dirtmonkey37
flinging feces ---->
MightyHedgehog said:
Well, if Too Human doesn't come out this year, I'll just get DMC4 instead.
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Too Human Coverage April/13/07 (post #922+ for reactions)
- Thread starter DreamMachine
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Well, if Too Human doesn't come out this year, I'll just get DMC4 instead.
Kittowny said:
I think the biggest difference is that the combat here should be more engaging and more fun with it being on the right stick...should allow for more free form combos. It's an interesting and astute comparison though...if all you're doing is hitting the same few combos simple so that your stats increase, then the combat will be incredibly boring and unsatisfying.
It works in WoW or Diablo where the other elements are the focus, but in this type of game...considering the camera perspective and the way the story is constructed...the combat looks like a large focus.
we'll see. I'm optimistic.
MightyHedgehog
Member
And that sounds reasonable. By the time you're done with that, a hopefully great TH releases with hopefully intact four-player co-op online. After all, something's gotta make up for the dogshit-in-a-burning-box that was PSU.dirtmonkey37 said:
dirtmonkey37 said:
the points I really like about this game, you already quoted them.
having said that, I have to acknowledge that today I practically learned nothing about the above things.
to me it would be better for the presentation to start with some flybys for the art taste, then focus on characters and the system behind the game.
then after having shown the "meat", maybe wrap it up with some seconds of fighting and show how rpg stuff and teamplay affects battle and that would be sweet.
getting to watch a level 1 character battle for most of the time is nice, but not substantial.
also, a couple of hundred more animation frames per character will not make significant difference for me if the main part of the game is weak.
now I dont say it looks to be weak or anything, its just that even though I watched the presentation, I learned shit about what interests me more in this game.
frames aint gonna give it legs for me. substance is.
dennis kind of stated that all he wanted today it to catch interest. in a way he succeeded in that for both me and you(example), even though I guess we expect different things from the same game.
what he'll make of our different kind of interests is another story though.
I still believe that a presentation that relied on the rpg stuff primarily and action aspect secondary would make the graphics details seem more insignificant and the game more grand.
but then again, other than some text I've read a long time ago, I dont have the slightest clue about the game's rpg elements or how they play out,
so for all I know maybe the better part of the game was shown.
edit
wowzers!!cooter said:
Doom_Bringer
Banned
Best looking action adventure game by far!!
i think it looks really good. combat does look stiff though, but it does seem more dialblo-esque than DMC/NG-esque, and does actually seem fun.
lair looks amazing. though i didnt like the grappling and fire explosions on the sea. they didnt look quite right. fantastic water though.
the girl, very cute. who is she?
as a whole, very positive feelings from that ign video.
lair looks amazing. though i didnt like the grappling and fire explosions on the sea. they didnt look quite right. fantastic water though.
the girl, very cute. who is she?
as a whole, very positive feelings from that ign video.
Corwood Rep
Member
Okay, I've had a long day so I may not be coherent, but a few people in this thread have pissed me off by having nothing but criticisms and giving the game no benefit of the doubt or compliments whatsoever, so I'm going to try and say this despite it potentially not making any damn sense or having any formal argument structure at all.
For all the people bitching about the animation and how the combat is an uninspired rip-off of Devil May Cry and what have you, why is this such a deal-breaker, exactly?
A game is more than the sum of its parts. Many brilliant games have absolutely broken animation and combat, regardless of genre. GTA has some of the worst animation I've ever seen in a big-budget game, and pretty damn bad combat. Zelda has pretty clunky animation too. Final Fantasy has historically assy animation too (I haven't played XII, so I won't rush to judgment there). And that's just off the top of my head.
Eternal Darkness was a great game because of how seamlessly it blended carefully crafted narrative, art, and general audiovisual presentation into one very cohesive, cinematic experience. It had lame animation and combat where the only thing really going for it was the interesting strategic idea of how enemies react to area-specific damage, e.g. blindness if the head is chopped off or whatever. But the gameplay was smart in how it integrated all those aspects of presentation and made you want to continue playing the game because of that presentation. And the gameplay itself was intelligent if not overly complicated - it was logical and made interesting use of item/environment-driven puzzles.
Too Human looks to be taking all the elements of presentation and storytelling that made Eternal Darkness a great game and kicking them into overdrive. The story has outrageous potential as far as a videogame story is concerned because of the untapped depth of Norse mythology, the art style is already demonstratably gorgeous, the score is already shown to be effective from the little we know about it, and it already looks to be blended together even more successfully than in Eternal Darkness.
What this means is that the gameplay won't be arbitrary. It will all be driven by all these other factors that will continue to make you want to play the game. On that level the game is going to be more of an experience than something you only play for the sake of the basic mechanical fun factor. Brilliant presentation can elevate an otherwise average game and actually make it more fun to play.
Too Human doesn't have to be Devil May Cry. Right now, the animation looks servicable, and the combat looks servicable. But that's really about all it needs to be. The combat/animation isn't going to be what makes this an amazing game. The other aspects of the gameplay, e.g. exploring new environments, the RPG elements and how use of items and environment play into progression, etc. will make it fun to play and may ultimately be enough to get people to not even ****ing notice the animation/combat clunkiness they're all bitching about right now.
SK has a lot of things they're focused on more than animation and combat, and based on their track record with Blood Omen and Eternal Darkness and what we can ascertain about their design philosophy from that, I don't think it's going to make much difference for the end product. Too Human stands to be a great game for many reasons aside from all the complaints going on so far.
Maybe the problem is that these are the sorts of things that are intangible. You have to be playing the game to see integration of presentation elements actually working. Movies and gameplay descriptions alone aren't going to sell people on that idea. Eternal Darkness had the same problem right up until it was released.
Edit - There's also some overstatement as to how bad the combat is. At worst, it's perfectly functional but unimpressive. There's nothing obviously broken or horrible about it from what we can strictly see in those videos.
For all the people bitching about the animation and how the combat is an uninspired rip-off of Devil May Cry and what have you, why is this such a deal-breaker, exactly?
A game is more than the sum of its parts. Many brilliant games have absolutely broken animation and combat, regardless of genre. GTA has some of the worst animation I've ever seen in a big-budget game, and pretty damn bad combat. Zelda has pretty clunky animation too. Final Fantasy has historically assy animation too (I haven't played XII, so I won't rush to judgment there). And that's just off the top of my head.
Eternal Darkness was a great game because of how seamlessly it blended carefully crafted narrative, art, and general audiovisual presentation into one very cohesive, cinematic experience. It had lame animation and combat where the only thing really going for it was the interesting strategic idea of how enemies react to area-specific damage, e.g. blindness if the head is chopped off or whatever. But the gameplay was smart in how it integrated all those aspects of presentation and made you want to continue playing the game because of that presentation. And the gameplay itself was intelligent if not overly complicated - it was logical and made interesting use of item/environment-driven puzzles.
Too Human looks to be taking all the elements of presentation and storytelling that made Eternal Darkness a great game and kicking them into overdrive. The story has outrageous potential as far as a videogame story is concerned because of the untapped depth of Norse mythology, the art style is already demonstratably gorgeous, the score is already shown to be effective from the little we know about it, and it already looks to be blended together even more successfully than in Eternal Darkness.
What this means is that the gameplay won't be arbitrary. It will all be driven by all these other factors that will continue to make you want to play the game. On that level the game is going to be more of an experience than something you only play for the sake of the basic mechanical fun factor. Brilliant presentation can elevate an otherwise average game and actually make it more fun to play.
Too Human doesn't have to be Devil May Cry. Right now, the animation looks servicable, and the combat looks servicable. But that's really about all it needs to be. The combat/animation isn't going to be what makes this an amazing game. The other aspects of the gameplay, e.g. exploring new environments, the RPG elements and how use of items and environment play into progression, etc. will make it fun to play and may ultimately be enough to get people to not even ****ing notice the animation/combat clunkiness they're all bitching about right now.
SK has a lot of things they're focused on more than animation and combat, and based on their track record with Blood Omen and Eternal Darkness and what we can ascertain about their design philosophy from that, I don't think it's going to make much difference for the end product. Too Human stands to be a great game for many reasons aside from all the complaints going on so far.
Maybe the problem is that these are the sorts of things that are intangible. You have to be playing the game to see integration of presentation elements actually working. Movies and gameplay descriptions alone aren't going to sell people on that idea. Eternal Darkness had the same problem right up until it was released.
Edit - There's also some overstatement as to how bad the combat is. At worst, it's perfectly functional but unimpressive. There's nothing obviously broken or horrible about it from what we can strictly see in those videos.
Too Human seems to slot nicely into the epic action-RPG genre Bioware has been trying to push along. Visual feedback is key to the fun in levelling up - if you're not showing damage points in numbers a la traditional RPG, they should be very obvious in animation and art.
The gameplay video in the IGN Weekly looks awesome. I am really excited to go back to my ol' d2 roots and start looking for armor, guns, etc. with friends. My only beef with how it's looking so far is that the gameplay looks like a mirror image of the DMC series. Perhaps I haven't looked at enough gameplay to be the judge of that but the 2 games look extremely alike. Regardless, I'll be buying both DMC4 and Too Human
Ninja Scooter
Member
if the main focus (or one of them) of the game is going to be the combat, then the combat better damn well be more than "servicable", otherwise those are the blueprints for a mediocre game. And from what i've heard, the developers seem to be making a lot of comparisons to DMC and Phantasy Star Online, which would lead me to believe that there is going to be a heavy emphasis on combat as opposed to exploration or puzzle solving. Pretty much every piece of footage we've seen of the game has shown the main character fighting in a room full of robots. As i said before, i liked ED, but it was easier to get away with the poor combat mechanics in that game because it was much slower paced than TH looks to be, and really did have more of an emphasis on adventure game style puzzles and exploring. Rarely did you ever have to fight more than 1 or 2 enemies at a time, and when you did they were those slowass zombies.
MightyHedgehog
Member
Some fair points, Aristotlekh.
I still can't give a game with that lack of seamless transitions and anim blending a pass when it is a marquee title running a massive budget across three releases. Animation is very important in a game (it's a basic communication to the user) and moreso if all you're doing is looking at your character go constantly melee.
The GTA comparison doesn't work because the on-foot animation is simple but fine for what's going on (walking/running/striking/etc. -- all simple poses with a more realistic bent toward the relatively mundane actions) and is only half of the focus since you're driving everywhere. TH doesn't have to be DMC or NG, but since they're clearly trying to meld major elements of those games into an action-RPG/adventure game, they should, at least, capture the strongest elements of those games in visual feedback since they're going for such combat flourish. Just copping some of that vibe from those games demands that they look as fluid lest they look like to a poor man's actioner to a potential buyer. Diablo II may not have fantastic animation now, but it was quite good at the time considering the isometric prerendered nature of the art and gameplay and technical limitations in what kind of hardware they were targeting in '98. I'd expect more than that today for a Diablo III. Basically, if you're going to elevate the style in apparent detail, couple it with cinematic cameras, you better ****ing make sure your animation is up to snuff or you take the whole thing down a peg.
Everything else looks and sounds great, IMO. But if I'm gonna be looking at that character run and fight around 100% of the time I'm playing, I'd expect an appropriate amount of care to be taken with the depiction. Having lackluster animation hurts the potential coolness of newly gained attacks, weakens the player's bond to the action at hand, and just looks pisspoor considering the hype. Fix the animation and quality of interaction on-screen, and the game benefits massively. I have no doubt that it will be fine by release, but criticizing TH's current deficiencies is completely fair as long as you also note the positives.
Sorry for redundant crap, but I'm too lazy to cut it up proper.
I still can't give a game with that lack of seamless transitions and anim blending a pass when it is a marquee title running a massive budget across three releases. Animation is very important in a game (it's a basic communication to the user) and moreso if all you're doing is looking at your character go constantly melee.
The GTA comparison doesn't work because the on-foot animation is simple but fine for what's going on (walking/running/striking/etc. -- all simple poses with a more realistic bent toward the relatively mundane actions) and is only half of the focus since you're driving everywhere. TH doesn't have to be DMC or NG, but since they're clearly trying to meld major elements of those games into an action-RPG/adventure game, they should, at least, capture the strongest elements of those games in visual feedback since they're going for such combat flourish. Just copping some of that vibe from those games demands that they look as fluid lest they look like to a poor man's actioner to a potential buyer. Diablo II may not have fantastic animation now, but it was quite good at the time considering the isometric prerendered nature of the art and gameplay and technical limitations in what kind of hardware they were targeting in '98. I'd expect more than that today for a Diablo III. Basically, if you're going to elevate the style in apparent detail, couple it with cinematic cameras, you better ****ing make sure your animation is up to snuff or you take the whole thing down a peg.
Everything else looks and sounds great, IMO. But if I'm gonna be looking at that character run and fight around 100% of the time I'm playing, I'd expect an appropriate amount of care to be taken with the depiction. Having lackluster animation hurts the potential coolness of newly gained attacks, weakens the player's bond to the action at hand, and just looks pisspoor considering the hype. Fix the animation and quality of interaction on-screen, and the game benefits massively. I have no doubt that it will be fine by release, but criticizing TH's current deficiencies is completely fair as long as you also note the positives.
Sorry for redundant crap, but I'm too lazy to cut it up proper.
Corwood Rep
Member
Ninja Scooter said:
But how do you account for games where combat is a huge part of the overall design, and the combat sucks, yet the game is still amazing?
GTA has broken combat. It sucks. But the awesome atmosphere, story, sense of scope, exploration, sidequests, music, acting, etc. to make up for it. And combat is one of the core gameplay mechanics.
Plus, the combat itself can be lame but implementation can make it better. GTA has bad combat, but it can still be fun because of the way in which you have to think about your environment (where you can get an advantage over the enemy, good sniping positions, good cover, etc.) and other contexts. We have no idea if Too Human is just going to be shooting giant hordes of enemies in big open rooms with no ability to use environment or other intangibles to your advantage. There are many ways a good designer could elevate a weak combat system.
P.S. I'm not really using GTA as a comparison because it's in a relevant genre, but because it's evidence of how to compensate for bad combat regardless of game style.
Dr. Kitty Muffins
Member
I think the game looks great but, at the same time, it looks like trying to release it 2007 would be an injustice to the game. First half 2008 at the earliest, IMO.
so i was reminded by an msn chat that too human had some coverage yesterday
so i haven't read anything in this thread
so i watched the too human portion of ign weekly
so i've never been sold on the combat being mapped to the analog stick and will just have to play it to believe it
so i'm looking forward to the game, despite not being sold on the combat, because what i presume will be an awesome story with great music and art
so i'm just going to hope for the best with the combat, but as long as it isn't broken and the aforementioned other aspects come together, i can deal
so i'm a fan of silicon knights because i loved eternal darkness
so i'm clicking submit
so i'm likely not to read anything else in this thread
ps hi everybody
so i haven't read anything in this thread
so i watched the too human portion of ign weekly
so i've never been sold on the combat being mapped to the analog stick and will just have to play it to believe it
so i'm looking forward to the game, despite not being sold on the combat, because what i presume will be an awesome story with great music and art
so i'm just going to hope for the best with the combat, but as long as it isn't broken and the aforementioned other aspects come together, i can deal
so i'm a fan of silicon knights because i loved eternal darkness
so i'm clicking submit
so i'm likely not to read anything else in this thread
ps hi everybody
LegendofJoe
Member
Denis Dyack said:
Holy crap I was one of the very first people that participated with that site. I can't believe those guys stuck with it-I used to talk to them all the time on the Too Human boards on IGN before they launched the site. That's really cool.
Doom_Bringer
Banned
The art, the graphics, the music, the environments, the effects, the characters all kick a lot of ass! Even the animation is pretty good and will be improved but I have a question
How much? Developers like Naughty Dog and Ninja Theory have been focusing on animation from the get-go. Will this game have that level of animation? I wonder if the animation is totally placeholder or something
How much? Developers like Naughty Dog and Ninja Theory have been focusing on animation from the get-go. Will this game have that level of animation? I wonder if the animation is totally placeholder or something
PseudoKirby
Banned
See? Too Human Pwns, and Denis Dyack is the best dev ever
he is truly a genius, and you all fail
he is truly a genius, and you all fail
kirbybreezy
Member
Definitely intriguing. I for one wasn't even dissappointed in the E3 footage, but it just wasn't presented in the best light.
Now its finally being given the right presentation to the public.
Still I find myself knowing nothing. Too Human has been around for a long time, and I don't know anything about the story. Is this by design or has the basic premise of the game, storywise been explained in some form.
Norse Mythology is always a plus, FFXI online has shown the potential for boss encounters to be had from the mythos, and those were awesome even though they had nothing to do with the story. I can only imagine the experience when they are an integral part in it.
Now its finally being given the right presentation to the public.
Still I find myself knowing nothing. Too Human has been around for a long time, and I don't know anything about the story. Is this by design or has the basic premise of the game, storywise been explained in some form.
Norse Mythology is always a plus, FFXI online has shown the potential for boss encounters to be had from the mythos, and those were awesome even though they had nothing to do with the story. I can only imagine the experience when they are an integral part in it.
LegendofJoe
Member
Hannar said:
Awesome, I can't wait to see it.
MirageDwarf
Member
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MirageDwarf
Member
OK. My bad. It just got out of my mind that that original video has watermark.SnakeXs said:
Denis Dyack
Banned
sp0rsk said:
I checked out your photos on deviant art.
It is interesting that you like narrative so much but you seem to really not like us very much at all. I found your inspirations and passions for your work interesting and I was shocked to actually read something positive written by you there. Positive suites you much better I think.PseudoKirby
Banned
Denis I beg of you to play Ninja Gaiden
also, you said you wont show off Too Human till its finished, am I wrong to think yo uare still at your Q2 2007 release date? as you are showing off too human?
also, you said you wont show off Too Human till its finished, am I wrong to think yo uare still at your Q2 2007 release date? as you are showing off too human?
PseudoKirby
Banned
also
http://unions.gamespot.com/THTUnion
I'm running a too human sorta fansite myself lololol
why is it not popular though, my other unions have 500 people in them, also the too human fansite doesnt look very popular either
http://unions.gamespot.com/THTUnion
I'm running a too human sorta fansite myself lololol
why is it not popular though, my other unions have 500 people in them, also the too human fansite doesnt look very popular either
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