Heap big buyer's remorse, renaigse.
(Working title: GreedFall: the Divorce)
According to GoG's "achievement" list GreedFall loses half its players somewhere between "unlock a new skill" a.k.a. level 2, and "empty 100 containers" a.k.a. level 10-ish. Granted, the sandbox or turn-based strategy games I so adore fail to entice 66% of their customers even to level 2... but after that they retain them much more successfully. "The very notion of a mass-market RPG contradicts itself" I said just a couple of weeks ago, and GreedFall seems as apt an object lesson on that point as any, ironically falling prey to its own greed in snatching at an unrealistically wide market share. We should all really stop buying games designed by art or business majors. Don't get me wrong, it still looks gorgeous:
Whatever their other faults, Spiders clearly has access to some exceptionally talented visual artists. Take the images above, two views of the same room from the entranceway and the upper gallery of the Inquisition's local offices. The statue is clearly meant to shock and awe visitors, but if you take the time for perspective it's obviously a cheap and quite common trick of lighting, and a biting comment on religious orders' inspirational smoke and mirrors through the ages. Keep in mind it would've been much easier for game designers to make the statue's head literally glow than pull off such a deliberate multi-part effect.
Yet sadly, as I had guessed three posts ago, the substance underlying this laudable aesthetic gloss leaves much to be desired. Let me backtrack to last year for a simile.
I'd wanted to catch up on the Witcher games before diving into Cyberpunk 2077, but The Witcher 2 proved such a wash that it could at best supply a negative example of RPG crafting implementation. The entire series seems to sell on nothing more than gratuitous sex scenes for teenagers too stupid to figure their way around internet parental controls. Increasingly bored of the sequel's piling on of cutscene after cutscene after minigame after cutscene, exasperated at finding no game to play in any of its gameplay, I was relieved at diving into the first wilderness area for some adventuring... then finally uninstalled when I saw what the adventuring consisted of. The zone itself was hopelessly cramped, with quest mobs literally popping up out of the ground, in infinite numbers, at random spots. The boss bugs pictured above proved a surprisingly challenging fight after some laughably easy ambushes in town... until I realized their stat advantage could be negated by fighting them on top of a zone line two steps away, constantly whittling them down and taking a step back to de-aggro. I have to wonder how many retarded little shits patted themselves on the back for "winning" facetiously difficult fights by being handed obvious exploits.
GreedFall applies the same lack of logic to large groups. While individual mobs heal to full if they lose aggro they also leash very close to their spawn locations, making splitting seemingly overwhelming packs
trivial. Also, the game includes a "balance" stat which is supposed
to prevent knockdowns, but its relevance was forcibly
overcompensated. Every nonhuman mob, bats included, has charging
knockdown attacks. Every. Single. One. The superbears and the supergoats
and the superbats and the other superbears and the superlizards and the
super-land-sharks which kick like goats for some reason, and the other
other superbears, all of them knock you down with every attack.
Humorously, due their pathetically short leashes they've knocked me out
of their own aggro radius on several occasions.
It also lacks aggro management. Mobs (and especially bosses) focus the highest incoming damage source (a.k.a. you)
forcing you to run in circles while your hirelings whittle down the threat without danger to themselves. This by
no means makes the fight harder (without a stamina bar, chasing your tail for five minutes is as simple as five seconds) but it does make it longer, which is the whole time-sinking point, of course. Also, the whole point of target assist is that it allows you to focus on
timing and sequences of events - but enemies tend to attack instantly
from a dead stop with no wind-up animation. Instead of enemies dealing
damage via explicit, counterable attacks, you tend to simply take damage, instantly and constantly, whenever in range, followed by some largely irrelevant animations. Quite often you find yourself being hit despite having dutifully mashed to dodge button because all the actual gameplay has already been decided by the enemy's target lock calculation, irrelevant of what's happening on screen. So far, though I've died quite a few times for getting three-shotted, the only truly difficult fight has been the Forest Guardian, a boss which simply telefrags you with pinpoint accuracy from a screen away... and if that's your idea of good gameplay, may I suggest Russian roulette?
But that's not even the most aggravating bit.
GreedFall touts its exploration theme as a prime selling point already undercut by subdividing the map into zones. On closer inspection, every zone map's further subdivided into tiny rooms and corridors (ironically, the towns are the least linear) and do you see those question marks in the fog of war? Those are points of interest. They're already marked for you, all over every map.
Yeah.
"Explore uncharted new lands."
yeeaaah... Bullshit.
The exploration angle's certainly not helped by all the locked gates and walls blocking off about a fifth of locations, which cannot be explored unless you have the related quest. Skyrim at least knew enough to limit such obstacles to the tail-end of a handful of dungeons, and allowed you to pick up unique items before they're required for a quest, without running back to some NPC for permission to do what you were already doing. I'm also feeling much less inclined to "explore" the constantly reiterated single-tileset terrain consisting of the same ravines opening into the same loosely forested meadows and banks, especially once I realized this island adventure features not a single beach or shorebird and fails to include water in any way besides the faction of pirates who never sail anywhere.
And the idiot-friendly main plot is not helped by the mediocrity of its writing.
You're given a massive, map-spanning quest to gather Professor
SummutFancy's lost research notes and gradually unveil the island's
ancient, deep, dahk and tewwible seecwets. Too bad that by level 10, the
second note I found (of sixteen!) outright tells you the grand
metamorphic reveal and your wannabe Boadicea's quest location immediately
reveals the rest. Sooo... we're done here, right?
I did have a passing thought that after thirty years of experience I
should've played on hard instead of normal difficulty... but doubling
mobs' hit points and damage will not fix their one single endlessly reiterated character model or
their re-redundant combat styles. Spongier damage sponges will only
render an idiot-friendly excuse for a game like GreedFall even more
pointless.
There's the crux of the matter: idiot-friendly.
GreedFall has its good points, besides just graphics.
Guns and heavy weapons can shatter enemy armor, a necessary step before slicing and dicing away with roguish light blades... or you can opt for armor-bypassing magic missile attacks with a limited mana pool. Magic supplies at least some minimal crowd control, and skills combine into new abilities, such as magic missiles and alchemical compounds yielding an AoE knockdown skill helping ranged characters to disengage from melee. The entire system, however, is undercut by the idiotic knockdown mechanics which make combat success entirely dependent on constantly mashing the dodge button between attacks (regardless of what or where or how you're fighting) instead of planning and executing conscious series of actions.
There's a stealth mode for sneak attacks, but in the absence of an actual incremental stealth skill, anyone can walk up to and backstab at least one or two mobs in broad daylight, often wiping out whole packs with impunity. Even Skyrim's infamous stealth archery focus demanded a couple more steps in the process than free kills with no investment.
Your character re-crouches automatically after a stealth kill, but
stands up after placing a trap, which makes absolutely zero sense as part of
pre-fight preparations... because you're not expected to possess the brainpower to prepare for fights. This is a game for console retards who just want to mash buttons, and traps are spammed during combat like any other magic missile.
Traps, potions, etc. can be fabricated from ingredients found out in the environment, but in direct contrast to the stringent constraints of, for instance, The Age of Decadence, mobs and resources respawn constantly (read: as soon as you turn your back) including loot crates in the middle of town. Infinite loot. Even by cRPG standards, the in-game economy's a joke.
Giving the natives a celtic / druidic feel put a welcome fresh spin on the usual "smoke-em peace pipe" nonsense, but their painfully repetitive vocalizations grate after only a few repetitions... and there are a lot of repetitions, on ol menawi.
Factions and companions technically have a reputation system, but so far it seems impossible to go wrong unless you deliberately lower your rep. As long as you quest, your rep increases.
Unlike most such games, companion quests are some of your most involved
adventures, and fully integrated into the island's greater political
events. Too bad the first three have about as much personality as mold and you only get the fifth when you're halfway through the game (unless you know to rush to her quest) and once again, you're not expected to choose between them but only slot them in and out for magic / physical damage convenience as interchangeable mooks.
Though its RPG skill trees gave me false hope and its talk of exploration prompts an immediate comparison to sandbox games, every single facet of GreedFall is, aptly, ruined by greedily aiming for an unrealistically wide market of subhuman cretins incapable
of planning their own actions, who have to be handed ready-made loot without purposely seeking it, can't prioritize their quests or enemies beyond hacking and slashing at
whatever's put in front of them, can't prioritize NPC companions or hold to a specific ethos or loyalty, can't even plan their own footsteps and have to be herded along canyons to every new location.
The marching morons are incapable of appreciating quality, and anything which markets to them will always turn out to be trash eventually, no matter the technical skill employed. This is not a cRPG. It's a Witcher clone, driven purely by hack'n'slash and gratuitous, nonsensical NPC romances, endless cutscenes foisting pre-chewed emotions and morality on you, and about as much relevant player choice as selecting between Dumb and Dumber. You teleport to where you're told to, hit what you're told to, click your way through linear dialogues and try to feel clever about it.
By level twenty, I feel like I've played a hundred levels of this crap. While I might cringe at the imagined frustration of replaying The Age of Decadence, at least it motivated me to finish the game and left me with a satisfying denouement. Retard fodder like Greedfall and The Witcher 2 get a mid-campaign uninstall.
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