BlackCapedManX on 25/11/2008 at 03:51

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Ooo! Oooo! Sidetracked by minutia! My bet is that they put a full 3rd person/1st person toggle in, so you don't necessarily have to see everything your player does when the devs otherwise wanted you to.

On a more serious note, Rene, I (and hopefully I'm not alone in this sentiment) appreciate what you're doing here. By all means you don't have to be here, and you guys "technically" own the title rights (spiritually I'd say the gamers do, but what does that mean in today's capitalist society?) so the fact that you're reaching out to us at all (and especially considering the bullshit you've been stalwartly facing down thus far) definitely counts for your part. We're a very discerning gaming community and the kind of games we're interested in don't get released that often (a fact compounded by that we don't agree on alll of the games we like or even all of their merits, but diversity makes for more substance anyway) so we're understandably very skeptical of the industry, and you have to be the one who faces down all of that flak.

In some far off gamers' utopia one day, we may actually get to have a discourse more directly with the developers. I take a lot from my artist background, and I think the idea of critiques would not be un-useful for game designers; it would be nice if they could lay everything on the table and say "look this is what we have, this is what we're thinking, what do you guys, who eventually will be purchasing this thing, think of what we're doing?" And that way we could call bullshit on some of their decisions, because in all productions of art (which is to give a lot of credence to what I'm expecting of your studios, to hopefully call what you're making art, rather than just another game, because if that were the case, we wouldn't care) you often need someone entirely outside to say "okay, I see what you're doing, but I think you're entirely off base on this part over here" because sometime you don't have the perspective to see it. And I realize that your job is to take what they have figured out, because much of this critiquing goes on internally, and present it to the community, but I think in this day and age there's definately a greater capacity for immediacy, for addressing directly the concerns of the consumers (or, to continue the art analogy, the appreciators.)

I guess I think this whole secrecy thing is kind of ridiculous. That you have to wait for press releases or however the beauracracy works before you can tell us things, as though we actually hinge on reviews to prescribe our opinions. I think with a game like this, you can definitely expect your audience to be a bit more independently minded, and to have an honest and intelligent voice about what's being done with a game, and that the industry doctrine of releasing information in "tantalizing snippets" (or whatever reason it's done for), clearly doesn't work with us (as you can see, it's mostly sowing seeds of dissent and doubt, around here you get either "it's doomed to be a horrible game and nothing will sway my opinion" or "I'll wait until it's out and make my judgement then," but I don't think anyone has said "everything looks pretty good, I'm excited," so if you're looking to entice this audience you need another game plan.) What happens is that we sit around stewing because it looks like you don't have what we want to see, and you're putting off showing it to us as long as possible, so that you can polish up and tidy this thing we don't want and say "but look how nice it is? isn't that great?" and even though it's not what we want we grudgingly accept it because no one is currently offering an alternative. We'd all love it if that weren't the case, if what you're making is secretly in our best interest, if you're making a game that is so Deus Ex at its core that you could name it "God From" and we wouldn't even call the title stupid, if you've got something that delivers so viscerally that these controversial things are just surface affectations that we can ignore because the soul is really there, then that's fantastic.

But I guess the reason why it feels like you're digging a hole, Rene, is because so far what you've been allowed to talk about, isn't necessarily what we want to hear. You've put forth a lot of information, a good deal of which is unfamiliar and uncomfortable to us, and haven't been able to have a solid back and forth with our questions, so we're left, usually, less happy than when we started at merely skeptical. And as much as DX is a story driven game, and it's about the interactions with NPCs, and what all flavor the odds and ends add on, it's the gameplay astoundingly enough, at the end of the day that kept us going back to it. That's where IW and Bioshock failed, Levine delivering on a pretty solid story in Bioshock that's wrapped in a rather unremarkable shooter, and IW simply being less, in nearly all regards than DX.

So when we're concerned about what the gameplay is, about character customization and (above all, by all means) replayability, it's very difficult when you can't go into more detail about even what the plans are. Like a quiet little ghost saying "trust me, the afterlife is totally sweet, but I can't tell you why until you're dead" (to put some mortality on the analogy.)

But, as much though as all of these elements are unsatisfied, and as much as we'd love to have a total-disclosure sitdown with the people putting this thing together, we're (if only subconsciously) aware that these ideas of yet are fantasy and play out in the same arena as these perfect games we'd like to see made. Until that rapture (see what I did? oh the wit, I kill myself) arives, we're seeing through your eyes, and every morsal we leap upon and tear you apart to try and see better because (in case you've yet to realize) we're a judgemental, opinionated crowd, and to be the sole diplomat to the country of savages we've got around these parts can be no easy task.