• chuckleslord@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    “Your actions in no way affect the world of the game so you can do whatever you want!”

    Is this supposed to be a selling point? Giving such freedom so as to make all of your choices meaningless?

    • Holytimes@sh.itjust.works
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      19 hours ago

      Technically Morrowind is the same. You can kill literally every NPC in the entire game but 1, fail every quest there is but 1 if you want to “beat” the game. Even that’s arguable. You could still just kill that 1 NPC thus not needing any quests at all.

      Just smart abuse of magic, potions and you can just go kill God.

      Beating the entire game with 0 quests done, and 100% of all NPCs killed.

      • yermaw@sh.itjust.works
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        17 hours ago

        Prisoner gets off the boat, hops a wall before even doing any paperwork, robs an apothecary and does god in with a single right jab.

        Thats the shenanigans I lived for

    • thingsiplay@lemmy.ml
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      19 hours ago

      Other games do the same, just without the freedom to do whatever you want. I mean I prefer a game that let’s me “kill an NPC permanently”, even if there are no further effects to the world and story. Would be nice to have those effects, but we all understand that it is probably an unrealistic request. So I prefer this over games, that does not let me kill NPCs permanently.

    • moody@lemmings.world
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      3 days ago

      They didn’t say it’s meaningless, just suggested that failing every quest leads to some type of conclusion to the game’s plot. It might not be a good conclusion, but the story ends.

      To me, this just sounds like failing a quest doesn’t mean the game is over or that you need to reload a previous checkpoint or save to keep playing.

        • TevTra@lemmy.tevtra.com
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          1 day ago

          This to be honest is the correct way to handle choices. Like Baldur’s Gate of Pillars of eternity games where they list down the conclusion of all the choices player made at the end of the game.

          • thingsiplay@lemmy.ml
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            19 hours ago

            I’d say this is debatable. Listing all choices and their conclusion (I did not play that game, so don’t know how it is presented) can take away the mystery and exploration of those choices. Some people might not like this and none way is wrong or right. I compare this to the “numbers popping up” in Action RPG games, when you hit enemies. Some like to see it, others don’t want to.

  • naticus@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    I’d rather kill NPCs I don’t like.

    But seriously, looks interesting! I’ll keep an eye out for this one.

    • Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      If you’re a vampire like the title makes it sound, killing people you like makes sense. You’re simply… making friends.

      • thingsiplay@lemmy.ml
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        19 hours ago

        Would be awesome if it comes with a base building mechanic, where you “hire” people (or enslave them?) to work for you. Either in your base or around the world, like a strategy game. I doubt this mechanic is in this game, but now I want to play such a Vampire Empire game.

  • I_Jedi@lemmy.today
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    3 days ago

    Opposite of Starfield I see. I would love the chance to cleanse Paradiso of life.

    It sounds like New Vegas in a way. You can kill pretty much everyone you see on the spot, and Yes Man gets you to the ending no matter what you’ve done.

    • Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Morrowind remains the gold standard. Even if you kill a plot-critical NPC (the game lets you do this freely and simply warns you afterwards that you broke the plot), there’s a hidden back route to complete the main quest. Even side quests tend to have an alternate route if a necessary NPC is likely to be killed as part of another quest.

      I think there’s only a single NPC that’s actually required to beat the game, and even then you can work around his death by abusing some wonky gameplay mechanics.

      • Holytimes@sh.itjust.works
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        19 hours ago

        That NPC isn’t even required. He just makes it easier.

        You need wraith guard else the weapons needed to beat the game do absurd damage to you. If you do the msq you get it, of you murder hobo everyone you have a single back up NPC the game doesn’t tell you about and even lies to your face about his existence that gives you a secondary option to get wraith guard.

        But fuck it just kill him too. Then go drink an absurd amount of potions, cast god tier spells, and man handle the weapons while they do their best to kill you. But you have more God juice running though you then vivic ever could fucking hope to have.

        Who cares that your taking 100s of damage every second. Just have a million hp. Its fucking Morrowind.

        YOU ARE THE ONLY GOD HERE AND THE ONLY GOD THAT MATTERS DEGOTH UR. NOW GET FUCKED.

      • Goodeye8@piefed.social
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        2 days ago

        I think how New Vegas does it is way better than how Morrowind does it. Morrowind is simply so loosely scripted that the games doesn’t really care if you break it. If you look at Morrowind speedruns there are actually no story beats that you need to hit to finish the game, you can just brute force yourself to the end. But you do have to know how to brute force it because it’s not intended to be finished this way.

        In New Vegas Yes Man is a deliberate design decision to let you kill whomever you want and still have the option to finish the story as it’s told. You can do your first playthrough like a maniacal murdering machine, kill everyone in your sights and still finish the game in the intended way. It makes sense from a narrative perspective, it makes sense in a gameplay way (because technically you can kill Yes Man, another one just replaces the one you killed) and it gives you excellent control over the story. You don’t have to go through all the factions to deal with them one way or another, you can just say you don’t care and go straight to the final battle. I think it’s a brilliant solution to quite a few problems that most games outright ignore.

      • Andonyx@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        I remember killing Vivek just to see how far abusing soultrap could take you. I got the message that I was now living doomed world. If you can get around that, that’s awesome.

        • Famko@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          Vivec drops the “weird dwemer artifact” when you kill him, which is broken. Only a real Dwemer craftsman can fix it, but, unfortunately, they all vanished from existence, so it can’t be fixed…

          …wait, Divayth Fyr has WHAT in his basement?

        • RollingZeppelin@piefed.ca
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          3 days ago
          spoiler

          ___I wonder what the work around would be since Vivek gives you the tools you need to defeat Dagoth Ur. Other just using the console to spawn the items in.

          • Holytimes@sh.itjust.works
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            19 hours ago

            He doesn’t give you anything, you murder him take it off their dead cold hermaphroditic corpse, then go murder the last dwarf in existence cause you don’t need no help. Go rob some graves for weapons of godly power.

            Then abuse the powers of magik and drugs to have 10s of 1000s of hp. So you can shrug off the joke of a security system the weapons have. While you murder a god.

  • esc@piefed.social
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    3 days ago

    I really like it when quests can fail and failing actually opens another path to something. Possibility of failure in general is good as well.

    • Mesophar@pawb.social
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      3 days ago

      Agreed; the idea of “you can kill any NPC, do anything you want, and still beat the game” doesn’t sound appealing to me. If there really is that much freedom in how the game is “completed”, then it doesn’t sound like it’s earned in any way. Just make it a sandbox game with no end at that point.

      I’d much rather the freedom to do anything you want, but then have consequences and close off possible routes or even the ability to complete the game altogether. Maybe that is what this game actually does, I don’t know, I admit I didn’t read the article. But the idea of “do anything, still win!” isn’t something I want.

      • Holytimes@sh.itjust.works
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        19 hours ago

        Go play Morrowind. Its literally this. And doing it where you murder everyone and fail every quest. Is easily the hardest path and very much the most earned.

        • Mesophar@pawb.social
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          16 hours ago

          Morrowind was my first ES game, played it when it came out! I never deviated that far from the path to kill the important NPCs for the main quest (well, anything I guessed was main quest), out of fear of locking myself out of finishing the game. I learned early in the game that you could screw yourself over…

          Don’t you have to use some exploits to beat the game if you kill certain NPCs, though?

      • MrFinnbean@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        I really love the game desing behind this system. The game is on a timer, but instead of time going foward all the time, the quest “cost” time.

        Way of the samurai games did this kind of trick back in the day. In those games the day was divided in to four parts, morning, noon, evening and night. Player had unlimited time to wander the game world, but once they did something big, the time would go foward and depending on what you did the story would go in to different direction. After 5 full days the game would come to a finale, but how you acted, effected who was alive and wich side of the final conflict you would be.

        The game ending and story coming to a finale does not necessarily mean you win.

        If the game is fun to play and one play trough does not take forever to finish, i can see my self playing the game multible times trough and trying to find the way to make everything end the way i want.

        • Mesophar@pawb.social
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          2 days ago

          That added context puts it into a different light for me. Don’t think it would be something I’m interested in, but can see what the appeal is for other people

      • esc@piefed.social
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        2 days ago

        I do! Especially not overcomplicated with rules. Monster of the week is one of my favorites.

    • Jax@sh.itjust.works
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      3 days ago

      Possibility of failure in general is good as well.

      To anyone that likes learning, yes. Then there are the people who are still crying about Dark Souls not having a difficulty slider.

      Unfortunately there will always be more of the second group than the first.

      • MrFinnbean@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Not the original commentor, but i think they meant more narrative failure than mechanical failure.

        Like “You failed to save person from burning house, and the failure changes how the story unfolds.” Not “You died to a boss and you need to try again.”

        First example of narrative failure that came to mind is from Deus Ex: Human Revolution. There is objective where you need to protect a chrashed pilot from enemies, but if you fail the game does not fail and load previous save. The game goes on and characters death effects the dialogue and a certain story point later in the game.

        In souls games, no matter how many times you die, the narrative does not change. Dying effects you only in mechanical sense, where you might loose some recources, but you will never lose them permanently, but there are narrative moments that you can fail. Like in bloodborne if you summon certain npc to your haven, he starts to murder other people you have brought there.

  • loppy@fedia.io
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    3 days ago

    The title is really missing a keyword from the actual quote… (emphasis mine)

    Not only that, but it’s possible to kill almost any NPC in the game…

  • ampersandrew@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    I would love for this game to be as good as its marketing wants me to believe, but I’ve seen far too many large teams form to put out a first project that seriously underwhelms, regardless of the pedigree of the people who formed that studio. I remain pessimistic but would love to be wrong.

  • Sundray@lemmus.org
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    3 days ago

    It’s true, the game gave me so much freedom I completed it despite not owning or playing it! 🏅