#is the game being dumbed down?

88 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

spice wyvern
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I feel like since i last played, everything has been dumbed down or made for children or just flat out worse, altered items instead of actually looking altered just turn black, voice acting make everything seems made for children with the guide making the lore more on the nose already with "they are evil" talk, the voice actors also do not seem well fit to the setting both sounding really generic instead of matching the setting of the Russian military radius, im not asking for Russian accents or generic COD general voices but they seem to out of place for the setting, and the artifacts just seem like recycled good altered objects instead of the actual interesting shapes of the older artifacts. I dont know maybe im tweaking but i feel like if this is the path the game is going, then it'll seem overly generic.

lyric sinew
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So true

torn inlet
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I have no clue why they changed the artifact or altered items.

Very odd choice

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And yes, the NPCs are bad.

wild trench
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I’m standing by this beta being an elaborate april fools joke and late april being the actual release date

torn inlet
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I'm really hoping they have two versions of the narrative fully built, and they launched this one to test the waters. And have a completely separate idea for the release as a fall back

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But that's really optimistic lol

pliant vigil
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God, no, I hope they won't give any of the characters a "Russian" accent! Couldn't finish the VR Metro game because of it, It sounds just SO dumb!

merry harness
merry harness
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They wouldn't develop 2 entirely different builds in parallel just to test a release they know will be inferior to the other

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It would be a massive waste of development and resources, and as this update has only been in development since around September, they would not have had time

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Our best hope is that they see the backlash and take it to heart, and at the very least try to meet us halfway. It would be a lot of work for them to just scrap and start anew, so unfortunately I have an inkling we're stuck with the NPCs in some regard - maybe they'll get a rewrite or something but I wouldn't hold your breath Explorer_Copium

wintry flicker
wintry flicker
merry harness
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Im sorry

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But it's true

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We probably aren't getting an actual redo of the narrative

near iris
pliant vigil
# near iris we're in eastern europe of course theres going to be fuckin russians

I'm not talking about Russians talking Russian. I'm talking about supposed Russians talking English with this dumb fake "Russian" accent out of old mafia movies 🤦‍♂️
Nobody talks like that, it's no more real than the Hollywood "mockney" accent.
And if they want actual Russians, make them speak Russian.

(Then again, Eastern Europe = Russian is kinda rich, I wonder what Poland, Ukraine or Estonia would thinking about that 🤔)

near iris
hushed rose
wild trench
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ok but ngl some statues saying random things in russian would be pretty dope

uncut igloo
merry harness
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which means it was a conscious choice to cast Frat boy #87342836426 and American woman #3333333

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over... any location suitable VA

low swift
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so true oh my god 80% of 1.0 feels like it was made for kids on cocomelon

agile fossil
# merry harness Our best hope is that they see the backlash and take it to heart, and at the ver...

As a professional developer I know the reality is probably going to be bad news.

More dev time kills profit so unless they really weigh bad reviews against lost sales and say it's worth it there won't be major changes.

Kinda I'm hoping that they had a teen intern do the script/voices for an April Fools joke and the real stuff is coming for 1.0 full release.

I'm hopeful, but I'm sure it's a real long shot.

merry harness
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We'll just have to see. CM have been very responsive to feedback in the past so there's some hope at least

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I think the April fools angle is dead though it's been too long for that to still be the case

fast torrent
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to mirror what Kevin said a bit... even back into itr1 the majority of our feedback has always been tweaks, additions, mostly content type stuff since they've hit it out of the park on MAJOR design choices without fail.

the story itself and the characters is kind of a core mechanic of the game... so I'll gladly be wrong but seems like we have a good look at where its all going

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teehee the radius is whatevs bro lets go!

low swift
low swift
fast torrent
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i love that yall document what was said in the dev diaries, its really helpful for this case

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the community has the power to actually be like "yeah... but..."

elfin goblet
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They're probably trying to do the hl2 thing where cutscenes that remove your control are very few and far between and are pretty short

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But the thing is with that game you always had something to do during the story segments

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You could fuck around with stuff in the area

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And the NPCs didn't look like they were staring off into space

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Locking the player in a small area with nothing to do other than listen to an NPC exposition dump is effectively taking control away from the player without saying you're doing it.

merry harness
vale island
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It’s specifically the expedition dumping and the recapping that gets me. Like. I know what I just did why are you explaining what I just did back to me.
Please I beg let me think for myself. The game does best when it doesn’t answer your questions. When you have to theorize about why the radius did X or how something came to be for yourself.

torn inlet
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Hey Buddy! You are in the radius! You have shoes on! See that gun on yoir hip, if you press the trigger it will shoot a bullet.

vale island
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Hey you just went through portals and shot things. Did you know that you shot things and went through portals?

wintry flicker
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“Buddy, why are you frustrated, it seems that you probably want to sit here for another 15 minutes and listen to that one time I got pants’d in middle school, huh buddy? That will fix it”

low swift
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"whats good my origional gangster! you just shot your gun? oh hey did i telly you sir you have a gun! and if you shoot it, it shoots!! bestn go headn use it or else the bad guys will grip your butt"

finite rock
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Yeah the guide is very annoying and despite his name, really doesnt guide you worth a damn lol

vale island
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I wish he was more vague

merry harness
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We dont even need a guide we have all the information we need on our twblet

cold wyvern
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To be honest, I couldn't care less. I'm a special case anyways. But I find the Altered Items... they don't bother me. Makes the other Artifacts look more rare and perhaps the old special Artifacts are now some legendary, deep into the Raidus loot for further special missions.
But yes, Lauri is... idk, he sounds anoying. Maybe it's because his voice is made with Ai? that's what I was thinking. Not being able to skip the tutorial is actually worse.

wintry flicker
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Somehow

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It isn’t ai

cold wyvern
wintry dagger
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I think while the guide can be nice they don't do it well at all on top of that this has never really been that type of game. There has been no face to face npcs in the first game. Unless they can fix this guy they can remove him from the game. He's just so annoying to deal with. Same with the terminal lady. I learned to accept and finish all side missions before main one because of how annoying she is to work with. I get they want to do something but make it less invasive.

wintry flicker
wintry flicker
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And make him less irritating

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And make the supervisor skippable

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And make her talk less

finite rock
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Yeah the guide honestly should just be removed in my opinion. ITR1 didn't have any stupid stuff like that, personally I think the story mode is actually taking away from the original feel of the game

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He doesn't add anything impactful to any experience so far. He's just annoying, cringe and takes away from the vast wasteland feeling of being alone in solo and multiplayer, which is ironic.

Now we just have Navi 2.0 from Zelda, except you can't skip the dialogue. Like he actually hasn't even explained what that compass you pick up was supposed to do earlier in the game, he acts like it's an actual useable item or something

low swift
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also like everything is just labeled as “altered” now
32 altered cubes (their textured just look broken unintentionally) and then i die in altered water

just feels dumbed down that it used to be

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like im a toddler and anything more would be too complicated for me to understand

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tbh i felt the same about spawns being changed to creeps, just sounds worse, but its not that bad, dont mind spawns staying creeps at all (although the name change doesnt make any sense)

but 1.0 takes that and now cm thinks im a 3 year old

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this game used to scare me 🪫
i mean it was more eerie and unsettling than outright scary, or tense

even when lauri isnt on screen the entire mood is killed by his presence

low swift
fast torrent
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because its creating the casual little fun environment these characters are guiding the game towards

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totally wrong play but

tardy parcel
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Hey, listen!

low swift
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i mean like as a character
why would you want to enter the radius 😭
the radius is never idolized, its a shit place for practically the damned

horrors lie here someone in her position should know that

finite rock
# low swift i mean like as a character why would you want to enter the radius 😭 the radius...

Practically like The Zone from STALKER, nobody wants to be in the Zone but it's a necessity to live. Except for Evas case because she's a desk jockey lmao, she might think she wants to but she doesnt

Except right now in ITR there doesn't even seem to be a real reason we're in the Radius besides whatever shit Lauri spews (which I just tune out now) and to find out the root cause of the Radius I think? Which would be cool if the Radius felt like the ITR 1 Radius did.

In ITR1 you learned what happened from environmental story telling and notes, the whispers of the people frozen in ash, things like that. Now we have Eva being a high school girl dropping random exposition and Lauri being Navi 2.0

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Where are areas like the Police Station in ITR 1? The Armory? Everything in ITR2 is just a tiny house or a broken down location filled with portals, there are no big actual factories or locations that are landmarks per say, except the church

wintry flicker
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How hard is it to remake the itr1 artifacts?

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Like c'mon

wintry flicker
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Like shaking

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Terrified when I heard them surrounding a building I was in

low swift
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itr1 artifacts where so cool im so sad they where left behind

jagged fable
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In places that would have those objects. But because they just plopped them into the old anomaly fields you find anomalous playing cubes out in the middle of nowhere

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and it feels dumb

sterile blade
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I wouldn't mind a mix of American and Russian because it kinda is a "coalition" of people in this worldscape. That and having us being born in the Russian side would make sense for us to understand it with Subtitles lol

hushed rose