Pheta

nobody needs to see that heteronormative degenerate filth. Kids are playing that game.

Wow, didn’t expect someone speaking so loudly about same sex relationships to be so bigoted, but all walks of life, I guess. Either way, I seriously hope you have no interaction with anyone below the age of 30 personally or professionally.

I’m not gonna even get into how romance is just a part of a story, and if you read anything that has romance in it, fanfic or not, it has just as much a right to exist.

I will however rip into you pointing out franchises for ‘heteronormative degenerate filth’. First, the game isn’t about you. No game ever is, nor ever will be. If that is a moral failing of a game, I suggest you start making games yourself or stop playing them, because any other expectation is really stupid beyond compare.

I will concede that games often lure you into self inserting yourself into the main character, as JRPGs tend to do. But at some point, the illusion has to break, and I can’t really imagine how you’d get mad if you’re self inserting into Zidane (FF IX protagonist) or even Leon or Cloud ( I hope you know enough about franchises you’re trash talking to know who they are).

Also, to complain about the Assassin’s Creed franchise of all things is so braindead I have to question if you’re a plant. You’re saying children are playing a game whose whole premise is premediated murder, and the romance scenes are what you’re up in arms about? That is honestly beneath anything that breathes to acknowledge, and really shows that critical thinking is a skill.

Do note, however, that if children are playing a game with mature content in it? That’s the parent’s responsibility as an individual to care for their child. Games aren’t obligated to include or exclude content to suit children, nor even whiny little shits like yourself.

That’s how the world works buddy. Sorry if you stepped outside your echo chamber, but romance is a part of stories as much as romance will always be a genre of books.

And everyone’s gonna judge you if you say stupid shit like this. ‘Psychological evaluation’, as you put it, is just extrapolating. Or, if you need smaller words, guessing that since you’re dumb enough to completely dismiss romance as being worthy of including in a plot, you might be dumb enough to be a bible thumping Karen, or part of Collective Shout.

If you really think being a bigot is okay, I don’t really know what else to tell you. Bye, don’t let the door hit you on the way out? You don’t have many friends?

But yeah, welcome to the real world.

First off, I wouldn’t worry even a little about ‘writing skill’. Skills in anything are things you develop, and you develop them by doing! So it doesn’t really matter if it’s a waste of time. The important thing with any creative endeavor is that you wanted to do it.

Think about it like this, lots of really popular artists and content creators didn’t start off that way. They simply wanted to do something different, and got better as they kept doing it.

The reason I asked the reasoning and desire here, is that goals and intent are a big guiding force, and having different end goals changes what would be positive changes, at least in my opinion.

Since the goal here is to entertain people, there are a couple of reasons why I recommended adding a backstory to your character, and being present tense. First, the game introduces your character as kind of a blank slate; it doesn’t matter what you did before, what crimes you committed, or life you led, destiny has set you on this path. In the grand scheme of things, it works, especially if a player doesn’t really want to think too hard about roleplaying.

But adding extra depth to a character, like any roleplaying, adds more reasons to be invested. It allows you to flex your narrative skills, completely free of the restraints of the game engine, the game plot, and gives the audience something to be interested in besides the base game’s plot.

That’s part of what I was attempting to explain earlier; the remaster of Oblivion came out recently, but the original version of the game came out well in the past, in 2006 (geez I feel old!).

Part of the reason I suggested using first person in your writing style is that it gives you opportunities to voice things in more expressive ways. If you’re going this route, you’ll basically be doing a fan dub of the game. There’s plenty out there, where you can effectively re-write the dialogue to be as silly, nonsensical, or meme worthy as possible. Of course, there’s plenty opportunity to really try voice acting, and writing a narrative that fits you.

Either way, that’s what I meant when using the term ‘personality’. Just showing emotion, or if you really wanted to get into character, you could act out scenes as your character itself, and roleplay your playthrough that way. There’s really no wrong way of doing this; you won’t get much attention on your videos starting out, but that’s the same for every creator out there, some close friends included.

The advice I gave for imagery can still be applied in first person too! Instead of recalling torrential rain, you could instead have the character shouting against the wind and rain. This may require some editing skills on your end, though the possibilities are absolutely there. Heck, half of this stuff is why the original Oblivion and Skyrim have such massive modding communities.

Finally, wanted to leave some suggestions. I don’t know if this is your first creative thing you’ve done, or if you’ve been working on stuff all the time. Either way, the best thing you can do to get better is to keep making stuff, whether that’s editing videos, script writing and creating scenes, or whatever you prefer.

If this is your first time, I wouldn’t take it too serious, to take the pressure off making them. Doing a fandub like I mentioned earlier is a great way to kill time with friends and add some goofiness into a game you enjoy. Fair warning though, fan dubs are typically better when everyone already knows the game/media before hand, so they can set up funny punchlines, or do skits with a scene they know about beforehand.

That being said, if you do want to do a more serious story, that’s perfectly fine too! A serious story can be really fun, and since it’s a project you’re doing for fun, don’t be ashamed to rip character traits from some of your favorite characters!

This is digressing from the point I’m trying to make, but I’m a big fan of TableTop Roleplaying Games (TTRPGS). Think Critical Role, or other games like that. They’re really fun, and are great ways to experiment with character ideas or story ideas, although your milage may vary depending on who is at your table.

But in all my experience at these games, video games, and reading, most stories are iterations of one another, just with a different personal flavor. So don’t be ashamed to steal an idea you really like, just make sure to put your own spin on it, or reframe it in your own interpretation!

I figured I’d give it a look, and creative stuff like this should always be encouraged!

There’s a lot of things I want to critique, but I first want to lay out some ground zero statements, if that makes sense:

I’m just one person, and things I say might not hold true from one person to another. Meaning, others may disagree with my opinions, and you yourself might even disagree; that’s fine.

The most important thing is to enjoy the process. If you’re having fun making these, keeping that fun going is the most important thing. If a suggestion would make it less fun, it’s completely okay to ignore it!

I’m having issues formulating my thoughts as I try to write this, so forgive me if it makes less sense than intended.

The future perspective is a fun idea, but it kind of conflicts with the whole premise of a blind playthrough. How are you supposed to have a future perspective on things that you, the creator of the narrative and story, aren’t able to foresee? I can understand wanting to do something creative with your first playthrough, especially if you felt inspired by the worldbuilding or lore of the Elder Scrolls world.

Let’s start from the top. First, who is this character’s story that we’re following along on? We don’t know their name, who they were before they were a prisoner, or why they’re in prison to begin with. A character is much more compelling when there is already a goal, something to the story beyond just the circumstances they find themselves in.

Second, there’s the issue of having a personal story layered on top of a pre-existing plot. What you’re writing is currently similar to fan fiction. Not really a big deal, but given that the world of Tamriel and the Elder Scrolls series is already pre-established, not to mention the plot of the game, there’s going to be many that are already familiar with the story of the game.

Given that, there’s the question of intent. Are you wanting to create this for others, and for it to be entertaining? As a documentary, to sort of chronologue your character’s journey or playthrough? Or is it just an excuse to try writing, using imagery and other storytelling tools? To be clear, any reason, even no reason, is fine. But there’s different critique for different approaches.

For example, if the intent was to entertain, I could mention that having more personality and getting us more familliar with the main character would be a good idea. If the idea was to chronologue the journey, you could have snap cuts of the most important moments filling out a journal entry (e.g., you’re reading out of a journal that the MC keeps, and adding snips of gameplay footage to coincide with the journal).

If you were wanting to just try using imagery and other narrative tools, you may want to reconsider your choice of words. While imagery is a fun way to write, adds immersion, and adds details to things that otherwise would be glossed over, you are able to show literal images of what you are describing. So there’s no need to describe the undead, as the viewer can see them as clearly as our main character could. If this was what you were wanting to do, you could use the other senses to add to the immersion; smell, sound, taste, etc. Describe how the undead smell, the rotting food tastes, how moist the air is, or slippery the moss on the rocks or pebbles are.

Another thing to consider ties into what I mentioned earlier; the pre-existing universe of the Elder Scrolls franchise. Oblivion takes place within Cyrodill, with so much going on. If you’re wanting to write a story within the universe, you might want to read up a bit, so you don’t create a narrative that falls apart when the world or game has a different plot point than what is intended.

If this is a blind playthrough, as in, it is your first time playing the game, you may want to consider changing the tone, or perspective. If the story is told in first person, there’s less issues with unexpected plot changes or conflicts between preconceived ideas or other things, as the main character will find out, or have their misconceptions corrected at the same time as the viewer.

I’m happy you’re enjoying the world of Tamriel. I myself grew up playing the original Oblivion, so it’s nice to see others re-experiencing the original fascination I had with the world and game. That’s all from me though!

But I have voiced that I don’t think this route/configuration of leadership will work.

Could you elaborate on this, beyond the one sentence? The rest of your comment makes it clear that you weren’t aware, and still aren’t about much of what was going on with SKG. Given that you don’t have a clear understanding of what the timeline of SKG was, that does leave room for doubt that you understand the initiative. I would like to give you the benefit of the doubt, so please explain what you meant.

I hope the initiative causes positive change.

We all do.

I will heavily disagree with you on your evaluation of Sly 4. The higher fidelity models doesn’t really add much to the characters that you couldn’t glean in prior entries in the series, and really only serves to give the characters a more plastic style all while minimizing the features that made them so memorable - their cartoonish aesthetic and stylized design. Not much changed on the design front for any of the major cast, besides more detail regarding their costumes. I will admit that more details on the smaller bits of their costume would be nice in the older entries, but compromising the style and aesthetic is a much worse tradeoff for what was gained. There’s many other people evaluating the level design in Sly 4 so I won’t go into that too much, but suffice to say, Sly 2 has comparable level design, and some are better in my personal opinion, but Sly 3 has the best level design of the franchise. None of those level designs were hindered or empowered by graphical capabilities. The only part that would have a noticeable impact, if anything, would be the post processing effects from some abilities in Sly 4, but I don’t really think those added that much to the experience, as most are gimmicks and costume based, meaning they are only used to solve puzzles and don’t play any further part in your arsenal except when the game specifically calls for those abilities.

Now I don’t disagree that modern computing power could make the series much better, but AAA has this tunnel vision on graphical fidelity, when the indie scene has proved time and again, style always has and always will trump substance.

Ratchet and Clank made the transition successfully because they didn’t overblow the graphical fidelity on Clank, it simply looks like a higher quality model of his early iterations, and has been made easier due to the armor and other sci-fi bits of technology in the series, as the genre scales better with the raw fidelity that most AAA developers pursue than other franchises.

Doesn’t really help either that the first step that the Sly franchise took into this modern era was spearheaded by a third party studio. I’m not gonna bash Sanzaru that much, as it’s clear they had to put in a lot of work to approach Sony and Sucker Punch to even get permission to work on the franchise, and it shows in the humor of their mission design, although they were uncertain of themselves and it shows. So not only was Sanzaru dealing with the difficult position of having the newest entry of a beloved franchise, but also coming up with ways to modernize the gameplay and graphics in a franchise almost iconified in the early 2000’s comic and cartoon aesthetic.

It’s clear they had more to juggle than could have honestly been expected of them, not the least of which that the franchise had been dead in the water for 8 years at that point, as the industry had slowed to a crawl after the creep of design scope and the upscaling of the industry caused much of the workflow to stagnate or recursion in on itself.

Nah, YouTube recently updated their site to slow down your browser and PC to a halt if they catch you using a block. First time it got past UBlockOrigin for me, but doesn’t change the fact that it’s malware. Thought it might be related to that, since I had to look it up to figure out what the problem was.

Pretty sure I have an idea on what your problem might be. Do you typically keep YouTube open or watch videos while playing a game?

I’ve played the game while it was in early access, and now that I’ve played quite a bit (not all) of the game, I’d like to give my thoughts for anyone stumbling on this or keeping an eye on the game and trying to make a decision.

First, the main feature of the game, beyond the aesthetic of an environmentalist version of post-apocalyptic world, is the airships. It’s a mobile base that is both a vehicle and where you do everything. The idea is nothing new, but the execution is done pretty well, in my opinion. There’s basic rooms, but you can unlock more rooms through exploration and research, which can result in some pretty interesting base designs and configurations.

As far as a survival crafting game goes, it doesn’t do too bad to stand out in the sea of similar games, as the game originally began based around not having combat in it at all, but has since adopted some combat mechanics due to popular demand. The environmentalist messaging and themes are very obvious, and it jumped on the bandwagon fairly early on, before the themes got too worn out, so it isn’t stale storytelling at the very least.

Now, for the changes between early access and 1.0, I will say it’s pretty drastic. I played the very early versions of early access, as well as most major updates that came out between then and now, and the difference is striking. First, in the beginning, you’d have to use a deck mounted extractor (think resource gathering laser tool) to gather materials, and you’d be able to acquire a portable version of the tool later on. In the 1.0 version of the game, that is turned on its head, where you get a portable one first, with deck mounted ones that don’t require energy later (for automation and convivence purposes). Resources feel much more in demand in the 1.0 version, as there is more to craft and upgrade, so you’ll be gathering and going through materials just as quickly. This is partly because most of the gameplay in early access involved exploring, with the underdust locations being the primary story progression areas. This meant that while you were exploring around, you’d be collecting materials passively, and because of this, you’d end up with tons of materials whenever you’d normally pivot to upgrading your base - right after getting a upgrade, or needing space for new facilities.

The 1.0 version is much more streamlined in that story and story required equipment is all marked out for you, meaning you can beeline from one place to the next without much wasted time; great if you’re in a hurry or a journalist, but it does hurt the pacing in terms of resource scarcity. Not to say that resources are any more or less rare, they’re very abundant, in fact. However, due to adding some new resources that are used interspersed throughout the crafting process for more complex items means that you will always have a deficiency somewhere.

I mentioned progression and story being streamlined in 1.0, but in truth it has had a massive overhaul, with proper zones to halt early players wandering into areas they do not have the tools to actually make use of, and to segment story into decent chunks. The game has more side grades for equipment than before, and they add interesting choices for gameplay, although due to the late adoption of combat, the upgrade system for combat is relatively shallow.

From my perspective, it was a promising survival game that focused more on base building and dealing with size constraints, and the interplay with base building, which has developed into a proper, feature complete game. The gameplay may not be for everyone, but it is clear it had a vision for what the game would be, and successfully achieved that goal.

Based on what I’ve played before the 1.0 release, I know that there is more content and mechanics to encounter, so I’ll reply with an update once I’ve properly finished the game and can give a more comprehensive review.