Shadowrun Shadowrun: Hong Kong - Extended Edition

[PlanHex]

where is he situated?

Downstairs, with Racter.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Wanted to start a second playthrough.

Dloading patch from GOG.

Patcher refuses to work saying one of the game files is 'incorrect'.

This is the last time I've got something that is likely to require patching on friggin gog.

 

[Fredward]

And then you have sentences like this one, and I'm quoting directly from the screen: "The abiding emotion the room is steeped in is one of perfunctory satisfaction, as if somebody had accomplished an important task." Style aside, that gives me the impression that they don't know what "perfunctory" means.

That actually makes perfect sense. You might be 'perfunctorily satisfied' that you've completed your daily, routine chores. It's not something that's going to evoke a strong emotion but you're happy it's completed all the same.

 

[Blackstaff]

Roxor :

http://af.gog.com/forum/shadowrun_series/shadowrun_hong_kong_305/post62?as=1649904300

" I found the error. The patch is strictly from Version 3.0.3 to 3.0.5. Since I already had patch 3.0.4 installed, the patch recognized certain files as having the wrong version and stopped the process. I had to reinstall the game (downgrade to 3.0.3) and then apply the patch @.@ "

Have to redownload everything

 

[eXalted]

Heh, Racter was mentioned in DC.

Spoiler

 

[Commissar Draco]

Frack they really had to add RT puzzle and stealth game to muh TB tactical game? WTF they were thinking?! Beside that like this more than Berlin Cause it was as souless leftard and boring place as RL Berlin is and belov the first Campaign which which felt more focused on doing Shadowrun work and not Biowerean like quests for People You were forced to care about... Still Solid turn based fun and lite RP game except the blasted RL parts of course.

/ thanks to new Matrix ( thankfully skipable in few places) and being a bit slugish technically.

 

[Killzig]

Heh, Racter was mentioned in DC.

Spoiler

Yes he mentions her in one of his dialog options too when he's talking about the researchers who had stolen his work.

 

[eXalted]

Yes he mentions her in one of his dialog options too when he's talking about the researchers who had stolen his work.

Yep, it's nice that they didn't just drop her name just for the sake of it.

 

[Ninjerk]

I don't understand how you take away points from new Matrix. It's overdesigned but you can avoid much more banal matrix combat this time around.

 

[Crichton]

Just finished it. As far as writing goes, I like the setting and most of the characters but I think the plot was only half-baked.

Spoiler

The basic Yama Kings / save the Walled City / Rescue your foster father story arc worked but there's next to no connection between most runs and your ultimate goals. There isn't even the courtesy of an "Alice Fund" to make sense of why you're wasting all this time when the situation is supposedly so urgent. Trying to hand wave it all away with Kindly Cheng just makes the player look like a little bitch. I think they should have replaced "Do Cheng's dirty work" with "Move up the ranks of the Triad" with the option of ultimately unseating Cheng and taking over if so inclined. With more resources, you could even have alternate plot progression where the player is actually infiltrating the triad and providing help to some other organization (HK cops / another triad / Bavarian Illuminati / Whatever) in exchange for help in freeing Raymond.

As a side note, I good ending by simply because of my completionist habit of running through all the dialog trees; it would be cool if being the best actually required something special as opposed to simple persistence.

The companions were a mixed bag, particularly Gaichu and Duncan. Gaichu has most of my favorite dialog but mechanically, he's a joke; ghoul-super-senses be damned, he fights like he's blind after all. Gobbet may not be able to hit anything either, but at least she has buffs/healing/spiriting control, etc. Conversely, Duncan is a Bioware Whiny Bitch (TM), but between being a rifle user and that grenade-returning cyber-arm, he's 2nd only to Is0bel in terms of usefulness. Is0bel is just plain great, runs the matrix so I don't have to and lends a hand with that grenade launcher; solid all-around.

Speaking of the matrix, I love the idea of making it stealth based instead of being a shadow of the meatspace tactical game. But there are no words for how much I hated the real-time Pac-man mini-game. It's also makes little sense that special watcher ICs can be avoided by hanging in their blind spots but every other IC just spots you automatically no matter what you do. At the very least, they need to make the whole matrix turn-based and they probably need to revise the way players interact with those watcher cones (i.e. make the size of the cone very with decker skill, an ace decker shouldn't be spotted because the very corner of the cone clipped him) as well as integrating the other ICs into the stealth aspect of the matrix.

My character was a dwarven bear-shaman / SMG user (it was kind of irritating to find Gobbet sporting the same build); which wasn't super effective. Acid bolt and SMGs (in the hands of a non-samurai) both seem pretty meh so I relied on others to do damage. My character was pretty much limited to healing, throwing up barriers and using the Shadow Spell for cover (I really like that one). However there are so many karma points in the game that eventually you just can't fail to succeed. This character might have been a lot more effective if I'd sprung for the grenade launcher in the Walled City but I was too broke or too stupid and I spent the rest of the game looking for another shop which sold them (in vain).

Finally, to everyone bitching in this thread that there aren't enough AZN characters in the game; for fuck's sake, it's a game, not a documentary. It doesn't take place in the real Hong Kong, it takes place in a fictional setting with elves, orks, dragons, totem spirits etc. And the team is made up a cast of misfits, they aren't intended to represent the city's precise ethnic balance. And there are plenty of slant-eyed NPCs; you've got Kindly Gook, Strangler Gook, Gooket, Gookchu and Maximum Gook. WTF else do you want?

 

[Immortal]

I also enjoyed the stealth style of the matrix.. in theory. The idea of dodging IC and sneaking around grabbing payloads felt a lot more in line with how being a decker / hacker should be.
I would love a more advanced stealth system and more tools / abilities that were around not getting caught in the matrix as opposed to killing IC when you are caught.

But it feels like I am the only one who didn't have an issue dodging ic scouts and fighting sentry IC at the same time.. I admit it's a bit hamfisted to run around IC in free run mode when the game is mostly turn based..

but it was an improvement over the original matrix imo.

 

[SwiftCrack]

My Gaichu has a constant 100% crit with Heaven stance and hits pretty well. His ghoulclaws/bite thing misses a lot for me though.

Oh and the new matrix is good in theory but the 'stealth' mechanics don't work for shit (seriously you just run at one certain point where you think it is safe and hope for the best) and it's just tedious in a different way now.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Bros, can you remind me what's the difference between simple and smartlink weapons?

And also - will Gaichu appear on the ship?

Accuracy if I'm not mistaken, gaichu you get from the serial killer mission, he then sets up shop in the hold of the ship, down the hall from the Russian psychopath

 

[eXalted]

Sometimes I'm having more fun reading the stories in the Shadowboard than the character dialogues - the crew that searches constantly for a decker, the haiku bot and so on.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Rachter is probably the best example of a sociopath I've seen in a video game. I don't think he's a psychopath really. In one conversation he says he does enjoy inflicting pain on certain people, but it is never an objective in of itself. That doesn't seem psychopathic to me.

 

[Lujo]

Right, they did it again - made a mediocre game for no apparent reason other than, well, incompetence I suppose?

How exactly does one go about getting hired as writer/editor for these guys? Because I'm an actual writer, and the mistakes and blunders here are entry level stuff. It feels like the game was made by a bunch of nerds who just hired people they knew that are literate (as in know how to tell letters apart). Ok, I'm being a bit harsh, but from a pro perspective it's very, very unclear why the quality of writing (be it dialogues, be it overal plot/pacing) is this awful. It takes effort, it takes actively hiring incompetent people and not hiring competent people to get this result. It takes people who should not be evaluating thier writers in charge of hiring/approving people who shouldn't be writing.

Right, that sounds a bit arrogant, but I'm impossibly miffed. Imagine looking at something for 20 or so hours and going... oh god, this could be so good, why wasn't someone somewhat competent writing this? Or editing this? Why are characters using phrases only a specfic type of nattator would use in narration but never voice? Why are these people using overly flowery phrases in tense situations? Did anyone read this stuff out loud when they were writing it? Was this outsourced, pinned on some content mill for 1$ per 500 words, then picked up by an Indian, subcontracted several times and ended up bing rushed for 0.1$ per 500 words?

Why couldn't the main story and the missions be integrated? It's piss easy:

Spoiler

Simple - everyone's having the damned dreams! It's all happening in the same damned city, have the Rooster guy get knocked out and have nightmares on the boat, tell you about them when he wakes up in exchange for better treatment / insurance. How about the people on the raft? How about plenty of other folks? If someone had something on the Plastic Face or Yama Kings to spill in exchange for a favor - it would add an intersting bit of "do we do this or not?" to that mission, tie it up with the main story. Every bloody run could've had an optional bit to do with someone in Heoi. Kindly Cheng sending out on missions? How about you happen to dig up clues about the plastic face man on one of them? Or stumble into info on the HKPD deal with your grandma? Or, you know, you run into the cops and one of them actually recognizes you? Do you get info or do you stay good with Kidly? How about a piss-me-off meter for the old hag, you displease her enough by chasing info instead of doing what you're told you get into a fight with her (she's practically absent for the end game, wouldn't hurt the story none).

There were good ideas here, moves in the right direction. The manic pixie dream girl / cute monster girl is comic relief this time, v nice. The plot asks us to believe at least 2 protagonists are scared for their lives and their parent's life, also works much better than "oh nose they killed the manic pixie dream girl who was somehow also a beloved hero mastermind mary sue". There's a pretty damned scary eldricht abomination coming through in a very scary way, beats an oversized/overused lizard any day. The campaign is less linear, also nice. Noone's idealized, and the most "pure" or emo guy is just a guy who's like that which is fine by me, there's folks like that.

But if I went and listed everything that would've gotten a resounding NO, WHAT ARE YOU THINKING from a serious editor in this game the list would be impossibly long. If a proper editor sat down with people responsible for various decisions and bits of text and managed to magically make them fully aware of what they did wrong those people would simply have no other course of action, being fully aware of how embarassingly unequpped they are for their supposed job/s, simply give it up and go do something else for a living.

It's still as if a bunch of code jockies got a licence to make something they personally enjoy (somewhat) but don't in fact understand how it works under the hood. It's like if a fan of racing decided just because he watched a lot of it he can make his own racecar and then got funding for it... But it's nothing new, sorry for venting people. This industry has always had a huge problem, people who take their time to lean coding and graphics and get into game design are pretty much always the last people that should be let anywhere near anything BUT coding and graphics. And it's always them looking for / aproving / hiring writers...

Bad mood. I like cyberpunk. I like noir. I like fantasy. And I love and dig the mashups since I was a kid. Too bad this kind of hackwork passess for good.

 

[Serious_Business]

I'm an actual writer

You don't say. What is that, an "actual writer"? What is this shitty rhetoric? Go back to your fucking tribe

 

[Excidium II]

The writing is passable, gets p. cringeworthy from time to time when it tries to be emoshunal.

 

[Great Deceiver]

That was hilarious actually.

 

[Kaivokz]

[...] It feels like the game was made by a bunch of nerds who just hired people they knew that are literate [...]

Who still managed to write a better game than most "actual writers."

 

[Jason Liang]

How the frag are people having trouble using Gaichu? Just switch to Heaven stance and slice things up, take the Ghoul abilities, and if they are armored spit at them, if they are far away lightning bolt. My 2nd playthrough and taking Gaichu every possible run, he is just as effective as Duncan or Koschei and better in a fight than Is0bel or Gobbet.

 

[Lujo]

Who still managed to write a better game than most "actual writers."

No they didn't, and the whole "it's passable" thing is simply because the writing for games is too often depressingly pedestrian which makes expectations low. But it takes actively being awful at writing to arse up a sci-fi/fantasy/noir/horror mashup with oddball characters. Where one genre would constrict you you pilfer from another, and it's very easy to make convincing characters. And then whichever anti-talent was in charge of editing this thing still manages to let one character speak like a gritty street goof in one dialogue popup and a like a WRITER of gritty street fiction in another. And whichever anti-talent was writing it latches onto phrases which make sense the first time you hear them, when not spoken by anyone but used as ambience, but make no sense when they're used 4 or five times IN DIALOGUE (or in fact every time something is mentioned). You can mix Lovecraft and gangsters, but you can't let your bloody gangsters speak LIKE Lovecraft. -.- Stuff like that, basic elementary stuff. I was playing it with my wife and reading the dialogues out loud, it became rather obvious that whoever wrote it didn't even read it properly. Seriously, try it.

That's not even getting into the pacing of the whole thing.

Give me a bunch of money and a bunch of coders who'll just do what they're told, or give it to anyone who knows how to bloody structure a narrative and keep the dialogues and the mood going right and you get a much better... well, game. This was a hackjob, there were obvious improvements in some directions since dragonfall, but a lot of fail otherwise. It's a bit incredible tbh, dragonfall was quite uneven in terms of writing but I expected the quality to go up not down. This game had more going for it, it was easier to make a game with this premise a great game than it was with the Dragonfall one and yet they managed to half-arse it up. Amazing.

Heck, if someone would fork over fair enough money, I'd mod the damned thing, just the dialogues just to prove a point. Heck, I'd make a before/after picture slide guide with notes on what exactly would have gotten the original writer slapped by an editor in every edited place, and would've got the actual editor fired if they had a sensible boss. I think someone said the editor was the bosses wife or something, which is about the only way the whole thing makes sense... There's brilliant bits in there, but it's a huuuge mess otherwise.

 

[Bubbles]

Who still managed to write a better game than most "actual writers."

Even if we assume that this is true, it wouldn't necessarily mean that the HBS guys are great writers. The self-contained mission structure and the huge amount of pre-existing lore makes it quite a bit easier to develop cool, short scenarios for a Shadowrun game than for games in a new setting without a clean and simple mission structure (Anachronox, PoE, Grimoire,...). These scenarios in Hong Kong have been perfectly fine so far, but the more complex stylistic aspects of the writing look etremely messy to me. The common complaint that S:HK simply has way too much writing is also something that should have been spotted and corrected early on; you could probably reduce the word count of most of the dialogues by 30% without losing any information or harming the atmosphere in any way.

 

[StaticSpine]

Accuracy if I'm not mistaken, gaichu you get from the serial killer mission, he then sets up shop in the hold of the ship, down the hall from the Russian psychopath

Yup, already got him and found his cabin.

Russian rigger is the best of all characters Now I want HBS to make a Mosocw campaign.

 

[imweasel]

Now I want HBS to make a Mosocw campaign.

After looking at the sales numbers and moderate reception of SR:HK, I am starting to get the feeling that we won't be seeing anymore Shadowrun games from HBS (other than the upcoming mini-campaign of course).