would it be possible to have a 3rd person view for those who would like to see it that way? Kinda how battlefront does it
THIS, basically something fallout style, not necessairly during combats, but just while walking around, would be a big gain for tp lovers.would it be possible to have a 3rd person view for those who would like to see it that way? Kinda how battlefront does it
Okay, let's see if I can put things into words properly.
First off, I like what I see in general. The game looks like it will be fun. The graphics are nice. The sound is alright.
My issues:
1) It's a shooter.
That's not a terrible thing. It's just that the game was being promoted as an RPG. And it doesn't really feel like it. It feels like a shooter with RPG elements, like what Mass Effect turned into. A game that's all about player reflexes, and running around putting tons of bullets into enemies (which is another issue I'll get into in a second). Where your character isn't really a character full of skills like in a PnP, but rather just a gathering of various combat abilities to spam in battle and make fights easier.
We saw that there was some non-combat skills (the hacking/engineering). But they didn't really have much depth to them. Open a door or reroute power, and, okay. The player has little interaction in the process as well. It's just like flipping a light switch if you have the skill points in there or not. That feels a little... simplistic. But that's something else I will go into.
Basically, the game looks like a decently fun shooter, like Mass Effect or Dishonored, but doesn't really strike that RPG chord.
2) Bullet sponges.
I find this to be incredibly disappointing. I was expecting combat to be quick and lethal (as would be with the PnP). Where a couple of well placed shots takes down an enemy, or the player. A game where defense and evasion is key to survival. Instead, we just have massively inflated health pools that just soak up damage until someone falls over. And that's... very lame. And just feels completely against the system this is supposed to be based on.
You shouldn't be able to put 10 rounds into random enemies. 2-3 shots should incapacitate or kill most enemies. A single headshot should be an instant kill. And this should apply to the player too. It should keep the life or death feel of combat that the PnP tries to capture. Instead we just have more spongy enemies like in any Doom or Wolfenstein game.
A player's weapon skill should affect their accuracy and the damage they can do (better skill means better aim, meaning you're more likely to hit a critical area). Gunfights should be fast, hectic and very very lethal.
While a system similar to the VATS system from Fallout would be nice, to capture the RPG nature of the combat (basing hit chances on skill and not just reflexes), SOMETHING needs to be done to bring the combat around to something more RPG-like. And the massive damage enemies (and player) take just spits in the eye of that.
3) Boss fights
I'm not opposed to boss fights. In fact I like the idea of facing off against a really tough opponent. But they should be tough because they're lethal, or have abilities above what you do. Not simply because they have a hundred times the health of the normal bullet sponges.
Giving the boss a weak spot to shoot is also kind of out of place. This isn't Zelda or Metroid. I can kind of give it a pass if you're saying there's some energy shield around an enemy and you need to hit device to bring it down. That's... alright, though the amount of bullets that had to be pumped into the thing is ridiculous. As is the damage he could take after it went down. The boss was in a power suit that didn't cover his cheat or head, so a single headshot should have instantly ended the fight.
Rather than the boss simply being even more of a sponge, you should make him harder to hit. And give him attacks that are difficult to deal with and force you to keep moving (and thus making it harder to get a clean shot off). Again, this just feels like it's completely counter to the base material. You want to make the boss tough? Give him combat armor, dermal plating, make him hard to get a shot into. And hell, give HIM a smartgun, so that you're forced to keep moving otherwise you'll get shredded. THAT is a boss fight. A slow moving sponge that you just sit there emptying clips into until he falls over is just pathetic.
4) Either the player's a god or enemies are pathetic.
So you go into warehouse full of guys who have taken cyber enhancing to crazy levels. Well, they should all be incredibly dangerous then, right? Nope. They're all just moving targets with tons of health that you take down one after another. Don't see anyone with massive armor that your bullets practically bounce off of. Don't see anyone moving at super speeds like the player can. Don't see anyone using any sort of special abilities or tactics. They're just standing around, occasionally ducking behind cover, and mostly just serving as a waste of time.
Even before the player is given all the high end abilities to show off, they flat out slaughter the first batch of enemies they come across without effort. Just a lot of bullets because of the aforementioned bullet sponge problem.
And the one enemy standing next to the smartgun. Why the hell didn't he just pick it up and use it? If there's something in the area an enemy can use against you, they should be doing it. That would make sense. And it would give some sort of stealth gameplay more purpose other than "I don't want to waste time shooting all these grunts". You could sneak through, take the better gear, disable weapons, and do useful things, and then decide to shoot up the place once they're crippled.
5) The skills seem too simplistic.
I'm not saying that everything needs a minigame like most games do. Sure, lockpicking or Fallout's hacking minigame is entertaining. But it's not a requirement. But just a straight number check to see if something is possible or not seems far too simplistic. You're emulating a PnP with dice rolls and such. So that take into account.
Instead of just "Do you have X amount of points?" to determine if something works, make it percentage based. So a lock has X difficulty, and the player has Y skill. That would determine the percentage chance of success. The game would then make a random roll to find the result. The better the player is, the easier the roll (to the point where a maxed out skill makes many checks pretty much guaranteed). And there could be risks involved. Failed rolls could just make the player have to take the time to try again (which when chasing a target or trying to escape can lead to varying outcomes). Or possibly have very bad rolls lead to panels shorting out, locks getting jammed, etc. Maybe even feedback from electrical devices.
Give the skills more of an RPG feel where the character is doing something, rather than simply being a skeleton key that unlocks all related interactions.
6) The brain hacking looked unwieldly.
We weren't shown too much about how the system works, but just from what we saw, that interface looked like a horrific mess. Maybe it's a lot simpler than it seems, but it looked like there were tons of options in there, with different layers, and abilities in layers, and selections all over the place. The demo guy just kind of jumped right to something specific and didn't really show off much. But hopefully that system is made a lot more user friendly than it looks.
7) The dialogue options were weak.
Sorry, but why were most dialogue choices either "Yes" or "Question"? It looked like most things were basically "skip all story and just accept whatever" or "ask a question for lore". I was expecting far better. I was expecting to see a whole lot of choices for every conversation. Not just in whether to blindly accept things or ask stuff, but in HOW to respond. Where's the "Yes", "Yes, but I want more pay", "Yes, but I don't trust you", "Give me details first", "Frag off slot face" options? Where is the supposed choice the player is supposed to have in how to approach any situation?
And hell, when they went in to talk to the gang, where was the option to say that Militech was waiting outside to screw them over? Where's our option to work with the gang and stick it to the corp instead of just dealing with what was obviously a scripted boss fight?
8) We're forced to cyber up.
That was very disappointing to see. The player is forced to get various cyber upgrades, whether they want to or not. So nobody gets to have the "purist" route where they keep their body clear of tech.
9) Damage popup as we're fighting.
More of a minor nitpick, but I don't like seeing the damage numbers popping up as we shove endless bullets down a target's throat. Just one of those immersion killing things.
10) A lot of the text seems hard to read.
There's a number of scenes where info is flashing around the screen quickly, and then disappears (like when scanning the woman at the start). It's kind of annoying to have tons of text appearing and not having a chance to really see what it's all saying. Admittedly a lot of it isn't really useful text, but still, some people like to get all those little details in.
11) Random floaty text seems odd.
The odd enemy or NPC would say something now and then that got floating text over their head. For one, the colour seemed super bright (that neon cyan colour), though I would hope that could be adjusted.
But it just seems out of place with the whole immersion thing. I think it would be far better if speech you pick up was just shown at the bottom of the screen like other stuff.
1) It's a shooter.
That's not a terrible thing. It's just that the game was being promoted as an RPG. And it doesn't really feel like it. It feels like a shooter with RPG elements, like what Mass Effect turned into. A game that's all about player reflexes, and running around putting tons of bullets into enemies (which is another issue I'll get into in a second). Where your character isn't really a character full of skills like in a PnP, but rather just a gathering of various combat abilities to spam in battle and make fights easier.
We saw that there was some non-combat skills (the hacking/engineering). But they didn't really have much depth to them. Open a door or reroute power, and, okay. The player has little interaction in the process as well.
7) The dialogue options were weak.
Sorry, but why were most dialogue choices either "Yes" or "Question"? It looked like most things were basically "skip all story and just accept whatever" or "ask a question for lore". I was expecting far better. I was expecting to see a whole lot of choices for every conversation. Not just in whether to blindly accept things or ask stuff, but in HOW to respond. Where's the "Yes", "Yes, but I want more pay", "Yes, but I don't trust you", "Give me details first", "Frag off slot face" options? Where is the supposed choice the player is supposed to have in how to approach any situation?
And hell, when they went in to talk to the gang, where was the option to say that Militech was waiting outside to screw them over? Where's our option to work with the gang and stick it to the corp instead of just dealing with what was obviously a scripted boss fight?
Along with some other points.[...]
8) We're forced to cyber up.
That was very disappointing to see. The player is forced to get various cyber upgrades, whether they want to or not. So nobody gets to have the "purist" route where they keep their body clear of tech. [...]
No real interactions with NPCs.