On 6/29/2020 at 9:29 AM, Olaxan said:This game was weird to me. It felt like there was deep lore, and THERE WAS -- in a included PDF. However, while playing the game I understood none of it; didn't understand my character, my motivations, the people, the factions, anything. I tried scouring the planet for these lore capsules, but couldn't find them all -- so guess I'll never understand why I'm playing the game (unless I read the big-ass included lore dump).
In the end I think I enjoyed my experience, but it sure was "Hazy" for me.
After finishing the game I would correct my rating to "pass".
Why? Because it clearly feels unfinished und lazy. The 50-page backstory document you mention is a big part of that. They claim you can enjoy the game without reading it and that's a lie. Like you said, you don't get the slightest bit of information about the backstory in the game. I think a two-minute intro could have changed that. I read the story, it's not really complicated. They just couldn't be bothered to tell it in any better way.
There's also a fifth enemy type I forgot about: Some kind of four legged spider walker that eats a lot of bullets but is otherwise completely harmless. It's too immobile to flush you out of your cover. This thing pissed me off, since it's just copy-pasted as a "boss" enemy to a few areas that are supposed to be ominous, creepy and important. It's even used as kind of a final boss for the two different endings. And that makes me feel like the cut corners. They could not be bothered to create a final boss. The two endings are equally lackluster - they are sequences that are about ten seconds long, without text. Without having read the backstory, you don't get what they really mean either.
I get it, it's a small independet game studio. But 90% of all games I play are from creators like that. If you can't afford doing anything else, why not at least an into with a textcrawl. They also could just cut the crawler enemy from all other places and just used it as the final boss. It wouldn't have affected the gameplay.