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The Witchers Intro for those that have not seen itsoftweir wrote: The Witcher had an amazing intro, but it had a lot going for it - Polish production (cheap), using an existing engine (cheap), intended for a currently very healthy market and with the force of a very popular series of novels to tempt people to join the market.
Wow, congrats on starting such a interesting thread.Boringnick wrote:
A scenario _is_ important for a sandbox game. GTA is in huge parts a sandbox game also. But what whould be more exciting? Cruising around and doing random stuff in a city full of crime, or cruising around and doing stuff in Barbietown?
A good sandbox game needs a good scenario. The mentioned Frontier Elite 2 in my first post was a pure sandbox game - there was no overarching plot to follow. All you did was trading (and taking sometimes missions from the military, they were all randomly generated) But it still had a powerful scenario behind it (good description of starsystems, the politics behind the governments, stories etc) - alltogether a powerful lore. And atmosphere in the game too as a result of it.
That is what's lacking in X. It has lore and atmosphere, but both are weaker by a magnitude. The problem is the not the basic premise of the scenario, but the execution of it.
You can do basicaly two things with the X lore. Describe and execute in this way:
Option 1: "A forgotten branch of humanity together with odd and not always trustworthy alien-allies are in a constant struggle against two superior foes for the very survivial in a hostile universe."
Or in this way:
Option 2: "Five loony races trade a bit in a cosy universe where sometimes funny looking blue-purple ships appear to wreak some damage."
BTF had a huge streak of 1, X3 has gone all the way of option 2.
O.K. I admit X3 tried a bit of option 1.. but in the plot only. And even then it failed miserably. When the news and "McCarthy" lamented about the Kha'ak, it was nothing but a huge laughing stock.
To make no mistakes: I only mention Elite and Frontier so often because that's the games X is based on, the name "X - Beyond the Frontier" was even a direct reference to Frontier.
I think many people here (well at least some do I hope) know the game X-Com UFO defense.
That game had an extremely simple story - evil aliens attack the earth. But the masterful execution of it made you forget how simple it was. Why was it "masterful executed"? Because it took itself serious, and was able to squeeze everything of the scenario out. And if it used clichés, it used the good ones.