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slowly recovering from birdsite

autistic queerthing from france. kitty fighting the puppy allegations. Asks welcome!

Icon: Komugi from Wonderful Precure
Header: Whisper of the Heart



bruno
@bruno

Freelancer mode feels like a roguelike whereas past attempts at a roguelike game mode in AAA games (Bloodborne's chalice dungeons, AC: Valhalla's forgotten saga mode) generally don't.

We're used to thinking of genre as a set of mechanics or themes. Eg, from Wikipedia:

Roguelike (or rogue-like) is a subgenre of role-playing computer games traditionally characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, grid-based movement, and permanent death of the player character.

But what if instead we thought of genres as a set of player experience goals? What if we tried to systematize what the 'vibe' of a genre is, and apply it through different mechanics?

Here's my version of a roguelike as a set of player experience pillars:

  • I have a random set of tools, and I have to improvise with what I got
  • I am balancing short-term goals (get through the level safely) against long-term goals (accumulate resources I can use later)
  • Failure represents a major setback in progression (up to and including going all the way back to the start)
  • My tools and resources are ephemeral and I can't rely on having them forever
  • I can know some, but not all, of what I can expect
  • I can push my luck, and probably will have to in order to complete the campaign
  • I don't know exactly the consequences of my actions
  • ...but I do have to live with them

And it's worth noting that Hitman is hitting these goals by being willing to do things that are, in a traditional AAA framework of frictionlessness, kind of hostile to the player. For example, you can get a really nice gun, take it with you on a mission, and then if you leave the mission without it that nice gun is just gone forever.


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in reply to @bruno's post:

IMO normal hitman is a game where "a nice gun" is not that big a deal. Aside from sniping (which "a nice gun" imo is one that gets past security pat downs, so not a rifle) how much more effective is it than thrown soda can, really?

the thing is that because this is a roguelike mode, you can't savescum, so sometimes you DO have to shoot your way out of situations. at which point having a nicer gun counts!

the mode is also stingy enough with guns that any silenced pistol counts as "nice." you don't have one by default!

Yeah, friction is really a necessary part here.

And I love the idea of genres as vibes, I've tried arguing about it in the past, that what matters is how the game makes the player feel, but what I've learned is that people really hate taxonomy.