Harebrained Schemes General Discussion Thread

[Harthwain]

And Kurvitz is supposed to be a published author. Not that it means much though.

1) To my knowledge more than a single person worked on text in Disco.
2) Publishing a book alone is not a feat in this day and age. You can even self-make and self-publish a video game too.

 

[V_K]

incredibly routine matrix (matrix gameplay has always been bad regardless of implementation).

I played a shaman so I know nothing about that

 

[DeepOcean]

Genesis Shadowrun was great, especially for a console game, but let's not pretend 80% of the game didn't consist of doing the same escort/kill/fetch mission over an over again to grind for karma and money.

Genesis Shadowrun was a great concept but I tried playing it recently through emulator and I just couldn't, too much repetition and the combat is terrible. I liked some ideas and the art style of it but the gameplay had serious problems , my ideal shadowrun game would have that 90's gritty look, non-linear but with actually decent combat and missions.

 

[Lacrymas]

I don't think any of HBS' Shadowruns managed to capture the nitty-gritty of the setting. You were always supported by established organizations with resources to keep the police off your back. They all somehow managed to get too epic by the end as well, which kinda detracts from the cyberpunk ideas of corporate overlordship, the police as a tool of capitalism, and commodification of the soul.

 

[orcinator]

All* the shadowrun games suck, just in different ways.

*okay I haven't played the Xbawks MP shooter or that Nippon only one but I don't have much hope.

 

[GhostCow]

All* the shadowrun games suck, just in different ways.

*okay I haven't played the Xbawks MP shooter or that Nippon only one but I don't have much hope.

The one on xbox is hilarious in that I think it was the first game to have crossplay with PC and they had to nerf the PC players so the pleebs could keep up. The guns were given way more kickback for PC players and there were a bunch of other nerfs that I can't remember. It's one of the things I bring up every time I see my roommate's dumbass wife playing PC shooters with a gamepad but she just won't change her ways and continues to suck.

 

[Serious_Business]

I'm guessing some woman at Harebrained Schemes said something about women and now their writing is bad and their games are the worst. Good job "buddies"

 

[V_K]

Genesis Shadowrun was great, especially for a console game, but let's not pretend 80% of the game didn't consist of doing the same escort/kill/fetch mission over an over again to grind for karma and money.

Genesis Shadowrun was a great concept but I tried playing it recently through emulator and I just couldn't, too much repetition and the combat is terrible. I liked some ideas and the art style of it but the gameplay had serious problems , my ideal shadowrun game would have that 90's gritty look, non-linear but with actually decent combat and missions.

Yeah, I played it through the emulator as well, I ended up just using cheat engine to save me the trouble of "radiant" missions. It turned out a much better (if much shorter) experience that way.

 

[Roguey]

I'm guessing some woman at Harebrained Schemes said something about women and now their writing is bad and their games are the worst. Good job "buddies"

Nah, what happened is that the lead designer became trans and everyone started talking like west coast teenagers. From the Codex review

Where BATTLETECH noticeably falters is in the plot and characters. There is also a strange stylistic change between non-event writing and event writing. While events are written fairly straight, the main game’s writing has a lot of characters talking like this:

“I told you – A THOUSAND TIMES – to not… sigh… microwave the burrito with the foil on.”

The stilted orthography is a sort of sci-fi mirror to the campestral style of a ten-cent Western. Fair enough, but every character talks like this. If you pulled dialogue from the game and hid its speaker, you wouldn’t even know who the hell was talking. A lack of distinction and differentiation between characters is somewhat ironic since, like most sci-fi settings, the cast is a Captain Planet’s catalogue of diversity. One big red flag for this unexotic “dialogue” is that every single character is a certified ass kisser. There is only passing resistance to any of the Princess’s goals or ideas. With a large cast of characters, the matter of getting from point A to point B has about as much conflict as going from 1-1 to 1-2 in Super Mario. The unending rimjobbing she gets also stands in stark contrast to the actual plot's conceit.

And a quick recap of said plot: you are a financially insolvent killer for hire and there is a deposed princess who wants to take back the throne. This is a great premise. Story-wise, it is intriguing. The mercenary has debts to pay and the princess needs to recapture her throne. I immediately jumped to the obvious question. Why doesn’t the mercenary just fork over the princess to those who own the throne? What could the princess possibly reward him for years of struggle and uncertainty that would be better than a simple phonecall to the current royals? Not only is this a fun narrative, it could feed directly into gameplay with difficult decisions to make.

Except at no point whatsoever is there any tension between a person who murders for cash and a person who is essentially a Disney Princess. The toothless premise most noticeably sends a wrench into the issue of cashflow. In-game, the Princess is bankrolled by an outside power yet you can ostensibly still run out of treasury. It seems to me that the better concept would be for the player to play as the Princess who must hire the mercenary, and if you run out of treasury then the mercenary turns on you. Meanwhile, the mercenary smells blood in the water and keeps making bigger and bigger demands. I don’t know, just thinking out loud here. It’d be cool if the player’s story was front and center instead of every accomplishment’s limelight being afforded to a Mary Sue with a scar, but I digress. What's clear is that you are not a mercenary at all, which is kind of awkward considering the non-story contracts you undertake. Instead you fall into one of those awkward gaming tropes; that one where the shopkeeper wants you to save the world, but he still finds the time to demand you pay a couple quid for the very tool you need despite the implication that any failure on your part would also be his doom.

The debris of this blown idea peppers the rest of the game’s writing: the plot never really deviates from good vs. evil, and it’s almost patronizing how thoroughly it makes sure you know who has the halo who the horns. At one point it even lampshades itself when a villain talks like a toddler about their evil plans, but the device felt out of place in the setting and served to only further highlight how doldrum the whole thing was. Not to mention said evilness coming to fruition pretty much gets hand waved away which was about the point I gave up on expecting more.

I’ve never played a game that so badly wanted me to dislike its protagonists like BATTLETECH does, but the worst bootlicker of them all is the player. So divested is the player from the mercenary concept, you bend over backwards for the Princess at every opportunity. Dialogue options range from “Yes ma’am” to “Sure I’ll do it.” Again, just to reiterate, you struggled for years to survive after the opening act. You literally killed people to put food on the table. Yet after meeting a royal princess who got beaten by the bigger animal in a Hobbesian setting you simply can’t salute her fast enough. Just have everyone scissoring each other in mission control and call it a day why don’t you.

 

[RegionalHobo]

have quite a lot of good faith in harebrained after dragonfall and hong kong

as it stands they are one of the devs i think have one of the best odds to do a decent job with a WoD game. Hoping for Mage, but will at the very least follow the news for any setting

 

[Silva]

Whoever says Genesis Shadowrun is grindy must check for a retardo test with the nearest psychologist. The game lets you ignore most of the side missions and go straight for the main story ones if you want. And it's even pretty short if you do that. There's a dozen speedruns on youtube to prove it. Like this one, which takes 36 min: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmCH2tiH990&t=5s

The difference being that Genesis Shadowrun actually has a dynamic mission generator mechanism in place, which communicates with everything from your reputation to contacts to Mr. Johnsons to factions etc. to provide a simulation of a shadowrunners life. Now, if one finds that boring, I don't know what to say. You're playing a game called "shadowrun", aka: "illegal missions the game" and don't want to execute missions but instead prefer to pass your time reading (cringey) fanfic and goind from point A to B to C in a linear story? What's next, wanting Bioware romances in the game too?

 

[Roguey]

Whoever says Genesis Shadowrun is grindy must check for a retardo test with the nearest psychologist. The game lets you ignore most of the side missions and go straight for the main story ones if you want. And it's even pretty short if you do that. There's a dozen speedruns on youtube to prove it. Like this one, which takes 36 min

I remember reading a Genesis Shadowrun LP and being amused when the LPer was caught using the money cheat which he admitted, because he couldn't stand all the grinding you have to do for money. You'll get wiped out on the critical path without properly upgrading your equipment and as I recall you have to buy info a lot too.

 

[Nano]

Your nostalgia is showing, Silva.

 

[Silva]

Whoever says Genesis Shadowrun is grindy must check for a retardo test with the nearest psychologist. The game lets you ignore most of the side missions and go straight for the main story ones if you want. And it's even pretty short if you do that. There's a dozen speedruns on youtube to prove it. Like this one, which takes 36 min

I remember reading a Genesis Shadowrun LP and being amused when the LPer was caught using the money cheat which he admitted, because he couldn't stand all the grinding you have to do for money. You'll get wiped out on the critical path without properly upgrading your equipment and as I recall you have to buy info a lot too.

The 36min speedrun above doesn't use money cheats. Why don't you try to watch it? It's just half an hour. Shorter than some HBS quests with their unecessary long and cringey dialogues.

And I remembered another thing that HBS Shadowrun lack that this game has in spades - stealth. While infiltrating a corporate office here, you must consider stuff like invisibility spells, maglock passkeys, persuasion rolls, hacking etc. to avoid alerting the building (or suppressing triggered alerts). And its totally possible to succeed at missions in pure stealth/without a single shot fired. All that in a dynamic, non-scripted way, with patrolling guards, office workers, etc. While in HBS thats impossible because again, missions are just scripted stories.

If this isn't the last nail in the coffin - a Shadowrun game without infiltration - I don't know what it is. But it makes sense really, because these HBS clowns don't know how to program dynamic systems if their lives depended on it. All they know is to write cringey linear scripts. So every aspect of the game that needed systems - infiltration, matrix, factions relations, etc - are non-existent or replaced by some unnecessary long text trying to pass for something else. Like a fanfic blog in game form.

P.S: You know what the best thing to come out of this hoax of a series is? That "Unlimited" mod that tries to replicate Genesis gameplay by simulating the live of a runner, with different johnsons and unscripted missions that affect your reputation etc. But the engine is so limited that the modder eventually gave up.

 

[Roguey]

And I remembered another thing that HBS Shadowrun lack that this game has in spades - stealth. While infiltrating a corporate office here, you must consider stuff like invisibility spells, maglock passkeys, persuasion rolls, hacking etc. to avoid alerting the building (or suppressing triggered alerts). And its totally possible to succeed at missions in pure stealth/without a single shot fired. All that in a dynamic, non-scripted way, with patrolling guards, office workers, etc. While in HBS thats impossible because again, it's all part of some scripted little story.

Having completed it, you're really overselling it.

 

[Silva]

It's not overselling, it's stating facts.

 

[Sailor Woedica]

I finally found this thread again! Ok I only played like 15 mins of this studio’s other rpg Shadowrun: Dragonfall yesterday but it’s already officially one of the coolest ever because Glory is from 2014 but everything about her is so 2020! The dewey red eyes that everyone irl and around had all last year and this year! And finally, like FINALLY a cute sporty lewk (like seriously I thought Disco Elysium was the only rpg ever that ever had such a fashionable sporty ootd and it was wasted on that main character) mixed with such a current oversized Billie Eilish lewk for the bottom half!!! And the hair is a sleek middle parting!!! The only thing that would make her even more 2020 is if she had a nose piercing. Like I said I’ve only played maybe 15 or 20 mins of Shadowrun but it has to be one of the best rpgs ever made. Monika was also really fierce but ugh what happened to her was seriously sad........ A vampire rpg from this studio would be so put together

 

[agris]

Trigger the codex with a statement thread is a few posts up

 

[cyborgboy95]

Re-playable mission. Hmmm. . .

 

[Roguey]

Not surprised to see HBS get on the roguelite train.

 

[razvedchiki]

do tell.

 

[Infinitron]

Post the full job ad: https://hbsstudios.bamboohr.com/jobs/view.php?id=65

Senior Level Designer
Design · Kirkland, Washington

Harebrained Schemes seeks a versatile and creative Senior Level Designer to join our team for a new project! You will work alongside the Lead Designer, larger design team, and environments team to create exciting, memorable, and replayable missions for a new game.

We're looking for an experienced, self-starting design collaborator that brings a deep understanding of—and appreciation for—player experiences across a variety of genres and audiences.

This is an on-site, full-time individual contributor role. (Please note that we are currently working from home due to Covid-19. We will return to the office in stages when it is safe to do so. In the meantime, all interviews will be done virtually.)

What You’ll Do

• Collaborate with the game director, department leads, and team members of all disciplines to design, implement, evaluate, and iterate on single-player game content for an unannounced title.
• Design & build levels and mission content that reinforce the game’s pillars.
• Implement interesting mission and objective ideas that allow the player to approach situations with a wide range of possible strategies within the game’s existing systems.
• Work directly with the environment art team designing levels to hit visual goals and ensure that the environment ‘reads’ well for the player.
• Collaborate with our tools engineers in the creation of practical tools and pipelines for level and mission creation. Provide insight into your workflow and actionable feedback so that our suite of tools is as efficient as we can make it for production. Advocate for more/better tools and systems when needed while continuing to work constructively within existing scope, schedule, and toolset constraints.

What You’ll Bring

• Experience as a single-player Content Designer, Level Designer, or Mission Designer on at least one shipped, professional PC or console game title.
• Experience overseeing, developing, or influencing the content tools pipeline of a professional PC or console game title.
• Strong understanding of game scripting logic.
• Experience delivering narrative content within a level.
• Experience building hand-crafted levels that contain variable content.
• Experience with iterative development and rapid prototyping.
• Familiarity with the gameplay and structure of turn-based CRPG games or turn-based tactical combat games.
• A player-first mentality with an emphasis on positive reinforcement over negative-reinforcement.
• New perspectives and views to the team
• Strong verbal and written communication skills.

Must be willing to take a content design test.

Nice to Haves

• A creative and unique perspective - able to use and reframe standard game mechanics in surprising ways.
• Knowledge of architecture, environment art composition principles, interior/exterior space design, etc.
• Participation in the development of tutorial experiences for a shipped game title.
• Experience with or knowledge of how procedural generation tools can create content at scale.
• Shipped at least one strategy or tactical-combat game.
• Experience working in a non-design discipline on a shipped title.
• Tabletop game design experience.
• Professional familiarity with Unity development.

 

[Lurker47]

Thought this was about harebrained scheme quests in RPG's.

 

[cb.spike]

So how long before Paradox mess this yet another atempt to use World of Darkness license meaningfully?

 

[Yoomazir]

Not surprised to see HBS get on the roguelite train.

I, for one, welcome a sequel to their Necropolis game