Post by wycha in Peripeteia comments

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I've played both demos, although I didn't finished any of them. While I appreciate Blade Runner but PRL and try to recreate Deus Ex mechanics. The game either for me has many issues or ends up it is not my cup of tea after all - at this moment. Maybe final version would be more satisfying. These nitpicks are subjective, it should be taken with grain of salt.

Both demos (partially tutorial too) for me suffer from too much emptiness, long massive corridors and rooms, that are mostly waste of space and time to travelling through them. In the current demo, while exploring can be rewarding, finding path back or backtracking feels the reward is not worth of pressing shift and w for those minutes. I am unsure if it is artistic choice , since it feels like the exaggeration is too great. I wonder if the same effect of empty wasted space and grandness of architecture and mass of it would be still achievable if many places would be shrunk by half.
Because of that, there are places, where I think shouldn't be available. Like the train tracks that leads to outside. I am not sure if they lead to somewhere for really patient players, or its purpose is to punish cheeky players that would explore anywhere they can.
Due to that long way from one interesting scenery to another, I had little to no motivation with "completing" the level.
Another thing, I feel like the jumping and climbing still needs polishing and subtlety. The jumping sequence between three thin bars deep in metro tunnel was frustrating. Do climbing a ladder is about pressing spacebar rapidly?
AI of allies is weird? After taking down enemies with sleep bombs, the allies came to do mass execution.
It is really nitpicking but poster of Wedel's cocoa powder is too sharp comparing to other posters.
It is subjective and personal, but seeing character model breaks immersion for me. I understand the inspiration with her design, and I suspect after talking with propaganda woman why main character looks as she looks. Yet her look compared to men in this world is too off. Like custom anime GTA mod made by someone who is beginner in the craft.

Sorry for harsh words, good luck with the game! I am still looking forward it completion.

Shodanon3 years ago(+1)

Hey Łycha, thanks a lot for the comments. They aren't as harsh as you'd think. Many of these we are aware of and want to address and some are conscious decisions, which will likely keep getting mentioned. We went through an additional art pass for the previous demo level, with added detail, quests and props and we were hoping for a three level demo but our discoveries regarding performance issues of that build led to us deciding the “memorial tower” level needs a complete remake in Hammer editor, instead of Unity’s built in ProBuilder (its use allowed the current demo runs better while being way bigger). Same with the current demo, we hope to add variety to the areas between points of interest, other than hidden goodies. We have no intention of scaling the map down, but filling it with cool stuff – most definitely.

Stuff like the endless train tracks will stay – it’s that artistic touch I don’t want to refuse Snake, the level designer and lead artist. We are happy with people’s reactions to Marie, whether they find her disturbing or cute. Both are intentional. We have received opinions that there are areas in the level that should be blocked off from the player but we decided to embrace our movement and allow people to go wherever they please, with more advanced techniques allowing places that you wouldn’t even expect reachable. You’ll find a small battery or an overpowered gun there, but it’s entirely optional. At the same time, our ambition is for the game to be hard but completable without using the movement tricks but that hasn’t yet been achieved yet. As for ladders, we believe there’s no need for a typical FPS ladder if Marie mantle them like any other object.

Thanks for giving us further chances. We hope that future iterations will address some of your issues, like AI becoming more refined (it’s not really "ally" AI, every NPC uses the same set of behaviours regardless of faction standing – like killing their enemy whether they are concious or not), nitpicks being fixed etc.

wycha3 years ago(+1)

Glad to read the response. Especially since some of my concerns are actually fully aware decisions; stick to them.

So the railway is rewarding. I guess I didn't had enough patience, and I thought I have some after Pathologic! I understand the wish to keep the world open, as streets doesn't had invisible walls either, and they can lead to non interesting places.
I will give more tries to demo in the meantime to check if maybe stars were in wrong position, or I expect too much from demo at this stage of development. Since I enjoyed the tutorial since I had directions what should l do, and have initial goal.

BoJustBo3 years ago(+1)

May I ask, how does the Hammer editor make levels more lightweight? As someone just starting with Unity I'd love to learn such thing before I make something without thinking about it and have it bite me in the butt =P

itch.io

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