@Octane Ill have to skip the Witness then. Im red/green colour blind.
The Last Guardian I tried and it aggrevated me due to how it handles the relationship and it leads to frustrating gameplay with no tell if you are doing something wrong, the ai isnt listening because plot, or if the AI is borking out briefly. I cant get behind that design.
And Unravel ive heard good things about but im not exactly sure what it is. 2d platformer?
Now Playing: Mario & Luigi Brothership, Sonic x Shadow Generations
Now Streaming: The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
I think it's hilarious @Ralizah called Bethesda games' design outdated, because it's the only open world model I enjoy at all. The Witcher 3 is just a story for a normal, linear game streeeetched out over this 100 hour game. It's a complete disconnect between the level design and the plot / quest design, and it made that game a slog along with the combat. You're on a wild goose chase for more than half of that game before the plot actually changes or evolves.
Meanwhile in Bethesda games have a reason to be open world. They're about places, not people. Every character and quest develops not only the individuals involved, but the world you're exploring. While the Wild Hunt was only in a few quests spread out across the Witcher 3, dragons in Skyrim can be found all around the world and you can even see Alduin resurrecting a named dragon at one of the burial mounds rarely.
Though I agree that Fallout 4 was a step down from Skyrim in terms of world design (I have always been a fantasy fan over anything else), it still has new things to offer. Firstly, I think it's the best open world FPS? Breath has the best melee combat in an OW, but the weapon crafting adds such a diversity to Fallout's already large weapons selection. Crafting a more powerful mod for a gun, or something that changes its function like a scope or a muzzle that coverts it into a shotgun, just feels so good. I love how min max-y you can get over exp in that game, from intelligence to the idiot savant perk that randomly triples exp received (even quest-rewarded points) to the well rested bonus'.
The stories told through the relay towers' radio signals and all of the other terminal entries and voice recordings blow the read content in similar games out of the water because they actually correspond to physical features and locations in the environment that you can seek out and profit from. I don't think Fallout 4 had as deep of a progression as Skyrim due to the absence of magic and enchanting, but its skill tree is still leagues deeper than Witcher and RPGs with similar progression styles. Choosing between stealth attacks, critical hits, melee, weapon mods, companions, and VATS is really difficult because they're all very powerful, and the game gives every player access to their entry level form to test them out before choosing a direction. Probably the biggest problem with the progression is how easy it is to create a jack of all trades, master of none character instead of a specified, powerful one. However, both paths give you plenty of options to dealing with combat, as well as quests with intelligence and charisma.
I've spent hundreds of hours in Oblivion, Skyrim, and Fallout 4; and even just playing Fallout 4 this year I've discovered new quests and secrets I walked right by the first time. I realize they're long, slow games, but that's inherent to open world design. If you want that kind of explorative experience, I don't think any other games are as continually rewarding.
@Dezzy WAT?! Free J&D??? I....might have to do that...do I get a code without having to pick up the game? Because I might wind up doing that if I can...
Crash Bandicoot DLC "Stormy Ascent" is free until August 19
Apparently people asked for it.
I like free things, in case you can't tell...so it certainly sold me. I also hope to watch my free Advent Children Movie this weekend, and I'm looking forward to playing DOOM multiplayer, now that the DLC is going to be in the next update. Unless Doomfist gets added to Overwatch first. (also for free...okay, I'll stop...)
@Ralizah That's neat! I don't own Crash unfortunately. I like platformers, but Crash' controls are a bit too wonky for my tastes. That segment in Uncharted 4 reminded me why I was never a huge fan of the franchise to begin with. I don't think they fixed any of the controls in the remaster.
@CanisWolfred Well, I guessed it probably was. I never played it that way (and I only played a couple of hours for that matter), but I do recall some third person lightsaber battles.
@Haru17 I'm still waiting for the GOTY edition of Fallout 4. I bought it at launch, but I sold it out of sheer frustration and Open-World burn-out well before the DLC released. I still got Hitman on my wishlist, too, and I'm contemplating getting the Skyrim special edition...but then again, I'm not sure if Skyrim VR will be a separate purchase, so maybe I'll just wait it out...for like, another 5 years or so...
@CanisWolfred Huh, I hadn't realized Fallout 4's GOTY release hadn't happened yet. Maybe they just didn't want to compete with Skyrim: Special Edition. In any case Skyrim VR is definitely going to be a separate purchase, so don't go in on the Special Edition if you're interested in playing it with move controllers in that immersive environment. I'd imagine it'll support the traditional controls as well, but who knows. Also I have no idea when Fallout 4 will be announced for PSVR.
@Haru17 Can't speak to TW3, but your description of it ("story for a normal, linear game streeeetched out over this 100 hour game") reminds me of why I didn't like the original Xenoblade Chronicles (beyond the frustrating and cluttered progression and customization systems). It's a linear, story-heavy JRPG set in an open world, except there's no reason for it to have an open world, so all that space is just wasted, and a lot of the game is just spent pointlessly wandering around admittedly very pretty landscapes.
RE: Fallout 4, I didn't get a lot of joy from weapon customization if only because there isn't a huge call for it. In general, normal shotguns, rifles, etc. work fine for my purposes. Since I don't feel any particular need to customize my weapons, it feels like fiddly busywork. Even worse, though, is that weapon customization is tied to the world's most tedious settlement building minigame. A lot of the new content is tied to that feature, actually, and after messing with it for a few hours, I decided I'd rather have my teeth pulled without anesthesia than ever put myself through that again. (ok, that's hyperbolic, but only partially...)
Another problem I have is that, no matter how much work you put into making cool, custom weapons, this doesn't change the fact that the combat is clunky and fundamentally unsatisfying. Melee combat much more so than ranged combat. Your character in a Bethesda game always controls like a robot that hasn't been oiled in a few centuries, and it makes hectic situations frustrating to deal with.
They also ruined VATS. It used to be a kind of cool throw-back to turn-based combat, and now it's yet another slow motion system.
World design is another issue for me. There's no artistry to the copy-pasted landscapes. Skyrim is somewhat better in this regard, but I've never played a Bethesda game where the landscape itself was memorable or even interesting to look at. This is especially a sore spot for me after playing BotW, which has a magnificently designed open world.
I can't speak much to the writing in Fallout 4, because I quit after 20 or so hours. What I did encounter wasn't compelling or interesting, but I obviously haven't spent as much time playing as you have, so I won't say there isn't good writing in this game. I just didn't encounter any myself.
One concession: I don't really care about the in-game lore. I'm not the type to dig through books in Skyrim or item descriptions in Dark Souls. So I have no idea how Bethesda games fare in this regard.
@Ralizah I don't know what you're talking about with poor controls. Bethesda games control just like any first person game. Sure, if you're backpeddling you can get hung up on geometry sight unseen, but that's more of a thing of situational awareness. Unlike other open worlds besides Breath, Bethesda games are all designed so you can climb up onto everything and all of the buildings and world elements have collision. Melee combat is simple, but it's also a shooter and melee stealth attacks are more interesting. Also, stealth in Breath of the Wild wasn't great with the contextual prompt for sneakstrikes bugging out all of the time and ruining three minutes of slowly creeping across a field.
I don't know where you get off calling Bethesda games copy-paste, especially in reference to Breath of the Palette Swap. They have a ton more enemy variety for one, with plenty more added in the story expansions (Far Harbor especially), and every enemy in the game has 4 or 5 points for positional damage, wounded, and severed limbs. Like, there are unique jumping puzzles, entry points into the dungeons.
Hell, there are dungeons at all! The dungeons / point of interest split is something other open world games still fail to get right, shrines being a big fat example of that failing. Sure some of the dungeons in Skyrim and Fallout 4 use the same wallpaper, but they at least have a few different sets and different kinds of enemies inside, which is more than Breath and Witcher can say.
I think you just need to spend more time with the game, it's just infeasible to understand an open world game this deep with less than a day of playtime. The weapon modding system is really simple after you gather the correct materials, and the game develops a language of which material types and knick knacks are valuable and which are just dead weight. The way to play these games is to read the (at most, four-paragraph) journal entries you find. You'll better understand the history of the dungeons and locations that way.
Ralizah's not the first one to complain about the combat in Bethesda's games, but I'm with Haru17, I think the feel and controls are fine, at least in everything since Morrowind. With a controller, mind you, I tried playing Fallout 3 with the moue and keyboard, and it was the awful. I still haven't tried it with the controller just yet, though, I had to install mods in order to get it to work, and that kind of erased all my saves...have I mentioned how much I hate community mods?
Granted, I haven't tried a lot of Western RPGs that came out before 2008. I just know that everything that wasn't Mass Effect or Elder Scrolls/Fallout 3/NV/4 found some way to overcomplicate things when all I really want to do is hit them with metal things and occasionally throw a fireball...
EDIT: Also, Overwatch. Doomfist. July 27th. Be there.
@Haru17 The way the character controls, the way he or she interacts with the environment, the melee combat... it's all slow and clunky. This is especially apparent after playing something a bit more fluid like BotW, any of the Arkham games, Shadow of Mordor or, hell, Far Cry 4. It also fares poorly when compared to other modern shooters like Wolfenstein or Doom. I don't think this is always a bad thing (I've praised ZombiU precisely because its clunky, weightier movement and combat disempowers the player), but fighting should be fun in Bethesda games. There's a lot of it.
No doubt that stealth sucks in BotW and that the enemy variety is lacking. These are legitimate shortcomings of the game. Thankfully, the basic flow of combat and character movement is so fun that these flaws don't stand out too much to me. Combat sequences can also quickly get hairy in BotW, but it never feels like I'm fighting the interface (with the possible exception, as you mentioned, of trying to pull off stealth attacks)
Anyway, I said the landscapes in Bethesda games feel copy-pasted. Because they do feel that way to me. The dungeons in Skyrim do to some extent as well. Sure, they're there, but there always basic variations on the same thing. Couple of rooms, random stuff in a chest, some enemies, and almost always one of those animal lock puzzles. They can be fun (I'll remind you that I actually like Skyrim), but I wouldn't point to them as being particularly well-designed. BotW's shrines aren't perfect (there are way too many combat shrines, for one, and those shrines that reward you just for finding them feel like a cop out), but there are a lot of interesting puzzles you encounter in them (and one particular motion controlled puzzle that shouldn't exist).
I've never understood the appeal of playing a game where you run around and read random notes and journal entries. Granted, I'm OK with that in something like Resident Evil, because RE games always have some sort of central mystery to them. What happened to Raccoon City? What was Umbrella trying to accomplish with all these experiments? etc. Bethesda games don't have that unifying context. Going back to the BotW example, why would I want to run around reading random bits of history or trivia about Hyrule when I could be climbing frozen mountains or paragliding through lush valleys?
At this point, games that just barf journals and audio logs everywhere feel lazy. Like they couldn't design actual interesting scenarios in which to present these narratives.
Currently Playing: The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy (PC)
@Ralizah You still haven't articulated any actual criticisms about the controls. The run speed in Bethesda games is somewhat slow because you're meant to stop and explore everything you find. Obviously your player character can't do backflips like Link or zip across the ground to punch an enemy like with Arkham combat because they're in first-person and that would be so, so disorienting. These games are about immersion and exploration.
Fallout 4 was immensely exciting precisely because they focused so much on bringing the combat up to snuff. There is a ton of combat in their series', and now the fights are much quicker and more satisfying with the positional limb damage I mentioned. Some of the early game guns are going to feel a bit basic if you don't upgrade them, but that only adds to how good it feels to get a new weapon or upgrade and test it out. Just how the feral ghouls animate and charge the player is cool, and like any Bethesda title the enemies can instigate each other and get into fights dynamically.
Bethesda games are sort of a jack of all trades and a master of one — environmental storytelling. While I generally also prefer cutscenes, I don't think you should discount Beth games for being different. And presenting a worthy alternative at that as opposed to something randomly generated or an isometric game that never has the budget to zoom in or use character portraits for cutscenes. If you actually read the journals in Beth games you'll find new details about the story or world. Fallout in particular has this really wonderful, dry sense of humor that viciously mocks the people of 2077 for being stupid enough to let the apocalypse happen. Like how the government collaborated with companies to build all of these vaults instead of acting to prevent nuclear war. There's a dungeon that tears at charter schools and pink slime school lunches for chrissakes.
Literally just ducking into doorways in the city can add new quests and dialogue you might not have ever seen before. There is unifying context to the world that you'd pick up on if you read the notes you see lying around. In Fallout 4 several of the dungeons are connected by raider gangs that know each other and have this drama that you'll only realize if you read all of the notes and recognize the recurring names.
I agree with your criticisms of Breath and Fallout 4's settlement system infringing upon the number of towns, but I'll raise you one more. I was dead bored climbing Hebra because there was absolutely nothing unique about it. Despite the distinctive shape from afar, it was just more reused elements from the rest of the world with no context provided to explain why it was even there. That's the problem with so many new gen open world games and something that absolutely never happens in Bethesda games. Even if you've seen that pipe before, there's unique writing that gives this area a history and adds interest.
Finally, I totally disagree with the notion that Bethesda open worlds are copy paste. Every OW game is going to reuse assets, the points of interest spread around the map keep the world from feeling too samey. Whether that's an open air dungeon like much of the Reach in Skyrim or the superhighways in Fallout 4, or the little unmarked areas that reward meticulous exploration, Beth games are top in class of making an open world feel unique and varied across such large periods of play. They're also probably the single best representations of nature in the medium, speaking more about The Elder Scrolls. They don't treat forests and natural spaces as featureless copy-paste areas like other open world games. The wilds hold rare materials, treasure chests hidden inside of tree hollows, and unique locations like Sleeping Tree Camp and the unmarked locations I mentioned that push players to value them as lands equally as valuable as manmade areas.
The journal entries and books are one of the high points of games like Skyrim for me. It really adds to the immersion, not only because you're learning more about the universe you're in, but also because it makes it feel more like you, yourself, are actually in that world. I don't know if it's just me, but doing a simple task like reading a book really makes me feel like I'm in the world a whole lot more than just running around or killing things. Regardless, even with the journal entries and books and whatnot, there's a heck of a lot more narrative in Skyrim than in something like BoTW, which has a fairly weak story and next to no interesting side quests. Skyrim's main storyline is probably on par with BoTW's in terms of strength, perhaps a bit lower, but the side quests and random encounters really pick up the slack, at least for me.
I don't find Skyrim's landscapes copied and pasted at all, either. Every location is distinct, and filled with unique things to find, unlike BoTW, which can largely be boiled down to shrines, stables, and monster camps. When playing through Skyrim, I always went into new areas never knowing what I would end up finding, be it a vampire-infested cave, a camp that was massacred by some unknown creature that left nothing but gore and bones stripped of flesh, or a hunter living in isolation, as well as countless other possible things, but with BoTW, I quickly realized that it was basically just empty space dotted mainly with those 3 things I mentioned, as well as the odd village.
You could send me a screenshot of any location you're standing in in Skyrim and I could probably at least approximate where you are, whereas if you sent me a screenshot of where you are in BoTW, I would have a much harder time figuring it out, unless you're looking at something like the Dueling Peaks, or are near someplace like Zora's Domain. Maybe it's partly because I've spent a lot more time in Skyrim than in BoTW, though, and because Zelda's world is so ridiculously big (that is forgivable and understandable, due to how much mobility Link has, but it does result in a lot of empty space, and if travel was based on a more realistic level like Skyrim, it would be absolute torture to explore BoTW's world) @Ralizah
@Dezzy WAT?! Free J&D??? I....might have to do that...do I get a code without having to pick up the game? Because I might wind up doing that if I can...
You get the code on the release data apparently. Probably via email. Why wouldn't you pick up the game?
@Dezzy WAT?! Free J&D??? I....might have to do that...do I get a code without having to pick up the game? Because I might wind up doing that if I can...
You get the code on the release data apparently. Probably via email. Why wouldn't you pick up the game?
Because I don't buy popular games until I can find them for under $40 (especially when I'm not even caught up). I mean, it's pretty easy to find Uncharted 4 for $20 now, and it feels like it came out just yesterday. But if I can pre-order it at Gamestop, and get the code via email, then that's good news to me. I was already going to go there on Tuesday to pre-order Gundam Versus, so now I can put 5 more dollars down on Uncharted: Lost Legacy, and then not pick it up when it releases, using those $5 on Gundam Versus at the end of September instead.
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