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Game News ELEX II gets a combat trailer, now available for preorder

Outlander

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hmmm.jpg


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Zeriel

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The lighting in 1.0 looks so cool. Even with the mod that's supposed to restore it to 1.0 lighting it doesn't look as dark/contrasty.
 

ELEXmakesMeHard

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The lighting in 1.0 looks so cool. Even with the mod that's supposed to restore it to 1.0 lighting it doesn't look as dark/contrasty.

100% agree. My most intense moments in ELEX were in 1.0, when I was traveling at night and had to navigate based on the sounds of sleeping monsters. I've been playing with the darkness mod, and it's just not the same. :argh:

1.0 also had the bizarre breast physics that added an extra dose of healthy jank.
 

Ismaul

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Though despite being hardcore, ELEX has a very weird kind of ~balance~ where just a few hours after you're finally capable of safely taking on low level creatures, you can find yourself with top-tier weapons and the build to use them to take on everything with relative ease. The game slowly goes from 0 to 30 and then slams on the gas to go to 100. Witcher 3, by comparison, has a far more traditional-feeling difficulty curve.
Björn said in one of his videos that this is done by design, i.e. they purposely make the early game, and to some extent the mid game, hard as ass on purpose. After that, it turns into your typical Skyrim-like: Everything just topples over when you blow on it. This is what their fans are used to, what they expect and want from them, so that is what they give them.
If only it could remain hard the whole game.

Still, the difficulty is why the combat is much better than in The Witcher 3. TW3 was quite shit, at the hardest difficulty you could just mash the quick attack button and win everything, no timing or strategy necessary. And that was with a build that put almost no points in sword fighting or fast attack. Quite a decline from TW1-2.

At least with ELEX, you need to pay attention or you get fucked. In the early game, you have to treat enemies as obstacles to bypass, or get an advantage on them to be able to defeat them. You need to time your shit. And you can actually fight enemies harder than level-appropriate ones, you can take on a challenge, and you feel accomplishment for doing it. TW3 prevents this with their almost-invulnerable monsters if they're not level-appropriate (the Skull-rated ones). So in TW3 you either have fights that are too easy, or ones that are almost impossible and frankly quite boring because they become a slog due to their artifically inflated high damage resistance.

TW3 did a bunch of things well, but combat was the worst.

I'd take jank ELEX combat over polished shit TW3 combat any day.
 
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Björn said in one of his videos that this is done by design, i.e. they purposely make the early game, and to some extent the mid game, hard as ass on purpose.
If only it could remain hard the whole game.
Agreed, I do also think the end-game difficulty could use some tweaking. But all in all, it does feel very rewarding to become so powerful, that you can one shot enemies that used to rape you. I just really enjoy how Piranha Bytes gives the player the feeling that all of their hard work leveling up and exploring didn't go to waste.

Another similar example, to name a popular game, would be Fallout. In Fallout you will get brutally murdered if you dare take on a Death Claw in the early-game, but in the end-game you can one shot those bastards with a plasma cannon. I just absolutely love that kind of game design, the only difference is that in a PB game, the rats from the starting area would rape you as well. :lol:


Still, the difficulty is why the combat is much better than in The Witcher 3. TW3 was quite shit, at the hardest difficulty you could just mash the quick attack button and win everything, no timing or strategy necessary. And that was with a build that put almost no points in sword fighting or fast attack. Quite a decline from TW1-2.

At least with ELEX, you need to pay attention or you get fucked. In the early game, you have to treat enemies as obstacles to bypass, or get an advantage on them to be able to defeat them. You need to time your shit. And you can actually fight enemies harder than level-appropriate ones, you can take on a challenge, and you feel accomplishment for doing it. TW3 prevents this with their almost-invulnerable monsters if they're not level-appropriate (the Skull-rated ones). So in TW3 you either have fights that are too easy, or ones that are almost impossible and frankly quite boring because they become a slog due to their artifically inflated high damage resistance.

TW3 did a bunch of things well, but combat was the worst.
I would like to add that combat in ELEX is also much more interesting simply due to the huge arsenal you have to choose from.

In The Witcher 3 you just have two swords (Witcher Gear) with varying amounts of damage output and the crossbow. Oh, and some bombs and a bit of magic. That just isn't the same as having flame throwers, spear guns, great axes, shot guns, swords, great axes, hunting bows, plasma cannons, grenade launchers, rocket launchers.... to choose from like in ELEX.

CDPR obviously planned to give combat much more depth, by adding more weapon types, but nearly all of it was scrapped. Some of the weapon types are still in the game and can be wielded, but they are completely useless in comparison to Witcher Gear.

Still, I quite like The Witcher 3 despite its faults. The Bloody Baron quest line is possibly the greatest quest ever created in a video game.

I'd take jank ELEX combat over polished shit TW3 combat any day.
I don't like jank, I like smooth animations, just as much as I like nice graphics, but gameplay is KING. That said, graphics fags and animation fags can get bent.
 

Grotesque

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I did play ELEX to completion.

you know that the time you live on this planet is limited, right?
if ELEX!!!! is shit and not to your tastes, why bother to finish it?

or you are the version of another guy around here that played Battle Brothers for thousands of hours and liked to whine of how shit it is?
 

Grotesque

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ELEX combat is shallow and the opposite of polished. Just pure jank. I'm sure Germans and the German-minded prefer it to Twitcher because in the first few hours of the game everything is so strong that you have to run away from everything


ELEX!!!!'s combat appeals to players that view games as puzzles and like the challenge of dismantling that puzzle and resolving it in an optimal way.
A draconic game that hurts the player is a puzzlebox, a hill to be conquered while deploying wits and innovation, exploiting game's systems to get on top and be successful, while feeling and enjoying the rewards of true progression through/after adversity that the storyfags will turn away from.

The beginning of the game where you have to find original solutions to seemingly unsurmountable challenges/enemies is the most enjoyable part because only true adversity births memorable gameplay moments.
 

Glad

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Ismaul

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Björn said in one of his videos that this is done by design, i.e. they purposely make the early game, and to some extent the mid game, hard as ass on purpose.
If only it could remain hard the whole game.
Agreed, I do also think the end-game difficulty could use some tweaking. But all in all, it does feel very rewarding to become so powerful, that you can one shot enemies that used to rape you. I just really enjoy how Piranha Bytes gives the player the feeling that all of their hard work leveling up and exploring didn't go to waste.

Another similar example, to name a popular game, would be Fallout. In Fallout you will get brutally murdered if you dare take on a Death Claw in the early-game, but in the end-game you can one shot those bastards with a plasma cannon. I just absolutely love that kind of game design, the only difference is that in a PB game, the rats from the starting area would rape you as well. :lol:
I'm all for feeling powerful at the end game by destroying enemies that used to be hard at the beginning.

But that doesn't mean challenge has to go. You can have some easy encounters where you destroy enemies and feel the progression, but not only that. Enemies that have become easy could still be challenging in greater numbers. You could also mix those enemies with a couple of challenging foes, that way the old and easy ones are more of an obstacle to deal with while you fight the real challenge. And you can have encounters with new, harder enemies.

I hope they do this for ELEX 2. At the end game I often find myself considering installing a mod that makes things harder.
 
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So bros, all of the detractors have inspired me to start an ELEX 2 giveaway. One lucky Codexer will receive an ELEX 2 Steam key, my treat.

No, I am not affiliated with Piranha Bytes or THQ Nordic in any way.

More tomorrow in the ELEX 2 thread and Giftstravaganza forum.
 
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Lorebrok

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Good lord that looks... disheartening. Not sure about that jetpack flying combat because you know, PHB jank. That could be a bad design decision. But frankly, the elex 1 gameplay looked shitty as well and when it released it was a tiny bit more polished. Still, I enjoyed elex 1 and fucking around in PHB worlds is always fun so I will probably get the game either way. Also being a sucker for eurojanks helps tremendously.

Btw, these guys dwell btw nearby, 15 minute driving away. In a relatively shitty house turned into a dev studio. Passing the house on my way to work every day.

Elex was average but as there are few good RPGs one could enojy it for an RPG fix at the time, even if it was completely forgettable.

But now after Archolos I can't imagine playing it and enjoying it the same, and seems like Elex 2 doesn't improve on anything.

All they have to do is literally copy Gothic as they did with first Risen - and it worked! But instead they are dead set on making this crap.

I guess I won't understand them as a non-G*rman.

It's a "buy on -75% sale" game.

Even as a german potato kraut snacker I can't understand them at all. And I agree with you completely, take gothic, make it again but different but not björn Pankratz different.
 
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