tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3967694277763110629.post8095641719555543749..comments2024-03-28T07:16:05.720-07:00Comments on Experience Points: Fate and the FrontierJorge Alborhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857765716032886965noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3967694277763110629.post-43758265888861311162010-06-17T14:40:32.826-07:002010-06-17T14:40:32.826-07:00@ Intertiacreop
As with Bill, I completely agree ...@ Intertiacreop<br /><br />As with Bill, I completely agree with you. The strange thing is, Red Dead exists in this halfway point between an immutable character and player choice. I like the world and the options I have, I really am ok with that. Its just incompatible with one aspect of Westerns that I also really enjoy.<br /><br />@ Bill<br /><br />I'm in the same camp. Even if it means suspending some of the mythology around western heroes.Jorge Alborhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04857765716032886965noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3967694277763110629.post-5340080233783787752010-06-16T13:10:37.819-07:002010-06-16T13:10:37.819-07:00inertiacrept, I completely agree.
I *wish* there...inertiacrept, I completely agree. <br /><br />I *wish* there could be a hardcore mode, either embedded and unlockable after you beat the game or available as a micro-transaction, downloadable addition, wherein your imagination of how cool it'd be to have to drag your half-dead carcass across a barren wasteland with wolves circling. <br /><br />Where getting shot isn't a matter of ducking behind a large stone for 15 seconds and waiting for your health to magically regenerate, but a matter of *where* you were shot, from what distance, and by which caliber of gun. <br /><br />Where the majority of conflicts would be - hopefully - resolved by wit and tongue rather than bullets. Where both sides are loath to pull iron because the consequences are so dire, potentially for both sides. <br /><br />I understand implementing something like this would probably require a completely different game - not a simple add-on or "Hardcore" mode. This new imaginary game probably wouldn't appeal to the BOOM'SPLOSION crowd. I imagine, also, that I'm asking/wishing for way too much. <br /><br />But count me in the camp who wish there was more subtlety in both the art of making video games and the content therein.Bill Thinksmartgames.comhttp://www.thinksmartgames.com/blog/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3967694277763110629.post-67000200118613379702010-06-14T21:17:32.667-07:002010-06-14T21:17:32.667-07:00There is much wrong with Red Dead Redemption. For...There is much wrong with Red Dead Redemption. For all of the very careful marketing technique designed to defray the implication that this is "Grand Theft Auto Old West", Marston is no more your player to control than Niko was. Marston comes with a hard and fast personality - there's nothing wrong with that. Where the designers f'd up was the illusion of decision. Games like GTA worked because you understood that you essentially had no capacity for choice. You were reading a book and the completion of missions were how pages were turned. <br /><br />I had a moment in Red Dead Redemption where I snapped and shot every last person on Bonnie's ranch and then used a pardon letter. In the next mission we were pals again even though I had dragged her farmhands through the streets behind my horse, shot her dogs, etc.<br /><br />This betrayal of the illusion of moral choice is big in video games right now (see also: Bioshock, Fable, Mass Effect, etc) but I felt more burned by RDR's decision to denude the Old West of most of its peril by following in the well-worn footsteps of a dozen multiplayer games by implementing the now standardized "crouch and ye shall be healed" mechanism for health regulation. That system makes practical and structural sense in games like Gears of War and Halo but it's absolutely retarded in a place where ONE GUT SHOT usually meant certain death.<br /><br />I got caught out by a pair of cougars many miles from Armadillo - they mauled me and killed my horse before I was able to put them down... barely. I spent a long second reflecting on how cool it would be - how intimidating but fun - to have to stagger back across the desert with buzzards over my head and wolves at my heels, almost dead, vulnerable to the elements. Instead, I waited a few seconds, auto-healed, whistled for another horse and rode off like it was no big deal which, of course, it wasn't.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com