Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra :: Re: I'd like to see some of those options as well

[quote name="Ice Cream Jonsey"][quote name="Lizard_King"]Well, I'll respond selectively because honestly I don't remember most games based on the quality of their writing. And I'm not sure if we are rating individual interactions or overall plot. I give Bloodlines a solid 7/10 in the former based on what I tried of a standard playthrough and a 9/10 based on what I played of the Malkavian playthrough. I give it no points for overall plot, because I can't remember it but given that it's White Wolf it's got to be awful. [/quote] I should note that Bloodlines, much like the other Activision game I bought that simply didn't work, enrages me because I paid the absolute maximum price for something simply not finished. I'm mad at the publisher, the developers, the gaming press (them most of all, what good are they?) but most of all... <i>me.</i> [quote][quote]Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate II[/quote] Really? I found the games mechanically interesting but no more deep than anything the Gold Boxes had offered. I guess the sandboxiness? The party interactions? Some D&D settings give instinctive jaded reactions, and Forgotten Realms is almost all of them in its generic, RA Salvatoreness. [/quote] I think BG1 is a good baseline. Like someone casting Bigby's Insipid Fist: <i>be no worse than this</i>. BG2 had a few parts I actually liked, although I'll confess adding mental points when stuff is read by the guy who played Sark. :) [quote][quote]Daggerfall[/quote] Did not play it until Morrowind released. If you could count the skeleton's scream as a writing achievement, I give it a solid 8/10. [/quote] Haha! I'm count it NOW, yes, that you mention it. He doesn't even have lungs!! [quote][quote]Grand Theft Auto 4[/quote]8/10, 3/10. I need to make lots of money so that when I make lots of money I can keep my job as a thug for hire. I will spice up that occupation with one good bank heist and an endless series of capers designed by people doing an homage to the Batman TV series villains. [/quote] I'm nowhere near finished with it, but I really like Nico's cousin. Nico's great and everything, but his cousin's a hard guy to write. And I think they did a great job (at least from what I've seen). [quote][quote]Grand Theft Auto 3[/quote] This had writing? [/quote] That's my sick burn against Bloodlines. They should have had the good sense in V:TM:B to make your dude a mute. [quote][quote]annnnnnnnnnnnd Jinxter (possibly the best-written game of all-time)[/quote] No idea. [/quote][/quote] This one's fun. I am usually not in the business of recommending text games to people. This is at least a graphical text adventure. Let me tell you how I discovered it: So, over a year ago Andy Baio gets a hold of a hard disk with internal <a href="http://waxy.org/2008/04/milliways_infocoms_unreleased_sequel_to_hitchhikers_guide_to_the_galax/">e-mails</a> from Infocom people. He creates a blog entry. He prints excerpts from the e-mails. People who worked for the companies involved encounter this. They post in the comments and for the most part, you see them politely gritting their teeth over the fact that confidential e-mails, in most cases out of context, are up on the web. I'm not going to beat the guy up for his decision: he later revised his blog post and apologized for printing confidential information. However, one gentleman that was perturbed was Michael Bywater. Bywater was - as far as I can tell, and from Bywater's own admission - brought into projects where Douglas Adams's flakiness and attitude towards deadlines were causing real problems. (I mean, that's not all he ever did it in his life, but just talking about the scope of text games.)To quote Bywater from the comments: [quote]Too fucking right I cashed the cheque. I spent too much of my life digging Adams out of holes he got himself into, and, just for once, it was nice to get paid.[/quote] Anyway, in my research, I learned that Bywater contributed heavily to the development of the Magnetic Scrolls game named Jinxter. And because Douglas was involved - rather, the developers had the good sense to work with a really talented guy. I bought it 20 years ago but never got particularly far. I started it through emulation last year and looking at it with a critical eye, it's really marvelously crafted. It's in Michael's own style, but - okay, you know how we're on Caltrops, and it's the one place where there's likely to be like five or six people who really, genuinely dislike the way Douglas Adams would write? Jinxter, if you had to give it a one-sentence description, seems written by someone who would occasionally like to punch Douglas Adams in the mouth, while still having respect for him. (And again, I don't mean to say it's derivative of DA's style or whatever else. Bywater is doing his own thing here. But the tone of the game would fit in perfectly on this BBS.) At any rate, that's as good as I can remember it getting for a commercial game. [quote]I guess I just remember the good lines more than the bad. I do think the Malkavian playthrough was an interesting experiment in replayability through writing choices, but maybe I was even more deluded in my foolish youth. I really did get a kick out of most of the conversations, and I liked how they reacted to you. I don't recall having faces respond to me like that in a game before that, but I didn't really spend any time with it until a major computer upgrade so maybe there were droves of similar things out at the same time. I hated the gameplay, so it had to be something else, right? [/quote] Oh yeah, I never played as a Malkavian. There were a few in the game if you were another race, right? Because I am almost positive I met some anyway. Whoever did their lines should have written the whole game. I also remember not wanting to hump the helpless guy bleeding on the couch because he seemed okay. I wanted him to live, not off himself because I started that frottage shit. Other things I liked about Bloodlines: - Your starting apartment was really well-done. - The city gave me the sensation of a stifled board game. I've been trying to describe the feeling for a few minutes, but I'm not getting it down. In something like Morrowind, you are overcome by the infinite. In Half-Life you're on a theme park ride. Bloodlines gave you just enough to explore that it felt like a dungeon master adding a few rooms and locations to a little scenario the night before everyone was supposed to come over and play. There's inexplicable barriers to exploration and such, but you could get to areas with a few turns and not see the original areas, because of the high buildings. That part I liked a lot. [quote]Mostly I'm just glad I didn't have to read yet another post about goddamned Planescape, even if I had to rig the results. [/quote] Here's my experience with PS:T, by the way: - installed it - met that floating dungeon eyeball - alt-tabbed over to Nanaka Crash. ICJ[/quote]