Games these days are immensely more complicated then in the days of yore. Unfortunately, this means that resources have to be much more directed and as a result, games tend to be more specialized in what they deliver. The problem is that with this trend, games specialize in one area and are thus shitty in others. Doom 3 was uh... dark and moody, but had shitty physics. CoD 4 has great shooting mechanics but shitty destructible environments. Bioshock has great storytelling and atmosphere, but shitty shooting mechanics. We tolerate these deficiencies, but perhaps we ought to ask for more.
I was just thinking about this recently and seriously... we need more middleware to help remedy this. Look at Havok, that's the perfect example. Why spend time coding a bunch of physics when you can just buy Havok? All we have these days is specialized games that all focus on a specific hook or gimmick. And I'm not saying gimmick in a negative sense, though it can be sometimes.
This might never happen, but it'd be nice if a lot of these gimmicks were all just made middleware. Like how companies buy game engines to make games on, instead of coding their own engine. Let's take that further along. Look at Wolverine. It's not a truly great game, but the visual damage and rehealing of Wolverine isn't something we've really seen in other games. That's Wolverine's hook. Or Red Faction 3, GeoMod 2.0 is obviously its thing. And it's great. But what if that was all middleware like Havok? What sorta game wouldn't be better off with nifty visual bodily damage like Wolverine, or the destructible environments of Red Faction 3? That's not saying that all dev teams that bought those and incorporated em into their games would put out amazing games, but it wouldn't hurt.
I for one would be very happy if CoD 5 had something like GeoMod 2.0 under its hood.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
The problem with Call of Duty 4
I liked Half-Life a lot. It was the first time we'd gotten these cinematic scripted sequences in FPSs. And they were done very very well. But that was back in the good ol days of 1998. Now Doom 3 and Call of Duty 4 foist that heavily scripted stuff on us every goddamn time you cross a room or street corner and I just shake my fist and yell "Damn you Valve! Damn you for condemning me to this scripted hell!"
What I want from an FPS now is not what I wanted from an FPS in 1998. The key is to move away from the Call of Duty 4 model. Which isn't gonna happen if Modern Warfare 2 sells as many copies as its predecessor. What's the CoD 4 model? Sticking you on a straight and narrow path with scripted sequences. Every. Five. Fucking. Steps.
I'm in love with this video. It says pretty much everything I have to say about scripted games. Everybody seemed to love Call of Duty 4, it won all sorts of Game of the Year awards, but this video really shows off all of my problems with it and what the alternative can provide. I played through CoD 4 pretty quickly and have absolutely no desire to replay that campaign, since it's all going to be exactly the same. Same scripts here, there, and over that away. But that video really makes me want to go back and play through Crysis again.
And if anybody from Infinity Ward is reading this... hey, I think you're probably a nice guy in real life and all. But uh, I really hate what you're doing to the industry so... ya know... stop it. Stop it right now.
There's also this inherent laziness in the scripted nature of CoD 4 and other similar games. I remember playing Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six and working my ass off in every single mission to make sure that every one of my eight operatives made it back alive. Sometimes unfortunate events occurred and that wasn't possible. Just a part of playing the game.
You play CoD 4 and you have this squad fighting with you at points, but it's all out of your control. There aren't any squad orders you can give em. Well, perhaps it's unrealistic to expect the same control that you get from a game like R6. Okay, fair enough. Maybe it'll be more relaxing to not have to order the teammates around, sure. Just rely on their AI.
But wait, what's this? They don't have any AI, they're just invincible meatshields that fire occasionally but never hit anything? Why is this interesting? A bunch of invulnerable AI, on opposite sides, firing at each other ad infinitum. All to try to create an epic battlefield that feels curiously hollow and meaningless. It's not epic or exciting to fight with a bunch of AI teammates who get showered by these tremendous barrages of gunfire but do not die, or only die at specific scripted moments.
Why should I the player work hard at all to kill the enemy when my performance has no impact on the squad? In R6, I tried hard to down enemies so my squad wouldn't take hits or die. In CoD 4, there's no urgency to protect my squad, they're all invulnerable. If I kill 30 tangos or just 1, it's not gonna save any of my guys. They're just static, might as well be statues leaning on a wall.
What I want from an FPS now is not what I wanted from an FPS in 1998. The key is to move away from the Call of Duty 4 model. Which isn't gonna happen if Modern Warfare 2 sells as many copies as its predecessor. What's the CoD 4 model? Sticking you on a straight and narrow path with scripted sequences. Every. Five. Fucking. Steps.
I'm in love with this video. It says pretty much everything I have to say about scripted games. Everybody seemed to love Call of Duty 4, it won all sorts of Game of the Year awards, but this video really shows off all of my problems with it and what the alternative can provide. I played through CoD 4 pretty quickly and have absolutely no desire to replay that campaign, since it's all going to be exactly the same. Same scripts here, there, and over that away. But that video really makes me want to go back and play through Crysis again.
And if anybody from Infinity Ward is reading this... hey, I think you're probably a nice guy in real life and all. But uh, I really hate what you're doing to the industry so... ya know... stop it. Stop it right now.
There's also this inherent laziness in the scripted nature of CoD 4 and other similar games. I remember playing Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six and working my ass off in every single mission to make sure that every one of my eight operatives made it back alive. Sometimes unfortunate events occurred and that wasn't possible. Just a part of playing the game.
You play CoD 4 and you have this squad fighting with you at points, but it's all out of your control. There aren't any squad orders you can give em. Well, perhaps it's unrealistic to expect the same control that you get from a game like R6. Okay, fair enough. Maybe it'll be more relaxing to not have to order the teammates around, sure. Just rely on their AI.
But wait, what's this? They don't have any AI, they're just invincible meatshields that fire occasionally but never hit anything? Why is this interesting? A bunch of invulnerable AI, on opposite sides, firing at each other ad infinitum. All to try to create an epic battlefield that feels curiously hollow and meaningless. It's not epic or exciting to fight with a bunch of AI teammates who get showered by these tremendous barrages of gunfire but do not die, or only die at specific scripted moments.
Why should I the player work hard at all to kill the enemy when my performance has no impact on the squad? In R6, I tried hard to down enemies so my squad wouldn't take hits or die. In CoD 4, there's no urgency to protect my squad, they're all invulnerable. If I kill 30 tangos or just 1, it's not gonna save any of my guys. They're just static, might as well be statues leaning on a wall.
Friday, May 8, 2009
Duke Nukem Forever R.I.P.
The King is dead. Long Live the King.
Now we'll never find out if Duke Nukem Forever was worth 13 years of blood, sweat, and toil. I'm a sad panda now. It's like a part of my childhood has died.
Just as Star Trek gets released too. With the resurrection of one dead franchise, another passes into the ashes of history. What are the odds that some other dev team like Raven or Epic just buys up the property and spits out a Duke game in a year's time? I'd find that quite amusing. Kind of a "That's how shit gets done, folks!" statement. There's always been a strong pro-stripper demographic out there that hasn't been properly catered to in about 13 years.
Ya know something? This news is probably as shocking as it seems because... they've been at it for so long. I think if they had given up the ghost after 4 or 5 years and just canceled the game, nobody would have batted an eye. But to keep at the damn thing for over a dozen years was uh, a sort of ridiculous perseverance in the face of... laziness, engine changes, and procrastination that everybody just thought they had to finish sometime, they'd gone too far to go back. And they sorta kinda seemed to be close to finishing the game. There were some vague promos going around in 08 so it seemed more likely then before. Not quite a demo or a playtime vid, but... there *was* something there. It was enough to keep hope alive, darn it.
Rest in peace dear friend. No gaming joke will ever surpass the glory that was Duke Nukem Forever.
Now we'll never find out if Duke Nukem Forever was worth 13 years of blood, sweat, and toil. I'm a sad panda now. It's like a part of my childhood has died.
Just as Star Trek gets released too. With the resurrection of one dead franchise, another passes into the ashes of history. What are the odds that some other dev team like Raven or Epic just buys up the property and spits out a Duke game in a year's time? I'd find that quite amusing. Kind of a "That's how shit gets done, folks!" statement. There's always been a strong pro-stripper demographic out there that hasn't been properly catered to in about 13 years.
Ya know something? This news is probably as shocking as it seems because... they've been at it for so long. I think if they had given up the ghost after 4 or 5 years and just canceled the game, nobody would have batted an eye. But to keep at the damn thing for over a dozen years was uh, a sort of ridiculous perseverance in the face of... laziness, engine changes, and procrastination that everybody just thought they had to finish sometime, they'd gone too far to go back. And they sorta kinda seemed to be close to finishing the game. There were some vague promos going around in 08 so it seemed more likely then before. Not quite a demo or a playtime vid, but... there *was* something there. It was enough to keep hope alive, darn it.
Rest in peace dear friend. No gaming joke will ever surpass the glory that was Duke Nukem Forever.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
My reaction to Star Trek (with spoilers!)
Just came back from Star Trek.
It's... very different from previous Trek films. There's some things that stay the same, and a lot that changes. Definitely not gonna replace Wrath of Khan, heh.
The CGI's amazing, of course. That's kinda the most obvious at-a-glance difference. See, this is really hard. My head is swimming with all the crazy stuff that I just saw, but... most of it's gonna be spoilers.
I will say, you should prepare yourself for a lot, I mean a lot of lens flare in this film. It was some sort of cinematic look they were going for, but sometimes the amount of it was just overwhelming. Like, a character will look out of a window, and the sun just pours through the window and completely blots out the screen with yellow flare for a good two to three seconds. That was just kinda "Ok, that's a bit much, thanks."
Yea... the timeline really changes...
They fucking DESTROY VULCAN, WITH SIX BILLION VULCANS! AND AMANDA GREYSON! HOLY SHIT.
Which is mind boggling, but I didn't really feel the impact because you're aware of the time travel, so... maybe it's just me, but I felt myself not reacting to the change when it happened because I was sure that they would use the time travel again at the climax to undo what had happened. It seemed really telegraphed. But then they don't do that at all, which was cool. But by then, the emotional impact of Vulcan being gone was uh, gone. It was just a CGI effect. Did anyone else feel this way?
They do show the Kobayashi Maru, which was really really funny. Maybe a bit too over the top, depending on your mood.
I mean, Kirk's fucking eating a goddamn apple in the scene... that's just insanely over the top. It does work in a comedic manner, but if you've envisioned it happening a different way since 1982 when Wrath of Khan came out, obviously this is gonna take some getting used to.
Just all throughout the film, there are these callbacks to the old series that we know and love. That was really cute and worked for me. Scotty actually saying "I'm giving it all I've got, Capn!" and uh, Spock uttering "When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
We even find out how McCoy got the nickname "Bones."
Not sure how I feel about the new guy playing Spock. It's just really hard to see Spock being played this way. It's much more emotional then we're used to, so that was a shock. And of course, because we actually have Leonard Nimoy playing him too. And the new guy's just got a huge nose. There'd be these closeups of Kirk and Spock eyeing each other, and I'd just focus on how Spock's nose is so much bigger then Kirk's normal sized one. It was just weird.
And yea, it's definitely been a while since I've watched TOS episodes. But I think it's also that when we see Spock being emotional before in TOS, it was usually emotional in a friendly, camaraderie sort of way. Here, he's mostly emotional in an angry way.
Right now I'm looking up who played the Orion girl, cause she was fucking hot. You know how Kirk is...
But uh... that's just minor. Now, there is one relationship in this film that was uh... completely out of nowhere, nothing in canon to support it.
Spock and Uhura? Holy shit! That totally came out of left field for me. Just uh... WTF. I don't think I was the only one in my audience to react that way, either. Not saying that it's a terrible decision though. Just a shocker cause we'd never seen this before in TOS. We'll have to see how the sequels handle this relationship. Still, right now... it's just a huge seismic change.
Nero's not a great villain. Kinda wasted in the story, I think. Just uh... not very memorable.
And his great villainous ship turns out to be just a mining ship. Which doesn't really jive with it being this sinister spidery juggernaut. Seriously, it dwarfs every other ship... I'd estimate it's somewhere from a half to one Borg Cubes in size. No idea why a mining ship needs to be that big. And the inside of it kinda reminded me a little of V'ger. Just a really crazy layout. Again, not sure why a mining ship would look like that.
Oh, know what I didn't expect? New Chekov's accent got almost unbearably comical to listen to. It's strange, cause I've never blinked at old Chekov's thick accent. But hearing it coming out of this young new actor was really grating. I actually burst out laughing when he first talked. Simon Pegg's Scotty was great, he was funny in that same sorta Jimmy Doohan manner back in the day. Just a joy in every scene. McCoy too, Karl Urban really seemed to have researched Kelly's acting mannerisms. Don't believe he ever said "He's dead, Jim" though.
Unfortunately, I've gotta report that this film suffers from the same horrible flaw as Deep Space Nine's big battle scenes... we never see any visible shields. Maybe I missed em, but from what I could see, there were never any shield impact effects. Ships just get torn to pieces from the get-go by torpedoes. I mean, yes, Nero's ship is from the future and is obviously much more powerful then the Starfleet ships. But still, I would've expected to see at least one shield impact before they failed. Hey, if I'm wrong on this... feel free to correct me with screenshots. Prove me wrong, I beg you.
The other strange technical oddity is that transporters can work through shields now. Either that or nobody ever has shields up. One or the other. Just kinda bizarre. Everybody's just transporting to where they need to be.
And wtf was with Kirk and Scott transporting to the Enterprise from the ice planet? I mean, I get that the story needed to send them there, but... you mean to tell me that transporters can now reach ships that have departed a planet at high warp for a couple hours? Really? That's some crazy magic Spock Prime worked on that transporter pad. I just... yea, that really didn't make any sense to me. Transporters have a certain range. And yes, having a guy from the future can certainly improve that range. But it really took me out of the movie when you have a transporter that has that kind of crazy range. Not to mention that like I said before, they seemed to be able to transport through the Enterprise's shields. Or the Enterprise was running with shields down, which would be kinda strange given they were facing a dangerous Romulan that had just destroyed Vulcan.
Annnnnd as far as the aesthetics, I really didn't like the new Engineering. It was filmed in a brewery, and that's pretty much what it looks like, a brewery. A lot of pipes going everywhere and huge vats that I imagine contained beer. Just a complete departure from the central warp core room that they introduced in the films and TNG. Which hey, what can I say... that worked for me. Also, the ship apparently has several small warp cores, instead of one long tube that runs from the top to the bottom of the secondary hull. The bridge of course is the same general layout, just all decorated Apple-y white. So it was much more familiar and I didn't have a problem with it.
Oooooh, they did change the phasers... that was pretty noticeable. They're still about the same shape and appearance to the Star Trek 5-6 model, but now they actually switch the barrel when you change it from kill to stun. So it'll have a red barrel for kill, and then flip to a blue one for stun. I dunno... probably a concession to appeal more to casual people?
There was something very strange with the USS Kelvin, the Akula-like ship. At the beginning of the movie, it's getting trashed pretty badly. They have to evacuate the entire ship. So, that top part is the secondary hull, with the shuttlebay. Now... this ship launches about 10-15 shuttles out of there with all the survivors. This is supposed to be a thrilling escape scene, yet... all I could think was how the hell did that secondary hull have room for all of those shuttles? Did the shuttlebay take up the entire hull? Where was their Engineering? It was so strange seeing 15 shuttles coming out of that dinky little secondary hull. Was there some sort of mass shifting pocket universe embedded in the Kelvin to store shuttles?
So yea, still pretty overwhelmed by the experience. Go see it, it's a good time at the movies.
It's... very different from previous Trek films. There's some things that stay the same, and a lot that changes. Definitely not gonna replace Wrath of Khan, heh.
The CGI's amazing, of course. That's kinda the most obvious at-a-glance difference. See, this is really hard. My head is swimming with all the crazy stuff that I just saw, but... most of it's gonna be spoilers.
I will say, you should prepare yourself for a lot, I mean a lot of lens flare in this film. It was some sort of cinematic look they were going for, but sometimes the amount of it was just overwhelming. Like, a character will look out of a window, and the sun just pours through the window and completely blots out the screen with yellow flare for a good two to three seconds. That was just kinda "Ok, that's a bit much, thanks."
Yea... the timeline really changes...
They fucking DESTROY VULCAN, WITH SIX BILLION VULCANS! AND AMANDA GREYSON! HOLY SHIT.
Which is mind boggling, but I didn't really feel the impact because you're aware of the time travel, so... maybe it's just me, but I felt myself not reacting to the change when it happened because I was sure that they would use the time travel again at the climax to undo what had happened. It seemed really telegraphed. But then they don't do that at all, which was cool. But by then, the emotional impact of Vulcan being gone was uh, gone. It was just a CGI effect. Did anyone else feel this way?
They do show the Kobayashi Maru, which was really really funny. Maybe a bit too over the top, depending on your mood.
I mean, Kirk's fucking eating a goddamn apple in the scene... that's just insanely over the top. It does work in a comedic manner, but if you've envisioned it happening a different way since 1982 when Wrath of Khan came out, obviously this is gonna take some getting used to.
Just all throughout the film, there are these callbacks to the old series that we know and love. That was really cute and worked for me. Scotty actually saying "I'm giving it all I've got, Capn!" and uh, Spock uttering "When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
We even find out how McCoy got the nickname "Bones."
Not sure how I feel about the new guy playing Spock. It's just really hard to see Spock being played this way. It's much more emotional then we're used to, so that was a shock. And of course, because we actually have Leonard Nimoy playing him too. And the new guy's just got a huge nose. There'd be these closeups of Kirk and Spock eyeing each other, and I'd just focus on how Spock's nose is so much bigger then Kirk's normal sized one. It was just weird.
And yea, it's definitely been a while since I've watched TOS episodes. But I think it's also that when we see Spock being emotional before in TOS, it was usually emotional in a friendly, camaraderie sort of way. Here, he's mostly emotional in an angry way.
Right now I'm looking up who played the Orion girl, cause she was fucking hot. You know how Kirk is...
But uh... that's just minor. Now, there is one relationship in this film that was uh... completely out of nowhere, nothing in canon to support it.
Spock and Uhura? Holy shit! That totally came out of left field for me. Just uh... WTF. I don't think I was the only one in my audience to react that way, either. Not saying that it's a terrible decision though. Just a shocker cause we'd never seen this before in TOS. We'll have to see how the sequels handle this relationship. Still, right now... it's just a huge seismic change.
Nero's not a great villain. Kinda wasted in the story, I think. Just uh... not very memorable.
And his great villainous ship turns out to be just a mining ship. Which doesn't really jive with it being this sinister spidery juggernaut. Seriously, it dwarfs every other ship... I'd estimate it's somewhere from a half to one Borg Cubes in size. No idea why a mining ship needs to be that big. And the inside of it kinda reminded me a little of V'ger. Just a really crazy layout. Again, not sure why a mining ship would look like that.
Oh, know what I didn't expect? New Chekov's accent got almost unbearably comical to listen to. It's strange, cause I've never blinked at old Chekov's thick accent. But hearing it coming out of this young new actor was really grating. I actually burst out laughing when he first talked. Simon Pegg's Scotty was great, he was funny in that same sorta Jimmy Doohan manner back in the day. Just a joy in every scene. McCoy too, Karl Urban really seemed to have researched Kelly's acting mannerisms. Don't believe he ever said "He's dead, Jim" though.
Unfortunately, I've gotta report that this film suffers from the same horrible flaw as Deep Space Nine's big battle scenes... we never see any visible shields. Maybe I missed em, but from what I could see, there were never any shield impact effects. Ships just get torn to pieces from the get-go by torpedoes. I mean, yes, Nero's ship is from the future and is obviously much more powerful then the Starfleet ships. But still, I would've expected to see at least one shield impact before they failed. Hey, if I'm wrong on this... feel free to correct me with screenshots. Prove me wrong, I beg you.
The other strange technical oddity is that transporters can work through shields now. Either that or nobody ever has shields up. One or the other. Just kinda bizarre. Everybody's just transporting to where they need to be.
And wtf was with Kirk and Scott transporting to the Enterprise from the ice planet? I mean, I get that the story needed to send them there, but... you mean to tell me that transporters can now reach ships that have departed a planet at high warp for a couple hours? Really? That's some crazy magic Spock Prime worked on that transporter pad. I just... yea, that really didn't make any sense to me. Transporters have a certain range. And yes, having a guy from the future can certainly improve that range. But it really took me out of the movie when you have a transporter that has that kind of crazy range. Not to mention that like I said before, they seemed to be able to transport through the Enterprise's shields. Or the Enterprise was running with shields down, which would be kinda strange given they were facing a dangerous Romulan that had just destroyed Vulcan.
Annnnnd as far as the aesthetics, I really didn't like the new Engineering. It was filmed in a brewery, and that's pretty much what it looks like, a brewery. A lot of pipes going everywhere and huge vats that I imagine contained beer. Just a complete departure from the central warp core room that they introduced in the films and TNG. Which hey, what can I say... that worked for me. Also, the ship apparently has several small warp cores, instead of one long tube that runs from the top to the bottom of the secondary hull. The bridge of course is the same general layout, just all decorated Apple-y white. So it was much more familiar and I didn't have a problem with it.
Oooooh, they did change the phasers... that was pretty noticeable. They're still about the same shape and appearance to the Star Trek 5-6 model, but now they actually switch the barrel when you change it from kill to stun. So it'll have a red barrel for kill, and then flip to a blue one for stun. I dunno... probably a concession to appeal more to casual people?
There was something very strange with the USS Kelvin, the Akula-like ship. At the beginning of the movie, it's getting trashed pretty badly. They have to evacuate the entire ship. So, that top part is the secondary hull, with the shuttlebay. Now... this ship launches about 10-15 shuttles out of there with all the survivors. This is supposed to be a thrilling escape scene, yet... all I could think was how the hell did that secondary hull have room for all of those shuttles? Did the shuttlebay take up the entire hull? Where was their Engineering? It was so strange seeing 15 shuttles coming out of that dinky little secondary hull. Was there some sort of mass shifting pocket universe embedded in the Kelvin to store shuttles?
So yea, still pretty overwhelmed by the experience. Go see it, it's a good time at the movies.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
X-Men Origins: Wolverine Uncaged: The Game: The Post Part 2
Having now beaten the game... does anyone else think Sabertooth was still the hardest boss? He just never let up. I never feared Deadpool except for the part where he'd optic blast the ground and I might fall off the damn smokestack. But as far as melee combat went, Sabertooth was just vicious. He was always on your ass. Gambit wasn't that bad either, just a matter of learning his ranged attack patterns and not falling off the casino.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
X-Men Origins: Wolverine Uncaged: The Game: The Post
Oh man this game is hella fun. Really great hack and slash action. It's sorta like... Max Payne but instead of guns you've got adamantium claws. Every once in a while you'll pull off a crazy move like slicing a guy's torso in half or whatnot and it'll go into slow mo while the blood splatters everywhere. Never fails to make me laugh. And it's all optimized really well for a PC port. This was made by Raven, so that's to be expected, those guys have been working on PC games for ages. It's just so cool seeing yourself heal back up from getting blown up, with skin growing over exposed ribs and muscle.
The only problem I've noticed so far involves the platforming. It's not really done well, and this one section in particular is super frustrating because you can't quicksave. Games like Assassin's Creed and Prince of Persia really show how bad and outdated this platforming is. But most of the game isn't platforming, it's usually killing soldiers in really brutal ways with your claws. My favorite move is leap, it's a really fast lock-on ability that you can perform from 3 to 40 feet. Just lock on a guy, leap and knock him over, jump up and dive down on him again to kill him, then leap onto the next guy, and rinse and repeat. You can do this to wipe out entire squads at a time. That never gets old.
The only problem I've noticed so far involves the platforming. It's not really done well, and this one section in particular is super frustrating because you can't quicksave. Games like Assassin's Creed and Prince of Persia really show how bad and outdated this platforming is. But most of the game isn't platforming, it's usually killing soldiers in really brutal ways with your claws. My favorite move is leap, it's a really fast lock-on ability that you can perform from 3 to 40 feet. Just lock on a guy, leap and knock him over, jump up and dive down on him again to kill him, then leap onto the next guy, and rinse and repeat. You can do this to wipe out entire squads at a time. That never gets old.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Mass Effect and bug hunts
So uh, reached Peak 15, this underground laboratory that was working on creepy crawly alien thingys. Of course, they all break out and shit hits the fan so you've got these scientists and some security forces holed up with barricades and every once in a while one of the alien bugs will pop out of a grate and try to eat em. Maybe it's just me, but I've got the feeling they were trying to make an Aliens homage with this area. And of course, there's great little touches like how the soldiers have been taking stims to stay awake all the time, and it's adversely affecting their behavior and mindset. Really immersive dialogue. I could spend so much time in this place, it really does feel like they were trying to make an Aliens game in an RPG.
Don't you think it'd be a lot easier if BioWare just didn't have the Paragon/Renegade scale displayed? Then there wouldn't be that annoying habit of trying to go all one way or the other. I was just playing and had to make this huge good/evil choice. My natural response would've been to kill off the Rachni queen. But because that was the "Renegade" option, and I'm trying to go for a full "Paragon" playthrough, I had to pick the other option, which was letting them go.
Because seriously, trying to get the most Paragon points was the only reason I picked that option to let this queen insect go. The Rachni are basically giant space bugs that once almost conquered the galaxy. They're governed by a hive mind, come out of eggs laid by queens... just your standard Alien ripoffs. And here I had the chance to wipe out the last queen. Somehow that was deemed the "evil" choice though.
It's just hard to believe that any rational person in that situation would've been Jesus-like and let that bug go free. Now, this one queen in particular did telepathically communicate with me and say that of course she wasn't going to be like that, she would teach her offspring to exist peacefully, mend their ways, etc. But really, who would just accept the word of this thing? I doubt even Gandhi himself would've been so understanding and trusting of a large space insect. Ya know what, it really reminds me of the TNG episode "I, Borg." Didn't buy Picard's decision in that episode and I don't buy the Paragon choice here.
It was sooo tempting to just hit the Renegade dialogue option and fry the Queen. But BioWare just decided that would be evil and I'd be punished with Renegade points. Seems to me they shouldn't be making judgements in really gray areas like that. I guess I just don't like BioWare pushing their non-genocidal agenda in their games.
Don't you think it'd be a lot easier if BioWare just didn't have the Paragon/Renegade scale displayed? Then there wouldn't be that annoying habit of trying to go all one way or the other. I was just playing and had to make this huge good/evil choice. My natural response would've been to kill off the Rachni queen. But because that was the "Renegade" option, and I'm trying to go for a full "Paragon" playthrough, I had to pick the other option, which was letting them go.
Because seriously, trying to get the most Paragon points was the only reason I picked that option to let this queen insect go. The Rachni are basically giant space bugs that once almost conquered the galaxy. They're governed by a hive mind, come out of eggs laid by queens... just your standard Alien ripoffs. And here I had the chance to wipe out the last queen. Somehow that was deemed the "evil" choice though.
It's just hard to believe that any rational person in that situation would've been Jesus-like and let that bug go free. Now, this one queen in particular did telepathically communicate with me and say that of course she wasn't going to be like that, she would teach her offspring to exist peacefully, mend their ways, etc. But really, who would just accept the word of this thing? I doubt even Gandhi himself would've been so understanding and trusting of a large space insect. Ya know what, it really reminds me of the TNG episode "I, Borg." Didn't buy Picard's decision in that episode and I don't buy the Paragon choice here.
It was sooo tempting to just hit the Renegade dialogue option and fry the Queen. But BioWare just decided that would be evil and I'd be punished with Renegade points. Seems to me they shouldn't be making judgements in really gray areas like that. I guess I just don't like BioWare pushing their non-genocidal agenda in their games.
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