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Alpha Protocol photo depository thread

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Johnny C:
yeah a lot about new vegas looks like a thing basically going right for obsidian for once in their careers. it's probably going to make a ton of bank and unless they somehow completely screw the pooch with it it's probably going to be a success in other ways too.


--- Quote from: KvP on 06 Jul 2010, 23:27 ---It's rough, certainly. Playing through it, AP felt a lot like Bloodlines, in that there was a certain roughness to the systems and the visual aspects of the game, but also a depth of polish and functionality with regards to more esoteric aspects of the game, particularly pertaining to choice and consequence, that is really unparalleled in Western gaming. I, as well as a lot of people, found those esoteric strengths to be more than enough to recommend the game, but the fact of the matter is that most people really don't care, and as MCA says himself, it's the base-level gameplay that appeals to people, and the base-level gameplay, while not as atrocious as that in Bloodlines, was not up to snuff of the games that AP tried to emulate. It's a really good first draft for a studio that's never done this sort of thing before, but it's not really good enough to carry it. Over time I think that AP's reputation will be rehabilitated in the same way that Bloodlines was (perhaps to a greater extent) but that always comes with the sort of cult that RPGs like this foster. But we're living in the age of $30 million averages in game budgets, and Obsidz's cult acclaim does it about as much good from a practical standpoint as, say, Kurosawa's did back in the day.

--- End quote ---

i'm in pain over this entire paragraph dude. i mean i agree its esoteric aspects are reason enough to recommend it (the actual impact of choices is neat to watch but even the way those choices get made and the way the player is rustled into the narrative flow through the dialogue system is actually fantastic), but it's not so much that people don't care about the esoteric stuff as that the lack of lustre on the stuff that the gamer has to immediately connect with on a moment-to-moment basis seriously hampers enjoyment. i'm at a point in the game now where i'm enjoying the action but that came after hours in which shooting and sneaking and simple actions were honestly excruciating.

the argument that people didn't want to look past the occasionally quite shitty gameplay in order to find the turd-stained gems underneath isn't really compelling, because they really shouldn't have to look past it. we're not just living in the age of $30 million budgets, we're living in the age when basically games are expected to be fun right away, not later after you've put in your time suffering through the stuff that is totally broken unless you have a certain amount of xp. obsidian doesn't have to give us PUSH BUTTON TO WIN GAME gameplay to get higher metacritic scores and/or sales, they just need to be able to deliver an experience that is compelling and entertaining on a visceral level too.

like i'm wishing it did have a sequel but really the only way their properties like this are going to get sequels is if they make them actually fun games. if history consequently sees AP as it is - a clever and rewarding experience with serious unresolved, seemingly unnoticed core issues - rather than as some kind of tainted glimmer of the way things could have been, then maybe obsidian will finally own up to the fact that there are glaring problems with their design process and quality control and then they'll smooth those problems out and then they'll produce a game that's actually unfuckwithable like we all know they are capable of doing.

KvP:
I don't disagree, and neither does Obsidz, really. They'd be the first to tell you where they fucked up. Sawyer has not really been shy with his low opinion of NWN2 (granted he came in during the 20% or so of the development cycle, but still) and the shoddy design that Obsidz has put in, in general. MCA doesn't go that far (he's a co-owner of the business, after all) but he has echoed your sentiments re: core gameplay pretty consistently. He has to say it over and over, since there's a large contingent of Obsidz' fanbase that is eternally frustrated that they aren't making turn-based Infinity Engine games anymore. He always says that the things that players remember most about games tend to be serendipitous and impressive events within games that aren't set up beforehand - what I most enjoyed about Fallout 2 wasn't necessarily the freedoms inherent to the game's design but the fact that you could get into a fight in a bar and one critical miss on the part of enemy could turn the scene into a Wild West-style free for all, with everything going nuts in slow motion.

The sense that I get is that they really did their level best. The combat on the whole is problematic for reasons that I can't really put my finger on - it has all the things that ought to make combat pretty okay - relative variation in approach, activated abilities, clearly understandable hit detection, enemy reactions, etc. but it's still not all that good. I think the two biggest things are samey AI throughout (intel gives you all these "strategies" that factions are supposed to employ but they all fight and die in the same ways) and a de-emphasis on movement, something that Bioware really honed in on in their design facelift from ME1 to ME2 - combat in most cases involves sitting behind cover and "charging" critical hits, which isn't all that dynamic in terms of action. One of the reasons I liked AP as much as I did my first playthrough was because I was a martial arts character, I think - aside from the Brayko fight and maybe Marburg the melee build is actually far quicker and more effective than gun builds, provided the right level of added toughness and given the inaccuracy of most of the enemies. I think mainly I'm just miffed because I went in looking to compare this game to ME1, which I thought was fairly reasonable given the timeframe (content and systems were hammered out long before we saw anything from ME2), and I think AP is a much, much better game than ME1 in almost every respect. But since it plays like a 2-year old game instead of a 2-month old game, it gets 3 or 4/10s? Rubs me as arbitrary. Which it is, but life isn't fair and all that.

The trouble is that this seems to sound the death knell of a certain stats-intensive sort of Action RPG, the rare sort descended from Deus Ex. As an example of that particular style AP is actually pretty exemplary (though the AI is still a big sucking hole) but what reaction seems to indicate is that RPGs in the future had better not really include stats at all, at least none that directly influence the experience of the game. It started with Oblivion's shift to twitch combat from Morrowind's comical dicerolling and it seems like it's ended with ME2's complete streamlining of the character concept.

David_Dovey:

--- Quote from: Johnny C on 08 Jul 2010, 01:01 ---the argument that people didn't want to look past the occasionally quite shitty gameplay in order to find the turd-stained gems underneath isn't really compelling, because they really shouldn't have to look past it. we're not just living in the age of $30 million budgets, we're living in the age when basically games are expected to be fun right away, not later after you've put in your time suffering through the stuff that is totally broken unless you have a certain amount of xp. obsidian doesn't have to give us PUSH BUTTON TO WIN GAME gameplay to get higher metacritic scores and/or sales, they just need to be able to deliver an experience that is compelling and entertaining on a visceral level too.

--- End quote ---

See this is how I feel about Assassin's Creed yet I get fucking chewed out every single time I try to make the argument.

ackblom12:
Assassin's Creed 1 pains me so much.

Ozymandias:
Assassin's Creed 1 is a mess.

However, it also was well hyped and therefore easily sold well enough to justify AC2 which was an absolute gem. Certainly, Obsidian can do better. Ideally, they should get a shot. Sales don't bear that out. Life sucks.

Also, I'm completely in favor of moving away from stats-based RPGs. Just saying. Arbitrary numbers indicating progress ain't really a thing I would mourn.

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