atmospheric pressures

[dhex]

someone asked me the other day why fallout (the original) was so venerated, especially by people who seem to hate life itself. the answer is simple: atmosphere. fallout is expressive, reasonably responsive, and full of consequences. it's memorable in a way that 2 isn't quite so up to, and that 3 never even gets close to.

even more importantly, it's short. shortness = emotional impact. it's easier to remember the nooks and crannies because it didn't take 100 hours to get there.

the original stalker hit all these points as well.

i was thinking that if matt was ever to be shown why japan's rpg industry is a shadow of a shell of a self it never possessed, he should play fallout. it's not very hard comparatively and the interface isn't particularly troubling, though not as smooth as 2. there's certainly a bit of reading, and not a lot of hand holding, but it's not that obtuse.

i'm in the mood to go home and play some fallout actually.

then again, perhaps atmosphere is the entire raison d'etre of jrpgs, what with the costuming and unrequited love and whatnot.

edit: another great thing about fallout is that a lot of the under the hood calculations affected your gameplay without you ever realizing it (i.e. dialogue choices for high int versus low int characters and npc reactions stemming from that).

[loopback]

I was remarking to a friend at lunch today that while I appreciate various aspects of Dragon Age, the combat style is not to my liking. The last RPG combat I truly enjoyed was the original fallout action points / turn based combat.

I realize you can make DA combat turn-based-sort-of by pausing all the time, but that is somehow 'still not the same' to me. And, I'll admit it, the hex grid. knowing you were 'in range' and were behind/flanking/in front of something was made obvious, and not guesswork.

Also the thing about Fallout that I truly loved at the time? You had no idea, until you'd finished the game, that there were things you may have missed and/or could have done differently.  It presented you with a genuinely open world where you were free to make choices based on your desire to 'roleplay' rather than follow a good/bad story arc.

I prefer my characters (in theory) to be known by their actions, rather than by an alignment stat. Though I am going to try continuing Dragon Age at some point using the approach a friend of mine is using: no savewhoring, no min/maxing, no sidequesting.  Playing the game as though you were doing a pen&paper RPG with an urgent quest before you.  When you had to go attack the Fire Giant Keep, you didn't stop to help the villagers plant their fucking potatoes or kill 10 rats.  You headed off to defeat the Big Evil. That other shit wouldn't matter if you had Surt on your front door waving his flaming sword around.

So a playthru with that in mind, followed by a second (optional) playthru that focuses on all the sidequestage.

[FortNinety]

First off, when you get down to it, the main reason why I play any game is atmosphere, regardless of genre. That even includes puzzle games and driving sims. Perhaps obviously.

And it's the only reason why I bother with JRPGs, with all the problems that has pretty much become the norm for the genre. I realize that you have a deep, seething disdain/hatred for Japan (which I pretty much understand 80% of the time, makes me go "dude, relax/not everyone is some 30 yr old salaryman who gropes 13 year olds on trains and still lives with his parents, Jesus" the other 20%, but which I still find entertaining about 99% overall) but at the end of the day, I've never been a fan of dungeons and dragons bullshit. Just haven't, sorry.

Basically, and once again:
soaring the blue skies in some futuristic airship that still has propellors (and yes, is captained by some lolicon) > running around in some dark, dank forest foraging for crystals, or whatever the fuck

Also:
a linear experience, but one that is excellently written, or something I can get into but don't have to truly commit a whole lot > a non-linear one where I don't know what the hell is going on, which does little for my short attention span and need for instant gratification

Not gonna lie, 99% of JRPGs these days are shit, but that's the case with lots of stuff, and when they're good (i.e. Persona 4) they're fucking the tits.

BTW, I did nab Fallout 1, but haven't had a chance to really check it out, since I'm hardly in XP mode these days (but I will be soon, to check out all the IGF stuff, in preparation of GDC). Also, have you played Demon's Souls yet? Despite it being from the land of soul cancer, it's totally up your alley.

[FortNinety]

Also, the issue of atmosphere... though to be more exact, presentation... is why I'm more into Japanese action titles that those from America. But on that end, it's even comes down to how the menus are driven.

Though that being said, Bayonetta and all its stylishness is absolutely cringe-worthy. Meanwhile, holy shit is Uncharted ever awesome.

[dhex]

loopback, have you gotten the age of decadence combat demo yet?

http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,1259.0.html

it's pretty boss. real game won't be out until xmas probably.

[loopback]

I downloaded it and briefly gave it a shot.  While I love turn based combat, I tend to fucking SUCK at strategy in such games.  I found the UI for AoD pretty hatefully crappy, to be honest. the range of things you could do for clickita or not was never clearly explained.  Plus having all the stats available for raising when you're looking at a pure combat demo was somehow offensive to my 'make the limited demo limited to what's relevant' mindset.

I WANT to like it. Dear god do I want to like it. But I think it may need a tutorial for the console-retarded (ie, me) that haven't touched a PC-only game with complex (and non-standard) controls in years.

[dhex]

combat beta survival guide:

http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,1208.0.html

dunno if you've read that already.

i've found dodge is still more reliable than block, at least for my first few runthroughs, though i've not been able to clear it yet. i do so very much hope this game is as awesome as it promises to be.

[dhex]

fort, i don't have a ps3/xbox so i've not played demon's souls. it's a roguelike, right?

at least as i understand the term, atmosphere isn't the same as presentation. presentation is the UI + art assets + text and voice acting or whatever other multimedia aspects are involved. atmosphere is how these things meld with the game world and related materials, plus the unfolding of those assets. i think you could maybe make the case for a very heavily stylized shmup - maybe - but for the most part things like puzzle and and driving games aren't really what i'm talking about. they're engrossing but not enveloping, if that makes any sense. (aka in the zone versus in the moment?)

a sense of breathing (breathable?) atmosphere is part of what makes a sandbox game, rpg or otherwise, compelling. if you don't like that playstyle it'll merely be confusing rather than evocative, of course. which is unfortunate, and i'll pray for your soul, but we cannot help what we are.

i am not much of a d&d fan myself, since the setting is genericized when it's not done really well. i.e. i'd only recommend planescape or mask of the betrayer to anyone. (i think you might get something out of planescape, as the combat is easy/meaningless, the setting is non lord of the ringsy, but it's definitely not linear nor obvious) which brings us back to fallout and its atmosphere; it's not a medieval or steampunk environment. they took the 1950s view of "the future" and stole it's artwork and understanding of radiation and melded it with mad max. that this hasn't been ripped off more often (this may change post fallout 3) is confusing.

novelty helps, of course, because it brings with it a sense of newness and uncertainty that focuses the attention. it's free to be jarring without being wildly out of place (something fallout 2 failed at, namely with the hubologists). but even without the novelty of post apocalyptic bang bang, more than any other rpg before (and perhaps since, excepting deus ex in part), fallout followed through with the natural expectations you would have concerning the world and it's inhabitants. it's a lawless place filled with a variety of largely terrible and violent experiences. want to massacre an entire town? go ahead. shoot all the kids you want. become a slaver. massacre all the slavers. etc. there's less of that brick wall of gamey-ness to contend with - contrast this with fallout 3, for starters - resulting in a more seamless and coherent experience. yeah, if you shoot a bunch of kids you're going to be magically known as a terrible fucking guy wherever you go and treated accordingly, but it is reactive and not entirely unreasonable given the trading networks between various remnants of civilization. your actions have unintended consequences, there are multiple ways to complete anything, the endgame is absolutely bursting at the seams with variation and possibility...

but back to atmosphere.

the real problem with almost all rpgs, western or other, is that they're combat heavy with absolutely terrible writing. or, rather, the writing is fine for what it's trying to accomplish, but otherwise awful at conveying character. it's not helped by full voice acting (though bioware's almost gotten the hang of tolerable voicework), because while bad writing can be glossed over, bad voice acting takes the bad writing and shoves it in your face.

more than anything else, this murders atmosphere. people will put up with shit combat systems if it means more time in a compelling game world.

and the combat tends to be either terribly mechanical - the exact opposite of tactical - or shitted up by having trash mobs in place of considered balance. grinding is, outside of perhaps roguelikes and mmos, a sign of design failure. or that you're playing a jrpg. to touch on loopback's issue with the dragon age combat, real time with pause is...ok enough for this modern age, where everything must burr and whizz and whatnot. but what it lends in urgency it kills in terms of tactics; you get used to spamming xyz spell (cone of cold, i.e.) or using the same mmo-ized "tactic" of tank, dps, spam spam. that said, it's still the best combat in a bioware game in forever - it's just not saying that much, ultimately. the western rpg lost quite a bit when it moved into the modern era. it gained some things - the children of ultima underworld, the fps+rpg hybrid, bethsoft's world building before oblivion, design flexibility, better interfaces, less reliance on the children of tolkien - but lost so much. (i have a whole list of things that are wrong with wrpgs, but that's neither here nor there)

and while i know it's old hat to blame this on xboxification or console tards or whatever the current term of derision is, it's simply that the market has changed. that an indie developer can put together something like age of decadence gives me hope, especially if iron tower studio can hit sales in the five figure range and can help fund/produce some of the upcoming stuff they're going to be publishing (the promising combat-lite lovecraft rpg and zrpg, the combat-lite post apoc zombie survival game). this combat lite trend, like the trend of having "evil" characters and choices that aren't stupid evil but rather calculating and reasonable - if self centered - gives me hope. that the 100gb bandwith of iron tower was used up in a single day (for a 150mb demo) after the rough combat beta was released also gives me hope.

perhaps the future won't be quick time event-ing into my heart after all.

[FortNinety]

Yeah, presentation and atmosphere are indeed two very different things. But as silly as it sounds, presentation is VERY important to me. And as bad as it sounds, I can easily be swayed into playing a shit game if the menu alone looks sexy enough. Though a shit game is a shit game, and that will come through in the bitter end.

One primary prejudice I've long held against PC games have been the historically shitty menu set-ups and the such. At the very least, they're fairly jarring. And perhaps out of necessity; it's not like a console game where it's guaranteed to work for it's intended system, hence why tons of windows related to set-up are not needed. But I hate it nonetheless; upon firing a game, I want to get right into the action and do not need to be reminded that it's a complex computer program requiring maintenance. Silly I realize, and clearly indicative of a person spoiled by Nintendo Entertainment Systems.

If there's one thing I love about the current indie game boom is how presentation is held at the highest regard. Whether if many are truly functional is up to debate, but that's for another time.

And re: racers, presentation is why I bother with Codemaster's offerings. My God, the front end for DiRT2 is sex in a doggie bag, and extreme sports is so not my thing. And I cannot tell you how many times I boot up DiRT1 just to mess around with the menu, or fire up GRID to see the sexy intro, which requires me to delete the save file afterwards every single time.

Music is a tricky thing; it's part of the presentation, but also greatly affects the overall mood, and thusly the atmosphere. And make no mistake, it's atmosphere and mood more than anything else that matters in a driving game for myself. The color of the sky for example is absolutely vital. After-all, its the small stuff that truly sets games apart from each other, since most these days are all alike: you drive real world vehicles in real world environments, and consoles these days are able to re-create NYC for example in a fairly accurate manner. Though once again, audio is crucial; I cannot play Gran Turismo for the life of me, but so help me God, I am such a sucker for it's light FM, smooth jazz. And the steering in Ridge Racer has always been a bit off, but those killer tunes I cannot resist.

But back to RPGs, I can only comment on what I love, and that's Persona 4, which has a great story, and loads of it. The voice actors are all pretty excellent and do a great job breathing life in the most two dimensional of cliches  (J-snobs with argue otherwise, and they're all just kidding themselves). As for the combat, that's pretty much the best part; there's just the right amount and it's actually fun to engage in (the computer will cheat, but not enough to truly piss you off). Though I will say that fighting is greatly aided by impeccable tunes.

Though forget P4, the one true great JRPG is still Panzer Dragoon Saga. Take everything I said, times it by 300, subtract any trace of soul cancer, and add a genuinely compelling combat system which I'm shocked has not been ripped off yet. You would actually like it a lot me thinks Mike.

And yeah, opened-ended/sandbox gameplay is not for me. Sounds great on paper, but never before has it been acceptable for the player to be thrust into an inherently boring situation which he and she must then amuse themselves in. So when one does manage to make oneself happy, its a bit empty, mainly since it greatly appeals to one's most base of urges (which btw ain't bad, just saying... mostly, kinda lazy) plus add cheap nostalgia, and you have Grand Theft Auto!

[B coma]

dhex I have the Fallout pack on Steam.  Do you know of anyway to play Fallout1/2 in Windows 7/XP and not have the visuals turn into a glitchy quilt? I've tried playing the game on two different setups now and while I can deal with the occasional rainbow of colors the really difficult bit is when the whole screen turns black until I scroll/mouse over it. any suggestions? I really want to play it!

[B coma]

On the topic of this thread, I am playing the hell out of Mirror's Edge right now thanks to that insane Steam sale.

Although I genuinely do find its kinetic FPS controls to be a joy on their own I'd say it's the presentation that keeps me coming back.  Even though the whole "Runner Vision" thing is sort of a lazy mechanic in some ways (yeah, I know you can turn it off) it really helps out the atmosphere, a lot.  Most of the world is a washed out sterile/oppressive steel jungle (see groan-worthy Big Brother comic book plot), but your character finds refuge in tracking down the features in the world that have warm, primary colors.  I think it really works in the game's favor.

The soundtrack is pretty great too. it's got a sci-fi bent, and it tends to give running-up-the-arm-of-the-crane-while-on-top-of-a-skyscraper the appropriate sense of wonder, instead of opting for some kind of empty bombast orchestral thing like so many other games do these days.

[isfet]

B Coma:  i recently played Fallout 1 for the first time ever over this past summer on my Windows XP PC.  are you running the game in Windows 95 mode?  i found that cut down on crashing or general bullshit.  aside from that, everything else ran rather smoothly.  of course, my PC is 5 years old, so maybe the older hardware just allowed this over-a-decade-old game run easier


i have a lot of thoughts for everyone in this topic, but i have to teach a class in about five minutes, so i'll be back around 9ish.

[isfet]

ok, back


basically i think there are a few good points here about what both Western and Japanese RPGs (and, perhaps, games in general) tend to do well and horribly.

ultimately, when you're playing the "best" of one of these games, it doesn't come down to an issue of which nation does it better, but rather it's an apples to oranges type of thing.  SMT: Nocturne is a phenomenal JRPG.  it's linear, but the atmosphere and actual environment is incredible, the music is great and the combat has an interesting sense of strategy (not to mention, it's difficult [in a good way]).  if someone were to ask me "if i want to play one last JRPG, but i am beginning to hate all things about and related to Japan and their games" (i swear this isn't about Mike), i would say "play Nocturne."  while Persona is definitely the jazzier and flashier series and perhaps more accessible on an immediate level, the fact that the power of your Personas sometimes ties into what base you got to with a girl is not going to be a selling point for all.

but the SMT series, to me, is an example of why i play JRPGs.

Western RPGs have a narrative, but it's one crafted by the player.  the world is a setup to have "adventures" in and to explore.  Matt, you mention not liking sandbox games and that open-ended play isn't for you, but you also say this in reference to Grand Theft Auto.  to that, i'm going to have to say that you haven't actually played a non-linear Western RPG.  GTA is a good example of how to do it wrong.  Fallout 3 does it wrong also, but not to the extent of GTA.  GTA is either "hey, here's a very obviously placed main quest, but if you want, you could run drugs to this neighborhood instead."  that isn't interesting; side missions shouldn't be conspicuous.

what the original Fallout does so well is that the emphasis is COMPLETELY on exploration and discovery.  i didn't actually know what my main "goal" in the game was until i'd gotten close to 3/4 of the way done with it.  everything is set up seamlessly; you meet people, they talk to you, sometimes they hate you, you learn information and you seek it out.  what Fallout 1 does that 3 fails at, especially, is the moral choices aspect.  Fallout 1 never really gives you obvious good or evil choices.  it really, more often than not, comes down to "both of these guys are total assholes, but this one's vice is more abhorrent to me, so i guess i'll turn on him."


without ranting on and on, i think, basically, my point is that both genres create a type of atmosphere, but the emphasis is different.  one shouldn't use coke for the same reasons that one would smoke weed, so to speak.

at the end of the day, 95% of games are, at their core, derivative.  what makes a game interesting is what it does with that inspiration.  obviously, some companies have figured out how to corner markets and some have figured out that if their game has a + b + c, x amount of people will like it in spite of how garbagy it actually is.  that is the nature of the beast.

in Japan, at least, there are a few companies willing to still make products that are never going to be "big" or "blockbuster."  but Japan is a country of extreme specialization.  on the Western front, i don't know if this is really happening anymore.  sure, there's an indie scene, but i don't think it's anywhere near its potential yet.  also, the game design theories of the indie scene tend to flock more towards the East, anyhow.

perhaps we will never have another "Fallout," because, as far as i've seen, Western companies are just too big to fail (ha ha).  risks don't seem to be an inherent part of their strategies.

[dhex]

bcoma - i found this thread:

http://www.interplay.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=889&sid=51c3e6bcadb0053ea533e4cffcf0e249

it sounds like some of the problems you're having may be addressed. i've only played the original cd installs and the gog install on xp.

i can't say i've ever given menus that much thought, nor can i immediately point at much difference between a pc game menu and a console game menu minus the graphical options, of which there's generally far more on the pc side. beyond that, i'm not really sure i understand what you mean.

game music can be a whole nother thread, but as i claimed back in the day on a tgq thread, 99.9% of all game music is terrible. it doesn't serve the game's environment or mood for the most part, and i generally disable it in fps games immediately. the wrpg doesn't fare much better in this regard, being largely strings n' things, and though i know this takes away from authorial intent, i think most modern games should have an option to pull from mp3s on one's computer.

[isfet]

i can't say i've ever given menus that much thought, nor can i immediately point at much difference between a pc game menu and a console game menu minus the graphical options, of which there's generally far more on the pc side. beyond that, i'm not really sure i understand what you mean.

i'm pretty sure when Matt is talking about the menus, he's talking about the actual style and appearance.  you'd really kind of have to see it, specifically.  it's basically just the flashiness, colors and the way it appears on the screen.  PC games tend to be pretty bare bones; press the escape key and big ol' gray box appears on the screen.