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But even if I go full liberal and pretend that women can successfully write for a male audience (which is not impossible, I just consider it very rare), can they at least try to hire competent ones that can appeal to said audience?
The first burning question is "what does it mean to appeal to a male audience?". Your answer would be "pretty ladies and buff dudes saving those pretty ladies", but that's extremely shallow and most well-read adult men wouldn't find that very exciting or stimulating. There's a whole novel about that, it's called Don Quixote. What is left then?
Why do you think well read men wouldn't like that? I am well read. I do not agree that it is shallow either. It goes deeper than any of us would like to admit.
Men and women have different psyche, they vibrate on different frequencies. Many marketing departments know all about it. Before you object, *of course* it is a statistical thing. We are talking about large audiences here, so statistics is where it's at.
It is very-very obvious to everyone which sex each ad is trying to appeal to. Now take Deadfire's introduction. They completely forgot that they should be trying to appeal to men.
Ah I see we've arrived at the inevitable "bitch about millennial female writers" part of this game's lifecycle. Might as well get it over with.
But look, this isn't a thing that's going to go away. In fact it's going to get worse. And it's not really about California. Look at the demographics. Which of the two sexes reads more books today? Which one earns more college degrees, especially in literature and the humanities?
We're not going to return to the era where most of an Obsidian RPG's writers were overeducated dudes who were born in the 1970s and played Planescape: Torment in college. That generation has moved on. You should actually expect majority-female or even all-female RPG writing teams to be the norm in the future.
True dat. The fact of the matter is that we will never know for sure what kind of personality and formative experiences are necessary to make a compelling cRPG. You can expect knowledge about the medium, playing the classics, dedication, but that's all generic. We don't know and can't tell in advance whether and from where someone will bring something new. That's the type of thing we will know when we see it. The only safe bet is that we can't expect anything from the veterans of the industry anymore. They disappointed their audience so many times by now, and in such a short period of time, that you will need to be crazy to trust them as luminaries of the medium. My hopes are in small indies and independent medium studios, but that's about it.
But even if I go full liberal and pretend that women can successfully write for a male audience (which is not impossible, I just consider it very rare), can they at least try to hire competent ones that can appeal to said audience?
The first burning question is "what does it mean to appeal to a male audience?". Your answer would be "pretty ladies and buff dudes saving those pretty ladies", but that's extremely shallow and most well-read adult men wouldn't find that very exciting or stimulating. There's a whole novel about that, it's called Don Quixote. What is left then?
Why do you think well read men wouldn't like that? I am well read. I do not agree that it is shallow either. It goes deeper than any of us would like to admit.
Men and women have different psyche, they vibrate on different frequencies. Many marketing departments know all about it. Before you object, *of course* it is a statistical thing. We are talking about large audiences here, so statistics is where it's at.
It is very-very obvious to everyone which sex each ad is trying to appeal to. Now take Deadfire's introduction. They completely forgot that they should be trying to appeal to men.
Mistakes were made, but I think in the long run these guys from the MOTB era like George Ziets, Eric Fenstermaker, etc were never going to be content to remain a dream team of "Avellone understudies" forever. It seems that if you're a really smart professional male video game writer, your natural career path is to eventually either become a bigshot Creative Lead (which means you have to find a studio where that position is open - see Fallout: New Vegas's John Gonzales) or go freelance.
Avelone made it clear he wasn't responsible for letting talents like Gonzalez leave. When people praise F:NV they always think about Sawyer. How about Gonzalez? The bad drives out the good. ALWAYS.
That's good of course, but the problem is that we don't see much of his efforts even in the games he has worked on. Writing a single companion only makes the rest of the writing look worse by comparison and we aren't satisfied either way.
It's not good. It is terrible. He is selling his name like a whore and fooling us, making us believe he is heavily invested in games he doesn't even touch. He either makes a character, or a dialogue piece, etc. That makes zero difference. He needs to stop this freelancing bullshit and be a creative leader of his own cRPG, with a handpicked team. That would work, but he doesn't have the opportunity. Besides, he is burnout too. He stated multiple times that he doesn't do develop only cRPGs, etc. So PS:T was a one time thing.
Yeah, but he was not as important as people usually think. In fact, he was trying to save Alpha Brotocol from Parker's carnage during that time. While Obsidian developers were having a blast making their dream game he was fixing their mistakes.
Been playing this a bit. Just finished the first planet. Overall I’m enjoying the game. I went for a low intelligence, but charming ‘Zapp Brannigan’ style character. He’s dumb, he lies and exaggerates a lot, and he gets other people to do his job for him. (Leadership skills + bonus exp from companion kills (and companion death on), high charm attribute and lie skill, also high tech skills (medicine, engineering); he’s a hands-on guy.)
Some thoughts:
Writing
I haven't met any of the main factions and can't comment on the overall story, but so far the writing has been above average in the ideas and content, and average to below-average in the execution. There are multiple ways to approach most quests and the presentation is often humorous and charming.
If you lower your intelligence on character creation you unlock dumb options (and this is only my speculation, but I think all conversations compare your intelligence to the intelligence of the person you're talking to, and if you are sufficiently below the intelligence of that person, you gain access to dumb options). Most of them are pretty funny and I think playing an lovable idiot probably makes the story more engaging. For example,
If you're dumb you can play along with Ludwig and join in on his vendetta against automechanicals.
It seems to be a trend that dumb options let you play along with the insanity present in the writing, which makes the game feel more campy/starship troopers-y than if you try to play it straight.
Gameplay
Combat is fun in many ways. The first area has pretty tight design and isn't overly large. I hope they continue that and don't go full empty world syndrome.
There are attributes that you set on character creation (like SPECIAL or stats in D&D, though I don’t think they increase with character level at all). Each gives a nice bonus (eg strength gives 10% melee damage per point, up to 30% at max) or a pretty harsh malus if you take it below average (eg int reduces crit damage to 20% of normal). Each one affects a set of skills, which give further bonuses to your character, including milestones every 20 points. You also get a perk every other level, with three tiers of perks.
There is an interesting combination of game-y systems and player skill systems. From what I can tell, for example, all weapons have a crit chance and a crit damage modifier, which just roll the dice to see if you do that amount more of damage. That’s what int affects. However, there is also weakspot damage—like headshots—which is separate from crit damage. So if you’re dumb, you can still headshot things for full bonus damage, but your “game-y” crit damage is lowered.
Skills also don’t seem to matter that much for weapon effectiveness. Having 20 points in a weapon skill allows you to do targeted shots or swings in time dilation mode, and these are very strong (eg targeted headshots cause blind, targeted limb shots cripple), but my character can use a heavy plasma rifle just fine with 2 points in heavy weapons, for full damage (only depending on my ability to aim).
Supernova. Supernova is poorly tuned but I’m playing on it anyway because combat is only moderately challenging even here. Here are the reasons Supernova sucks:
1. You can ONLY sleep on your ship. Not at inns. Not in a bedroll. Only in your ship. (To get rid of injuries (concussion, broken limbs, etc.), you have to sleep.)
2. You can ONLY fast travel to your ship. Combined with 1. this means if you want to sleep, you go back to your ship, and then you need to trek it back to wherever you were. Doesn’t matter if you are in a civilized town with a bed, you have to go to your ship and then run back. Either 1. or 2. would be okay, but together they are just gamified nonsense.
3. You get thirsty after ~15 minutes of play, which immediately reduces your dexterity by one (on like a 5 point scale). If you have average dexterity, that makes it below average, which makes your weapons and armor degrade faster... because you haven’t had a drink of water. What? Gamified nonsense. This is only a problem at first because you’ll get enough bits to buy loads of water pretty quick, but it’s still stupid (the malus is too big too quickly).
Reasons supernova is good:
1. Enemies aren’t pushovers. (You’ll learn to be afraid of primal behemoths until you get a plasma weapon or two.)
2. When companions run out of health they die. Permanently.
3. Manual saves only on your ship (autosaves on area transition, but on the first planet there are only 3 area transitions (main city, mini dungeon, main dungeon)).
That’s pretty much it, I think. Other than the drinking issue, the food/sleep system has been mostly unobtrusive.
I don’t know why they don’t have an option for increased combat difficulty + permanent companion death without the other stuff.
Yeah , the DLCs are great, but i was talking about the main game. People praise Avellone for the writting of the main game too when was actually Gonzalez.
The Alpha Protocol team isn't the same as the Aliens (and later Fallout New Vegas) team. Except for Parker, the leads on Alpha Protocol (Raymond Holmes, Brian Mitsoda) also left Obsidian shortly before/after Avellone joined the project.
BTW, the average playtime for the completionist approach in TOW is only 28 hours... Like I said, the depth is smoke and mirrors. Even Bloodlines had 40 hours. https://howlongtobeat.com/game.php?id=62935
It's not good. It is terrible. He is selling his name like a whore and fooling us, making us believe he is heavily invested in games he doesn't even touch. He either makes a character, or a dialogue piece, etc. That makes zero difference. He needs to stop this freelancing bullshit and be a creative leader of his own cRPG, with a handpicked team. That would work, but he doesn't have the opportunity. Besides, he is burnout too. He stated multiple times that he doesn't do develop only cRPGs, etc. So PS:T was a one time thing.
I meant it's good for him, not necessarily for us. And yes, the fact he is criminally underutilized for his writing talent and criminally overused for his persona and popularity is what I'm criticizing.
BTW, the average playtime for the completionist approach in TOW is only 28 hours... Like I said, the depth is smoke and mirrors. Even Bloodlines had 40 hours. https://howlongtobeat.com/game.php?id=62935
I don't think they were completionist runs, I'm at 25 hours(not done yet) but I've searched every nook and cranny. I still have a good chunk of content left to do.
