Now I feel like I kicked someone's baby.
Not at all; more like you criticized someone's kid. Both of those things might be awfully upsetting for a parent, but criticism can actually be useful! Perhaps
especially for a parent. While it may seem like my hackles went up (I hope they didn't!), I really do value getting negative feedback. Ordinarily, I just accept it and don't try to argue back against it, but in this case, I'm not sure I wholly understand the criticism, which is part of why I'm pushing back, to get a better understanding of it. As a threshold point, though, I should say -- as I did several times in the recent Codex interview -- that I agree that the design is the worst part of Primordia.
You can't replace Ben from Full Throttle with a cursor. Cursors don't ride motorcycles or kick things with their boot.
I think you're too focused on "special powers" and not enough on the intrinsic nature of the character. It's quite common for adventure games to feature unusual protagonists -- a wannabe pirate, an investigative reporter, a novelist, an insurance salesman, a medical student -- yet not to have any special "verbset" of actions. It's the exception, not the rule, to have a protagonist with super powers (like Ben's kicking or bike riding, or Bobbin's magic).
To me, the question is less about whether Horatio's being a robot supplied the player with robotic super powers (obviously not), and more whether his characteristics supported the core adventure game verbset (collecting items, building machines from scrap, repairing broken machines). There, I think there was quite a close link between the character and the actions, in fact a closer link than in most adventure games, where characters who would not logically pick up doodads or repair machines, or at least would not do so with pleasure and ease.
Replacing Horatio with a cursor makes sense only if you believe that cursors "build energy sensors or gather electronic parts from scrap heaps." The fact that you think they do is simply a sign that you've been so immersed in adventure game gameplay that you don't question those conventions. But a cursor can no more build an energy sensor than it can kick someone. To me, relying on, "It's an adventure game, so of course the protagonist can do such and such" isn't a great explanation.
(For what it's worth, early designs contemplated Horatio incorporating the parts into himself as upgrades, but we dropped that for a variety of reasons, a big one being that Vic really likes inventories.)
Likewise, replacing Horatio "with a talking cursor"
would, in my view, change quite a bit. It says a lot that Horatio is a robot
and yet he behaves this way. He sleeps on a bed. He wears clothes. He holds tools. He reads books. He speaks aloud. He takes notes by hand. Your response is, "Yes, this is proof that his being a robot is irrelevant." My reply is, "No, this is proof that Horatio is striving toward outwardly human behavior, like a cargo cultist who doesn't understand the meaning of the rituals he's performing." The cargo-cultist motif runs throughout a variety of encounters in the game.
But you remember there is only one canonical ending for these games?
I plead ignorance to what "canonical" means here. Fallout has sequels; PS:T doesn't. Obviously the Fallout sequels assume certain things about how the first game ended, and I guess we can call those assumptions "canonical." But even if one set of outcomes is "canonical" in that sense, I'm not sure why that matters; if we made a Primordia 2, then Primordia would have a "canonical" ending (in fact, the spin-off novella "Fallen" renders
non-canonical the Thanatos mass-transmission ending).
Looked at on its own, rather than from the perspective of sequels, FO1 had a lot of possible outcomes. Just off the top of my head, I believe there's the option to kill the Overseer or to help the Master take over the Vault (right?), both of which provide meaningfully different endings. Then there are all the ending slides that can go one way or the other.
With respect to PS:T, I'm not sure what it means to say that there's one "canonical" ending, since there's no canon beyond the game itself, which has several different endings. I assume you're talking about the fact that in most end-game scenarios, TNO ends up in the Blood War. But even just looking at the very end game, that's not the only ending (you can also unmake yourself, either with wisdom or with the Blade of the Immortal). There are several other ways to end the game (in your own destruction, typically, but also, as you note, taking over for the Silent King). In addition, the Blood War ending cinematic changes slightly depending on what you do, and the pre-cinematic sequence changes radically. Moreover, my understanding is that there were originally more endings planned for PS:T, but they were dropped for budgetary reasons.
I assume the division you're drawing between "very nice failure states" and "canonical endings" is that if the game ends before the last piece of playable content, it is a failure state, whereas if it ends after the last piece of playable content, it is a canonical ending. But if that's so, the the self-unmaking in PS:T and shooting the Overseer in FO are both "endings" not "failure states."
In any case, I'm not persuaded that the distinction is very useful, although I agree that having endgames that occur at different points of the game is a nice touch.
Regardless, accommodating a variety of ways to end the game short of just saying, "You lose!" strikes me as a good thing, not a problem. Like PS:T and FO, Primordia has a "main trunk" of endings (the ones where Horatio survives and leaves Metropol) that are a bit more elaborate; these correspond to the Blood War ending in PS:T, but like that ending, they have a variety of permutations depending on what companions you saved and what other choices you made.
for me it didn't feel there is much to interpret after . . .
To me, at least, there's quite a bit that's still open going into the final sequence in Primordia. Among them: What is the nature of Horaito's obligation to Metropol? Is he morally entitled to walk away from it? How strong is Horatio's commitment to non-violence, and has he truly ever overcome his original programming? These aren't questions the
game can or should resolve. They are questions for the player to resolve because they are fundamentally questions about "human" nature and morality. As pretentious as it is to say, Primordia is meant to challenge the player to come to his own conclusion.
One way to let the player come to his own conclusion is an open ending like the Blood War in PS:T, where you can ascribe whatever motivations and explanations to the scenario that you want, but you're obliged to do that ascription in your own mind. But a very large number of PS:T players -- myself included -- found that ending unsatisfying; a bit too abrupt, and also, ironically, not open enough. It assumed a lot about the TNO that might not jibe with the player's read on the character. (An acceptance of fatalism being the main presumption.) With Primordia, I wanted players to feel like they could make the final decision with Horatio -- to help Metropol, to destroy it, to simply take the power core and go, to die fighting, to die refusing to fight, etc. In other words, they interpret the ambiguity about Horatio's nature (and about the moral circumstances he faces), and then, based on that interpretation, choose what they think is the best way to resolve things.
The fact of achievements ruined the multiple endings to some extent, but if you look at people's tweets and comments about the game, it's clear that even with achievements, many players got a "bad" ending and simply assumed it was the main ending, and responded to the game accordingly. In my view, that's a great success: if you think "de pie o muerte, nunca de rodillas" is the right choice, and die to Scraper with plasma torch in hand, I think it's great that the game accommodates that in a way that suggests it's a viable conclusion, rather than expressly labeling it as a failure.
Obviously, if the player is simply there to "win" in a gamist sense (i.e., getting a high score), then some of those choices aren't viable. But if that's all the player wants, then both PS:T and FO simply have bad endings, because the protagonist necessarily loses in a gaming sense. He doesn't get the girl, the hero's welcome, or even a chance to enjoy his powers.
Kiosk is a guessing work in a sense that it's not a creative puzzle where you use your skills/objects/characters/knowledge, it's more of a minigame, a rebus.
Well, I guess I have two responses.
First, I agree with you that the kiosk is "more of a minigame, a rebus." But that seems totally disconnected with your nonstandard uses of the terms "guessing" and "creative." It seems to me that you're taking value-laden words that win arguments, and then redefining them such that you can use their value without their meaning. Everyone agrees that a "guessing" based puzzle is bad, and that a non-"creative" puzzle is bad. But "guessing" usually means "picking options without any basis to know which is right and which is wrong, until you stumble on the right one." It has nothing to do with whether a puzzle arises organically the setting. Integrating a differential equation wouldn't be "guessing" in any normal use of the word, but it would be "guessing" by your definition. Likewise, there are puzzles such as the insult sword fighting in Monkey Island that are clearly "creative" in any ordinary sense, but
are actual guesswork (or involvement a substantial amount of guessing). And they have nothing little to do with using "your skills/objects/characters/knowledge." I realize that bickering with you over your use of English terms when your profile says you're from Russia is absurd; certainly if I were trying to explain myself in Spanish (which I sort of speak), I'd use the wrong terms all the time. (And if I were trying in Russian, my post would read, "Hello. My name is Mark. Thank you. Comrade. Good bye.")
Second, I think you're looking at puzzles from a slightly off perspective. Even if you don't use the protagonist's special skills, or inventory items, or in-game knowledge to solve a puzzle, the puzzle can still tell you a lot about
other characters and the setting, and even things about the protagonist himself. The kiosk puzzle is linked (both by its actual content -- i.e., the screens you see -- and by the nature of the puzzle) to a key theme in the game, namely the way in which information gets packaged, repackaged, and lost. Memorious's use of steganography tells you something about Memorious; MetroMind's inability to detect the steganography -- despite rigorously monitoring the kiosk -- tells you something about her limitations. Horatio's ability to crack the steganography -- even if it's the player who's doing the work -- tells you something about him, his quest for answers, and his seeking to see past the superficial.
You may or may not like the puzzle; you clearly didn't like it! And I can't argue with that. It plainly didn't work for you. But I think think the criteria and terms you're using to judge the puzzle aren't universal.
Anyway, bottom line is:
I just wish gameplay in Primorida was more, uh, "inspired"?
That is the gospel truth.
