Vault Dweller said:
Your points would be valid if they weren't based on assumptions that the dialogues are better and the combat is more strategic. I hope you are old enough to know the difference between pre-release statements and the actual features.
Obviously, everyone likes to hype up their newest games, describing them as innovative or featuring a new engine or being an immensely life-like experience, yadda yadda. Although I'm as much in the dark as anyone else when it comes to the details of the new dialogue system (other than the fact that it's now actual voice-acting), Beth and our good friend MSFD have mentioned that it has been updated for the better, with each NPC having their own personality and having different responses, which is why there are dramatically less NPCs in Oblivion than there were in MW. Now, unless they're LYING, this suggests one thing pretty clearly:
Characters will have dialogue suited for the individual self. As in, not the shit you saw in MW, where two people across the world said the exact same thing on the exact same topic, even though one had been purring up to that point at the end of each sentence and the other was a legionairre with anger issues. Characters having dialogue suited to them instead of some stupid wiki? I don't know, VD, but that sounds like an improvement to me.
Seeing as the MAIN COMPLAINT with MW dialogue was the very cardboard Wikipedia delivery, it would seem a slightly intelligent move for the people at Beth would have been to alter it. My assumption is that they have. Your assumption is that they haven't. Either way, they're both assumptions, but I think it would have been extremely idiotic of the people at Beth if they did it again.
As for combat,
http://www.elderscrolls.com/codex/team_ ... stevem.htm
Already it sounds different and focusing on timing rather than a clickfest. Or maybe they're lying and this is actually fake hype to lure us in? Maybe they haven't changed combat at all!
Vault Dweller said:
Uh, no. But thank you for your opinion.
Does being an arrogant prick come easily to you, or do you practice it? I phrased my post politely, without insulting anyone, but you seem to be incapable of this amazing feat whenever somebody has a differing opinion, or disputes something with you.
My OPINION is pretty well founded. I'll detail why below - please, correct me if I'm wrong. Earlier in this thread you mentioned the example of your boss at work dying - someone would replace him, and someone would replace him, and life would carry on. Your world wouldn't come to an end, and thus the game shouldn't come to an end just because you killed King Billy Bob.. Unless I've misunderstood "Uh, no," you seem to be implying that making the world throw constant alternatives at you wouldn't be difficult to program or implement. I think your expectations of Radiant AI are a little high, but I'll just go on with my little story. Instead of focusing on the fantasy setting of Elder Scrolls, let's bring this little argument to modern times. I entitle this game "Rulion"
"Rulion" takes place in present day Nebraska, in a small town called Smalltown where everyone mostly knows everybody. You, the player, get a murderous urge and walk up the dinky little streets and knock on a random door. Bill opens it and you kill him, but you're so messy, you leave the weapon on the floor with your prints and everything. Bill's wife comes home an hour later after achieving her little AI schedule of leaving the office at 6PM and discovers Bill's body. She screams, drops her bag of groceries, and the AI guides her to the phone and she dials the cops.
For arguments sake, let's say your outside in the shadows or something. You're a fucking stealth god. The police show up and collect evidence, get in their car, and go to the station.
OR
You somehow manage to take the bag of evidence. The police don't notice right away and go to the station, and when they get there, they realize the evidence is gone and the AI guides them back to the house to double-check since obviously one of them dropped it.
OR
You don't steal the evidence bag, but you had killed the forensic guy earlier in the day. The police arrive in the lab, find the body, and now they're launching a murder investigation. They also call up HappyCity and ask if they can get another forensics guy to come up to examine the evidence they collected during the earlier crime. The next day, that guy is on his way to the dinky little town and arrives to the station and manages to get blood samples from what you left under Bob's fingernails and for what you left under the forensic guys fingernails, and he makes a match.
OR
You go to the highway and pose as a hitchhiker as the replacement is on his way to town. You kill him once you're in the car. You dump his body and it's found and the police are now looking for his car, the one you're driving in.
OR
Earlier in the week you had fucked with the engine of his car, and so it breaks down in the highway and it takes him an extra day to get to SmallTown.
OR
Going back to Bill's death, his teenage son, who had been going through the AI schedule of going to school, can no longer afford it or needs to help support his mom, so now his schedule changes so that he goes to the local factory.
OR
Going back to stealing the evidence bag, maybe you take it to where you live and burn it in your fireplace. Then you go outside and kill the kid across the street in broad daylight, and drive away. The police come to your home and depending on the Perception of the cop examining your fireplace, he finds the burned traces of an evidence bag and suddenly you're linked to Bill's murder.
And none of this must, of course, interfere with the main plot: to find your missing daughter. Radiant AI is a step in the right direction of making a world more living, but shit like what I mentioned above is too advanced or time-consuming to make at the moment. You seem to be critizing Radiant AI for not being this powerful yet, for making alternatives you every tiny detail you do. I don't know - making a world so life-like where things work like that seems pretty difficult to me. Because it doesn't seem like you'll ever be happy unless games can adapt just like real life.
Vault Dweller said:
I would have bought that argument if I didn't play MW where you can kill pretty much anything and everyone because you are so POWARFUL.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this. I was referring to a previous post, where somebody made the suggestion that instead of making NPCs immortal or doing the whole reloading thing, you should just make them uber-tough and give them a retinue of guards to protect them. Logically, no, your character shouldn't be able to take them all on as if he was a demi-god. I agree with that. But I also brought up the point that some people will get angry at this and say their lvl 99 character SHOULD be able to take them all on. You'll also get the people that cheat and make their STR 9999. And assuming they kill him, they'll break the game. It's better, in the end, to make them reload upon doing this.
Vault Dweller said:
I dunno. Maybe because other games don't tell you: "No, you are playing it all wrong! Let me reload the game for you". Just a thought.
Other games DO do that. And by Beth having to compensate for the dick who just wants to kill everything and everyone because it's "funny lol" and honestly expects the game to deal with it, they'll have to lower the immersion factor and how well characters can engage you. Would it be better for you if the game had an objectives screen that said "MISSION FAILS IF YOU KILL KING BILLYBOB, DUKE FANCYPANTS, YOUR MOTHER"?
You're exaggerating the hell out of how much having a few NPCs you shouldn't murder will ruin the game and interfere with your role-playing. You can't kill a handful of people. So what? Can you really not get around it? Should I ask developers to include a suicide button so I can commit harikari instead of having my character die at the hands of the evil wizard because my character needs to be roleplayed that way? I couldn't kill Paul in Deux Ex but I didn't freak the fuck out. I couldn't kill the Elder or the Overseer. I couldn't kill Meryl in Metal Gear. I couldn't kill Gorion. I couldn't attack or kill any of these people without ruining the game.
Rant over. Let's see you nitpick some more and make big deals over the tinest of subjects.
