NightNord

I think that's unfair. He has imagination and talent, he just doesn't know how to control them. It's a skill a professional writer or an artists acquire with experience, because you need to write/draw what you are told to, not what you want David Cage is what people call "visionary" or as it's known in the gamedev industry - "primadonna". Apparently he never had much of a creative constraints and therefore never learned how to structurize and control his imagination - which is a usual case with such people, hence the nickname. I worked under one such guy and despite having a team of 20 (twenty) writers at the later stages, the main story was still mostly incoherent because if the guy with the money wants the dragons here and you'd be damned not to deliver dragons here. Doesn't matter how illogical it is. And the guy wants dragons because it's cool and that's what his imagination generated and he can't force it generate something more fitting That's one of the things that mundanization of the game development brought - it pushed out such people with wild ideas and brought more professional people who can control their imagination and produce something more coherent. And incidentally something more safe from the perspective of the sales department. So that's also the reason why the high budget gaming industry is so dry with ideas You need a leash and some creative constraints to make more refined product, but you should always be careful not to totally kill the creativity in the process

I knew that Ross will hate the room scene A bit of trivia about Farenheit and Quantic Dreams in general They are the guys that popularized if not invented QTE. So if you hate QTE, you know who to blame Their later games are a bit lighter on QTEs (mostly reserved to action scenes) and more about dialogue choices, but that's still a staple of the genre They basically invented the "interactive movie" genre Telltale adventures are heavily inspired by Quantic Dreams. So you can blame them for that sub-genre of adventure games as well The Supermassive Games titles are also heavily inspired by Quantic Dreams, especially the part where the story doesn't matter (the focus is the intercharacter drama) and which-of-your-own-legs-you-want-to-cut-off style of choices The official genre of Farenheit is the "interactive movie", so it's not really meant to be non-linear (the choices are more like "fail/succeed" and, in case of Farenheit, if you succeed you get a bit more information/plot development) Heavy Rain is a bit more non-linear, but mostly in terms of which characters are going to die (which is what the Supermassive Games are really based on) Interestingly enough, QD are also managed to get closest to the true branching story in Detroit: Become Human. Even though it still has a set of fixed events/scenes, in each playthrough you will only see a 30-50% of them and the shared scenes that happen in every playthrough may have different characters with different roles (sometimes opposing) Before Detroit the official idea for choices is that you are NOT supposed to replay or reload the game and supposed to just live with the consequences of your choices In Detroit they changed to formula to showing you the potential story tree with your choices highlighted and explained and other branches left dark/unspecified, but still visible. And the idea is that you are supposed to play through multiple times to get all the variations. But most people still don't do that and only ever see a third of content (which is why most companies don't do that) The idea that you should always be able to progress at least somehow even if you fail everything is at the core of many games, including most RPGs. JRPGs - like Mass Effect or Final Fantasy - do this more directly by simply routing all your choices into the same consequence. Like Farenheit does. CRPGs - like Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate, Ultima, etc - do this indirectly by providing layers of mechanics and content to make sure you can come out of any situation. That style of storytelling really predates Farenheit and mostly stems from the fact that most people don't replay the game and people choices are usually normally distributed around "safe" choices. So anything stemming away from those choices is effectively making content that only a tiny portion of the playerbase will ever see - diminishing returns The weakest/usually criticized point of all QD games is writing. Because it's heavily influenced by David Cage, who is a director and not a writer. Although after Farenheit they went to more mundane things, it is still more about spectacle and drama than about actual substance. For instance, Detroit is a great game with a great setting and engaging story as long as you are not digging too much into it. If you will, the seams and the writer hand/intent is way too obvious That said, the story of Farenheit was heavily cut due to budget constraints. This explains some of the jagged narattive and rapid spiraling into supermen movie stuff The floating combat is not a stylistic choice, but a technical limitation. The synchronized animation is notoriously hard and it was just too janky with the tech they had to work with. This is also the reason for some over-the-top action scenes - it was just cheaper to do it that way Temperature in Celsius and other oddities with locations like desert vs NY (and many other stuff really) - that's because the studio is French. The only reason why this game set in the USA is the same as with many other European-made games at the time. The main market was USA and the idea was that unless you make the game set in USA the americans won't buy it Both Detroit and Heavy Rain were originally PS exclusives because of the deal with Sony. After Detroit success they managed to get out of the deal and release both to PC. The deal with Sony is also why Heavy Rain switched the platform abruptly. Those games are extremely expensive and long to make and both Farenheit and Heavy Rain were not super successful, so they had to rely on the publisher. The Detroit was super successful which allowed them to get off the hook There is no Dimension X. The starting set is just the ending set without the background. The background (the lush nature, the hobo camp, the appartment) is set based on the ending. The bugs and other stuff are just nightmares sent by the Oracle to kill you indirectly/by sleepwalking (the nightmares can't kill you) - if you fail the room scene, you'll end up hanging from the balcony and will be saved by your brother

The developer probably referred to a DRM (as is - the game itself doesn't use any service, but the copy protection does, which is much easier to fix). And the PC Gamer just quoted the twitter post entirely and copy-pasted a generic "about the game" block afterwards. I don't think there have been any malign intent in either post. And to answer the question "how you call that kind of journalist" - "lazy". Or "cheap". Or, you know, "game journalist"

Ross really starting to sound like "the end is nigh" guy. Not the complete batshit crazy type, but the type that say all the right things, point to all the right facts, but then come to completely weird conclusion and/or obsessed with completely irrelevant things Like that oil thing or pandemic - the problem here is just capitalism, not oil, or pandemic or america going down in flames (that was kinda writing on the wall for a while now). And DX: HR writing problems are the fact that it, unlike predecessors, don't show the system problem, it shows a problem within the system - it doesn't say "that's what capitalism inevitably ends up in", it says "hey, there is some bad capitalism out there, mkay". Neither the oil nor pandemic nor the climate change collapse will bring the world down. The collapse of the current world order may bring the world down, but that again will have nothing to do with all the natural disasters and resource shortage - those are just catalysts, not the problem - and that would be something predicted back in 19th century. Simultaneously, bashing the poor DX:HR writing for not reflecting on player murdering everyone or murdering the police in a mission-based game is just unfair - as you said, in the original they basically just dropped the ball on it and you would fail the game without even knowing it. That's simply bad design and games stopped doing that. But making a proper complete game with consequences of such drastic actions would require either an exponentially more production of content that only like 5% of players will see, or simply banning such actions. It's not "bad writing", it's just a budget and design decision that has nothing to do with writing, but you just don't see that And that brings us to the topic of "people on the internet doesn't know what they talk about". Neither are people off the internet - anyone who speaks against the current mainstream is going to be pushed into marginal space, but that's the same space where actual crazies are. But also some of the establishment people may slip in some ideas that are not necessary aligned with the current narrative. How do you know who is who? By analyzing their argumentation and ideas, if they do make sense - and frankly that's not any different from what you do on the internet anyway. But mostly people stick to the narrative they are used to and just seek reconfirmation - either that they are doing great, or that they are doing bad, or that the end is nigh and oil shortage is going to kill us all.

It's funny to hear Ross complain about "lacking diverse approach" after making a video when he bashes Microsoft for not allowing his personal very specific workflow :D Like what you are trying to do - is to essentially build a producing pipeline using OS and GUI as a glue/framework. That's not what most people do - most people use 5-6 programs and that's it, so they don't have all your problems with menus and taskbars and all that. Windows 10 feature of pinning app icon to the taskbar along with multiple super-wide monitors for professionals is usually enough. Basically people don't open and close apps all the time, so efficiency of that doesn't matter. What most people who professionally do something, including video production, use is integrated commercial suites, like Adobe Creative Cloud that come will all the features you desire from OS - radial menus, all the important functions accessible on toolbars, customizable UIs, deep integration of various pipeline step applications into each other (so you don't have to open them via OS or even open them at all), and scripting. When people say "use scripts/command line" they don't mean "write a script with 10 parameters and then launch it every time from CLI typing in all the stuff" - no. They mean "write a script with 10 parameters and integrate it into your pipeline, so it happens automatically". No one resizes images using IrfanView, no one even thinks about it - you have your OBS configured to output images to certain directory in a certain format, you have a script that collects those images and transforms them into whatever format is needed and there is a project management application to display, filter those images, as well as to provide parameters to the script (from project settings). Your idea about "thinking out the box" with "script menu to launch scripts" just doesn't make sense as it's not about "20 seconds to launch a CLI command vs 10 seconds to launch the same command via GUI", it's about "10 seconds to launch the script vs 0 seconds to have the script launch automatically by being integrated into the pipeline". I work with artists and writers (game development) and they use precise controls all the time. And yes, they can work for days without even touching the keyboard - but that's because everything they do is integrated and whatever 5 buttons they have on their tablet + radial menu in their app is enough. And when they need to do something that is not integrated into the pipeline, it's rare enough for them not to care about how efficient it is. That's why no one in professional environment has your problems with OS gui . That's why you get overrepresentation of Linux users - you are walking into BMW club and asking how to turn your hatchback into a truck the best way and then get amused that the most answers you get are coming from the preppers garage nearby. That's because they are the people who try to do what you do. Normal BMW users just buy a truck and don't try to build a truck out of hatchback. But preppers also don't build their armored trucks out of BMWs, they use different chassis that is more suited for the task. Basically, it all comes to the "choose right tool for the job" - it seems that you have consistently selected all the wrong tools for all the steps of the process

Yeah, well, the only way to find that it is to read Twitter apparently. All other resources including the official site are dead

"Ross doesn't like wireless" OK, that Ross dude really have problems P.S. Why not make a custom one? Sounds like you just want a different wheel position - everything else should probably be feasible to find in a market mouse. The wheel and the button are actually separate controllers, so with some 3d printing it should definitely be possible to move the wheel to the side and replace it will a button

You might be delightful that there are communities on Linux that basically do what you want to do - share screenshot and ideas, as well as use highly customizable and scriptable DMs (there are droves of those) designed by those people for those people. You have been looking at themes for KDE and Gnome, but there are a lot more than that. Also, Windows 10 soon™ will support (already supports?) "Linux subsystem" with graphics support, so it's not entirely impossible, you'll be able to run Linux DE on a Windows. Now I can't really tell you anything besides that, as my ideal OS UI is no UI. Like I use full-screen window and launch apps via a launcher by typing it. But I do use a lot less programs and I don't use mouse that often, so it's usually sits somewhere by the side sad and lonely, so I don't have the problem with hotkeys or command line. Also, if you want to look for general UI innovations, you may look at web scene and nodejs and electron and like that. Stuff like Atom or VSCode. You may see that the trend there, but I assume you won't like it - the trend is not to use mouse. In fact, most professional applications are moving this way - for example Maya have the selection wheel like you want, but they're now mostly following the Blender road of basically command line + hotkeys. That's why you see so many freakish themes - people who make them, don't really use them. The trend today is less mouse more keyboard (which is ironic, yes). But honestly I don't think a lot of people really care. Like I think it's not very honest to say MS (or anyone else) don't do R&D on that stuff. They do and there are tons of weird ideas being tested. It's just for most people "easy to understand" interface trumps everything else, and what is more easy to understand than what you know. Now, what the ideal UI would be? Neurointerface. Can we have it right now? Nope

Looks like dead cells, in everything, including non-ending. That's yet another of those 2d souls games that keep copying overall look of the design, but not the essence of it.

I actually don't agree that was a bad decision. I think that was the best decision to be made considering circumstances On prime directive - I don't think he's violated it, as he restored situation to pretty much the closest possible way that would be without Enterprise showing up - as if the freighter would land, but won't be able to take off again On the whole situation - it's clearly what is called a "social sci-fi", as in - it's not really about technological/realistic situation, but it's a theatrical play about class struggle. Planet B are clearly capitalists, they have knowledge and posses means of production. Planet A are workers. So on topic of the decisions, what were the variants: 1. Send parts - restore space travel, let the situation to continue for some indefinite, but limited amount of time. Nothing will really change, as it was shown that this civilization as a whole is dysfunctional as it led to the failure of the only thing that kept it sustainable - space travel 2. Do not send drugs - that would make transition period (if any) impossible, angry the population, start the panic and make situation even worse immediately. This drug shipment gave them time that they MAY use to improve things 3. Help planet B somehow - I think the idea here is that it's planet's B fault - they had the knowledge and means to sustain the space travel and they failed it. They are the most dysfunctional part of the society and one transport of food won't help them. And transporting planet's A inhabitants there would just be a slave shipment. Planet B is unreasonable - they don't understand the gravity of the situation as clearly shown - and I think the idea is that they are going to get what they deserve. 4. Tell planet A inhabitants the truth - that would scratch out the planet B inhabitants sent to A possible options, while not really reducing (IMO) negative consequences as plague or not, withdrawal will be real. I also would not agree that planet B inhabitants won't tell anything - their only assets in possession are knowledge. Stuck on planet A they have options - sit tight and die/be executed as soon as withdrawal kicks in, as planet A inhabitants clearly hate them and will surely blame everything on them. Or tell the truth to the leadership of the planet A and utilize their knowledge and ruthlessness to maybe stir the situation away from the worst scenario. This is basically their only option of survival. Basically planet B is done in pretty much all variants as it's just dysfunctional (Brave New World, etc - quite common theme among utopias/dystopias/social sci-fi - leaders without/separated from workers can't survive). Planet A have options: 1. Civil war with significant technological step back (planet B people die, no effective control measures) 2. Civil war without significant technological step back (planet B people survive/pass knowledge, but no effective control measures) 3. No war, no loss of knowledge, but creation of capitalist class on planet A (planet B people hijack control of the situation) TL;Dr: So basically planet A have options ranging from anarchy to communism, with possible status-quo as capitalism. Pretty much whole spectrum - so in that case Enterprise's intervention does not cut out options of future development, but preserves them - which is pretty much what prime directive is about. They don't make choices for the people on planet A, they just ensured that all options are still on the table. And planet B have no choices to begin with, so who cares.

I like how Ross says Amnesia is bad and someone suggests SOMA as better game. I thought soma is universally hated. It would be interesting to know what Ross would think. I would bet he's also going to hate it. Stadia is almost dead already, most people in the industry does not believe in it. On topic of Linux: wine isn't easy, especially on nvidia. If you want a game to be running on Linux you may just ask people to run the game in specific manner so they come up back with ready solution (it may not work the same on your machine though). I dunno why people recommend lutris or playonlinux - those are launchers that are meant to run scripts that someone else did. If you are running weird games, then well - those aren't going to help you.

I am kinda disappointed at Gordon just shooting the barrels like it's an accident (from the second time). I honestly was expecting another sarcastic remark on this gamey situation like it was before about barrels, manhacks or famous box smashing room from fm1. Or another mod in like headcrab sitting on the barrels and Gordon deciding to blow it up with infinite barrels to be sure.

I meant - it's when player already understands everything, but heroes are acting clueless. This is actually imparting gameplay because you have to find "proof" of something you've already understood.

Story with a twist, even though the twist message isn't really very twisty. Very short. Very nice UI and overall game execution. Looks like a tech-demo or presentation for something bigger. Walking simulator with very light "puzzles" (mostly need to solve riddles of sorts).

It's a puzzle actually. Portal-like with narrative walking simulator intermissions. Puzzle mechanics are solid, varied enough, even if somewhat short. Story is god-awful. Attempts to introduce "atmosphere" are made in such way that it's better not to have any story (at one puzzle level you'll be forced to solve a puzzle that uses a trick unseen before and after, under constant sound of a woman crying). Tons of melodrama. Like the whole story, except for the very end when it turns out it's not melodrama, but you are already fed up with it.