Ruin Explorer
Legend
Only played like 40 minutes so far but first impressions:
1) Visual design is absolute top-notch and more imaginative and frankly skilled than BGS with FO4 itself. Particularly of note they profoundly get what "works" with a British setting and what doesn't. So we don't have the Pip-Boy itself nor the character. The general technology vibe is less 1950s pastiche as Bethesda Fallouts and more 1960s/1970s, which is appropriate because that's the most dystopian British tech has ever looked (the computers even look kind of very early 1980s, but it really works). As a Londoner, there's just loads of stuff they've nailed, like what public rubbish bins look like in the City (theirs being a Fallout-ish version but clearly recognisable), and they've redesigned so much in ways that I really didn't expect.
2) The sound design is mostly great. Some of the SFX are questionable but the music is fun and on-point including a distorted version of Big Ben's chimes in one of the tunes, and a fair bit of ominous bonging in general, which whilst heard less now, was absolutely a feature of British life for a long time. The ominous jingle is particularly good.
3) The voice-acting is mostly solid, but there are places where it feels like people were chosen specifically for being able to do a particularly British voice, but like, can't act at all - unfortunately one of the main characters in the intro bit of the game is like this (Ms Smythe).
4) The writing is the biggest let-down. It's not consistently bad, but a lot of it has a "written by an enthusiastic teenager who has never actually bothered to read or learn anything about how to write well, and doesn't like editing or re-visiting his work" vibe. Not all of it - but it is surprisingly how much at the front of the game is like this. Even the intro sequence includes a "because... [text]... because...", repetitive run-on sentence, something I'd been taught to avoid by 14. This is sad because this is the place it's most obviously significantly worse than an actual game so far, and I feel like there were probably good writers who wanted to work on this, but they'd already picked bad ones or something. It could massively benefit from a professional re-write. Concepts aren't the problem, to be clear, nor the plot so far (and indeed I doubt it will be), just dialogue and especially stuff like computer terminal writing.
I also have an very early spoilers geography question because: It seems like we're in London Bridge station, because everything says London Bridge station, and looking at the Atta-boy map, it appears we're south of the river, as you'd expect. And then we get on either the overground or an overground bit of the tube (it looks like the latter), and it really looks like we go and head across what really looks like the Thames (i.e. travelling north across London Bridge). But then the train fades to black and crashes, and we're in Lewisham (where the train has crashed), which is south of the river, not across any big rivers from London Bridge station. I guess maybe we were supposed to be north of the river going south, but that doesn't make any sense because that'd be Monument, also the map didn't show that, it showed us pretty much where'd expect London Bridge station to be (more or less). And this also didn't seem like just an error you'd make. So either the fade to black was meant to have the train suddenly reversing, or the big river wasn't supposed to be the Thames (which makes a small amount of sense given what appeared to be Canary Wharf was on the left). Very odd anyway, maybe I just need to redo that section and see if I can make sense of it.
1) Visual design is absolute top-notch and more imaginative and frankly skilled than BGS with FO4 itself. Particularly of note they profoundly get what "works" with a British setting and what doesn't. So we don't have the Pip-Boy itself nor the character. The general technology vibe is less 1950s pastiche as Bethesda Fallouts and more 1960s/1970s, which is appropriate because that's the most dystopian British tech has ever looked (the computers even look kind of very early 1980s, but it really works). As a Londoner, there's just loads of stuff they've nailed, like what public rubbish bins look like in the City (theirs being a Fallout-ish version but clearly recognisable), and they've redesigned so much in ways that I really didn't expect.
2) The sound design is mostly great. Some of the SFX are questionable but the music is fun and on-point including a distorted version of Big Ben's chimes in one of the tunes, and a fair bit of ominous bonging in general, which whilst heard less now, was absolutely a feature of British life for a long time. The ominous jingle is particularly good.
3) The voice-acting is mostly solid, but there are places where it feels like people were chosen specifically for being able to do a particularly British voice, but like, can't act at all - unfortunately one of the main characters in the intro bit of the game is like this (Ms Smythe).
4) The writing is the biggest let-down. It's not consistently bad, but a lot of it has a "written by an enthusiastic teenager who has never actually bothered to read or learn anything about how to write well, and doesn't like editing or re-visiting his work" vibe. Not all of it - but it is surprisingly how much at the front of the game is like this. Even the intro sequence includes a "because... [text]... because...", repetitive run-on sentence, something I'd been taught to avoid by 14. This is sad because this is the place it's most obviously significantly worse than an actual game so far, and I feel like there were probably good writers who wanted to work on this, but they'd already picked bad ones or something. It could massively benefit from a professional re-write. Concepts aren't the problem, to be clear, nor the plot so far (and indeed I doubt it will be), just dialogue and especially stuff like computer terminal writing.
I also have an very early spoilers geography question because: It seems like we're in London Bridge station, because everything says London Bridge station, and looking at the Atta-boy map, it appears we're south of the river, as you'd expect. And then we get on either the overground or an overground bit of the tube (it looks like the latter), and it really looks like we go and head across what really looks like the Thames (i.e. travelling north across London Bridge). But then the train fades to black and crashes, and we're in Lewisham (where the train has crashed), which is south of the river, not across any big rivers from London Bridge station. I guess maybe we were supposed to be north of the river going south, but that doesn't make any sense because that'd be Monument, also the map didn't show that, it showed us pretty much where'd expect London Bridge station to be (more or less). And this also didn't seem like just an error you'd make. So either the fade to black was meant to have the train suddenly reversing, or the big river wasn't supposed to be the Thames (which makes a small amount of sense given what appeared to be Canary Wharf was on the left). Very odd anyway, maybe I just need to redo that section and see if I can make sense of it.
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