Adventure Game Development - Chitchat

I've yet to finish assrim (skyrim). I originally own it on the Xbox 360. I spent 20+ hours of that after the tutorial bit at the beginning literally just walking randomly around the massive map. I really should have focused on the story quests more as I ended up getting bored & quit the name never to open it again.

I recently bought the legendary edition in a sale with all the dlc for about €5, so I might install that on Steam & give it another go at some point, but following the story this time, but first I've still to finish the 5 million Riddler collectables & challenges in Batman Arkham Knight, before I move onto anything else...

P.S: I've not played Shadow of the Colossus". Heard it was supposed to be pretty good? Though I guess it doesn't matter either way as I know longer have a PS2 - died a few years back & I've already got a backlog on Steam alone of about 300 games & almost 3000 TV show episodes to catch up on.

P.P.S: I'm also interested in exploring too. I already mentioned Skyrim. I did the same thing in Fallout 3 & New Vegas as well - the only difference being is that I managed to finish both of those games unlike Dragons Dogma (surprisingly nice game) that I ended up exploring too much & got trapped in a large open space area full of enemies & monsters that were levels & levels stronger than me & I kept dying while trying to make my way back, so I gave up in the end on that. I do prefer shorter games with more focus on story than exploration mind, though I just finished INFRA which was nothing but exploring.

Heard it was supposed to be pretty good? Though I guess it doesn't matter either way as I know longer have a PS2

It was available for PS3 (with "Ico" from the same developers) as a double feature game pack. Unfortunally the two-player-mode of "Ico" doesn't work any longer.

I love both of them, because there is a lot of morality. You have to ask yourself what "good" and "evil" could be. Both games hasn't a really good ending, but it's ok. The world isn't true realistic, more some kind of a "foggy" graphic (they must have some restrictions in details because of the PS2-engine...). The soundtrack of "Colossus" is great, I have heart it for years again and again...

I went with xbox 360 instead of ps3. Owned both original xbox & ps2 at one point, but rarely played on the ps2. Played a few Final Fantasy games on it & that's about it I think & I never finished any of them - not finished any since FF9 on ps1. Never really had a lot of games for ps2.

Also, not played "Ico" either. I think the type of games I played the most on consoles were probably stuff like first person shooters (call of duty, battlefield, mirror's edge, farcry. etc) & third person sandbox games like GTA, Red Dead Redemption & Saints Row - oh & the Tomb Raider games of course.

My dad over in the UK has a PS3. I think he said he recently bought PS4 as well, so I'm looking forward to trying out Uncharted 4 & Last of Us Remastered Edition the next time I'm over there. I've played all the Uncharted games & Last of Us, Heavy Rain & Beyond Two Souls on my previous visits, hence why I've never bothered buying a ps3 myself & now I have a pretty powerful custom built pc, so I don't need to bother with consoles for the most part - though I'm going to be super pissed if the FF7 remake doesn't come to PC at some point (probably won't as Sony are twats when it comes to Sony PS bloody exclusives) - game will probably be shit anyway as I've heard they are replacing a lot of the core mechanics with the ones from the newer titles, which is a shame as I liked the old turn based system & materia stuff. It was nice & easy for me to understand. Too many choices in the newer titles.

I played FF9 with a PS1 memory adapter - but it was ... let me say ... worse. I can't finish...

And then Final Fantasy X was a miracle. It has the most illogical story ever, the most stupid gameplay (with typical FF-fight music, the same all the time...), hours of boring cut scenes with nonsense dialogs, an average graphic, and the main character is an idiot and runs like a drunken chicken ... but we all loved it. I don't know why.

Maybe because it was new at that time. OK, the rendering movie scenes were great, state of the art. The world was big, colourful, and the characters were funny and talked a lot. I think FFX was like the old (the only!) Star Trek series  - you must love it or hate it.

At the end you can fight against the "judge" (I think, he was only in the German version?) and it was a fight about three hours, the most stupid fight I ever did ... and you get nothing for it. Just for fun.

FFX has some side quests and missions to play it again and again. It wasn't - of course - an adventure game, but it has a tear-jerking story, seven main characters with own history, a lot of strange locations and a take-a-break fight system you can drink coffee if you need. It was boring sometimes because it was a mixture between adventure, movie and join-the-party-game, but this adventure part could be the reason to be so successful (so they made the FFX-2, but it was a flop, I think). If you take away the fighting part, FFX could be an useful adventure...

There are only a few games I would play again (Riven, Last of Us, Mass Effect, Portal, Bioshock, Monkey Island, Colossus), - but FFX is one of them.

edit: Please don't talk about Blitzball! DON'T!

The only FF game I have every truly liked is FF7. It was actually the first FF game I ever played. I borrowed it from my neighbor when I was (actually not sure how old I was, but it was probably the year after FF7 was released) & I literally played it for 4 hours straight without saving (because for some reason I didn't have a memory card) until I died during the fight where you're trying to prevent the plates from being dropped down on sector 7.

I think I've played through the game fully twice & at least made 2 or 3 other attempts over the years of fully playing through it, but for some reason I always make it near-ish to the end (could go fight the boss) but for some reason I always decide to go off & finish all the side quests & level up materia & stuff & end up getting bored & moving onto something else. FF7 story made no sense at all for the most part & the graphics were painful to look at. Funny blocky characters during main game parts, then semi-decent ones for fight sequences & then you had random video cut-scenes in which the characters sometimes looked ok & then sometimes they looked like the blocky things from in-game. Maybe it was a budget thing or the developers just couldn't be bothered. If FF7 had FF8 graphics I would have been very very happy, not that those are that great either, but at least the people looked like people.

I don't remember how far I got in FFX. I know I got even less further in FFX-2 because it was pretty dumb. Didn't care for 12 at all & 13 was very linear & full of lengthy cut-scenes every 2 minutes. I ended up getting stuck on a boss fight after about 20 hours playtime - I think it was on top of some tower (supposedly the game gets a little more open world after that bit, but I just don't have the patience to grind level up my characters so they are strong enough to beat the boss. Bleh!)

I'm a big fan of the Portal games & Mass Effect. Really considering installing Mass Effect series & playing through them (maybe as Commander Shephard this time instead of custom character) while I wait for Mass Effect Andromeda to come out.

I think, a good story can save the game, but a good story only isn't enough to pay €60.

I played FF13-1 and FF13-2 up to the middle, because I want to know what happens to Lightning and Vanille (which are pretty sexy...), but it wasn't enough to stand all this millions of monster-fightings only to level up. There are some good places to level up and after some hours passing through and through getting stronger the game become stupid.
After all it was only pushing the x-button... forget all special attacks and combos, ... take too much time...

I loved "Lara Croft" (2013, PS3), because the game has a good mix of fights, details, puzzles, side-quests, challenges, lurking, story and character design. The graphic is wonderful (mostly) and later the switch between levels to go to another challenge is user-friendly. After the fights the enemies often disappear so you can research the world without trouble. The story starts promising, but it doesn't make the most of the plot. Some time events are nerve-racking and sometimes there are too many bloody corpses lying around (what the hell where do they all come from and look as dead as 10 years before...?).

I think, "The Last of Us" shows the new way to tell stories: with broken characters growing up and questions of morality and mankind. There is only a simple story without real decisions, but with a lot of atmosphere and emotions. I think, this emotions (remember FFVII: Aeris...) make the game.
If the player can really decide (not to kill the doctor or save the friend..) then it would be the best game for years.

"Mass Effect" is on the best way to allow decisions with different story lines, but the story is still linear. I'm waiting for the next generation...

Tomb Raider 2013 almost got it right. It's a great game with great graphics. Just a shame there wasn't much of the navigational puzzles from the other games where you need to figure out how to get around the different levels. Is was definitely more action oriented than previous titles. One thing I found amusing was how she reacted to killing the deer, then her first human kill, then 5 minutes later we get to go on a mass killing spree stalking & taking out people in cold blood with a bow & arrow like some super assassin.

I borrowed Rise of the Tomb Raider to play on 360, but wasn't keen on it because the graphics looked dire because you could tell it had been optimized for PS4 & PC, so just like FarCry 4 it was an inferior port with worse graphics than previous entry. There was some elements I liked in Rise of the Tomb Raider such as the improved crafting system & side quests, but the story-line was a little cheesy due to the very cheesy bad guy & his dialogs. It kind of felt more like the shitty bad guys featured in some of the earlier Tomb Raider games like Legends & Underworld. Cliché stereotyping.

Now, The Last of Us for me was brilliant. Played through it twice & even played the DLC which was nice. Nothing much happened in the DLC other than the 2 girls chatting away & playing around. I think I must have spent about 20+ minutes in the costume/toy store bit just to squeeze as much of their dialog out as possible because it was amusing to watch them playing around & trying on the different masks & stuff without a care in the world.

I think The Last of Us would also have worked without the clickers. It could have just been a post-apocalyptic game similar to the movie "The Road" about 2 people trying to go from point a to point b & having to deal with all the crazies & things a post-apocalyptic world chucks their way, but I guess they wanted it to be more of a horror game.

I liked the little talking bits between the 2 characters & the giraffe bit (which I missed on first play through as I was too busy looking around for secret collectables & stuff).

I rarely bothered buying anything new on console as I never played online, so mostly waited for stuff to come down in price or bought it second hand. I wait for sales on pc too, even though I do play some multi-player games (battlefield, rocket league, borderlands, etc).

I haven't an PS3 online account (it isn't possible because of cloned hardware. We wanted a backup of all the datas. That's a usual way make backups from your PC-harddisk - the disk can die, can't it?, but Sony doesn't allow this...), so I haven't been online for some years. I can't play this "The Last of Us" DLC, but my sister did it on her own playstation. I hate this Sony politic to carry the playstation to a friend to play a game - it's a NO GO!!!

The DLC is a really warm love-story and shows the story before TLoU. Not that easy to play with Ellie, but I liked it very much.

Your are right with "Lara Croft": there is more action than puzzles. Yeah, the bad guy... the developers must show every time that --> HE IS <-- the bad guy. Don't forget: he is the bad guy! Yes! Bad guy! He! Have you ever heart: there is a bad guy... BTW: Lara Croft became a bad woman, I think. She is similar to Ellie killing enemies if necessary without tears at the end but she knows she is worse. Waiting for "TLoU Part2"... ;-)

Is there a Last of Us 2 in development? I was pretty blown away by the game because I took into account what games Naughty Dog are most famous for developing (before Uncharted series), which are the Crash Bandicoot games. When you take that into account, it really shows how far they have come. Oh, there's a trailer on their website for Last of Us Part 2. Will check that out later on. Thanks for the heads up. There's supposed to be a movie in development too.

There was still no reason for making the bad guy cheesy. Why are they always so egotistical, clichéd & over the top with their speeches & acting? what's wrong with being subtle?

An interesting video about game design.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1_zmx-wU0U

I just read "The Art of Game Design" by Jesse Schell within 4 Days and I must say, he has plenty to say to our discussion ;D