Little details in RPGs that please you

[rusty_shackleford]

a contra to https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/little-details-in-rpgs-that-annoy-you.142443/

Anytime an RPG makes a town actually feel like a community e.g.,

• Carl the blacksmith in Gothic 2 offers free strength training if you didn't pay yet and return Edda's lost statue to her. When you try to pay him, he refuses your money and says he heard what you did for her.

 

[Arulan]

When NPCs talk about something happening at a specific time in the future or implying the time-sensitive nature of a task that they actually mean it. For example delivering your father's ale or various NPC meetups in Kingdom Come: Deliverance. It really breaks your belief in the world when we need to clear the miller's name before they hang him turns into whenever you get around to it, we can continue, otherwise this quest will be frozen in time.

 

[Pocgels]

Good tooltips

 

[Butter]

I like when doors aren't just a wall that you can lockpick. In The Magic Candle, you're expected to knock on someone's door, and then they won't let you in if you don't know who lives there. In The Dark Heart of Uukrul, you can listen at a door before deciding whether to go through.

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

The lack of a compass and objective markers. Those things ruin the sense of adventure. It's why I gravitate to games like Souls and Conan.

 

[Glop_dweller]

The banker in Arx Fatalis has useless gold mine stocks for sale.
But the game begins during a miner strike. Once the strike is ended (solved by the player), those stocks become valuable.
If bought low, they can be sold high.
________

Fallout's Necropolis waterchip.

If the Player takes it, it removes potable water from the region; the consequence is obvious.

________

Planescape: If the player lies about his name or acquaintance to enough people, it affects reality enough to create that person.
https://torment.fandom.com/wiki/Adahn

Adahn the Imagined, or simply Adahn, is a manifestation of
the Nameless One's lies. He can be found loitering in the
Smoldering Corpse Bar, very confused and unable to remember
how he got there.

________

The Witcher [1] has a little Smurf village in it; gnomes likely.
It's non-interactive—at least afaik, but it's an interesting thing to stumble across in the woods.

 

[Darth Canoli]

• Improving companions by gathering clues and unraveling their secrets (PST, KotOR)
• Good Riddles and secrets (Isles of Terra, Darkside of Xeen, ...)
• Great combat (ToEE, KotC, KotC 2, Colony Ship, Dungeon Rats)
• "Real" books and lore giving you hints about secrets or info about gameplay elements (like some monster weaknesses)
• Not having to deal with useless garbage (ultima's legacy)
• Areas and NPC dialogs evolving through the game depending on your actions.

 

[Wunderbar]

• Improving companions by gathering clues and unraveling their secrets (PST, KotOR)
• Good Riddles and secrets (Isles of Terra, Darkside of Xeen, ...)
• Great combat (ToEE, KotC, KotC 2, Colony Ship, Dungeon Rats)
• "Real" books and lore giving you hints about secrets or info about gameplay elements (like some monster weaknesses)
• Not having to deal with useless garbage (ultima's legacy)
• Areas and NPC dialogs evolving through the game depending on your actions.

those are not "little details"

 

[Darth Canoli]

I guess I don't care for little details then.

 

[The Wall]

I love world simulation stuff. In Oblivion local newspaper by the name BlackHorseCourier writes about all major quests that MC is part of. Then you can read about how some mysterious group of master thieves stole Elder Scroll while drinking ale in tavern, NPCs commenting about latest news they've read, while you sit there with big smirk on your face

 

[The Wall]

In Witcher 1's Vizima lesser feral Vampires would attack occasionally citizens on streets during night and guards would fight them. Dwarves would piss on prostitutes. You could bribe people with chicken wing. Stuff like that

Make fantasy cities look & feel alive

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Witcher 1, people will walk out of the rain to covered areas. Little touches add a lot.

 

[The Wall]

Witcher 1 was such passion project. Throughout the whole game you just feel the love for setting from old CDPR

 

[Technomancer]

The Witcher [1] has a little Smurf village in it

Where can I find it?

 

[Catacombs]

Sane inventory management

 

[Moaning_Clock]

- Was surprised and pleased to find out that there is a reaction to being naked in AoD
- If you press ctrl in A Legionary's Life that you get all the hotkeys
- In Titan Outpost you can tell an NPC that you are smarter than him and play with him 4D Chess to prove it - it doesn't affect anything but it's cool thing to see
- Liked the dagger under the pillow in Seyda Neen - but there are a lot of details in Morrowind that I like (the water breath puzzle if that counts, the text on the dwemer pipes, the leg that you can equip as a weapon and much more)

 

[Renfri]

Washing dishes in Divine Divinity

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Changing diapers and making bread.

 

[luj1]

There were sidequests in Morrowind which didn't even have journal entries. Which was incredibly stimulating. I remember talking to a random NPC about 'latest rumors', he mumbled something about fishing one day and thinking he saw a city off the coast, somewhere southish from Hla Oad, but couldn't recall whether it was low tide or just him being buzzed to his eyeballs. I opened up my journal, nothing. So I went for a long swim and found a sunken shrine belonging to the deity Boethiah. There I received a quest telepathically from a living statue underwater. It asked me to find a worthy mason to build a new shrine on land and promised a reward. I found an Orcish mason in Caldera who asked for supplies and needed months of in-game time to build it. The quest chain doesn't end there however as the weapon given to you as a reward by the deity can be further upgraded at the shrine if certain conditions are met.

I also loved the environmental storytelling,

- Casting levitate and finding a Daedric helm on a fucking ledge 10 meters up in a grotto
- Finding an alternative entry point into a dungeon hidden behind a waterfall in a nearby tomb on a small island
- Meeting a projection of a god on a random overhang in a cave

 

[Moaning_Clock]

- Meeting a projection of a god on a random overhang in a cave

Where was that?

 

[Humanophage]

Witcher 3 isn't especially reactive, but I like it when the order of your responses affects their content. E.g. you have several response options, among them asking "do you think this other character is okay" and "are you okay" after some violent events. If you ask "do you think...", the character gets upset that you're not asking about her. If you then ask if she's okay, the character gets upset that you're only asking it because they mentioned it. On the other hand, if you did it in reverse order, the character gives normal answers. A decent way to reduce dialogues from feeling like info dumps without veering too much into Fahrenheit territory.

 

[Hobo Elf]

-Non-static skyboxes, i.e you can see starfalls, the sun/moon move in the sky and so on.

-This shouldn't be on this list as it should be the default, but day/night cycles (looking at you Larian). Also dynamic weather effects.

-In areas where you can't get to but still see it would be nice if there was some kind of movement happening there. Cars, people, trains, wagons. Just something that gives you the feeling that you're part of a bigger world and that there's something outside of the game area even if you can't go there.

Basically little things to liven up the game world. I'm also a fan of the stuff that rusty_shackleford already mentioned here. Everything that makes the worlds feel more dynamic and lived in adds a lot to the experience for me. I appreciate it when developers pay attention to detail.

 

[Glop_dweller]

The Witcher [1] has a little Smurf village in it

Where can I find it?

After eleven years, I don't know precisely. It is in one of the supplementary adventures after the main quest, out next to a tree in the fields.
I suspect that they are in 'Wraiths of Quiet Hamlet', but the module seems gone from my desktop.
__________
I have just read that CDProject dropped the 'new adventures' from distribution when they released the Enhanced edition. I suspect that you'd have to have the physical DVD version to install Wraiths of Quiet Hamlet.

Now that it has me curious, I will hunt down my Witcher DVD, and find out about it. I could not find a video example of it on Youtube.
*But surely here of all places there are several who found them in the field, and remember where?

 

[ELEXmakesMeHard]

When you've entered the Wizard's Institute of Technocery in QFG2 (to prove yourself as a mage), you're asked to name a sponsor. The obvious sponsor is of course Erasmus. But you can type the name of any other mage from QFG 1-4 (Ad Avis, Katrina, Erana, Zara, Aziza, Keapon, Baba Yaga, etc.), and get special dialogue from them (or about them). Nice touch.

 

[Haba]

Succubi have their tits out.