britown

Creative-Type Impersonator

🌸请别在工作死🌸


I sometimes like working on never-to-be-finished video game projects


Right now I'm making a game called Chronicles.


Wanna make a game? Here is a list of great C++ libraries to use.


I maintain a Letterboxd in much the way that I assume people maintain bonsai trees.


This is Owen:
Owen
And this is Molly:
Molly
Furthermore, this is Max:
Molly

Where you're walking along and you find a lady on the side of the road (a fairly common occurrence in Vvardenfell) who claims to be an exotic dancer late for an event who has dropped her prized ring in a nearby murky pool.


Ever the Good Samaritan, you might agree to help and so you wade into the murky water to retrieve the ring.

This is when the lady pulls a knife and the 80% chameleon-hidden NINJA ACCOMPLICE hops out from hiding and they both try to kill you.

This is a classic sort of thing, maybe we can call it Getting Patches'd but I was really affected by just how strange and innocuous and perfectly executed it all was. There was no cut-scene. One of them didn't run up to you, pause the game, and explain to you that they had tricked you and reveal their plan. You grabbed the ring and were immediately in a very dangerous position of two fairly strong enemies on your ass. That moment of realization and panic was so pure because you don't have time to prepare for what you're going to do.

I think to how other entries in the franchise and other games might use this as a jumping-off point for further quests or be carrying a journal explaining their motivations. But here it's just all so self-explanatory and perfect.

Morrowind is a game that somehow achieves the feeling of a hostile and independent world; a world that exists despite you, not for you. I have to guess that a lot of that achievement was driven by technical limitation. Less truly is more when you're trying to create a place for a player to explore.

Edit: if you'd like to follow development on an indie project attempting to capture fragments of these vibes, might I recommend checking out my game! There's no way that this claim will ever come back to haunt me.


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in reply to @britown's post:

This really sums up why that game is one of my favorites of all time. I adore it so much! And honestly, the lack of fast travel made it so much more real, immersive, and dangerous. I had to be careful too on who to trust. It's hard to find that sort of intense immersion in games these days.

I just started playing Morrowind for the first time a couple of hours ago and I was picking flowers in this beautiful countryside and I come upon someone, they're a scholar, they say they were with a friend but got separated, they heard some strange animal, they don't know where their friend is, they don't know if they're okay, can I help? So I say yes, why not? Well, a few moments later the combat music starts up and this massive beast starts walking over a hill, ignores the scholar I just spoke to, and starts chasing me! And as I am running away a rat also notices me and then they're both on me and beat me to death.