General video game discussion

Bohandas said:

EDIT: That reminds me, does anybody know if there's a word for sequences that are like cutscenes but aren;t cutscenes? Like the part in Half-Life 2 where a bunch of boring people yammer at you in a cave, or the bit at the beginning of Skyrim where your character is a prisoner and a bunch of the other prisoners talk interminably. Like, you can still technically move your character to a degree but you can't actually do anything so it might as well be a cutscene. What's that called? Does anyone know?

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I have often heard them referred to as "walk-and-talk segments", almost always disparagingly

Gradine said:

I have often heard them referred to as "walk-and-talk segments", almost always disparagingly

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I did some googling and it is interesting that there isn't a generally agreed upon term. The best one I could find is "scripted sequence" which is accurate but not very pithy.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has quite a lot of that, but on the other hand they are much more entertaining than the last two movies.

pukunui said:

I am loving Veilguard so far. I don't get why people don't like it.

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Same here.

Most of the hate for Veilguard had little to actually do with the game itself, sadly

Gradine said:

I have often heard them referred to as "walk-and-talk segments", almost always disparagingly

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the only time i've seen that term spoken in a positive manner is when it's in a movie or show lol

trappedslider said:

the only time i've seen that term spoken in a positive manner is when it's in a movie or show lol

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From a game-design standpoint it's basically an unsolvable problem, because what happens if you make the NPC too fast, or too slow, and there's absolutely no way to make them feel good

Gradine said:

Most of the hate for Veilguard had little to actually do with the game itself, sadly

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Yes, I figured a lot of the hate was for reasons we can't discuss here. I do see other criticisms, though - it's "not Dragon Age", it's "too Fortnite", "all the companions get along too well", Rook is "too shallow", etc. Now, I've only been playing it for a little while, but nothing I've seen has made it feel not like Dragon Age to me. I mean, the amount of stuff it builds on from previous games is fantastic.

Also, I've already had to deal with Neve and Harding disagreeing several times, and I've had to give them the "come on, guys, we need to work together as a team, not be at each other's throats" spiel, so I'm not sure what those critics are on about.

I will say that Veilguard feels more like a successor to DAII in both its approach to combat and the fact that you're playing a specific character (even if you can change more of the details than you could with Hawke). Conversely, DA:I felt like more of a successor to DA:O.

And while Veilguard can be very bright and sparkly and magical, it can also go to some very dark places very quickly. D'Meta Crossing was disturbing after the beauty of Arlathan Forest. More disturbing in many ways than the blight-riddled Deep Roads in DA:O because of the improved graphics and more up-close nature of the game.

The only thing I don't like so far is the Primer/Detonator combo thing, but I expect that will just take some getting used to on my part.

(BTW, my Rook is a female elf Grey Warden mage aiming for Spellblade. I like that my first three companions are all women, too. The ladies are saving Thedas!)

Gradine said:

From a game-design standpoint it's basically an unsolvable problem, because what happens if you make the NPC too fast, or too slow, and there's absolutely no way to make them feel good

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One thing that always annoys me is when the game forces me to walk with an NPC because that NPC will, without fail, always walk slower than me, so I have to keep starting and stopping so they don't fall behind (or I end up continually bumping into them from behind).

pukunui said:

Yes, I figured a lot of the hate was for reasons we can't discuss here. I do see other criticisms, though - it's "not Dragon Age", it's "too Fortnite", "all the companions get along too well", Rook is "too shallow", etc. Now, I've only been playing it for a little while, but nothing I've seen has made it feel not like Dragon Age to me. I mean, the amount of stuff it builds on from previous games is fantastic.

Also, I've already had to deal with Neve and Harding disagreeing several times, and I've had to give them the "come on, guys, we need to work together as a team, not be at each other's throats" spiel, so I'm not sure what those critics are on about.

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It's almost like those critiques weren't being made in good faith!

pukunui said:

The only thing I don't like so far is the Primer/Detonator combo thing, but I expect that will just take some getting used to on my part.

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The thing is, this exact mechanic has been conceptually in the series from the beginning, just never quite so explicit. But my Origins Mage Grey Warden was taking advantage of so many status effect combos (a personal favorite was Sleep + Nightmare)

pukunui said:

One thing that always annoys me is when the game forces me to walk with an NPC because that NPC will, without fail, always walk slower than me, so I have to keep starting and stopping so they don't fall behind (or I end up continually bumping into them from behind).

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The problem is that the NPC must be slower than you, because if they are faster than you than you will inevitably get left behind. Even if they move at your exact speed, any stepping off the path means there's no chance of catching up. This is what I mean when I call it an unsolvable problem. The only good solution is a bad solution (or to stop doing talk-and-walks altogether, which honestly, at this point...?)

Gradine said:

From a game-design standpoint it's basically an unsolvable problem, because what happens if you make the NPC too fast, or too slow, and there's absolutely no way to make them feel good

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Though there are certainly ways to make them feel worse. In games with mouse-and-keyboard control the classic one is to make the NPCs move faster than your character's walking pace, but slower than your running pace, ensuring you have to stop-and-start no matter what.

Fortunately less of an issue with analogue controllers on console, which do let you match your pace to the NPC, and some more recent titles have got better at it, letting your character set the pace while the NPC matches you and timing out the dialogue and distance so that it will conclude around the time you reach your destination if you maintain a fast pace.