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Valve keeps milking zombies
November 11th 2009, 17:00 MSK by Milan Brezovský Set for release on November 17, the title adds melee combat to enable deeper co-operative gameplay, with items such as a chainsaw, frying pan, axe, baseball bat, and more. Introducing the AI Director 2.0, L4D's dynamic gameplay is taken to the next level by giving the Director the ability to procedurally change weather effects, world objects, and pathways in addition to tailoring the enemy population, effects, and sounds to match the players' performance. The result is a unique game session custom fitted to provide a satisfying and uniquely challenging experience each time the game is played. Featuring new Survivors, boss zombies, weapons, and items, Left 4 Dead 2 offers a much larger game than the original with more co-operative campaigns, more Versus campaigns, and maps for Survival mode available at launch. So, let's interview the resident Valve employee on the chainsaw details. |
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Topic: Valve keeps milking zombies
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Jamie - If people are making you feel that the QTE stuff from Indigo Prophecy is in Heavy Rain, then they haven't played both games. The QTE system in Indigo Prophecy has nothing to do with Heavy Rain. Thank God, too. \"Making love to a woman is like working on an assembly line. No matter how good you are at it, you\'ll eventually be replaced by a foreigner or a machine.\"
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I'd like to know how you think Heavy Rain is a one-trick pony/ I didn't say it was. You said that people here only like simple games with your 'binary' comment and analogy to only eating one food at a time. <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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I'm kinda dumb, it's cool \"Making love to a woman is like working on an assembly line. No matter how good you are at it, you\'ll eventually be replaced by a foreigner or a machine.\"
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Ooh, SupCom 2 demo on Steam. BUYBUYBUY
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actions that can be QTE sequences for the more intense moments. Squeezing past a garbage can is an intense moment? Hrm. |
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Squeaky - That section actually isn't in the game, but that's a different type of button sequence. Those are the sequences where you have to hold down buttons, sometimes while manipulating the sticks or the motion sensors in the controller. It's used mainly to put discomfort onto you so you share it with a character. I think it's pretty damn effective in the full game. Scenes like the fight in the demo are the more traditional (yet evolutionary) QTE sections. \"Making love to a woman is like working on an assembly line. No matter how good you are at it, you\'ll eventually be replaced by a foreigner or a machine.\"
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My problem with cut-scenes and story in games is that it decreases player agency and leads to immersion-breaking conflict. By definition, a cut-scene takes control of the character away from the player and makes the character do things the player may not want the character to do. This is more than just annoying, it lessens the connection with the character. Instead of feeling like the character is your avatar, you feel like a teamster, hauling someone else's avatar to the next location so the cutscene will play. The more story there is in a game, the less control the player has over their character's actions and the less connection they will have with the character and the game. So instead of providing an opportunity to immerse yourself in an alternate world, it's just a long, poorly written movie which takes work to watch. "I hope you one day decide to smarten the fuck up so I can stand to look at your posts." - gaggle
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Also, QTE's are always bad. There is no way to make them good, the best you can do is make them easy or optional so they have a lessened negative impact, but they are still a net-negative on the game. "I hope you one day decide to smarten the fuck up so I can stand to look at your posts." - gaggle
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now I think you are being unfair. The cut screens in Uncharted 2 do not take you out of the game, they make you a part of the story, and work very well. "Testiculos habet et bene pendentes" - "He has testicles, and they dangle nicely."
"LP, your big balls are a religion." - Jibble |
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The same can be said about Heavy Rain, since the majority of scenes that would non-interactive cut-scenes in other games have you involved, much like how Uncharted 2 does the same. \"Making love to a woman is like working on an assembly line. No matter how good you are at it, you\'ll eventually be replaced by a foreigner or a machine.\"
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I don't have a PS3 so I can't comment on Uncharted. But every story-heavy game I've played has by necessity taken control away from the player, because in order for the story to progress the way the writer intended all the characters have to take certain actions, including the player character. This is certainly the case in RPGs. At best you are limited to specific choices like TYOA book, at worst your choices are meaningless. A simple example of cutscenes weakening a game is when you have to walk into an ambush that you know is an ambush because getting ambushed is part of the story, and the game won't let you progress until you trigger the cutscene that begins the ambush. There's a lesser problem with cutscenes, however, and that's that they suck. The pacing and writing is usually really weak, the acting is only occasionally up to Hollywood standards, and the characters are rarely interesting. This is a minor quibble, though, because even good cutscenes rarely achieve anything that could not be done better in another way. "I hope you one day decide to smarten the fuck up so I can stand to look at your posts." - gaggle
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Shadarr - What are the other ways they can be handled? And who is handling them like you would prefer? Because as far as I can tell, you're wishing for a hypothetical that this baby industry hasn't figured out yet. And for what it's worth, Uncharted is probably the only series in gaming history that has character acting and scenes that approach a Hollywood standard. I've been hoping that with UC/UC2, other developers would up their game on that front. \"Making love to a woman is like working on an assembly line. No matter how good you are at it, you\'ll eventually be replaced by a foreigner or a machine.\"
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I can't stand Heavy Rain. I don't object to what it's doing per se. It wants to be a game/movie hybrid: fine. I don't see reason to prescribe what games should be, so long as David Cage and his champions don't think they are elevating the medium by making it more like a film (and sadly, arrogantly, they do). But if you are going to make a game more like a film, you have to make that a good film, and not something so risible and cliche it would make the writers of Numb3rs blush. Some kiddy dies and there's a shot of his red balloon flying up into the air. You've got to be fucking kidding me. A dream sequence. You've got to be fucking kidding me. Poorly conceived, poorly written, poorly acted. Games can get away with this stuff when they are mechanically interesting - that's partly why, historically, they haven't bothered. But if all you are doing is prodding the shitty story down one of several shitty paths, it doesn't cut it. For me. I know plenty of people who've been able to suspend their taste and embrace it, but, for me, I couldn't abide it. - words and stuff -
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Objective-based gameplay rather than scripting, with NPCs acting like real characters. Instead of walking to a trigger point and watching a cut-scene of bandits jumping out at you, the bandits will jump out at you and talk to you without taking control away. Or if you spot that you're walking up to an obvious ambush area, you can choose to avoid it or sneak up on the ambushers and kill them from behind. This will work because your objective is something unrelated to the ambush like travelling to the next town or finding a foozle, so the devs don't feel like they have to force you to be ambushed so you will see the cutscene. Games that take this approach include Fable, Space Rangers and Crackdown. "I hope you one day decide to smarten the fuck up so I can stand to look at your posts." - gaggle
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Marsh, that was my counter-complaint to all the idiots claiming GTA4 was a brilliant story. It was at least a 50-hour experience, but they sure as shit didn't pack as much into that 50 hours as an equivilent HBO series. The story probably could've been compressed down to a 2-hour movie, and even then it would've had to be reworked to be less of a mess. For some reason, people who want games to be like movies have much lower standards for games than movies. Or maybe they just have no standards, period, but nobody cares about their opinions on movies. "I hope you one day decide to smarten the fuck up so I can stand to look at your posts." - gaggle
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Shadarr - I'm mostly with you on what you'd want to see more of in games. I'm actually getting Crackdown this week to finally play, so I'm going to keep an eye out for what you are talking about. And as for standards, people expect different things from the baby games industry as opposed to the comparatively old movie industry. Should people expect differently? Up until the past few years, I'd say yes. Not anymore. \"Making love to a woman is like working on an assembly line. No matter how good you are at it, you\'ll eventually be replaced by a foreigner or a machine.\"
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I just can't think of a single game where I thought "Wow, that game had a great story" or "That was an amazing cinematic." The closest was probably Assassin's Creed, but the reason the cinematic was amazing when you first see Demascus was that you knew it was a real city, that it actually existed and you were going to be able to go experience it. If it had been a standard game cutscene where they show you this awesome panorama and then stick you in a tiny room with five people to talk to, it would've been a yawner. "I hope you one day decide to smarten the fuck up so I can stand to look at your posts." - gaggle
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You know if you think about it, the issues with games like Indigo Prophecy, Shenmue, Phoenix Wright, Heavy Rain, etc. is not really the lack of gameplay. I mean all of these games are just outgrowths of classic adventure games, where the gameplay was limited to navigating the environment and "solving" various "puzzles" by clicking on hotspots, combining inventory, and parsing dialogue trees. Is that kind of gameplay really all that different from the gameplay found in an action game like a shmup, fighter, RTS or shooter? I mean all you do in those kinds of games is press keys in a certain sequence or click on a bunch of moving pixels within a certain timeframe, and do some minimal resource management. Gameplay to me exists on a continuum with the real metric being how much meaning each individual action has on the outcome. The problem with adventure games is not the nature of the gameplay per se, but the linearity of the experience. In the typical adventure game every player will hit the same plot points, encounter the same content gates, and essential have the same experience as each other. The same is largely true of most action games, but there may be a little more variability in the moment to moment experience due to the inclusion of AI. TBS games and simulations are probably the high water mark in terms of non-linearity. To sum up, I think that the complaints about the QTEs really miss the point. Similarly, the fidelity of the graphics or how well they approach Hollywood standard doesn't have anything to do with why some people don't like Heavy Rain. The real issue is just that their preferences are further up on the scale of linear to non-linear experiences. |
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#317 by Shadarr If it had been a standard game cutscene where they show you this awesome panorama and then stick you in a tiny room with five people to talk to, it would've been a yawner. Like Mass Effect? <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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For example, but Resident Evil 5 was like that too. They show these sweeping vistas in the cutscene and then you're stuck in a series of corridors the whole game. "I hope you one day decide to smarten the fuck up so I can stand to look at your posts." - gaggle
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Dethstryk (#316): Shadarr - I'm mostly with you on what you'd want to see more of in games. I'm actually getting Crackdown this week to finally play, so I'm going to keep an eye out for what you are talking about You're going to love it. There are no cutscenes and the entire city is open from the moment you start the game. Of course, if you wander onto the second and third islands before you've conquered the first one you'll get your arse handed to you in short order. |
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#321 by deadlock You're going to love it. There are no cutscenes and the entire city is open from the moment you start the game. Judging from the way deth has been talking about Heavy Rain, he'll probably hate it. |
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Re: Heavy Rain/Indigo Prophecy It's a shame because Quantic Dream's first game (Omikron aka The Nomad Soul) had a lot of freedom and variety. There were large cities and huge outdoor landscapes to discover and the gameplay varied from Tomb Raider style adventuring to FPS and one-on-one beat 'em up. I was pining for a sequel to The Nomad Soul for years but then they switched to making the next Space Ace/Dragon's Lair. She's probably had sex with like 4 different guys by now and has no idea who he is anymore, his face lost in a memory sea of dicks.
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Squeaky (#322): #321 by deadlock You're going to love it. There are no cutscenes and the entire city is open from the moment you start the game. Judging from the way deth has been talking about Heavy Rain, he'll probably hate it. I refuse to believe that there is anyone on this earth who could play Crackdown for more than a few minutes and not love it. |
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And yet I am strangely underwhelmed by the prospect of Crackdown 2. Possibly because the only thing that they really need to add to Crackdown is the ability to jump higher and throw dead bodies and cars further. Oh, it would be also be pretty cool to be able to kick over a building. Actually, Crackdown with Geo-Mod buildings would probably be the best game ever even if they had to compromise and have buildings magically rebuild once you leave a zone. Except that that wouldn't be a compromise because you'd get to throw a car through it all over again. |
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Believe it or not, there are (broken) people out there that do not like Crackdown. These people should be shunned. |
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I need two XBoxes - one to play games on and one that only ever runs Crackdown. |
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Squeaky (#327): Believe it or not, there are (broken) people out there that do not like Crackdown. These people should be shunned. Correction: they should be pinned to the side of a limpet-charged car using a harpoon gun and then round-housed off a cliff. |
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That's not strange at all deadlock, because Crackdown 2 is being made by different devs who claim to be respecting Crackdown's freedom while talking about what a mistake it was to let you go to other islands and get weapons out of order. Fucking hacks. BUYBUYBUY
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Crackdown was so boring even writing this makes mzzzZZZzzz |
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And that's why we don't listen to gaggle. <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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You say that, but you still listen. Maybe Just Cause 2 will be more up my alley, in terms of sandboxy games. |
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It pains my heart to see the Gas Powered Games' eagerness to satisfy the crowd. Sadly, it's not the hardcore TA-like RTS crowd. SC2 demo feels like Earth 21x0 meets C&C meets zoom from SupCom meets cheesyness overload. Nothing more. I guess I'll still pre-order it. Parhelic Triangle is coming.
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BobJustBob (#330): That's not strange at all deadlock, because Crackdown 2 is being made by different devs who claim to be respecting Crackdown's freedom while talking about what a mistake it was to let you go to other islands and get weapons out of order. Fucking hacks. Yeah, I mean people are getting excited about the glider and stuff. Glider?! You can jump off skyscrapers without so much as jarring your ankles and you fucking ponces are getting excited about a glider? |
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Gliding is fun. It's almost as good as flying. Also, plz to be calling it the squirrel suit. BUYBUYBUY
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I "played" the heavy rain demo. The controls for walking around are enough to make me never want to play the game ever again. If the demo is anything like the rest of the game, anyone that says they like the game has some pretty severe brain damage. |
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Terrible voice acting. Shitty animations. QTEs. No real gameplay to speak of. Heavy Rain is looking to be the most overrated game of all time |
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JUST CAUSE 2 DEMO NEXT WEEK BUYBUYBUY
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#339 by BobJustBob JUST CAUSE 2 DEMO NEXT WEEK Fucking A! <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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Supreme Commander 2 is a lot like Earth 2160. An average game that removes everything that was good on its predecessors. |
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I don't like the sound of it when you put it that way. I only played the demo for a few minutes, but it seemed pretty much the same as the last one... Do enlighten... "Fucking Radio Shack. It's a wonder they even know how to use a bathroom and don't just walk around all day with shit in their pants." - smds
"the concept that a happy worker is a productive worker is hardly an entry from Matt's Big Book Of Things The Fairies Said." - Dum |
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By Earth 2150 Lost Souls they'd already removed the fun. In the first LCS mission your enemy has invisible tanks. Invisible. Fucking. Tanks. Yeah. "One part disembowels me while another slowly eats its way through the gas line. As I bleed out on the floor, it reminds me that I need to buy milk." - Jibble
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Oh yeah. That was slightly unpleasant. However, Earth 2150 and its Parhelic Triangle is coming. Eventually.
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Anyway, Matt, if you like the demo, you'll probably enjoy the full game, too. tl;dr version: I don't like the story; the oversimplification of UI; removing unit tech generations; fluid resource income/expense turned into simple currency. (1) Story. The demo was plain awful. The full game story is about 0.5% less awful than the demo. I have no idea why they had to hire Square Enix to help them write story worse than that of both SC:FA and SC. Also, why the fuck do the "characters" look like they're cut out from SiN? Graphics-wise. What's next, hip MCGA FLI cutscenes rendered in 3D Studio R3.5? (2) Simplifying and oversimplifying. They've cut down the UI a lot. Good. They've removed minor elements like fuel for planes. Good, I guess? Engineers now automatically repair shit around them, for free. Very good. When you zoom out, both your Ctrl-assigned groups and other groups of units can be selected with one click. Brilliant. But turning off a visible indication of fog of war boundaries? Seriously?! That was one of the worst decisions in that game. Everything looks flat. Can't see exact enemy HP. (3) C&C, not Total Annihilation SupCom2 has completely thrown away its roots in favor of mainstream RTS games. Can't say I don't understand that they want to profit, but still, they've thrown what was typical for TA: shitloads of units and their tech tiers. All you have here is a group of mostly unremarkable units combined with over-the-top experimental units. Some of them are ridiculous, but mostly, they're at least entertaining. (3b) Units: the good part To their credit, the units are still quite balanced, the research does make a difference, and some of the experimental units are fun. It's still a strategy and not an arcade game - you need to protect your Fat Boys with AA or interceptor units, you can't usually just rush somewhere with tons of one unit type, etc. Also, factories have a few simple, but nice upgrades like AA, radar, shield, etc. (4) The 'conomy. Again, more C&Cization of the glorious TA model. Your mass extractors and power plants are a constant stream of income. You have no mass/energy limits. However, the cost of the units produced is decremented immediately upon queuing. Selected an engineer and gave him order to build 20 research labs? TOO FUCKING BAD, because now you have no resources and you'll either have to wait, or cancel his orders and get a refund. Also, you can't assign multiple engineers/ACU to the same construction job. You can't call in Support ACUs. There are no buildings that would take 40 engineer-minutes to make. And despite what they claim, there are no glorious 800-unit armies. Parhelic Triangle is coming. Eventually.
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hmmm.... As I said, I only played for a few minutes. That computer is now a country away from me...but some of the chances you mention don't seem great. "Fucking Radio Shack. It's a wonder they even know how to use a bathroom and don't just walk around all day with shit in their pants." - smds
"the concept that a happy worker is a productive worker is hardly an entry from Matt's Big Book Of Things The Fairies Said." - Dum |
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Ok, new topic. Does this sound like magic to anyone else? There was a white paper pdf I found, but I don't see it now. The concept is awesome, but to actually do it? I have no idea how they'd accomplish that. The concept for the Global Information Network Architecture (GINA) evolved from a realization that the current technologies provided an unprecedented opportunity to create a useful Global Information Grid (GIG) that could transform the possibilities for Net-Centric Operations. This all comes up because someone called our company today and what's to integrate with our product. And a competitors product. To show/use/something both systems at once and share data inbetween. I have no idea how they'd manage that beyond us giving them our source, since not only do you need to know the details of all of our architecture, connecting to our data without first going through our business layer would be a really bad idea... "the concept that a happy worker is a productive worker is hardly an entry from Matt's Big Book Of Things The Fairies Said." - Dum
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Well, if your company won't do it, IBM (or EDS or Blah Blah Blah) will. Zep-- w0rd up!
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FYI, that's what I do for work..combine data from unlike sources/vendors. Double FYI, It's not very difficult. Zeo-- w0rd up!
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Read what they are saying in this white paper, just the first few pages or so. It's a link to download pdf. It's the same link at the bottom of the wiki page. They aren't talking about just integrating systems. They are talking about integrating thousands of old systems and allowing them to communicate between each other. How are they doing this? Automating UIs? Unlikely. If they are going directly to the data, how safe is that? The business layer exists for a reason... Not to mention, how would they decipher all of our "api"s? In that white paper they suggest they can do it faster than we're talking about. Much faster. "the concept that a happy worker is a productive worker is hardly an entry from Matt's Big Book Of Things The Fairies Said." - Dum
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