carrollstreetstation reblogged
carrollstreetstation reblogged
Playing Fallout 4
NPC: You need to help me with this quest. Will you do it?
*dialogue options show up*
Me:
as much as it’s a shame bethesda couldn’t be bothered to do this in the first place, like everything else you don’t like about a beth game, there’s a mod for that.
(it really lays bare how paltry the dialogue options are though... so many of them are repeats of each other in slightly different inflections)
i really hope they go back to a silent protagonist with FO5/TES6, because while it was a decent experiment to give the main character a voice it really hampered the writing. it's really obvious they weren't willing to pay the two voice actors for the player character for more than simple sentences. it's like if quentin tarantino was charged by the word when writing a script.
return of the immersive sim, 2007-2008
system shock 2 is one of those seminal games, a cornerstone for future games, something to emulate. quite a few games -- mostly sci-horror -- have drawn from it; aliens vs predator 2, doom 3, and later alien: isolation all take cues from it, which makes its relative obscurity all the sadder. a big part of that, however, is due to the fact that for many years the system shock license -- and indeed the separate licenses for both games -- has been a gigantic fucking mess.
irrational games, the developer of system shock 2 under the auspices of looking glass studios, wanted to do a sequel; however, electronic arts nixed the idea, and irrational, after deciding not to rehash the cyberpunk theme again anyway, decided to make a spiritual sequel instead.
the first couple of drafts were particularly strange -- with themes of cult deprogramming and abandoned nazi bunkers. the main thing left behind from the nazi bunker idea was the concept of genetic manipulation.
the end result, of course, was quite different from the early drafts. an art deco orgy of tremendous opulence, the game attempted to meaningfully tackle concepts like laissez-faire capitalism and objectivism, using a plot centered around genetic manipulation to drive conflict. a pretty ambitious idea, all told, though ken levine is nothing if not ham-fisted, and the game presented a disconnect between what the story seemed to advocate and what the game expected you to do.
there were other problems with the game. first, the game had been marketed to two separate groups in two separate ways. to old-school PC gamers who remembered 1999′s system shock 2, it’d been touted as a spiritual successor. to everyone else, it’d been marketed as a story about hubris and objectivism with an art deco, 1950s-style setting. it succeeded in the latter -- but the former proved unsatisfactory to the majority of PC gamers -- a wretched, entitled lot if there ever was one.
oh, the flaws were endless! gone was the inventory management (thank fuck.) gone was having to pay money to use the resurrection chambers (which resulted in a ludicrous argument where someone posited that because theoretically you could just charge a big daddy with a wrench and die over and over with no resource loss the game had no challenge. i shit you not, someone actually said that.) gone was the RPG-style character development where you had to put points towards one skill or other with limited points to use (which i honestly thought was kind of silly anyway.) gone was the luck-based hacking, replaced by a pipe dream knockoff -- which could be pretty annoying, but system shock 2′s hacking is utter garbage.
there were other changes but those were the ones that drew the most ire. i won’t lie -- i spent a few years being angry at bioshock for not being system shock 2. then i realized wait no that’s fucking stupid and learned to enjoy bioshock as its own game, and though it’s a little dated now it certainly maintains its own value as a game.
(note: this was written before the remastered version came out, which i have not yet had a chance to play.)
to hear old-school fallout fans tell it, nobody's been more hard done by than them. depending on how puritanical they are, some even consider fallout 2 a slap in the face of the franchise, with its over-reliance on humor and pop culture references. then interplay did its best to drive the franchise into the ground; fallout tactics was an okay squad tactics game in the vein of jagged alliance, but the console-only fallout: brotherhood of steel was like if gauntlet was dropped on its head as a baby and exposed to too much nu-metal, and a planned official third main game, known to fandom by its development name, "van buren" was never finished when interplay shut down 2003 after having attempted to stave off bankruptcy for years. due to years of poor management and struggling to compete, the company had been hemorrhaging money and talent since the 90s -- fargo himself bailed in 2001 to form inXile, leaving caen in charge. under caen, several studios had been closed and projects canceled, and he tried to leverage the company's most popular titles to bring more money in. it failed.
interplay was effectively dead, and so was fallout. the legal proceedings that followed would take years. in an effort to pay off creditors, interplay licensed the fallout IP to bethesda for three games, then sold it entirely a few years later. there's actually a somewhat complex -- and nasty -- legal case surrounding this; the fallout wiki breaks it down rather well.
the fallout fandom immediately lost its shit.
see, bethesda were a bad company. they made bad games. morrowind was kinda okay, but oblivion was consolitis-infected casual shit for babies and not a TRUE RPG because reasons. bethesda would ruin fallout! OBLIVION WITH GUNS!
bethesda ignored the hysteria and had been working on a new fallout game since originally licensing the IP in 2004, released the game in late summer 2008. the first numbered fallout game in 10 years, it was a drastic change in gameplay. where fallout 1 and 2 had been more comparable to the middle ultima games -- isometric RPGs with a point and click interface -- fallout 3 was, essentially, well, oblivion with guns.
there's more to it than that, obviously, but that's about the gist of it: it was a first person (or third person at the touch of a button) action RPG in an open-world sandbox that had far more granularity to it than even fallout 2's sprawling mess of locations.
it had some flaws. for one, the shooting never really felt completely right; a lack of iron-sights was part of it, but there was no sense of "oomph" to it. this is mitigated in part by VATS; in an attempt to recreate the turn-based combat of fallout classic, pressing the appropriate key or button (default V on keyboard) would pause the game and zoom in on an enemy, allowing the player the chance to pick their shots, with a percent chance to miss. for the RPG player this was a somewhat satisfactory confession; the action gamer might find it stifling to be forced to use it to get around the clunky combat.
the engine, of course, was borrowed from oblivion; by this point it was starting to look a little dated. some people complained about the green tint over everything -- an odd artistic choice to be sure, especially when the “real is brown” trend was in full backlash at the time, but in hindsight, it gives a bit of visual character to the game that has persisted. the famous “fellout” mod lays bare the real problem with the game -- a very muted palette in all its texture choices.
probably the chief complaint, common with bethesda games, is the writing; depending on the quest, it was quite spotty at times, and the main quest especially was underwhelming. part of the problem was everything centered around the player, which is a typical problem for bethesda. worse is the player dialogue had an air of stiffness to it -- it didn't seem natural. (though of course there's a difference between speaking naturally and saying "tag-teamed by giant fuckbots.") there's plenty of other criticisms, but this isn't the space for that.
what fallout 3 did have was a game that had far more to explore than its predecessors, or indeed oblivion; an oppressive atmosphere (one that not even a mod to remove the green tint could erase!) and a few genuinely good quests. it also had some decent DLC; point lookout in particular was a moody, atmospheric piece that drew players away from the wasteland surrounding washington DC into the the swamps to the south, and the culmination of the main quest in the pitt gave an early hint at the kind of dillemmas one might expect from new vegas.
while those of certain temperament would deny it, the influence of deus ex on fallout 3 is blatantly obvious -- and lead designer emil pagliarulo has gone on record saying as such. and it's easy to see where deus ex fits in; depending on how you've built your character, you have multiple methods for dealing with a given situation. skill development is important, and most skills are useful in some fashion. this multifaceted approach is classic deus ex -- hell, it's classic immersive sim, period.
fallout 3 didn’t get everything right, nor did it get everything wrong. but what it did do was introduce fallout to the world; fallout 1 and 2 had been consigned to the mists of 90s PC gaming, clunky by modern standards on top of being difficult to obtain legally (at least until they were released on gog.com -- and then removed due to legal issues, and then put up for sale again... hopefully for good this time!) fallout: brotherhood of steel wound up in landfills where it belongs. fallout 3 was a blockbuster, a multiplatform hit from a company that had scored big on bringing the elder scrolls to console with morrowind. fallout might’ve been doomed to obscurity if not for bethesda’s rescue of the franchise. and whatever your feelings might be on fallout 3, without fallout 3 there never would have been a new vegas.
then again, some people might have preferred that...
metal gear solid 4: guns of the patriots
for pretty much most of the last 30 years, every time hideo kojima released a new metal gear game he would declare it to be the last one. as we all know, that didn't work out. metal gear solid 4 marks no less than the 5th time kojima would go back on his word to revisit the franchise -- and there's been a couple more since! (then again, with his exit from konami, he might have to keep his word this time if only by default!)
in a lot of ways, however, MGS4 feels like a conclusive end to the story that started way back in '87; it's a farewell letter to fans, allowing them to look back on the franchise up to this point and see the long, winding trail that solid snake has travelled, while also exploring new forms of gameplay as well as a further exploration of the links between player, console, and game -- in this case, the console being the playstation 4, the series' first 7th-generation release. in a sense, all this reflects in snake himself, who is rapidly aging, and he's tired, and is keeping on through sheer force of will and new technology to help him.
unlike previous games, the game is divided into several parts; while MGS2 had two separate sections, the first one was far shorter than the latter and served as a prologue more than anything else. MGS4 goes whole hog and just splits the game up into multiple missions, 5 in all, each with their own conceit. on top of this, a few fundamental changes to controls had been made; the legacy of resident evil 4 can be seen when holding down the aim button, as the camera shifts behind snake's shoulder. the camo system that first appeared in MGS3 was expanded upon; snake's sneaking suit now acts like a chameleon, changing its appearance to hide snake provided he stays still. aided by a small helper robot, reminiscent of the tiny metal gear that helped gillian seed in the sega CD adventure classic snatcher, snake hunts for clues to track down revolver ocelot, who has now completely been subsumed by the liquid snake personality, and is at war with the mysterious patriots, who have engineered a global economy based on warfare.
while the first two parts of the game seem to be reminiscent of previous games (and perhaps a bit of call of duty 4, as well), it's the third section where the gameplay really seems to shine. set in a gloomy european city reminiscent of prague at night, it's no less than thief 2's famous "trace the courier" mission writ large. the fourth section sees snake returning to shadow moses island, the setting of metal gear solid 1; it's fallen into disuse and is empty and abandoned, but returning to the place brings back a lot of memories for snake and the player. you're even given a pixellated MGS1 snake mask!
perhaps the single greatest complaint about the game is the heavy use of cutscenes; where MGS3 had toned down extensive cutscene use following criticisms about the end of MGS2, MGS4 returned to it in full force with roughly 8 hours of cutscene time -- the final cutscene alone holding the guinness world record at a whopping 71 minutes. of course, proportionally it's on par with MGS2, with about 12 hours of gameplay, while MGS2 tends to average out at 8 hours gameplay and 6 hours of cutscenes. (and who says games are getting shorter?) it's also important to remember that the game was intended to be a conclusion to a story that was 6 entries long at the time (7 if you include portable ops) so some lengthy wrap-up is to be expected, especially in a franchise as story-heavy as this one.
i'll never actually understand the cutscene complaint. the series has always been experimental, and by MGS1 had become something of an auteur work, weaving multiple disparate thematic elements together to analyze and critique everything from nuclear proliferation to the way gamers idolize and outright fetishize iconic characters. the long cutscenes are part of that, and by this point anyone getting into the franchise knows, or ought to know, what they're signing up for. kojima himself always wanted to make movies anyway; when the playstation 1 gave him the technology to do the next best thing, he took the opportunity and the rest is history.
as a game it's superb, cutscenes and all. as a work of artistic expression it's an incredibly emotional farewell (until peace walker, anyway) for one of the most popular and yet divisive series of all time, and serves as a highwater mark for the playstation 3's library.
carrollstreetstation reblogged
so yesterday i found a complete boxed copy of system shock 1 (CD version) on ebay for only $95 after months of searching (years, really, but i got serious this year.) with the impending arrival of a new and major piece of my collection i decided to clear off the clothes i’d been keeping on these bookshelves and formally set up my collection. i have a few CEs of other games, but nothing i’d want to actually display.
what i really want to do is get the CEs for the latter two bioshocks as well as dishonored 1 and 2, DX mankind divided and fallout 4 but i’d be hard-pressed to justify their purchase as they’re much more recent and i bought them all digitally.
will update once the new game arrives.
UPDATE: IT’S HERE!!!
so yesterday i found a complete boxed copy of system shock 1 (CD version) on ebay for only $95 after months of searching (years, really, but i got serious this year.) with the impending arrival of a new and major piece of my collection i decided to clear off the clothes i’d been keeping on these bookshelves and formally set up my collection. i have a few CEs of other games, but nothing i’d want to actually display.
what i really want to do is get the CEs for the latter two bioshocks as well as dishonored 1 and 2, DX mankind divided and fallout 4 but i’d be hard-pressed to justify their purchase as they’re much more recent and i bought them all digitally.
will update once the new game arrives.
carrollstreetstation reblogged
hdghgggggtghhhh-deactivated2018
fallout 2 is a gift from god
When you have to enter the combat mode…because the orphaned children keep stealing all your stuff.
this is how i'm visualizing that from now on
every time i do the pitt in fallout 3 i always get hung up on the damn ethical dillemma and i can never decide which is the better choice since they’re both shitty and morally grey
but like every problem the game has, it’s easily modded away
carrollstreetstation reblogged
if putting metal gear solid 1 music into operation anchorage is wrong, i don’t wanna be right
Source: rotaken.deviantart.com
rock paper shotgun’s john walker is a hateful piece of shit
there was absolutely zero need to preface an article complaining about dogmeat in fallout 4 with a long, shitty paragraph about why dogs are the worst animals ever and people who like dogs are stupid.
Let me declare my uninterests. I don’t like dogs. Dogs are awful animals, too stupid be let outside on their own, too yappy to be inside a building, and every single one of them is five seconds away from biting a child’s face off. (“Oh no, not MY dog, he’s the gentlest, sweetest thing!” Yeah, that would be how every dog that bites a child face off is described by the owners, just with a “was” in front.) Dogs are rubbish, and everyone who disagrees is wrong.
i don’t give a single solitary fuck if he was trying to be funny, i want him to punch himself in the fucking face for wasting everyone’s time with such a hateful goddamn diatribe.
this shouldn’t upset me this much, but holy fuck it does. and yet you know what’s funny? i’m not even surprised. it’s john walker. he’s easily the biggest fucking millstone around RPS’ neck. this isn’t even the worst article he’s ever done, though it’s certainly the one that’s made me the angriest. and he’s about as faux-progressive as you can get, too; there isn’t anything sincere in him when he tries to talk about social issues.
i don’t even know why i still read this shitty neckbeard website anyway. probably because pippa warr and alice o’connor actually post things worth reading, unlike everyone else.
also i can’t stand when people start whining about how “people have differing opinions” when someone disagrees with them
no shit people have differing opinions, why do you think someone is disagreeing with you?????????? instead of doubling down on your argument, why not actually try and listen to what the other person is saying
it’s too early in the day (6:54pm EDT) for this bullshit
The point, in case zealots ever want to accept it, is that your tastes are not the only tastes in the world. Really, I know this may be hard to believe, but if you like playing a turn-based game set in three counties of Utah in 2242, and you like miniguns but don't like lasers, and you like the ratio of combat to dialogue to be about 4:1, and you like cars that look more like Buicks than Pontiacs, and you think 50s-style monsters are okay but 50s-style aliens aren't, and you think Max's jacket from Mad Max is okay but the football pad armour isn't, and you don't like it when italics are used in dialogue but you do like it when boldface is used, and you want it to be longer than 100 hours but no longer than 120 hours, and like games to be non-linear but only to a point, and like big cities, but only two because four is too much BUT HEY NOT THAT ONE, and you like the desert but don't mind a little grass BUT HEY NOT THAT MUCH BECAUSE IT'S NOT FALLOUT...I am terribly, terribly sorry, because we are not going to make a game just for you. We're not trying to make a game for everyone. Really, we aren't. But we're not making a game just for you and ten other angry guys with tastes that are narrower than a hallway in a camp of pygmy dwarves.
Josh Sawyer
carrollstreetstation reblogged
hazardgirl-deactivated20190710
I’M SORRY FALLOUT 3 LOVERS IT WAS A GOOD GAME IT REALLY WAS I’VE PLAYED IT PROBABLY A HUNDRED TIMES DON’T GET ME WRONG. TUNNEL SNAKES RULE FOREVER.
but it can’t be denied that it is a complete offshoot.
i liked it, i believe it as part of the fallout universe, it was fun, it was entertaining, it had many fallouty bits in its themes and in its jokes, i have nothing against it as a stand-alone game. it’s great and interesting and cool and funky and bloody and funny,
but it was essentially meaningless. and the fact that what seems like 99% of people who know about fallout believe it to be the best example of what a fallout game is.. is wrong.
i’d assume tumblr fucked up and loaded no mutants allowed instead of my dash, but they hate all the fallout games over there really (that’s how you know they’re true fans.) but it still reads like the same old butthurt that bethesda owns the IP and not based obsidian, and after close to a decade of listening to this lament i am just about fucking done with it. i’m not even a big bethesda fan (skyrim is the only TES game i like) but they got the rights fair and square because interplay was run into the ground by a sleazebag and were too broke to hold on to their own fucking IPs. you want to be mad at someone? be mad at the guy who tried to force interplay into a market it historically fared poorly in, didn’t pay his employees or the rent and stole the office supplies the day interplay went bankrupt. be mad at this motherfucker.
now, you might have had a leg to stand on 3 years ago when FO4 was just a bunch of hoaxes and rumors, but it just doesn’t hold water now when it’s clear from fallout 4′s placement in boston (which fallout 3 and new vegas both have ties to via the institute) that bethesda is looking to build a “region” of their own, something distinct from the “core region.” which is fine, because this is their IP now and the east coast is the region they know.
but really, though, i'm sorry, but just 'cuz fallout 3 wasn't part of the "core region" (which even chris avellone seems to think is played out -- he’s hinted at wanting it nuked and seems to have disagreed with josh sawyer over how to depict the NCR) doesn’t make it “meaningless,” even without the existence of FO4. you know what’s meaningless? that statistic of “99%.” gonna need a big ol’ citation on that one, ‘cuz as someone who prefers 3 for a lot of reasons that have no bearing on this discussion, i’ve become very aware of just how many people prefer NV over 3. trust me, i’m in the minority here -- and i’m fine with that.
i’ve been in this fandom since 1999. i credit the first game with helping me not fucking delete myself from existence. this series is super important to me, okay? i’m not just some FO3 fanboy, wet behind the ears, playing the HAWT NEW XBAX RPG (i didn’t even have a 360 when FO3 came out.) and to me, FO1 is the be-all end-all, the game from which all RPGs should take notes from regardless of mechanics, themes or setting. so i think i have some standing here when i say that i have never understood some peoples’ insistence that fallout as a series be restricted to one particular region, or only tackle a particular theme, or whatever. the fallout world is bigger than california and nevada (and utah and arizona i guess.) there’s nothing that says fallout games can’t show a broader picture of what its own world is like. it’s utterly fucking daft to declare a game “meaningless” because it’s not a ~*direct sequel*~ to previous games. or is silent hill 2 meaningless because it didn’t directly follow from the events of its predecessor?
You've heard of the Sierra Madre Casino. We all have, the legend, the curses. Some foolishness about it lying in the middle of the City of Dead, a city of ghosts. Buried beneath a blood-red cloud, a bright, shining monument luring treasure hunters to their doom...
intentionally an unusual choice today.
by itself, fallout new vegas is an RPG in the bethesda mode, though somewhat stripped down in terms of world space and places to explore. new vegas stands apart from its immediate predecessor fallout 3 (as well as skyrim) by having a smaller, but more populated wasteland to explore; it’s mostly occupied and defended by NCR troops, so it’s less of a wasteland and more of a semi-secure territory just behind a stalemated frontline. (which you could argue kind of misses the point of fallout, but that’s a discussion for another day.) it’s almost pleasant, nevermind the giant wasps, firebreathing geckos, deathclaws, and occasional bandit.
and then there’s dead money. as the first DLC released for the game, dead money turns the gameplay on its head, switching modes from an open-world RPG with some optional light survival elements to a full-on survival horror, removing most of the player character’s gear and forcing them to scrabble for supplies and equipment amidst a long-forgotten casino resort town. this would be fine, except the town is flooded with a poisonous red mist that hides the menacing ghost people, seemingly undying mutants that glow in the dark under their mining gear and hunt for anyone foolish enough to visit the sierra madre casino. you’re ill-equipped to deal with them -- or anything you run into inside the casino proper -- but that’s okay, because the three other poor fools thrown in with you are just as bad off. and god help you if you have a low endurance stat.
as interesting as it is to play a survival horror transplanted into new!fallout’s systems, it’s the story that sets dead money apart, drawing inspiration from the 1948 neo-western “the treasure of the sierra madre” (get it?) the player is lured there by an ancient looping radio broadcast, promising escape, wealth and a chance to begin again, but quickly finds there’s nothing there but ghosts and regret -- and no way out. you’ll have to decide who to trust, and what to hold on to. and in the end, the only ones who make it out are the ones who’ve learned to let go. all in all, it makes for a strong part of new vegas’ DLC lineup, and sets the theme for the rest.
carrollstreetstation reblogged
hawkefels
normies get out!
fallout 2 special encounter, 1998
carrollstreetstation reblogged
carrollstreetstation:
but
don’t get me wrong i mean i like NV and all but the problem is it’s obsidian trying to shoehorn an in-depth story with meaningful themes and three-dimensional characters into an open-world game that does not segregate its major story elements from gameplay (like, for example, GTA does.) what this means is that all that precious story comes off feeling disjointed and what’s supposed to be an open-world game by necessity needs to funnel the player via non-scaling beefgates (a major, major sin) to keep the player on the path that obsidian wants to tell. fallout 3 might be mostly fetch quests without much of an over-arching story, but it stays truer to its open sandbox genre, stays truer to the gloomy, sad, empty feel of the original fallout (which fallout 2 and NV do not do – and as far as i’m concerned, that’s a failing on their part) and the smaller self-contained stories are sometimes pretty good.
that sense of self-containment BTW is the exact reason that NV’s DLC is so much better than the base game, because the regions you explore are so much smaller and the story therefore has a bit more rigidity to it, while at the same time being segmented across four separate DLC, each one a story in and of itself. it presents its themes better (that bit in dead money with the heavy gold bars in the vault was brilliant) and the environments are honestly more interesting too (i love classic fallout, but the “core region” theme has been played out, and i think obsidian knows this which is why chris avellone has hinted at doing a game set in pittsburgh or new orleans as well as the possibility of nuking NCR.) but no matter how good the DLC might be, it doesn’t change the fact that the base game just has some serious ludonarrative problems.
long story short sandbox and story don’t mix well, even GTA’s much-vaunted story is just a bunch of cutscenes that play out separately from the game itself, often with characters who don’t even appear in the game-world outside of story missions
I’ve never, ever been able to understand your thinking on this, because it’s absolutely 100% backwards to me. it continues to be bizarre even now. you’re saying a game should sacrifice good writing and more developed characters for the sake of an open sandbox world. this makes no sense at all. do you want it to be similar to Skyrim or something? cos Skyrim, just like Fallout 3, is utterly bleak when it comes to the writing department.
the thing is, NV has already sacrificed its writing, because due to the nature of the game, the story comes off as disjointed. that’s my entire point. all that precious story and characterization is hurt by the way the game is set up. NPCs die or disappear, important plot points appear out of order because you zigged left instead of right, etc. the game is literally fallout 3 with a story that tries to be deeper and more thoughtful and it just doesn’t work. it honestly reminds me of how in stalker: shadow of chernobyl, it’s possible for the main quest to be impossible to complete because an important NPC gets torn apart by dogs and you’re not even on the same fucking map. (they might have fixed that in later patches, but i only ever played SoC unpatched the week it came out, like literally the first patch was released while i was finishing the game, and then with fan overhauls, so i have no idea if they ever fixed that officially.)
and that’s not even getting into the fact that while a good meaningful story is very nice, and even important for some games, it should complement the gameplay, not get in the way of it. otherwise, make a movie. or a metal gear game.
what they should have done was make it a more linear RPG, maybe something akin to mass effect. it would have worked, then. then again this is obsidian we’re talking about and their mass effect clone was alpha protocol and we saw how that turned out...