroimaken

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Re: Videogame Discussion II: Snake's Revenge
« Reply #88 on: February 18, 2014, 05:05:45 PM »
My feeling was that the political conflict was not resolved in any real fashion.  But, maybe I just missed something.  It's been a long time, so maybe I'm just forgetting stuff.  I remember the peace conference, but that didn't seem to feel like any lasting end to the conflict.
The peace conference is an optional quest in case you don't solve the political situation before deciding to go after the final boss.

If you aren't in an hurry to save the world, you can go around conquering forts and cities for either faction until you kill their top leader, and then the other big leader makes a grand speech. Along the way earls and their courts and guards will have been replaced, all that will be left of the other faction are some scattered bases across the countryside, and you're told you can go wipe them out if you please, but they don't pose any real threat anymore to the current government.

Of course, that demands you actually worked up your ranks in either factions, so you may've missed that.

I'm not sure how I'd go about implementing all of that, maybe just late game questlines or something.  Or, a sequel, as noted above.  Or, a less atomized management of the IP, which I think is a real issue with Elder Scrolls, at least from what I've gathered.  But, the game seemed like it wanted to set itself apart in this regard, but it went through fairly standard (which isn't to say unenjoyable) quest lines to get you to various social positions, and then it was just off to the next set of fairly standard RPG questlines.  And, it probably doesn't help that it was all bookended by bog standard main questlines.

Well, I guess the problem here is that Skyrim isn't Mass Effect. Aka you're trapped in some forsaken frozen wasteland whose entire population consists of a few hundred dudes, and half the world is in ruins with the wilderness monsters out of control. You're not the high ranking officer of a capital ship that sits side by side with the most important dudes in the galaxy in the first couple of hours in the game, neither do you get to go around planets with a team of the best hand-picked warriors in existence.

Basicall, it's a matter of scale. You're not expected to worry about high politics in Skyrim, just like in Mass Effect you don't have to worry about dirt-covered raiders randomly trying to jump you in the street, or having to crawl around sewers killing rats with rusty weapons.

Indeed, you can always polish a program more. But eventually you have to release it to the public. There will be flaws, that may be corrected by others later on that have the extra free time for it, but the original developers of Skyrim had a deadline to meet. Some things will always slip trough the cracks.

It's kind of hard to sustain that argument when Skyrim uses the same engine Fallout does, and the game-breaking bugs stem from the way their engine handles things - which means some of those bugs go all the way back to Fallout 3.

Given they did not have to code the game FROM SCRATCH again, you'd think they'd dedicate SOME time to, y'know, fixing what they know would STILL be broken in the next game.

Granted, with the kind of community Bethesda games get, and their main attention being on PC consumers, I can see how that's not high on their priority list either...
Heh, Skyrim vanilla has a lot of bugs, but still less than Fallout 3. :p

According to Cracked.com, the bolded part is incorrect.
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Offline oslecamo

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Re: Videogame Discussion II: Snake's Revenge
« Reply #89 on: February 18, 2014, 05:11:46 PM »
According to Cracked.com, the bolded part is incorrect.

Hey, that's Oblivion, aka centuries before Skyrim. And Oblivion goes on the most heavily populated area on the setting, while Skyrim is on the northern wasteland.

Well, I guess it's no wonder the Empire lost the war against the pansy elves if they were sacrificing their own people like in the arena like that. :P

Offline X-Codes

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Re: Videogame Discussion II: Snake's Revenge
« Reply #90 on: February 18, 2014, 05:40:26 PM »
Especially since all the mages in Cyrodil were constantly hanging around the coloseeum, casting short-duration luck spells of obnoxious magnitude before placing bets on bloodsport and obligating the proletariat to pay out the gold after the blood sacrifice.

Offline brujon

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Re: Videogame Discussion II: Snake's Revenge
« Reply #91 on: February 18, 2014, 08:44:59 PM »
Indeed, you can always polish a program more. But eventually you have to release it to the public. There will be flaws, that may be corrected by others later on that have the extra free time for it, but the original developers of Skyrim had a deadline to meet. Some things will always slip trough the cracks.
Some things?  Skyrim for PC was almost beta quality on release with the battery of bugs present in the game, like rank 5 of the Light Fingers perk making it impossible to steal significant quantities of gold.  Look at the Patch History for the game to see some of the ridiculous stuff that had to be fixed after the game was released.  These don't even address a number of quest-breaking bugs that have to be picked up by the unofficial patches, instead.

I have to agree to that. And there's still a bunch of ridiculous things, even after all the patches, official and unofficial, that remains bugged as hell, as one example:

Horses.

Mountain. Go around it? NOPE. GRAB A HORSE AND GO OVER THE MOUNTAIN.

Horses are the best way to climb a mountain. Screw mountain climbing equipment, screw physics, screw everything, imma just gonna grab this horse and go. WHO NEEDS TUNNELS? WHO NEEDS CAVES FULL OF FALMER AND BANDITS THAT TAKE LONGER TO GO THROUGH?

Skyrim said it. Not me.
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Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: Videogame Discussion II: Snake's Revenge
« Reply #92 on: February 18, 2014, 09:09:04 PM »
... you use horses? :O

Offline X-Codes

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Re: Videogame Discussion II: Snake's Revenge
« Reply #93 on: February 18, 2014, 10:45:47 PM »
... you use horses? :O
I tried to.  I really did.  Then I fast-traveled and forgot where I left it.

Offline Wrex

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Re: Videogame Discussion II: Snake's Revenge
« Reply #94 on: February 18, 2014, 10:48:25 PM »
So, there is a La-Mulana 2 Demo out. It's not really going to be representative of the final product, but it's still a good level. People who bought the soundtrack will notice that they use one of the bonus tracks for the music in said level.

Offline linklord231

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Re: Videogame Discussion II: Snake's Revenge
« Reply #95 on: February 19, 2014, 12:50:30 AM »
... you use horses? :O
I tried to.  I really did.  Then I fast-traveled and forgot where I left it.

I thought owned horses followed you when you fast travel?  Or did I mod that in.  I honestly don't know what's modded and what's vanilla anymore. 
I'm not arguing, I'm explaining why I'm right.

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Re: Videogame Discussion II: Snake's Revenge
« Reply #96 on: February 19, 2014, 01:34:10 AM »
I'm absolutely fed up with Blighttown (Dark Souls). I've been stuck in the place for 3 hours since killing the boss, and cannot physically make progress without being harassed by the mosquitos so much that they force me off of the platform I'm standing on to my death.

I've put up with the game up to this point, but Blighttown is seriously making me consider quitting.
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Offline oslecamo

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Re: Videogame Discussion II: Snake's Revenge
« Reply #97 on: February 19, 2014, 05:41:57 AM »
In case you didn't hear, Twitch has been playing pokemon in a stream now. Yes, the original one.

The catch?

Viewers get to vote for what actions for the player to take. All actions. Every single step. Which leads to insane results, like taking hours to use Cut, releasing your top pokemons, and constantly running in circles.

This article details several of them. My favorite would be the part where Helix Fossil seems to have been raised to deity status, because somehow most of the time a decision needs to be made, chances are that the votes lead to trying to activate said item.

The biggest question so far is if it's possible to win the game at all with 50 000 people competing to control poor Red's mind at the same time.
« Last Edit: February 19, 2014, 05:44:24 AM by oslecamo »

Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: Videogame Discussion II: Snake's Revenge
« Reply #98 on: February 19, 2014, 05:52:29 AM »
... you use horses? :O
I tried to.  I really did.  Then I fast-traveled and forgot where I left it.

I thought owned horses followed you when you fast travel?  Or did I mod that in.  I honestly don't know what's modded and what's vanilla anymore. 

I don't know, since they always seemed to be more trouble than they were worth to me. Their only real advantage is... you can go over mountains if you stubbornly decide to try. XD

Skyrim's horses are apparently equal to those mountain goats that can climb a nearly vertical dam.

Offline Kethrian

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Re: Videogame Discussion II: Snake's Revenge
« Reply #99 on: February 19, 2014, 06:22:28 AM »
In case you didn't hear, Twitch has been playing pokemon in a stream now. Yes, the original one.

The catch?

Viewers get to vote for what actions for the player to take. All actions. Every single step. Which leads to insane results, like taking hours to use Cut, releasing your top pokemons, and constantly running in circles.

This article details several of them. My favorite would be the part where Helix Fossil seems to have been raised to deity status, because somehow most of the time a decision needs to be made, chances are that the votes lead to trying to activate said item.

The biggest question so far is if it's possible to win the game at all with 50 000 people competing to control poor Red's mind at the same time.

Yeah, I heard about it.  I also heard Twitch.tv gave that one stream its own chat server, so it wouldn't bog down the rest of the streamers.  And, it's been topping 75,000 simultaneous viewers.  Also, there's a vote system in place for "anarchy" or "democracy".  Whichever one is currently not being used needs 75% votes to become enabled.  "Anarchy" is the classic mode, where every chat action gets input (at a roughly 20 second lag), whereas "democracy" ... is more complex.  I haven't seen it in action, so I'm not really sure how it works, other than there are complex inputs that can be made (move left twice, then down three times).
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