Game News Broken Roads releasing on April 10th

[Infinitron]

Tags: Broken Roads; Drop Bear Bytes; tinyBuild

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[motherfucker]

I can't point out any glaring flaws and yet there's something about this trailer that convinces me this game is gonna suck.

 

[OSK]

Broken Roads is up there with Disco Elysium, Fallout, and even Baldur's Gate.

 

[MrBuzzKill]

Broken Roads is up there with Disco Elysium, Fallout, and even Baldur's Gate.

Quoting who?

 

[jac8awol]

Broken Roads is up there with Disco Elysium, Fallout, and even Baldur's Gate.

Quoting who?

The Gamer. Which gamer? Any gamer!

 

[Hellraiser]

I don't like the dialog choice tags as seen at the timestamp below, and not just visually because it looks like somebody vomited out a whole rainbow on the dialog GUI, but also from a design perspective:



The players won't be making actual roleplaying choices evaluating whatever dilemma or situation the PC is in, but just reading their preferred color and choosing that regardless of context. Call me autistic, but if a designer makes some multi-dimensional philosophical alignment gimmick he should at least try to get the player to try to read, evaluate and reflect on all the choices rather than funnel them towards "mash 3 for purple" because they're playing a purple philosophy character now.

You know, try to keep up the illusion and gaslight the public that it might be some deep philosophical mature game about the post-apocalyptic struggle of the individual (also known as a typical day in current year Australia), thus trying to overshadow any likely expected flaws in the game design, fake C&C etc. and make it stand out. Ah who am I kidding... redditors and journos will mash 3 for purple without reading shit and still call it deep(tm) if that's how the memes flow...

Also I think Torment: Numanuma shat out a similar color-coded dialogue choice tag rainbow which might be another reason this triggers me. And this roleplaying a color things reminds me of that currently popular with managers corporate psychobabble fad about color-coded personality type (insights? forgot how it was called), which is likely another reason why I'm not a fan.

 

[OSK]

The morality stuff is an interesting idea, but I don't know how it's going to play out.

Normally choices and consequences are based on your character's actions. You're provided with a bunch of actions you can choose from and then deal with the consequences of that choice. This game seems to also be providing consequences based upon your character's morality. If your character regularly makes humanitarian choices, it's going to lock you out of making Machiavellian ones. I worry it would be frustrating to want to make a choice I think is valid due to extenuating circumstances (or maybe I just disagree with the game developer's label for the choice), but the game locks me out of it. I guess you can look at it as just another layer of choices and consequences. Choices lock you out of making other choices, and this is just doing more of that by forcing your character to act within the morality parameters you've been following up to that point.

 

[Tyranicon]

That's a little too early to say when the game isn't even out, isn't it?

 

[Hellraiser]

That's a little too early to say when the game isn't even out, isn't it?

I would really like if it lived up to the hype, the gimmick seems like a decent one for a RPG if one has a competent writer/designer. As it is I remain cautiously pessimistic thinking it's probably going to be meaningless besides some (most likely badly written) fluff responses and maybe a few token quests/rewards unique to a particular philosophy. Odds are even KOTOR's full light/dark side bonuses are going to feel like a bigger deal than whatever impact this gimmick will have.

I mean for fucks sake, what did tides in Numanuma even fucking do despite being emphasised and hyped up during development? I can barely recall those even were a thing, an utterly forgettable mechanic even by the standards of that game itself.

I would love to be proven wrong here but I haven't seen good game writing in who knows how many years, while the hacks seem to reach new lows all the fucking time and this is a very ambitious concept they are hyping up. One with high potential to just end up as a conduit for pretentious writing. As it is I'm hoping the combat and 'stralia setting make it worth playing despite the likely to be shit writing.

 

[Tyranicon]

I would love to be proven wrong here but I haven't seen good game writing in who knows how many years, while the hacks seem to reach new lows all the fucking time and this is a very ambitious concept they are hyping up. One with high potential to just end up as a conduit for pretentious writing.

Brother, I want to agree but writing in video games is like a tier F priority. In the history of cRPGs there's maybe a handful of games with serviceable writing and just one with great writing.

Maybe two, I dunno, I can't into Disco.

 

[Kiste]

An indie CRPG with graphics that don't look like total shit and isn't pixelart? That alone warrants at least some attention.

 

[Galdred]

The morality stuff is an interesting idea, but I don't know how it's going to play out.

Normally choices and consequences are based on your character's actions. You're provided with a bunch of actions you can choose from and then deal with the consequences of that choice. This game seems to also be providing consequences based upon your character's morality. If your character regularly makes humanitarian choices, it's going to lock you out of making Machiavellian ones. I worry it would be frustrating to want to make a choice I think is valid due to extenuating circumstances (or maybe I just disagree with the game developer's label for the choice), but the game locks me out of it. I guess you can look at it as just another layer of choices and consequences. Choices lock you out of making other choices, and this is just doing more of that by forcing your character to act within the morality parameters you've been following up to that point.

I'm usually not a big fan of the way morality choices are used. Most games give a strong incentive to just choose answers that match the chosen alignment. I'd rather have the characters do evil things because it makes their life much easier in the short run.

That said, turn based party combat in a post apocalyptic settings is probably enough for me to get ti anyway.

 

[luj1]

I can't point out any glaring flaws and yet there's something about this trailer that convinces me this game is gonna suck.

This game is made by dangerhairs. It has banal art design. It has a banal setting. Dialogue isn't great.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

writing in video games is like a tier F priority

Sadly I wish it was. The reason why so many games are unbearable these days is because people making them think they're writing a novel. If more people like John Carmack were still around we wouldn't have this problem.

 

[Hellraiser]

writing in video games is like a tier F priority

Sadly I wish it was. The reason why so many games are unbearable these days is because people making them think they're writing a novel. If more people like John Carmack were still around we wouldn't have this problem.

It's not just that, "artists" in general are the third biggest calamity that has befallen modern game development, right behind what the big publishers are doing for profit-maxxing, and just behind developers having shit taste in the first place drawing inspiration from the same mainstream popcultural memetic slop. Too many fucking creative types who start designing games by focusing on the art-side rather than the actual fucking mechanics. And the fucking art is probably highly derivative banal shit boring you saw a million times to boot (as mentioned, they all draw from the same pool of slop, and the internet makes this and stylistic fads even worse).

In general have to agree with Maxie's often repeated take that "writing should be left to the most autistic and smelly programmer nerd on the team" or something along those lines, but also expanding it to pretty much all the actual design work.

 

[Tyranicon]

-dev offers the lowest pay known to man and a belittling position to writers-

-job gets accepted by starbucks barista or other agenda-toting goblin-

"Noooo, writing is a stupid thing to focus on, more gameplay instead!"

-In a genre where the gameplay is 40% reading-

 

[taxalot]

Release date is clearly chosen to be done in conjunction with the Fallout TV show.
It's saying something. I don't know what it's saying, but it's saying something.

 

[dubLEs]

The dialogue in this game seems awful. It's made by Australians, but seems really unauthentic. And yes unfortunately I am also an Australian.

 

[GloomFrost]

And of course they had to put "strong independent wyman" in the thumbnail. In an actual post apocalypse in Australia a blonde like her wouldn't be holding a rifle in her hands but something else... Game is not out yet and it already pisses me off. DECLINE!!

 

[Baron Tahn]

The dialogue in this game seems awful. It's made by Australians, but seems really unauthentic. And yes unfortunately I am also an Australian.

Yeah, that's my biggest problem with it too. It's like hipster city folk trying to write crocodile dundee for an American audience when they spent maybe two days on a roadtrip in a new air conditioned SUV, went to a country pub once, screamed at a huntsman and then ran back to safe Melbourne lattes and called it an extreme outback adventure.

 

[Bastardchops]

It's got a setting and a morality system but what's the premise?

 

[Hellraiser]

-dev offers the lowest pay known to man and a belittling position to writers-

-job gets accepted by starbucks barista or other agenda-toting goblin-

"Noooo, writing is a stupid thing to focus on, more gameplay instead!"

-In a genre where the gameplay is 40% reading-

By your own admission the writing in RPG, besides one case, is serviceable at best. And this is considering titles from before "starbucks barista or other agenda-toting goblin" were an issue. Looks to me like it is a lost cause to focus on writing unless you've got a second Avellone onboard ready to produce his magnum opus. I mean it's a crapshoot, maybe you have some passionate guy who will capture lightning in a bottle, but you can't really solve it by throwing more money at it.

I also doubt that, unlike with programmers, there's a shitload of better writers who rather work for better money in theatre, cinema, writing press releases or as novelists, and starvation/mortgage is the only thing stopping them from working on computer RPGs churning out "serviceable" writing on the level of say Fallout 1. Those mediums require a different toolset/approach.

 

[Baron Tahn]

Noone wants to pay them is Tyranicons point though. I work in TV in Oz and half the time we have to struggle to write it ourselves or bash it together somehow because the award rates for writers from guild is A)fkn high and B)they are shit anyway.

So what you get is sub par writing from kids who just flunked out of Uni with half a creative writing course, basically. Passed yr 12 English with a decent mark, they can spell and read - but boy are they terrible. Modern progressive agenda, no life experience, you name it.

 

[Bastardchops]

Noone wants to pay them is Tyranicons point though. I work in TV in Oz and half the time we have to struggle to write it ourselves or bash it together somehow because the award rates for writers from guild is A)fkn high and B)they are shit anyway.

So what you get is sub par writing from kids who just flunked out of Uni with half a creative writing course, basically. Passed yr 12 English with a decent mark, they can spell and read - but boy are they terrible. Modern progressive agenda, no life experience, you name it.

What are they writing? Home and Away episodes?

 

[Baron Tahn]

H&W and Neighbours are both written by 'real writers' who get paid to award to hammer out enmasse and you can see how that turns out. Australia gives most of its arts budget away to the states to stimulate other economies anyway...Its a long story.

Im working on something now with a writer whose last job was part of a writing team of 6 for one feature film - all used sparingly because the showrunner had written the screenplay himself due to the budget concerns, just needed them to tweak it so it was less obviously trash. Gotta have that momey to spend on that CGI, you see. As Tyranicon says, writing skill is the LEAST valued thing, even for film/tv - games its just a joke. A funding grant from the relevant parties doesnt even touch the sides.

I would not be surprised in the least if the writer for this game was just the designers Uni mates.