Tar_Alcaran

Unfortunately, I’m kind of stuck with it, I can’t disconnect from those communities that have chosen to tie themselves to this platform. If I did I really would be a hermit living in a cave.

I don’t really know anything like discord though. What would be a good alternative?

I remember when steam launched, and we all fucking hated the “always online” requirement because be all had dialup and switching steam to offline mode was a damn annoying hassle.

That feels like a bit of a hate train on SOMA that’s not really relevant. We often dislike character idiocy, especially when it’s our player. But speaking protagonists can be done well - Dead Space 2 made the move, and even ported it back when they finally did a DS1 remake.

Yeah, the DS1 remake had Isaac talking, and they did it pretty decently because he’s not constantly surrounded by people who have answers to questions that Isaac has. The game is still about finding out what happened, and nobody can answer that, so you can’t talk about it. You’re discovering it with Isaac AND the other survivors. In DS2 you can’t really ask all that many questions about unitology, because people don’t really know the answers either.

But it would ruin all the interesting stuff about HL2’s history discovery. If someone just tells you “Oh yeah, the combine conquered the earth, and now they’re using these hybrid soldiers to suppress humanity after their military conquest, and their citadel is slowly expanding an ever more repressed population in this city” that’s not nearly as interesting as finding it out. But if Gordon asks, anyone would know the info, because they lived through it. By having a silent protagonist, people can just assume Gordon’s been around and knows this stuff, and not magically kidnapped by a supernatural magic guy in a suit who keeps mysteriously following him around. Half the fun in HL2 is figuring out the world, it’s a core concept of the game. You learn something for yourself, you figure it out by putting it togehter. Having G-Man spell it out would remove the fun. And having Gordon spell it out for the player would definitely detract from the game too. HL2 really hit that level of natural discovery, and making it optional to the game enjoyment.

Of course, launching it today removes a lot of the fun too, since there will just be 5000 youtubers repeating eachother about the game.

“What the…how long have I been gone? What the hell happened to Earth?”

But, you KNOW what happened to the Earth. What would spelling it out add to the story, except replacing the wonder and accomplishment with a boring bit of exposition.

Having Gordon be a silent protagonist adds hugely to the first person experience of the game. Sure, you can add dialog and questions and elaborate, but that would detract from the experience. Picasso could have also added pointers to each of the characters in Guernica to explain how they relate to the bombing of the city, and it would make the painting a lot clearer… and a lot worse.

I want to compare Half-Life with SOMA here (so spoilers for both). They’re both great experiences, but Gordon is silent while Simon won’t shut up. Simon needs to asks questions because the story requires you to understand some things, and some people need very basic explanations. When I played SOMA, I kept waiting for there to be a secret plottwist that Simon was copied incorrectly and was thus either braindamaged, or modified not to recognise reality for a specific purpose. No, that didn’t happen, Simon is instead an absolute moron who completely fails to realize that everyone constantly being copied means that he too will be copied instead of having his mind relocated. The game treats this as some kind of big realization, when it was in fact absolutely blatantly obvious to anyone paying attention. It’s literally the core of the game. Simon, being a moron, then takes this out on the person helping him, because he’s a moron.

Not only is the main character an idiot, I’m being railroaded into taking decisions that are stupid, which are then reacted to as if I couldn’t possibly have foreseen this, implying I (the player) am probably really stupid too. That was a huge detraction in SOMA. Simon is an idiot for the sole purpose of getting the information to you, the player, because apparently you need to be informed like you’re some kind of idiot too.

On the other hand, Gordon doesn’t talk. That’s a BIG restriction, but it also means you don’t even have to option to ask questions. On the other hand, you don’t need to; all the reasonable questions you might have are answered in the game by environmental storytelling. Who are the combine? Well, we see them beating up random humans, speaking a weird garbled message, we hear speeches by Breen, we see the combine raid random apartments. It’s very clear who they are without Gordon needing to ask about it. It’s like starting a book in medias res, which is quite common in writing.

Half-Life 2 assumes you can make connections, and you need to do so because Gordon doesn’t talk. SOMA assumes you’re an idiot, and reinforces that constantly by Simon talking to people like an idiot.

HL2 has a ton of story, but it isn’t spelled out in cutscenes or written down in item descriptions. It’s discussed by NPCs and inferred from the environment. You experience it all in a first person frame, without third person cutscenes or by asking someone to exposit at you. You don’t even have to go out of your way with a guide on your second monitor to unlock that info, it’s right there with you, you just have to pay attention.

You’re a person in the world and nobody will be the explaining the concept of lightbulbs or the where the combine came from or how the city was built. But you can absolutely find out more about that in the game.

But yes, we all hate the cliffhanger.

time is the one resource Big Tech steals that we can’t ever get back.

That’s an odd argument, since DIY takes significantly more time than just buying a solution.

By… Stepping outside and talking to people? I think all neighborhoods have that ability, even if we don’t really use it much.

Because you, and everyone, is in a huge bubble.

Normal people don’t give a shit where stuff is hosted, or if it’s hosted at all. The vast majority of people couldn’t care less what happens to their catpics if their phone gets crushed and they don’t want to use a separate messaging platform just to talk to you.

The things you think are important absolutely don’t matter to them. Most people don’t give a single second of thought to where their documents should live, and will just download it again on a second device instead of synchronizing anything.

It’s really nice that these things exist, but why would someone do anything with them if they literally don’t have a purpose for it?

There are only two types of games nowadays. Everything that isn’t AAA is labelled “Indie”, even when they’re with major publishers and have three dozen devs and a hundred externals.

Yo dawg, I heard you like ads, so I put some ads in your ads so I can sell toys while I sell toys

I loved Control, it had such a great setting and amazing world building that was constantly reinforced in your surroundings.

The Oldest House was an amazing place. I hope they can match it with the new area, a city just isn’t the same.

Can. But shouldn’t.

small levels centered on some gimmick that get boring on replays.

If I never have to fly through pointless glowing circles or highly dubious canyons ever again, it will still be too soon.

I think it will be 30 hours of Wing Commander The Movie level cut scenes

It never existed!

Just remember, we could have not had Duke Nukem Forever forever

It’s “we have StarCraft at home”. They did a mediocre copy of all the surface visible features, and that’s about it.

Era One (very recently into early acces) feels a LOT like homeworld 2 used to. But the “build your big ships from blocks” is definitely something you need to get used to, and need to like.

And it’s from the Homeworld Complex people, who do not exactly have the best trackrecord in developing.

Let people run their own servers, allow blacklists and whitelists.

Problem solved.

The helicopter is a helicopter. After about a week, it arrives and if it spots you, it follows/observes you for nonspecific reasons.

The helicopter is also extremely loud, drawing zombies from a huge distance to you. The best way to deal with it is by being inside, so it doesn’t spot you. Then it’ll just fly around and not do much.

I’m more of an Android girl myself