Shadowrun Shadowrun: Dragonfall vs Hong Kong (No Plot Spoilers!)

[Vaarna_Aarne]

To me I think it was that it felt so much like Eiger, Glory, and Dietrich formed such a clear core team that it just seemed wrong to not stick with the group.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Ran mostly with Glory, Dietrich and Blitz. Because I needed a sodding decker. Never found Eiger particularly effective.

 

[Ninjerk]

To me I think it was that it felt so much like Eiger, Glory, and Dietrich formed such a clear core team that it just seemed wrong to not stick with the group.

Yeah, I can see that. Viewed from that perspective he behaves like a afterthought. Dietrich was the other character I really liked. Eiger didn't do it for me.

 

[Gay-Lussac]

Tried both of these for about 15 hours each and disliked both. Too many NPCs serving as info dumps. Every one of them has 15 page essay titled "Shit nobody cares about" that they're ready to throw in your face.

I swear, there was a quest objective in Dragonfall where you're supposed to try and gather some info, so you're forced to go around talking to random NPCs, and one of them had this massively detailed backstory about where he was from, who he was, what he was doing. He must've droned on for at least 5 of those dialogue boxes. In the end, the NPC in question was irrelevant to the quest, exclusive to that transitional area and just generally served no purpose at all. I just sat there thinking "what in the actual fuck was the point of that?".

It's like they hired too many writers for the game and they ended up with way too much time on their hands. The companions are interesting but their backstories are written like some kind of chronicled historian account. They all start from their childhood and detail every single thing the characters went through in order to get to where they are. I wanted to know why the samurai dude was being hunted down, but I simply couldn't be arsed to read through all of the daddy issues and the ethics of his organization and how life is different where he came from and blablablabla...

From my experience, Hong Kong is an even worse offender in this matter, so my vote goes to Dragonfall.

In general, though, the combat in these games is fairly mediocre and it's upsetting how your companions get a far more interesting level progression than you (because they actually get some rather interesting and unique specialization options).

 

[Slimu]

I've finished Dragonfall and in Hong Kong I've done all the side missions (16h). Based on this, I can say that Hong Kong has too much info dumps. I think a quarter of the time was spend only talking with every NPC from the main hub. Dragonfall on the other hand has fewer info dumps so you get faster to the action. Regarding the missions, I found the ones in HK too easy; played on hard with the 2 attacks mod for NPCs. Dragonfall had more combat and I think it was a bit harder than HK (but still pretty easy). I would say Dragonfall is the better one, but I haven't played the free expansion for HK.

From my point of view the combat is the weekest part of the series. When they'll make Shadowrun 2, they should work harder on making combat encounters more interesting and improving the AI. The one attack per round for each enemy is beyond stupid, and when you get 3 AP/round, it's almost unfair how fast you kill them all, while they only have 2 AP and make only one attack.

All the above being said, I likes the games for what they are, but that may be because I like the Shadowrun universe, not because the gameplay is great.

 

[Doktor Best]

I think one of the main reasons for the 1 attack per enemy rule is the way the healing system works. If they attack twice you will always lose some hp even with smart cooldown management because you can only heal the most recent damage.

Its one of those design elements they should drop anyways. Yes, it resembles the rules regarding healing in the pnp ruleset, but it simply doesnt work that well in a pc game where combat encounters are more frequent.

 

[Slimu]

I think one of the main reasons for the 1 attack per enemy rule is the way the healing system works. If they attack twice you will always lose some hp even with smart cooldown management because you can only heal the most recent damage.

Its one of those design elements they should drop anyways. Yes, it resembles the rules regarding healing in the pnp ruleset, but it simply doesnt work that well in a pc game where combat encounters are more frequent.

The 1 attack/round rule should be the same both for the player and the enemy to ensure a fair game.

Receiving two consecutive attacks on the same character makes only the last one healable with spells. Since spells already have a cooldown of 2 rounds (if I remember correctly), you can't just spam healing spells so you need to use healing items if multiple party members take hits. This means that you are expected to lose some hp after the enemy rounds so you have to use items.

I may be dreaming, but I think it would be interesting if somebody would mode the combat system from Telepath Tactics in the Shadowrun universe.

 

[GarfunkeL]

You know you can skip those infodumps? They aren't forced on you. You don't have to talk to your team members and you don't have to interrogate the dialogue trees of every NPC. Which makes the complaint that there is too much "infodump" or dialogue or text in the games so bizarre. You don't like to read? Stop talking to them then!

 

[vmar]

Dragonfall is the better game by far

 

[Gay-Lussac]

You you can skip those infodumps? They aren't forced on you. You don't have to talk to your team members and you don't have to interrogate the dialogue trees of every NPC. Which makes the complaint that there is too much "infodump" or dialogue or text in the games so bizarre. You don't like to read? Stop talking to them then!

I love to read, actually. I don't like to read shitty writing. There's a difference. This is akin to a crappy amateur filmmaker deciding to make a 5 hour long movie filled with drivel and when people complaint that it's boring and lacks editing you just say that they don't actually like movies or appreciate true cinema; it's absolute nonsense. In fact, that's what this game's writing lacks: an editing pass.

You take away the writing from Dragonfall and Hong Kong and what you have left are barebones mediocre combat and character development systems. That's why I think the games, overall, suck.

To each his own, if you absolutely love the setting, I suppose that the info dumps might be a treat. As someone coming with no ties to Shadowrun, I couldn' stand it. Just my honest opinion.

 

[Joni Odin von Hassenstein]

I like Hong Kong more.
Especially since in Dragonfall the world is full of SJW crap. Which is believeable if you know the Berlin of today, but annoying when you yourself in some dialogues can only give SJW approving answers.

 

[Doktor Best]

To each his own, if you absolutely love the setting, I suppose that the info dumps might be a treat. As someone coming with no ties to Shadowrun, I couldn' stand it. Just my honest opinion.

Thats actually a good point i think. You have to like the setting, be interested in it. If you do, then the Shadowrun games suck you right into it and all those npc and companion infodumps simply provide the means to get to know this big sprawling world as the exploration in the game is pretty limited and you dont "get around" as much as in other, more open games.

Same for Pillars of Eternity. You HAVE to be a sucker for these theological themes in order to enjoy the story.

I did in both cases, but i can totally understand that people get annoyed by it very easily if they dont care as much for those themes because the writing and the gameplay relies on it so much.

 

[bertram_tung]

I don't even remember if I beat Hong Kong.

Dragonfall was great.

 

[Darth Roxor]

To each his own, if you absolutely love the setting, I suppose that the info dumps might be a treat. As someone coming with no ties to Shadowrun, I couldn' stand it. Just my honest opinion.

Thats actually a good point i think. You have to like the setting, be interested in it. If you do, then the Shadowrun games suck you right into it and all those npc and companion infodumps simply provide the means to get to know this big sprawling world as the exploration in the game is pretty limited and you dont "get around" as much as in other, more open games.

Same for Pillars of Eternity. You HAVE to be a sucker for these theological themes in order to enjoy the story.

I did in both cases, but i can totally understand that people get annoyed by it very easily if they dont care as much for those themes because the writing and the gameplay relies on it so much.

Except the infodumps in Ding Dong are not interesting even if you're a sucker for Shadowrun.

Completely untrue for PoE as well.

 

[GarfunkeL]

I love to read, actually. I don't like to read shitty writing. There's a difference. This is akin to a crappy amateur filmmaker deciding to make a 5 hour long movie filled with drivel and when people complaint that it's boring and lacks editing you just say that they don't actually like movies or appreciate true cinema; it's absolute nonsense. In fact, that's what this game's writing lacks: an editing pass.

You take away the writing from Dragonfall and Hong Kong and what you have left are barebones mediocre combat and character development systems. That's why I think the games, overall, suck.

To each his own, if you absolutely love the setting, I suppose that the info dumps might be a treat. As someone coming with no ties to Shadowrun, I couldn' stand it. Just my honest opinion.

You can't compare an RPG and a film and say that it needed "editing" in the same sense as a movie. You can't skip parts of a movie - you can skip portions of a game. If you don't like reading or you don't like interrogating NPCs or you find them poorly written, you can safely skip them. That's my point. Don't torture yourself and then complain that it was all shit.

I do agree with Doktor Best that it's probably more to do with whether one is a fan of SR in general. Being a huge sucker for Shadowrun in general (yes yes, I even got some of the shitty penny novels), I had a good time reading almost all text in all three games.

 

[Gay-Lussac]

I love to read, actually. I don't like to read shitty writing. There's a difference. This is akin to a crappy amateur filmmaker deciding to make a 5 hour long movie filled with drivel and when people complaint that it's boring and lacks editing you just say that they don't actually like movies or appreciate true cinema; it's absolute nonsense. In fact, that's what this game's writing lacks: an editing pass.

You take away the writing from Dragonfall and Hong Kong and what you have left are barebones mediocre combat and character development systems. That's why I think the games, overall, suck.

To each his own, if you absolutely love the setting, I suppose that the info dumps might be a treat. As someone coming with no ties to Shadowrun, I couldn' stand it. Just my honest opinion.

You can't compare an RPG and a film and say that it needed "editing" in the same sense as a movie. You can't skip parts of a movie - you can skip portions of a game. If you don't like reading or you don't like interrogating NPCs or you find them poorly written, you can safely skip them. That's my point. Don't torture yourself and then complain that it was all shit.

I do agree with Doktor Best that it's probably more to do with whether one is a fan of SR in general. Being a huge sucker for Shadowrun in general (yes yes, I even got some of the shitty penny novels), I had a good time reading almost all text in all three games.

You're neglecting my point that, if you simply "skip" all of the writing altogether, the core gameplay that's left is not satisfying enough to carry the game on it's own. In fact, the only RPGs that manage to get away with bad writing that I can think of are ARPGs (specially Diablo-clones).

Besides, I don't want to skip through all of that content, I want a game with interesting and well written companions and NPCs in general. I want a good story to motivate me to progress in the game. These are things I look for in an RPG and they depend on concise and to the point writing that doesn't get bogged down in an endless amount of fluff.

If they had cut off at least half of the meaningless details that the characters drone on about (not to mention trying to make the companion story progression less formulaic), they might've come up with an enjoyable, wholesome CRPG experience. That's what I meant by the game benefitting from an editing pass. But, as it stands, Shadowrun simply fails to deliver.

If you feel I'm actually mistaken about the quality of the writing itself, feel free to argue that perspective, as that's always subjective to some degree. I don't know how anyone can justify something like the waste of digital space of an NPC that I described in my first post, though. And that one isn't even really "skippable" since he's put square in the middle of an assignment which requires you to question random npcs. It was somewhere in the middle of the quest where you acquire the samurai ghoul.

Being a huge sucker for Shadowrun in general (yes yes, I even got some of the shitty penny novels), I had a good time reading almost all text in all three games.

Well now, I wonder why you actually like the game... is it really that far-fetched to you might just be a tad bit biased on this subject?

 

[opium fiend]

Your HK experience will be greatly improved if you don't talk to the troll family about -anything- except their wares. Every other windbag character has some pay off somewhere in their dialogue, except them. I wanted to shoot their club up by the end.

Speaking of shitty characters, how's Bliz? Not as a decker, but is he interesting? I don't remember his story (only that I didn't like him very much), did they concluded it in the Director's Cut of DF?

 

[Ninjerk]

Didn't finish his story, I think, but yeah I knew the troll family was going to annoy me after the first conversation.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Actually writing in Dragonfall made me interested in Shadowrun, not the other way around. I had no experience with this setting before the games.

This thread inspired me to play mini campaign

 

[agris]

Miltiadean

 

[agris]

Gay-Lussac I'm fairly allergic to shitty writing in games, and I didn't find it bad in DF or HK. I thought it was rather good in a pulpy way, but yes, if you ask characters questions about their history or background, you get infodumps. This is what GarfunkeL is saying, you don't have to do that. I've seen Infinitron talk about this before, there is a skinner-box like tendency for older cRPG players to try to extract every single bit of content from a game, including all the conversation nodes. I know I do this. But we can't fault the game for providing optional content that you elect to hear. It really isn't like PoE where every quest comes with endless exposition and history.

 

[Mozg]

Your HK experience will be greatly improved if you don't talk to the troll family about -anything- except their wares. Every other windbag character has some pay off somewhere in their dialogue, except them. I wanted to shoot their club up by the end.

The only person that I considered kinda tedious that I still bothered to nag often was the magic research person with an ugly portrait. She at least pipelines some setting stuff to you. Otherwise I mostly ran down people to talk to them to get writing for its own sake and for the sci-fi or fantasy angles, like with the drone guy, and ignored boring ones.

Spoiler

Still got the "golden ending".

Speaking of shitty characters, how's Bliz? Not as a decker, but is he interesting? I don't remember his story (only that I didn't like him very much), did they concluded it in the Director's Cut of DF?

He doesn't have a big, cartoonish personality like the melee girl or the punk rock shaman, nor does he have a little storyline and arc vis-a-vis the PC like Eiger. He's just some guy that's kind of a fuckup.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Eh, the troll family are among the more tolerable NPCs in HK. Their arc is pretty much standard asian family drama material.
Heck, I only find maximum law and the drone guy to be annoying.

 

[Doktor Best]

I liked Blitz's sidequest very much though, especially the guy you had to team up with was pretty well written.

 

[TOUGH GUY]

I kind of enjoyed how some of the HK quests were very light on combat, but at the same time I wish they had included more "adventure game" elements in them, more actual gameplay in the noncombat parts. Most of them just waited until you clicked on five hotspots and then allowed you to move on. Take the nerd convention for example, I thought you would have to pretend to be a leet haxor (dexor?) and blend in, otherwise something bad might happen. I even seem to recall the dwarf computer person saying as much. But no, instead of the game reacting to your being out of place and acting suspicious, you only went through a few fluff dumps. A wasted opportunity, very much like my own life. I think only that one tower infiltration mission had any noticeable amount of choices and outcomes of the talky approach and/or possibility of failure.