rofif
Can’t Git Gud
I can't imagine a world in which a story game is good for 130 hours.
This just means its a bad story taking too long to get to it. Unless BG3 story is 30 hours and you played it for 130
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This just means its a bad story taking too long to get to it. Unless BG3 story is 30 hours and you played it for 130
MirageMew2
Member
It’s bizarre really the stark contrast in Starfield’s start versus Skyrim. It’s like if Skyrim never let you leave the Helgen sewers.
Golgo 13
The Man With The Golden Dong
Unless it’s RDR2 quality writing/acting then yes, I’m %100 with you. I experienced this with Diablo 4 and Starfield recently. I was rolling my eyes and mashing “skip” when the robotic/cliched character was droning on about bullshit.
It’s like “shut the fuck up and let me go kill something”. Bad acting/writing is mostly to blame.
It’s like “shut the fuck up and let me go kill something”. Bad acting/writing is mostly to blame.
SmokedMeat
Gamer™
I get you. I’ve got a good 45 minutes to an hour to play each night, and just now finally finished the Diablo 4 campaign.
One thing that irked me and felt like a complete waste of my time was missions where I had to go speak with someone, who then had me speak with someone else/perform an action, and then be directed to go back and speak to the first person.
It wasn’t often, but it was pretty annoying feeling like a ping pong ball when it happened and felt unnecessary.
One thing that irked me and felt like a complete waste of my time was missions where I had to go speak with someone, who then had me speak with someone else/perform an action, and then be directed to go back and speak to the first person.
It wasn’t often, but it was pretty annoying feeling like a ping pong ball when it happened and felt unnecessary.
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GymWolf
Member
I think they are?! (for the most part)
Like usually when you have multiple choices you can ask to go directly to the point or ask more questions.
It is the same in witcher, latest ac games, horizon games, mass effect games, bethesda games, obsidian games and really most rpg or action rpg that have a bit of roleplay or discussions with npcs.
I guess that sometimes even the "go to the point" option is still too verbose in some games.
nemiroff
Gold Member
This thread is no different from any other similar discussion, there's nothing new here whatsoever.
It depends on personal subjective opinion.
It depends on the game.
It depends on the genre.
It depends on the quality.
..It pretty much depends in infinity.
With BG3 I indulge in every single uttered word, in other games I just skip. AND sometimes I just put on a podcast and play Power Wash Simulator.
It depends on personal subjective opinion.
It depends on the game.
It depends on the genre.
It depends on the quality.
..It pretty much depends in infinity.
With BG3 I indulge in every single uttered word, in other games I just skip. AND sometimes I just put on a podcast and play Power Wash Simulator.
StueyDuck
Member
Yeah but you are mentioning the good examples which I said earlier.
In Starfield, FFXVI, Hogwarts, Cyberpunk etc you can't start a secondary quest or do anything outside of main quest without being bombarded by some first year English 101 short story.
To be clear this is a very recent issue I am noticing in gaming, I never felt this with wrpgs jrpgs in the past
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I think gamers need to learn which games are actually for them and which aren't.
If you don't like world-building, then perhaps games that try to make world-building a major part of the role-playing aren't for you. Maybe Souls games, platformers, racing games, etc are more your speed.
If all you want to do is shoot stuff, play more first-person action games like Doom.
If you don't like world-building, then perhaps games that try to make world-building a major part of the role-playing aren't for you. Maybe Souls games, platformers, racing games, etc are more your speed.
If all you want to do is shoot stuff, play more first-person action games like Doom.
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StueyDuck
Member
Well if you find joy in anything any of those people say in that game aside from the MQ storyline then more power to you.
Games have done it well and far far better in the past. The Witcher 3 and mass effect trilogy come to mind straight away
Edellus
Member
I agree. Some games require immersing ourselves into the world and caring for the characters to be enjoyed. Just like other games require persistence and patience to enjoy the challenge and learning process through trial and error of some games.
For example, I really like FFXIV and I read everything/watch (even optional dialog). I can't say I'd be surprised if someone that won't invest themselves into that immersion (skipping dialog and cutscenes) will like FFXIV very much, because that's what most of that game is.
StueyDuck
Member
I fucking love Kojima games, at least that shit is nuts and keeps your attention even if it's completely nonsensical.
Some dude droning on about how he started a shop and the shop is good but then the shop stopped being good so the shop changed and became a different shop and now the shop is good again, it's his favorite shop since the last shop he owned which wasn't much of a shop compared to his new shop.
Like I'm joking but what I wrote above isn't far from your average dialog in starfield
rofif
Can’t Git Gud
lol fuck them books
Book are long because you have to describe some stuff. Time wasted
Buggy Loop
Member
The story within the 130 hours played, not that the story is 130 hours long.
BG3 also has a lot of story though so it's not far from target.
Every side quests brings a story, background or lore into the game. I know its hard to comprehend after FF16 & Forspoken Rofif, you should try it.
amigastar
Member
StueyDuck
Member
no need to be childish here. A game and a book aren't the same thing. Do you say that to people who enjoy films and TV too?
NeoIkaruGAF
Gold Member
Things would be at least a bit better if you only had to *gasp* read characters’ lines and there was no VA for the useless banter.
But no, people said they hate silent protagonists and would want full VA in fucking Pokémon too.
But no, people said they hate silent protagonists and would want full VA in fucking Pokémon too.
ComputerBlue
Member
This is one of the reasons why I rarely play JRPG’s, they explain, and over explain and then re-explain, every little fucking thing, and so much of it is text based which makes it even worse, because you can’t just skip the whole scene, you gotta spam X to get through every sentence.
That’s not to say I don’t appreciate a good story with some great dialogue, there are loads of games where I get completely immersed in the story, but the problem is, is that video game writing is more often than not fucking garbage.
That’s not to say I don’t appreciate a good story with some great dialogue, there are loads of games where I get completely immersed in the story, but the problem is, is that video game writing is more often than not fucking garbage.
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Hugare
Member
Havent finished FF XVI yet due to this shit
And I'm 100% sure that I'll never, ever finish Persona 5 because of this
Like a broken record, I'll mention BG 3 yet again
Played almost 10h of that game on the weekend, and everything feels meaningful. Everything.
The most mundane sidequest has interesting, believeble characters that dont treat you like the all mighty savior from the moment you meet them
Going from FF XVI or Starfield to BG 3 is jarring af.
The only game that I've ever played to make me feel this way was TW 3.
But BG 3 is even better than TW 3 in this regard
This game has raised the bar so much for me,
And I'm 100% sure that I'll never, ever finish Persona 5 because of this
Like a broken record, I'll mention BG 3 yet again
Played almost 10h of that game on the weekend, and everything feels meaningful. Everything.
The most mundane sidequest has interesting, believeble characters that dont treat you like the all mighty savior from the moment you meet them
Going from FF XVI or Starfield to BG 3 is jarring af.
The only game that I've ever played to make me feel this way was TW 3.
But BG 3 is even better than TW 3 in this regard
This game has raised the bar so much for me,
SirKicksalot
Member
Random people talk as you walk past them in Starfield and you get an objective. "Talk to Tyrone". Who the fuck is Tyrone?
50 hours later my log is full of "Talk to X". I will not talk to anyone.
This writing style ruined the Assassin's Creed Odyssey Discovery mode. In Origins you walk somewhere and some specialist explains what you're seeing. Odyssey is all EYYYY CHEEKI BREEKI LET'S DRINK SOME WINE AYYY LMAO and I abandoned it five minutes later.
50 hours later my log is full of "Talk to X". I will not talk to anyone.
This writing style ruined the Assassin's Creed Odyssey Discovery mode. In Origins you walk somewhere and some specialist explains what you're seeing. Odyssey is all EYYYY CHEEKI BREEKI LET'S DRINK SOME WINE AYYY LMAO and I abandoned it five minutes later.
Phase
Member
That's because the emphasis isn't on gameplay anymore, and it shows.Currently my time is being shared between two AAA campaigns, ffxvi and starfield, this time being limited, I can only squeeze an hour or two luckily a night
If I'm lucky
Modern game design/pacing/story-telling has characters nattering on for minutes and minutes on end. it's always just pointless meaningless shit with side characters we are meant to Care about apparently.
Am I only one finding this pointless droning on by characters about menial shit ruining most modern games, the writing seems to be extremely superfluous and doesn't respect the players time whatsoever.
I am finding myself mashing the skip button as fast as I can in these games after a few hours.
EDIT: thanks to mods for getting this on the right side
DonkeyPunchJr
World’s Biggest Weeb
A. World-building doesn’t have to mean a character just stands there dumping info on you paragraph after paragraph. In fact that’s probably one of the worst ways to accomplish world-building and is a sign of crappy writing
B. A lot of that supposed “world-building” barely even qualifies as that. Much of the time it’s just an attempt to give you some flimsy but “better-than-nothing” in-world explanation for why it’s asking you to do some dumb videogame-y that nobody would ever agree to in real life.
E.g. FF XVI there’s one quest where a lady is like “help me, my kids’ clothing is falling apart because I don’t have any fabric to repair it. I ordered fabric from some random person at a shop stall half a continent away but it hasn’t been delivered yet, probably because we live in the middle of a poisonous lake in the middle of an abandoned wasteland. Can you go find out what happened to my fabric?”
Then you go and
find out the fabric shop had their supply shipment hijacked by some BANDITS, so you go kill the bandits and get the lady’s fabric.
Come on. That’s not world-building, most of the dialog is just there in service of the dumb fetch quest and adds nothing.
lughnasadh123
Member
The last thing I want or need from devs is to start catering to people with low attentions spans rushing through a game asap just so they can move on to the next game they can burn though asap etc, etc, etc.
StueyDuck
Member
it's got nothing to do with having "low (short) attention spans". It's about how poorly written these story dumps are and how superfluous and meaningless they are, as others have said it's just very bad padding in modern AAA gaming.
not everything is Mario or starfield. there has been better games at achieving these things that came out many many years ago, again the Mass Effect trilogy puts many WRPGs to shame today.
it sounds like you would maybe enjoy an infinite game written by AI?
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Northeastmonk
Gold Member
I enjoy progression. 30-50 hours is fine, but make me feel like I did something in 30 minutes. Lies of P for example. I can spend 30-40 minutes leveling up or practicing my attacks. NiOh, Souls, etc. Even if I only have time to upgrade something or grind a few levels. Make me feel like I did something besides talk or make a short trip for more talking. If I grind or something then I’m more prepared the next time I get to play. It might not be for everyone, but I like it. Give me a small area to go crazy in for a while. I may or may not move on to the boss. I can’t count how many times I felt good just arriving to the next area, save, and quit. If I somehow have to listen to everything and watch someone basically fart on screen for 10 or so minutes, I become less engaged.
Edgelord79
Gold Member
Don’t play FFXVI
docchicken
Member
Both of those games give you a location marker after the (fully skippable) dialogues, so that's probably what you should be doing.
StueyDuck
Member
hmm see i don't want to give people the wrong impressions with this thread, i really enjoy playing FFXVI and playing Starfield.
but the writing and the pacing and the lore dumps just drag the experiences down (again of things that are not Mainquest, i'm sure if you mainline both these games it's not as bad)
unfortunately im going to use starfield as an example again, because it's what i'm playing tonight, i had about an hour and a half free to play tonight, and i've spent almost all that time running around neon and just having info dumps and lore dumps and story dumps and it all went nowhere, this is a game where you can be a space pirate and explore planets etc but without reason to do that you won't. So you need to speak to all these NPCs to get quests, but they'll just bore you to death with non info and force you to click 100s of times just to get to the point of the whole conversation which ends up being "take this package to this guy"
Johnny Concrete
Member
I liked FF16, but I agree and it’s not just the stuff between gameplay either. Everything seems to be designed to lengthen the time to beat a game, because that’s apparently the all meaning number: 100, 150, 200 hours of gameplay for only 80 euro’s!
FF16 would’ve been so much better as a 25 hour game, imo.
They praised themselves for having barely any loadtimes when travelling to a new location, but accepting a damn (side)quest takes up to 10 seconds. I don’t get that.
FF16 would’ve been so much better as a 25 hour game, imo.
They praised themselves for having barely any loadtimes when travelling to a new location, but accepting a damn (side)quest takes up to 10 seconds. I don’t get that.
Neff
Member
You're not wrong. I feel that as soon as video games were given big budgets/schedules for scripting and voice acting they soon developed a problem of not knowing when to shut the fuck up, mostly a symptom of extremely mediocre, failed writers high on their own farts. And Bethesda games are pretty bad for this. I just started the New Atlantis tree sample quest in Starfield last night and it was all I could do to stop myself gunning the guy down. I really miss the days of NPCs basically just giving you a piece of solid advice and then sending you on your way, and if it has to be a quest, yeah for the love of god get to the point.
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StueyDuck
Member
see this isn't entirely correct because the skipping feature in these games are awful, FFXVI is better than starfield but both still want to skip one line at a time in a 4 page long form story.
again though FFXVI is better here though because some scenes you can skip entirely (but those scenes i don't want to because those are actual acted, scripted scenes with emotion and character). But starfield you have to listen almost to half a sentence, then the skip has like a 2 second delay before the skip will work again, it's really slow and janky, and you can't skip entire conversations, at least not from what i've found
lughnasadh123
Member
Quality aside since it's subjective - you're whining about a story driven game having players go through the story.
Icymanipulator
Member
An hour or two a night split between 4 huge games. 
Maybe you have other problems. Not to say OPs points aren’t valid, but ya time is a thing. Only 24 hours a day. Might have to put some games on hold and/or just play one at a time.
Maybe you have other problems. Not to say OPs points aren’t valid, but ya time is a thing. Only 24 hours a day. Might have to put some games on hold and/or just play one at a time.
StueyDuck
Member
well i'm not, and you are purposely ignoring that.
i am criticizing (not whining, but since you say that i am assuming this conversation isn't going to amount to anything more than your average twitter troll shitpost) lengthy padding that doesn't tell any sort of story, i'm sorry but the fact a shopkeeper once wore a gray jersey isn't "Subjective story quality" it's just time wasting.
maybe read what people are saying before spurting gaslighting nonsense?
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StueyDuck
Member
2 games, and ffxvi im basically at the end and Starfield i've just started, believe it or not i know how to time manage my lifeAn hour or two a night split between 4 huge games.
Maybe you have other problems. Not to say OPs points aren’t valid, but ya time is a thing. Only 24 hours a day. Might have to put some games on hold and/or just play one at a time.
Nankatsu
Gold Member
This is true for FFXVI.
That game as some fantastic moments, but those brainless gaps between the main narrative feel so bad. And on top of that, most sidequests are dull and empty as fuck (I did them all).
At its core I liked FFXVI narrative, but I don't know how the hell I managed to bear with that game for 100+ hours.
That game as some fantastic moments, but those brainless gaps between the main narrative feel so bad. And on top of that, most sidequests are dull and empty as fuck (I did them all).
At its core I liked FFXVI narrative, but I don't know how the hell I managed to bear with that game for 100+ hours.
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Edgelord79
Gold Member
Enjoyed it too. But the constant dialogue and monologuing was a bit much. Same boat I play at most an hour a day. That’s like one cut scene and 20 min of gameplay.
lughnasadh123
Member
Sadly, I did.
Very much expanding the story and their characters and you very much whining about it. You want to rush through the game due to your limited time and want to cut out all the stuff that isn't the highest quality without caring that it does add to the worldbuilding in game. Ruining modern games? Fuck off with that hyperbole.
Edgelord79
Gold Member
There is no hyperbole. And why are you coming off so aggressive? People have different opinions.
DonkeyPunchJr
World’s Biggest Weeb
Funny thing is XVI and VII Remake both have awful dialog but for completely different reasons.
XVI is loaded with dumb MMO style quests (many of which are embedded in the main story quest) and they tried to dress them up by dumping lots of pointless backstory around each quest. Like, okay dude, I’ll go find the ring you dropped in the swamp, I don’t need a whole speech about how much that ring means to you. Plus all the VA is so monotone and bland and has pauses at the end of each line.
VII Remake it’s like the writers have no idea how normal adults with functioning brains talk and communicate with each other. Everybody is constantly repeating themselves, pointing out obvious things, talking in circles, reacting to stuff, narrating their own actions, making weird grunting and sighing noises, etc.
If anybody in real life talked like a FF7R character you’d be like “what the hell is wrong with that person? Did they suffer brain damage from excessive anime consumption?”
StueyDuck
Member
yep, average twitter shitposter.
LordOfChaos
Member
Also is it me or does the cutting to different head on shots when multiple people are talking to you in a dialogue feel incredibly old? Like just show all the people in the conversation at once, even rotate around it cinematically if you want, but it adds to the lifeless droning feeling of most of the dialogue. Also just pointing at something like my ship in the distance to fast travel on Xbox is a chore with no cursor snap to obvious context points
I was hyped for this one, but 4 hours in, its' clunky if not outright buggy (depends what you call a bug), and I'm very eh on it.
I was hyped for this one, but 4 hours in, its' clunky if not outright buggy (depends what you call a bug), and I'm very eh on it.
docchicken
Member
I see the point you're trying to make. Some of the more interesting content is hidden in these exchanges, for example in FF16, some boilerplate dialogue will suddenly have an acted sequence, but only to slightly develop the conversation from the previous scene. This sort of writing gate-keeps the satisfaction, suspense, or whatever they are trying to develop with the character interactions. Oftentimes, the cutscene may seem like filler even if it is well done -- specifically in FF16. You feel like you don't want to skip those, but you'd rather not have all of the "in-between." I do agree it feels padded, especially in sidequests in FF16. It's low-stakes though so it doesn't bother me as much. Much prefer the big story setpieces in FF16. If the entire game had the pacing of the demo, it would have been a serious goty contender.
I agree with this assessment to an extent.