Sulphur on 27/1/2020 at 15:19
I think there's a clear difference between a PS:T/DE infodump and Morrowind's, though. PS:T paced out its text in digestible chunks; DE does the same with some additional thoughtfulness like having it take up the bottom right of the screen where it draws the attention naturally. It's also effervescently written in both cases, which is a quality that's, shall we say, not a priority in the MW experience. A lot of Morrowind's NPC text scans like the interminable asides of a character from The Odyssey about their place of birth and their parentage and their respectable relations and the prowess of their people and what tidings Zeus has in store for them when you're just waiting for Ulysses to get on with his journey and lay some suitor smackdown already. At least The Odyssey had metre in its original form.
Thirith on 27/1/2020 at 16:40
Yeah, unsurprisingly I'm with Sulphur on this one. The difference between the conversations in Morrowind on the one hand and Planescape and Disco Elysium on the other is massive, regardless of how much text there is. A conversation isn't just about the transfer of information; arguably, much of the time the other aspects are as important. Who is a character, how do they relate to the world, others in general and my character in particular? Morrowind's conversations consisted mostly of text that was identical for the majority of characters, which means that dialogues told me little to nothing about the people I was talking to - which in turn meant that Morrowind pretty much had no characters to speak of, or at least none that I would call characters. The amount of text and the general 'infodumpiness' has more or less nothing to do with how these games feel to me and how much I enjoy their conversations.
Sulphur on 27/1/2020 at 16:55
Exactly. I didn't want to use the word 'character' because I feel like I bang on about that too much, but it's that precise lack of it that made reading the text a tedious proposition. As interesting as the world was visually, it was peopled with less than people; ur-automatons, perhaps. Which is a shame considering Morrowind probably had the most interesting narrative of the ES games.
froghawk on 28/1/2020 at 01:50
I'm not sure there are any characters in any Bethesda game. I certainly can't think of any offhand..
Sulphur on 28/1/2020 at 04:59
Boone is Obsidian, not Beth.
I hear FO4's Nick Valentine is fairly all right. I guess having the dulcet tones of Garrett behind him must also help.
Sulphur on 28/1/2020 at 07:29
Aside:
Kentucky Route Zero wraps up today. They should be consolidating the interludes, as well, within the bracket of the final release. I played KRZ a time so long ago my brain feels ice crystals prick at the memory (okay, okay, so it was six years ago - that's not even a human dog year), but at the time I knew it was something special, akin to a Zen koan that ended mid-sentence. And here we are, journey's end and resolution in sight, inasmuch as language and silence and the sharp edges of polygonal poetry can afford such a thing.
I can't wait.
WingedKagouti on 28/1/2020 at 11:15
Quote Posted by froghawk
I'm not sure there are any characters in any Bethesda game. I certainly can't think of any offhand..
Sheogorath in the Shivering Isles DLC for Oblivion.
EvaUnit02 on 28/1/2020 at 14:42
I picked up
Soldier of Fortune 1 in the recent GOG sale. Holy shit, this game is helluva fun! Can't believe that I missed it back in the day. I've only played the first level so far, what a rush it was:- storming a NYC subway, blowing away dudes with a really good FPS shotgun. Watching the thugs frail around after glowing off one of their legs. Make sure that you grab the(
http://sof1.megalag.org/sofplus/) modern graphical options fan patch.
Since 3D Realms announced that they're remastering
Kingpin: Life of Crime, I installed the GOG version, with the (
https://www.moddb.com/mods/kingpin-rags-2-riches/downloads/kingpin-life-of-crime-rags-2-riches-v1) Rags 2 Riches mod and the (
http://download.kingpin.info/index.php?dir=kingpin/patches/unofficial/mh%27s_kingpin_patch/) modern graphical options fan patch. The game has aged extremely well, it's very good IMO. The only downside is the balancing. The enemies are ridiculous bullet sponges. This is very much Tom Clancy's The Division levels of suspension of disbelief where dudes in singlets and sweatshirts are soaking up insane amounts of damage. I'm playing on the 2nd to easiest difficulty, it seems to be the sweet spot for bullet sponginess, just try to score headshots or blow away dudes with the shotgun.
Gggmanlives' reviews sum up both games nicely.
[video=youtube;T6PYvnVwZD0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6PYvnVwZD0[/video]
[video=youtube;csFf3lod66w]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csFf3lod66w[/video]
Malf on 28/1/2020 at 15:20
Still plugging away at Iceborne and The Surge here.
Iceborne's great, and a breath of fresh air when compared to Western "Games as a Service" games. There's nowhere near as much pressure to keep playing it all the time, which means it's easy to pick up and play or drop out of as the fancy takes you. Western games like Destiny 2 want you to LIVE inside them, devoting every waking hour to them. Which can be fun for a while, but ends up feeling dirty and abusive.
The story is utterly, UTTERLY stupid though, and delivered by complete morons. Affable morons, but morons all the same.
I'm not saying the voice acting's bad; far from it.
But the lines these poor actors have inflicted on them are awful. Like, original Resident Evil levels of bad. So bad, it's frequently unknowingly hilarious.
So a Capcom game then :D
As for The Surge, I really like it! But it's quite crashy, which is putting me off of playing it :(
That's a shame, as it does a lot of interesting things with the Souls formula.
I'll do some troubleshooting tonight to see if there are fixes, but with so many games to play these days, I may just get distracted by something shinier.
froghawk on 28/1/2020 at 15:28
Quote Posted by WingedKagouti
Sheogorath in the Shivering Isles DLC for Oblivion.
That was the only example I could think of after a hard think. And if I can only remember a single character after putting hundreds of hours into games which are heavily populated with characters, I think that's a problem. Especially when you compare with New Vegas, which is filled with memorable people.