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An RPG without some of the JRPG.
Yeah, when I saw the words "DQ3 clone", Hero's Realm was actually the first game that came to mind. It's also symbolic that I still haven't played it yet: I'm sure it's awesome and fun and what not, but I can't quite find the energy for another retro excuse story for the sake of an excuse story. The way I see it, RPG Maker is already retro relative to the rest of gaming out there, so copying the storytelling of the 90's is a step too far.
I do get your point about bad serious storytelling being a lot worse than excuse/non-serious kind of writing, though. I think a good example here is Guild Raider!: that game didn't take itself seriously, had very enjoyable and light-hearted writing and its premise might not be wholly original, but was certainly a lot fresher than typical "retro" fare. It would be awesome if you could make something like that.
I do get your point about bad serious storytelling being a lot worse than excuse/non-serious kind of writing, though. I think a good example here is Guild Raider!: that game didn't take itself seriously, had very enjoyable and light-hearted writing and its premise might not be wholly original, but was certainly a lot fresher than typical "retro" fare. It would be awesome if you could make something like that.
An RPG without some of the JRPG.
OP: I hear you, and that's part of the reason why I consider the "J" part to be more of a misnomer, because it attaches a lot of very Japanese cultural baggage to a set of mechanics that are as culture-agnostic as that of any other genre. Nihilo, the game I'm currently working on, might still have the protagonists in their early 20's, but the rest is being averted as much as possible at the moment, and there's a heavier emphasis on non-linearity that's closer to WRPG than JRPG.
Isn't that only like two game series, i.e. a drop in the ocean relative to JRPG genre? Sure, I know of a couple more games like that (Tokyo Jungle and The Deer God), but they're outside of JRPG genre and have animal protagonists, so I don't think that would count. Also, please don't make another DQ clone. We've got enough of those already.
Agree, except for the highlighted parts. The ability of our medium to provide genuine non-linearity in storytelling is a tremendous power that should never be underestimated. As I have said before and will say again, A Blurred Line has little to its name without those story branches that stayed in play for a long time. Of course, there's also the potential to misuse it until it backfires, i.e. Mass Effect 3. To me, the key is to make sure every choice ends up feeling authentic: i.e. to make it something the player can reasonably believe their character will do or say in a given situation, as opposed to something obviously contrived for its own sake.
Similarly, it's a very open question whether cutscenes are that important/necessary and whether or not games of this caliber were done before. After all, one of the reasons Half Life remains remembered for so long is because it was almost completely devoid of cutscenes. And in my country, at least, there's a significant sub-section of gaming culture that considers any games with a lot of cutscenes to be "interactive cinema" as a very derogatory term (and I don't just mean something like The Order: 1886 or Heavy Rain, but also The Walking Dead, Uncharted games or even Wolfenstein: New Order).) The same sub-culture absolutely venerates Planescape: Torment as the best RPG ever made. For reference, it was released in 2000 and obviously had few cutscenes, but provided 1.4 million words of writing, much of it through all the dialogue trees.
Firstly, the ratio is not as skewed as you think it is, although there were definitely more WRPGs made about 10-15 years ago than nowadays. Anyway, what in this context counts as "WRPG formula" and how far can a game stray from it before it's no longer a WRPG? Is it limited to the traditional high and dark fantasy stuff of The Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, Gothic, The Witcher, Two Worlds, Bound by Flame, Fable (more of a slasher but fine), Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, Pillars of Eternity, and Planescape: Torment? As you can see, that's already plenty of games with rather significant differences in between them: i.e. Pillars of Eternity has guns and Na'vi like races, while Gothic had one of the most complete day-night cycles ever made + free-running and stuff.
Then there's a whole post-apocalyptic subgenre: besides the universally known Fallout, there's the recently revived Wasteland plus a few older titles like The Fall: Last Days of Gaia. And of course, there are more than a few genre-benders like fully-Nordic The Banner Saga, Of Orcs and Men (made in France but is very linear and small-scale like real-time JRPGs), where humans are performing genocide on Orcs and you're playing as an Orc and Goblin, and last but not least, the legendary FPS/RPGs like Deus Ex series, Mass Effect and even S.T.A.L.K.E.R or Alpha Protocol. And of course, we can't forget the Knights of the Old Republic duology.
author=Craze
stop making games about fucking people to make team members. please.
Isn't that only like two game series, i.e. a drop in the ocean relative to JRPG genre? Sure, I know of a couple more games like that (Tokyo Jungle and The Deer God), but they're outside of JRPG genre and have animal protagonists, so I don't think that would count. Also, please don't make another DQ clone. We've got enough of those already.
author=LockeZ
I'm not opposed to JRPGs that don't take themselves seriously, but I think there's a serious lack of ones that do. Western RPGs are way more likely to have you fighting nothing but threatening enemies in realistic situations, instead of making every tenth enemy be a smiley-face slime and winning battles with the power of friendship. You would never see an enemy like Ultros in The Witcher 3. Bringing that kind of serious, straight-laced action/drama aesthetic over to a linear, story-driven, character-centric, cutscene-heavy game has a tremendous potential for storytelling, and that potential really has yet to be unlocked in a successful big-budget RPG. (A few games in other genres, like Metal Gear Solid and Alan Wake, actually do a better job.)
Agree, except for the highlighted parts. The ability of our medium to provide genuine non-linearity in storytelling is a tremendous power that should never be underestimated. As I have said before and will say again, A Blurred Line has little to its name without those story branches that stayed in play for a long time. Of course, there's also the potential to misuse it until it backfires, i.e. Mass Effect 3. To me, the key is to make sure every choice ends up feeling authentic: i.e. to make it something the player can reasonably believe their character will do or say in a given situation, as opposed to something obviously contrived for its own sake.
Similarly, it's a very open question whether cutscenes are that important/necessary and whether or not games of this caliber were done before. After all, one of the reasons Half Life remains remembered for so long is because it was almost completely devoid of cutscenes. And in my country, at least, there's a significant sub-section of gaming culture that considers any games with a lot of cutscenes to be "interactive cinema" as a very derogatory term (and I don't just mean something like The Order: 1886 or Heavy Rain, but also The Walking Dead, Uncharted games or even Wolfenstein: New Order).) The same sub-culture absolutely venerates Planescape: Torment as the best RPG ever made. For reference, it was released in 2000 and obviously had few cutscenes, but provided 1.4 million words of writing, much of it through all the dialogue trees.
author=Desertopa
I think that a game made according to the conventions of WRPGs could be at least as good as any JRPGs out there. But none of my favorite games are WRPGs. Why? It probably has a lot to do with the fact that there are, like, fifty JRPGs for every WRPG out there. If there were as many people trying to come up with interesting variations on the WRPG formula, the best they'd come up with would probably be a lot more impressive.
Firstly, the ratio is not as skewed as you think it is, although there were definitely more WRPGs made about 10-15 years ago than nowadays. Anyway, what in this context counts as "WRPG formula" and how far can a game stray from it before it's no longer a WRPG? Is it limited to the traditional high and dark fantasy stuff of The Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, Gothic, The Witcher, Two Worlds, Bound by Flame, Fable (more of a slasher but fine), Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, Pillars of Eternity, and Planescape: Torment? As you can see, that's already plenty of games with rather significant differences in between them: i.e. Pillars of Eternity has guns and Na'vi like races, while Gothic had one of the most complete day-night cycles ever made + free-running and stuff.
Then there's a whole post-apocalyptic subgenre: besides the universally known Fallout, there's the recently revived Wasteland plus a few older titles like The Fall: Last Days of Gaia. And of course, there are more than a few genre-benders like fully-Nordic The Banner Saga, Of Orcs and Men (made in France but is very linear and small-scale like real-time JRPGs), where humans are performing genocide on Orcs and you're playing as an Orc and Goblin, and last but not least, the legendary FPS/RPGs like Deus Ex series, Mass Effect and even S.T.A.L.K.E.R or Alpha Protocol. And of course, we can't forget the Knights of the Old Republic duology.
City by night
The Last of Us RPG
OK, I have watched the video, and here are my thoughts:
* The default blue palette used for the menus doesn't fit the gritty world of TLOU. Something like army-green, khaki-brown, etc. woould be far more fitting.
** Similarly, the default menu sounds also ought to change.
* I actually rather like the small conversations with other people at the camp. Thus, I'm not sure why you decided to limit it with a timer. I presume it's something that was present in the original's multiplayer, but there's no need to replicate it here. Keep the dialogue quality up instead, and perhaps have some more environmental description, or dialogue trees for certain characters.
* The voice rips from the original game are certainly a highlight of gameplay. Too bad the rest feels like a poor attempt to emulate completely different 3D multiplayer style right now.
** Again, why the arbitrary 1-minute limit? What's so special is supposed to happen by the time it ends that the player cannot be allowed to exceed it?
** Guns just lying around in chests/boxes in the open is poor RPG design in general; it's even worse here, however, because you're supposed to be many years into the post-apocalyptic world where they are precious enough to be fought over. Make them all droppable from the enemy and/or move some inside the houses and such, so that it would make more sense.
*** Guns in general are all new and clean, when again, your game is many years AFTER the original, which was already a couple of decades after the outbreak. All the early-game guns in that setting should be ramshackle crap, with rust spots and only held together by spit and ducktape (I'm exaggerating here, but only slightly). To include rocket launcher and fission pistol as unlockables is to not just miss the point, but miss it by a mile.
** Guns appear to not need reloading at all, which again misses the point. From what I know of Ace, implementing ammo should be quite possible in one way or another.
* Of course, everything to do with guns pales before the largest problem: Fireflies do not appear much smarter then zombies from the video. You just walk and shoot before they can react, completely mocking both the AI of the original and the need to use cover. Until you fix that, whether through scripts or something else, so that they can act somewhat adequately, the gameplay is not interesting.
* Lastly, and given that dialogues appear to be better than other stuff seen so far, why not actually move beyond the premise of multiplayer a little and write your own storyline here? It certainly can't hurt what is already here.
** Similarly, the default menu sounds also ought to change.
* I actually rather like the small conversations with other people at the camp. Thus, I'm not sure why you decided to limit it with a timer. I presume it's something that was present in the original's multiplayer, but there's no need to replicate it here. Keep the dialogue quality up instead, and perhaps have some more environmental description, or dialogue trees for certain characters.
* The voice rips from the original game are certainly a highlight of gameplay. Too bad the rest feels like a poor attempt to emulate completely different 3D multiplayer style right now.
** Again, why the arbitrary 1-minute limit? What's so special is supposed to happen by the time it ends that the player cannot be allowed to exceed it?
** Guns just lying around in chests/boxes in the open is poor RPG design in general; it's even worse here, however, because you're supposed to be many years into the post-apocalyptic world where they are precious enough to be fought over. Make them all droppable from the enemy and/or move some inside the houses and such, so that it would make more sense.
*** Guns in general are all new and clean, when again, your game is many years AFTER the original, which was already a couple of decades after the outbreak. All the early-game guns in that setting should be ramshackle crap, with rust spots and only held together by spit and ducktape (I'm exaggerating here, but only slightly). To include rocket launcher and fission pistol as unlockables is to not just miss the point, but miss it by a mile.
** Guns appear to not need reloading at all, which again misses the point. From what I know of Ace, implementing ammo should be quite possible in one way or another.
* Of course, everything to do with guns pales before the largest problem: Fireflies do not appear much smarter then zombies from the video. You just walk and shoot before they can react, completely mocking both the AI of the original and the need to use cover. Until you fix that, whether through scripts or something else, so that they can act somewhat adequately, the gameplay is not interesting.
* Lastly, and given that dialogues appear to be better than other stuff seen so far, why not actually move beyond the premise of multiplayer a little and write your own storyline here? It certainly can't hurt what is already here.
AA_Portrait_JamesSamsonDISTRESSED.png
Looks good, but all those images you've recently uploaded should be resized (besides the loading screen, that looks fine.)
Also... I hope that's not too pointed a question, but since my recent review on Divided Infinity received no comments so far, should I take the apparent resumption of work on AA as a sign that my plea for DI to be rethought is being taken to heart?
Also... I hope that's not too pointed a question, but since my recent review on Divided Infinity received no comments so far, should I take the apparent resumption of work on AA as a sign that my plea for DI to be rethought is being taken to heart?
Not certain what to do
How long is it right now? If it's not too long, I may be able to get a review in sooner rather than later, and hopefully help you to move past your current writer's block.
Direvil Darkfort
I finished both, and yeah, it's Craze's game all the way. Granted, LockeZ's game had better build-up towards the duel, with dialogue before & after every scripted fight vs. two easily missed examine dialogues (admittedly, pretty good ones) for Team Paladin. The forced reasons for combat eventually got rather tiring, though; it would've been a nice subversion if there were a couple more enemies that actually got the memo and stepped out of the way. The way Team Overlord goes immediately from battle to three text screens, with not even a small victory cutscene in between was also a bit underwhelming. Craze's game was much better about it, and had better music to boot.
Anyway, I'm not sure why people found LockeZ's game so difficult. Not one of the girls ever came close to dying for me, probably because I spammed Bloodsplatter nearly every turn for Anathema and promptly did the Sacrificial Pact whenever someone's health dipped below 1500 HP. Unfortunately, this was pretty much all Anathema and Mortissiga were good for: I would say about 80% of heavy lifting was ultimately done by Toxicoil and Project Freedom. It doesn't help that Lighting Strike usually does a lot more damage then far more expensive Burn Everything. For the boss battle, I ended up just having Project F attack normally after being buffed by Anathema, so that I could ignore randomness and dispatch them one-by-one.
Craze's duel, on the other hand, really did make me restart several times before I arrived at winning strategy. (For me, it was keeping Project F asleep no matter what, and if that failed, using Stalwart Guard. Once she's asleep, sedate Anathema and have everyone else bear down on Mortissiga, and essentially dispatch them from left to right.) The post-duel segment was very good, too, and I even liked the encounters there better then LockeZ's. It''s a pity that pre-duel encounters were all wiped out with Broad Sweep and Tundra before they could fight back, as they did look cool before they found eternal sleep.
I totally did! Not that it mattered much, but still.
Anyway, I'm not sure why people found LockeZ's game so difficult. Not one of the girls ever came close to dying for me, probably because I spammed Bloodsplatter nearly every turn for Anathema and promptly did the Sacrificial Pact whenever someone's health dipped below 1500 HP. Unfortunately, this was pretty much all Anathema and Mortissiga were good for: I would say about 80% of heavy lifting was ultimately done by Toxicoil and Project Freedom. It doesn't help that Lighting Strike usually does a lot more damage then far more expensive Burn Everything. For the boss battle, I ended up just having Project F attack normally after being buffed by Anathema, so that I could ignore randomness and dispatch them one-by-one.
Craze's duel, on the other hand, really did make me restart several times before I arrived at winning strategy. (For me, it was keeping Project F asleep no matter what, and if that failed, using Stalwart Guard. Once she's asleep, sedate Anathema and have everyone else bear down on Mortissiga, and essentially dispatch them from left to right.) The post-duel segment was very good, too, and I even liked the encounters there better then LockeZ's. It''s a pity that pre-duel encounters were all wiped out with Broad Sweep and Tundra before they could fight back, as they did look cool before they found eternal sleep.
author=Craze
I gave Anathema bloodlatch as a passive in my game. I'm not sure anybody noticed. XD (Any healing action or item use causes her to restore 100 HP.)
I totally did! Not that it mattered much, but still.
RMN v4.6 a.k.a. "Backlog"
@GreatRedSpirit: Thanks. Very illuminating.
Is it just because some webmasters are lazy, or is there some difference in underlying infrastructure that makes certain websites incapable of making such redirects? Thanks in advance.
author=WIP
Not every site will do it.
Is it just because some webmasters are lazy, or is there some difference in underlying infrastructure that makes certain websites incapable of making such redirects? Thanks in advance.
RMN v4.6 a.k.a. "Backlog"
author=kentona
but Tim Berners-Lee says "HTTPS Everywhere" harmful
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Security-NotTheS.html
Wait, so the argument is that when a website switches from HTTP to HTTPS, the old links still written with HTTP become invalid? I'm not sure what's like on other browsers, but mine automatically converts them even if I deliberately remove the "s" from link. (i.e. here) Or is there something else at play we should be concerned about?
Mafiosi 3
Wait, so the first two still have no reviews on here? I should probably amend this, but I don't know if I can find the time to do so before mid-July.
Anyway, good luck with writing! I hope you finish it soon, if only so that you can go back and edit FH2 into shape (or at least edit it enough so that it longer has those hair-pullingly aggravating puzzles/boss fights in it.)
Anyway, good luck with writing! I hope you finish it soon, if only so that you can go back and edit FH2 into shape (or at least edit it enough so that it longer has those hair-pullingly aggravating puzzles/boss fights in it.)
Games - Tester
Games - Other
