Akka
Moody old mage.
Yay, gender politics, we really needed to have it here because we certainly can't read about it in the whole rest of the forum.
In What Electronic Entertainment Have You Been Partaking #18: Reticulating Splines
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Synobun
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Have you considered violence?
aelf
Ashen One
This was worked out a long time ago. Poland was carried from Eastern Europe to North Africa on a sea of salt generated by Polish posters.
It sounds like pretty much what I suspected. The source material itself isn't at the forefront of contemporary progressive mores, being from the 80s and 90s.
In any case, gender issues and intersectionality aren't the only things media can fail at. We also have the likes of TLOU2, which is hailed for those but failed in other ways as a narrative and as a moral tale. I'm not sure it's any better ethically and aesthetically.
Yeah. So can dystopias not be depicted in media for fear of creating negative portrayals of certain groups or identities? If novel forms of objectification are part and parcel of an imagined dystopia, is it harmful or normalising to show that?
Real-life marketing campaigns are another thing, though. But that's how capitalism works, and we have enough defenders of capitalism around to make me think people don't actually really care.
Akka
Moody old mage.
Yeah, but I can't punch people through Internet, so I fall back on sarcasm.
(this is - half - a joke, no need to get your pants in a twist)
hobbsyoyo
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The ad campaign involved jokes like (paraphrased): "I identify as a doorknob" and "Did you just assume my gender?" (when responding to completely unrelated tweets). Definitely insensitive and in poor taste but it's hard to judge how offensive they were outside of the critic class who may or may not be representative of any other segment of society.
It is very interesting to me though that CDPR is getting a pass here for presenting a future where transpeople are fetishized in advertisement like ciswomen are, but EA got savaged (irl, not here) for their portrayal of a transwoman in Mass Effect Andromeda. In the initial cut of that game, they had a single transwoman NPC who was very upfront about her gender transition and people attacked it for being an unrealistic portrayal of the trans experience. That's fair enough, but the point was rather that in the future, there is no basically no controversy over gender transitions such that it's truly not a big deal to be open about it.
In the end, EA caved to pressure from trans groups and rewrote that NPC in a patch and gave her a whole side quest which was cool. I thought that the attacks on that NPC were understandable but off base, and yet even if taken in the most uncharitable light the ME:A NPC issue was far less insensitive/offensive than C2077's approach to transgender people in the game and in their advertising campaign.
I have also not read that there are any trans characters in C2077 outside of that advertisement, and that the game seems to have very high levels of violence and suggested sexual violence against females. Additionally, the way the game handles the way that a player constructs a transgendered character is problematic according to those same critics due to the way they handle voice actor selection for the characters. I will say though that this seems like a nitpick and whinging, and truth be told I'm not fully bought-in to the hate-hype around the way the game portrays transpeople.
I think the lot of you have helped reframe the issue such that I'm less outraged myself though I'm not fully on the 'no big deal' side of it either - and a lot of my unease has to do with the way the company has presented itself/its stance on these issues versus the way they actually executed on these issues in game and in advertisements.
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But back to the gameplay itself - as I said before, the longer reviewers play it, the more they seem to dislike it. It seems to be a big, empty mess - and that's even putting aside the bugs. The game just barely runs on next gen consoles and powerful PC's and hardly runs at all on the consoles/PC's that the vast majority of players actually have.
Given the lack of fun content and an abundance of meaningless dialogue choices, I don't think it's fair to say people had unrealistic expectations of the game. It was in development for almost a decade after all, and the developers put their workers through a year of crunch after having publicly saying they'd do no such thing. And in the end, they delivered a product that is not only buggy as hell but is huge and empty after having been massively hyped by marketing as a deeply rich and immersive world.
https://thenextweb.com/gaming/2020/12/14/no-patch-can-fix-cyberpunk-2077/
hobbsyoyo
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A related problem that seems to be getting worse in the video game industry:
Publishers have been getting consistently more controlling over reviewers. It's to the point now where reviewers get at best a day or two of advanced time with a game to turn around a review before the game that releases. For something like Tetris Effect, this isn't a huge deal but for games that clock in at 60+ hours of playtime, this is hugely problematic. Publishers are also making it hard to be an honest critic by withholding review codes for publications and reviewers deemed critical and whatnot.
This is getting so bad that I now read articles complaining about this exact problem around every new major release - yet while Gamergate was blown up by mysognistic manchildren into this huge 'scandal', this very real scandal seems to go unnoticed outside of the critics/reviewers themselves.
Publishers have been getting consistently more controlling over reviewers. It's to the point now where reviewers get at best a day or two of advanced time with a game to turn around a review before the game that releases. For something like Tetris Effect, this isn't a huge deal but for games that clock in at 60+ hours of playtime, this is hugely problematic. Publishers are also making it hard to be an honest critic by withholding review codes for publications and reviewers deemed critical and whatnot.
This is getting so bad that I now read articles complaining about this exact problem around every new major release - yet while Gamergate was blown up by mysognistic manchildren into this huge 'scandal', this very real scandal seems to go unnoticed outside of the critics/reviewers themselves.
Go on?
Synobun
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You can't tell me what to do.
The replayability is largely fake. Every planet is exactly the same and hides behind procedural generation. The actual make-up of the environment is identical between worlds; only the window dressing is changed. There might be different colours, the things might look a little different, but once you look a little deeper you realize that it's all the same. Every cave has the same glowy plant, the same stalactite mineral. Every lake has the same two or three plants. The buildings have no variety, so if you've seen one you've seen them all, which is terrible gameplay when you are specifically required to go to buildings constantly for quests and during exploration.
Sentient species variety is laughable too. You've got the robots, who are scientific. The big guys, who are militaristic. And the small guys, who are economic. There you go. Bon appetit.
The lack of colonization tools is glaring given the intense focus on scanning fauna, flora, and minerals and looking for planets with favourable conditions.
I'm getting good time out of it, but I'm not sure if I'll ever come back to it once I'm bored. It is a shadow of what it could be. Spore was technically the same, but it at least felt like a complete experience to me. No Man's Sky still feels incomplete.
On and on our units march, our army of elvish pretty boys, wielding magic, bow, and blade against the drakes, orcs and undead…
He's a moderator. Now go home and rethink your post.You can't tell me what to do.
Ajidica
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Playing Greedfall, the Eurojank RPG put out by Spiders recently. It has some rough around the edges parts, but I've been super impressed with it so far. Good voice acting and good quest design, although sometimes the game gets confused as to what stage of a question you are in. I'm about 12 hours in and so far would give it a solid 7/10. Neat setting (Age of Discovery/Renaissance/ 30 Years War Europe) set in the 'new world' where the natives have a Celtic Iriquois vibe instead of Mesoamerican. Strangely for a Eurojank RPG the combat isn't terrible. Not as fluid as Witcher 3, but still pretty good. The tutorial area is a bit of a slog though.
(For example, I was supposed to try convincing an official to do something before resorting to blackmail. However, I had accidentally found the blackmail before going to the official, so I didn't have the option to convince him before immediately resorting to blackmail.)
(For example, I was supposed to try convincing an official to do something before resorting to blackmail. However, I had accidentally found the blackmail before going to the official, so I didn't have the option to convince him before immediately resorting to blackmail.)
aimeeandbeatles
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You can't tell me what to do.
The replayability is largely fake. Every planet is exactly the same and hides behind procedural generation. The actual make-up of the environment is identical between worlds; only the window dressing is changed. There might be different colours, the things might look a little different, but once you look a little deeper you realize that it's all the same. Every cave has the same glowy plant, the same stalactite mineral. Every lake has the same two or three plants. The buildings have no variety, so if you've seen one you've seen them all, which is terrible gameplay when you are specifically required to go to buildings constantly for quests and during exploration.
Sentient species variety is laughable too. You've got the robots, who are scientific. The big guys, who are militaristic. And the small guys, who are economic. There you go. Bon appetit.
The lack of colonization tools is glaring given the intense focus on scanning fauna, flora, and minerals and looking for planets with favourable conditions.
I'm getting good time out of it, but I'm not sure if I'll ever come back to it once I'm bored. It is a shadow of what it could be. Spore was technically the same, but it at least felt like a complete experience to me. No Man's Sky still feels incomplete.
Valid criticisms, but you can RIDE A GIANT MANTIS.
EgonSpengler
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I had much the same feeling with No Man's Sky. A procedurally-generated environment begins to become noticeable eventually, at which point the novelty wears off. For me, I suddenly realized how shallow the game is when I spent hours and hours learning one of the alien languages only to realize there's no meaningful communication to be had. I forget which language I was pursuing, and I forget how big my vocabulary had become, although one of the NMS players on this forum noted at the time that I'd gotten really far with it. But there's no reason, within the game, to learn those languages. As far as I could tell, the aliens don't treat you any differently, you gain no access to new missions, new equipment, new NPC allies or flunkies. I enjoyed my ~30 hours with it, which was fine, but as you say, it had no replayability for me.You can't tell me what to do.
The replayability is largely fake. Every planet is exactly the same and hides behind procedural generation. The actual make-up of the environment is identical between worlds; only the window dressing is changed. There might be different colours, the things might look a little different, but once you look a little deeper you realize that it's all the same. Every cave has the same glowy plant, the same stalactite mineral. Every lake has the same two or three plants. The buildings have no variety, so if you've seen one you've seen them all, which is terrible gameplay when you are specifically required to go to buildings constantly for quests and during exploration.
Sentient species variety is laughable too. You've got the robots, who are scientific. The big guys, who are militaristic. And the small guys, who are economic. There you go. Bon appetit.
The lack of colonization tools is glaring given the intense focus on scanning fauna, flora, and minerals and looking for planets with favourable conditions.
I'm getting good time out of it, but I'm not sure if I'll ever come back to it once I'm bored. It is a shadow of what it could be. Spore was technically the same, but it at least felt like a complete experience to me. No Man's Sky still feels incomplete.
hobbsyoyo
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Pursuing all the tech upgrades (and finding all the minerals required to implement them) was the most enjoyment I got out of the game.
Second favorite thing was building up my crafting infrastructure to crank out high value products and get rich. Base building was overall a lot of fun and led to a lot of questing for tech and materials but it was constantly ruined by all the game updates that erased chunks of my bases, moved them around or otherwise invalidated all of my crafting infrastructure with economic changes.
I think I would be on pace for 1000 hours of playtime rather than the 200 I actually achieved if I had come to the game around now rather than launch as so much of my dissatisfaction is tied to all the massive updates which are now in the past.
That said, all of the complaints of shallowness and repetition are 100% on point.
ARK: Survival Evolved is very similar to No Mans Sky. Different premise but same resource collection, exploration, and base building with no real story.
EgonSpengler
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Anyone interested in what NMS does, but wants to try narrower-but-deeper, I recommend Subnautica, one of my favorite games of all time.
Instead of hopping from planet-to-planet, you've crash-landed on a single planet, and have to figure out how to escape. Instead of procedurally-generated terrain and animals, you get a handcrafted alien ecosystem. I forget how big the map is in square miles or km, and it wouldn't sound very large, but it's so detailed and intricate (and 3-dimensional - it goes down hundreds of meters) that it "feels" quite big. It has survival elements and base-building & crafting elements, it's 100% open-world, and there's a main story and a side story to follow. There's no character-building or in-game economy, so no trading or wealth accumulation. You build the tools, vehicles and shelters you need, but the base-building lets you build pretty detailed and intricate structures (that is, the structures you build are functional, and even necessary up to a point, but you can keep going past that and build large undersea palaces if you want to). The graphics are solid and the music is excellent. Mainly, though, it's possibly the best exploration game ever made. And if you love it, the sequel is currently in early access, with no final release date yet.
Subnautica gameplay trailer:
Instead of hopping from planet-to-planet, you've crash-landed on a single planet, and have to figure out how to escape. Instead of procedurally-generated terrain and animals, you get a handcrafted alien ecosystem. I forget how big the map is in square miles or km, and it wouldn't sound very large, but it's so detailed and intricate (and 3-dimensional - it goes down hundreds of meters) that it "feels" quite big. It has survival elements and base-building & crafting elements, it's 100% open-world, and there's a main story and a side story to follow. There's no character-building or in-game economy, so no trading or wealth accumulation. You build the tools, vehicles and shelters you need, but the base-building lets you build pretty detailed and intricate structures (that is, the structures you build are functional, and even necessary up to a point, but you can keep going past that and build large undersea palaces if you want to). The graphics are solid and the music is excellent. Mainly, though, it's possibly the best exploration game ever made. And if you love it, the sequel is currently in early access, with no final release date yet.
Subnautica gameplay trailer:
Spoiler :
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