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Sep 4th, 2010 at 21:01:23 - The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (PC) |
Finally started playing Oblivion this week. Only had the game sitting in my case for over a year. I notice several things I'll talk about: (1)expectations; (2)autonomous tensions; (3)speechcraft
(1)I played Morrowind back in the day. I don't know if I ever beat it, but I know I played with at least two different characters and distinctly remember picking a lot of locks, stealing a lot of items, and levitating and raining fireballs on city guards. Those are all things I enjoy doing in games, especially stealing things. I enjoy seeing what I can get away with. In Oblivion, I initially tried to steer toward a kind of caster/melee/thief hybrid, but due to trying to be efficient with race/class/skill combinations, I wound up with a straight thief (sneak, security, marksman, acrobatics, speechcraft, mercantile). I am good at stealing, sneaking around, talking and haggling, and shooting things with a bow. I didn't want to just be the same thief I tend to like to play, so this was achieved by focusing on ranged attacks rather than melee attacks, which I'm thoroughly enjoying.
So, what I expected from this game was to be able to go anywhere and do anything. I expected to be able to sneak around stupid NPCs, pick their locks and their pockets, sell my stolen goods, be rich, assassinate people, explore the world, be a hero and a villain, and eventually decide to complete story missions. This is what I've realized. Oblivion touts intelligent and realistic NPC AI. My enjoyment of Morrowind was largely based on the fact that NPCs were idiots and I could get away with whatever I wanted, breaking all the rules with minor penalties for being caught. This is how most open-ended free-roam games are, in my experience. In Oblivion, the NPCs certainly are...mmm, I hesitate to say 'smarter,' but, maybe they are more observant, more cautious, and more suspicious. Being smarter or more holistically realistic would entail a whole range of behaviors, some of which I see in the game failing, others of which I see in the game working, and others of which I see not at all.
Oblivion's emergent AI, or whatever they called it, is interesting so far. I've come to the Imperial City where citizens roam around. Apparently, everyone has a schedule that they follow, and depending on various things, NPCs will perform a range of actions, such as eating, sleeping, walking, etc. at certain points of the day. I was reminded of this when I came to the city the first time. It was night, and I was exploring. I wasn't paying attention to the time of day, and came to a locked shop. Weird. Picked the lock, went upstairs to the bedroom, was busy stealing things, when I hear footsteps! The shop-owner apparently just came home from somewhere and was going to sleep! I hid behind the door and waited for him to get in bed. He never saw me. So he must go out at night and come home around a certain time for bed. Now what happened next is something that irritates me. I went to pick his pockets while he was sleeping. He caught me, yelled, "Guards!" and then stood there and proceeded to carry on his normal NPC conversation with me. He told me some rumors, gave me directions, and even gave me a quest! I would think he would run outside, refuse to talk to me, or attack me. But no, normal conversation follows. So, following the normal conversation, I go outside. I am immediately arrested for pickpocketing. What? How? The victim was upstairs in his private room. There's no way a guard heard him yell or could have known I stole from him. Another time, I picked a lock in a shop, went inside the room, to find a guard standing there, who promptly arrested me. Why would a guard be inside the private bedroom upstairs of a shop in the middle of the day behind a locked door alone?
(2) This leads to problems of being autonomous in the game. I cannot do what I want, when I want, where I want, because NPCs are, not only overly cautious (they follow you around in their shops -- how weird would that be in RL if the proprietor followed you around as you browsed in his shop?), but they do things that don't make sense. Of course, you have to play within the rules of the game, like the rules and norms of real life when you go out, but I expect these to make sense, and I expect to be able to manipulate these rules in certain ways. I know how to do things I'm not supposed to without being caught or getting in trouble. Maybe I haven't spent enough time in the game, but it's frustrating that I'm having trouble playing how I want to play. Then again, maybe I have to come to terms with the fact that that's how the world of Oblivion is and I can't blame it.
I do, however, feel free to explore outside the city. At the beginning of the game, you escape from prison, and upon exiting the sewer escape route, you see a vast expanse of land, a river and rolling hills. Your main quest leads you far away, and from that point, you are free to go where you want. I turned in the opposite direction of the quest and ran, soon discovering a little bandit camp and some kind of ruins. I explored them, found some treasures, killed some skeletons, and felt like I'd been somewhere no one else has ever seen. There must be tons of places like that in this huge land, and I find that really exciting, because I can play through again and probably have a similar, but different experience.
I'll also have a different experience if I play through again because of the level of possible character customization. You can mix and match any skills and attributes and races to play exactly how you want. The trouble for me is I want to be a kickass thief, marksman, mage, alchemist, and about 90% of the other skill/class combinations. Very difficult to do all that with one character.
(3)Finally, an improvement to the NPC AI I do see is their reactions to me. Depending on race, deeds, etc., NPCs will like you more or less, and you can influence this with a little speechcraft mini-game. You can do this with most any NPC, and how it works is you can either admire, joke, boast, or coerce them. You can only select each speech type once per round and you must select all four. Now, NPCs either hate, dislike, like, or love the four speech types, and you have to play the game to raise their opinion of you. You gauge their hate, dislike, etc. by facial expressions, which are really well-done. Mouse over 'joke' and they may slightly frown. Mouse over 'admire' and they may smile broadly. It's a fun game, very easy with practice and an increasing speechcraft skill, and affects the amount and type of information they give you, maybe giving or withholding quests, price of buying and selling goods, etc. I feel it adds some realism to the NPCs, them being able to make recognizable facial expressions and me being able to respond to them. In addition to this, NPCs also talk with one another on the street. It can be kind of awkward conversations ("Hello!" "Hi, how are you?" "Goodbye!") or actual interesting ones that may give hints or useful information. Apparently the NPCs will engage in a lot more random, pointless, dumb, etc. behavior that I haven't seen yet. So far, I'm fairly impressed with the NPCs' interactions with each other and my ability to influence them, even if in shops, they are ridiculously cautious and guards are prone to arrest me.
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Sep 4th, 2010 at 20:13:29 - Neverwinter Nights 2 (PC) |
First entry for this game, but I played it some time ago, Spring 2010 I believe. Always enjoyed NWN games and D&D games in general. I kept this one around after beating it because there's a dedicated mod community, and I wanted to try out some popular mods. I had downloaded 6 or 7 back when I beat the campaign, and finally took one on. These are my first impressions of NWN2 modding, and a specific mod, Pools of Radiance, which is a recreation of an old D&D module from a long time ago.
I was hesitant to try any of these because I assumed they could not be as good as the original game, and if they're not as good as the original game, and I have other games to play, then why bother playing something sub-par. Well, because I want to know and see what fans do with the editing tools.
Things I liked about Pools of Radiance:
(1) Journal entries written in first-person drew me into the story. I felt like my character actually had a personality, that it could have been me. In fact, the mod suggests choosing a 'mundane' character. I chose a Shield Dwarf Fighter, level 1.
(2) The author(s) were technically proficient with the editor, ultimately creating a mod that was visibly on par to the regular NWN2 campaign.
(3) Storyline voice-overs were a nice touch. I felt the people who made this mod were incredibly dedicated to Pools of Radiance.
(4) I never played the original and don't know the story, so I don't know to what extent they were faithful in recreating it, though I assume they were very, and this is interesting to me that people update classics to new skins, such as people have done with various other games.
(5) Interesting tweaks to the gameplay. My favorite is that you cannot just 'rest' anywhere. Well, you can, but you have to have supplies. I suppose the original NWN is silly in that you can just lay down on the floor in any old dungeon or forest and have a nap. There are 'restful' places, such as beds, where you can sleep without supplies.
Things I did not like:
(1) Little buggy things that were mildly annoying, such as my weapon magically unequipping itself, so that I started a lot of fights bare-handed.
(2) Misspellings and grammatical errors in text.
(3) Being stuck and not being able to get help.
I'll end, because #3 killed the game for me. I was supposed to find this ogre cave to rescue some people, and I could never find it. I looked for probably an hour. The downside to playing a mod is that few people have played it, there's no walkthrough for it, and so if you get stuck, it's trial and error, the forums, or quit. I couldn't find anything on the forums, and I couldn't find the cave, so what else to do? I don't want to spend time looking anymore since I've other mods and games to try. But I feel the short amount of time spent with this mod gave me a glimpse at probably a high-quality NWN2 mod. I will play through some others to see what different things other authors are able to do, how they may tell stories differently using the game, how else they may tweak the original game rules to make it more realistic or whatever.
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Sep 4th, 2010 at 19:54:47 - World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King (PC) |
Sindragosa Down + Being Social!
If you asked me about the social aspect of WoW a year ago, I would have said, "Meh, I don't really care." Until WotLK, I generally played alone, leveled characters, PvPed, and ran 5-person dungeons, and certainly didn't have any friends in-game. With WotLK, I started raiding, which, to progress, necessitates joining guilds and forming relationships with other players. I've been in a handful of raiding guilds this expansion and can say I have friends on WoW. When you play together with the same people every week, it's hanging out. Hang out with people long enough, I like them more and more. Achieve things in-game together through hard work, get to know each other over time, and experience the ups and downs of life on and off the game, all this ties people together, I believe. So it's been over the last almost two years that I've slowly realized I play WoW now because I can play with other people.
That brings me to raiding, which like I said, requires other people, and preferably other people you know and like. My goal for this expansion pack is to kill the Lich King. There are 12 bosses in ICC, LK being #12. In the last 2 months, a handful of guildies and I have put together some very successful 10 ICC runs. We continually get to 9/12 or 10/12 before people leave. Being fairly casual raiders, we never pick up and continue, just start over next week. Yesterday, I logged on to see if the guild was doing anything, which it wasn't. So, I began scanning trade chat for ICC 10 groups. Someone was spamming for 2 healers for Sindragosa and Lich King (11&12). I immediately got an invite. It was a guild run, and this is the farthest they'd ever been, same as me. I got on their Vent, and by the end of the night, almost as important as what we accomplished, I felt like I'd met another handful of cool people.
Some guilds are more closely knit than others, and this one was one of those familial feeling ones. They were all very nice, had obviously been playing together a long time, were mostly good players, but were real enough and down to earth enough to make them very likable to me. There were two women, one the 'guild mom,' a very upbeat and encouraging guild leader, another person who consistently had trouble with the fight because he couldn't zoom out because he doesn't play with a mouse (!), another person who, during the fight, kept running to the wrong side of Sindragosa because her computer couldn't handle the graphics of 10 players animating in the same spot (I constantly had to run in range of her to keep her alive). After the raid, I chatted with them in Vent a while, found out they run a cross-game guild, with channels for SC2 and other MMOs, and that they'd been around a long, long time, through the birth and decline of other MMOs in the past. They invited me to come around more often and play with them in the future. They liked me, and I impressed them with my playing, so I got an invite back. Being social, being friendly, and being skilled at whatever it is you do, gets you places. I'm not leaving my normal guild, but I'll maintain ties with these people, maybe play some other games with them in the future, and definitely, hopefully, kill the Lich King with them!
And about the actual Sindragosa fight, we learned it beginning to end, over the course of about 3 hours together. When she finally died, on our stated last attempt no less, we all yelled in Vent and of course there was a lot of excitement going around. That moment right there, killing a difficult boss with a bunch of other people for the first time, is the pinnacle of this game for me. And another plus is I've gained knowledge and experience in the fight, and I can teach it to other people I know. One fight left to learn in the game and then I'll be able to say I've vanquished the expansion's namesake.
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Sep 4th, 2010 at 19:30:50 - Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty (PC) |
SC2: On achievements.
When trying to figure out why I am actively trying to get achievements in SC2, I realize that I attempted similar feats of my own volition in SC1 (see how many CPU players I can beat outmatched, how fast I could kill an enemy, winning with all races, etc.) Then, I know that I generally scoff at official achievements in games. I usually don't care to do them, find them unnecessary and a waste of time. So what is it about Starcraft that makes me want to compete with myself?
I think that, first, it's my history with the series. I like it, it's fun, and I know I'm going to spend a lot of time with it, based on my experience with SC1. Perhaps I think it will be worth it to spend time getting achievements. Worth it because achievements hone my skills, and I'll be playing online; worth it because other players can look at my achievements and be impressed (maybe). Why else? Maybe my desire for achievements depends on the social aspect of the game. Achievements really became widespread, as far as I know, once XBox Live got going, especially with the 360. So in general, are people more inclined to pursue achievements when they can show them off or compare themselves with others? This may be part of it. I certainly tend to care more (usually still a low amount) about achievements in online games (WoW, Call of Duty, Team Fortress 2) than single-player games, but I immediately think of Culdcept, where I attempted to complete eeeeeverything on a couple different play-throughs. Perhaps since Culdcept was a board game, I imagined it as a social experience, playing board games with other people. Perhaps it's just a certain type of challenge I enjoy, a honing of skills or strategy.
In the end, different people will care about different achievements in different games for a variety of reasons, and even have different definitions for what is an achievement, but I wonder if I can't begin to figure out patterns. I suppose I could continue reflecting on my own relationship with achievements. For SC2, I've played 3 campaign missions, but played each of them multiple times to unlock what I could. The rest of the time, I've spent playing versus the computer trying to see how many/how hard I could win against, and a couple exploratory 1v1 and 2v2 online matches, including a short session with my brother, all of which I/we lost.
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