Yeah, it wasn’t the only game that featured that.
The new Thief is good at using the hands ingame like real hands. Sadly, the rest of the game more or less seem to suck.
Please don’t try to belittle my arguments by exaggeration. That’s not a good discussion style… 
It didn’t say that the whole game should look bad. Not at all. I said that it should stay consistent. I titled 3rd person cutscenes as “eye-candy” in this context since these cutscenes are used to make the game more movie-like, to offer something for the eye to watch from a fancy movie perspective (how we’re used to watch movies) instead of trying to stay in perspective to uphold immersion and believability. A first person cutscenes can be damn good-looking as well of course. It’s not a question of graphical quality, it’s a question of game design. 
Well, sorry, but you belittling the role of all that “eye candy” is just as much unfair.
Modern virtual games as a medium have generally a great deal in common with film and literature (kinda like a third side of a triangle). Criticising the use of filmmaking methods is essentially a nonsense. Like criticising a deep and elaborate setting and story with long and “boring” branching dialogues where you could make a simple and straightforward shootthemallup! FPS action. Which would also be more down-to-the-core of gaming.
It’s all a question of game design…
I guess I didn’t make my point clear enough so let me try to put it this way: I don’t think cutscenes are bad in general and I do appreciate the methods of filmmaking in games. But imo the styles of these methods have to fit to the overall vision and goals of the game. So why using 3rd person cutscenes in a first person game? A game which you as a developer decided in the first place to be first person since you wanted the game as immersive as possible. As Dan said himself, if you want to achieve a story-driven game centered around a certain predefined character you would more profit from a 3rd person view which is in fact a perspective we know a lot better from movies. So the whole game is designed around the two buzzwords realism and immersion. Every minute of gameplay is created with the vision immersion > watchability. So why should you chose to break that basic vision of your game by using a different perspective in cutscenes which necessarily breaks immersion to some extend? It just makes no sense. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t use some kind of “eye-candy” stuff or cutscenes. In fact you could do exactly the same thing just in first person perspective. Of course - and that’s the real challenge here and maybe also the real reason why Warhorse seems to with 3rd person cutscenes - decent first person cutscenes are hard to make, especially when movement (of your own character) is involved and your sight has to be directed. It affords a lot of thinking and clever (cutscene) design to make engaging and cool first person cutscenes but they are not impossible, not at all. 3rd person cutscenes may be the much easier version but they imo also take away from the very basic goals of this game. In life, you just usually just cannot kill two bird with one stone. In the end you could still lack the skill, money or time (which is indeed very likely) to achieve everything you wanted but it’s at least worth to try or even to think about…
I’ve lost track of who is debating what here, but I cannot throw my hand in with those who want all 1st person.
I agree that it would be awesome, novel, and achieve maximum immersion, but I’m not sure I want that at the cost of the extra stuff you see as the player, that Henry would not be able to see from his perspective.
A first person cutcutscene comes with that unfortunate consequence. If Henry is trying to avoid being impaled by an incoming spear, how will he also see the moment he dodges and it hits his comrade in arms? With a third person view, we get to see both.
Disclaimer: I have no knowledge of any such cutscene in the actual game
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Well, if you ask me you should ask yourself that question before you make a first person game. For me it’s some lazy design, some cheap opt-out to bring in 3rd person through the back door. There are numerous first person games which didn’t have 3rd person cutscenes as I wrote above. It’s by no means a “new” or “radical” feature. It’s even the most obvious solution.
3rd person and 1st person are two very different things on a very basic level. From a design point of view imho they cannot combined in a fitting and meaningful way since they follow two very different design principles: being the character and watching the character. Imagine a book (although it’s not completely the same there) in which the perspective changes between first person and third person from time to time. Doesn’t sound that good, does it? In a consistent first person story you cannot leave the character and his body. You sense what he senses.
That’s one of the main reason why I think 3rd person is a better fit for an RPG than first person (while first person is a good choice for a linear action game for example): you have way more freedom with 3rd person since you only watch the main character without being him. That way you can even show areas far away from your character, like for example an event at a different time or place. It’s all possible since you’re just watching an interactive movie (yeah, that’s indeed true even at that stage) and the same rules to movies also apply here. First person instead is something that doesn’t exist in movies. It’s exclusive to games (and books). With VR the strenghts of this perspective are as high as never before but they come with some costs like a restrictive array of methods and styles you could use when aiming for a consitent and really immersive experience (which is the key goal in first person games anyway).
Combining 1st person and 3rd person seems to me like a game searching for its identity, sorry. It’s a game which wants too much and therefore loses its basic design vision. Many game with this “problem” have been done, no question, and even some of them are great. But they still suffer from this issue and as games get more and more realistic and first person gets more and more immersive (think VR again) the issue gets even more urging. It’s easy to call Deus Ex a good game despite its mix of perspectives since the game wasn’t very immersive in first person in the first place. The tech was just too clumsy and not realistic enough. But time changes and so does tech and some old design problems which seemed minor 10 years ago can become important today…
And there’s the Mafia II sale through Steam. 75% off until tomorrow morning.
lol mafia 2 was probably reason dan left. it was watered down, constricted, and casualized for the mainstream.
when studio does that, developer with vision will jump ship!
You have no idea why Dan left. Don’t be so negative all the time, it’s getting annoying…
Mafia II was a quality action game. Being more accessible isn’t a bad thing by nature by the way.
Still, I wanted to give both of the games a try and with the recommendation I grab the PC version of Mafia II since it’s not hindered by the poor port PS3 got, I was just waiting for a good sale.
Yeah, have some fun. Don’t expect too much and everything will be ok. 
That’s what I game for - to have fun, hopefully to enjoy the story. As long as things aren’t game-breaking, I can put up with a lot as long as I’m interested in what I’m doing.
I like Mafia 2. It was not as good as the first game, but decent nonetheless. They could have kept it more realistic, as they did in first Mafia IMO, sometimes it felt a little too arcadey - probably trying more for the safe path of GTA and such. What I didn’t like was that it seemed like they basically ripped some of the content from the game and made it DLC - actually, I played the game a long time ago and only recently found out that there are 3 big DLCs. So don’t forget to get them if you bought the game just now :).
Yeah, but none of the three DLCs is really worth the money. And none of them contains stuff that necessarily should be in the main game (or is missed there). The ending remains “open”.
Haven’t played the DLCs yet, will probably replay Mafia 2 soon, so I will try them out. Joe’s Adventures should have been in the main game IMO, it was relatively short as it was. BTW, I have recently watched some gaming show from an archive where Dan Vávra said that he has originally planned 4 endings for Mafia 2. Too bad we will never find out what those were (and what other things got cut out / changed).
These cuts are available to the public. You can go through the (extensive) list here http://tcrf.net/Mafia_II or here http://www.game-archivist.com/empirebay/
And you are right about the multiple endings. At least you can guess them based on their titles.
http://www.game-archivist.com/empirebay/bts_epilogues.php
Interesting stuff, thanks. Seeing as there was like a lot of possible content removed, Mafia 2 could have been a great, great game instead of a good one. I guess that’s what happens when the game is in development for a very long time and you are pushed to release it as soon as possible. It kinda didn’t offer too much after finishing the story. Also, it seemed rather short, therefore my comment about the DLCs (although they probably planned that all along). It had only 15 chapters, the first Mafia had 20.
Looking through the cut out stuff, I would have really liked to try the extreme difficulty (among other things).
Tbh most games look like that from the inside. Cut content is a absolute normal reality in game development. There will be cut content in KCD as well. You just can’t implement everything you want in a game with a limited budget, time and team size.
I get that, but I think it was super obvious in the case of Mafia 2 - considering that there was a standard of extra content aside from the story in the first Mafia, which obviously the sequel originally meant to exceed or at least match. And if you think about it, its a lot of the stuff that was criticized about the game - not a lot of options and extra stuff to do, unimpressive length and somewhat weird ending / parts of the story. It was in development for a relatively long time, so that is probably one (if not the main) reason.
In the case of KCD, the good thing is that new features will be added between Acts.
Well, I think most open world action games are “flawed by design” in general. There are very few acceptable examples which really made some use of their open worlds (like GTA San Andreas or AC Revelation). In most action games open world is just another word for pointless racing, running or ship driving game (like seen in GTA IV/V, Watch_Dogs, Mafia 1+2, AC Black Flag,…). It’s basically a big labyrinth of streets with some zombies (called NPCs) running around and wallpapers of buildings or other environment as street limitations. That’s the horrible abomination of an open world RPG which tries to simulate a real, believable holistic world instead of that endless iteration of racing/running games…
Open world adds nothing to the basic game. Mafia 2 would be the same game without an open world. Maybe (or very likely) it would be a much better game. Watch_Dogs is a new prime example imo how to make side activities completely wrong, breaking both world design, story AND atmosphere. At least Mafia 2 wasn’t an “working off a list of achievements game” for what it’s worth… 