The Great Infinity Engine Do-Over

[Simulacrum]

MrBtongue, one of my favourite youtubers, returned from hibernation to give us another "Tasteful, Understated Nerdrage" in a video titled the same as this thread.



The video is rejoicing at the re-emergence of the old isometric RPGs associated with the infinity engine, but at the same time directing some criticism at how these games are, as he puts it, "too balanced". Watch the whole thing if you want him to elaborate on it, but I think his core point of contention is that the process of creating these modern games was different from creating the old ones in a significant way: The older games focused on making their world come alive, essentially, "The game is a guest in your world", not the other way around, with the game's systems designed around accommodating this, the results often being some very janky game mechanics, unbalanced games, and a lot of very cheesy strategies.

The newer games, however, focus more on making their games balanced, intuitive, and "safe", with the game's world sense of authenticity of secondary concern. They then force some choices in there to appeal to people's expectations of "Choice & Consequence" (which he made a very excellent video on also).

He expresses something in this video I've been feeling for some time now. I especially felt this when it came to the newer Fallout games: Games obviously designed to keep the setting intact rather than to create a world that feels authentic, and I feel like these games have lost something important in the process. Here's somebody expressing the same thing, though hopefully a bit more articulately than I have.

What do you guys think? Agree / disagree with the premise? Does it even matter to you if the game world feels authentic, or does "balanced" game design even inhibit your ability to enjoy it as such?

[Vespian]

MrBtongue, one of my favourite youtubers, returned from hibernation to give us another "Tasteful, Understated Nerdrage" in a video titled the same as this thread.



The video is rejoicing at the re-emergence of the old isometric RPGs associated with the infinity engine, but at the same time directing some criticism at how these games are, as he puts it, "too balanced". Watch the whole thing if you want him to elaborate on it, but I think his core point of contention is that the process of creating these modern games was different from creating the old ones in a significant way: The older games focused on making their world come alive, essentially, "The game is a guest in your world", not the other way around, with the game's systems designed around accommodating this, the results often being some very janky game mechanics, unbalanced games, and a lot of very cheesy strategies.

The newer games, however, focus more on making their games balanced, intuitive, and "safe", with the game's world sense of authenticity of secondary concern. They then force some choices in there to appeal to people's expectations of "Choice & Consequence" (which he made a very excellent video on also).

He expresses something in this video I've been feeling for some time now. I especially felt this when it came to the newer Fallout games: Games obviously designed to keep the setting intact rather than to create a world that feels authentic, and I feel like these games have lost something important in the process. Here's somebody expressing the same thing, though hopefully a bit more articulately than I have.

What do you guys think? Agree / disagree with the premise? Does it even matter to you if the game world feels authentic, or does "balanced" game design even inhibit your ability to enjoy it as such?

I disagree, because FO4's issue is not with the setting, but with how they used the space within the setting. The setting can easily be the most important part, without losing a realistic approach to interaction between characters, entire dialogues and choices ánd even what you get to actually do within the setting, besides kill, kill, kill, kill, kill. I feel FO4 fails to pull me in, because every so many dialogues I shrug and frown and scratch my head over dialogue that any real human being would never even imagine in such a situation.

For example, the strong tie to SEAAAAANNNNN is inevitably detrimental to the game. If you would follow the human line of thinking, nothing would matter more than getting your child back. Instead you're basically 'forced' to roam the land and do sidequests that have no relevance. At the same time, if you take the disjointed from reality approach and choose not to give two flying fucks about your kid, you're forced to speak dialogue that's all about the wee little babe you lost, instead of fitting the narrative to the possibility that your brain froze over in the vault and you simply stopped giving any fucks whatsoever.

[Tidezen]

I think the internet bears a lot of responsibility for the situation of RPGs becoming too "safe" in their balance and in-game choices. With the abundance of information about every single quest, decision and game mechanic (stats, skills, team comp, items) the game is laid bare within days after (or months before if there's a beta) release.

In older games you didn't have this information right out of the box, and because games were more opaque, one was forced to interact with that game from "within" it. You could save-scum in some cases to "try out" different paths, skills, etc., but that could often be tedious to do, and often the easiest thing to do was to just play naturally and see how it all plays out. Even as a completionist searching every nook and cranny, if the game's loot was randomized, you'd roll the dice and see what you got, then move on, without knowing if that last boss had a 5% chance of dropping an awesome OP item.

It gave each playthrough some uniqueness and an organic feel to it, rather than checking off a shopping list of "stuff I want by endgame" because you already know everything the game has on offer.

With players having an intricate knowledge of the game's mechanics and loot offerings, it creates an impetus on the developers to make their systems more balanced, which of course leads to homogeneity.

[WarpedAcorn]

I love Mr. B Tongue and his videos are always excellent. It was like Christmas came early when I saw he had a video up yesterday.

That being said, I don't 100% agree with his points about the modern isometric RPG's. In fact, they're just as broken as they've always been and there's always a way to abuse mechanics to cheese your way through the game. The only real difference is that the player has to actively seek out the cheese rather than having cheese readily available.

Regarding Pillars of Eternity, he cited the comparison of weapons to BG2. I do agree with this, and this is a reason I heard a lot of people were disappointed with item drops in games after Diablo 2. For balancing reasons, items were homogenized and the chances of having a completely broken weapon were removed. For a lot of people, this killed the fun because getting the stupidly powerful weapon (like Blackrazor) was a lot of fun (and in that specific example was available so late in the game that it really didn't matter).

The discussion of choice was an interesting one. There are always limitations when having a programmed game people play vs. something where a person is adapting to your actions (I.E. a table-top RPG). I don't have an issue with binary choices in games, but the choice he spoke up regarding the Wasteland 2 character was only significant because of the world building done in W2. At that point in the game, regardless of the manufactured choices, he was invested enough in the story, setting, and his party to have the weight of that choice.

In all, although I love his videos and always seem to learn something, I think Mr B Tongue was stretching a bit with this specific criticism on these titles. And yes, both Pillars and Wasteland definitely have their fair share of criticism.