Sign in to follow this  
Jake

Idle Thumbs 143: This One's Fr4e

Recommended Posts

Of course, the systemic elements of the game are to me one of the best parts of the experience, but I've always thought that part of why people get so frustrated with FC2 is that they see a game they'd like to play with good gun play, but are thwarted by and do not enjoy the systemic elements. If you don't have the patience for them, it doesn't matter how much "atmosphere" or "immersiveness" they add, you're just frustrated that you can't enjoy what would otherwise be a great shooter. So, people who love the systemic elements love the game, and people who don't really hate it because it is keeping them from otherwise great content.

 

That's basically what happened to me.  I love hearing the Thumb's stories about Far Cry 2 but my personal experience was extremely different from theirs.  I wanted to like the game but it consistently frustrated me at every possible opportunity.  Instead of seeing awesome emergent gameplay, all I saw was bullshit ways the game was screwing me over and that just made me mad.  In hindsight that's maybe not a fair assessment, but it's what I felt at the time.  I understand what the anonymous dev was saying.  I appreciate the systems and the way other people enjoyed the game, they're just not things I ended up enjoying myself.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

What's the Steve Gaynor lean?

 

 

Searching for @fullbright "deal with it" on Twitter reveals an example of this pose—just not from Steve:

 

DEAL-WITH-IT.jpg

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Weirdly, Iwata is still saying that making games on smart devices isn't being ruled out..??

(source)

I read that as on a future Nintendo smart device or other future Nintendo initiative that's still in R&D. He specifically says that saying "Nintendo is putting Mario on the smartphone" would be a misinterpretation of his words. Nintendo also issued a denial of that interpretation. Maybe I'm misreading as well. It kind of sounds like Iwata basically said "fine sure, smartphones, yeah we have our top men looking into it. We've got em working in shifts," while furiously writing "ohhh fuck smartphones" on his notepad under the table.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Nintendo has, famously, built their hardware, particularly their user interfaces around the requirements of the games that headline it (Mario/Zelda) - which is why the N64 controller was so weird (and bad), and the Gamecube controller was so weird (and secretly amazing).

 

I have no doubt that they're looking at smartphones, if for no other reason that their core products, DS and WiiU, feature substantially similar touchscreen interfaces. But in their typical fashion, they would need to design a game from the ground up to fit onto the the smartphone, accounting for screen size / proximity, input limitations, etc.Nintendo isn't going to just "put Mario on the iPhone", because that would be a terrible experience for consumers and devalue their brand. If anything, I could see them doing some kind of spin-off thing like Square Enix does with targeting hand-helds: you get FF: Crystal Chronicles, not Final Fantasy. It expands your brand and exposure, but doesn't compete directly with, or devalue, your flagship products.

 

If I was Iwata, I'd tell a R&D team: "Find me the smartphone's comparative advantage over the 3DS. if you can find me an excellent experience that is only possible on smartphones, then show it to me." Just from a perspective of understanding the competition.

 

Of course, it could also be the fuck smartphones thing.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

What's the Steve Gaynor lean?

 

IIRC that's when Steve leans back from the table to bodily communicate that he is "done" with something.  The discussion I remember was some board game involving nation-building or company-building where he leaned the whole time and didn't really get involved, then suddenly got focused and wiped everyone out within a couple of moves.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I agree with what Gormongous had to say about the Banner Saga.

 

I thought the writing was quite good. I generally dislike fantasy writing so I was surprised that the writing engaged me. Like Chris, I also liked the game's slow, deliberate pace which is why I thought the amount of text was okay and not off-putting. Snappier text would have felt tonally not of a piece I think.

 

The comparison to FTL makes sense because in both games you move from place to place, you're managing supplies to keep you going, and you have these events where you pick between a couple of options, and then engage in some battles, however despite those similarities I think it's a mistake to lump the games together. FTL is a quick roguelike experience whereas the Banner Saga is a RPG (Stoic is made up of ex-Bioware people I believe) where the events are set by the game designers. You're supposed to play FTL over and over again so having a lot of text would be inappropriate. I doubt it was the intent of the designers for people to play the Banner Saga over and over again, so having more writing doesn't strike me as gratuitous or excessive.

 

The game is not perfect by any means, I'm excited to see Stoic make a sequel to the game, and see what changes they decide to make because there are a lot of decisions about the game design that can be further refined. What is there for this game though is strong enough that I'm glad I played it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I wonder if your opinion on The Banner Saga would change at all if you got deeper into it.  The story elements and decisions get considerably more interesting as you begin to get a handle on what all is going on. 

 

It's quite similar to a Nordic Battlestar Galactica.  You're a military commander who has been saddled with a bunch of refugees.  How are you going to handle that?  Will you weaken your military in order to ensure the survivability of your convoy?  If you have someone in your convoy that you distrust, will you cast them out knowing that it's going to cost you the support of other warriors you desperately need?  How much will you risk the lives of your warriors to gain supplies?

 

The glut of characters that get thrown at you in the first couple of hours makes more sense as you go on as well, as many of your heroes can be killed off and there are other heroes you can completely miss picking up.  A series of catastrophic choices could leave you with a skeleton crew of heroes to fight your battles, hence the large number of starting heroes that you are introduced to. 

 

I do find myself frustrated at the level of ambiguity involved in some choices.  But at least the outcomes of my choices never feel unfair.  It never feels like there's a "gotcha" moment where you made a choice that seemed obvious, and something terrible happened. 

 

 

I doubt it was the intent of the designers for people to play the Banner Saga over and over again, so having more writing doesn't strike me as gratuitous or excessive.

 

I actually feel the opposite, like it was designed for 2 or 3 playthroughs.  First time through, you get the mystery and stress of not knowing what's happening.  But on another playthrough, you're making really hard decisions where you know the consequences.  Like will I accept a particular character into the party now for the awesome benefits he brings, even at a high cost down the road.  Or am I willing to sacrifice this hero for a bunch of renown or supplies.  It becomes a morality game about what kind of a commander you want to be, as there is rarely a benefit to be earned without some cost to you.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I loved the introduction of malaria in Far Cry 2, and I think it is one of the most important opening segments of any video game I've played. The opening minutes of a game should prepare a player for their impending experience and Far Cry 2 does that in spades. Far Cry 2 seemed to me, to be a lesser experiment in setting a game in a world subject to the chaos theory (or a close proximity of). You have choices all the time in FC2 (the game opens with you choosing which character to play) but hardly any choice you make is unaffected by chaos, or has much actual impact (with obvious exception). You can plan an encounter for hours but your experience will always be subject to this chaos. This is why the introduction of the game was so important, it taught me that (1) certain things were out of my control (2) random shit would happen to me and (3) I would have to deal with that shit, or die. This is why I think Dark Souls was an apt comparison; the tutorial level of ds teaches the player how to exist in their world, and whether or not you were able to get through it (though dark souls' difficult was primarily a question of impatience, as you can almost always predict what will happen next). Both used their introductions to give me the context to enjoy myself. Games that are 'difficult' generally are just games with deviated design that do their best to teach the player the differences in their world. I don't think this is a failure only the "enlightened" can accept, I think it is one of the most successful introductions to a game lost on an industry looking for another Call of Duty 4.

 

Edit: Sorry for any grammatical errors, I wrote this almost entirely asleep

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

re: The Banner Saga and King of Dragon Pass comparisons, for those that have played both, are there any notable differences in the way KoDP presents that overwhelming cauldron of choices so as to make its intentionality more obvious?

 

The big difference, in my mind, is that the King of Dragon Pass interface always has the seven elders of your council along the bottom. Any time a decision comes up, if you click on one of those elders' portraits, they'll highlight the choice they think is best and give a little blurb on why. Their advice is often biased if not flat-out wrong, but it helps you as the player get an idea of the decision space as well as both expectations and outcomes. I wish more games with tough decisions, especially tough decisions with no right answer, had ways to ask for advice that didn't involve just physically walking your character over to them and initiating an obviously bespoke dialogue tree.

 

I agree with what Gormongous had to say about the Banner Saga.

 

I thought the writing was quite good. I generally dislike fantasy writing so I was surprised that the writing engaged me. Like Chris, I also liked the game's slow, deliberate pace which is why I thought the amount of text was okay and not off-putting. Snappier text would have felt tonally not of a piece I think.

 

The comparison to FTL makes sense because in both games you move from place to place, you're managing supplies to keep you going, and you have these events where you pick between a couple of options, and then engage in some battles, however despite those similarities I think it's a mistake to lump the games together. FTL is a quick roguelike experience whereas the Banner Saga is a RPG (Stoic is made up of ex-Bioware people I believe) where the events are set by the game designers. You're supposed to play FTL over and over again so having a lot of text would be inappropriate. I doubt it was the intent of the designers for people to play the Banner Saga over and over again, so having more writing doesn't strike me as gratuitous or excessive.

 

The game is not perfect by any means, I'm excited to see Stoic make a sequel to the game, and see what changes they decide to make because there are a lot of decisions about the game design that can be further refined. What is there for this game though is strong enough that I'm glad I played it.

 

I agree with you (agreeing with me) on all counts. I think that having a discrete set of decisions with optimal choices is more suited to a smaller game that can be replayed quickly and repeatedly, like FTL. It may not look it from the outset, but The Banner Saga is long, up to eight or ten hours, so there shouldn't be as much of a design premium on optimal choices, since without the ability to replay easily they would just come off as the "gotcha" moments that Bjorn mentions. Big games get a lot more mileage out of obfuscated decision-making with the player. It's pretty much my only meta-level complaint about Crusader Kings II, that so many of the events and decisions have only one good answer, so once you've played long enough to see them all, there's no mystery, just mastery, and the game's less for it.

 

And yeah, I thought the writing was good, too. It was thematic but not overdone. I don't know why the Thumbs called it lore, as if it's something extraneous and indulgent thrown in, when everything that's discussed has direct bearing on the plot, except maybe for the godstones you can choose not to visit.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

And yeah, I thought the writing was good, too. It was thematic but not overdone. I don't know why the Thumbs called it lore, as if it's something extraneous and indulgent thrown in, when everything that's discussed has direct bearing on the plot, except maybe for the godstones you can choose not to visit.

 

Yeah, the lore is buried in the map, and you can choose to engage with it or not.  I tend to open the map up and read a couple of entries about the area I'm in every time I stop in a town. 

 

I haven't finished it yet, but even the Godstones seem relevant to me.  Mechanically, there is always a bonus to be gained from each stone, depending on the heroes you have and decisions you've made.  Secondarily, the death of the gods seems to have been the event that started everything else in the game.  Even though their death was centuries in the past, it set in motion a series of events that are now culminating.  Also, nearly magical shit seems to happen at several stones, which seems to indicate that perhaps not all is as it appears with the gods.  I guess that might be crossing more into lore territory though if the story doesn't ever directly go that direction. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The Far Cry 2 discussion had me thinking about my experience with the game. Prior to Idle Thumbs I knew of Far Cry 2 in one way - by name. That's it! I knew nothing about its plot or setting or any mechanics / systems involved. I didn't get into the game just because the game was claimed to be good though. There were enough specifics mentioned over various podcasts that I had an idea of what to expect.

 

So this episode freaked me out because it made me realize I was 'robbed' of having my own view or framing of what the game is. Which would have run into the danger of me dismissing the game as crap. But then I thought on it more. When I first played FC2 I thought I was finished with the tutorial sooner than it actually was. I was frustrated as hell that a lot of side things weren't showing up that I'd heard about. I drove around the map exploring every marked location and such, but there was no Phaedrus, nothing. Knowing those things were supposed to be there though made me perform whatever linear progression mission I had left to do before everything opened up to that free-for-all. If I hadn't known about any of that, I probably wouldn't have given the game much of a shot.

 

I think this is something I've at least done for other people, where they played a game from one perspective, didn't like it, but I convinced them to consider it in a new light and they changed their mind. It's probably happened to me too. I just can't think of any specific examples right now.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I generally like lore in video games. Good or bad I tend to enjoy it because it makes makes me feel like there is more to the world I am in than what I see based on my interactions.

 

Some people don't like lore and that's fine too.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I generally like lore in video games. Good or bad I tend to enjoy it because it makes makes me feel like there is more to the world I am in than what I see based on my interactions.

 

Some people don't like lore and that's fine too.

 

Yeah, lore works in some games for me but not in others. I'm just not sure I agree with (my completely unfair caricature of) Chris and Sean's opinion that this game keeps shoving irrelevant lore in your face and doesn't just let you get to the tactical battles. The "overworld" bits, in addition to being important mood- and world-building, drastically affect the circumstances under which the battles occur, as well as helping you prepare for future battles. It feels really wrong to take one part of a dual-structure game and declare it the "real" game just because it grabs you more from the start.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yeah, lore works in some games for me but not in others. I'm just not sure I agree with (my completely unfair caricature of) Chris and Sean's opinion that this game keeps shoving irrelevant lore in your face and doesn't just let you get to the tactical battles. The "overworld" bits, in addition to being important mood- and world-building, drastically affect the circumstances under which the battles occur, as well as helping you prepare for future battles. It feels really wrong to take one part of a dual-structure game and declare it the "real" game.

It's the part of the game that resonated and felt substantial to me. In XCOM, the stuff in between battles still feels vital and vibrant. In The Banner Saga, it doesn't so much for me. It feels extraneous. For me it's a matter of execution, not principle.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

It's the part of the game that resonated and felt substantial to me. In XCOM, the stuff in between battles still feels vital and vibrant. In The Banner Saga, it doesn't so much for me. It feels extraneous. For me it's a matter of execution, not principle.

 

Maybe it's just a matter of taste then, because I'm watching a friend replay XCOM and I'm really struck by all the po-faced drama and hand-wringing about morality and the alien menace. Remember when you build your first genetics lab and you're told that there are hidden dangers to becoming too much like the enemy? What? I love the game, but ugh. I'm coming to the opinion that the fiction of XCOM is really and truly awful, except when it intersects with actual gameplay decisions, so I find it much more extraneous than in The Banner Saga.

 

Also, this might be just me, but when I'm playing a single-player game next to a friend, I'm instantly 100% less tolerant of any text block longer than a couple sentences. Anyone else get like that?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Maybe it's just a matter of taste then, because I'm watching a friend replay XCOM and I'm really struck by all the po-faced drama and hand-wringing about morality and the alien menace. Remember when you build your first genetics lab and you're told that there are hidden dangers to becoming too much like the enemy? What? I love the game, but ugh. I'm coming to the opinion that the fiction of XCOM is really and truly awful, except when it intersects with actual gameplay decisions, so I find it much more extraneous than in The Banner Saga.

 

Also, this might be just me, but when I'm playing a single-player game next to a friend, I'm instantly 100% less tolerant of any text block longer than a couple sentences. Anyone else get like that?

I don't care about the fiction of XCOM, but there's a bunch of stuff to actually DO in between battles that I like a lot. I don't care about the fiction of The Banner Saga but also there's pretty much nothing else to do in between battles that I find interesting.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Also, this might be just me, but when I'm playing a single-player game next to a friend, I'm instantly 100% less tolerant of any text block longer than a couple sentences. Anyone else get like that?

No, it's fairly common, since you're react to the game differently in a social situation than as a simulation. Similarly , watching a horror movie in a group is a very different experience from watching one alone.

 

I find this is especially the case for games that have a relatively fragile systems as I have difficulty maintaining suspension of disbelief when my attention is split between the game and other people. Something like Facade, which requires tons of buy-in from the audience really suffers.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I don't care about the fiction of XCOM, but there's a bunch of stuff to actually DO in between battles that I like a lot. I don't care about the fiction of The Banner Saga but also there's pretty much nothing else to do in between battles that I find interesting.

 

Now that's something with which I definitely agree. All the truly important decisions are made at the towns, all at once, when you decide whether to spend your renown on food or gear/leveling. I had posted a similar opinion in the thread for the game, but I wish there were a greater density of discrete event chains while your group is on the move. The conversations get better as you keep playing and get a better context for everyone, but the long stretches of watching your group cross the distance between towns becomes too familiar and a bit too dull.

 

Anyway, there are quite a few interesting things being done between the battles, but for some reason, the developers don't put them in lights, so most of the big plot twists could pass right by you if you're not reading every word of the text. I suppose they expected a greater initial buy-in from most players, even though RPS complained about it in their previews of the game.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Everyone seemed a bit self-conscious talking Nintendo, as if they had already talked it to death on an earlier show or something.  But I don't think they did?  It was a good talk and wasn't sure whe the Thumbs were rushing it along.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

In King of Dragon Pass, you're given an excess of information with every single decision, to the point that it's almost impossible to process, with the intended consequence that you can't play it like FTL, where you're presented with an obvious and well-flagged decision point that has a guaranteed optimal response for your given situation, and instead have to default to a more instinctual style of role-playing. Clyde or someone who's played multiple times can speak to this better, but after beating the game once, I'm mostly sure that there's not supposed to be an optimal or even positive outcome to coming across a farmer with cattle that could feed your clan. Something bad's going to go down, so you just have to go with what you can stomach as both player and character. That's King of Dragon Pass to me, where you do what you know is technically the right thing, but it blows up in your face anyway because of a sacrifice you missed four years ago or even just random chance, who knows.

EDIT: Yeah, listening to more of the conversation, maybe I'm just not sure that the minimalism Christ and Sean seem to crave was the actual design goal of Stoic here, considering that they are making a lushly illustrated game depicting a multi-episode Norse saga, which are just a lot of words. Right or wrong, of course.

One thing worth noting about how KoDP deals with lore is that later in the game's timeline lore can becomes vital to progress. There is a system of 'vision quests' where you must send a member of your tribe to reenact the games lore in the spirit realm.

Success depends upon if your choice shares qualities with the hero he or she is supposed to be playing the part of, and how well you remember the sagas of the various gods and heros.

It's not just lore for lore's sakes.

I think I love KoDPs for the same reason I do Farcry 2, and CK2 because it's occasional unfairness plays up to my expectation of the brutality of their respective settings.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

One thing worth noting about how KoDP deals with lore is that later in the game's timeline lore can becomes vital to progress. There is a system of 'vision quests' where you must send a member of your tribe to reenact the games lore in the spirit realm.

Success depends upon if your choice shares qualities with the hero he or she is supposed to be playing the part of, and how well you remember the sagas of the various gods and heros.

It's not just lore for lore's sakes.

I think I love KoDPs for the same reason I do Farcry 2, and CK2 because it's occasional unfairness plays up to my expectation of the brutality of their respective settings.

 

Yeah! And the cool thing with the heroquest stuff is that you need to know the lore well enough not only to emulate it, but also to get everything back on the right track if something randomly fails and the heroquest goes off the rails. It's all so strange and fun, it makes me wish that heroquests weren't basically something you have to grind near the end to beat the "long" game.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this