Shadowrun Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut

Has there been a single RPG since then that is better than Dragonfall? Because if there has, it has escaped me...

 

Directors Cut? Probably not.

Original? D: OS full version.

 

Cooldowns per se are not a bad mechanic unto themselves. It depends on the context in which they are implemented.

I don't think this is correct? I don't recall situations where picking different dialogue options led to the same replies (and I did in fact reload several times to try different conversation nodes during the NPC chats and key encounters during missions, with different replies).

Yeah, I got that feel as well. Sadly this thing has been going on for quite some time and I fear that Planescape Torment is to blame for it all. (Not being sarcastic here, but it comes with maturity. PST companions felt complex and deep as a teenager but I'm not sure how well they hold up at 30 years of age). Even MOTB companions like Gann, Kaelwyn etc. came off as trying way too hard, as I recall.

Do you mean in terms of mechanics?

 

After waiting for the DC to start playing, I finally finished it last night, not going to be the game of the year, but might have been not too long back. It's a leaps-and-bounds improvement over Dead Man Switch.

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My runner was a troll heavily invested in using a rifle with smaller investments in spellcasting and charisma; a sort of street paladin.





You might think that since I created a character with essentially the same build as Eiger that I'd use her less but Ahnold basically spent the entire game frantically humping her leg. Sadly there was no bioware-style troll-on-troll sex option. For pretty much every mission, I took Dietrich (because I actually liked him), Eiger (unrequited lust, she never even thanked Ahnold for lending her an assault rifle for the early missions)) and Blitz (because I was desperately afraid of losing out on something by not bringing a decker even though I hated him).

Speaking of Blitz, it's as if the writers carefully thought about how Glory, Eiger and Dietrich would fit into the setting and wrote a nice little backstory for each of them and then much later in the process, a designer came by and yelled "There's no decker, you fruits! There has to be a decker NPC!" Next run going's to be with a rigger/decker so I can leave Blitz's dumb ass back at the curiosity shop.

The writing was a gigantic improvement over DMS, particularly in the absence of evil space insects, but also in the companions and minor NPCs. After DMS, I kind of got the impression that HBS were just a bunch of Shadowrun fans with no idea how to design a game. But either I was wrong or they've improved dramatically.

Ahnold was a rifleman because that was the best weapon for a high ranged-combat character in DMS but it looks like all the guns are pretty useful now. I think the fact that rifle feeds into both assault rifles and sniper rifles means that it's still the most useful but SMGs and pistols are pretty hot too. Pity about shotguns.

The only gameplay problems I thought were significant were the loopy AI and the occasional inability to move a character exactly where I wanted to because the cursor kept highlighting some nearby clickable object/character.

 

Do you realize that the people who originally created Cyberpunk put it together with idealism? Well, a sliding scale of idealism vs cynicism but back in the late 70's and early 80's, the whole point of cyberpunk emerging was to marry "20 minutes into the future" low sci-fi with ideals of punk. Both Shadowrun and Cyberpunk 2020 had it from Day 1. William Gibson's Neuromancer had it, FFS.

 

I'm aware of it, what I mean by idealism is a naive idea of the good guys versus the bad guys, the protagonist on Neuromancer isn't exactly a good guy. He shot people for money and lived as a petty criminal and total outcast on a technological shithole and was a self centered asshole at the start of the story. Eiger, Dietrich, Glory and Blitz are way too good two shoes with their dark past just estrategically hinted with the objective of making them more cyberpunkish but still way too little and way too safe.

You need to counterbalance idealism with cynism or just become really annoying. Even the supposed good guys on shadowrun are psychopatic assholes that only do something good because it coincide more with their needs than ideals.

 

Ah yes, that I agree with. I thought you were making a blanket statement that any media with Cyberpunk theme should only appear between black-and-grey morality.

 

Question: I did the recruitment test for the Black Lodge as the very last quest of them all. Had I done it earlier, would I have gotten more missions? Separate ones, or integrated into the other missions?

I think the game could be still be significantly better though. Maybe an additional 3 or 4 missions, some more people to talk to in the Kreuzbasar together with maybe a few easy fedex type quests and reactivity, more non-hostile characters to interact with during the missions...

 

Knights of The Chalice, Blackguards, D: OS, New Vegas, etc.

 

It definitely could be better but it's still pretty great. I was really surprised by Dragonfall. DMS was a big disappointment to me, to the point where I didn't play Dragonfall until months after release since I had it sitting around in my account from Kickstarter but couldn't haul my ass into playing it. Once I finally did I had a really good time. Only taken a short look at Director's Diamond of the Year edition but it seems yet another step forward (Showed it to a family member who had been beating his head against Wasteland 2, then he picked up the Shadowrun double pack that evening) with the tweaked up combat and party management, etc. The editor sadly never became a glorious second Neverwinter Nights but as far as base games go they did a lot better than with DMS. Really kinda hoping they do another big Shadowrun adventure with that engine. No idea how well Dragonfall did for them but now that it seems like they've hit their stride it'd be cool if we got more.

Also gotta say that Dragonfall is still a good chunk better than Wasteland 2. We were talking Wasteland which segued into Shadowrun when I mentioned I made my WL2 party out of the Dragonfall team, which led to me showing him the game and reminding myself how enjoyable Dragonfall is. Plus it was my first look at the improved edition which was neat. Can actually have a sniper that gets to shoot melee units before they can close! Shocking!

 

Having massive performance issues with the game, anyone else with scrolling and movement slugginish?

 

I had originally, but the patch to either 2.04 or 2.05 fixed them for me.
Another patch should come soon, it's already up as beta on Steam.

 

My computer should be running it fine but yes, I'm only getting strangely 30 FPS. That was also the case for Dead Man Switch though.

I blame Linux, though.

Also, call me silly, but I thoroughly enjoyed Dead Man Switch. The reason being probably that it had been ages since I last played a turn based RPG.

 

I think it does, yeah. Cybperpunk is by definition, a dystopian world. The "least of all evils" approach is paramount. If you want a more optimistic approach, you have post-cyberpunk stuff, where the protags can be good guys (Deus Ex).

 

Anyone knows if the fiddled with the difficult settings again in the 2.0.5 patch? I'm playing the game on hard and it seems easier then when I messed around with the first 2-3 but missions in the unpatched game. Then again, it might be just me going trough the same content for the nth number of times and just having an easier time because of it.

 

It's probably this. I'm playing on very hard, but since I started over so many times to try alts, now I'm having a very easy time, hardly ever needing to use a BuMoNa trauma kit. As far as I know, they just fixed that bug where the hit chance stacked against you every time you loaded a game saved during a run. Other than that, difficulty seems to be the same.

Anyway, you should try playing on very hard, because lower than that is way too easy.

 

There was a bug pre-2.05 which increased the miss chances.

 

Question for when I complete it : apparently, the mods available for the Director's cut are different from the base version judging from the Steam workshop. Is this because they merely have two entries in the Steam database, or are the mods I find for the base version compatible with the Director's Cut ?

 

He's saying after he beats it. New adventures and shit.

And I haven't tried it myself taxalot but I've heard that they are (Kind of) compatible. You very well may get bugs and weirdness (Occasional nude NPCs was mentioned) but it'll run. You can even dump the DMS campaign in Dragonfall DC for the souped up mechanics.

 

Just finished Dragonfall (Director's Cut). Very nice altogether. 8/10, will play again.

Nitpicker's Minor Flaws:

- Plot gets a bit too cheesy towards the end, with all the treehugging and hippie let's all live together in peace propaganda.
- No stealth whatsoever (although, truth be told, I never felt the "need" for it: it's just weird to see an RPG without it).
- Nukers still equal easy mode, especially when it comes to spending Karma Points.
- Very little environment interaction.
- Decking and the Matrix are still massively understated.
- C&C still pathetic.
- AI: Artificial Inanity.

Overall the campaign is really good, and a major improvement over the original campaign in regard to most aspects, especially story-wise. Characters are a bit more interesting and better fleshed out, and a couple of their "personal story" missions were really good (Glory's, above all). Missions feature a better design overall. C&C is still fairly absent: some choices -DO- give the player some thinking to do, but unfortunately turn out to be mostly inconsequential if not on the very short run.

Again, a very good game, and the more so considered the dry spell the subgenre (cyberpunk/scifi) has been suffering.

 

What the fuck? I was doing APEX's mission (siding with her) and she had the medic program inside the matrix. Then I had to reload and instead of medic she had firewall.

 

Finished Dragonfall yesterday. While it felt good and i definitely got my money's worth, I felt half the game went against the other, so to speak, or that the core mechanics in the game were bit disjointed:

1) The way skill checks work in conversation feels annoying. If I don't have enough strength to pick a certain option, don't even show me that option. It feels like the game is constantly taunting you to spread your karma points around but then punishes you if you do so as that makes your character significantly less viable in combat.

1a) Now i know most of the additional conv options is story fluff and only occasionally alternative objective paths/bonus goodies. Problem is showing the greyed out options shatters the illusion of choice and, by proxy, replayability. If I wouldn't see the greyed out options i would feel tempted to reroll a different character after my current playthrough just to see how certain convs play out when playing a strong decker instead of a charismatic mage. Due to seeing different options and noticing how all of them lead to the same outcome I don't feel tempted much.

2) There's one optimal character build: Rifles, rifles, rifles. Long range? Carry a sniper rifle. Short range, grab an AR and then switch to a minigun. All the other weapon types are subpar compared to rifles. They tried to fix this by introducing weapon variety like tasers in the pistol group, or accuracy/different firing modes to some shotguns. Still, what's the point of tasing someone when you can unload full auto on him and kill him outright or in 2 rounds.

Buffs are nice but redundant when you've cyberware and stims. Mages damage output shines only for a brief moment in the mid-game and then falls behind again. Shamans suck a bit as there's only a handful useful conjuring spells and spirits are too unreliable unless you pick the creator totem (which is one of the few useful totems in the game, by the way). Deckers are plain bad and matrix segments don't really justify having them around if you ignore story fluff. Riggers scale weirdly but are still worse than other choices and if the drones are gone they're dead weight. Melee is lacklustre.

Seriously, I played through this game on hard and had a feeling all the time that having four runners with miniguns/sniper rifles/grenades would steamroll through everything there is in the game without issue. Also would feel like playing Syndicate.

3) The party system is very restrictive and, what adds insult to injury, the game capitalises on these restrictions to work around basic design flaws outlined in point 2 which never should've been there in the first place.

Ultimately I'd say the game's got lots of soul backed by great visuals, great music and a solid storyline but the PnP->cRPG translation is pretty bad which effects in a poor party system, basically non-existent loot system, poor character development and poor combat (although it did get considerably improved compared to Dead Man's Switch so kudos where they're due).

Don't get me wrong, it all works, and it gets the job done and ultimately the game is quite enjoyable - but when HBS start working on a sequel they should go back to the drawing board and rethink the way they want to do it from scratch. The whole team is there, what you need is a proper systems designer on board.

I recommend JE Sawyer.

 

Boo. Totes disagree. There are other ways of letting the player know different skill picks give different options; greyouts ruin the fun of discovery and murder replayability, especially when the additional options are pure story fluff.

FNV did it bit better than dragonfall (rubbish options as your 20 science character tries to be, uh, scientific) but it was still lame. Showing the success threshold felt gamey and still ruined the sense of discovery; the rubbish options were also almost always bad except in a very few cases (like picking them to get challenge points or in very particular conversations) which felt even more gamey and it's gaminess of the bad sort (read: there's nothing to justify it's there).

A good way to do it would be to put cues in the dialogue. For example: The raider gives you a dismissive stare. "I could mop the floor with ya but it wouldn't even be fun".

If you teach the player that these cues are there, he should reason "Yeah, that probably happened because my STR and END are pretty low and the dialogue would be different if i built my character differently"

Still, I'm sure JES would agree that even if the game goes the greyout route it should be designed around it so that it doesn't tempt you to be more flexible with your skill points only to slap you in the face later cause you're useless in combat. Skills like Biotech are huge offenders here: there's a fair few dialogue options for Biotech so it really feels tempting to invest more than 2 points - then, halfway through the game, you realise that it was a complete waste.

Curiously enough even Charisma doesn't really feel like it pays off fluff-wise. At the end of the game i felt my 7 points in charisma was the biggest karma waste and I should've only left 4 there to get 4 conjuring and the lightning barrier. Spend the saved 18 KP on something actually useful. Like more HP or better guns use. Charisma wasn't even checked in places where it really felt like it should have been like, say, at the very end of the Humanis mission.