Shadowrun Shadowrun: Hong Kong - Extended Edition

[Morality Games]

Almost done with the game, and cant believe the casuals complain that there is too much text. I mean seriously? First of al, there isnt too much text. Second, 80% is optional. Bunch of peasants here, go back to Call of Duty.

With Hong Kong, I think it is a less an issue of there being too much text as there is too much mediocre text.

All of the companions in Dragonfall are pretty boss to talk to and over half the companions in Hong Kong make you feel tired just walking up to them.

You are right it is optional though.

 

[Excidium II]

No such thing as optional content. It's in the game, you gotta get your value.

 

[Roguey]

The text problem is that you have to keep mining the same sources for more text after every mission and it's pretty draining to keep doing that all at once again and again. Dragonfall didn't have this issue.

 

[dibens]

The problem is not too much text, the problem is too much text of shadowrunners whining all the time like fucking girls. You kill dozens of people in cold blood every day, shut the fuck up.

 

[eXalted]

Greetings, chummer, I'm a generic merchant but lemme tell you my life story so you can see that I am not that shallow.

 

[adddeed]

Thats the thing, youre not forced in any way to hear anyone's life story. You can just go straight to the point, ie show me your wares. Same for everyone else. I read through all dialogue in the game, and disagree that its mediocre or worse than previous installments. I mean yes im no literary expert, but I found dialogue interesting enough, especially compared to other games out there.

 

[Roguey]

The problem is not too much text, the problem is too much text of shadowrunners whining all the time like fucking girls. You kill dozens of people in cold blood every day, shut the fuck up.

Your brother is the only whiner and he's the one who doesn't even want to be a shadowrunner.

 

[pippin]

Thats the thing, youre not forced in any way to hear anyone's life story. You can just go straight to the point, ie show me your wares. Same for everyone else. I read through all dialogue in the game, and disagree that its mediocre or worse than previous installments. I mean yes im no literary expert, but I found dialogue interesting enough, especially compared to other games out there.

You miss content, though. There's a few quests iirc (unmarked ones as well) that you will miss if you don't talk to the merchants about their things (was playing as a mage, so I never felt the need to use the tech guys for instance). The writing is really too long, it sometimes feels as if they take three times as much to say what they said with a few sentences in Dragonfall.

 

[Lhynn]

Your brother is the only whiner and he's the one who doesn't even want to be a shadowrunner.

Oh that retarded cunt, why didnt the game let me shoot him in the eyes.

 

[Excidium II]

h o m o p h o b e

 

[pippin]

I've never felt truly engaged with any of the companions. They were really, really bland.

 

[Excidium II]

I liked mostly the jap and the rusky.

 

[pippin]

Yeah the russian guy seems to be a cool guy. The rat girl is nice too. The rest are useful for their combat abilities but it always felt like I had to go out of my way to try to understand them, something which never happened in Dragonfall. In that game, my companion's issues felt way more natural and "real", even.

 

[Lhynn]

Racter is a bro, Gaichu is a honorabru man, both girls were the definition of meh, the brother i ignored the entire game.

 

[Roguey]

Oh that retarded cunt, why didnt the game let me shoot him in the eyes.

Bring him along with you on the last mission of the base campaign and make the deal with the demon.

(Note: Racter and Gaichu don't turn on you, being a sociopath and a flesh eating zombie respectively, so bring them along too to help you kill him)

 

[GarfunkeL]

The problem is not too much text, the problem is too much text of shadowrunners whining all the time like fucking girls. You kill dozens of people in cold blood every day, shut the fuck up.

Did we play the same game?

 

[Jason Liang]

Gunshow does add weight to the extended ending though.

We wouldn't bitch about the dialogue were the game's encounters well designed. HBS gave us the cyberzombie mission, Apex, etc... in Dragonfall. Even Humanitas was awesome. None of the encounter content in Hong Kong was even as good as Humanitas. There's like only 1 memorable fight in the original Hong Kong campaign (the elf/ Koreans street fight), 2 if you're generous (Ares prototype). The extended was slightly better but none of it was again even as memorable as Humanitas.

Gaichu personal mission was a huger fail than the Bhaalspawn fights in Throne of Bhaal, considering how much Gaichu built up his former team in his dialogue. Hey it's SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT.

WuXing mission was a huge fail. You're running against one of the AAA megacorps, what's this crap?

Gobbet's personal mission, you fight some rats, some more rats, and a rat shaman boss... Glory's personal mission boss fight in Dragonfall is 100 times better comparatively.

With most of the missions, you can tell that these were beta encounters and they didn't have the time to finish them (like the restaurant).

Unfortunately Hong Kong is a lost cause.

Oh, and to be honest, it's not all the NPCs that are crap. Most of them actually are interesting to talk to. It's basically just the Ork family shit, as well as the shitty backer shadowrunners that hang out there. What a black hole cesspit.

 

[Zombra]

No such thing as optional content. It's in the game, you gotta get your value.

Thats the thing, youre not forced in any way to hear anyone's life story. You can just go straight to the point, ie show me your wares. Same for everyone else. I read through all dialogue in the game, and disagree that its mediocre or worse than previous installments. I mean yes im no literary expert, but I found dialogue interesting enough, especially compared to other games out there.

You miss content, though. There's a few quests iirc that you will miss if you don't talk to the merchants about their things.

Guys. Join me in the next phase of RP gaming - where you don't have to do every single goddamn quest in order to fully enjoy a game. Games have so much content now, it is perfectly cromulent to look at a quest and go, "I don't want to do that," and then not do it. This includes talking to every fuckface about their life story to get some shithole quest to find their lost underwear for 2 xp. You're a fucking leet gamer playing on hard anyway, you can do without those 2 xp. Clear cutting every fucking pixel in the game is not the goal any more. It's a buffet. Take what you want and leave the rest. Trust me. It's incredible to play RPGs this way. Just try it in one game - that's all I ask. I bet you never go back to this completionist stupidity.

 

[ilitarist]

The scum who criticised Hong Kong for too much text should stay the fuck away from Torment. Oblivion was made for them. RUMORS.

Oblivion has ten times as much text as Hong Kong.

 

[ilitarist]

Guys. Join me in the next phase of RP gaming - where you don't have to do every single goddamn quest in order to fully enjoy a game. Games have so much content now, it is perfectly cromulent to look at a quest and go, "I don't want to do that," and then not do it. This includes talking to every fuckface about their life story to get some shithole quest to find their lost underwear for 2 xp. You're a fucking leet gamer playing on hard anyway, you can do without those 2 xp. Clear cutting every fucking pixel in the game is not the goal any more. It's a buffet. Take what you want and leave the rest. Trust me. It's incredible to play RPGs this way. Just try it in one game - that's all I ask. I bet you never go back to this completionist stupidity.

The problem is most non-sandbox RPGs consider optional content to be not optional. In Shadowrun Dragonfall/Hong Kong not every mission has to be completed but you are expected to do every mission unless you go for challenge run, because it's fun, it's more loot, it's more powerful characters in the end game. Side content like talking to people is less useful as it's usually just a little EXP/Karma/Money but you still have to do it to optimize and there's never any drawback to doing that. On the other hand you have open world games a la Bethesda (and maybe Fallout 2) where there's enough content for you to define your character and playthrough by what your hero does or does not do. You never visit some towns and still have a complete journey and powerful enough to survive endgame. Your character in Skyrim rarely makes any specific decisions, he's defined by where he goes and what he does or does not.

What's interesting is some series are transforming into what you've just described. Witcher 1 & 2 blatantly required you to do sidequests, especially 1 where you got into dead end with main quests till you solve unrelated sidequests. Dragon Age 1 & 2 where similar, you had to do sidequests to be powerful enough, and most of those where on your way to the top. Your character is defined by decisions he takes to finish mainquests and sidequests. But in Dragon Age 3 and Witcher 3 there's the same switch. Those games are not open world, you still have solid mainquests and big decisions there, but now you're supposed to chose what to do or not to do, you have tons of activities. For many players it was hard to switch, especially in Dragon Age Inquisition, which becomes a boring grind fest if you try to play it as a traditional RPG.

So the game should be tailored to this playstyle. And clearly telegraph that you're not supposed to complete everything.

 

[naossano]

I don't think there is a problem of quantity or quality of text. The problem is keeping The same approach all the way.

You do a mission, then you talk to the same 30-50 npc that have a new update in their usual topic of conversation, then you do another mission, then you talk to the same dozen of npc about the same topics, then another mission, then. You rince and repeat.

beside the mission, there is not much surprise. You know who you will talk to, in which order, about which topic, and you know it will take you twice as much time as the mission.

if they had,for instance,changed the pool of npcd every 2 or 3 mission, I would have been a bit less boring. Or only update their dialogs after a few missions. Or have several missions in a row. Or anything that would disrupt the pattern.

 

[Beowulf]

I read through all dialogue in the game, and disagree that its mediocre or worse than previous installments. I mean yes im no literary expert, but I found dialogue interesting enough, especially compared to other games out there.

Yeah, especially with the likes of shadownanny.

Ok, I know it was just one NPC, so sorry for bringing it out; but I agree with the rest, that thinks that dialogue (and writing overall quality) in Dragnofall was better.

In Honk - Kong it was mostly bland and boring, and you had to pull information one dialogue at a time, which was both predictable and tedious as fuck, as naossano already mentioned.

 

[Zombra]

The problem is most non-sandbox RPGs consider optional content to be not optional. In Shadowrun Dragonfall/Hong Kong not every mission has to be completed but you are expected to do every mission unless you go for challenge run, because it's fun, it's more loot, it's more powerful characters in the end game. Side content like talking to people is less useful as it's usually just a little EXP/Karma/Money but you still have to do it to optimize and there's never any drawback to doing that.

It should be obvious that there is a drawback to doing stuff you don't find enjoyable. Increased character power is an incentive, of course; but it's not all-important, nor should it be. The assumption that it is and must be is exactly what I am challenging (and have disproved through personal experience).

What's interesting is some series are transforming into what you've just described. Witcher 1 & 2 blatantly required you to do sidequests, especially 1 where you got into dead end with main quests till you solve unrelated sidequests.

And that's fine too. It's not required for any game to let you skip anything you want, or anything at all. That doesn't make it sensible to complain about stuff one doesn't like that is skippable.

So the game should be tailored to this playstyle. And clearly telegraph that you're not supposed to complete everything.

Ehhhh. You are championing handholding on an insulting level. The very existence of multiple dialogue options (including "Goodbye" before you've clicked on every other single fucking option first) implies it is OK to click one and not the other, and the option to walk past an NPC without talking to him at all implies that that is fine too, at least to try. Hell, for decades RPGs have been putting in hard-to-find content that not every player is expected to complete, but some people just can't take a hint and still think they're "supposed to" do it all. The SR games are all perfectly easy to complete without scouring everything. The assumption that every possible xp must be pursued may have its roots in experiences with some-but-not-all earlier games in which optimization is super important, but it is still an assumption, and a very stupid and limiting one.

We are all familiar with "soft gating", in which for example a tough monster guards a critical door - the game can't be completed without defeating it, and it is impractical to do so without doing x amount of other content first. A good game will allow you to attempt the fight immediately (should you wish to) and then decide for yourself whether you need to level up to beat it. To expect that a game requires you to do most or all other content first before even trying another way is again a stupid assumption.

Try to play every game in a way that you find fun. If you can't finish it that way, then and only then should you consider playing it in a way you find less fun. This should be self-evident but evidently needs to be said out loud. Playing in a way you don't enjoy first and then complaining about it is ridiculous.

 

[ilitarist]

Ehhhh. You are championing handholding on an insulting level. The very existence of multiple dialogue options (including "Goodbye" before you've clicked on every other single fucking option first) implies it is OK to click one and not the other. The SR games are all perfectly easy to complete without scouring everything. The assumption that every possible xp must be pursued may have its roots in experiences with some-but-not-all earlier games in which optimization is super important, but it is still an assumption, and a very stupid and limiting one.

We are all familiar with "soft gating", in which for example a tough monster guards a critical door - the game can't be completed without defeating it, and it is impractical to do so without doing x amount of other content first. A good game will allow you to attempt the fight immediately (should you wish to) and then decide for yourself whether you need to level up to beat it. To assume that a game requires you to do most or all other content first before even trying another way is again a stupid assumption.

Try to play every game in a way that you find fun. If you can't finish it that way, then and only then should you consider playing it in a way you find less fun. This should be self-evident but evidently needs to be said out loud. Playing in a way you don't enjoy first and then complaining about it is ridiculous.

Sometimes it's clear you can skip some secondary missions. But even in SR you'd be mad to skip major missions because those are interesting. It's clear you are intendent to play through all major missions even if most of those mission can technically be skipped, how could player know that unnecessary minor quests are really unnecessary? The game has already sort of lied to you by saying you have more important main mission to beat, and it's often also urgent. I'm not talking about hand-holding but about clarifying what type of game it is. Morrowind tells you in the beginning that you should become an adventurer and later maybe work on main quest. Baldur's Gate 1 tells you to go for damned mines all the time while Baldur's Gate 2 just asks you to collect money, so you see it's a different structure. Shadowrun games both have plots that urge you to move forward but you're really expected to do all the major sidequests on your first playthrough. Dragon Age Inquisition and Witcher 3 present you with lots of things to do and create a sense of urgency, but previous iterations of those games did the same and expected you to complete everything, so there contradiction appears.

And soft gating is sort of the good solution to gating but it's still gamey and requires meta-knowledge. Usually it means you are not supposed to go there if enemies one-shot you, and sometimes are is even guarded by more powerful versions of enemies. I don't like it cause it assumes you *have* to either know progression route or save/load till you know it. I think it's better to just allow player to go become better if he feels that current enemies are too difficult even if he still can beat them with consumables or huge effort.

 

[Delterius]

Hong Kong has a problem with pacing and editing. That much is evident. The text itself tends to be much more descriptive than Dragonfall's and it is pretty obvious that the game's mid act, which is most of the whole thing, was stitched together. The actual story develops off screen, by the unspoken efforts of the NPCs. I was shocked at how quickly you get the third AP point. All this compounds to the perception that HK has an 'excess' of writing. Which is unfortunate, the game has the moving parts and concepts of the best Shadowrun story yet, but it fails to use them adequately.

Now, the "you don't even have to play the game" defense is even more rich than "it gets great 57 hours in".