Game News Shadowrun Returns Kickstarter Update #76: Dragonfall Director's Cut Dev Diary #1: Missions & Content

[Harold]

No. Absolutely not. While Biowarian, they are nowhere near as bad as Meril or Fenris.

Glory's backstory is way more edgy and crawling in my skin than Fenris'. Her daddy beat her everyday, she was a hooker, she was the slut of a cult guru, then she literally became Satan's slut, lost her magical essence and had her body encased in chrome to prevent further Satan-fucking. Fenris just whines about being a slave and hating mages, while two-note it doesn't pile edginess upon edginess. Eiger reminds you with every dialogue that she's a strong-independent-female-character(tm). Furthermore, the moment when she decides you no longer suck is entirely decided by plot pogression. It doesn't matter if you tried to appease her til then or if you were a complete asshole, from that moment on she says she was out of line, heck, later on she even comments how she's seen you grow, regardless of how little of a fuck you actually gave. In DA II there was at least a friendship/rivalry system that made sure companions responded depending on how you previously treated them. Same thing with Amsel - the no personality information dispenser- you could be nice to him all you want, but if you snap at him during your last convo, he then, based on that one remark, concludes that you're the biggest asshole ever; and the game then wants you to care about him when he dies

Does Glory and Eiger go to bed with you and decide to do a monologue about what the nature of love is?

Nope. Neither does Merill. Your point?

Let's not have a 300-page thread about which companions are worse (DISCUSS!). Suffice to say that some of the Dragonfall companions are not up to the unscalable-to-level standards of the Codex.

Spoilsport.

 

[Infinitron]

While I believe that the writers of Dragonfall were directly influenced by Bioware-style companions when they wrote those characters, let us remember that the "Biowarian companion" is nothing but a bastardization of the companion model first introduced in a certain game from 1999...

 

[tuluse]

Yeah, does anyone have edgier backstories than Morte or Dak'kon?

 

[Rake]

Yeah, does anyone have edgier backstories than Morte or Dak'kon?

No, but better writing is required to pull this kind of characters off. If you don't have the skill, the "tragic" can become "angsty".
Case in point, Bioware. Most of their games try to follow PS:T's design model and focus, but fail horribly because they aren't good enough do pull it of.

 

[Harold]

Yeah, does anyone have edgier backstories than Morte or Dak'kon?

There's nothing 'edgy' in the modern sense of the term about them. All PST companions are over-the-top sure, but they fit with the setting and theme of the game, they're well written and their backstory is revealed in time, as you put the pieces together and build a bigger bond wit them through other interactions. With Morte you have the 'Don't trust the skull' line when you get to your tomb (quite a ways from the start of the game), and you learn the later parts about him when you get FFG, quite a ways later. And if we're going to compare Dak'kon and his Unbroken Circle of Zerthimon, which is probably the best thing MCA has ever written, with Bioware or Shadowrun companions then

 

[Gondolin]

No, but better writing is required to pull this kind of characters off. If you don't have the skill, the "tragic" can become "angsty".

More like "pathetic and annoying".

 

[tuluse]

There's nothing 'edgy' in the modern sense of the term about them. All PST companions are over-the-top sure, but they fit with the setting and theme of the game, they're well written and their backstory is revealed in time, as you put the pieces together and build a bigger bond wit them through other interactions. With Morte you have the 'Don't trust the skull' line when you get to your tomb (quite a ways from the start of the game), and you learn the later parts about him when you get FFG, quite a ways later. And if we're going to compare Dak'kon and his Unbroken Circle of Zerthimon, which is probably the best thing MCA has ever written, with Bioware or Shadowrun companions then

I'm just trying to point out that implementation is more important than concept. Brooding, depressed, emotionally broken characters can be done well. Bioware doesn't do them well, so people tend to think the whole concept is bad.

 

[Harold]

^Of course. Harebrained doesn't do them well either, tho'

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

The backstories were bad, but not that bad. I though Dietrich was ok, but a little boring. Eiger's could have been ok if it had omitted the moral justification for her strangling the dude. Blitz's would have been ok if he was a less annoying character - girlfriend leaves under mysterious circumstances involving corporate espionage. Really only the Glory backstory was totally over the top. But even it has a decent core idea; magically gifted person attracts attention of powerful malevolent spirit and protects herself by destroying her essence with cybernetics.

Plus, aside from Blitz, the characters themselves are fairly inoffensive in-game. Their backstories may be edgy, but what story relevant dialogue they have is pretty innocuous. Not having juvenile declarations of love is a pretty big improvement over the biowarian template.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

I really am excited for this. I just want my cyberpunk/shadowrun fix.

 

[DeepOcean]

Does Glory and Eiger go to bed with you and decide to do a monologue about what the nature of love is?

Nope. Neither does Merill. Your point?

Sorry man, stop with the liez and bullshitz as Valourn would say. Nope, even the most cringeworthy dialogue or backstory on DragonFall does't even come close to this shit on the video above.

You can accuse HBS of not taking risks and playing too safe and close to Biowarian cliches (What is true.) on their characters but bringing fucking Dragon Age II into your argument is like you commiting suicide with a nuclear bomb of shit.

Do you want to become more elfy, Harold?

 

[Harold]

Wow, that's the best you got, huh DeepOcean ?
She doesn't go to bed with you, unless you flirt with her beforehand and, even if you do, you can still hit the brakes right before. You are the one that does all the initiating. The character does fuck all in terms of romance unless you coerce her, because she's designed to be an autist when it comes to everything else besides blood magic and her mirror. Even when you get her to bed, she still doesn't have any monolgue about love. The codex party-line that Bioware characters force romance down your throat is the laziest criticism, when there are so many legit things one can criticisise Bioware for. Unless you initiate them, all romances are completely ignorable.
Try harder next time.

 

[DeepOcean]

Wow, that's the best you got, huh DeepOcean ?
She doesn't go to bed with you, unless you flirt with her beforehand and, even if you do, you can still hit the brakes right before. You are the one that does all the initiating. The character does fuck all in terms of romance unless you coerce her, because she's designed to be an autist when it comes to everything else besides blood magic and her mirror. Even when you get her to bed, she still doesn't have any monolgue about love. The codex party-line that Bioware characters force romance down your throat is the laziest criticism, when there are so many legit things one can criticisise Bioware for. Unless you initiate them, all romances are completely ignorable.
Try harder next time.

Let's make things clear here:

Bioware companions are known to:1) bastardized character arcs into "click into this dialogue option 5 times to make theraphy on this character and his issues will be magically resolved.", 2)the creepy worshipping of the main character to massage the ego of the player, 3)Being passive most of the time and rarely challenging the player with the player having to go out of his way to get some confrontation, 4) Cringeworthy romances, 5)Melodrama, 6)Shallow, copy pasted fantasy archetypes, like what you posted above about Merril. Dragonfall ones have a bit of the number one, a bit of number three and only Eiger has an annoying level of number five.

They are mostly underdeveloped and the only one that suffers a bit of Bioware shit is Eiger . I don't get how they are somehow worse than shit like Fenris (Man, Fenris oozes edgy and "I'm so cool, look at me, I'm a cool douchebag look at me." ) . HBS could make them truly biowarean shitheads on Director's cut(what would be a disappoitment.) but at least on Dragonfall as it is today their Biowarean influenced shit is underplayed and largely safely ignored.

 

[Jaesun]

 

[DeepOcean]

Don't get your hopes up, I'm done about sperging about Bioware.

 

[Bleed the Man]

For me, what make the companions awful and boring wasn't the biowarian type of character and shit writing (although it contributed), but the fact that the companions didn't interact with you during the course of the game. The companions only developed during the conversations with them in the main hub.
You can say what you want about Bioware characters, but they get a relatively decent amount of development during normal quest and general banter. It helps flesh out their (shit) personalities. In Daggerfall, we only get the conversations with them between runs, and because of that, they're fucking info dumps about their backgrounds.

With that said, this Director's Cut with the companion quest might mitigate (but not eliminate entirely) the problem.

 

[Jaedar]

Mages are not OP in SRR. It's the heal spell that's op. As is haste for that matter.

 

[Roguey]

Heal is fine, considering its lengthy cooldown and "last-damage-taken only." It doesn't help you all that much if you've been hit by multiple shots in a turn, particularly burst or auto fire.

 

[Infinitron]

Heal is fine, considering its lengthy cooldown and "last-damage-taken only." It doesn't help you all that much if you've been hit by multiple shots in a turn, particularly burst or auto fire.

The thing about Heal is that strongly pushes you towards this kinda-gay gameplay style where you inch forward, trying not to get hit by more than one thing in a single turn so that you can become effectively invulnerable.

Doesn't always succeed, but when it does it's cheesy/degenerate.

 

[himmy]

I'm starting to mark notches on my bedpost for every time someone on the Codex refers to Dragonfall as Daggerfall.

 

[Roguey]

The thing about Heal is that strongly pushes you towards this kinda-gay gameplay style where you inch forward, trying not to get hit by more than one thing in a single turn so that you can become effectively invulnerable.

I would do this regardless. This is how I played JA2 until I got annoyed by the strategic gameplay and quit. Also how I played Fallout Tactics until I just got bored. Getting hit at all = bad.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

I'm starting to mark notches on my bedpost for every time someone on the Codex refers to Dragonfall as Daggerfall.

Very unusual sightings #178: Codexers with notches on their bedpost

 

[Jaedar]

Heal is fine, considering its lengthy cooldown and "last-damage-taken only." It doesn't help you all that much if you've been hit by multiple shots in a turn, particularly burst or auto fire.

Which would be a problem, except enemies rarely hit more than once on a single guy(they seem to try and avoid shooting everything on one guy even). The difference between running a party with 3 heals and no heals makes more of a difference than all the difficulty levels in the game.

Also, lengthy cooldown? It's one turn iirc(at least one of the levels?).

 

[Darth Roxor]

Also, lengthy cooldown? It's one turn iirc(at least one of the levels?).

Nah, it's 3. Only Aim has one turn cd.

 

[Roguey]

Which would be a problem, except enemies rarely hit more than once on a single guy(they seem to try and avoid shooting everything on one guy even).

It happens more often once you hit the third act, as it should.

The difference between running a party with 3 heals and no heals makes more of a difference than all the difficulty levels in the game.

I doubt healing is the only factor when you're running a party with a mage pc, dietrich, and a hired mage runner.