3476

Is what some of guys think off as emergent gameplay even possible? What kind of processing power would it require to make a real world, like what some of you seem to want from F4? Or maybe it’s the computer world equivalent of the uncanny Valley, where, the closer to a real world the game appears. The more the cracks and seams are showing?
Because, in the end, ALL these words are fake, as TT complained this one is, and I doubt we will move beyond that anytime soon.

3477

Emergence or whatever or no, I still liked my seven-way fight.

One of my biggest disappointments in FO4 is when you find something out from a terminal (or whatever) that seems like it would be pretty important to your companions, but it’s not. There’s no “hey, Valentine, check out this holotape I found!” or “You wouldn’t believe what I pulled off this terminal in Quincy, Preston!” I mean, even a one-shot blurb from the companion like, “OMG, I knew it was him!” would have been nice.

But I also recognize that Bethsoft games are basically edge-case generators – and I am pleased at just how many edges Bethsoft managed to cap (or at least tried to acknowledge) in FO4. It’s far better than, say, in Skyrim where you become Death Destroyer of Worlds and townsfolk still come up to you asking if you polish the Companion’s boots.

3478

Someday, someone may create a game with Dwarf Fortress depth and a good graphics engine. If they do, I will buy it :)

I won’t hold my breath, though. Obsessive Indie Dev depth + AAA polish and pretty? That’s not a common combination.

3479

Well, games don’t have to be “powered”, driven by emergent behaviors at 100% of features, characters and systems. It’s not a binary choice: emergent games vs non-emergent games. Most games that are known by their emergence had only some of it, in comparison with the rest of the “static” content.

Don’t think the problem is the lack of processing power. Just making entities move, trade and combat in a strategic map like in Mount & Blade is barely a small fraction of cpu power. The problem is more the ever increasing complexity and hard to debug games you have with more emergent based games. At some point you have behaviors that are “buggy” but you can’t know how the hell happened in a game so you can’t fix it, as precisely, it was something emergent. That’s of course, in the case the game designer wants to make something emergent in the first place.

When I use the word “fake”, there are degrees of fakeness. Yeah, it’s all code so everything it’s fake to some degree, at some point abstraction kicks in. But a truck moving in a road in Call of Duty and soldiers embarking on it is more fake than the same in Arma, where AI drives the vehicle obeying certain orders, while in CoD it’s all prerecorded.

In any case, I never said I wanted that from F4. Just clarifying that F4 isn’t a game with emergent behavior, as that was what people were talking about.

3480

Uh, sure it is. The story above is pretty much the idea. Multiple overlapping systems creating a surprising consequence. And a huge part of it is subjective, a feeling that you get when you encounter these moments. But of course the layer of design and intent supporting it has to be there. There are a lot stories like that of FO4. You just not feeling it is not really a compelling argument.

3481

The Atomic Cats Garage: 1 lousy quest? Really?

3482

But then you can have Piper cross dress in a Cats jacket!

3483

I can’t agree with this. I have no idea how you can even begin to see it this way.

3484

“Emergence” in the form of mobs with hostility flags set per species is trivial to implement and barely worth mentioning. This kind of “emergence” has been around for decades in various games.

Fallout 4 is a lazy game from dialog, storytelling, and roleplaying implementation perspectives. The design is clearly incomplete for settlements and for UI. Conversation is almost meaningless. The main story is imbecilic. The roleplaying is rudimentary at best and often absurd.

But obviously enormous worldbuilding effort was invested, so it’s not lazy from that point of view at all, and the feel of the combat gameplay isn’t bad either. Still I question how much all that worldbuilding really pays off in the end when so much of the world is just piles of brown and gray garbage inhabited by the same old feral ghouls and the same old raiders. The care with which the garbage decoration is places palls after you’ve seen it a million times, and the careful placement of a collapsed girder you can use to jump up to the next floor avoiding the stairs loses its value when all you are going to find up there is more garbage and some hot plates. The same thing applies to the gameplay. Once you learn how the bad stealth-activation system actually works most of the combat becomes trivial.

3485

Now it feels like you’re holding FO4 up to a standard that is not considered for other games.

Just so we’re on the same page, which open world games (I’m keeping this intentionally vague) succeed in your opinion in a feeling of emergence?

3486

Despite the fact that I like the game, I agree with almost everything you’ve written here. We part on ‘storytelling.’ If you leave out the god-awful main quest, there is plenty of good storytelling. Some of it is in sidequests, but a ton of it exists in bits of flash fiction spread throughout terminals, notes and the occasional teddy-bear or corpse vignette. There is some excellent creative work in the margins.

As in all Bethesda games, I end up compartmentalizing their uniformly awful main quests. That allows me to enjoy their worlds without the goofy “Only you can save the world…” nonsense.

3487

Uhh…

I think he is saying here

Fallout 4 is a lazy game from dialog, storytelling, and roleplaying implementation perspectives. The design is clearly incomplete for settlements and for UI. Conversation is almost meaningless. The main story is imbecilic. The roleplaying is rudimentary at best and often absurd.

he thinks is a bad game. Independently of the emergence factor (or lack thereof).

3488

I’m still waiting for an example of better AI, emergent gameplay or world simming. Try sending your companion to a settlement way across the map while you get a new one. Then follow them clear across the map and watch them get into fights along the way while you help with your new companion. You’ll see your own caravans running supplies between settlements and they can join you in fights. You’ll discover new places on the way. If your old companion passes near a different settlement en routte you can ever run over there and recruit some more guns to accompany you to the far away target settlement by just sending them there and they will follow the same path. It’s unbeleivable what they’ve accomplished.

I’m not talking about guard patrol paths and alarms bringing troops in. I mean real emergence where you see and do shit even the designers haven’t done. It blows everything else clear out of the water when it comes to emergence and keeping track of all these state changes and variables. I can’t think of another game that’s keeping track of so much that still had modern graphics and sound. Dwarf Fortress is the only one I can think of that even gets close, and that game is basically a math sim without graphics or sound.

3489

It’s arguable either way. New Vegas had less engaging combat, less polished environments, less content overall, more fiddly and less useful or interesting crafting, no base building, half-assed or otherwise, crappier companions, and less interesting setting. All, of course, in my opinion, but I think you can argue this and not be out of the range of rational discourse. I put 227 hours into New Vegas and love the game, but after F4 I could not go back to that one I don’t think.

3490

Dialogue
Number of choices
Consequences, as you say
Quests, both in quality and in quantity
World building
Character progression
Variety of the experience
Companions
Story

3491

I only replied to his opening statement. As said before, he can freely think it is a bad game otherwise. Should’ve quoted to make it clear.

3492

Fallout 4 is as authored. Every little dilapidated house, every broken elevated highway, every fridge with food inside, every lab, every manufacturing plant, every hospital, every warehouse full of enemies, every trap, every table or shelf full of loot, every weapon component you can use. All of that is authored content.
Just because the player has freedom to enter or not a house or to go South or West exploring doesn’t mean there is a “simulation”, lol.

3493

I don’t believe games become obsolete due to other games doing what they do better. For example, my friend keeps telling me that dragon age inquisition isnt even worth playing in a world that witcher 3 exists, however i still enjoy it greatly even if i agree witcher 3 is similar but way better.

Witcher 3 does open world better than fallout 4 without losing the writing/world quality. I have no idea how they did it, but they did. I’m still going to play bethesda games (open world only) and bioware games though (writing/world quality only).

3494

MGS 5.

Reminds me a lot of fallout 4 in that it is an amazing game but feels very unfinished. I have more sympathy for MGS 5 though as they made a whole new engine where as fallout 4 was an incremental sequel with a few new mechanics (all of which lack any degree of polish)

And really as someone else mentioned, emergent gameplay as is found in elder scrolls just means that different factions fight each other when they meet. This happened in Baldur’s gate 2. Does that make BG2 the bastion of emergent gameplay?

Don’t get me wrong, i’m playing xenoblade chronicles X now and it greatly annoys me that there is no fighting between different factions when it makes sense. I just don’t think you can use that argument to escape the witcher 3 comparison.

3495

Emergence is a mostly-bullshit games-industry-theory word that arose from some oddities of Thief. Very rarely are game worlds profound enough for unexpected gameplay patterns to “emerge” from a low level to a high one that have any significance. Instead any random interaction of game features that doesn’t happen all the time is said to be emergent. Meh.

Human intelligence is “emergent” from apparently mechanical low level patterns of neuronal firing. The enormous complexity of life-form structure and function is “emergent” from the austere data of genomic base-pair sequences in cytological context.

But two types of mobs that are specifically and deliberately programmed to engage in combat on detection and which move randomly around an area do not provide “emergent” gameplay when they meet and fight. That’s embedded planned gameplay at the same level of the rest of the game. It just doesn’t happen all that frequently is all.