I finished the story in Mafia II last night – in Hard Mode, no less! – and it was truly a wonderful ride. Initially when I made my little post about the demo I had planned to wait until the game had naturally lowered in price after 4-6 months. But launch day arrived and I failed my saving throw versus impulse purchases. I initially justified it by guessing it was probably similar to The Saboteur, another excellent single-player open world game that I fell in love with last year. For my personal comfort I chose the 360 version. The PC version looks incredible, especially with PhysX enabled, but I would be in excruciating RSI pain right now if I had played the PC version as much as I did the 360. So, no screenshots for this article, obviously.
What is Mafia II? Despite obvious comparisons, it is not a GTA clone, per se. To gamers and reviewers who were expecting (or more probably, assumed) it would be, they may be disappointed at the lack of pointless and clunky mini-games … annoying hoodlum friends who call at inopportune times … side-missions compared to Rockstar’s offerings. I compared it to The Saboteur above, and that is probably the most accurate comparison. While the game exists in the open world city of Empire Bay, it is a single-player game with a highly focused linear narrative. I wouldn’t have it any other way; Mafia II has kept me entertained solidly since it released a few days ago, which is more than I could say for GTA 4 which took me over 18 months of occasional play before I could be bothered to finish Niko’s storyline. Mafia II and GTA are two very different types of games, despite sharing the open world, driving and shooting.
Mafia II is comprised of 15 chapters, each focusing on specific parts of protagonist Vito Scaletta’s rise and fall (and rise?) within the mafia families in Empire Bay. Each chapter is set in its own timeline. Chapter 1 starts us off with Vito assigned to the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment in 1943 Italy. Chapter 2 moves forward to February, 1945 when Vito comes home to Empire Bay after being wounded in battle. Vito meets up with his childhood friend Joe Barbaro who brings Vito into the gangster scene. The next few chapters take place at later points in February until Chapter 7 where the timeline moves forward to April, 1951. This is the final year of the story, though time progresses as Chapter 7 starts us in April and Chapter 15 concludes in September. Additionally, many chapters are broken into parts which occur at various times during whatever day that chapter is set. Because of this narrative design decision, there is no day/night cycle nor random weather but rather each time frame is set in its own time of day or has specific weather assigned to it. This especially works well when the game starts off in winter with the city and cars covered in snow and roads with patches of ice then shifting to spring and summer. It’s a nice touch that we don’t see often, probably because of the extra expense of re-texturing the entire world per season. Some parts of the game occur at night, sometimes it’s raining, sometimes it’s foggy but the weather always seems to be appropriate for that segment of Vito’s story. Rather than being random like you’d see in GTA (or even an MMO) the weather, the time and other factors all contribute to the big picture of setting the mood as we progress through the narrative.
Controls
In my article about the demo I complained about the default controls on the 360 because I’d spent so much time with GTA 4 and Red Dead Redemption lately. There are two control settings, one of which is nearly identical to Rockstar’s control layout so I was very happy with that. Responsiveness is spot-on and generally I was happy with the controls for both shooting and driving. The vehicles in the demo seemed heavier or less controllable than their retail counterparts as well. Vito can store up to ten cars in his garage, and there we can see the stats of each car from brake horsepower to top speed and the car’s weight, which is important in terms of high-speed controllability. All the cars are rear-wheel drive (probably era-appropriate?) which combined with the overall weight of these older cars can result in excessive fishtailing if you don’t slow down. Unfortunately, I don’t slow down. Once it starts fishtailing, I try to correct to the other direction, probably end up over-controlling and the fishtailing gets progressively worse. I’m not the greatest driver in the world with analog thumbsticks (note: I can drive FPS vehicles perfectly fine with WASD but I am beyond useless with WASD in racing games and these open world action games. Go figure.) but I got the hang of many of the vehicles in Mafia II far better than I ever did in GTA 4, possibly better than I did in The Saboteur as well.
The shooting aspect is pretty standard fare for an open world action game. It has the same snap-to cover system we see in GTA 4, RDR and others and works great for the most part. Just like in Rockstar’s games, it knows if you’re running towards an object when you try to go into cover so Vito will run then duck and slide behind the object and so forth. The only problem is when there are multiple surfaces in a small area, Vito may take cover behind the wrong one or on the wrong side, but that is a common problem with every snap-to cover mechanic I’ve played, so I won’t single out Mafia II for it. There is no automated targeting option like GTA 4 has so you have to aim your shots. The 360 and PS3 versions do have the obligatory target assist option but it’s fairly tight — you have to aim within a few pixels of the target before it will attempt to assist. My only real gripe with the shooting is that the target reticule is located higher on the screen than I am accustomed to. I’ve had over a decade of the reticule being in the center of the screen. In Mafia II the reticule is level with Vito’s eyes. That makes perfect sense when I think about it but during hectic shootouts I would revert to aiming the center of the screen (the reticule is not displayed unless you have a weapon drawn and aimed) and firing a shot several feet over the head of the enemy. The moral of the story is when you’re hiding behind something bring your target even with Vito’s eyes (roughly halfway between the top and middle of the screen) and you should nail your target.
Mafia II also features brawling in addition to gunplay. In GTA 4, Niko could punch and block, but that was about it. Here, Vito can block, punch, counter-punch, jab and grab, with two combo’s and some finishing moves which shift to slow motion for the knockout blow (which may be a kick to the jaw rather than a punch). It’s fairly basic, no deep fighting game mechanics here, but it’s more than we’ve seen in other open world games. Just like the guns all have a good feel, so does the melee. When Vito takes a hard punch, from the animations to sounds to graphical effects, it all comes together and it’s like “damn, that hurt!” When you manage to defeat your opponent with a finishing move, it’s a satisfying thing indeed. Some reviewers are whining about the brawling, saying it’s tacked on and limited. Really? But GTA’s isn’t? Keep a straight face while you answer that. Take your tongue out of Rockstar’s sphincter first though so I can hear you…
AI
The AI in Mafia II is probably its weakest aspect, though not a game-breaker. I’ll break it down into categories for posterity.
Actor AI: Quite often after a cutscene or conversation, the actors are supposed to walk out of the room but never open the door so they get stuck walking face-first into the door. If I walk over and open the door for them they will continue on their merry way. Possibly a minor and patchable glitch but it’s right there in your face so it’s noticeable. Otherwise the actor AI serves its purpose.
Driver AI: On the surface the driver NPC’s seem to have the same basic AI we’d expect based on what we’ve seen with other open world games but the more I played the more it seemed like the AI drivers had a very limited focal point of awareness. Rather than having, say, a cone of vision, the drivers in Mafia II appear to only notice things directly in front of them, and even then only within a certain distance of the AI vehicle. If, say, I am driving alongside a vehicle in GTA 4, the AI might beep its horn at me and get over slightly so I don’t hit the car. If I am at a corner and begin making a turn in GTA 4, AI drivers appear to at least be aware of me. Not so in Mafia II; the AI doesn’t appear to have any awareness of me whatsoever until I am directly in front of it. If I beep my horn at AI drivers, they do not react at all whereas in GTA 4 they might get over to one side or another.
Pedestrian AI: Very limited in scope. There aren’t as many pedestrians walking the streets as we’d see in GTA 4 or Crackdown and more importantly, they don’t react to our presence much. If I aim a weapon at a pedestrian in Mafia II they don’t notice whereas in GTA 4, Crackdown and others the AI will cower and run away. If I shoot a gun in public in Mafia II the AI will cower where they are but never run away and don’t say anything either, compared to the screaming panic that ensues in GTA 4, etc. Also there are very few AI conversations in Mafia II compared to the others, though the few that exist are pretty good, including the inmate reciting the Zero Wing introduction speech verbatim (pop culture Easter egg). The AI pedestrians are only aware of us driving if we happen to skid around a corner or otherwise end up not on a street surface, such as a sidewalk or parking lot. Then, and only then, will they react to the presence of our vehicles or to our horn. But if both the pedestrian and myself are on the street, the AI does not acknowledge my horn or vehicle at all.
Police AI: Standard fare with the exception that the police also react to speeding. While driving, there is a “speed limiter” that, when enabled, will not allow you to exceed the posted speed limit (45 mph on city streets, 60 mph on the highway) to avoid police chases. Otherwise shooting in public, stealing a car or hitting a police car will get the cops’ attention and they turn into the same single-minded and obsessed homicidal maniacs we’ve come to expect. There was one time when a police car T-boned me in traffic but did not start chasing me. It could have been a fluke or perhaps the AI knew it hit me rather than me hitting it, but either way I approved. Escaping from the police is quite a bit easier in Mafia II than GTA 4 at least though once escaping, you are still “wanted” and if another patrol notices you long enough they will resume the chase. Usually they note your license plate so you’ll have to stop by a repair shop to have the plates changed. If they get a good look at Vito though, you’ll have to change his clothes to clear his “wanted” status.
Shooting AI: Again, standard fare. The AI will usually take cover then pop out at predictable intervals to shoot at you. Sometimes the AI may switch positions, even running to different parts of the area, to make things interesting but that is the exception rather than the rule. Occasionally the AI may try basic flank maneuvers. Nothing we haven’t seen before and nothing we’re not already expecting. In my mind, one doesn’t buy an open world action game and expect advanced MilSim AI tactics, but apparently some reviewers do… I don’t understand that.
Graphics
As I mentioned above and in the demo article, the PC version has some incredible graphics, especially if you have the hardware to enable PhysX. Absolutely incredible. Even on the 360, though, Mafia II has great graphics for an open world game, which usually has to make sacrifices to pull off the seamless world. For sheer visual fidelity, I would list Mafia II, GTA 4, then The Saboteur. GTA 4 has the lowest performance of the bunch though it has the most detailed city and comprehensive AI so I’ll cut it slack for that, while The Saboteur muddied the background textures too much for my liking in order to get the foreground visuals and performance up. GTA 4 also blurs and muddies its background textures quite noticeably. The distant buildings and countryside in Mafia II look much sharper by comparison. 2K Czech broke out all the lighting, particle and post-processing effects as well. The headlights at night were very well done, starting as a single, brighter point of light then splitting into two headlights as the cars get closer. Lights at night and in mist or fog have both a glow and starburst effect applied. Weather is equally well done; the rain effects I thought were especially good-looking.
Sound
The sound in Mafia II is top-notch. From ambient sounds to vehicles to weapons, everything sounds excellent. The weapons in Mafia II all have their own unique “feel” and the high quality of the sound effects enhance that greatly. While driving, Empire Bay has three radio stations which play from the list of licensed songs from the 40’s and 50’s in addition to a few good DJ spots between songs. The game’s score was recorded by the Filmharmonic Orchestra Prague and is also of excellent quality and fits perfectly with the game’s narrative. Voice acting is more often than not a sore spot for video games but here. The voice acting in Mafia II is superb; it seemed like the actors really got into their characters and delivered quality performances every time. Finally, the audio engineers and producers for 2K Czech may have accomplished an industry first. Longtime readers may remember one of my pet peeves in games is that studios never lower the volume of background sounds and music when voiceovers are being played. So many games have voiced dialogue which is blocked out by full volume music, explosions, or whatever in the background. Meanwhile audio engineers have been doing it in radio, television and cinema for the past 50+ years. It takes a smallish European studio to finally show everyone else how it’s done. I doubt that it gets noticed, though so I won’t bother expecting any big-name American studios to suddenly begin mixing their audio in a professional manner.
Conclusion
If there has been one common theme in every paragraph I’ve written, it’s that of narrative. Mafia II is a highly focused, narrative-driven game and it is that which separates it from being the non-linear GTA clone that many assumed they were getting. There are no random strangers giving side-missions, no street races, or any of the other fluff detracting from the story. The only thing coming close would be robbing stores, selling high-end cars to Derek or crushing cars at Mike Bruski’s junkyard for extra money. [Note: Two DLC packs have been announced where you play as a different character “Jimmy” adding arcade gameplay featuring side-missions, street races, etc. and leaderboards. One of the DLC is currently a PS3 exclusive.] There are two aspects of collecting in Mafia II – Playboy magazines and Wanted posters. There are a total of 50 Playboy magazines, each featuring an actual, and uncensored, Playmate centerfold. Each Chapter has 3-5 magazines hidden, usually in one of that chapter’s featured locations. Then there are 150 Wanted posters hidden in rather hard-to-notice places all over Empire Bay for players who enjoy that sort of thing.
One thing I didn’t really mention was Empire Bay itself. It is a fictional city based on features of New York, Chicago and San Francisco. Some of the really high buildings immediately bring to mind the famous New York City skyline, with one tall pointed building reminiscent of the Empire State Building. One chapter of the game is set during heavy morning fog and you drive over one of the large arched bridges. In the city then driving up the bridge you can barely see in front of your face through the fog and looking out of the bridge is nothing but whiteness then you crest the top of the bridge and emerge from the top of the fog and can just make out the tops of some of the taller buildings as they pierce the misty veil, stretching for the overcast sky above then you drive back into the fog as the bridge descends. Simple, yet effective, and brings to mind those foggy mornings in San Francisco. Empire Bay is also smaller than Liberty City and less of a meandering jungle of streets. That may in fact, be appropriate for the era in which Mafia II is set but for a game play experience, I prefer driving five to eight minutes over GTA 4’s ten to fifteen minute drives during missions.
Mafia II takes it’s M rating to heart, more so than GTA 4. Just like every gangster movie ever made, Mafia II has a lot of strong language and violence in some cutscenes. The few instances of violence in GTA’s cutscenes don’t hold a candle to this.
Obviously I enjoyed my time with Mafia II and would heartily recommend it as long as you know you’re getting a game focused on story rather than the more non-linear meandering experiences of GTA 4. Oakstout and I were doing some multiplayer GTA 4 last week and he mentioned he always feels overwhelmed in the open world games because he never knows what to do or where to go. If you’re only playing Niko’s story then that isn’t the case (same with Red Dead Redemption) but GTA 4 has all the strangers, the friends, and other side-content that could be missed if you don’t know about it. Mafia II is all about Vito’s story, period, so I suspect Oakstout might have an easier time with Mafia II provided the game’s style and theme is suitable for him. The story itself was very enjoyable as Vito meets various characters and as time passes and he matures he begins to realize the toll of the lifestyle he has chosen. There are a few unexpected plot twists and the characters were all enjoyable to learn, even the bad guys who were usually so bad it felt good to go against or defeat them. Again, props to the voice actors for jumping feet-first into their characters.
Now excuse me, I have a few more Playmates to find…
Fun Fact: All those Playboy magazines? Mafia II is set between 1945 and 1951. Playboy was founded in 1953.
This morning wrapped up ArenaNet’s live demo presentation of Guild Wars 2 at Gamescom 2010. I did not go crazy bonkers following every possible link and morsel of text, but I did watch several of the live stream presentations. Thanks to @Longasc for providing a play-by-play English translation.
I love the character animations so far! I love the more active combat skills. I love the skill effects. I especially love that finally we see skill effects look pretty much the way they did in the CGI trailers – that must be an industry-first. The world looks glorious and very fitting with ArenaNet’s art style for the Guild Wars setting. They wanted to bring their concept art to life and it looks like they are well on their way to accomplishing it.
The combat mechanics look solid and the concept of a “downed” player should serve to provide a more “heroic” (for lack of a better term) feel to battles. Borderlands and a few other recent games (mostly shooters) have similar mechanics where when you run out of health you fall to the ground either unable to move or can crawl slowly but can still do a little bit of damage to contribute to the fight until you bleed out. Any player can revive any downed player they meet in the world; no grouping required and it’s not the same as resurrecting a corpse so we don’t need to equip a special skill to revive.
Another great feature is GW2 is doing away with the concept of “tagging” or “owning” mobs. This mechanic exists because of “kill stealing” in EverQuest where other players could do more DPS than you and get the mob’s aggro and full XP for the kill, creating a hostile environment among players. Developers came up with “tagging” mobs so people outside your group could not steal them. The downside is that tagging also has begat a somewhat hostile, or at least anti-social, environment where players get downright angry if you help them fight despite the fact that you don’t diminish their XP at all. GW2’s mobs are public in that anyone can join in the fight, can help each other out, but everyone gets full XP rather than the shared XP that most modern MMO’s use which is actually a disincentive to group while leveling.
I have always liked Guild Wars’ UI because it’s so minimalistic compared to traditional MMO’s where you end up with a screen full of hotbars and other UI elements. Guild Wars 2 added a “quest tracker” UI frame in the top right, though it seems like it will only work for whichever quest you set as primary rather than adding five or ten quests and taking up a good portion of screen real estate.
For a negative, I loathe the Diablo-esque “big red health ball” in the center of the screen. I’ve heard it is merely a placeholder but I cannot even fathom how the artists at ArenaNet thought that was a good idea. I’m all for innovating with the UI to keep you playing the game rather than playing the UI but that big red ball is so out of place it sticks out like a sore thumb. When your health goes down your screen gets “bloody” as seen in a number of shooters which gives you a big clue that you’re in trouble without forcing you to stare at your unit frame.
Also, progress bars have made an unfortunate return in Guild Wars 2. They may be “gashy-slashy stylized” like the rest of the UI but they’re still progress bars which frequent readers should know I dislike. Guild Wars had precious few progress bars, most skills with lengthier inductions had a full animation which built up to the skill’s release – a noted improvement over the traditional MMO that just cycles a brief animation loop while the progress bar ticks. From what we’ve seen in the demo Guild Wars 2 also has “build up” animations, making the progress bar redundant and in the way.
Finally, I was horrified to have my fears confirmed in the demo featuring the Charr Necromancer who opened his inventory and moused over all his gear. Sure enough, gear now has stats just like every other DikuMMO. That means Guild Wars 2 will be a game where yet again gear – and by association, level – matters. More gear treadmills. Entire areas of the game rendered obsolete by levels, just like we see in every other DikuMMO. In the previous post I wrote about levels in Guild Wars 2 and my fear that the broken Diku Monster would infect Guild Wars 2, a couple readers correctly commented that ArenaNet had not yet detailed what exactly a “level” means in Guild Wars 2 and perhaps the game would not use Diku-levels. However, ArenaNet’s developers appear to have confirmed the Diku-influenced levels in their own blog the past few days at Gamescom.
I was one of the designers responsible for events and spawns in The Brand, the mid-level charr section that players will experience at Gamescom.
A demo player named Dutch Sunshine made a run from the newbie area at level two with a group of higher level ArenaNet staff and survived all the way into the level 15 area.
Toby played in The Brand, the mid-level charr area where demo players take on The Shatterer, a very big, very hostile dragon:
That pretty much says it all. There are low-level starter areas progressing to specific areas for specific level brackets, which obsoletes all previous content, unlike Guild Wars 1.
I cannot find the words to express my disappointment but perhaps it’s for the betterment of their business model which relies on box sales and transactions rather than a subscription. The traditional Diku model, utterly broken as it may be for the massively multiplayer genre that has unfortunately adopted it, is what the majority of MMO players are familiar with. It’s easy to understand and easy (by comparison) to design and balance. They need box sales, and the simple Diku system sells.
I just finished reading a forum thread from players who played the demo at Gamescom and one perhaps said it best that we should not think of Guild Wars 2 as a true successor to Guild Wars, we should just think of it as an MMO.
I downloaded the Mafia II demo for both Xbox 360 and PC (via Steam) yesterday and did a few playthroughs on each platform. The PC version is amazingly smooth! 2K Czech is obviously proud of the work they’ve done on their PC engine and they have every right to be. Performance didn’t scale quite as well on the 360 engine; it could definitely use more optimization (which I don’t see happening this close to release date) but it’s not bad by any means.
Graphics are quite good for an open world game; better than GTA4 on probably every point, and make no mistake: GTA4 will be what everyone compares it to. It also has PhysX (only Medium and High settings) which I had never seen fully functional until now. The environmental texture interaction with PhysX was amazing! Start moving and Vito’s jacket would “poof out” slightly from the air catching it, and the corners of his jacket sway in the breeze. With PhysX on, smoke actually reacts to your movement through it whereas with no PhysX it’s a static particle effect. I ended up leaving PhysX disabled because this PC is my first ever with an ATI video card, so PhysX calculations are offloaded to the CPU which caused a performance hit of roughly 20 to 30fps.
Controls were a mixed bag on both platforms. On the 360 the default controls (I did not check to see if controls are changeable) use the Halo “press RB to reload” which I intensely dislike, and the Gears of War “press A to enter/exit cover” which is fine except I’ve been spending so much time in Red Dead Redemption and GTA4 lately that Rockstar’s controls are far more intuitive for me at the moment. On the PC, it may just be that I do the majority of my gaming on the 360 now but it took me awhile to get used to controlling Vito with mouse and keyboard. I have no problems with MMO’s and FPS’ so I am inclined to stand by my opinion that PC developers just don’t “get” third person shooter-style control. Driving was atrocious for me on the PC. I thought I was a poor driver with analog thumbsticks but driving with WASD? No wonder racing games have all but died on the PC, it’s atrocious! I’m sure PC gamers who spend more time with action games that use vehicles would get comfortable with it faster than I did, and a few key re-binds would probably serve me better than the default controls.
Audio is great as well. The story takes place from in the early 1950′s so era-appropriate music plays on the radio stations — Buddy Holly, Elvis, and many more — as well as commentary from the fictional radio stations. On the playthrough I just completed, for example, the DJ was talking about the new invention of the “computer” (quoted because of how the DJ annunciates every time he says the word) as big as a house and eventually scientists hope to make them small enough to fit in a garage. Voice acting is also well-done, and features liberal use of F-bombs as we would expect from an M-rated game focused on the Mafia. My only complaint was the audio engineering. There was a little too much bass on Vito’s voiceovers and the mixing made his voice seem too all-encompassing rather than coming from his location onscreen. As usual, the audio engineer (Do game studios even have audio engineers? Maybe that’s the problem!) didn’t think to adjust the music and other sounds during dialogue, but I can’t think of a single game ever that did this properly off the top of my head so I can’t really fault the guys at 2K Czech for being industry-consistent.
A recent trend in practically every video game genre is collectibles and Mafia II jumps on the bandwagon as well with a number of Playboy magazines (featuring actual centerfolds from the era) all over the city of Empire Bay for Vito to find. The demo includes five magazines, which I have included locations to in my slideshow. Considering how innocent of an era we consider the 50′s to be, it’s almost amusingly disturbing to think that these shop owners leave Playboy magazines on their countertops in plain view of everyone though.
I just may end up buying Mafia II, though probably not for awhile because I’ve already spent quite a bit of time with GTA4 lately, finishing both Niko’s story and The Lost and Damned DLC and my current obsession has been Red Dead Redemption (92.2% completion of all tasks at the time of this writing!) and Crackdown 2 is waiting on me as well, so my plate is a bit full on open world games. Despite the better performance on the PC, I will be getting the 360 version of the game for comfort (RSI on my mouse-using wrist, remember?) and the achievements. Yes, I’m an Achievement Whore, what of it?
A couple weeks ago, one of the popular topics recirculating the blogosphere was immersion. “Immersion” ranks right up there with “hardcore” or “casual” where if you ask ten gamers what immersion means to them, you’ll get twenty answers. Two of my favorite articles on the subject were The Psychology of Immersion in Video Games and What is Immersion? From my own experiences observing and participating in discussions of immersion, it seems those two articles collectively hit the nail on the head: as gamers, we tend to use the term “immersion” to mean alternatively “spatial presence” (read the first link, or Wikipedia) — which is how I normally define immersion as well — or “flow” depending on the circumstances (and the player’s understanding of the terms).
Despite my love for video games, when I stack them up against books and movies, I find games to be the least immersing of the three. Books would be top of the list because the various descriptors used in writing can pull me into the story’s world (spatial presence) to various degrees, though I may only achieve a state of flow where I am really engaged or engrossed in the story but circumstances around me such as the fact I am reading on a plane, possibly elbow-to-elbow with other passengers, snoring fat guys in front of me and screaming demon-children behind me prevent me from reaching a state of immersion. Similarly, movies can be so engaging and entertaining that they pull the viewer into that world — James Cameron’s Avatar was a cinematic experiment in forcing a suspension of disbelief; remember the hoopla over “Post-Avatar Depression?” — or they may be very enjoyable, the 2 or 3 hours may seem to pass quickly, but we are still aware we’re in a theater, that there are other people around us (possibly talking or making other noises) and we still had to get up to visit the restroom. Athletes can enter a state of flow while playing (being “in the zone”) or I could get into a state of flow if I am successfully playing Tetris but Tetris is not immersing (spatial presence) because there is no “there” to Tetris, there is only the gameplay itself and the level of my focus upon it, which is flow. (Yes, I am calling upon my trademark ability to split hairs (/wave to SmakenDahead) and refute Elena Gorfinkel’s Tetris example quoted in the second article I linked.)
The above paragraph can sound like it is external stimuli that is “immersion breaking” or perhaps even “flow breaking,” but I believe there are three factors at work, that being only one. A second is, for lack of a better term, the media presentation. If I’m reading a book from a new author, that may show in her writing and if I deem the writing style amateurish it may have the effect of reducing my interest and therefore reducing flow and immersion. Also if the writing is either too complex, vague, or overly prosaic yet underdeveloped (Tolkien’s The Silmarillion comes to mind) and I find myself repeatedly re-reading paragraphs just to try to understand what the author is trying to convey, all levels of flow and immersion are nullified. Studies (and opinions) show that sometimes using a well-known actor in a movie can contribute to the audience’s engagement with the story. Other times, not so much. For instance, I tend to be skeptical of movies starring Jim Carrey and Robin Williams because all too often they don’t act. They may be playing a character with a different name, but they are being themselves and replaying their same old shtick again. But the few times they step outside themselves and into the role, I find myself able to get into the movie much easier. Another example is Inception, which I have not seen yet. I keep hearing how excellent the movie is, and what a fantastic job all the actors did, yet I watch the trailers and can’t help but think Joseph Gordon-Levitt was horribly miscast because all I think is “That kid from 3rd Rock From the Sun? Are you kidding me?” My suspension of disbelief is already broken before I’ve even arrived at the theater, and it will be left up to his acting and the overall story to bring them back up for a fully enjoyable, immersing, and hopefully thought-provoking experience.
That last sentence serves as a segue to what I see as the third factor: suspension of disbelief. More to the point, a willing suspension of disbelief, meaning the participant must bring that to the table themselves. I have to be willing to give John Papsidera the benefit of the doubt for casting Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Inception. World of Warcraft players have to be willing to believe in the cartoonish world of Azeroth. Immersion is not something left entirely unto the creators to supply, though they certainly have the bulk of that task. We, the audience and participants, must be willing to suspend our disbelief in order for the spatial presence immersion to work.
But is immersion required? Looking at our favorite genre, MMORPG’s, I am inclined to say no. Sure, some players take things all the way into full role-playing. Even then, there are different degrees and types of role-play. I have my own style and typically limit it to myself, since it my enjoyment of directing my characters development through the world that matters to me, and I do it my own way. However, when I do happen to include others in my little personal role-play sphere (usually in chat) some readers can be thrown off because I can often switch in and out of character within the same sentence and leave it for the reader to discern which is which. To put it more technically, I am readily able to switch from the Player form to the Character form at will, and sometimes to the Person form, as Gary Allen Fine would say in his Shared Fantasy: Role Playing Games as Social Worlds. Whether that is a result of so many years of tabletop RPG’s where I had to switch from myself to GM to various NPC’s, writing, and now various video games and MMORPG’s or simply my (lack of) attention span, I will leave you to decide. Other players don’t seem inclined to immerse themselves in the game or its world but are perfectly content to play for the entertainment and social value. I always remember an Age of Conan player who said in Global chat “I know that I am sitting at my computer pushing a cartoon character through a cartoon world, and I don’t care to take it any further than that.”
How can media creators, or specifically game designers, work to improve our suspension of disbelief and therefore our sense of spatial presence? Small details and consistency. In order for us to believe in this virtual world, it needs to be true to itself to pull us in. I said above that the WoW player must be willing to accept the cartoony world, but from there the task in on Blizzard’s shoulders to ensure the various aspects of that world appear or behave in a consistent manner. Turbine has all sorts of little Tolkien references hidden away in LOTRO awaiting players to discover, assuming they are recognized for what they are.
Yet, for myself, I find that it is often the act of playing the game itself that detracts from spatial presence. Our Diku-influenced MMORPG’s require so many hotbars, inventory slots and other UI frames that keep me in the Player form paying attention to the keyboard, mouse, and on-screen cursor or watching UI elements such as debuff icons or health bars. Those UI elements take up entirely too much real estate on my monitor as well and get in the way of putting myself fully in the role of directing my character or believing in that virtual world. I always appreciated WoW and LOTRO for including the ability to bind name text to a key, and I get highly agitated at all the games that make me go into the options and turn names off one by one. Unless I have a need for names to be displayed, I typically press the ‘N’ key to turn off all names over NPC’s, objects and other players, because the more I have to pay attention and mentally engage myself in my virtual surroundings the better my sense of flow and immersion will be as opposed to simply being told in large, brightly-colored text that there is an annoying Mirkwood Crow up ahead in the darkness or that the player ThunderN00b is hiding behind that bush hoping to gank me but his big name sticking out of the bush gave away his position.
While we hear the word “immersion” being used most within the MMORPG genre, and MMORPG’s are for the most part consistent with their world design and behavior within it, MMORPG designers are woefully behind the times and behind the power curve compared to other studios. Specifically I will give Rockstar the award for Best Virtual World Design, and that is mostly due to all the little details they put into their worlds, and also physics, which is something MMO’s haven’t adopted yet.
I recently finished the story mode to Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption, which also provoked me to get back playing their Grand Theft Auto 4, where I finally finished the story mode, and one of its expansions, The Lost and Damned, which I also completed. Without getting into the gameplay of any of those and just sticking to the topic of the virtual worlds they have created, they are hands-down the most immersing I have experienced. The environments are a huge part of it, from the massive, winding Liberty City to the open ranges of the Old West, it is always fun to explore. The citizens of those worlds are another huge factor. All the people walking or driving through Liberty City or riding their horses or coaches in Red Dead Redemption. Having conversations among themselves, reacting to your presence if you walk near (or into) them, skid your car around a corner, or shoot a gun. Sometimes I like to just stop and observe what they do because you never get the same thing twice. I might drive down a street and find an accident in the intersection. An NPC may have been mugged and the thief is running away. An NPC thief might be carjacking another driver — or me. The police might chase down and arrest the NPC. Helicopters and planes fly overhead. Boats and ships are in the river. If I get out of my car, it’s still there when I come back. In RDR, Rockstar ramped things up even more. My horse is not merely a “speed buff with graphics” like our MMORPG mounts. Like the car in GTA4, it is its own entity and if I get off the horse it still exists in the world. But the horse is also an animal, so has its own AI. Horses are skittish around noises like gunfire, and this is reflected in-game. My horse also knows if there’s a rattlesnake nearby even if I don’t see it. It also has a sense of self-preservation and will do everything in its power to prevent me from riding off a cliff. These are consistent behaviors I would expect and the AI interactions and behaviors contribute to my suspension of disbelief, even when it’s silly. At times it can be aggravating if I hop off the horse to gather a plant or skin an animal and it walks off to graze, but it is the behavior I would expect if I let a real horse go alone unhitched. Compare all that to our MMORPG worlds where most town citizens are mannequins or at best have a brief patrol pattern. There is never any sense that the NPC’s actually live in MMO villages or that they truly exist at all other than as static Pez dispensers for quests. Another example in RDR is when I gather a plant or skin an animal, I am shown a brief cinematic where Marston bends down and picks the plant or takes out his hunting knife and skins the animal. This is a brief perspective shift, which may potentially bother certain players (as discussed in my recent Dragon Age vs. Mass Effect article) but it does serve to keep me squarely planted in the virtual world. What are not immersing are progress bars. I don’t know what happened in recent years that caused developers to decide that nearly every possible action in an RPG needs to be accompanied by a progress bar, but it is an annoying practice. Being annoyed in both Person and Player forms is a sure-fire way to eliminate my spatial presence.
There are no names floating above NPC’s or objects in Rockstar’s worlds, I have to mentally engage myself, pay attention and *gasp* learn. This is especially apparent in RDR where, if my count is correct, there are 31 different animals (counting both domestic and wild) and I may have to hunt and skin various types. Not only do I have to learn what each type looks like (Is that a deer, an elk or a bighorn ram? Is that little critter a raccoon or an armadillo?) but also learn where they may be located, not only from a “zone” point of view but also what terrain do they prefer and sometimes take into account whether they are predominantly diurnal or nocturnal animals. The animals in RDR behave like the animals they mimic. Wolves are pack animals and hunt together, but with more realistic patterns than the hard-coded patrols we’d see in an MMORPG. Deer are easily spooked and will bolt in erratic patterns, which can be fun to watch if there is a herd of them. Buffalo and cattle can also be spooked if chased, will work themselves into a lemming-like frenzy and run themselves off a cliff to their deaths. All this leads to a more pure sense of “hunting” than what we have in an MMORPG where we know not only which zone a particular mob is located, but also where it has been placed and will always respawn. The crème de la crème of hunting in RDR is the grizzly bear. While it is only found in the North, specifically in the area around Tall Trees, it can often be an elusive beast depending how vigilant I am scanning the entire environment and the time of day. Unlike MMORPG’s where “night” is simply stars in the sky and the lighting turned down a couple notches, Rockstar’s nights are very dark and difficult to see in. In LOTRO or other MMORPG’s if we get into aggro range of a bear, it will stand up, make its bear roar sound then charge us. There is no aggro range in RDR. If a grizzly happens to see me, I can pretty much bet that it’s pissed off and will charge. I rarely see them ahead of time and when I do it’s too late. They don’t make a roar sound at all ahead of time, I have to rely on hearing it breath as it charges. In fact, there are already so many ambient sounds in RDR from other animals to other NPC people, to gunfire, to my horse making horse noises, to the sound of its hooves on the ground that I ended up turning off the music every time I enter Tall Trees just to give myself one avenue of advantage to attempt to hear a grizzly breathing. Grizzlies are also the most dangerous predator in the game. Two swipes from a bear and you’re dead. We can carry medicine in our pack which will heal us from one hit but depending on how the physics system reacted to the bear’s mauling, it’s possible the bear may be back for its death blow before we manage to stand and use the medicine. You’ve heard adrenaline-pumping stories of trying to avoid and evade enemies on a PvP server in an MMO? The grizzly in RDR is the closest I’ve ever come to that feeling in a PvE setting. I may be hunting, but I am also being hunted.
[Note to MMO developers: The previous paragraph is precisely what we speak of when we ask for better AI. We are not asking for impossibly difficult AI like you continue to believe. We are not asking for human-level deviousness, ingenuity and tactics. We are simply asking that things behave as we would expect them to, including cover or survival tactics for intelligent enemies (eg. humans or humanoids). The "Hulk Smash!" AI found in MMORPG's was perfectly acceptable in 1980's-era arcade games but it's time to join us in the 21st century.]
Rockstar also uses physics in GTA4 and RDR, specifically the Euphoria physics engine, which is specially crafted to provide realistic movement and behavior to models rather than having each animation sequence hard-coded like we see in MMORPG’s. If I jump off my horse while it’s still moving, I will lean back on my heels while I realistically skid to a stop. If I jump in the air, I see a normal jump animation but if I’m near a fence I climb or vault over it. I may even stumble over an object or a small ledge and fall to the ground then pick myself up and dust myself off. Running too fast down stairs may lead to stumbling or running into someone. Reactions to an explosion takes into account the distance from the center of the blast. Maybe I am simply knocked down or maybe I am blown off my feet and into a wall. By contrast, all “knockbacks” in an MMORPG have hard-coded arcs instead of actual physics modeling. Rockstar also gives more benign physics behavior such as walking or driving uphill tends to slow us down, and moving downhill speeds up. Age of Conan is the only MMORPG I have seen include that behavior. Horses in RDR ride faster on paths or roads than in wild terrain. If it rains in Liberty City your tires have less traction.
Speaking of weather, Rockstar even delivers in that department. Not content with simply “rain” their worlds might have anything from light showers to torrential downpours to raging thunderstorms. Sometimes the rains will be accompanied by mists. Wet surfaces actually appear wet and puddles form. Mornings may be foggy in Liberty City. Mountains in RDR may have mists or fog in the evenings. Dry dust blows through the weeds in the parched plains. I’ll give LOTRO the award for Best Weather in an MMORPG but Rockstar still takes the award home for Most Comprehensive Weather in a Video Game. Not to say it’s perfect; it isn’t but it’s the best out there at the moment.
This is the YouTube version, fine for the embed here but I recommend viewing the one on the RDR: World in Motion article which describes how they made it. The best version is their 720p H.264 MP4 they link for download though.
For those interested, Digital Foundry also has time-lapse videos of GTA4, Assassin’s Creed 2, and others. Links should be found at the end of each time-lapse video article.
As Turbine tweeted earlier today, they have released us from the NDA for their upcoming F2P/Freemium conversion. I have an actual article in my head that I may sit down and write tomorrow but for now I’ll just leave you with a slideshow of the Beta 1 screenshots I took.
I have had neither time nor motivation to participate in Beta 2 yet other than keeping the client patched. Mostly because I found myself approaching the situation I was in during beta for The Burning Crusade which caused me to cancel my WoW account, delete every character on every server and never look back. I don’t want that to happen with LOTRO so I have intentionally backed off my playtime in Beta 2.
I did tweet this earlier, but need to vent and get it off my chest here in more than 140 characters. I’ve done my fair share of beta testing and it isn’t often I come across the type of NDA that doesn’t even allow testers to admit they’re in beta. Turbine did that to us. Then they release every possible tidbit of information to the gaming sites and blogs, then very detailed developer diaries. Meanwhile we’re still under NDA so we can’t even comment on all this because doing so is admitting you’re in the beta and therefore violating the NDA. Is there much left to even discuss at this point? It was an extremely aggravating experience, to say the least.
To reiterate, these are all Beta 1 screenshots; some things have changed. I will make a separate gallery for Beta 2 when I get time to play, test, and take screenshots.
Way back when Arena.net first started discussing Guild Wars 2, and being undecided how levels would be handled, I knew this would happen. For a brief moment, I had hope they would go with one of their early plans which involved a potentially cap-less leveling system; in essence what they have now in Guild Wars 1, only the number over your head changes as a visible means to show other players how much time you’ve put into the game, while the level itself wouldn’t matter in terms of gameplay because Guild Wars is not a game about levels the same way all our DikuMMO’s are. But I knew, in my heart of hearts, that Arena.net would not be able to resist the easy *ding!* progression of Diku – mostly thanks to World of Warcraft’s popularity, but I tend to put the blame squarely on EverQuest since it was the first truly successful MMORPG, and was almost literally a graphical DikuMUD.
Today’s Guild Wars 2 blog unveils the in-development leveling progression – which has a level cap of 80. Sound familiar? Gee, thanks, Blizzard…
On an extremely positive note, Arena.net is completely eliminating the XP curve that has always been prevalent in level-based games, since the original D&D. Instead, they’re taking an approach that is somewhat more akin to that seen in Mass Effect 2. In ME2, it takes exactly 1,000 XP to level; that number never changes. The GW2 blog doesn’t specifically say so but my instinct says GW2 will keep the “numbers get bigger as we level” for everything: health, damage, experience, etc. but they have the mathematics carefully calibrated so that if it took us two hours to level from 1 to 5 then it should take those same two hours to level from 70 to 73.
Dissecting the last few paragraphs of the blog entry we have:
…progression in Guild Wars 2 is way more than just leveling. We have achievements, trait collection, crafting, dungeons, skill collection, items, and much more.
Standard MMO fare everyone already expects; no surprise here.
Anyone can increase the length of an experience bar and call it content, but our world is filled with an almost endless stream of things to do.
Then why bother with that XP bar and levels when Guild Wars was about skills not levels?
And because our world is ever-changing and dynamic, you can play our content again and again!
Dynamic and repeatable content does not require levels but collecting and combining skills could make each repetition a little bit fresher of an experience, and that was ultimately the point of Guild Wars’ gameplay and progression. Not levels.
It’s been said that the act of leveling should only be enough to teach you about the class you play, and Guild Wars pretty much nailed that theory in both Factions and Nightfall where you start on a “noob island” and play through some of the backstory while you level to 20 (or very close to it) and the game gradually teaches you all the basics, then unleashes you into the actual game, playing through the actual campaign story which all takes place at level 20. I’ve always held the opinion that having those 20 levels at all was a mistake and if Guild Wars had simply started us off teaching us about skill collecting and putting together a good build, that would also have eliminated much of the confusion from the Diku crowd who only knew levels+gear=progression that didn’t work in Guild Wars.
Now that we know Guild Wars 2 will have those 80 levels, we also know the Diku simpletons will “get it” but will that be a good thing? Raph Koster writes that learning is fun, but if game after game after game has the exact same type of levels, what are players learning? They’re certainly not learning that levels are not the answer to everything.
After a Twitter conversation about this with @Longasc and @adarel, I thought I would be better suited to write down my feelings on the matter.
The discussion was the dialogue mechanics in Dragon Age: Origins versus the Mass Effect series. Adarel and Longasc both prefer the lengthier responses in Dragon Age, while I prefer Mass Effect showing me the Cliff’s Notes list then Shepard gives his actual response.
Adarel and Longasc each went on about how they felt Dragon Age gave them more real choices, but after after playing both of them myself, plus a lot of DLC for both DA:O and ME2, I really don’t see a difference in the available choices or their influence at all. Both titles give players a “Good Guy (White)” choice, a “Bad Guy (Black)” and a somewhat “Neutral (Grey)” choice. From there, character advancement may present additional options such as the Paragon or Renegade selections in the Mass Effect series. Each game may have a much longer list during the “gain more information” phases of dialogue but when it comes down to the actual story-influencing decisions, Good, Bad and Neutral are all you’re left to choose from. Many players have complained over the years that BioWare really only craft their stories based on Good or Bad (my own experiences corroborate this argument) and the varies “shades of grey” have no bearing or influence on the story progression whatsoever. From dialogue choices to story progression itself, there’s a reason the (tongue-in-cheek) BioWare RPG Cliché Chart exists, after all.
When it comes to CRPG’s, the thing is we don’t really have much choices available at all. We’re playing in someone else’s creation, through someone else’s story using someone else’s characters who say someone else’s dialogue. In Mass Effect, or even games like the Final Fantasy’s we play a specific character – Shepard, Cloud, Tidus, etc. – written by someone else. All we really do is put points into their RPG attributes and collect gear. Even Dragon Age, which lets me create my own character, fails to really give me real choices because it’s a hard-coded storyline in a CRPG. It doesn’t matter which race or origin I started off with, because I’m funneled into the same storyline with the same choices: play the Good hero or the Bad hero.
Taking a look at MMORPG’s, even when some story might be available, we have no choices whatsoever because the games have to be tailored for so many players. The stories are nearly always about the NPC’s and rarely our own characters anyway. The only choice we have as players is whether to do a batch of specific content or not. BioWare’s first MMORPG, the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic, simply looks to be a fusion of by-the-numbers “been there, done that” MMORPG content with BioWare’s trademark Black or White dialogue choices during the story arcs, primarily to serve as “new content” for additional replayability when leveling alts.
Back to Dragon Age vs. Mass Effect, my perception of what both Adarel and Longasc were getting wasn’t so much the issue of available choices (or the lack thereof) as the presentation of them. In Dragon Age, your character is mute, lacking any voice acting at all, therefore the dialogue choices can be a bit lengthy because the player has to read each and decide which to respond with. In Mass Effect we are shown a very brief response onscreen then after choosing one we see Shepard act it out in the cinematic, complete with voice acting which gives the lengthier dialogue audibly since it was never a visual presentation. Longasc in particular voiced his distaste for Shepard not saying precisely what he wanted him to say, but honestly, are the choices in DA:O any different? There are only so many available, and being forced to read the selections verbatim I can say that many times I would not have had my character say those phrases so I had to choose which one was closest to how I wanted to role-play that character. Again, same end result but simply a different presentation to achieve it.
I think pretty much everyone agrees that having voice acting for each race and gender in Dragon Age: Origins would have been expensive; perhaps prohibitively so for a new and untested IP, and I still feel the cost was the major factor behind the mute characters. The other is that it’s easy to simply insert a character’s name in text but the voiceovers would have to be generic to accommodate players being able to name their own characters versus using pre-written characters such as the aforementioned Shepard, Cloud or Tidus.
What did BioWare themselves have to say on the matter? First, go read this article on IGN. Back already? Good! According to BioWare, they did test out a Mass Effect-style dialogue system during the development of Dragon Age but chose the lengthier text trees because it worked better due to the perspective of the writing. Mass Effect is written from a third-person perspective, which is why we get the entire dialogue acted out with voiceovers based on player input on the dialogue tree, but leads some players to feeling like they’re not fully in control of the game. Dragon Age: Origins, on the other hand, was written from a first-person perspective. The player makes the direct choice from the dialogue tree, verbatim, and the NPC’s respond accordingly. The cinematics in Dragon Age never truly include our character in the conversation because we have made our choices, reading the words onscreen and mentally applying the voice we’ve given the character instead, so the cinematic skips ahead to the NPC responses being acted and voiced.
Additionally, I feel that some players, myself included, may have viewed Dragon Age: Origins distastefully if it had kept the lengthy textual dialogue and then had verbatim voiceovers. I’ve been in too many classes where the “instructor” (I use this term as loosely as possible within this specific context) does nothing but read PowerPoint slides verbatim with no exposition. Personally, I feel insulted by this “technique” (which is also proven to be one of the worst for educating) because I already read the slide faster than he was able to speak. I’m not an infant; I don’t need to be read to, and if he’s incapable of expanding on the message of the presentation then he is not doing his job. Of course, Dragon Age is not an educational lecture so that argument may not have applied, but I felt that case needed to be stated nonetheless.
In the end, I suspect what Adarel and Longasc were getting at was a simple preference for the first-person writing of Dragon Age: Origins. If they fall within the subset of players who felt a certain “lack of control” with Mass Effect’s more cinematic third-person writing (and it sounds as if they do) then Dragon Age: Origins would have felt more like they were in direct control of everything the whole time. Perhaps that feeling of control gives a perception of more available choices?
A lot of Dragon Age fans are skeptical of Dragon Age 2 since BioWare has stated now that Origins gave the… origins (ha!) of the setting and its races, Dragon Age 2 will be a story about a single character, Hawke, who will be fully voice-acted. The player can choose the gender and whether the character will develop along the Good or Bad story arc. In other words, similar to Mass Effect. Whether or not BioWare shifts to a third-person writing perspective for Dragon Age 2 has yet to be announced, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
When it comes to sequels, game or otherwise, I personally don’t demand an identical experience to the first. In the case of an RPG, it’s the world, the setting, that I want to come back to, not specific characters or specific dialogue perspectives as we’ve been discussing here. If BioWare totally changes the feel for DA2, I’m fine with that because at least I get to come back and have more adventures in that world. Conversely, if they make a future Mass Effect game in the style of DA:O I would jump on board that as well. I am a gamer for varying experiences; I do not “demand” each title within any given genre, of any given IP for that matter, give an identical experience to every other within that category. This is precisely why the MMORPG genre is in such a rut and players call everything a “clone” of something else (almost always WoW) after all. However, I also do not “demand” drastic innovation or change, either. Look at the faux fury over Starcraft 2’s near-total lack of innovation to the RTS genre or to the Starcraft IP. Guess what? It will sell millions and players will be happy regardless how much they complained in forums or blogs. Nearly every review of Crackdown 2 denounces Ruffian for “merely” providing “Crackdown 1.5” because it is… more of Crackdown. But isn’t that what the fans asked for? Developers can go either way with sequels, and with various sub-factions of the playerbase, they will always be a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” position. All I ask of the developers is to do what’s best for that individual title.
As I mentioned the other day, Longasc gave me a 10-day key for Star Trek Online. Unfortunately, something is glitched with Cryptic’s system and I was unable to gain any content beyond what was already available in the Unlimited Demo (which I highly recommend for anyone curious about the game). I had been looking at a few options of purchasing the game, but wasn’t entirely satisfied with any. Direct2Drive and Steam are both still full-price at $50 for the standard digital edition, while the Atari Store has it for $30 but the fine print makes it seem that I only have download rights for 30 days unless I spend another $4 for download access for two years. I foresee all of Cryptic’s games converted to a hybrid “freemium” model inside two years anyway, but that’s not really the point. So, while I was out yesterday doing some mandatory shopping I picked up the DVD version for $30. I’m a little annoyed at having the physical box which will just end up stacked in the closet collecting dust, but whatever.
I added the Retail Key to my Cryptic Account and swoosh! off we go into Federation Space! I logged in my demo character, Science Officer Sarvranthus who was last seen aboard the USS Raptor floating aimlessly in the Sirius Sector with nothing to do. Suddenly the full gamut of STO content is available so I hailed Starfleet and made some new NPC contacts who had several missions for Sarvranthus.
One of the missions sent me into another star system where I was attacked by several enemy ships. (Sorry, can’t remember the mission name or specific details.) What I did appreciate about that mission was that the star system itself was essentially Star Trek’s take on WAR’s Public Quest system, only better. One of my gripes about WAR was: how is it a “public” quest if I still have to get invited or join a group doing it? Sure, there’s a UI frame specifically for handling that, but I still felt all that defeated the purpose of having the “public” label. In STO, it’s simply “open grouping” with auto-joining, so anyone who warps into that sector automatically joins the group and the difficulty scales based on the number of players. What I have not learned yet is: do these missions scale immediately or not? My gut reaction is “not” because the first time I went into the system there were several other players but by the time I got to the action (I’d forgotten how to engage Full Impulse speed and mistakenly thought simply pushing my throttle forward was maximum impulse speed) the other players had taken care of business with me only getting a shot or two per enemy which was not enough to count towards my own mission completion. More enemies warped in to fight just as the other players warped out because their mission was finished and I was left drastically outnumbered in the USS Noobmobile. I stumbled across the Warp to Sector Space button just before the Raptor exploded — talk about an “Oh Shit!” button! Whew!
Longasc came online then and joined up with me to finish the mission. STO scales not only based on number of players but also by level so it seemed to split the difference between Sarvranthus being level 3 and Longasc being… way up there. It wasn’t like your run-of-the-mill DIKU game where I would never have been able to even hit the enemies; I could hit them just fine and was holding my own while Longasc pretty much flew around me giving some buffs and the occasional heal (I know, that sounds silly for space combat but in practice it works well) though if he did decide to open up with a barrage of phaser blasts, he pretty much one-shotted everything in sight.
After a few more space missions, I was assigned an away mission on a planet surface. I took one or two of my NPC crew and Commander Riker Longasc brought along his brand-new Holographic Bridge Officer, appropriately named HOBO. Once again, while the mission did scale to compensate for our vast difference in levels, I was still able to contribute as if everything was on-level while Riker Longasc with his (level cap?) gear and uber-HOBO pretty much laid waste to everything in sight.
All in all, so far I am having a pretty good time with STO. Music and sound effects are straight from the films and television shows and the graphics are decent enough. The few issues are relatively minor, namely the engine seems like it isn’t always quite sure about the camera angle so it jumps a bit. Hopefully something Cryptic can iron out soon (I notice it in the Champions Online demo as well). I do find myself wishing that it controlled… better. By better, I mean more like a… I suppose a third-person shooter, to a degree. Mass Effect 2 would probably be a great example of how I wish STO handled. I don’t know what it is but when I see my character with a gun, I want to shoot the gun not tab-lock onto a target then press 1,2,3 on a hotbar to watch the gun being fired then wait out a cooldown. Despite the game more or less being Yet Another DIKU MMO, the UI is completely non-standard, thereby eliminating any complaints of another MMO “cloning” the Asheron’s Call 2 World of Warcraft UI and layout. This is a good thing; I find STO’s UI to be perfectly acceptable and fitting for the setting after I learned where things were and what they did. I am still very much a noob and have a ton more to learn but I think this might be a good diversion from all the standard fantasy MMO’s.
I almost feel like I am hitting another wall with MMO’s already, but in the same breath I don’t feel that way at all.
In LOTRO I got Arwellyn to kindred reputation with the Malladhrim and immediately bartered for the Smoky Black Horse of theirs. I also worked up Veldorran into the low 50′s. I was so excited when he reached 45 and I took him up to Eregion to do the Moria introduction and get his first Legendary Items. Similarly when he was finally ready to enter Moria proper that was simultaneously a cry of “Yes! Finally” followed by a sigh of “oh crap, now I have to solo all this Moria content again…”
Luckily Red Dead Redemption came to the rescue, not only getting me away from the PC but providing a new setting and a highly detailed and immersive experience that puts MMO’s to shame.
@Longasc and @BlueKae have finally broken my will, with @Longasc providing me a 10-day key for Star Trek Online (which, with my job equals 2-3 days tops) so I plan on giving that a go tomorrow and Monday with the STO gang from Twitter. See you all in the final frontier!
Update: Removed screenshots and replaced with embedded Picasa slideshow.
NASA released their free game Moonbase Alpha last week, distributed through Steam, and I’ve played a few sessions so far. It is supposed to serve as a proof-of-concept for the in-development MMO funded by NASA, though the current game only supports 1-6 players. The game was developed by a partnership of NASA, Army Game Studio, and Virtual Heroes, a division of Applied Research Associates and uses the Unreal Engine 3 (the Army Game Studio uses UE3 for their America’s Army game) to inspire interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education and careers. The official site bills Moonbase Alpha as a “first-person explorer” though it’s mostly third-person. Scrolling the mouse will switch to a first-person camera but unfortunately it does not switch the FOV (field of vision) to a proper first-person perspective while in first-person camera mode. Most MMO’s are also guilty of this, so perhaps it’s safe to assume most MMO Gamers wouldn’t know the difference anyway?
The premise for the game is that in 2025 NASA has a small, nearly self-sufficient base on the moon, the eponymous Moonbase Alpha, and the players are researchers at a small outpost near the moon’s south pole. As you load the game, you’re shown a brief movie where you witness a small meteorite impact the moon’s surface near your outpost which damages the solar power arrays and oxygen supply to the living quarters. The game session – which is only 20 minutes in the standard competitive mode – then begins as players attempt to make repairs in time.
There is currently no real hand-holding at all and my first session I walked over to the camp having no idea that I needed to get a welding torch out of the equipment shed first, so I had to walk back over to the shed then walk back over to the camp and start fixing things. It’s also a bit sim-ish in the sense that once I retrieved the welding torch from the equipment shed, if I want to pick up another tool or drive the lunar rover I first have to put down the welding torch. Players can load equipment onto the bed of the lunar rover then board the vehicle to drive to a repair location to save time, since walking on the moon can be painfully slow. The more players who join the game, the more repairs need to be made so strategy becomes involved deciding who fixes what, and who gets to use the rover as it’s only a 2-person vehicle, as well as deciding to repair components that are heavily damaged or to replace them. Again the rover can come into play hauling replacement parts while someone else dismantles the broken part.
There are two solar power arrays to repair, each of which needs to have the solar panel lowered first. One is fairly heavily damaged. A toolbox is already placed between the two arrays and contains a welding torch and a wrench which will be needed to secure at least one power hose to a coupler after it’s repaired or replaced.
Next is the oxygen generators. Unfortunately these are leaking dangerous contaminants and players cannot get too close to the generator camp. Luckily NASA stocked some deployable RCU’s (robot constructor unit) in the equipment shed. One RCU has an arm which can pickup parts of the ground and re-insert them into the generators while the other RCU has a built-in welding torch for those up-close repairs that the astronaut players are unable to safely perform themselves. Once deployed, the player remote-controls the RCU to make the needed repairs while monitoring the status of the robot’s battery and also maintaining proper distance to the remote control to avoid losing the signal.
Welding has a simplistic yet challenging mini-game associated, where every so often a window with a circuit board appears and you “solder” specific connections to help speed up the welding repairs. It’s as simple as holding the mouse and drawing a line, staying within the boundaries given, but each successful weld will “level up” the next attempt which will give even more circuits to weld and a shorter amount of time to make the welds. Each successful attempt shaves several seconds off the total repair time, which can be critical with the 20 minute session time. There is also an option to create the game in “free play” rather than “competitive” which removes said time limit so players can explore and repair at their leisure.
Once it starts fishtailing, I try to correct to the other direction, probably end up over-controlling and the fishtailing gets progressively worse. I’m not the greatest driver in the world with analog thumbsticks (note: I can drive FPS vehicles perfectly fine with WASD but I am beyond useless with WASD in racing games and these open world action games. Go figure.) but I got the hang of many of the vehicles in Mafia II far better than I ever did in GTA 4, possibly better than I did in The Saboteur as well.
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