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Shadowrun Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut

Bio Force Ape

Arcane
Joined
Feb 24, 2014
Messages
3,427
It's just bad video game writing.

There's clearly multiple writers working on different missions and sections of the game. Some of the writing is really good and some just awkward and geeky -- I cringed hard at a line you can choose near the end "Crazy lady is crazy." Seriously? Shitty internet memes? And even bad typos/grammar popped up occasionally (the winged statue in the Kreuzbasar: "it's wings..."). It's like they hired a decent writer and then a couple 19-year-old fan fiction idiots from Reddit.
 

Riel

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Itaca
It really bothers me how in the end there is no exploration, all there ultimately is is still a series of linear levels that on rare occasions you can choose to approach in a different order. I think even DMS had more exploration. I can't understand why everyone is getting so happy about a Call of Duty RPG lite. And those "choices" ultimately are all cosmetic and illusory. Skill checks never matter.

These guys simply don't have the capacity to do something that deserves to be called anything close to an RPG.

The PnP game itself never was about exploration : you are supposed to go in, get the job done, and go out asap, not search the 35 foors of the target corporations looking for goodies.
There are many occasions where skillchecks do help making runes very different
the Aztechnology run being the most obvious exemple

I was satisfied all in all with the game and even with C&C but it's true that even in that run you mention while the consquences are quite strong don't really change anything outside of the run itself, all in all very Biowarian C&C, confined to its plot arc.

While I'm sure we all know that C&C that actually affects the main plot in a fundamental way is EXPENSIVE it is about time we'd get some, and Shadowrun returns: Dragonfall isn't the case.

Another form of C&C that is very rarely put in practice is the posibility of screwing a mission by saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, cRPGs go to great lengths to ensure we can't screw it with dialogue choices, and it really detracts from the overall experience of dialogue when it only matters cosmetically. You could beat Dragonfall without reading a single line, I'm pretty sure of it, and that's sad.

I am not really asking for C&C like if this was PnP session, that's imposible, most of the C&C in a game has to be illusory (or Biowarian) so there is actually a reasonable ammount of it, but man do put some real C&C mixed in with lots of illsuionary C&C just to keep people on edge wondering if this click on a sentence is the one that's gonna screw you while leting them get in character. You get that right and you are Planescape: Torment or Fallout, those are #1 and #2 games according to the codex, coincidence? Don't think so.
 
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Joined
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Who gives a fuck about C&C? Stop pretending that's an important game mechanic. When it is implemented, it's always done poorly or to the detriment of the rest of the game.

Death to C&C and C&Cfags.
 

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
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Who gives a fuck about C&C? Stop pretending that's an important game mechanic. When it is implemented, it's always done poorly or to the detriment of the rest of the game.

Death to C&C and C&Cfags.

I agree as much that C&C is on the whole an overrated concept, but when it's not *always* detrimental or poorly implemented, in fact I can hardly think of any cases where non-linearity would truly be a liability.

However, if your game has no C&C to it, you might as well just be clear about it and don't shower the player in decision-making that looks like something big but doesn't actually have ANY variables whatsoever, and Dragonfall does that in the most shameless of ways at times.
 

Akratus

Self-loathing fascist drunken misogynist asshole
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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Who gives a fuck about C&C? Stop pretending that's an important game mechanic. When it is implemented, it's always done poorly or to the detriment of the rest of the game.

Death to C&C and C&Cfags.
Stephen-Colbert-Takes-Off-Glasses-and-Shakes-Head.gif
 
Repressed Homosexual
Joined
Mar 29, 2010
Messages
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Location
Ottawa, Can.
The SNES game had exploration and it was the best part of the game, being in a scary cyberpunk city full of strange monsters. Shame that they've sacrificed all of that for a BioWare lite experience.
 

Grunker

RPG Codex Ghost
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Who gives a fuck about C&C? Stop pretending that's an important game mechanic. When it is implemented, it's always done poorly or to the detriment of the rest of the game.

Death to C&C and C&Cfags.

I agree as much that C&C is on the whole an overrated concept, but when it's not *always* detrimental or poorly implemented, in fact I can hardly think of any cases where non-linearity would truly be a liability.

However, if your game has no C&C to it, you might as well just be clear about it and don't shower the player in decision-making that looks like something big but doesn't actually have ANY variables whatsoever, and Dragonfall does that in the most shameless of ways at times.

I sort of agree, but I don't really think the illusion of choice is bad in a game that's honest about that the fact that the illusion is all you get. Like obvious flavour dialogue, stuff like that. However Dragonfall and other games sort of promise you that your choices will matter and then don't deliver. That's shit. Should just stick to what works.

Then again, trying to deliver too much is sort of the overarching theme of SRR and its DLC. The DLC is just much better and more focused.
 

Riel

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Messages
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Who gives a fuck about C&C? Stop pretending that's an important game mechanic. When it is implemented, it's always done poorly or to the detriment of the rest of the game.

Death to C&C and C&Cfags.

We storyfags are gonna kill all combatfags by sepultating you with a ton of scripts!
 

Gord

Arcane
Joined
Feb 16, 2011
Messages
7,049
Finished it yesterday, was pretty good all in all.
I like the improvements they made to the game.

Would have liked more had the story not started to get all epic 20 minutes after you start it, but otherwise it was generally well written.

I noticed some minor inconsistencies along the way:
Blitz mourning in the last mission how he misses Monica, even though he never met her, since you pick him up in Drogenkippe after she's dead.
Clockwork's death. When is he supposed to have died? The info about Vauclair and APEX you buy from the info broker says that he probably vanished years ago, yet he's still posting in BBS. That would mean that he's already being impersonated by APEX, but then again you only get the suspicious postings by him if you free APEX, if I understood it right?
 
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Owlish

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck Douchebag! Village Idiot Repressed Homosexual Possibly Retarded Edgy Shitposter
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The problem with Shadowrun Returns is that it presents the illusion of choice when there is none. The presentation is dishonest.

You can click any dialogue choice in the first campaign and it didn't matter what you chose, the result was always the same. You can click randomly and you will have the exact same experience as every other player. The same is true 99+% for Dragonfall.

At best they will have a slightly different reaction to your dialogue choice before saying the exact same canned response that they say for all the other dialogue options.
 

Gord

Arcane
Joined
Feb 16, 2011
Messages
7,049
Well, you have some freedom in choosing the runs in the first half of the game (although you will need to do 2/3 to get enough money for Alice) and there are several points where having the right etiquette can save you some fighting, most prominently in the Bloodlines run.

Of course it's true that most of the time choices are minor or cosmetical - if you absolutely need an open game with lots of C&C the official Shadowrun Returns campaigns aren't what you are looking for, but then it's anyway difficult to find a game that does this.
On the other hand I think that it does quite good as a rpg light in a cool setting with a mostly good story and manages to provide good fun at the price point.

I wonder if we are going to see more and improved UGC for Shadowrun now that Dragonfall is out and has added some stuff to the base game.
Are there any announcements if they plan to release more official campaigns eventually?
 

imweasel

Guest
The world does react to some of your decisions. I guess you could say Dragonfall has some simulationist C&C, just without much actual consequence, other than maybe some extra karma points. You can also piss off or please some clients and factions though, and pleasing clients or a certain faction can reap extra rewards. The consequence is that you can't please every faction and client, you have to make choices.
You can also avoid some fights, by either choosing the correct dialogue choices (this includes skill checks and etiquette) or using the scenery to kill groups of enemies. But there is no actual consequence in doing so, the outcome is always the same.

That's about it.

Are there any announcements if they plan to release more official campaigns eventually?
Now that Dragonfall is out, I am actually starting to wonder what Harebrained Schemes is up to. They haven't announced any new projects.
 

Lhynn

Arcane
Joined
Aug 28, 2013
Messages
9,824
Actually i thought biowarean C&C was the one where your choices and the consequences are not only meaningless, the relation between them is almost non-existant. Like hugging your team mates so that they dont catch a bullet at the end.
Could someone clarify?
 

Riel

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Apr 29, 2012
Messages
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Location
Itaca
Fake C&C is paramount to any good cRPG, you need to properly mix it with some REAL C&C too. That's where Bioware fails.
 
Self-Ejected

Ulminati

Kamelåså!
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Hopefully we'll get some of that next time. At the very least, Dragonfall showed us that harebrained makes some pretty interesting combat encounters now. Especially the big fight in the APEX run.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,232
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Is there some kind of bug where enemies become harder to hit after you've reloaded a saved game? I'm pretty sure that happened to me in the Humanis Policlub. Went from ~90% hit chance down to ~60% hit chance at fucking point blank range. When I got back outside they went back to 90%.
 

Owlish

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck Douchebag! Village Idiot Repressed Homosexual Possibly Retarded Edgy Shitposter
Joined
Sep 14, 2013
Messages
2,817
I think that that happened to me, actually

Also, does Harebrained Schemes only hire SomethingAwful goons and tumblr SJWs as writers?

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Poz game of the year and "muh metahuman holocaust!" Basically the Humanis group are evil as hell racist boogeymen that make no valid points at all within the game's context. As one dimensionally evil as it gets.
 

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