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The Troika Games Saga
GameBanshee has an interview up with Leonard Boyarksy, one of the founders of the late Troika games, describing the last days of the much missed RPG developer. From the article: "It became apparent in January when the last of our possible deals that we'd been pursuing fell through. When we started looking six or so months ago, there was a lot of initial interest but our projects could never seem to get past the marketing department."
Too bad, I actually really liked playing VtM Bloodlines - partially for the storyline, but mostly because the ambience of the game reminded me a lot of the SNES Shadowrun game. Call me weird, but it just seemed to have a similar 'feel' to it, what with the various missions, social interaction, computer usage and simple combat. Which makes me want a similar treatment for a Shadowrun-based game really bad.
I'm playing vampire right now and I love it. Yet, to say that it needs only polish is a little too nice.
The fight system is flawed.
This is a gameplay design issue. They didnt choose between fps style fight and rpg style fight, tried to blend the 2 of them and failed. You find yourself, if you go with firearms, with a slow aiming target, when you can finally fire, you do hp damages (!!!) to the guy in front of you (let's say, you just unloaded a shotgun at blank point in his head -> he gets 34 points of damage and immediatly shoots back) meanwhile other guys behind you unload their machineguns in your back with an ease you can't dream of. So it's better to go blades or fight but it is quite dull -> third person view, same moves all the time, only damages vary.
Some quests and dialogues are unfinished, not unpolished, un-FINISHED.
If they had time before the release as being said above, those could have been taken care of. The whole game world seems less and less finished as you go further. Santa monica, the first map is so much above the other ones, chinatown seems like a 8th of it, with empty side quests, empty buildings, empty NPCs. Empty as in meaningless.
The loading time are killers.
As much as it was bearable in Santa Monica, whith all the side quests and action going on, it is unbearable in Chinatown to have those loading times for uninterresting dull building/quests. It may be an issue with the source engine, i don't know.
How much are those issues due to troika or to activision, i dont know, but ultimately, it is activision which payed and released the game, and in my mind it is activision which is responsible for releasing a great yet flawed game.
The worse is that they just have to release a SDK to have all the above fixed. There are a lot of people who loved the game and cried for one, and are ready to develop whats missing for free.
Man, it would be free PR for both the videogame and the RPG.
Release the SDK!!!
please?
Buggy games... like Fallout and Fallout 2?
I just played through Fallout over the past month, and there were quests I'd completed that I didn't get the reward for, there's no interface to arm your NPCs (you have to barter with them, and they won't trade with you unless you give them an even trade) or you can steal from them and plant weapons on them. They have no max weight capacity through barter, but they do through stealing (they have a max item count capacity in both). Several dialog options make no sense where they lead you, it started exiting to the desktop every 5 minutes in the military base for me, and from what I hear, Fallout 2 is worse.
That said, despite the bugs, Fallout was awesome.
I completely agree. I don't want some stupid ass hole in a suit deciding what I will enjoy based on a financial statement.
As far as I'm concerned, all these companies pandering to the corporate model who go out of business deserve it for doing business with the devil. They are out to make profits, not games; and art is a jealous mistress. She won't give you access to true inspiration unless your motivation is the craft itself.
Do what you love and the money will follow. Do what the marketing department says, and your games will suck.