Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Festivus is coming!

So, as I planned, I have been very laid back this week, and didn't do anything particularly interesting for the game (I did start taking notes for the next update, as I predicted, but that doesn't come as a big surprise for me, and I worked on a few bugs that got reported). I will probably update a bugfixed version within a week or so, to solve a few remaining problems that weren't discovered during testing, and then I'll go back to working on the game (next week I also have an exam, so things will probably start picking some speed the week after that).

I got things to be happy about, though, since I got 2 donations this week! 15 pounds from bobdark and 20 canadian dollars from S.D. (if you read this, check the e-mail I sent you! ^_^)!  I'll never thank you guys enough for this, really.

Since I am weak willed, I ended up spending part of it on the The Humble THQ Bundle (I never played a Saints Row game before, so I thought I could try an rectify that).  I wanted to be more thoughtful with money, but Christmas sales are behind the corner, so I am probably just wasting energy trying to delay the inevitable... -_-

This week of relatively little work on the game might be a good chance to talk about ME1 & 2, and the MC aspects in them, as I wanted to do for a really long time (I mentioned this a long, LONG time ago, but I am great at not meeting deadlines, let alone ignoring the ones that aren't set in stone), so next week I will probably post my impressions about them (it won't be a review of the games themself, although I will probably mention my opinion with the games in general).

10 comments:

  1. 5 mins in ME3 kills 120 hours of great story........ sad chapter in video game history.

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  2. What are you talking about? ME3 got cancelled due to unknown reasons, and we can only "speculate" about what went wrong...

    More seriously, I am not going to enter into "rant mode" now, but I have a lot of issues with the series, that include ME2 and ME3 as a whole, not just the ending (that is something that still haunts my nights).

    I am not this great story teller, nor I am an incredibly observant and knowlegeable critic, but there are a lot of low points in the plot after the first chapter, because they often decided to target the raw emotions of the players, disregarding some basic stuff that are a real killer mood for me, especially in a sci-fi setting. ME2 was saved by the characters for me, while ME3... Simply wasn't saved. As I often point out I would give ME1 an 8, ME2 a 7 and ME3 a 6 (ending excluded, I just can't consider it part of the game, anyway, it feels like an alien growth attached to the rest).

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    1. I can tolerate the ending if they don't let me pick one from the lovely color wheel. It would be so much better (wait! not better) just more tolerable if the game force an ending to me which is determined by my action. The way they do things in Bioware really kills all illusion of choice. I guess when you work for EA, you have to aim at people who can only think about the plot for 5 mins before they headshoot something.

      The only good thing that really stands out from Bioware games is character writing. Say what you want about the game, you can't help but love Garrus and Mordin.

      OMG....I just remind myself about Tali's picture! THE PAIN!!!

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    2. The ending is terrible from three points of view:

      it's generally bad in a game to throw out of the window all the previous choices and go with a deus-ex machina, unless you really work hard on setting it up properly, because games (and RPGs even more than the average games) are about choices and consequences directly controlled by the players, so it kills player agency;

      It's poorly written. Seriously, it breaks narrative coherence for no additional emotional pay off, and it makes no logical sense (all of the choices raise a lot more questions about the actions of the catalyst, and they in fact aren't a solution to the problem he claims to want solved, which seems very counter-intuitive), while introducing new characters and plots at the last minute, and solving said plots a minute later. I die a little inside whenever I think about the Catalyst's line (both pre- and post-Extended Cut DLC, even if post is slightly worst, as it introduces a new batch of contradictions);

      It's thematically a nightmare: all solutions evoke fascist reasoning to them (you either sacrifice an entire species together with the Reapers, you become the absolute Tyrant of the galaxy, or you turn everyone into the perfect creature... By homogenizing all species in a weird hybrid form), and it goes directly against the idea that you can triumph against all odds, that was evident in the previous games (you are allowed to pick only among the choices the Catalyst offers you. No way to negotiate, despite it making way more sense, considering the Catalyst basically is fine with you picking destroy, too, so it could simply exile itself and the Reapers, and everything would be fine).

      Yeah, I still love the characters, but I feel that they tried to go so hard for "the universe is burning" that they got put in a corner, a little, which just makes the problems all the more glaring.

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  3. Best Scenes of ME3 was Mordin's death in curing the genophage and Wrex Speech to his people.
    I don't want to remember anything else of that game.

    (Bradipus)

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    1. I am with you with Wrex, but I believe that Mordin's death could have been handled a bit better, for some reason I found the way he has to go a little too convenient, let's say (it's still a good scene, overall, but Mordin makes everything better, so they could hardly screw that up ^_^).

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  4. It had to be him...someone else might have been wrong.

    I wrote it was one of the best scenes, but i didn't wrote it was logical.
    (I had EDI and Mordin with me and i wondered why an AI reinforced with reaper tech couldn't unhack the damage done by the STGs which according to Mordin if i remember correcly was done by hacking.)

    Bradipus

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    1. Yeah, that about sums it up. It was likely that we were going to say goodbye to Mordin, and I wanted it to be epic, but the scene itself could have been handled a bit better (this isn't on the level of Fallout 3 ending, where the big mutant refuses to go inside in your place, but the setup could have been more logical, without sacrificing the emotional impact. Still, it's a good moment, touching).

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  5. Hello again.

    I decided to spend some time with Blanked as well, its a nice game, not close to drunken cowboy in my eyes (by that I mean That ToDC is awesome game, while Blanked is "just" good, not the other way around :-) ), but I just unable to get all the directors "convinced". So, is there some walktrough or something? Ideally outside Hypnopics, as for some reason, I cant log inside the forum. Any help would be nice :-)

    To the previous topic: In ToDC, sometimes I travel to some planet and I end on different planet. It is happening exclusively when there is some interaction with someone (Mr. Nice guy abduction, Malena vine/confrontation part, Jane dinner making, heck, it happened once when I started the game for teh second time, that I ended up after the first mission not on the "main" planet I should have, but on the robotic planet instead (and I couldnt leave).

    Vic

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    1. Yeah, Blanked has a lot of limits, it was just my second game, so I still lacked some confidence with the RAGS engine, plus it was done with the free version of the engine, which has less features than the full version. Also, it wasn't exactly "original", either, it was influenced by other games I had played, and a copy hardly ever reaches the original... ^_^

      There should be a walkthrough... On the hypnopics collective... It should be in the thread, so I believe you could find it without having to create an account, but you would still need to unearth it from the old thread of the game (there isn't an "official" version, so to speak).

      This sounds like a very weird bug... And I haven't heard about it before, at least not with the frequency you seem to experience it (I believe it happened to me only once, since I started working on the game). I believe it might be a problem with RAGS itself, and so nothing I can do about it, but just in case, if it happens to you again, report me exactly what you did, so I can try to reproduce it, and see if I can do something about it, ok?

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