I personally never really saw one way as better than the other:
I think you have the right idea - people should stop complaining as if this is a bad thing - but I think it's directed at the wrong people.
First Killzone screenshot/details? So says USAToday..
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I personally never really saw one way as better than the other:
I think you have the right idea - people should stop complaining as if this is a bad thing - but I think it's directed at the wrong people.
hm... maybe it is just me, but I find the first person weapon view to be a little odd looking. I can't quite put my finger on it; it's really good modeling and it looks great, but it seems like a person is holding up a gun in front of a rear-projection screen - a separate entity from the game-world.
:|
I think it's the DOF that might look strange to you. I think it's fine... Gives quite a lot of depth.
mm... maybe. I mean, I see this very stylized, well-wrought world in front of me, but the gun and hand seem pasted on top. That said, I like how they do the case-ejection in the lean and peek view.
Large scale battles don't make an FPS good, nor they are necessary. That said I'm sure they are more difficult to nail down realistically, with good AI and while keeping the pacing.
So I personally like them, they are rare and can add to gameplay variety. I'm also pretty sure K2 will have more open areas.
But the discussion didn't arouse from gameplay point of view, but from a technical one. The scale certainly influences how impressive game's visual are, as rail shooters are easier.
Hence I find the discussion totally valid.
On large battles...
I agree it is ok or even prudent not to have it. However I also think that if GG can figure out a way to stage it, it will wow the players. Either way, there will be opportunities to showcase the game using different techniques (e.g. if the battle is smaller, we may be able to see more detail, better enemies).
Laa-Yosh mentioned that there are 2 dozen people in the KZ2 landing area. To me that's a great starting point. With 20-30 active people in the viewable area, the gameplay can be more varied and immersive as opposed to corridor fights all the time. More trickery can be used to deliver the sense of scale by building on top of this platform.
As AlStrong (and even Laa-Yosh's posts) implied, the illusion of "grand scale" can be implemented intelligently. Depending on the level design, it may be possible to show a large battlefield (Both the area and the number of enemies).
Consider the final escape scene of Halo 1 (or 2 ? where you need to drive the buggie from an exploding ship), the long escape route is very bumpy (uphill + downhill) and packed with NPCs/enemies. When you're fighting in the "valley" of the road, enemies gets streamed. By the time you reach the top of the bump, you're greeted with new enemies and even 1-2 hovering enemy ships.
There is zero incentive for you to stay behind or go back. As the player roll forward, he is continuously greeted with new events. Now in Halo, these sections are closed off in segments too (The road leads into sections of tunnels). So we can't see really far when you're at the high points of the road. Nevertheless, the entire experience is memorable to many.
In recent games like Resistance, the play area (actual size + number of enemies) already compares favorably or surpasses Halo 1 and 2 (e.g., The Stalker level, the Sniper level). However the absolutely largest battle scenes are done in third person view (e.g., The Goliath level, the Tank level). I like KZ2 where the developers try to present *everything* in first person view.
I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to compare across games _if_ people's attitudes are correct (i.e., if you are genuinely interested in gaming, damn it).
Here's hoping GG can blow my mind off with the _smallest_ level possible (1 square room ?), or the supersized ones found or not found in other games. It's about creativity, hardwork and tons of play testing. It's not about Halo vs KZ vs Resistance.
I agree it is ok or even prudent not to have it. However I also think that if GG can figure out a way to stage it, it will wow the players. Either way, there will be opportunities to showcase the game using different techniques (e.g. if the battle is smaller, we may be able to see more detail, better enemies).
Laa-Yosh mentioned that there are 2 dozen people in the KZ2 landing area. To me that's a great starting point. With 20-30 active people in the viewable area, the gameplay can be more varied and immersive as opposed to corridor fights all the time. More trickery can be used to deliver the sense of scale by building on top of this platform.
As AlStrong (and even Laa-Yosh's posts) implied, the illusion of "grand scale" can be implemented intelligently. Depending on the level design, it may be possible to show a large battlefield (Both the area and the number of enemies).
Consider the final escape scene of Halo 1 (or 2 ? where you need to drive the buggie from an exploding ship), the long escape route is very bumpy (uphill + downhill) and packed with NPCs/enemies. When you're fighting in the "valley" of the road, enemies gets streamed. By the time you reach the top of the bump, you're greeted with new enemies and even 1-2 hovering enemy ships.
There is zero incentive for you to stay behind or go back. As the player roll forward, he is continuously greeted with new events. Now in Halo, these sections are closed off in segments too (The road leads into sections of tunnels). So we can't see really far when you're at the high points of the road. Nevertheless, the entire experience is memorable to many.
In recent games like Resistance, the play area (actual size + number of enemies) already compares favorably or surpasses Halo 1 and 2 (e.g., The Stalker level, the Sniper level). However the absolutely largest battle scenes are done in third person view (e.g., The Goliath level, the Tank level). I like KZ2 where the developers try to present *everything* in first person view.
I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to compare across games _if_ people's attitudes are correct (i.e., if you are genuinely interested in gaming, damn it).
Here's hoping GG can blow my mind off with the _smallest_ level possible (1 square room ?), or the supersized ones found or not found in other games. It's about creativity, hardwork and tons of play testing. It's not about Halo vs KZ vs Resistance.
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Lean & Peak looks really nice. The next step? Instead of being an emphasis of the game design or focus of gameplay, PLEASE GG, just make it another "option" for the gamer. I don't want to see a Gears clone.
I think that is one of the next evolutions: Some of these unique mechanics popping up, to be migrated into broader designs. It is cool the first time someone does something new, but after that it really needs to be a nuance of the design than the entire focus.
I will be totally dissappointed if this turns into a pop and shoot game. I will be very happy if it is an "option" and only a part of a broader shooter design--run&gun, tactical fire fights, mono-y-mono duals, large battle scenes, grunt cannon fodder using frustrating squad tactics, big bad bosses with nifty AI, squad interaction, vehicles, etc...
I agree that KZ2 doesn't need to have huge open battlefields, and if the gameplay is cover oriented GG has the freedom to focus more time and engergy maximizing the visual pay off for not developing open areas.
I would hope that it isn't a game that is: Cover centric, black throughout, mainly in little cubby holes, streets, and alleys. That doesn't mean it needs huge open areas, only that a "Gears" style cover game is sooo 2006!
Heck, if Gears 2 is basically Gears 1 from a gameplay & design perspective, but with new content, I would have to rate it in the 8s at highest.I agree on both parts. Bungie did a lot of various things (and minor tweaks) and have a refined, integrated product.
As for firsts... the industry is littered with "me first!" type games. Look at Killswitch and cover. Ok, but not great. Then we had to suffer through PDZ's attempt at cover (not a bad game, had a lot of potential, but definately fell short and had major design issues). Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter did a nice attempt at some cover concepts, but had a lot of other things going on. It was really Gears of War, with a solid assist from Rainbow Six: Vegas, that really nailed cover. Now it is all over the place: Brother in Arms 3, Killzone 2, heck, even Mass Effect.
1/ Who used cover first?
2/ Who used cover well first?
3/ Who used cover well in a good game first?
4/ Who used cover well, but in a nuanced, "not only allys and corridores" game first?
For the sake of discussing cover, 2 and 3 only really matter. So 1, while interesting, is pretty irrelevant. So harping too much on, "Others did XYZ first" doesn't mean much. I thought Halo did vehicles well--but I totally agree with you that Battlefield 1942 is the mother of all vehicle FPS (and the consoles still don't have anything resembling it). On the topic of Halo 1, in general design (not cover) it was 4 in a lot of various ways (mostly minor), but did a good job of taking a lot of ideas, sprinkling in some of their own that match their design vision, and converging them under a cohesive design that worked well. I still think Halo 3 could have used the "equivalent" (but NOT SAME!) of cover, squad interaction (ala BiA), etc that meshed well with their gameplay. Heck, sprint + some advanced melee would have been cool. To me it is riding the "classic" FPS design concept and branching out in other design areas (like 4 player coop and larger battle areas). Personally, as MC is supposed to be a great leader, I think voice ops would have worked well. Keep it basic, but instruct humans at certain points -- flank right/left, pull back, rush, hold, etc. Use them as "cover" and to draw in the Covenant for your own flanking movements. Voice would have kept it simple (small popup, "Do you want the marines to... A) flank right B) flank left C) hold...).
I would have liked to see SOMETHING. After Bungie announced 4 player coop, seeing how deep their MP options are (insane), and Forge/Machinima stuff I have felt less of a, "Uhhh Halo 3 is gonna totally suck and fans are gonna make it out to be something it isn't" but I am still left a little bummed about gameplay. Not a bad shooter, but I am not seeing the things I have in CoD4, BiA3, or TF2 to draw me in to the actual gameplay. Story, yes, but gameplay? Nope.
Hopefully Killzone won't, as you said, rely only on graphics / story. Sure, those don't make a game bad, but it is nice for flagship titles to introduce something new to the game design element. I like the fact they are doing cover -- pretty necessary based on their design tbh.
If they are going to go the graphics/story route + cover they are gonna run into Gears of War 2. Even if GeoW2 is a 2009 title, the PR starts in 2008. I am worried that GeoW2 will be more the same, but if Epic takes their cover system foundation and adds some new design twists and mechanics, improves the graphics, continues/deepens the story, flushes out MP, etc I think some of what KZ2 does will be muted.
Of course we are reaching a point where design nuances and experience/immersion count as much as anything else. It isn't necessarily the novelties or "me first" innovations that count, but how cohesive and fluid the experience is. It isn't enough to have vehicles, but to do them right in a meaningful way to the game.
I think GG nailed the cover system so far -- loving it -- so I am not too worried at this point. It is early, so stuff like AI (godmode, etc) isn't on the "uh oh radar" yet for me. 20 hours of lean-&-peak in black worlds, though, does concern me. Ditto enemy variety. I think the game will need to try being interesting--shooting a giant laser with a rifle doesn't strike me as being very interesting.
I don't think KZ2 needs to be revolutionary on all fronts. HL2 showed you can have an absolutely killer game that puts everything on the table, picks a number of areas to progress the quality in those areas, and then tie in a number of memoriable and varied gameplay experience together in a fairly tight package with an interesting story (told well, and in a unique style) with a bow tie of "nice graphics".
It really comes down to the art of game making. Cool technology doesn't always make great games. Whether KZ2 is a great game will come down to many, many different aspects of the design coming together in a tight package.
I hate gamepads too (grrr!) and I am on board here... but golly gee Wally! Halo 3 has an amazingly stupid number of online variables and modifiers
I think Halo 3 underdelivers in a number of ways, visually, but having huge, open areas does have an impact on what they can do. Lets put aside how many people are in there (I dunno how many although I just read an eyewitness account where they saw ~ 30 brutes join nearly the same number in the same battle, and not in a wave), we have seen a couple scenes with very large, expansive areas. The game seems to follow the Lord of the Rings mantra: it isn't where you are going, but how you get there.
I agree with Phil that FPS != FPS. Not that we should compare, but I would say that Gears of War and Killzone artistically and in terms of gameplay design/goals are very, very similar from what we have seen. I think Halo is trying to do the "FPS" in a different way than Epic or GG did/are. The real question is who made better design tradeoffs and art choices for the limtiations of the current hardware. At least that is my quesiton. And that isn't intended to be a comparative question, but a more general: which developers are making the best use of the hardware? What art styles are working best? What are our boundaries for this gen? What are our limits? What results in the most bang for buck in _____ scenario?
Obviously GG has done a wonderful job balancing their budgets to get a great amount of bang for buck on the visuals. So much so most are overlooking a lot of the "uglies".
Maybe if UT3 with keyboard and mouse proves to be popular, they will support keyboard and mouse in this game too.
Yes, Bungie follows its own path, and they're quite right to do so. It's far too regular now that every new release should integrate every single feature from previous games of the genre to be good. This will only dilute the gameplay and increase the chance of incomplete, unpolished features.
Halo's approach for cover is that the longer an enemy can see you, the more precise his aim will become. The shield will recharge only if the player doesn't get hit for a few seconds. These elements work together, there's no reason to ruin their balance just to get another checklist feature.
Same goes for squad control, issuing commands would only slow down the game, and there's already a lot of complex game elements in the form of all that equipment and weapons anyway. Gears certainly does not have a comparably wide arsenal.
Now I think we're getting offtopic here, so perhaps a new thread is in order...
Halo's approach for cover is that the longer an enemy can see you, the more precise his aim will become. The shield will recharge only if the player doesn't get hit for a few seconds. These elements work together, there's no reason to ruin their balance just to get another checklist feature.
Same goes for squad control, issuing commands would only slow down the game, and there's already a lot of complex game elements in the form of all that equipment and weapons anyway. Gears certainly does not have a comparably wide arsenal.
Now I think we're getting offtopic here, so perhaps a new thread is in order...
Having seen this sequence many times, I noticed that "The Heavy" is very lonely. If they have moths/flies swarming around lights, GG might as well add packs of Helghan roaches, rodents (or cats and dogs) with him.
I like how GG mentioned that the covers (some covers ?) will deteriorate. For higher difficulty level, they should make the railgun penetrate all covers after a while. It will force people out of their stop-n-pop sequences.
Or may be throw in another Helghan guy armed with flame thrower to render some spots unsafe to hide.
As you can see, I am all ready to conquer Helghast. Can't wait, but keep the media coming !
Let me assure you there is no way context sensitive cover can be focus of gameplay in K2.
It will always be optional. The best they can do is forcing blind fire time to time.
If you are talking about cover in general, it has been around since at least Wolfenstein 3D. Lean & Peak was a few years later, although it didn't add much without context sensitivity.
So I don't really know what is all this talk about Gears' cover system (or Gears in general) in this thread.
And for the record, if we are not limiting the talk to FPS any more, cover has been long used by all those arcade rail shooters with pedals. The moral of the story is that an FPS is an FPS, not a TPS.
Yes, in the demo, the guy dashed out in a couple of places to eliminate the enemy, including the mini-boss. But cover is still important if they are going after realism and smart enemies (It works both ways). I think blind fire would be good in MP for suppressing enemy activities so that your comrades can make their moves.
Me too. Only I get to delete stuff and make lives miserable when I hear the voices in my head telling me to do stuff. . . the voices. . . make the voices stop, people. . . by staying on topic.
The weather-stuff could lead to some interesting stuff, the arc tower that shoots lightning is one thing and while you are trying to destroy that there will be some heavy resistance with helghasts. In the end of the demo-level a flying thingy was revealed and more vehicles are promised so combined with the minibosses i think there will be enough variety in this game.
On the MP-mode there should be some interresting feel to it considered the impact and heavyness it is to of the shoot-em-up in this game, combined with a low pace, no jump and shoot and the cover-system it could be really cool. In this game it looks like you really are shooting a guy instead of a "thing" like it feels like in Resistance for e.g.
Well any time a developer chooses not to make huge scale games his game is destined to be attacked from a technical point of view even if that enabled him to make other things better?
So the developer is left with no other choice than make large scale shooters? Because thats the vibe I get from this thread.
If he wants to make a game that feels, looks and plays in a certain way and in order to achieve that he shouldnt over do it with large scale areas he should do exactly that. Omit large scale areas and people should leave it at that. Not every shooter should follow the same route.
It's like saying that Gears isnt a good achievement, is nothing special from a technical point of view or the developer should have not chosen to make it that way because technically it is unimpressive and linear. Well judging from what we have seen, played and the awards it won they did perfect. It would have been a waste of time if we discussed how wrong it was for Epic not to make Gears large scale.
Its not that Killzone 2 is too narrow anyways. And it is not like it has 8 enemies only on screen either. The opening scene is large and I could count easily above 12 characters on screen.
Lets leave Killzone be whatever it is trying to be instead of judging it as if it has to follow the same technical achievements of other games.
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Plus, the dev already said something like cover being for tactically oriented players, presumably referring to other tactical shooters.
But I believe there is more than that.
In an FPS strafe is very important and that's how you generally do precise targeting while avoiding being a target yourself, as opposed to camera only stationary targeting.
Now the main advantage of TPS cover is ability to target without leaning and this is absent here. The only remaining advantage is while peaking you are a smaller target, but still stationary and lack of mouse becomes even a bigger problem.
So it's very difficult for them to force context sensitive cover throughout the game, as for the most part one should be as fine with strafe/crouch style free cover.
I agree. I also think they can and should make FPS cover more attractive by for example increasing autoaim/stability etc.
That would definitely work in a one-shot-kill MP match.
I guess it's unfortunately more about inability to accept that a flagship game for one's preferred console is not the best in something... Developers certainly wouldn't think that their fans are their worst critics.
Who says anything about attacking?
I hope not from me as I'm not in the mood for discussing things I didn't say or imply or think.
Every shooter should be same. A couple of corridor shooting levels, some vehicle (preferable jeep) levels, and large open warfare with a lot of scripted events. Enemies can be alien, human, monster or a mixture of those. Space marines preferable. This is the recipe.
Yes it would, as it is now.
Yes very impressive.
Once again, Killzone 2 will have more open areas. But doesn't matter, some people think already impressive background geometry isn't enough to ensure similar quality open areas, others don't agree. What could be wrong about discussing that, especially here of all places?
You misunderstood me.
I am not talking about your opinion and position. I am talking generally
I dont understand that part though
Which is my point. Since nothing is wrong or right yet it is pointless to jump to conclusions whether Killzone2 is doing something wrong or right yet. It is the execution that determines that.
Yeah I find this very unfortunate too because at the end the developers' efforts dont seem to pay off because their games are criticized for things that shouldnt have been criticized.
I don't think people are saying "something is right/wrong". They are expressing that they hope to see larger battlefields in addition to the corridor and courtyard skirmishes.
Some commented that large battlefields are not possible in KZ2, but others like me disagreed. If the developers so desired, I believe it is possible to give the perception and experiences of a large warzone, just like how past games managed to pull it off in various ways.
In my view, it is important to have enough variety to make combat interesting, and to make the story convincing. Even if GG can implement 101 ways of corridor gunfights, I would be somewhat disappointed if they become the entire Helghan invasion experience.
Unless the Helghan planet is made entirely of maze-like environments, I would expect to see varied terrains, large and small, during the conquest. That is all.
Laa-Yosh said:
Nope. In my view, KZ2 is already best in certain visuals aspects but that's not the point. We just don't believe that the level shown is the entire KZ2 experience. Btw, the most loyal fans are usually the worst critics.
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