13 months later: are there still alternatives?

[Wilbefast]

I've just been looking at the new Deus Ex game and hoping it doesn't turn out to be a terrible disappointment. This makes me think: how are things shaping up for alternatives to killing in Overgrowth? Remember this?



That was 13 months ago to the day. Now, I'm conscious that sometimes you just have to cut the fat to get things working in a timely manner. So now that the team have moved into crunch mode and everybody's hands are dirty, to say the least, I wonder how many of the high-brow design decisions are still on the table.

I'd really like a non-lethal, or almost non-lethal, run-through of the game to be possible, as in Iji, Splinter Cell and even Hitman. I'd expect a straight-up assault or stealth approach to be possible, as in Lugaru, but this time round I'd rather like characters and events in the game to at least acknowledge my decisions, even if they don't change the story in any way.

But David has talked about even more, stressing of course that these are just ideas and may not make the cut. Which is why I'm wondering: 13 months later, what's looking like it'll make it into the final game and what isn't?

Remember too that I'm a Linux user so can't play the alphas, in case there's something in them that I've missed

[LucarFox]

Well, there is definitely blood, which is all over the picture.
But this whole "alternatives" stuff is kinda messy at the moment. I would say I can't really see that being done until later stages of the development...
This blog post certainly does show a lot of potential though.
As well as the other one on character customization, which gets me really excited as well.


-for the record, I hope the new Deus Ex game is amazing as well.
unfortunately I'v already found out I've wasted my money on the special edition for merchandise, to have Square Enix announce that this special merchandise I bought was only going to be released in Europe. *baww*
Nevertheless, I'm still stoked about it. Just glad to see I'm not the only one.

[Sparrow15]

Lugaru is such a fantastic game, that my biggest worry is that Overgrowth might not be as good. That said, it's shaping up very well, but part of what made Lugaru so great was the surprising amount of choice. Even before we get to stealth vs. combat (which are not very well balanced in Lugaru) there are a ton of fighting options and styles. I'm hoping that the same makes it into Overgrowth, and after going back and playing Lugaru through with all reversals and without alerting any enemies, I definitely hope that is possible in Overgrowth as well.

[Wilbefast]

Lugaru did have a few fault though. For instance, I'd like much to see better weapon combat. Speaking of which: people who've had a chance to play the alpha: how does the combat feel, compared to Lugaru?

[adwuga]

truthfully, i prefer lugaru, but the fighting is still pretty early with balance and weapons, and especially stealth. lugaru was in my opinion, the best close up fighting game ever. right now, overgrowth is sort of meh-ish in that area. overgrowth has much better movement though, with all of its parkour awesomeness.

[Sparrow15]

Since the soccer kick got put in, my current interpretation of the style is: get your enemies on the ground and kick them repeatedly. You will never lose to one bunny, but two gets harder, and three is a fair challenge.

David said that reversals will probably not exist in the same capacity as in Lugaru, but that "counter-throws" made sense to him. It was actually exactly what I was hoping he would say. I think that the combat can be different from Lugaru and still interesting and difficult, it's just noy quite there yet.

[Wilbefast]

Hmm... Lugaru balanced the soccer kick by only letting you do it once (or twice if you're quick) on each enemy. But an artificial constraint needn't be used: perhaps the player could be dissuaded from using cheap tricks by some other means?
It would be interesting to perhaps introduce some kind of "honour" system. Like how in "Bloodlines" you can lose "humanity" if you kill civilians, and this makes your response choices more bestial, which in turn makes it hard to talk your way out of confrontations.
So aside from brutality and stealthiness you could also have how "fair" you choose to play: letting enemies get to their feet or discarding weapons when fighting unarmed opponents would add to your honour, and this would help influence enemies in the future.

But getting back on topic: from my limited experience it becomes a lot more difficult to think about design when you really get into the nitty-gritty of programming. So perhaps dedicated Game Designers aren't a waste of oxygen after all See: shameless self-advertising.

[SamW]

Game designers would, however, still know how much it costs to implement certain design decisions, so they can not be completely divorced from development and implementation.

Otherwise you get to become Peter Molyneux. Briliant Ideas man, but not enough there to ensure proper execution

Of course if you have significant resources and time, it would be OK to shoot for the sky and to not burden design with the technical issues. But I don't think anyone has nearly unlimited resources at their disposal.

[Wilbefast]

I'm not making the case for designers who know nothing about programming - far from it! Recently I was in Paris entering a mobile game development competition. Our team won the competition and the check was split evenly 7 ways. Thing is, I did 100% of the programming; sat there grinding the whole 48 hours while the non-programmers, at least at the end, provided coffee and emotional support.

In a sense being able to focus purely on technological issues was nice, but I absolutely agree that designers with no programming experience can only do so much, especially when some unexpected constraint or opportunity appears on the technology side of things. And since I also had to learn how to use the Android SDK, emulators and others tools in the same 48 hours, such unexpected occurrences were very frequent.
Ironically I've worked very hard to train as a programmer so that I can one day break into design, yet it's often those without any training at all who are cast as designers by default in these kinds of competition

Euh... sorry for the rant