Tag Archive for ‘Characters’

Tag Archive for 'Characters'

REVIEW: ‘Crysis’ Pushes Graphics, Lacks Depth

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on August 13, 2008

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Crysis made its name as a graphical powerhouse, with visuals beyond what current generation consoles and most supercomputers can generate. But there’s almost no depth behind this unarguably impressive presentation.

Story in Crysis is little more than an excuse for the big-budget action. The main character is a faceless soldier named Nomad, an elite commando with a futuristic nano-suit that allows superhuman abilities.

Nomad is part of a US special forces team investigating a tropical island where North Koreans have taken over an archaeological investigation of ancient ruins that turn out to be a buried alien spaceship. It follows a strict formula of War of the Worlds, Half-Life, and Halo, but lacks the depth and creativity of those three.

Scripted events and minimalistic dialog shoves the story forward, viewed in the first person Half-Life-style. The characters are all extreme testosterone to the max, the situations all cliche. It’s ridiculously generic and takes itself too seriously to be fun.

I almost lost it when the gruff general refused to listen to the pleas of the scientists pretty daughter not to nuke everything. “But we don’t know what will happen! It could make the aliens stronger!” “I’ve got my orders!”

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Sleep With Everyone In Obsidian’s ‘Alpha Protocol’

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on July 29, 2008

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Obsidian Entertainment has always been in BioWare’s coattails. They followed BioWare releases with sequels for Knights of the Old Republic in 2004 and Neverwinter Nights in 2006.

Their upcoming action-based CIA yarn Alpha Protocol is the companies first new intellectual property, marking a break from BioWare and outdoing the RPG behemoth in an unusual respect: sex scenes.

Alpha Protocol promises explicit sexual relations with not just two, but all of the game’s female characters. MTV Multiplayer’s Tracey John talked with Senior Producer Ryan Rucinski about Alpha Protocol’s explicit intimacy.

There are several factions in the game that you can ally with or fight against, so the women Thorton meets can become collaborators or enemies. As a government operative, the player can acquire missions and assistance from the ladies Thorton’s wooed. But piss them off — by dating other girls, for instance — and there’s hell to pay.

‘It all depends on how you treat them,’ Rucinski said. If you have a strong relationship with female characters, they may help with missions. However, he told me that some of them are ‘bats–t insane’ and can get you into trouble. ‘One may ask you to assassinate a high-level person,’ he added. ‘Maybe that’s not something you want to do, but she’s really hot. But there are obvious repercussions.’

[Thorton] can ‘get’ all of the game’s women if he wanted to. Rucinski told me it was possible to have sex with all the females, and that the sex scenes were similar to how Mass Effect treated its intimate moments. But he was quick to assure me that, ‘It’s a mature game, it’s not [adults only].’

Alpha Protocol, which comes out next February, has achievements for being a ladies man, and for avoiding relationships altogether.

Like a good Hollywood flick, relationships in Mass Effect were well told and treated respectfully before things got dirty. Alpha Effect has a lot to live up to if it wants to avoid being written off as unnecessary smut as BioWare’s space opera almost was.

‘Fallout 3′ A Modern Flavor For the Cult Classic

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on July 27, 2008

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The upcoming Fallout 3 can’t be just like the decade old originals, so get over it. But Bethesda, who got rights to the game from worn-down original studio Interplay, looks like they’re doing a good job of adopting everything that made the originals so unforgettable and putting it in a next-generation title.

Some have made a rabble-rousing hubbub over changes to the design. A shift in perspective from isometric to first person or behind the head, unkillable children, and a reduction in party size from four to two have all drawn venomous ire from the franchise’s cult followers.

Fallout 3 definitely looks different than its predecessors, which were rendered in 2D sprites and came out about a decade ago. Even as a big fan of Fallout, I don’t mind the changes and am happy with the new game’s presentation so far.

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REVIEW: ‘Age of Conan’ a Strong Alternative to Current MMOs

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on July 9, 2008

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Two months after its release, Funcom’s massively multiplayer online RPG Age of Conan is overcoming its launch problems and providing players with a world where roleplaying is actually viable.

Based in the sword and sorcery fiction of Robert E. Howard, whose 1920s and ’30s pulp fantasy invented the genre, the world of Age of Conan is just as intense and lively as the prose of its creator.

The game pits players against evil armies, dangerous beasts, wicked cultists and their summoned creatures. It’s bloody combat, which uses a demanding system of combo attacks, often ends with decapitations and fatalities.

Conan’s “low fantasy” setting is much grittier than that of World of Warcraft or Lord of the Rings. There are few real heroes, and every character presented in the opening act has bad qualities.

Age of Conan’s first act tells a story in the manner of traditional RPGs, with both single- and multiplayer content. It sets the game apart from other MMOs, and feels more like Oblivion or Baldur’s Gate.

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BioWare Founders See Narrative As More Than Just Story

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on April 26, 2008

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Another interesting interview with BioWare folk sprang up this week, this time with the two doctors who founded the well-known studio, Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk.

Muzyka and Zeschuk see multiple narratives within every game. “The story, VO, and the character interactions for us is an important one, but it’s not the only one,” said Muzyka in the interview.

“There’s also you as explorer, exploring new areas with that sense of awe and excitement,” he continued. “Or you and combat as you as a combatant and progressing your abilities. Or developing your skills assuming your personal identity, growing your character, or interacting with other players in your online guild or community.”

Both Muzyka and Zeschuk are incredibly smart industry veterans with opinions worth listening to. In this interview, they comment on dealing with Fox, their upcoming MMO, Nintendo, film and, most interestingly, narrative and storytelling.

“It’s not narrative in the game that’s the thing,” said Muzyka, discussing games as a medium for art. “I think it’s the emotion, that whatever play experience you’re having, whether social interaction or gameplay interaction, or in the game having combat, it’s the emotion you’re feeling that makes you feel connected to it.

“That’s why art resonates,” he continued, “as you start feeling something for the characters or the experience.”

BioWare Writers Discuss Their Craft

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on April 20, 2008

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BioWare writers Mike Laidlaw and Drew Karpyshyn discussed dialog, working with user-created characters, and world-building in an interesting interview with CVG.

“Getting to the same level of quality as film is good,” says Laidlaw, “but just trying to make a film isn’t the right direction. Interactivity gives us something no other medium has.”

Karpyshyn agrees: “We’re finding that the technology is finally reaching the point where it’s starting to feel very realistic - we can actually have interactive conversation where you talk with people rather than them just talking at you.

“I like to use the analogy that we’re at the point where Hollywood was in the early ’30s where they’re just starting to add sound, they’re starting to get the technology locked in place. It’s all about our skill set, coming up with our own conventions, our own language of telling stories, something film has developed over the last century.”

Not surprisingly, writing an open-ended narrative is extremely tough. “Fortunately at BioWare,” said Karpyshyn, “we’ve kinda got used to it, but that’s why it requires a full team of four or five writers for one of our games.”

There’s a lot of fascinating tidbits in here. The BioWare writers reveal how they create characters, from the protagonists to the quirky barkeep, and how they develop their appearance alongside their dialog.

One of the most interesting things they reveal is that the team spent nine months planning out the details of the “Mass Effect” galaxy before deciding on characters or plot. Hopefully that means the sequel will get here sooner.

PREVIEW: ‘Age of Decadence’ Harkens Back to RPG Classics

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on March 24, 2008

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I think back to games like “Baldur’s Gate II” and “Planescape: Torment” as the epitome of gaming narratives. The lack of photorealistic graphics and voice acting allowed developers to create non-linear experiences with literary exposition and protagonists born entirely out of the imagination of the player.

“Age of Decadence,” an intriguing offering from the small and independent staff at Iron Tower Studio, promises to be an RPG in that traditional sense.

“Age of Decadence” is turn-based and isometric with a well-developed character creation system and an emphasis on player-driven plot. The game immediately brings to mind classics like “Temple of Elemental Evil” and the “Baldur’s Gate” series, and is set in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world torn apart by magic.The game boasts around 100 total quests, including no MMORPG-like delivery or hitlist missions, and over 20 large areas.

“Overall, dialogues and choices are the main aspect of the game and the main attraction,” said lead designer and writer Vince D. Weller in an interview at Gnome’s Lair.

“We have seven different endings and only two involve mortal combat,” Weller continued. “You’ll be able to talk your way in and out of trouble, make allies and enemies (there are no default good and bad guys), and handle quests in non-combat ways using dialogues and text adventure elements.”

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Reflecting on ‘Morrowind’

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on March 3, 2008

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I stumbled on a fantastic piece of “The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind” fan-art whilst browsing the ever-time-consuming DeviantArt and it got me all nostalgic. The picture is titled “Morrowind Days” and drawn by DA user SnowSkadi.

And that about sums the game up. Everything that made “Morrowind” (and “Tribunal”) so utterly fantastic. Sure there were technical problems, things that could have been done better, unbalanced gameplay. But whatever, that’s life. And for every flaw, every inconvenience, there was something so real and lifelike about that world where you would get destroyed if you set one unprepared foot out of Seyda Neen and into that memorable cave of slavers.

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‘World of Warcraft’ Money Cap Reached

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on January 18, 2008

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World of Warcraft players are beginning to hit the game’s cap on gold, according to WoW Insider. The cap of 214,748 gold, 36 silver, 48 copper is a result of the game code. Blizzard has not commented so far.

In terms of story and character development, massively multiplayer online games are different beasts entirely, but it’s nonetheless interesting to consider how they function. Level caps exist in most games even outside this genre, preventing things from getting to easy and overbalanced. If you could get to level 9,000, somebody would, and it would end up being just like that episode of South Park.

But to have a ceiling on every quantifiable aspect of your character means that there’s a point of stasis and perfection, a point where you literally cannot develop anymore. At some point, after years of playing, you’ll be the max level with the best items and the most gold and there’s nothing for you to do but stand around Ironforge and gloat.

Is your WoW avatar a character, or a bucket you’re trying to fill to the brim for Internet prestige?

(Note: I’m grasping for news. Slow week in the story department.)

REVIEW: ‘Mass Effect’ Experiments In Sci-Fi Storytelling

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on December 3, 2007

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[More updates soon -- the video project that consumed two weeks of my life is now complete.]

I probably should be commenting on Actiblizzard, the Gerstmann-gate or similar overshadowing news items, but I’m still so smitten with Mass Effect, the newest offering from my one fanboy passion, BioWare. Despite my awe, I have some criticisms.

Set in an original futuristic universe, Mass Effect combines aspects from nearly every science fiction franchise and icon into one daunting game. Interstellar exploration, automatons gone bad, hive-minded bugs, a struggling humanity, etcetera ad nauseum.

What impressed me most about the game is the degree of cinematic immersion it achieves through gorgeous graphics, a breakneck pace and a fantastic conversation system, which allows fluid conversation between Shepard and NPCs (if you haven’t played the game, you should really check out a video of the conversation system in motion). I felt like I was watching and participating in a thirty hour space opera instead of playing a game.

Now for the criticism.

The conversation system makes for a cinematic experience, but can be unintuitive at times. It uses a radial menu of heavily abridged topics that do not always represent the actual dialog. A few times I found myself choosing one option only to hear something I definitely did not intend come out of Shepard’s mouth.

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