-
How is it that out of - Red Dead Redemption 2 - Death Stranding - Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order - God of War Death Stranding was the game I felt the least board while traveling from Point A to Point B?Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 6 Favorites
Mood -10 🙁
-
Some one is going to say "oh travel should be realistic, fast travel makes no sense in this universe, etc..." but ok, you are a *game* if you're going to make that call than you need to make travel *part of the game* as in - it's something that you play. Only Death Stranding did.Permalink On twitter.com
♻️ 1 Retweets
❤️ 2 Favorites
Mood -3 🙁
-
One of the things I appreciated about Death Stranding was you were constantly discovering new places and when you had to go back to old places it unlocked new ways to travel through them and new things to do. This is not a hard concept.On twitter.com
♻️ 1 Retweets
❤️ 5 Favorites
Mood -1 🙁
-
SW:Fallen Order makes traveling through the same places over and over again a constant slog. New things don't happen. Maybe you unlock a new route to make it shorter, maybe you get a new (useless) paint job. It's frustrating me a lot.Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 2 Favorites
Mood -6 🙁
-
And I was spending so much time riding around in RDR2, with nothing, absolutely nothing, to do I quit the game. I actually liked the parts where I did something in that game, but the travel was just too much and too boring.Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 1 Favorite
Mood -1 🙁
-
And God Of War... the travel just killed me. The boating back and forth over similar water, it was slightly better by water moving and revealing new things, but I ended up just wanting to be done with the game asap instead of exploring the open world, which I usually love!Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 4 Favorites
Mood +1 🙂
-
I think.... I think Death Stranding has ruined in-game-travel in other games for me. It put so much thought and effort and mechanics into that travel (because that's the core game mechanic!) that it makes stuff I wouldn't have been as bothered by in the past bad in comparison.Permalink On twitter.com
♻️ 1 Retweets
❤️ 6 Favorites
Mood -9 🙁
-
In games, like any fiction, you make a choice about what to include and what to leave out. Full-on realism is impossible, so you make choices.... and those choices should be motivated. It feels like the choices for how to traverse the world in many modern games aren't motivated.Permalink On twitter.com
♻️ 1 Retweets
❤️ 2 Favorites
Mood +7 🙂
-
RDR2 is, I think, the cardinal example of this. Why make hands on travel so burned into the gameplay experience? Realism? That's BS, it's not like I can smell or feel anything. It's a waste if it isn't out of some sort of reason related to the core gameplay decisions...Permalink On twitter.com
♻️ 1 Retweets
❤️ 3 Favorites
Mood -3 🙁
-
It really isn't a gameplay mechanic that is core to the experience of the game, survival in the game is on foot or standing still. And if it is to enforce particular gameplay mechanics... why can I ride day and night for like a week w/out going to sleep and have no consequences?Permalink On twitter.com
♻️ 1 Retweets
❤️ 1 Favorite
Mood +1 🙂
-
And it isn't even thematic! It doesn't connect to the story in any real way besides buffer that I saw. And if you're all about 'making a western film in a game' which is I guess what thematic mode is about... Westerns didn't spend that much of their time watching people ride!Permalink On twitter.com
♻️ 1 Retweets
❤️ 3 Favorites
Mood 0
-
And it can't be about making me see all your lovingly crafted environment, right? A game like Last Of Us (1) did more to show me and help me feel something about the environment with 10 minutes of forced camera movement than 3 hours of riding in cinematic mode.Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 1 Favorite
Mood +3 🙂
-
Same with Death Stranding: By making the environment an active persistent obstacle and making traversal itself an accomplishment that unlocked both story and skill, it kept me engaged with the act of travel *constantly*.Permalink On twitter.com
♻️ 1 Retweets
❤️ 3 Favorites
Mood -1 🙁
-
Even far lesser-budget games understood that if you're going to force traversal to take time it needs to *mean* something. I just had a ton of fun last month playing Rebel Galaxy, in part because when you went to warp you were constantly finding stuff, making decisions, etc...Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 1 Favorite
Mood +2 🙂
-
And that was wild b/c like... in theory everything in that game you *need* is already on the map, but the act of exploring nebula, finding rare gear in asteroid belts, deciding if you're going to rob that convoy, and then if you are how to approach, it kept it engaging.Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 1 Favorite
Mood 0
-
It's sort of hard to distinguish how being able to make your own decision about how to engage in a situation, why, and having serious variations and challenges involved in the approach differentiates from the endless identical side-of-the-road pings, but it really is different.Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 1 Favorite
Mood 0
-
At core, it is b/c everything to "explore" in RDR2 or Fallen Order is really pre-determined and has no significant impact on your capabilities as a character or on the story, but in Rebel Galaxy every encounter went towards changing something about how the world reacted to you.Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 2 Favorites
Mood -3 🙁
-
Rebel Galaxy def isn't the best game in the world, but it makes for a good example I think because it had constraints. Outside of the superlarge game studios there has to be choices, consideration about what to do with time and money and resources.Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 1 Favorite
Mood +4 🙂
-
I think that with less constraint it can be harder to find what's important and needs the most focus in your game (or any piece of art). It isn't impossible, there are good huge budget games out there, but it does make it a lot easier to have a very pretty and elaborate muck up.Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 1 Favorite
Mood +7 🙂
-
... just ... if you've got a big open world game... give it fast travel unless you have a compelling story-based, or game mechanic-based, reason not to. Making your player do something in-game is a choice. Justify it or eliminate it.Permalink On twitter.com
♻️ 1 Retweets
❤️ 2 Favorites
Mood +1 🙂