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Shadowrun Shadowrun: Hong Kong - Extended Edition

roshan

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Apr 7, 2004
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What are the details of Agris' mod?
 

Gondolin

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Purveyor of fine art
I played through the first and dragonfall both twice already. And I've restarted Hong Kong like 6 times and never really made any headway. It's just so boring. Really seems like they phoned it in.

y8Mombx.png
 

Serious_Business

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Finished this yesterday. I feel like the Shadowrun games have really solid writing ; it doesn't entirely pull the games to the heights of greatness, but to me, there was something engaging about it throughout. A lot of designers have tried to put emphasis on writing with the isometric renewal in the last years, but more often than not it failed - it would be probably difficult to point out exactly why... video game writing works not only on the quality of the writing, but how it's presented and what it means for the experience. In Hong Kong, it sure wasn't always meaningful - they slipped up in many parts. The main story was clumsy and a lot of details they wanted to convey to the player ended up feeling like clutter. But you do get the feeling that they were invested in what they were writing. NPCs like Duncan or Racter are probably some of the best written characters you could think of in any crpg. A simple portrait and some lines describing their behavior was enough to make them feel more alive than any kind of animation and voice acting. There's some real accomplishment there. The setting is something quite fun in itself - it explores moods and ideas, it's very eclectic ; it's probably one of the reason the writing works. Pillars of Eternity showed well enough that careful world-creating was entirely unnecessary as a base for good writing - it makes it just an exercise in analytic tediousness so that everything makes sense and as a "proper place". Here in Shadowrun you get more of an exercise in violent colors and themes - it works as a psychological experience ; doubly so because the psychology of most characters are engaging - "realism" hasn't anything to do with it.

In terms of gameplay, the system works but overstays its welcome. It would need to be considerably harder and more complex for it to work - tactical games require tension to be interesting experiences... some encounter design manages to create that tension, which translates well into the narration : it makes you feel like your characters are small and vulnerable, like they're just trying to survive. But in the end you do feel like, well, like in any crpg endgame : like a demigod. This works for the narrative too, because it can mean that your guy is more experienced ; but an experienced shadowrunner is supposed to be successful because he's paranoid and careful, not because he can fight the world with 3 guys backing him up. Anyway, there doesn't seem to be much point in trying to think how the system could have been done better ; it's not the main appeal of these games, I think.
 

DeepOcean

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Nov 8, 2012
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agris
Do you have any idea how you generate a random number so I can store it on the global variables on their editor? I read the little documentation available but their forums are dead.

I'm asking because it seems you are the only guy with knowledge about their editor that still follows this thread, got playing the game right now with your mod and it is really nice, thinking on messing with the editor a bit. Thinking pretty much recycling content from the 3 games and stealing custom content from other custom modules, reusing them and making a version of Shadowrun Unlimited that is actually finished.
 

agris

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agris
Do you have any idea how you generate a random number so I can store it on the global variables on their editor? I read the little documentation available but their forums are dead.

I'm asking because it seems you are the only guy with knowledge about their editor that still follows this thread, got playing the game right now with your mod and it is really nice, thinking on messing with the editor a bit. Thinking pretty much recycling content from the 3 games and stealing custom content from other custom modules, reusing them and making a version of Shadowrun Unlimited that is actually finished.
I have never touched the editor, so unfortunately I don't know the answer to your question. I'm guessing with some trickery (take current time in milliseconds, multiply it by another stochastic variable, re-scale the result it to your 0 - max range needed for RNG) you could do it though.

I wish there was a Shadowrun Plus mod that took the original games and re-mixed the itemization so that weapons and armor were less of a linear increase in performance and had more trade-offs. Plus the addition of meaningful found weapons and armor, with the option for certain NPCs to customize or upgrade ala Fallout 1/2. Additionally, I wish runners that you hire had a static inventory so no refreshing of consumables, and that if they die on a run they die permanently. The de-linearizing the item progression plus making hired guns mortal would go a long way to improving the strategic aspects of gameplay IMO.
 

ArchAngel

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Mar 16, 2015
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I never finished HK. Got to about half way, then went to talk to everyone around the HUB and all my companions with the plan to exhaust all conversation options (like I would do in Dragonfall) and it was sooo boring and bad. I kind of lost interest at some point and went to play some other game. Later I lost the saves in windows reinstall.
 

agris

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Yeah, the compulsion to extract maximal content has this significant down-side wherein players feel they need to explore all of those dialogue options even if they don't want to.

personally, i loved not caring about certain NPCs or their stories. it's liberating to not care about every sad sack. it's hard to balance that with (my own) munchkin-ism though.
 

ArchAngel

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Yeah, the compulsion to extract maximal content has this significant down-side wherein players feel they need to explore all of those dialogue options even if they don't want to.

personally, i loved not caring about certain NPCs or their stories. it's liberating to not care about every sad sack. it's hard to balance that with (my own) munchkin-ism though.
For me it was more that I really enjoyed the conversation in Dragonfall so I had same expectation of HK. But HK either had different writers or they no longer cared to write well.
 

Roguey

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For me it was more that I really enjoyed the conversation in Dragonfall so I had same expectation of HK. But HK either had different writers or they no longer cared to write well.
Same lead writer (Andrew McIntosh), it was just a case of delivering too much because the people wanted more.

For what it's worth, I know someone who liked the writing in Hong Kong but can't stand Dragonfall on account of not being able to care about any of the characters. :M
 

Modron

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How dangerhaired are they Roguey? I mean weren't the characters all around better in Dragonfall, granted Hong Kong is definitely pretty decent but I didn't particularly care for any of the npcs in it.
 

Roguey

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How dangerhaired are they Roguey? I mean weren't the characters all around better in Dragonfall, granted Hong Kong is definitely pretty decent but I didn't particularly care for any of the npcs in it.
Not at all.

Hong Kong has the cool psychopath, the autist, the chill trashy ratgirl, and the stoic zombie samurai. The only outright terrible person is the whiny brother.
 

InD_ImaginE

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Pathfinder: Wrath
Nah, the whiny brother is good. I too would whine all the fucking time if I am a cop forced to be a criminal.

The autist hacker is terrible.

On Dragonfall vs HK, I feel like the dialogue ammount in HK is good for the companion. Maybe slightly a bit too much. The only one getting as much decent stuff in Dragonfall was Glory. The rest of the companion are just kinda there, especially the Shaman guy who basically has 0 content after his nephew saving mission (which is incredibly early).

The dialogue for NPCs are opposite extreme for both. It is nearly non-existent in Dragonfall while is too much in HK. Instead of putting all the dialogue on those limited NPC, having a bit more NPC with spread out amount of dialogue would be better for HK. And it doesn't have to be these unique NPCs with portrait. Just give some unique names being a regular of the port you can meet every two mission, let's say.
 

agris

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Gaius maximus Yes, as long as those mods don’t modify the vanilla AI packages. It’s only a few loose files in the zip file, you can look and compare yourself.
 

normie

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Insert Title Here
to be contrarian, I enjoyed Returns the most for the simple fact it felt the most mercenary (the story hook, but also thanks to means of getting to plan how you approach a mission by hiring other mercs depending your need and your means, a feature that became vestigial in later games with the addition of permanent companions and the game economy becoming balanced around not hiring anyone ever) and not bogging you down with permanent companions with deep™, tragic™ backstories

Dragonfall was a step in the right direction as far as how missions were set up between story beats, adding Shadowland BBS and such, but it also became constricted by textwalls and companions eagerly waiting around for you to ask what their malfunction is, HK doubly so

anyway, I loved Duncan, I would have loved HK a whole lot if it had turned out a Shadowrun sandbox with multiple hubs and a whole slew of systems to provide the freedom to merc around, make friends, make alliances and betray them, perhaps with the meat of character interaction properly drawn out and centered around your relationship with bro Duncan to reflect the sort of shadowrunner the PC is

Shadowrun Unlimited captures the direction of where things should have went the best - coincidentally, it would have also provided the framework to milk the most out of the game with DLC
 

Nano

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Grab the Codex by the pussy Strap Yourselves In
Same lead writer (Andrew McIntosh), it was just a case of delivering too much because the people wanted more.
I definitely didn't think Hong Kong had too content or dialogue. The game was about as long as it should've been IMO.
 

Roguey

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I definitely didn't think Hong Kong had too content or dialogue. The game was about as long as it should've been IMO.

It had pacing problems. Do a mission then come back and read paragraphs and paragraphs of text from your companions, the local NPCs, and the computer. Even if you find it all interesting, it's quite a bit to go through all at once (and if you decide to skip some conversations, you risk missing out on their conclusions if you skip too many before you run out of missions and the endgame starts).
 

V_K

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Shadowrun Unlimited captures the direction of where things should have went the best - coincidentally, it would have also provided the framework to milk the most out of the game with DLC
The problem with SRU was Unity - having the loading times that SR in an open-world structure is really untenable
 

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