Thread 719005038

This board is extremely boring right now (and lately) so I want to talk on something thats really been on my radar for some reason.

Been playing this demo of Hell is Us, havent gotten too far yet, so I don't know if its actually totally bad based on a demo slice thats just the tutorial. But I'm kind of at the point with videogames where I'm just holding out for interesting looking experiences that look to do things either differently or contrarily to most modern games.

The mere fact that the devs of this game have outspokenly stated that they value the adventure aspect of action adventure, and dont pretend the genre is just an action combat simulator, but IN OPEN FIELDS! therefore its adventure just because of fields and surface level travelling, even though you dont have to engage with the world at all.

Is enough for me to want to hope this is secret GOTY.

Full thoughts will come once done with demo.

lol

>>719005038 (OP)
Hello tombraider alanwake windwaker schizo
Game looks cool though

>>719005038 (OP)
shut up nigger

>>719005786
whats wrong?

>>719005038 (OP)
>The mere fact that the devs of this game have outspokenly stated that they value the adventure aspect of action adventure, and dont pretend the genre is just an action combat simulator, but IN OPEN FIELDS! therefore its adventure just because of fields and surface level travelling, even though you dont have to engage with the world at all.
>Is enough for me to want to hope this is secret GOTY.
Hm, you mean the devs want the "Adventure" part to be deeper than just walking, running, and possibly climbing in their game? Can you tell me more? Been playing DRG and PEAK and I would agree that "adventure" can be just as deep as combat, if not deeper.
>>719005786
get the fuck out and let people discuss their hobbies and industry innovations.

>>719006224
>and I would agree that "adventure" can be just as deep as combat, if not deeper.
no idea what that means, number of presumptions that just dont make sense. especially because most uses of the word "deep" doesnt understand the word and simply refer to sheer quantity.

also 90% of videogame combat isnt deep. and theres an implication here than adventure needs to meet some arbitrarily standard of "depth" that combag often reaches.

anyway none of what you said was the point of my post.

the point is about focus.

action is more immediately engaging and almost impossible to misunderstand compared to adventure, its also much more straightforward than "adventure" to define. This is the real problem.

Most people havw a vague and almost meaningless conception of "adventure" so broad it could literally mean and encompass anything. More often than not, it invokes appearance/aesthetic and feeling.

What do I mean? Well a game I often seen called adventure, or rather genre, is Final Fantasy 9 and JRPGs.

These are not adventures though, beyond the lose movieized definition of traveling from one familar area, to another familar or unfamilar area in search of something. Based on this definition virtually any game can be adventure. The reason I call this a "movieized" definition is because I think it harkens back strongly to lord of the rings, which reduces adventure to "going places with a purpose and fighting/encountering things" this very well explains the modern action adventure genre.

But classic adventures, before entertainment reduced them to something to be "felt" more than experienced. Is stuff like seafaring. Going out, in search of something in the unknown hostile seas.

What can we understand to be the cores of a sea faring adventure? You need something to traverse the seas:
-Traversal
You need something/someone to actually point the traversal in a meaningful direction a CORRECT direction, youre not supposed to get lost or its for naught:
-Navigation

Youre supposed to be prepared for dangers, or problems. Youre supposed to think ahead aswell as solve problems on the fly.
Maybe theres a leak on the ship that needs to be patched.
You must prepare food.
Maybe stop at familsr ports to gather information for the trip ahead, so you know what to expect.
Solve problems like a sheet of ice to navigate, figure out either another way, or a way through:
Problem solving.

To me these are the 3 cores of adventure:
-Traversal
-Navigation
-Problem Solving.

Translate this to videogames and you get:
-Platforming
-Exploration
-Puzzle Solving

I dont think you need all 3 to be adventure.

You can have atleast 2 of each and be adventure. One can imagine a situation where one is stuck on an island, and cant really "traverse" much therefore, and it could still be an adventure.

One could imagine an adventure with few problems along the way, but is still adventure.

One could imagine an adventure where you dont really need to "find the right way". Maybe you just need to deliver something from one port to another, and you know exactly where youre going, but problems arise along the way you need to deal with, and of course you still need to traverse.

This is what I think is lost in videogames. And why the "action adventur" genre is a fraud.

It usually only includes one of these things alongside combat.

OR includes all 3, but to such a miniscule degree (I use the classic example of uncharted here, where you deal with a 30 minute puzzle (and this is being charitable, it might not even last 30 minutes) every 4 hours, in a 8-15 hour game.) that its a lopsided "adventure" that might aswell be an action game.

But you see, videogames get away with it, because adventure is no longer an experience, movies have turned it into something to be "felt" to be marveled at, to watch along the ride.

So the aesthetics of familar tropes associated with adventure:
Fantasy
Horses or Boats
Mountains and Fields
Forests
etc.

Is enough "adventure".

kek sometimes you find rare gems on /v/ to laugh at

wtf is this game?

>>719009625
New upcoming game this year that I want to believe in.

I'm more interested by the fact the game's 50 bucks instead of 70

>>719010348
yeah so you know itll be good because e33 was that price too

>>719005038 (OP)
Game hasn't even came out yet and it is the most underrated game of the past 5 years. It isn't going to be a revolutionary game but more intriguing than 90% of games coming out, including Indies.
From the story, setting, and music, I find the game enigmatic and I have to see what the fuck is going on.

I really hope it ramps up from what we've seen in the demo. For the adventure and investigation side of things.
An NPC will tell you that you have to listen for wind chimes to find your way through a forest. So you:
>go to forest
>follow wind chimes
This is only 1 step removed from having a questlog in your hud that tells you the next objective. Not that impressive to be honest.

I played the demo and it immediately went to the top of my "must play" list. The promise of more organic, player-led discovery, experimentation, and problem solving is all I've wanted in games recently. The setting is super interesting and it seems to be content to not jabber a shitload of expository bullshit at you and lets you figure it out on your own.

The souls-lite combat is fine - it didn't wow me but didn't turn me off either. I know it's dumb to get my hopes up but I'm gonna buy it and hope that it scratches the itch

>>719005038 (OP)
demo was nice. gonna check it out on release for sure.

>>719005038 (OP)
The demo sucked. The aesthetics and tone are all over the place and the gameplay was jank. I wanted to give this a fair shake and everything I've seen has led me to believe it's glorified shovelware

>>719006809
>>719007295
wtf this guys based, ive been thinking this about adventure for a while now

Anybody else watching Forsen play Hollow Knight?

>>719016987
>I wanted to give this a fair shake and everything I've seen has led me to believe it's glorified shovelware
You legit sound like a redditor

>>719006809
>>719007295
Can you fucking make it any less clear you come from Reddit with the reddit spacing?
I'd take your threads more seriously if you just went to a new line without a space between, bc It's so clear you've probably had all these discussions on reddit beforehand, and you're bringing a reddit energy to this.
truly turning this place into /v/eddit...

>>719020862
Im banned from reddit because my opinions are too critical and dont follow the arbitrary rules of the subreddit...kind of like this comment is imposing.

Do you retards with no self awareness not ever consider that just as reddit encourages (enforces) a standard of reddit spacing, or they wont read your shit, you doing the opposite is the exact same thing in principle just from the other side?

Ive always said 4chan is the otherside of the same coin reddit is on.

Both places are impossible to have actual discussion on, just circlejerk and reinforce whatever current narrative and preconceived notion is being circulated and have the most basic "engagement for engagements sake" threads like "WHATS YOUR FAVOURITE TOO VIDEOGAMES!", "REPLACE X VIDEOGAME WITH BALLS!", "LOOK AT THIS THING FROM TWITTER EVERYONE!" fuck you and kill yourself I am better than all of you, and the fact this shit world even allows me to think that, for how not even exceptionally intelligent I am, is prove of how low the standard for thinking is generally.

gawdlike thread desu

>>719007295
You don't need to translate it to videogames for there to be an analog, 'platforming' isn't the only type of traversal possible in a game, exploration that leads to nothing might also be a good experience if it comes from player intuition and isn't totally fruitless. I would make a game with fun traversal and planning, but make it clear that the expedition might be treacherous and even pointless without planning. Think about sunless sea as a spanish cross-sea adventurer that knows nothing of the other side of the ocean type shit
I'm thinking of SotC but intuitable, or Outer Wilds.
>>719013662
If you did the windchime thing without talking to the NPC, it would feel so earned- much better. Maybe still have an npc but don't make it mandatory. I assume the game allows this yes? Even still, some puzzles should be left to personal discovery and area/context clues.
I think there's a lot of ways to design fun games around these ideas, that don't require 'boxes'

>>719021149
nigger, all I asked is for you to not add reddit spaces, the over and constant use of spaces between every sentence when a single 'shift+enter' would suffice, that's literally it. Otherwise I'll just ignore bc it's annoying and gay. My personal choice. Cope about it.
Different culture, different place, learn to fit in or get called reddit redditor.

>>719021773
>You don't need to translate it to videogames for there to be an analog, 'platforming' isn't the only type of traversal possible in a game
Uh yeah, no shit retard, that implied in the word "traversal" do you know what an analog is? Analog doesnt mean "only way something can be understood".

>exploration that leads to nothing might also be a good experience if it comes from player intuition and isn't totally fruitless.
Youre just saying shit and applying self affirming words after it. I dont care whether something can be called "good". I already went over and explained why despite adventure videogames lacking the core essentials of adventure, theyre still often called adventure and feel sufficient for retards.

If you paid close attention youd notice that my entire spiel directly attacks open world games aswell. And I refrained from using "exploration" for SO long, and only used it as an analog for videogames, not because I agree with the concept, but because it can be understood that way. Because "exploration" on its face, and especially how its used, does not actually mean or indicate anything whatsoever. Hence I was very particular and gave MUCH context and analogy for not only why navigation is adventure but also why its important, and what it means.

There are an abundance of retards satisfied by WANDERING. Not exploring. A "world".

If the a child running around in an open field picking up flowers and rocks, is the equivalent of an explorer charting new land and navigating unfamilar territory, then words truly cannot mean anything. Notice I said "equivalent" not "the same" inb4 you quibble like a retard over "obviously its not the same!" for you to put something in the same category it has to be near equivalent.
>I'm thinking of SotC but intuitable
SOTC is shit.
>or Outer Wilds.
Outer Wilds is one of the most purposeful exploration games ever, youre literally piecing together threads of information to find where to go. Also—

—mentally charting the world almost like you would a mark, in the sense that you have to be aware of an understand all the ways in which each planet and the information and things you find there connect to other planets.

The unique properties of the quantum rock on Ash twin or whichever one, is directly connected to the quantum tower on Giant Deep. Youre charting both a history (of the people who leave things behind) and a connection that makes a series of seemingly disconnected things, seem like a whole (Like a series of disconnected lands, making up a europe, or a North America, or...an Earth.)

>>719021773
>Think about sunless sea as a spanish cross-sea adventurer that knows nothing of the other side of the ocean type shit
Dude. Nobody goes across the ocean for no reason. Do you know how easy it is to get lost? Let alone to have the money and luxury to just fuck off with a bunch of resources to live off with the possibility of getting lost in the first place? They go looking for something. Even if they dont quite know what it is, or what theyll find.

>>719022967
it's a videogame faggot

>>719023503
Bruuuuh duuude who knew...I thought it was only possible for things to make sense and be done with purpose in real life...brah...

>>719005038 (OP)
>>719005038 (OP)
>>719006809
>>719007295
you're not really coherent, but i played the demo and thought it was an interesting failure, i won't be buying this game based on what i've played so far until a steep discount.

+ atmosphere and level design, i quite liked the branching pathways through the forest with some light looping back, and getting through a dungeon and then having a passage over the roof to the entrance is always a good thing
+ inventory management and lore entry type stuff is well done, i like archiving old items, tablet interface is a nice bit of diegesis
+drone character is cool, good take on ashes of war/weapon art, basically the drone is a four slot weapon art thingamawhatsit
+the "apc" player home idea is neat and can go in a lot of different directions as far as customization and menu options/interactions in the menu
+i actually found the MC kind of funny and charming

so a lot of good things here in terms of art and writing direction. but

- the ancient evil stuff is really gay and lame
- the woman rescuing you then jobbing to a level 1 enemy is really gay and lame
- i did not like the quest design, it reminds me of asscreed or harry potter legacy, just checklist fetch quest bullshit, all of this stems from gamedevs mass misunderstanding of what makes people like TES, hint it is not the quest design
- the "puzzles" were horrible, you need to study OoT dungeons not bleak falls barrow
- combat is totally trivial, extremely easy to hit twice, back up, and heal pulse. this is way, way overwrought, the timing on the heal pulse feels so punitive but the stamina gain is simultaneously so insane that it really doesn't take long for the player to figure out how to cheese this. don't re-invent the wheel here - if you want bloodborne rally, just do bloodborne rally. recovering stamina with rally is retarded.
-it's store-built UE5 slop, movement really feels like ass

>>719024338
>you're not really coherent
whats incoherent retard? will read the rest of what you have to say later. seems a lot of people didn't like the demo, up to me to see how superficial those criticisms are when I finish it and read the rest of this

>>719024664
i find it hard to know what you're driving at, whether your overall evaluation of the game is positive or negative, what parts of it you would promote and what parts you'd rather were left by the wayside, things like that. it seems like the game sparked some ideas about genre in you, but i'm not totally sure what they are cause you're writing is very stream-of-consciousness

>>719024338
>- the woman rescuing you then jobbing to a level 1 enemy is really gay and lame
agree with this, even only seeing this in the story trailer I thought it looked silly
>- the "puzzles" were horrible, you need to study OoT dungeons
>you need to study OoT dungeons
>need to study OoT dungeons
>OoT dungeons
You are a genuine subhuman retard. Genuinely not even of human intelligence. Can confidently dismiss everything else you say after, not that most of anything you said was substantive anyway.

"gay and lame". Isnt criticism. Neither is "just do bloodborne dude!" criticism for what something isnt, is never valid criticism.

the impression i get from people impression of this demo, is that its the most barebones aspect of the gameplay are on display, and they are judging preemptively, and so they have to shit to surface level criticisms like aesthetic, atmosphere and impression of story.

if a dark souls demo released where all that was available to play was the tutorial level before the crow takes you to firelink shrine, I might not have bought the game either, especially with the initial trick the game does of making you think you can fight the asylum demon at headfirst.

hmmm ill have to pay very very close attention to the demo of this game then to see if theres anything of value to salvage. besides maybe the final bossfight of the asylum in DS, im not sure there was much about it that reflect the depth of the rest of the game and its underlying systems.

>>719024859
Im being hopeful for the game because the devs said theyll focus more on adventure aspects in one video, and it sounded exactly like what ive been wanting in videogames for a long time now. Its that simple. Everything else is just me elaborating on what I think adventure is, and what is core to it, through analogies.

>>719025395
>oot
knew i would trigger you. anyway, i just mean like, instead of the puzzle being "figure out the correct order for four symbols," it should be "figure out the correct configuration of a rotating room, and you have to maybe defeat a few enemies each time you want to make it rotate," to add some gameplay other than just reading some stupid faux-shakespearean flavor text for a hint, like in skyrim.

the lock-and-key paradigm is correct (OoT and Skyrim) but the lock should involve more traversal around the dungeon and obstacles, to make it challenging, like oot, rather than some stupid memberberries, like skyrim. at least, that's what i tend think of as fun in a dungeon.

>gay and lame isn't criticsm
but you know it is because you agreed when i applied it to the cutscene with the woman, so. you know what i mean

>just do bloodborne
but that's not the criticism, that's the advice to remediate the thing im criticizing, which is the easily exploitable implementation of rally ("heal pulse") this game went for. im criticizing it because it is overcomplicated and easily cheesed, relative to the thing it is manifestly imitating, ie, rally mechanics

>>719025395
>if a dark souls demo released where all that was available to play was the tutorial level before the crow takes you to firelink shrine, I might not have bought the game either, especially with the initial trick the game does of making you think you can fight the asylum demon at headfirst.
it's a good point, but hell is us suffers from a circumstance dark souls didnt, which is that it has to market itself as a soulslike in order to compete. so devs are forced to engineer mechanics that nod to these games by publishers. so it makes some sense to evaluate them in terms of their better-or-worse-to-play, more-or-less-fun, adaptations from the more popular, so-far more significant games.

there's a kind of "soft canonicity" that is helpful when evaluating how you feel about these games, it doesn't mean that fromsoft game design is an unimpeachable bible but it provides a reliable reference point when discussing newer things.

and thats why i think just copying rally is 99% of the time a better idea than trying to roll your own combination of these core mechanics, you're gonna end up landing on something that already existed as a cheese build in the older games!

>>719005038 (OP)
You have three options:
>buy an ad
>pay for a course and counciling in online marketing
>buy a rope
>be honest
When you're being a disingenious turbofaggot, you're asking to ge bullied.

>>719025875
>"figure out the correct order for four symbols,"
well I agree with this, but for different reasons, this isnt interactive, its fake interactivity, no engagement with the environment whatsoever,
also hilarious that you say this and praise OoT when OoT literally has a "block" pushing puzzle equivalent of this quality where you have to put the picture of those shitty ghosts together.

Its literally impossible for OoT to have any depth in any of the ways youre asking of this game. Its platforming is literally automated. Meaning its traps have to be as simple as pushing forward. Which is why it spams so many "beat all enemies in a room" "challenges" aswell as meandering "OOOOH IT FEELS LIKE IM FIGURING SOMETHING" shit like the Kokiri "follow the righr order!" teleporting log maze.

Anyway. That sort of puzzle design is disappointing. If it was going to do minimal interactivity puzzle design, then I was hoping itd be closer to Resident Evil where its about matching a number of keys to a number of doors by having to mentally map all the connections of the level relative to your position.

>>719027196
Three options, for that the fourth: being honest, will cause you spontanousely combust. Niggercattle.

>>719027257
>Anyway. That sort of puzzle design is disappointing. If it was going to do minimal interactivity puzzle design, then I was hoping itd be closer to Resident Evil where its about matching a number of keys to a number of doors by having to mentally map all the connections of the level relative to your position.
but that might be too hard for the modern gamer. oot is a good balance because it pads gameplay without being transparently braindead.

>>719026314
>and thats why i think just copying rally is 99% of the time a better idea than trying to roll your own combination of these core mechanics, you're gonna end up landing on something that already existed as a cheese build in the older games!
I just don't know how much it matter when souls games allow themselves to be broken and cheesed anyway. And even break their own systems by allowing stupid shit like moving while drinking estus in DS3, and the general abundance of estus the game shits out.

But I guess I just have to finish the demo to understand what specific context youre getting at.

>>719020242
Not an argument nigger

>>719027395
>but that might be too hard for the modern gamer.
The game marketed itself as being antithetical to modern game design, and respecting more classic design (not that I have a particular preference for classic design, moreso, select classic games, i just dislike modern design) and is the entire reason why I believed in it, so it better not be pulling punches for stupid reasons like this.

>>719028416
A place of hope. Because thats all thats left. If im hoping, as a result of how the world currently is (modern game design) somebody else with the capacity to actually do something, has to be aswell.

>>719027426
>allow themselves to be broken and cheesed anyway
souls can be broken and cheesed after a lot of running around to build a combination or with a lot of running around early on as a result of excess player knowledge. but this game has a mechanic that can be cheesed in its design and there's not too much they can do with enemy design to prevent it

>>719029864
Im playing through the game right now, and I can understand people not liking the combat at first, or even throughout the entire demo. But im seeing a lot of genuinely interesting novel ideas. One thing that I've always wanted from action games, is one that actually commits to crowd control. Despite DS having my favourite combat, the way you "control" enemies is largely by funneling them into narrow space, and using the enviroment to your favour combined with your shield. Which is good, but not quite direct crowd control.

The distract ability, combined with the pulse healing, and other stuff seems to suggest youll have a lot to keep your eye on and juggle at the same time in the game.

Yes, the combat is really too easy right now for it to matter, but you guys cant believe? You cant see the potential? This is more thought into its combat than like 90% of "mash heavy, mash light, and do some juggle combo with 600 variations that are all virtually the same and redundant, but because you can just do sooooo many it looks cool and complex, because complexity and depth = a lot of things happening!"

>>719020862
Get laid.
If spacing triggers you so hard grab one of those cactus plants a fag like you most certainly owns multiples of and shove it up your putrid vagina faggot and piss off. Nothing on this site is more gay than you sub faggots whinging about reddit shit. Fuck off,

Guy who plays the Riven remake for 45 minutes and then makes it his personality:

>>719031341
Youre a retard. I hated Riven. You clearly dont understand what Im talking about. Especially if you think Riven applies to "adventure". It has the problem solving at most. The movement isnt even developed enough for 3D navigation to be engaging, let alone over 2D navigation.

I think people have this notion that if you have to "figure out a puzzle to progress" that that is the same as "figuring out the way forward", but figuring out the way forward, should involve, not just an understanding of an instance infront of you, but an understanding of an entire area, and how it can be interacted with and "routed".

Riven is a game where you press switches and randomly search around looking for what it triggered. A game like that can never demand navigation, interactions with space are too random and arbitrary for that to be the case.

One very simple but crude way to knoe if a game involves good navigation is if you ever need to mentally map an area. That is never ever the case in Riven. Its not that type of game. Its incredibly simple and one dimensional beyond "puzzle solving" and even then I could make an argument even that is largely simple, but its simplicity is hidden by some facets.

Anyway guys, will make a new thread about the demo and impressions now that Im basically done.