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This thread is, admittedly, all over the place. But I'm still enjoying it as I can talk endlessly about this stuff (as I poorly understand it). Jake, yeah, playing Dishonored made me think about this thread a lot. Also Total Biscuit's WTF on it. He mentioned that whenever he plays a game the first thing he does is gets up close to a texture to judge its resolution and implementation. But Dishonored sidesteps this kind of by having a painterly and impressionistic style. So things can be low res without looking low res. And yeah, individually, textures don't look terribly impressive, but taken as a whole and especially from a distance, the textures serve the design well. I do agree the lighting feels a bit flat thus far, but that seems to be on purpose, the Unreal engine certainly has the ability to generate more dramatic lighting as some of the above examples show.

It's too early to tell but I've been enjoying what I've experienced. I can't judge the morality system until I see how the endings turn out. It seems more nuanced than violent/non-violent. Also, having the plague spread as a result of your violent actions is probably helpful as rats attack enemies and adding chaos to the system would make it easier to sneak around. I'm still going to play mostly non-lethal as that's usually a more interesting challenge. I'm also kind of confused by guard vigilence. I mean, it's not bad as far as stealth games go, but it's still weird that a guard can't see you if you're in his line of site 20 feet away. He's not a mouse for god's sake, there shouldn't be a fog of war past 10 feet. (I'm playing on hard and I don't think the game handicaps guard abilities at that level) Oh and one more thing on morality:

I think you can just paste the url directly in, let me try: In any case I'm looking forward to trying it. The gameplay sounds tense and fun, very easy to die, but there's also a strange impetus to go crazy and play without thinking. I like the style, kind of like the film Drive meets old school GTA meets GTA Vice City. As for the violence? Yeah, it's grotesque, but some of it seems novel. Like the fact that you throw up after violently killing someone. There's a place for grotesque violence in art, depending on how it's approached. I liked Drive for example, and it had some sick stuff in it. But Winding Refn makes intelligent statements with his subject matter. We'll see if this does the same.

Your impression is in line with my reality. I have the first game but stopped about 3 hours in. It was pretty dull, seemed like God of War but with less tight gameplay. It was enjoyable enough but, as you said, didn't hook.

Ugh. Bethesda does great with vistas but needs to figure out how to design interiors. Or hire someone who does. That's a good point about differentiating categories of contrast. Good art direction is about balancing them all. Hawken does a great job of creating beautiful environments that are highly detailed but use an extremely limited palette. It's a very nuanced approach to art direction that stands out immediately.

I think the color grading discussion is a separate and fairly controversial one. For example, I think BF3 looks stunning. It's grading focuses the eye away from the background and onto the action which is usually exaggeratedly lit. They've also gone for a very cinematic feel, hence the heavy color correction and I'm glad they didn't just make another moderately colorful, semi-photoreal FPS. Same goes for Enslaved and Bioshock. Far from examples of Unreal Engine driving art direction I think they took the engine and made it work for a very specific and directed look in each case.

Gonna play this for now. I enjoy stealth/action games more than strategy, though admittedly X-COM looks just amazing. I've also been insano-exited for this ever since seeing the stealth playthroughs.

Yep. The pacing of this game is just incredibly awkward. They don't seem to have learnt any lessons from the first in that regard. Constantly having to return to explored areas to do side missions, having to return to town to cash in missions, having to do numerous fetch quests, adds up to a poor ratio of time spent to fun had. At this point I can't find much enjoyment in the single player, I tend to have fun when playing with friends, so I usually just wait until someone I know is playing.

Apparently there won't be any traditional boss encounters in the game: http://kotaku.com/59...d-designer-says This is a great position to take. Especially after the very clear error the DX:HR people made in forcing boss fights into the game. Color me very excited.

Cool interview with the Introversion Software guys here: http://www.electrondance.com/ They're definitely considering the moral implications of the game, which is good. The host also totally called out the fact that even after being introduced, ethical dilemmas tend to succumb to repetition in the game world.

It's a superlative statement to be sure. But it's something I wonder about. Not so much about the technical aspects not being learnt but the differences in theory. Having nostalgia goggles for old games tends to make some fans ignore the advancements games have made in the past two decades. For example a lot of gamers say recharging health is a hindrance to modern games where I think it helps you put your focus elsewhere when playing the game as opposed to constantly hunting down rogue health packs in secret rooms. So I'm wondering if you have a developer who has the nostalgia goggles if he/she would make a game that tried to rebuild old mechanics in a new skin. I guess Black Mesa is a distant example. Maybe Serious Sam 3 is more of what I'm thinking about. Or Hard Reset.

vimes, that's a great point. you should send that into the podcast, would make for some great discussion I bet. My guess is that for many of these devs, the original 15 year old games were their best work, when they were fresh in the industry and had less at stake. Then they spent a lot of time getting disenfranchised by the funding process and couldn't make the same kinds of games that they first got into the business to make. Kickstarter allows them to do this. Kickstarter also allows fans of the original game to relive something that's a very core part of their gaming memory. This does have the unfortunate side effect have ignoring all the *good* progress games have made in 15 years. Not necessarily all of it, but this desire for the retro, for the original leaves out a lot of what's changed. I noticed this playing through Black Mesa. It's a really fantastic mod, beautifully executed and succeeds at bringing Half-life up to, at least, graphical date. But a lot of the gameplay mechanics show their age. I feel like if the mods had instead taken the things that made half-life work, like interesting, well-designed massive spaces and unobtrusive environment scripting and had combined that with updated AI, shooting and movement mechanics the project would have been something more than a great way to relive a past memory. That's my worry with kickstarting old games. Are they going to just improve the graphics and aesthetic and leave the game unchanged? Which is truly how a 15 year ago version of themselves might make the game if they time traveled to the present and continued being a dev from that point...

Hence why I think Bastion's take on difficulty is so interesting. Allowing the player to pick and choose which areas in which he/she wants to be challenged allows the player to create a better catered experience. Now, if you can figure out a player's strength's and weakness via scripting and adjust as needed, that could be even cooler. I suppose L4D does this, having zombie swarm behavior ultimately be a reflection of player behavior.

I think the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. example is interesting. That game is excellent at instilling a sense of tension and fear. The thing is, I never felt rewarded by getting through a tough section, just relieved. Which was an interesting way to experience a game, but quite different from the way difficulty is being discussed here where it's about perfecting player skill and feeling proud of overcoming a challenge. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was about immersing yourself in an awesomely realized and simulated world. And I do very much enjoy games like that, because I prefer immersion and storytelling over gameplay most of the time. I couldn't finish Meat Boy or Dust Force because I didn't feel like playing just to beat-that-score. Actually, Bastion is a great example of a game that could get very difficult but allowed you full control over the variables of difficulty and could also be played just for the atmosphere and narrative. In that way it's a game that lends itself not only to replayablity but to a wide player base and I hope other devs take its difficulty system into account. Essentially you could add totems to a shrine that would change particular aspects of the game like having enemies reflect damage or be invulnerable to certain attacks. The reward would be more xp and a more interesting gameplay experience, especially for subsequent playthroughs.

What makes you say that? I've been having a blast, quite along the lines piratepoo has spelled out. The pacing feels really unique.

Ooooh I did not know this was out! Despite having a just-ridiculous backlog at this point, and the price tag, I'm really leaning toward picking this up. I'm just so curious to see how all the systems work. The tutorial stuff you guys mention sounds a lot like the "shocking" sections of the Call of Duty games where they seem to almost be making a point about the brutality of war but then fall short and just make something that seems pointless and awful. When you first step into the AC-130 I actually thought it was a really interesting experience because visually it was indistinguishable from actual gunship footage coming from Iraq, and it kind of put you into the shoes of those operators albeit at a very significant distance. But they never try to actually make any cohesive statement out of it and it gets reduced to gameyness once the shock wears off and I think ultimately fails to say anything significant. Perhaps this is whats going on with the more fucked up aspects of Prison Architect. Because I can totally see some interesting things coming out of trying to simulate prison systems, that force you to think on the situations millions of people have to deal with each day. But the thing is, most of what I see in the trailers is more of a comedic - dwarf fortress style random crazy - variety. And if the serious stuff is just served to you and not commented on besides that blunt CEO letter... it could be failing to make the player think in a similar way the COD guys did. I guess I really have to play this and see!

Oh my god. Dark Souls is third person Ghouls 'n' Ghosts.

Clearly we have different definitions of what atmosphere means. I would think stripping something to the basics would remove its atmosphere. It's got about as much atmosphere as a computer lab. It's a cool style, but I don't exactly feel immersed. Cheers for the answer.

I too never played the original so I'm approaching this with incredibly fresh eyes. Plays to me like Frozen Synapse with a ton of atmosphere and immersion layered over. Which would be great. Nappi, I think it's pretty important as this does remind of me of Ghost Recon (the original) in that the more veteran units you have the better you will do.

At least all the options are on the table. I would be more worried if they took possibilities away, but it doesn't seem to be the case judging from the text of what you posted.

Another Castle and A Life Well Wasted are two podcasts I rate alongside Idle Thumbs (both are no longer recording though I do see some stuff from ALWW this year). Mainly because they tend to talk about things other than how entertaining a certain game is. Though there are plenty of podcasts that do have elements of that, along with the traditional buyer's guide stuff. Like: Giant Bombcast, Weekend Confirmed and Gamers with Jobs.

CaptainFish This reminds me of Day of the Tentacle: having to solve puzzles in the past for a character to progress in the future. Not sure if this fits the nonlinear bill, but it was interesting all the same.

That's really my only point, you have to kind of choose one over the other. Because both games are pretty damn time-intensive. But whatever, releasing games is rarely done in ideal circumstances, so it's likely they didn't have a lot of choice in the matter.

Well this is unexpected news: http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/09/19/nintendo-forms-wii-u-partnership-for-unity-engine

I played the first game on console and this one on PC so I can't make any comparisons. But so far mouse control has been 1:1, excepting sniper rifles which have built in weaknesses that you eliminate through leveling up. Overall I think they've tried to make up for their mediocre Borderlands 1 port with a pretty well-done Borderlands 2 port. Total Biscuit goes into it in further detail here: