twisty on 9/4/2015 at 16:49
Glorious! Well this piece of news caught me by surprise.
Pyrian on 9/4/2015 at 16:57
Quote Posted by Brethren
Riiight, that's what they said about Thiaf too.
Look, you took a comment about how action plays out - which they've made clear is optional, mind you - and turned it into a statement about set-piece level design, which it wasn't at all. Of course I expect DX:MD to have a great deal of set piece level design; after all, DX:HR
certainly did, and even DX1 had a substantial share. But none of that is in the statement you're talking about.
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
"Everybody enjoyed the stealth gameplay in the last game, so let's focus on something else."
It's ominous, but from my "shooty" run of DX:HR, I
do think they need to work on the gunplay mechanics. I have few hopes that they'll abandon the cover system, but it needs to work better when firing.
DX:MD looks like the name of a hospital sitcom.
Renzatic on 9/4/2015 at 17:00
Quote Posted by heywood
And this just sucks balls:
* Mankind Divided's moment-to-moment action plays out like a series of set-piece moments, a 'remarkable feat' considering nothing is scripted
"Set-piece" action is a deal-killer. This shit is what caused me not to buy Thief 4 or any of the Bioshock sequels. And it's the antithesis of Deus Ex.
Plays out like a set-piece despite not being scripted might be a good thing. It means things are still free form, but it all comes together rather cinematically. That's completely different than "we made a bunch of set-pieces".
I'd take this with a grain of salt, but the way it's worded doesn't concern me at all.
faetal on 9/4/2015 at 19:37
Quote Posted by Pyrian
DX:MD looks like the name of a hospital sitcom.
It's an X-Men prequel set in a gene therapy clinic:
Dr
Xavier
MD
heywood on 9/4/2015 at 21:16
Quote Posted by EvaUnit02
God forbid we give players more options in how they build their character and the ability to customise their equipment to suit how they play at any given time. I have this nice 8-10 hour long, linear as fuck, heavily-scripted "interactive movie" railroaded game from bargain bin game developer Naughty Dog that you might like instead.
I think you misunderstand me. I'm not after a linear, heavily scripted railroad game AT ALL. Quite the opposite.
What bothers me about doubling the number of augs is there will almost certainly be a corresponding increase in the number of available praxis kits, and there were already WAY too many praxis available in HR. It will further water down the role playing/character building element, which was already pretty watered down in HR compared to DX. Another thing that will get watered down is difficulty, due to overpowered augs (surely there will be more of those) and less scarcity of praxis and bio-energy.
Regarding the other point, I assume they intend to allow the player to pause time in the middle of a gunfight and change ammo type, reload, equip a scope, etc., and that the change is effectively instantaneous in game time. If so, that is stupid and immersion breaking, albeit not unprecedented. I'm not against allowing players to make these changes, but it should be in real time. This is not a deal breaker though, since you can just opt not to use it.
Quote Posted by Thor
Could you elaborate a little on what that is? What are those set-piece moments exactly? Do you mean like 'press Q to strangle this guy' and he takes 3 seconds to do that or something I have missed entirely playing those games?
Quote Posted by Pyrian
Look, you took a comment about how action plays out - which they've made clear is optional, mind you - and turned it into a statement about set-piece level design, which it wasn't at all. Of course I expect DX:MD to have a great deal of set piece level design; after all, DX:HR
certainly did, and even DX1 had a substantial share. But none of that is in the statement you're talking about.
Quote Posted by Renzatic
Plays out like a set-piece despite not being scripted might be a good thing. It means things are still free form, but it all comes together rather cinematically. That's completely different than "we made a bunch of set-pieces".
I'll explain what I meant.
set piece
noun
a thing that has been carefully or elaborately planned or composed, in particular.
setpiece (film production):
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setpiece)
My interpretation of set piece in gaming refers to a heavily orchestrated bit of level design that tries to make the player play out a scene just the way the designer has envisioned and "directed". Think Bioshock. It is the antithesis of designing game systems and game levels for role-playing and emergent gameplay, or to be an immersive sim as Brethren put it. I don't like set pieces because they limit player freedom & playstyle. And the more elaborately orchestrated the scene, the more you have to constrain the player in order to experience it as intended. I think it's very hard to do set pieces without breaking immersion, or worse, jarring the player by interrupting gameplay for an interactive movie moment. The only games I've ever liked that relied on set piece design were the Half-Life series, and only because they were absolutely brilliant at linear level design.
Human Revolution had plenty of scripted/triggered moments and conversations, but didn't really have set pieces in the above sense. The closest were the boss fights and the scene where the chopper is shot down and you try to save Malik. And these were my least favorite parts of the game. Fortunately, most of the game was free of anything resembling a set piece. Deus Ex also had plenty of triggers, but the closest it came to a set piece is probably that first firefight in Hells Kitchen.
It's possible that Eidos Montreal doesn't really mean set piece as per the definition, but is referring to a cinematic flow of action and character animation. If so, that could mean that player controls are streamlined and interaction with the environment will be more automated like Thief 4, or that movement and combat is more richly filled with pre-animated sequences, or there is more player aiding to make sure the outcome matched the player's intent. In any case, I think the same tradeoff will apply where player freedom & control is sacrificed to achieve a more cinematic look & flow.
Anyway, there will be plenty more opportunities to debate it once they start doing gameplay demos.
Renzatic on 9/4/2015 at 21:22
Quote Posted by heywood
I'll explain what I meant.
set piece
noun
a thing that has been carefully or elaborately planned or composed, in particular.
setpiece (film production):
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setpiece)
...and then some other stuff
Right, but that's not what he said. You all but nailed the intended message with your "it's possible" paragraph. He pretty much said he was impressed with the fact that entirely unscripted events came across as well as prescripted set-pieces. This, if true, would be a very damn good thing, if you ask me. It would mean that the AI and world mechanics would be capable enough to provide their own dramatic scenes without being specifically told to do so, and they'd be different every single time you played the game.
heywood on 9/4/2015 at 22:24
In "entirely unscripted events came across as well as prescripted set-pieces", what do you think "prescripted set-piece" refers to?
I don't have the actual Game Informer issue in hand, just what has been posted online. So maybe the context is clearer in what you're reading.
Volitions Advocate on 9/4/2015 at 22:31
I didn't find that bio cannisters in DX were hard to come by. You really paid for it if you wanted to change your augs (or was that DX:2? I might be meshing them together)
Assuming that Adam has the ability to use twice as many augs means that there will be more praxis kits could be a viable deduction, but it could just as easily be that there are twice as many augs because you can't ever have them all. Maybe forcing the player to choose one or the other rather than unlocking them in a linear sequence like HR did.
I know one thing that DX did that drove me nuts, and that was how they implemented the skills. I find it incredibly hard to believe that somebody with perfect nano-augmentations, being trained as a combat operative, couldn't shoot a damn rifle by the time he was on his first real assignment.
I'd be very happy to find a good balance between hardcore 80s and 90s style RPG and the more modern form of it. I'm all for difficulty and a lack of hand holding, but it had better make sense.
If I'm a nano-augmented super soldier. I better fucking know how to shoot a gun and swim well before my first day on the job.
My $0.05 anyway (we don't use pennies in Canada anymore)
Volitions Advocate on 9/4/2015 at 22:33
Quote Posted by heywood
"prescripted set-piece"
Didn't it say something about a "remarkable feat" because nothing was scripted?
Renzatic on 9/4/2015 at 23:35
Quote Posted by heywood
In "entirely unscripted events came across as well as prescripted set-pieces", what do you think "prescripted set-piece" refers to?
What Volition said. The latter part of that sentence does nothing to negate the former. It's saying that unscripted events came across as well as if they planned everything out step by step for the most dramatic effect.