My critique with the 0.4 alpha

Gameplay
#1

I’d rather post here about the less impressive and buggy things I encountered rather than praises…

okay so

  1. coming from the dev that supposedly made Mafia, I’m very shocked to see that the main protagonist here sounded so… childishly naive… the way he talk, the way he respond to things, so incredibly and sounded so naive in a bad way, much worse than say… luke skywalker on the very first sw movie; I honestly not sure if the audience will get attached to this kind of protagonist, in fact I predict many will laugh or find him annoying and thus will put people off from this game.

  2. and so do many of the characters so far :frowning: I’m not sure if this just me who gotten accustomed with more mature RPGs on PC with better characters writing like in recent titles such as shadowrun dragonfall or pillars of eternity… simply put, compared to such recent cRPGs, the characters displayed in this game so far seem lacking… lacking realistic believable behavior/dialogue… (and at this topic, I’m still waiting for an RPG with character writing that can be equal or surpass what obsidian did with Kreia in kotor 2)

2 and half. :smiley: and… perhaps it’s their voice actors… no offense… but perhaps it’s them who acted in the wrong way to make all those characters feel off… yeah it’s one package, the writing, the dialogue and the voice acting…

  1. speaking about them… it’s now about their faces models… it’s not on par with the environment… the only one guy face I’m rather impressed is the one older guy who have a wife that gave us quest about missing document, anyone else looked rather unfinished and kinda unprofessional…

well so far it’s that, couldn’t try the combat because it was bugged for me… later I’ll try again but for now I’m voicing concern about those 3 points (or was it 4 :wink:)

cheers warhorse and fellow fans/testers.

#2

I agree about the main protagonist. Remember this is not how he will sound in he end result as they still haven’t got a full host of voice actors.

It would be best if you put your bug problems in the bug thread of the forum as they will be answered there :smile:

#3

BTW great username :smiley:

#4

They are just space holders…

1 Like
#5

bug thread? I’m not sure if this fit into bug fixing, it’s more about design choice.

btw this forum is also one of the worst forum out there, how can I quote someone else’s post here? lol

#6

Pasted image765×277 36.6 KB

like this, you select the text and then click on a pop up box “quote reply”

Once you get used to it, it is wery easy to exist in this forum.
I was pretty impressed by it.

Anyway to your “bug” list.
Almost anything you listed is place holder: Voiceover, faces, some animations etc.

supposedly? rly? You do realise that this is TECHNICAL alpha, in many games you would not be able to even see this stage of a game. Here you can play it.

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#7

1, All animations, voice acting and even current face are only placeholders For facial Mocap, and real professional voice actors.

2,Again all dialogue is only for the purpose of technical alpha, incluidng quests, etc… They won’t appear in the main game.

It’s amazing how you managed to pick, just the things that doesn’t matter and are placeholders.

1 Like
#8

I’m not sure if everything just completely place holders, if they were, then this is more like concept preview than tech alpha :smiley: and I don’t recall paying for a concept preview

but nevertheless things I mentioned really need changes for the better.

#9

https://youtu.be/kNK_0BgT2TI?t=3736 (1:02:15) This covers all those point.

2 Likes
#10

I dont know what concept preview is but technical alpha which you bought is just a tiny fraction of a game in which you can test features that developers want to have tested.

I do not know what you thought you are buying but you cannot expect finished game nor even finished features. Everything can have bugs and nothing might be finished.

#11

I thought people paying here are backers. They just give money so that warhorse studios can create this game. So you didn’t bought anything, you just helped them. Helping them gives you the right to get access to tech alpha and to have a digital copy of the game act I once it is finished. So, IMHO, you can’t really complain about the content of what you “bought”.

About your critique’s point n°1 : Henry looks childish and naive.
Well, maybe he looks so, but if you find the good dialogues you will see that he (you ?) can be quite the contrary. I remember having him threatening the herb woman using words like “fucking” and so on. So IMO it all depend on how you play.

3 Likes
#12

Hi I would like to give you some feedback. I have done the survey but there was no room for additional suggestions (complaints).

  1. Id like to have option to completely remove the camera changes during the dialogs and only has first person point of view which keeps you in the game and character. The cinematic takes always tear me out of the immersion into the world and my character. Same with the herb picking and so on, just make my character lean a bit and grab the air near the plant would be better i think. It would be nice to have a option to have realistic point of view as much as possible. (would be especially good with oclus VR). Also when you have dialog i dont like the locking of the character. It would be better for me to be able to move a little and when you decide to leave the conversation simply go away instead of this ok thanks i have no more question, end dialog, bla bla bullshit. I think this is not a big issue to implement simply track position of my character and let him speak to me when i get to far just end the dialog. This would again increase my immersion in the game which is for me essential.

  2. Combat system, i am a bit unssure what to think, i like hard things in game but now i feel its kind of too random. May be im still a noob in fighting and i think you would surely improve the combat system so not really much to add here :).

  3. Option to save the game. Now as the game is much bigger i would like a option to save my progress so i can play around more. I hate to play few hours and then loose everything. Plus its even more frustrating when the game crashes.

I think thats all. I hope somebody reads this and may be will consider it a bit. All and all the game looks great and i have high hopes it will be a new hit after many years of cheesy games. It is especially great considering it is still a buggy tech alpha. Also i think you have taken a bit too challenging goal to meet all our expectation, but it will be im sure it will be fine let it end anyhow. (sorry for my czechglish but it think you will understand me just fine) :slight_smile: GO WARHORSE!

#13

My game seems to save on exit, so I return to the same location next time I run the game. I’ve only been wandering though so I’m not sure if other progress is lost?

I must admit I agree about the cut scene style dialogues. As this is a first person game I would rather they stayed in first person for conversations, with, perhaps, some cinematic dialogues for story progression. But at the end of the day its up to WH how they wish to present their game.

I am a little uncertain as to the point of this alpha, other than to give those who have paid in full for an unreleased game a little treat. If this is all totally separate from the finished title is any of our input that useful? Other than the map and rendering will everything be new, or is this build going to be consumed within the final, full, game?

#14

I’m not new to this kickstarter and early access thing, I backed and bought several other projects… one thing in common is that as contrary as someone said above, not everything in the early alpha / early build versions completely place holders and will have no meaning whatsoever in the future, in fact usually what were released to backers/testers would be included in the game; so yes I stand by my view and thus my concerns.

now about the character writing / dialogue you mentioned, sure the protagonist do have an option to somewhat threaten others, however, due to his other dialogues and behavior as well as his voice acting, his aggressive dialogue choice simply become even more disjointed with his overall portrayal and make the character truly lack some coherent… well, characterization…

don’t you find it laughable that the protagonist speak some silly naive dialogues (with such weird voice acting) and then out of nowhere proceed to threaten some old woman in such manner?

it’s totally killing the immersion man! and this is very important in RPGs.

#15

if you don’t understand the concept of tech alphas or early access, you shouldn’t have pledged. please ask for a refund and buy the retail version later on. thank you for your support.

1 Like
#16

Yes, but none of this is meant for the final release, its just to give us something to do in the world. If this was the quality of the final build it would be the worst game ever released :scream: :smile:

#17

Dude, it’s a Alpha, you can’t judge the game based off a tech demo/Alpha, most of the graphical things you see are just place holders, the developers have consistently stated the voice actors were temporary place holders simply to have voices for testing purposes. If you bothered to read the kickstarter goals as well as the financing goals on the site, it was clearly indicated that they weren’t going to actually use those voice actors for the final game.

Dialogue again is temporary based on what the developers stated.

The models again are temporary, you can see this clearly as the faces are improving in quality, hair looks like it’s still being worked on.

If you don’t realize the difference between a tech demo/Alpha for testing and a full game, then you clearly don’t understand the concept of what “final product” means, chill and realize that the game is still in development.

#18

You are right, i feel so dumb right now :smiley:

#19

U sure about this? Any source?

As for the models, animations, voiceovers etc., yeah everyone with half a brain knows these are just placeholders. But the writing and the quests we see in 0.4? U sure that’s just for demonstration purposes too? Seems to me it’s a lot of writing and quest designing to be thrown away afterwards.

#20

This fits so…

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