Bethesda and PnP mechanics

I'd just like to add that what the article, and Hines, describe do not sound like fun.

In my mind, an RPG (PnP or otherwise) is usually a strategy game where one logically completes quests in order to logically unlock important skills and continue advancing a narrative.

An action game eschews story (most of the time) for reflex and hand-eye coordination. Neither genre is better or worse than the other. This mix they're talking about is absurd.

We want the condition of the weapon you are using, and your character’s skill with using that weapon, to determine whether or not you can kill that creature over there – not your ability to put crosshairs on a target and pull the trigger.
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This sounds like an argument for not using a first-person perspective, if everything but my ability to hover my cursor over a baddie is checked 'fore I get my kill. Look at me missing! Is my mouse broken?

Much of what can make videogaming a transparent, believable experience is predicated on enabling a purer and more direct kind of roleplay, eschewing immersion-breaking mechanics like turn-based combat, and dependence on stat screens
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I often sit down to play Civilization grumbling that my decisions are not rendered in real time, that my plebs do not make their desires known to me in one incomprehensible shout, but turn by turn. No other game has immersed me so completely inside of ITS OWN environment. Make that distinction--a game should be its own reality--not a mirror of my own. I'll never believe that.

Since they rely on visual representation rather than imagination...
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Let me finish this quote: "...Bethesda will never create compelling content." Imagination is more powerful than a visual representation. I prefer it. The more you leave up to the reader, the more personal his or her experience. Wasn't that Hines' main point?

Believability. What a load. Shiny cars attract more attention. That's the bottom line here.

Eureka! That crate DID react realistically to my shotgun blast! NOW I'm ready to enjoy this post-apocalyptic adventure in which radiation mutates humans--doesn't outright KILL them.

Come on. We call it make-believe for a reason. Let me micromanage. Save yourself some trouble, Bethesda. No one's going to gawk at your believable textured geometry 3 years from now--but people might create an online community for a game almost a decade old if only because it's fun.
 
This is so stupid. Damn.
I've said it before and I'll say it again about this fucking 'immersion'.
There's nothing immersive about first person view. No-thing.
Normally, all human beings have so called 'peripherical' sight, that allows you to see everything that happens to the left or right. So the perception field is MUCH bigger than can be depicted even on a widescreen. Thus any 3d person view (including iso) is much more immersive (fuck this word) as it allows you to be aware of what happens around you.

There's nothing 'immersive' about minimizing interface. UI is a part of the game atmosphere if done well. Just look at Fallout or Witcher. Their interfaces are pieces of art. They not only don't brake the immersion of player into game, but enhance it by creating the unique spirit.
Thus these games, even though they lack shiny graphics, or models, become much more beliveable and immersive.
There's nothing immersive in Oblivion. Shitty interface, imbecile faces and FP prospective added to that. That's why it fails. That's why that ideas of 'immersion' that they are putting into their games fail.
Instead of focusing on creating atmosphere and spirit of a game, they focus on technical issues that they think are immersive, like first person view, real-time cobmbat. But that's not what makes a game nice. That is just moronity.
 
Hines suggests that much of what can make videogaming a transparent, believable experience is predicated on enabling a purer and more direct kind of roleplay, eschewing immersion-breaking mechanics like turn-based combat, and dependence on stat screens.
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That's moronic. So now, stats and turn-based combat are immersion-breaking just because he doesn't like them?
I never found stat screens and turn-based combat immersion-breaking when playing games like Fallout or X-Com.
 
Tyshalle said:
I disagree. Fallout is about more than just reliving a Pen and Paper RPG in a video game environment.
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No it's not. It's just that. It's just a game, in the end...

Touché!
 
There is a book called "Everything bad is good for you" and it brings up the nature of PnP and how it challenges us to think and how we evolve those ideas. It looks at popular tv shows from Dallas to 24 and brings up an idea about complexity. That in order to be successful in the long run you have to add to the complexity and challenge the viewer. Because a viewer has moved from being the passive couch potato to actively analysing what's happening and to connect all the threads. The series then bring these people together to discuss the issues at hand. Often on internet forums...

There's one side that likes the tables and dices because they present a type of challenge for the mind. You need to learn all the rules, know what everything does (skills, traits etc) and throw the dices, get the result, think how to proceed (tada) and play on (a lot of people find this dorky though). This approach could seem overly complicated with todays technology (why not make it easier?), but it presents an opportunity for thought and strategy that are still compelling to a broad audience. "It is my turn, I have this many points, how do I spend them most wisely? I could do this and this but maybe this move is better.". People still play chess just for the challenge. It gives you time for evaluation. And of course it's a lot of fun to be able to play by rules that emulate another view of the world. They hinder you, but also enables you to do a lot of new stuff previously unthinkable.

I admit that I sometimes find simulators to be a bit boring (microsoft flight simulator just to name one). Sure, you have a lot of control over an aircraft but I just don't see what's so fun about it. My dad though can "play" it for hours which makes me wonder. I'm just guessing here but I have a hunch that he knows the controls and when to use them. I don't. He knows how to use those rules in interesting ways. I have yet to be enlightened.

I think the key to this is that there is a lot going on, and it is the connections between all these elements that are interesting. You are not just moving a piece on a board, you are also keeping track of what is happening behind it. It is when the mind gets to analyse all these connection you really set it to work. Maybe the initial challenge, the effort needed to invest, is too big, or maybe it's just a badly designed introduction to the game.

Of course the charm with computer based rpgs is that the DMs are automated so you can play it by yourself, but If we produce mechanics to take care of more 'mechanics', maybe we loose a lot of the challenge, rendering it less attractive?

Shiny graphics rocks. No question about it, I'm a graphics geek. But graphical representation isn't enough to get my power armor working.
 
Oblivion as the high water mark... Of what? Tree simulators circa 2004?.

To suggest that Oblivion is the at the top of the list for anything RPG related strikes me as obtuse ignorance at the least and mendacious toadying for money at worse.

As far as the spirit of Fallout being lost... lets see.. confirmed on the chopping block we have...

[*]Totally gutted, intelligence WILL NOT affect dialogue (loss of an entire sub-branch of the game, the moron*)

[*]ISO View / TB Combat... you know, the minor things...

[*]And ripped away is my beloved status-box which conveyed so much of the rich depth of character and humor that is Fallout, oh well, life's a pisser and then you die... :rip:

Added elements include creative master-strokes such-as:

[*]Nuklear Katapults... BOOM! You know.. destruction is the new trees

[*]<strike>Healing and Magic Wells</strike> Toilet Drinking with a radiation meter.... joy....

[*]<strike>Lockpicking</strike> Computer Hacking Skill Minigame

And finally, Retcons galore

[*]Roaming Extroverts: the Brotherhood of the Nobel Fucking Knights of Good n' stuff

[*]The Enclave. :roll:

[*]Nuklear Exploding Kars... BOOM!

And I'm just getting warmed up... hard to limit myself to three per list.

In summary key elements have been removed, new elements shoved in and the few bits that we're kept altered to the point of being unrecognizable. To maintain that this is somehow a direct sequel in anything but name is laughable, but for some to maintain this untenable view... well suppose it pays well.

BN is spot on with Beth lacking creativity, what saddens me even more then that failing is their need to squash that amazing creativity that came before.

This is really starting to smell like another Ultima:9 fiasco. Time will tell I s'pose.

*It could be argued that the moron game is the only one left with the richer dialogue being what is essentially being tossed out, but this is the glass if half empty stance and I'm ever the optimist.
 
Well if you're a 'writer' you should bloody well know that it is impossible for a computer to take away all of your senses even in a 'picture perfect look' I've seen millions of photos, good, bad, and ugly, however none of them I got the impression that I could reach out and touch.

If your imagination is so easily shirked and cast aside for bloom & doom so be it, however I still pity you for it.

Here's a spot of trivia, you know video games when computers were just starting out were ALL TEXT, completely and utterly comprised of text, in fact when the move to pictures occurred there were some headstrong 'purists' that refused to consider video games with pictures as true video games.

Video games haven't always had shiny graphics, to many it is an upgrade from pure text, however to me the graphics will always be secondary to a good storyline.

Welcome to the MTV generation lad, you're home.
 
Tyshalle said:
...but ultimately, there does come a point in time where visual/audio immersion does become more effective than your own imagination.
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I disagree, technology can be used to translate an idea accurately but it can further inhibit immersion. It's like the argument "The book was better than the movie." Does the author need to fill the book with illustration after illustration to get his point across? Of course not. Perhaps he needs to create an entire 3D world to get his point across because his readers lack the imagination to make their own world from their own point of view!

When a book is translated into a visual form it forces indivuduals to accept the world through a narrow point of view and leaves little to the imagination. It can be quite effective and a good idea at times, but is the movie more immersive than the book is? I think not.

There's a level of experience where you say "I know I'm in a scary forest" and your imagination fills in the blanks with your fears, assumptions, and understandings. how frightening the trees look, how horrifying the details are on the creatures, what sounds surround you, how visually frightened YOU are. A person can fill this in for themselves by simply reading a few descriptive lines of text.

As compared to "I know I'm in a scary forest, I can see the trees, see the creatures, I can see everything, even passed the trees" At this point you're seeing a forest from some one else’s point of view, some one else’s imagination, not yours. It can be effective, it can make a great game, but it leaves little to the imagination which is far less effective form of immersion.

People like it when they connect the dots with their mind, it becomes a personal interaction of visual elements married with typography or text to deliver a message. Such as if I say two completely different words like: "Forest" and "Scary" Together they create an entire world with many, many, many elements your mind created. Fallout had this with it's simple graphics and descriptive text, YOU created the world, the game developers simply set it up for you to create.

Unfortunately, nice graphics are nice, but you're only seeing some one else’s point of view.
 
“Because you’re manipulating this avatar within a videogame, there’s a layer of feedback that has to be provided to the player, visually, that you don’t have to deal with in a PnP. You attack, roll dice; if you get a good roll you hit. If not, you miss. It’s pretty cut and dry. You may curse the roll but there’s no questioning what happened, unlike in a game where you may say: ‘Wait, my sword passed right through him’, or: ‘He was right in my crosshairs, why did I miss?’
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Why do people say that there is no rolls in shooters, so that shots immediately hit if the crosshair is over the target? That doesn't happen since... Wolf3d? There is always a deviation due to wind, unsteady hands, recoil or whatever, and in some examples (stalker and the early handguns) bullets often miss even at point blank range. Nobody ever objects about these random rolls; here that counts as immersion and realism, I guess.

I think we did a pretty good job of it in Oblivion where the player has control over what’s happening, but ultimately your character, and his or her equipment, abilities, etc, determines whether you succeed or fail.”
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Not really. Everything is your level, and has abilities similar to yours. Only equipment makes some difference.
I would think he heard that.
 
Ausir said:
Leon Boyarsky didn't come up with the post-apocalyptic setting, Scott Campbell did. But Leon came up with making it retro-futuristic.
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D'oh, I always make that mix-up

Wish we could contact old Scott C.
 
Total Immersion IS:
  • Jumping everywhere I go
    Facing a wall and putting a rock on the forward arrow key
    Stuttering as I gawk at treez and rox
    Picking every flower
    Killing every creature
    Psychic guards
    IRQL errors and BSODs
 
Player freedom and the idea of immersion are issues of which Bethesda Software, the developer of Oblivion and Fallout 3, is acutely aware. “It’s obviously something that’s had a big impact on us and the way we’ve approached our games,” says Bethesda’s vice president of marketing, Pete Hines. “Let the player create the character they want and go out and make their own choices. Go where you want, do what you want. You decide how to deal with problems and what to do next.

“But in a videogame it is at least somewhat important that you do not allow the player to break the game, either intentionally or unintentionally. So I don’t know how much we can do away with the rules, but we do the best to bend and stretch them as far as possible to allow people the most freedom possible. I don’t know how far we can stretch that freedom, but I assure you we plan to find out."
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First off, freedom was sorely lacking in Oblivion. Second, Hines' statement sounds like a lame excuse for developer laziness. They don't want to make the game completely open-ended, where you can kill any character you want, or have many different ways (not just 2 or 3) to complete a quest or approach a situation. That would be too much work, and Bethesda has shown little ability to do such a thing. A well-designed game can't be "broken" by the player. I expect that "freedom" in Fallout 3 will be stretched only a slight bit more than Oblivion, if at all.
 
I'm not a diehard NMA Fallout nut (no offense) but I have to say that messing with stats is one of the most satifying parts of RPGs. It literally takers me hours to settle on the starting stats for a new character in fallout 2, or say NWN2. That's one of the things I didn't like about oblivion...if you don't read the manual you can't even tell what the starting stats for your race/gender are! And you don't even get to play with them! What a let down.
 
Messing with stars is awesome. There's nothing like party creation for example in Wizardry 8


Edit: omg stats, not stars, black you moron
 
Tyshalle Wrote:

If we're arguing that designer intention is more important to a game (or a movie or book or story or whatever) than the game (or movie, yadda yadda) itself, then that's basically taking the stance that what the teacher teaches is more important than what the student learns. I don't agree with this philosophy at all, but it does put you and I at sort of an impasse philosophically speaking. I don't really give a flying fuck what the developers intended for Fallout, because while I adore the game, I care more about what I took from it than what the Developer was thinking when he made it. I don't really find quoting developers to be very good evidence against my points, honestly. But like I said, if you believe the opposite there's really no way to argue it effectively either way.
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Your a dumbass. Fallout is not an educational software program. It is a work of digital art. Art is from the perspective of the creator, and your suppose to enjoy the creators perspective of the work in question, not pick and choose like a fucking moron from something like if hypothetically Mona Lisa was remade by Bethesda and given cock-sucking lips and a huge rack, and made holding a chainsaw. THE POINT IS THE ORIGINAL INTENTION OF THE ARTWORK, NOT YOUR OPINION ON WHAT IT SHOULD BE! SO SHUT THE HELL UP AND GO MAKE YOUR OWN DAMN GAME ASSHAT!
 
like if hypothetically Mona Lisa was remade by Bethesda and given cock-sucking lips and a huge rack, and made holding a chainsaw
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I don't much care for Bethesda but now I want to see someone draw that.
 
The crux of the issue seems to be that bethesda and p.hines in particular seem to be completely out of touch with a huge section of the playerbase (and reality). There's not really much more to say over it other then how disgusted I am.
 
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