I'm also really excited to learn what this game is. While I agree that there are a lot of disparate descriptions of some individual parts out on the internet, I don't have a good picture in my head of what the first two hours with the game will look like.
Their early spaceflight into planet exploration demo years (wow, years?!) ago made it look like a very polished space combat game where you could wander around and name planets. If this had been a big-budget AAA release, that demo would have been a comprehensive, polished vertical slice of the game's systems and we the audience would understand that the next few years would be spent building additional content and iterating on that slice.
But as a consequence of the way much of this game's content was designed, it was actually a horizontal slice instead. The world and traversal mechanics were built and looked amazing, but we were left with no clue about the majority of the game's systems. There's nothing wrong with that, but maybe it was shown a little too early and garnered undue expectations (too high or too low) as a result.
Fantastic article! These guest posts continue to be wonderful.
Regarding my own tabletop RPG history, I was super late to the party, only playing my first DnD (4e) game in my mid-twenties. I had been a longtime video game player, but always thought of pen-and-paper games as being weirdly anachronistic and boring. I was so wrong. What made that first game so amazing wasn't the combat, which our group largely avoided and barreled through. It was testing the limits of our poor, suffering DM by making crazy decisions on behalf of our characters.
One member of our party decided that he wanted to enslave rather than kill a small goblin that was just an ordinary enemy. This led to an epic storyline where the goblin agreed to be subservient, betrayed the group (for a perfectly understandable reason, you know... slavery and all), redeemed himself at the perfect moment, and died. The following year's adventure was spent infiltrating and destroying a rebel faction in order to avenge his death.
And that awesome series of events were all spawned by my friend, after a few drinks, wanting to use his Christian Bale Batman voice. The possibilities of tabletop RPGs are as vast as the imagination and cooperation of your GM, and are really fun to play as an adult.
I've heard a lot about storygames (conversation-based, tabletop games not necessarily including RPG or combat mechanics) recently and I'm looking into trying to get my friends and family into them. If anyone has any recommendations, I'd love to hear them.
Great article Ian, glad to see another fresh voice on Giantbomb.
How do we balance the need for real change in the industry's labor standards with the seemingly endless glorification of the indie auteur? We know crunch must go away and overturn reduced, but at the same time we revel at the idea someone like Jonathon Blow can put 100% of his being into creating The Witness. What do we do to get away from the idea that everyone in game development must be wholly devoted to video games?
I also loved the article, Ian!
With regards to Mr. Blow, I believe that we can both celebrate passionate (in non-cynical hiring terms) game developers as well as robust-but-ethical developers.
To bring in a movie analogy, Boyhood is an amazing movie, requiring unprecedented dedication and miracles to create. But Mr. Linklater took on that risk specifically to produce something so unusual and exploratory. The Marvel superhero franchise requires wrangling a mind-boggling amount of risk as well, but I would expect each professional working on those movies to be compensated according to market standards for their expertise (though I could be wrong.)
Unions aren't great, but in many industries they're far better than unions not existing.
Also, I've had multiple family members suffer from Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and other forms of dementia related to old age. My aunt has the early stages of Alzheimer's right now. I know how awful it can be, and how difficult it is to face that. I am in no way trying to insult anyone who has difficulty handling a situation such as this, just commenting on the situation Henry finds himself in at the beginning of the game, one that I tried to express some sympathy for. Maybe the term I used was too loaded, but I didn't know what other word to use.
I've also had family members affected by Parkinson's, and can totally vouch for really good people eventually being broken by providing support for the afflicted year after year. It's incredibly sad to watch, but the tone of conversation with the person providing the most direct support gradually shifts from "This is very sad, but we're doing the best we can to manage." to "Goddammit, she found her way to the superglue and decided to try to fix the glass she dropped. By the time I arrived, all of her fingers were superglued together. Shit." Degenerative brain disorders inflict DoT damage on those closest to the sufferer, and I thought Firewatch illustrated that idea in an interesting way. Great review, Alex!
@orange_pork: Monster Hunter is alright! I played it for a while. One of those giant games I wish I had more time to play, but also there's the multiplayer features I don't see myself using much.
I also wish I'd put more time into it, and plan to return to it this month. If you haven't tried out the co-op multiplayer (even with randoms), it was by far my favorite way to play. Ganging up on a tricky monster was more fun and more chaotic than the single-player encounters. Granted, I was only about 10 hours into the campaign, so there's a lot more to see.
Mega Man's game loop of ChooseLevel->SlayRobotMaster->TakeTheirWeapon has stuck with me for nearly 30 years. Why hasn't anyone else tried that formula?
That reminds me a bit of what makes Zelda games interesting for me. I know that if I decide to clear a dungeon, I'm going to get a new gameplay-altering ability or tool. While I play the occasional loot game, better loot (numbers going up) doesn't hold the same appeal to me as getting fundamentally new mechanics as a reward.
Recently, Just Cause 3 has scratched that itch. It has a ton of pacing problems, but also provides lots of info about what a particular mission, challenge, or territory takeover will earn you. So I can sit down for a short session and come out having earned a gameplay-altering reward.
I'm also replaying Shadow Complex thanks to the free PC download this month, and its Metroid-style progression also gives me the same compulsion to "just get to the next item".
I'm of two minds. On one hand, I'm all for them re-imagining the game from the ground up, breaking it up episodically, and building something new and cool out of it.
But on the other hand, is that really what excited anyone about the original announcement? I was only expecting updated dialogue, more polished controls, and a new coat of audio/visual paint (pre-rendered backgrounds and all). While still a huge undertaking, that's an order of magnitude less work than the task they've set out for themselves.
Once we start to think of the remake as an FFXIII-style AAA JRPG that happens to reuse plot points from FFVII, then the battle system changes, possible linearity, and episodic nature make sense since that's just what they're used to developing and they're hoping that this time, FFVII nostalgia will make it more profitable.
Both of my game examples have already been discussed in this thread, but the late Persona games and Fallout 4 are both amazing games that I've played to some degree of completion and have fond memories of. But I can't say I enjoyed the moment-to-moment gameplay of any of them. I think that reflects much more on something yet-unidentified changing in my tastes, but it seems weird nonetheless.
@tinaun: The dadgames idea is really interesting, because as I move slowly into that target demographic, you're right that I increasingly identify with those player characters. And I can't remember ever playing an LGBT character (aside from the occasional RPG party member) whose identity as such had any bearing on the story. Only blank-slate characters who had the option of romancing whoever. Hopefully there'll be a breakout success that bucks that trend.
@kcin: You just made me hope that Obsidian recruits the MGS5 devs to build the spy-action game of my dreams!
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