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Horizon Zero Dawn - open world action-RPG from Guerilla Games - now on PC

Metro

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PC release, go.
 

toro

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Meh. The story went to shit pretty fast because the villain was retarded.

Also Alloy is as interesting as another Mary Sue.

Overall the impact of the story is not really there.

PS: I don't know what this guy is talking about. Objectively the game story is shit when your main protagonist and villain are un-interesting to say the least. Subjectively or with a lot of indulgence someone could say that the story was ok but honestly, this guy is just embellishing things.

The main story is pretty shallow. Theoretically the game world has potential for handling different and powerful themes but the implementation really lacks any cohesion around one main theme therefore it fails to make a long lasting impact. Or to say anything about something. It feels like it was sanitized by some retarded SJW: Keep it safe. Don't show real horror. And so on.
 
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DeepOcean

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Really interesting insights, dunno how the story on Horizon is but based on Guerrilla past efforts, they fucking SUCK at story telling, pretty interesting how he fought to remove the horse from the game and how that made sense, this kind of utter blindness to important world building aspects is the number one reason why so many developers fail at creating interesting worlds and stories, they underestimate how little details could make the difference and you end making bizarre worlds like Fallout 3.

For people that underestimate the impact of talented people on a team, if this person is on the right position and is allowed to make his contribution, he could alone turn around a whole project.
 

toro

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02:16 - [Interviewer] Can I bring it back to those Obsidian days
02:17 for a little bit?
02:18 Because I want to talk to you about
02:19 the challenges of making open-world games,
02:21 or writing open-world games,
02:23 that you would have sort of learned all those years back
02:27 that essentially, this team is probably going to learn
02:30 all over again.
02:32 What's one of the most challenging things about
02:34 writing a game which has just so much writing in it?
02:38 - That's exactly right.
02:39 I mean, I think actually your question already
02:42 holds the answer, right?
02:43 Which is just the amount, the kind of encyclopedic nature
02:48 of an open-world role-playing game.
02:51 The script, for one, is in and of itself
02:54 an immense challenge.
02:55 In the case of a game like Fallout New Vegas,
02:58 where there was so much of a focus on branching narrative,
03:03 on player choices that just led to completely different
03:09 climaxes, that also meant that the number of facts
03:13 that you needed to cross-reference,
03:15 and the range of,
03:19 the range of kind of conditional dialogue,
03:21 incredibly challenging to account for.
03:24 In the case of Horizon,
03:25 that still ended up being a massive script,
03:28 and so that's a challenge in and of itself.

03:31 But we were also doing something very different
03:33 with this game I think because we were trying to
03:37 create a hybrid between what's most exciting about playing
03:42 a massive open-world role-playing game,
03:45 in terms of the scope of the world
03:46 and also the depth of the lore,
03:48 and a lot of the pleasures of interactive dialogue
03:51 and there's some choice,
03:53 but we were really trying to blend that with
03:56 what's most exciting and cool about an action-adventure
04:00 that has an authored character,
04:04 that has a defined arc,
04:07 and the cinematic storytelling that's used to convey that.

04:12 - [Interviewer] Right.

Standard PR drone speak: Horizon has no branching narrative, but at least it's exciting, cool and cinematic. Who can ask for more?

Waste of talent. But I guess the pay is good.
 

Nyast

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Finished it today, and I agree the story was good. It had me genuinely interested. Not the dialogues though, which as usual in that kind of game, sucked. Also, considering how bad the loot / items are, I wouldn't call it an RPG. At best, an action/adventure game with light RPG elements.
 

toro

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Finished it today, and I agree the story was good. It had me genuinely interested. Not the dialogues though, which as usual in that kind of game, sucked. Also, considering how bad the loot / items are, I wouldn't call it an RPG. At best, an action/adventure game with light RPG elements.

If it was so good then please tell us more about the villain. Pretty please.
 

toro

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Horizon has a pretty good story, better than most rpgs.
If scenes like this are representative of the game's narrative, it has to be one of the worst written RPG's of all time:



Yep. The scene is quite representative for the rest of the game.

But to be honest, the story is good up to a point but then they shoehorned the villain. Actually there are two villains: one is a human white male and one is an AI. The first one is a SJW fantasy enemy and the second one has no reason to exist.

Now, the game is long enough and they paid attention to details therefore most people will be busy exploring or fighting therefore they will not notice that the main story is retarded.

However once someone finishes the game then within 5 minutes it must realize that the story is retarded and it cannot be defended.

No sane human would design and build Hades. It makes no sense.

Also why Hades is capable of flying while Gaia is stuck in the ground?
 
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Bohrain

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My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
It feels like game journos praise every title that attempts to have more complex plot and dialogue compared to Sonic 3 as God's gift to writing no matter how shit it is.
 

Deleted member 7219

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I miss John Gonzales. He was so awesome to work with.
Details my good man, don't leave a story hanging.

I mean for starters he was just a really good person who was witty and funny. He was very open and easy to talk to, and many writers are actually more reserved and quiet. As a game developer, he always had great and challenging ideas. John, if by some chance you are reading this, I do hope you get to make your 'dream' game someday, yes, I remember it - I never forgot it. ( proof to John that I remember: changing photograph )

I should clarify too what I consider a good writer to be. In my experience, too many writers these days are just looking to create vessels to espouse the WRITER'S beliefs and values.

That's not good writing, that's actually terrible writing. Though even good writers can mess up, just like bad writers can sometimes get it right.

I'll give you an example. Extremely liberal SJW Joss Whedon created and wrote the crew of the Serenity. Malcolm Reynolds, and Jayne, Zoe, etc. Most of the crew, especially Malcolm, hold very strong anti-authoritarian views, Malcolm is a straight up libertarian archetype. Avellone once described Malcolm to me as the "loveable Confederate soldier". Joss Whedon has even stated in interviews that he does not agree with Malcolm Reynolds on anything.
The fact that Joss Whedon can put aside his own personal bias to create really good and endearing (as well as imperfect) characters shows that for all his flaws (of which there are many) he IS a good writer. His characters serve the world and story he created.

Now I actually don't know John's personal beliefs, and that's a GOOD thing to keep that stuff to yourself, but he is that type of writer. His characters have had all sorts of varying beliefs and desires, and he creates his characters to serve the story, not to serve himself.

I mean for more examples of stories... if you've played FO:NV and the Honest Hearts DLC, you've experienced how good he is. I think John Gonzales can easily count himself equal with Avellone and Zeits as a writer.

I don't know what else to say, I guess the take away was that he just has a great presence and was always great to work with.

Great post. And yeah Joss Whedon's Buffy and Firefly days were the fucking days. Such great shows. I think Gonzales wrote Mr. House, and I cherished every fucking line of dialogue with that guy. New Vegas is, as far as I am concerned, pinnacle of AAA gaming (with Witcher 3). I really hope whatever Tim and Leon are working on there will follow-it up, quality-wise.

And I hope Horizon 2 is made into an RPG, though I am not holding my breath on that one.


He did write House. I know somewhere here on the Codex he got a lot of love for the Survivalist in Honest Hearts too.

I'm going to join in the Whedon love here although it is OT. Angel is my favourite of all his shows, but Whedon as a writer and director never let his personal views override his amazing personal talent. Angel was a great "boys own" show that actually said, yes, men can still be strong, powerful heroes.

Whedon can seem like an absolute asshole in interviews, but when he made a TV show or a film he always let the story and the characters take centre place.

As for Gonzales? Bro. Hope he comes back to RPGs some day.
 

Zarniwoop

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Yep. The scene is quite representative for the rest of the game.

But to be honest, the story is good up to a point but then they shoehorned the villain. Actually there are two villains: one is a human white male and one is an AI. The first one is a SJW fantasy enemy and the second one has no reason to exist.

Now, the game is long enough and they paid attention to details therefore most people will be busy exploring or fighting therefore they will not notice that the main story is retarded.

However once someone finishes the game then within 5 minutes it must realize that the story is retarded and it cannot be defended.

No sane human would design and build Hades. It makes no sense.

Also why Hades is capable of flying while Gaia is stuck in the ground?

Did you actually play the game?

The guy that built Hades isn't exactly "sane"
 

Metro

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I don't really care about the story. The mechanics look solid.
 

Trashos

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He did write House. I know somewhere here on the Codex he got a lot of love for the Survivalist in Honest Hearts too.

House was my favorite character in the main game, and I don't think I have ever met (or will ever meet) anyone who didn't like the Survivalist story.

Anthony, do you know who wrote Dean Domino for Dead Money? I am in awe with that character. I am in awe with Dead Money in general, but Domino was probably the highlight for me.
 

Kem0sabe

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Continue to say that the story was good, the reveal about the fate of humanity, their solution, how it ended in tragedy. It was all quite interesting and made me want to play to the end to see how it turned out, which is more than I can say of elex fo example.
 

toro

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Yep. The scene is quite representative for the rest of the game.

But to be honest, the story is good up to a point but then they shoehorned the villain. Actually there are two villains: one is a human white male and one is an AI. The first one is a SJW fantasy enemy and the second one has no reason to exist.

Now, the game is long enough and they paid attention to details therefore most people will be busy exploring or fighting therefore they will not notice that the main story is retarded.

However once someone finishes the game then within 5 minutes it must realize that the story is retarded and it cannot be defended.

No sane human would design and build Hades. It makes no sense.

Also why Hades is capable of flying while Gaia is stuck in the ground?

Did you actually play the game?

The guy that built Hades isn't exactly "sane"

Yes. A fucking Pentecostal.

http://horizonzerodawn.wikia.com/wiki/Travis_Tate

Through no fault of his own, Tate's work on HADES proved to be ultimately disastrous for the people of the 31st century. A mysterious foreign signal caused HADES to gain independence from GAIA, at which point it launched a virus which set the other subordinate functions loose and facilitated its escape from GAIA Prime

But you did not get my point. The concept of HADES is simply retarded.

Anyone would be happy to be able to reborn life after an apocalypse and there is no rational reason which can justify the implementation of some AI purposed to wipe out entire life in case life is not respecting a certain criteria. Take note that Hades purpose was to kill humans and not the wild fauna.

What is the criteria which can say that the current human life forms must be eradicated? There is no such criteria. There cannot be such a criteria. As such the villain, the story and basically the entire narrative are shit.

Questions?
 

Zarniwoop

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Yes. A fucking Pentecostal.

http://horizonzerodawn.wikia.com/wiki/Travis_Tate



But you did not get my point. The concept of HADES is simply retarded.

Anyone would be happy to be able to reborn life after an apocalypse and there is no rational reason which can justify the implementation of some AI purposed to wipe out entire life in case life is not respecting a certain criteria. Take note that Hades purpose was to kill humans and not the wild fauna.

What is the criteria which can say that the current human life forms must be eradicated? There is no such criteria. There cannot be such a criteria. As such the villain, the story and basically the entire narrative are shit.

Questions?
Again, did you play the same game I did? Hades was built to destroy the fauna and flora in case the environment was NOT SUITABLE for human life. So that everything could start over. Hades would kick in before human life because the terraforming process went wrong.

If human life already existed, it would not activate.

The first attempt worked and humans came back, thus hades was never activated. Until Russian election-hacking squads fucked with it.
 

toro

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Yes. A fucking Pentecostal.

http://horizonzerodawn.wikia.com/wiki/Travis_Tate



But you did not get my point. The concept of HADES is simply retarded.

Anyone would be happy to be able to reborn life after an apocalypse and there is no rational reason which can justify the implementation of some AI purposed to wipe out entire life in case life is not respecting a certain criteria. Take note that Hades purpose was to kill humans and not the wild fauna.

What is the criteria which can say that the current human life forms must be eradicated? There is no such criteria. There cannot be such a criteria. As such the villain, the story and basically the entire narrative are shit.

Questions?
Again, did you play the same game I did? Hades was built to destroy the fauna and flora in case the environment was NOT SUITABLE for human life. So that everything could start over. Hades would kick in before human life because the terraforming process went wrong.

If human life already existed, it would not activate.

HADES was one of a suite of nine subordinate functions under the control of GAIA as part of Project Zero Dawn. Should GAIA's terraforming efforts prove unsuccessful with regard to producing an environment suitable for sustaining life, HADES' function was to reverse the work done, reverting the planet to its previous lifeless, sterile state so that GAIA could engage in another attempt. In the process, any life that was introduced during the terraforming attempt would be exterminated.

HADES' last resort failsafe function intrinsically meant that it only acted if required. Since GAIA's first terraforming attempt was successful, HADES was never required, and thus remained inactive.

Ok. My mistake. Please answer the following questions:

1) HADES has no issues killing humans. Shouldn't the AI acknowledge that he has no purpose once human life is encountered? It seems like the most basic failsafe logic you put in any AI of that kind.
2) Considering that the world ended exactly because of AIs going rogue who would design and implement an AI who would destroy the world?
3) Why should someone design a subsystem which could take over the main system? Who is so retard? Maybe only Elisabet Sobek ... the most intelligent and formidable woman in the world.
4) Why starting from a blank state is better than correcting something? How do you define that a terraforming effort was unsuccessful? Terraforming is not really a cheap operation.
5) Let's say you need 500 years to recreate Earth atmosphere, why would someone destroy Earth atmosphere and then wait another 500 years instead of trying to control or clean up what exists? Each hundred years increases the risk of failure for the entire House of Cards. Real AIs should adapt to existing conditions and don't try to destroy reality in order to match their programming. If an AI can only proceed from a specific set of initial conditions then that AI is a failure and definitely not suited for terraforming or any other complex tasks. Creating a second AI to correct the first AI is simply stupid. By doing it you just multiply the complexity of the entire system by two and you are basically asking for something to blow up in your face. I mean that's what I'm thinking ... but I'm not Elisabet Sobek.
6) How come Hades is able to fly? If that prick was able to fly then a full AI like Gaia should be in orbit.
7) How come Hades is expert in manipulating humans? He was not designed to ever deal with them.
8) How come Hades was able to write viruses in order to corrupt Gaia? His primary function was not that. I know, real AIs can shit rainbows without any explanations when the plot requires rainbows.

Now, I guess your answer will be that the mysterious signal did change HADES code ... which is possible. However that raises the following question:
9) If someone is capable of modifying an AI in such a manner then that *someone* is capable of creating it own AI and it doesn't need HADES for anything.

What I'm trying to say is that there is no rational reason for HADES existence. Nobody would be so stupid to create this type of AI. And whoever is capable of modding HADES should be capable of creating his own evil AI. It makes no sense.

Hades is pivotal to the main story and everything crumbles once you realize that his existence doesn't make sense. Hades is just a stupid plot device.

I admit that the rest of the story is pretty consistent and quite good ... but I cannot take it seriously when the main villain is so fucking retarded. Does this makes sense to you?

And for the last time: Yes, I did play the game. I enjoyed the mechanics. I enjoyed quite a lot of things. But I lost interest once I found out about Hades. Honestly, at the end of the game I was doing the moves but I did not care anymore.
 
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Zarniwoop

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Yes. A fucking Pentecostal.

http://horizonzerodawn.wikia.com/wiki/Travis_Tate



But you did not get my point. The concept of HADES is simply retarded.

Anyone would be happy to be able to reborn life after an apocalypse and there is no rational reason which can justify the implementation of some AI purposed to wipe out entire life in case life is not respecting a certain criteria. Take note that Hades purpose was to kill humans and not the wild fauna.

What is the criteria which can say that the current human life forms must be eradicated? There is no such criteria. There cannot be such a criteria. As such the villain, the story and basically the entire narrative are shit.

Questions?
Again, did you play the same game I did? Hades was built to destroy the fauna and flora in case the environment was NOT SUITABLE for human life. So that everything could start over. Hades would kick in before human life because the terraforming process went wrong.

If human life already existed, it would not activate.

HADES was one of a suite of nine subordinate functions under the control of GAIA as part of Project Zero Dawn. Should GAIA's terraforming efforts prove unsuccessful with regard to producing an environment suitable for sustaining life, HADES' function was to reverse the work done, reverting the planet to its previous lifeless, sterile state so that GAIA could engage in another attempt. In the process, any life that was introduced during the terraforming attempt would be exterminated.

HADES' last resort failsafe function intrinsically meant that it only acted if required. Since GAIA's first terraforming attempt was successful, HADES was never required, and thus remained inactive.

Ok. My mistake. Please answer the following questions:

1) HADES has no issues killing humans. Shouldn't the AI acknowledge that he has no purpose once human life is encountered? It seems like the most basic failsafe logic you put in any AI of that kind.

Yes, it should. Those were likely removed by the h4xx0r beam.

2) Considering that the world ended exactly because of AIs going rogue who would design and implement an AI who would destroy the world?

Someone who realised it's a pretty damn efficient way of stripping a planet of hostile lifeforms, just build more self-replicating bots. Plus the typical sc-fi trope of "but THIS time we will be able to control it, promise"

3) Why should someone design a subsystem which could take over the main system? Who is so retard? Maybe only Elisabet Sobek ... the most intelligent and formidable woman in the world.

Someone who is smart enough to realise that if it couldn't take over the main system, the main system (GAIA), being a self-aware AI, would probably want to protect its creation of abominations, much like the Xenomorph queen in Aliens and thus never permit HADES to take over voluntarily.

4) Why starting from a blank state is better than correcting something? How do you define that a terraforming effort was unsuccessful? Terraforming is not really a cheap operation.

Because ecosystems are complex and chaotic, who knows if it's even possible to correct it? What we DO know is, the one we had on Earth, works.

5) Let's say you need 500 years to recreate Earth atmosphere, why would someone destroy Earth atmosphere and then wait another 500 years instead of trying to control or clean up what exists? Each hundred years increases the risk of failure for the entire House of Cards. Real AIs should adapt to existing conditions and don't try to destroy reality in order to match their programming. If an AI can only proceed from a specific set of initial conditions then that AI is a failure and definitely not suited for terraforming or any other complex tasks. Creating a second AI to correct the first AI is simply stupid. By doing it you just multiply the complexity of the entire system by two and you are basically asking for something to blow up in your face. I mean that's what I'm thinking ... but I'm not Elisabet Sobek.

The atmosphere isn't destroyed, only the biosphere meaning the life. There would be changes to the atmosphere as a result of course, but there would be no humans to nuke everything to shit and cause more damage, so subsequent retries would probably be much quicker than the first one.

Also, Every evul AI in every dystopian sci-fi ever, tries to destroy the world. It's a given at this point.

6) How come Hades is able to fly? If that prick was able to fly then a full AI like Gaia should be in orbit.

This is your first good point. The AI should be able to do whatever its host robot body can, of course, but as for flying like a disembodied space ghost, that scene really didn't sit well with me either. I've got nothing.

7) How come Hades is expert in manipulating humans? He was not designed to ever deal with them.

It was programmed to learn and adapt. Google bots are already manipulating people by studying their behavior as we speak. In 50 years from now, how much more advanced will that shit be? Nevermind however many centuries that thing has been dormant.

8) How come Hades was able to write viruses in order to corrupt Gaia? His primary function was not that. I know, real AIs can shit rainbows without any explanations when the plot requires rainbows.

Da fuck? That WAS its primary function. Read your own question 3 again. Slowly. It was designed to override GAIA and activate Faro killbots.

9) If someone is capable of modifying an AI in such a manner then that *someone* is capable of creating it own AI and it doesn't need HADES for anything.

Says who? That makes no sense. When IRL hackers hack something, do they create their own version? No.

What I'm trying to say is that there is no rational reason for HADES existence. Nobody would be so stupid to create this type of AI. And whoever is capable of modding HADES should be capable of creating his own evil AI. It makes no sense.

Wrong. It's much easier to hack a computer than to build a new one. Especially in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where there are no high-tech industries.

Hades is pivotal to the main story and everything crumbles once you realize that his existence doesn't make sense. Hades is just a stupid plot device.

Wrong. Its existence does make sense in the context of the game world, and also the plot could still work (with minor changes) if it wasn't there.

Does this makes sense to you?

Yes.

Look, if you want to find things wrong with the story, they are definitely there. Long before Hades, there aere much more fundamental issues, some of which I have mentioned in this same thread. Hades is the least of its problems.

Firstly, pure math. We don't know how long these things take to self replicate, but we do know that it would pretty much halve with every generation. Thus, pretty damn soon the entire planet would be one crawling mess of robots. I punched some rough numbers into Excel, and basically my earlier post on the subject was wrong. If the robots take a week to replicate, within 20 generations, or around 5 months, you'd have 5 million robots. A month later, you would have more than 80 million and by 7 months, you'd have more than a billion. This does make the year and a half plus timeline of PZD seem a little ridiculous. In a year's time there would be 22 quadrillion robots (if the resources existed to build them, which it wouldn't).

Sure, the robots wouldn't be replicating full time, they would also be liquidizing dolphins and fighting, but it's also really unlikely that their replication would take a full week so let's call it even.

Second, why would the smartest man in the universe and the biggest evul white male embodiment of corporate greed, SPECIFICALLY make his engineers not make a backdoor into his killbots' OS? His main clients are big corporations and armies. Exactly the kind of customer who wants a secret backdoor into every goddamn thing, plus being a greedy fucking white heterosexual male, he would want to take control for his own needs. Did he never see any movie ever made about rogue AI? Makes no sense in the context of the story.

Third: Why would this same evul white male suddenly have a moment of conscience, realise he made a terrible mistake by killing billions of innocent people, and attempt to make up for it by killing even more innocent people (the alphas) and doom the rest of humanity to extinction as far as he's concerned?

Then: in the context of HOW THE REAL WORLD WORKS:

There would not be stronk, independent fierce wombyn running around being warriors. There just wouldn't. There is no social support system for it and they would be insta-slaughtered. Feminism is a luxury afforded by modern Western living standards and technology. It goes away immediately if those things go away, and all of humanity's knowledge was lost, thus there would be no silly ideas like this floating around, people would just do what they were naturally good at. And they would not be buddy-buddy with someone who looks completely different from 99.99% of the tribe by having jet black skin, while at the same time shunning a baby because it has an unknown mother. There is no enlightened Twitter mob to explain how differences between people are social constructs, people will behave according to their instincts in a survival situation.

You would not be able to kill 20 meter tall death machines, with wooden fucking arrows. And they would not be equipped with the worst heatsinks in the universe, that can't even cool down the death machine in the middle of a blizzard.

Etc.

Many issues with this game/setting/story, but Hades is not a big one.
 

toro

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... snip ...

Now you are just fucking with me.

I agree on Ted Faro, the character has no internal coherence. Also he should have never been allowed near the Zero Dawn project.

HADES function was not to override Gaia. Read the wiki. Hades function was to revert the world to a blank state under Gaia's supervision. The game fails to specify this but it's obvious because the game states that HADES was a subordinate function of GAIA serving as the "extinction failsafe protocol" for Project Zero Dawn. Only when the mysterious signal occurred was Hades able to override Gaia because somehow he became a self-aware AI like Gaia and he started writing viruses. The hackers did not simply hacked the system they made all subsystems self-aware. That's like rewriting an OS on the fly. I find it hard to believe but then Russian haxxors are pretty good. Seriously. Read everything again.

Anyway, for me, the quality of the main villain is more important than many other things. Even more important considering that he will probably make a return in the sequel. But it doesn't matter, my point was that there is no rationale for his existence.

TL;DR: You accept some dumb things including Hades and I accept other dumb things excluding Hades.

There is no argument which can convince me that Hades existence was not retarded. Therefore we can agree to disagree.
 
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Divinity: Original Sin
You would not be able to kill 20 meter tall death machines, with wooden fucking arrows. And they would not be equipped with the worst heatsinks in the universe, that can't even cool down the death machine in the middle of a blizzard.

Etc.

Many issues with this game/setting/story, but Hades is not a big one.

Finish the game today, I generally liked it as a hiking console adventure with RPG elements. The above issue is in-game explained that those robots that co-exists in the world with the tribes of nora, banuk, carja were made to not harm humans at all. Only after Hades started to influence the machines they became more agressive.

About the Hades issue, I cringed when they made a system that would sterilize the world every time the terraforming process went wrong. I agree that it could be a necessity, but I'd rather have they made gaia overlook everything real-time and course correct everything on the fly. And if things got wrong, Gaia herself could take care of the task of wiping everything and repeating the process, being so self aware of everything almost human like. Also, it was also for nothing since looks like gaia got it right on the first time.

4) Why starting from a blank state is better than correcting something? How do you define that a terraforming effort was unsuccessful? Terraforming is not really a cheap operation.

Because ecosystems are complex and chaotic, who knows if it's even possible to correct it? What we DO know is, the one we had on Earth, works.

Terraforming is a very complex process, but it's the same earth with all the necessary conditions to support life (distance from sun, size, etc). Also, Its believable that humans knows how earths biosphere formed and they would even know more about the process in the future, which would make a template to terraform the earth a very promissing endeavor. Gaia would detect any abnormalities and counter act them in time to steer things in the right direction. It's obvious it would be easy/predictable to course correct it. The only thing that could compromise is if some kind of pathogen infect the species early on altering the dynamic of the species of flora/fauna introduced, affecting evolution, but evolution wouldn't really take place at all since the species were all genetically stored and would be cloned and reintroduced as final species..

It would make a lot more sense the villain be related to the apollo part, since Ted Faro purges it, this would bring it self aware, and it would make much more sense since Apollo would have all the knowledge of humanity and that could be a motivation to kill them all. also, it would make Ted a double stupid decisions guy. And it would be also more impactful in a relationship between Sylens and Apollo, since Sylens was avid for knowledge.

In any case, I agree that the swarm devour biomass and proliferate at geometrical rate is a little too much, and gaia being an antropomorphic AI, these are very much stupid things.

But the game is good, fun, even though quest are simple and badly written, the game is beautiful, the robot creatures are variable and offer a challenge, and combat gameplay is actually fun. It's obvious that this game followed the successful witcher 3 structure, but witcher 3 is more RPG due to the fact you have choices in the main story, and also in character creation/skill setting. You can max out your character in Horizon zero down. It's in between The witcher 3 and Assassin's creed origins, which is more actiony and you can't miss anything.
 

Ash

Arcane
Joined
Oct 16, 2015
Messages
6,227
reading this thread:

"Popamole"
"Popamole"
"Popamole"
"Popamole"
"Popamole"

...Yet most still saying they enjoyed it. Damn storyfaggots and mole-whackers. Often are both one and the same, mind you.

Does the game have undemanding gameplay even remotely comparable to whack-a-mole, or are you unfairly assigning it that label just because it's a AAA action game? Does it have tons of handholding? dead simple level design? Little combat challenge? A lack of resource management demand? An overly-generous economy (skillpoints, money etc)? A somewhat automated process during climbing segments or somewhat automated interactions in general? Problems presented and detailed by other NPCs, and often solved by said NPCs too (or with much of their help)? Regenerating health? Frequent QTEs? A sense of tedious repetition? A lack of consequences for failure or bad play? Overpowered player mechanics?
...eh that'll do for now. If yes to even two or three of these, you're probably playing braindead popamole. And if so, what the fuck are you doing? You know there are plenty games with both decent gameplay and story right? Do you realise with popamole the gameplay is just wasting your time with menial repetitive tasks and is often in conflict with the story all the same? Enough of your decline-enabing.
 
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