Vegas

I think Tycho from Penny Arcade's problems with the game are similar to yours. Feedback for your gameplay choices isn't immediate. Like you said, you either get by or you don't. And really, you're a superhero in this game. It can be shockingly easy at times. I think the important question here though is to ask "shockingly easy to do what?" If you're trying to get from point A to point B it doesn't take long at all, and if you use all the resources available to you it isn't exactly challenging. [even less challenging with all the UI stuff on] This is where the player's self-direction and expression come in. There's an obvious incentive for not killing people - less chaos. Death begets death in this game, and there are definitely consequences for your actions. Those consequences manifest in the world and plot. Knowing you're responsible for all this, and especially if you buy into the story, your gameplay decisions do take on weight. Then you set your own goals, knowing how they might affect the world. Difficulty comes in meeting those goals, and improvising (while staying true to your goals/principles) when things go tits up. I can see not buying into the story and game world, though I do enjoy them myself. I think giving the player so much power means leaning on the richness of the story world and relying on the player to have a stake in it. If the character interactions weren't static, as in if quests and requests arose from your interacting with characters instead of them just telling you what to do, I wonder if this problem would be solved for you.

Yeah I don't see the point in playing an immersive game when you're consciously breaking the immersion every time it doesn't go perfectly Edit: okay I do see the point, especially if you're consciously going in there to play around with the systems. But if you're in it for the story and for the world, reloading like that is ...non-preferable in my experience.

Agreed. My first playthrough was on normal and my new playthrough is going to be on hard, and I'm going to play it completely differently. The first time I played, I role-played and made the decisions I thought appropriate at the time. I was betrayed, and I murdered my betrayers. I ended up as dirty as they were. I saw Dunwall collapse into chaos around me as I explored it and found new reasons to love it. Having had that experience, role-playing means something entirely different in my second playthrough. I feel more attached to Dunwall now, and realize that it's not necessarily doomed. The world is only as good as I choose to make it. I feel as though the people in this city aren't evil, but are pushed to the limits of their humanity in the face of a very real crisis. Knowing and feeling these things, I can't in good conscience murder everybody I encounter. I have decided to take the stealth route, trying not to kill anybody. Both decisions toward my play style were reached through role-play. I do feel that my second playthrough is somehow more "valid" or "accurate" to the role I'm playing, as Corvo would have prior knowledge of and an attachment to his world before the events in the game.

Hello! I'm Vegas. I'm a student at UT Austin studying Radio/Television/Film. I want to make games and am the industry officer in the Electronic Game Developers Society on campus. I'm a big fan of Idle Thumbs and the way they talk about, think about, and make games is very inspiring to me. Looking forward to some interesting conversation!