MetalCraze said:
Yep the fact that you've just compared AP to a shooter instead of RPG only proves my point.
Also you should play Deus Ex sometime, because you obviously didn't.
Yes, if AP succeeds it certainly won't be as a pure rpg. I would have thought it was pretty obvious they were aiming at a Deus Ex style game rather than Fallout - even their own hype-shite has had DE as their name-drop-material, instead of FO.
I posted Deus Ex's list of 'C+C' in an earlier post, and I can't be bothered looking it up again, or typing it all out, so I'll just give a sample (not that this matters, but I've played DE about 5 times a year, every year since it came out - it's my 'remember when gaming was great' game that I keep returning to. I find I can replay it almost infintely, whereas even FO and PS:T can only support about 3-4 playthroughs at most. I've also made numerous posts arguing that the game industries biggest fuckup was that they didn't make Deus Ex and Bloodlines the 'standard' for dumbed-down pseudo-rpgs, rather than KoToR and Oblivion):
In 'choice: consequence' format:
- go into ladies' bathroom: flavour text;
- kill lots of folk on 1st level or kill hardly any: flavour text (and an insignificant weapon/ammo you'll get that level anyway);
- handle the guys guarding the 1st vial of ambrosia yourself, or let your partner go in: flavour text;
- kill the hostages / save the hostages: flavour text;
- kill your partner / kill the terrorist leader / kill both: flavour text;
- protect Paul or leave him to die: different character saying the exact same stuff later in the game (LESS than flavour text)
- speak to the doc on your way out, or don't (ooohh...OBLIVION-style choices..): dadada...THE BIGGEST C+C IN THE GAME FOLKS, later you get to kill Gunther automatically in dialogue, or (GASP) kill him at the SAME spot in the SAME level of the game, with the SAME consequences either way!
- kill Gunther or run away (oohhh...MORE Obilivion-style choices. Skyway must have just loved all those Deus Exish 'do my quest or don't' choices that Bethesda offers);
- (when the copter gets locked up): kill the guards using guns, kill the guards using computer skills or kill the guards using gas (fun choice, but more on that later): ohh...different ways to kill the exact same guys with the exact same consequences...gee that's big C+C right there!
- attack the Hong Kong actress/MI5 early or attack her later: no difference, still end up being attacked by her at the same later point in the same later way. Oh...and flavour text.
- kill Simons / run from Simons - if you don't kill him you fight him instead of another guy later in the game...not even a flavour text difference...AND THERE'S THE EXACT CONSEQUENCE THAT SKYWAY IS BITCHING ABOUT IN A.P. LADIES AN D GENTLEMEN! EXCEPT WITH EVEN LESS CONSEQUENCE BECAUSE YOU END UP FIGHTING THE TOUGHER GUY (Simons) ANYWAY! But, hey, it's in Deus Ex so it must be good in THAT game.
- save Jock or don't - flavour text.
- help Illuminati / help Tong / help Helios - flavour text
So there we go. There's some awesome C+C right there. Flavour text must be what FO3 was lacking, otherwise Skyway would have loved it.
Fact is, you don't need revolutionary C+C to make a game sufficiently interactive - and frankly I don't think any game has given the kind of C+C you're looking for. Tougher guards, flavour text and mulitple ways to kill the same guys with the exact same consequences, can be perfectly sufficient to give an adequate illusion of freedom. They were in Deus Ex, after all (and that's a fuckload more freedom than, say, SS2).
I'm not saying that AP is necessarily going to be great - the things that worry me most are (1) the crappy AI (though Deus Ex's AI was much mocked for being by far the crappest AI of its era when it came out - even Specter says he was afraid that people would compare the AI to other shooters and realise how crap the AI was in comparison, missing the point that it was crap because they were trying to include other options like stealth etc, instead of just making a good shooter-AI or a good stealth-AI etc), and (2) that it's 3rd person instead of 1st person. The few times I've played 3rd person (eg Dead Space, and even SS2 which I'm loving) I've spent the whole game going 'fuck I wish this just had decent FP controls and perspective). There's a lot of 'stage-rules' for 3rd person shooters that folk who are used to them just accept, but which seem mindblowingly crap to folk who aren't - eg inability to duck and jump, and most importantly, the presence of 'can't walk here' bits. E.g. there's a pipe or a set of boxes in the way - you could easily just step over the fucking pipe, or push the boxes aside, or stack them to climb over them, but in 3rd person shooters they just act as magic impenetrable barriers. Worst of all is where games actually exploit that for difficulty - e.g. in Dead Space and others where monsters can move anywhere, but the player can't - it doesn't make it too difficult, but it makes the stupidity of the arbitrary boundaries just scream out at you.
But crap C+C isn't something that I've seen so far - it looks like they're aiming at Deus Ex style fake-choices: flavour text and multiple ways of killing the same guys and then adding to that stuff which Deus Ex lacked, i.e. tougher guards and different skins/stats of NPCs to reflect faction choices.
