ITT: Darkling is picky and sexist about video games

[Darkling]

Yeah, after watching an hour or so of gameplay, I don't think I want to play TPP. 'Punished Venom Snake' infiltrated an outpost to learn the location of Kaz Miller, then infiltrated another outpost nearby to liberate him, then rode off to the LZ only to be interrupted by what looked like zombie black ops personnel and having to ride to a different LZ. And the protagonist hardly spoke at all! Man, Kiefer Sutherland must have been crazy expensive if Konami decided not to give up having him in their game halfway through production.

A month or two ago, after Googling "games like deus ex", I found out that DX is part of a genre I hadn't known of before, called 'immersive sims'. They put you in an environment with multiple ways of going about your objectives, while making what's going on around you seem like a realistic living (or at least lived-in) world.

Unfortunately, that sort of detail (especially with the AI) requires smaller areas than most open-world games offer these days - probably why games like TPP and Ghost Recon Wildlands have that problem where when you set off an alarm, all the enemies suddenly know your exact location. It would be too complicated to simulate each individual enemy searching for you and deciding where to look next, etc.

Even in DXMD, if you get spotted, you might only gather the attention of the one enemy who saw you. Or you might cause a general panic and have all the enemies start searching for you. Or if that enemy saw you for long enough, they might instantly start firing on you, at which point yes, all of the enemies in the general area seem to know exactly where you are and come rushing to shoot at your last known location.

*sigh* I guess I'll have to keep looking for a game to occupy my time.

[Jo']

BTW: you can play as a woman! You just need to swap from "Fake Snake" to one of the female base soldiers. Actually playing your staff eventually raises them a little in their stats.

Man, Kiefer Sutherland must have been crazy expensive if Konami decided not to give up having him in their game halfway through production.

I don't know. Maybe Hayter had become quite expensive himself, since he's a Hollywood script writer and would not just jump when Kojima needed him. There were some rumours about that.

I am pretty sure Kojima was unsure about using Sutherland himself. He is not that a good of a game/story designer as people seem to make him. First of all the game tricks the player into believing they play the legendary "Big Boss" they had played (or even fought) in prequels. That way he fucked up his own main character, because a simple maniacal medic, with a piece of scrapnel in his skull could become as good of a legendary soldier as Big Boss himself. Latter was the genetic basis of three clones in the futurely set MGS games. The whole series was all about Big Boss being "TeH Bestes Soldier Ever"(tm). Nicely done Hideo, kicking your own Trademark into the groin.

Actually he uses Sutherland's voice for both, Big Boss and Fake Snake. In the very beginning in the Hospital the guy in bandages (Ouh, why can't we see that face I wonder?) has Sutherlands voice and is very likely supposed to be Big Boss.


"Immersive Sims"? Haven't heart that one before either. Which games are there in that genre?
Apart from the 3 or 4 DX games?

And despite the popular critiques, I liked DX2 (Invisible War) better than DX1. Even if it's shorter. They really tried very hard to allow you to choose one of three factions. Of course the game would not change that much in its story, but depending on which side you chose you would have different enemies in different parts of the game world. I recall I re-played DX2 about three times in a row.

[Darkling]

BTW: you can play as a woman! You just need to swap from "Fake Snake" to one of the female base soldiers. Actually playing your staff eventually raises them a little in their stats.

Hmm, that does appeal to me a bit more. Looking further into it, I found that you can even have a chance to find better soldiers than Fake Snake himself. (I don't understand the rankings, but apparently he's A++ and you can find soldiers who are S or S+.) However, it sounds like it's completely random whether you find female soldiers to recruit - and I imagine their appearance and skill level would also be random. Plus non-Fake-Snake characters don't get the bionic arm upgrades that Fake Snake has access to.

https://www.polygon.com/2015/9/8/927539 ... ter-secret

I think it's nice that Konami went to the effort of creating a female character model and bringing in a female VA to voice her throughout the entire game. I would much rather play as a female than as Fake Snake, but the aforementioned randomness would bother me. I'd want to play as a female character that I found attractive to look at, but I've seen a wide variety of different female soldier faces from the game.

EDIT: Oh, wait, apparently you can repeatedly restart certain missions until you find a female soldier whose looks you like. After that, you can just keep returning to the checkpoint, which keeps her appearance but randomises her stats, until they're what you want. You need high heroism and game completion to obtain soldiers with really good stats, though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_zzHfoQENE

Oh well. Maybe I'll play it one day if I ever run across the game for a really cheap price.

A random question that occurs to me - why are Fake Snake and Quiet sometimes completely drenched in blood?

That way he fucked up his own main character, because a simple maniacal medic, with a piece of scrapnel in his skull could become as good of a legendary soldier as Big Boss himself.

Yeah, that didn't make sense to me either. How could a medic, let alone one who'd been in a coma for nine years, have the strength and skill of Big Boss? Sure, he might believe that he's Big Boss, but that doesn't explain how good he is at stealth and combat, etc.

I've read that there's about six hours' worth of Kiefer Sutherland voice work on the audio cassettes, and four hours in cinematic cutscenes. So, while there's a theory that Kojima wanted the player to be able to immerse themselves in a 'silent protagonist' (especially since you're not Big Boss), my theory is that they had already completed all of that voice work before shit started hitting the fan and Konami baulked at continuing to pay Sutherland - hence the other characters basically filling in all of the information for Fake Snake in their dialogue, and Fake Snake himself saying very little.

Maybe, since they didn't have to do facial capture on Sutherland for the audio cassettes, that work was cheaper to do, but when they started doing the cutscenes, they realised how time-consuming (and expensive) it would be to go through the facial-capture process for every line of dialogue that Fake Snake delivers in the entire game?

Actually he uses Sutherland's voice for both, Big Boss and Fake Snake. In the very beginning in the Hospital the guy in bandages (Ouh, why can't we see that face I wonder?) has Sutherlands voice and is very likely supposed to be Big Boss.

Yeah, there was another theory that they used Sutherland's voice as little as possible during the actual gameplay to emphasise the fact that you're not Big Boss, but I think budgetary restrictions still seem like the more likely culprit.

"Immersive Sims"? Haven't heard that one before either. Which games are there in that genre?

System Shock 2, Thief II: The Metal Age, The Elder Scrolls Oblivion, the first Bioshock game - and more recently, the Witcher series, the Dishonored series and Prey.

The only DX game I've played is Mankind Divided, and that's only because it was really really cheap. I read a few reviews and it sounded like it might be okay, so I bought it, figuring it wouldn't be any great loss if I tried it and didn't like it.

I did the same thing with Dishonored 2, but found that I didn't like it. I sold it online just a few days ago, actually.

Now I just need to find my 'next' game before I finish my New Game Plus on DXMD (which is staggeringly easy since I'm playing on the easiest difficulty and have practically all the augs unlocked, since my progress carried over from my previous game).

[Jo']

Part 1:

Don't get your hopes up too high. The way I perceive it the stats are only for raising the division's level. If you play any soldier it doesn't seem to have any effect at all. Apart from a single special "skill" soldiers might have. Like faster running, a wild running punch, less chance of getting hurt and stuff like that.

There are several voice actors making the noises of the soldiers, panting, interrogating, petting the dog. But nothing more than that. One female is known for her somewhat unattractive "asthma" panting.

I got one S++ ranked soldier (funny enough mostly female) for each division after defeating the main boss.

Yes, those soldiers can't use the bionic arm. Don't see much use in it anyway. It's a gimmick.

I think there are NO female soldiers in the field only prisoners can be female and those you may farm. And yes, their appearance is random.

Their levels - very likely - will be rather low. I think there is some connection with the level of the mission. Means it is possible that early missions will yield only low level soldiers. Even when repeating the side missions I eventually stopped caring about those since finding special soldiers yielded in low level soldiers, I just shoot them to make a point (;

I have no idea how the heroism connects with the stats of the found soldiers. I have 99% completeness because I apparently miss one animal, but I can't tell which from the 40-something - and I can't bother to go out any collect all of them over and over again just to pride myself on 100%.

Bloodiness depends on how often you got hit by bullets. You can trqavel to mother base and take a shower. If you stay out in the field long enough flies will gather around you *lol* There is even a cut-sequence where the soldiers on mother base shrink away from you and Ocelot throws a bucket of water at you. If you have Quiet with max friendship she might take "you" to the shower.

[Jo']

Part 2 of 2

Sure, he might believe that he's Big Boss, but that doesn't explain how good he is at stealth and combat, etc.

No point in trying to rationalise. It's Japanese, it's Kojima - in other words it's not supposed to make any sense. Or to be fair, I bet it's because of the online multiplayer. Some Million Players would be Big Boss, so let's turn them in to Fake Snakes.

Rediculously enough some people seriously started phantasizing that Medic is the reason why back in the 80s in MG2 Big Boss had to be killed again (After being Killed by Solid Snake in MG1). IF... I mean serioulsy! IF Kojima back in MG2 had planned that that (2nd?) Big Boss was not THE Big Boss, but... well Medic... nah, it's not even worth wasting time over such pointless speculations

I've read that there's about six hours' worth of Kiefer Sutherland voice work on the audio cassettes, and four hours in cinematic cutscenes.

If you have the time, go and read about how Raiden came to be in MGS2. That told me how "individual" and brillant Kojimas game design is. A survey amongst school girls - most certainly not the primary target group of MGS games brought forth that they don't like "old men" as protagonists. So Kojima turned Solid Snake into a side character and brought in *tadaa* Shiny blonde long haired Bishi Raiden. And guess what!? Hardly any player liked nor wanted him. He gained a bit of fame with the younger kids as he turned Cyborg in MGS4 (some 10 years later), but who cares...

Maybe, since they didn't have to do facial capture on Sutherland for the audio cassettes, that work was cheaper to do, but when they started doing the cutscenes, they realised how time-consuming (and expensive) it would be to go through the facial-capture process for every line of dialogue that Fake Snake delivers in the entire game?

It is done this way? Back in 2006 we had a software that controlled facial animation automatically by simply inputing the audio files. That is much more easy esp. If you swap files for other languages (localisations).

Back in the day dialogues in MG(s) where on codec. Technically the same thing as audio tapes. From a production point of view it can't be any more simple.

System Shock 2, Thief II: The Metal Age, The Elder Scrolls Oblivion, the first Bioshock game - and more recently, the Witcher series, the Dishonored series and Prey.

I played Dishonered 1, was okay, but I didn't really got into it. I stopped one of the Thief games as Zombis started to attack me (I hate it when games rely on "Zombie AI" - BTW there ARE Zombies in TPP *cries*)

my New Game Plus on DXMD (which is staggeringly easy since I'm playing on the easiest difficulty and have practically all the augs unlocked, since my progress carried over from my previous game).

I played DX3+ on "Give me Deus Ex" and it's still easy. I wonder if I can bring myself one day to play DX3 with no augs at all.

[Darkling]

Yes, I read a bit more on the topic and learned that there are three possible voices for the female soldiers. I guess the same must apply when you play as a random male soldier, too. And I heard about the asthmatic wheezing of one of the female soldiers. Man, it would suck to have gone through the arduous process of finding the right-looking woman, then repeatedly resetting her skills until they're to your liking, only to find that you can't stand her voice when you actually get around to playing as her. =/

There are several voice actors making the noises of the soldiers, panting, interrogating, petting the dog. But nothing more than that.

Oh, okay. That makes more sense. The article I linked above said her female soldier was 'fully voiced', so I assumed that meant everything. As it is, though, it sounds like they just had the 'generic soldier' VAs record voicework for the basic gameplay, not the full script. I did read that some of the dialogue is captioned rather than spoken aloud when you're playing as someone other than Fake Snake, so I guess that's what they were talking about.

I just found it weird and disconcerting that there was blood all over Fake Snake's face and Quiet's entire body at times. Sure, I understand that it would be expensive to have different variations of where the bloodied areas are, but it just seems excessive. Oh well.

No point in trying to rationalise. It's Japanese, it's Kojima - in other words it's not supposed to make any sense.

I get that sense with a lot of Japanese games. There seem to be a number of variables among Japanese game makers:

* quality / fun of gameplay
* profoundness of story
* ecchiness
* visuals and atmosphere
* sound design and music

(among others I probably haven't thought of)

Sometimes a game might get the levels of all of these right, but usually one or two of them are either under-served (ie a poor story or uninspiring gameplay, or a bishoujo game without enough ero scenes) or way overdone (overly complicated combat system, a story that's filled with twists and turns and endless philosophical ruminations).

With TPP, for whatever reason, Kojima seemed to step away from trying to have a profound story, while the end result was still a game that you enjoyed playing for a very long time.

I think what's missing for me with Western games is (any) ecchiness. Most of the women in DXMD look like they were badly carved out of a potato, whereas the anonymous female soldiers in TPP (while having varying degrees of attractiveness) are at least uniformly at least somewhat pleasing to the eye.

The same goes for a PS4 game I was thinking about playing - Horizon Zero Dawn. The main character, Aloy, is female, but if you took away the long hair and gave her a masculine haircut, she would look like a teenaged boy. She's (I think intentionally) not attractive. Same with Mass Effect Andromeda's character creation and how difficult (impossible?) it was to create an attractive female PC. Some Western game developers seem to be gunshy about creating 'sexy' women in their games in today's SJW environment.

I like eye candy. I like looking at attractive women (which is probably a large part of the reason I enjoyed Nier Automata so much, though in that case the gameplay was also really fun; the story almost went too philosophical but stayed within my tolerance levels).

It is done this way? Back in 2006 we had a software that controlled facial animation automatically by simply inputing the audio files.

Yes, for MGS V they used motion capture for the characters - both for the character animation and for the faces. (Sutherland only did the voice and face work; another actor did the physical motion capture.) Apparently that was one of the reasons Kojima wanted a bigger Hollywood actor rather than David Hayter to play Big Boss / Fake Snake. Kojima wanted the performances to be more subtle and less 'over-the-top video game dialogue'.

BTW there ARE Zombies in TPP *cries*

LOL, yes, I saw that in one of the 'waifu farming' videos. But Fake Snake was still attaching balloons to recruit the zombies after he knocked them out (though I noticed that he seemed to attack them in the head a few times before doing so). I guess there's an in-story reason for that?

Maybe I should move up to 'Give me a challenge' in DXMD at the least. But part of me is old and tired and not in the mood for difficult games anymore. I find 'Give me a story' frustrating enough at times. Can't win, I guess. =/

[Jo']

You can develop different outfits for "Quiet". One is "Bloody". Explanations says "it's to scare the enemy". I don't know if it has ANY effect in the game.

Hearing the dev-talk in DX3 it is very likely that a lot of game development does not go smoothly. Be it technical issues, like loosing a lot of time because of a bug in the engine. Bad managment or lack of resources, i.e. not creating more models (VERY likely why there are/were no female aliens in Mass Effect or no male Asari). Sudden Budget cuts, random management decisions and so on. Also incompatibility between the original story or game play design and what the engine technically can do.

Yes, the attempts at sex or romance in western games to date are pretty awkward.

I was trying "Oblivion 4" yesterday and had quite some issues to get an attractive female character, but the whole game took a while to get into it - on the Xbox360 that is. I still don't see the "immersion" yet. It's an RPG.

I also saw an add about a new PS4 game. Something like "Detroit become Human"?


Great idea about the face-capturing, esp. since "Big Boss" or "Snake(s)" in general only make one grim face to begin with...


Well, the zombied soldiers are "Puppets" or "Marionetts" taken over by... Parasites. The "Skulls" turn soldiers into such. I also picked up those who had good stats. Again, don't think about it.


I tried once the "Kill'em all" approach, since Police was the only real challenge in DX3. But it doesn't really have any effect. Since there is no back up in DX3 - eventually I'd depopulated Seattle and Hengsha...

[Darkling]

Quiet is a sniper! The enemy aren't supposed to see her. I guess maybe Kojima just has a gore fetish or something. =/

Yes, I've read up on the development of Human Revolution, and apparently the choice of game engine was political rather than practical (ie it was one that was being developed and used by another Square Enix company for Tomb Raider games, so using it was free). However, "the [Crystal] engine quickly proved to be inadequate to the HR team's needs as Eidos Montreal and Crystal Dynamics were pulling the engine's design in different directions".

The same thing apparently happened with DXMD - the game used the 'Dawn' engine, based on technology from another Square Enix company responsible for the 'Hitman' games.

It boggles my mind (slightly) that companies won't bother to invest in licensing a proven third-party graphics engine that they know is tried and tested, rather than trying to develop their own technology, but I guess there's a balance between the possibility of creating a new engine that's ideal for your purpose and making something that just fails in every regard.

I haven't played Oblivion myself (I tried Morrowind on my PC and didn't particularly enjoy it), but I think the essence of 'immersive sims' is that there's no one 'correct' way to do things. The game is designed so that you can approach your objectives using a variety of approaches.

'Detroit: Become Human' is a game from a French guy called David Cage. I've played a couple of his games on PS4 - 'Heavy Rain' and 'Beyond Two Souls'. In both cases, I think his reach exceeded his grasp. They are perfectly serviceable 'adventure games', but he's quite sexist and I think the stories of those two games were trying to be more profound than they actually ended up being. I don't think I'll bother with Detroit BH. His previous games have generally left me unsatisfied in terms of plot resolution. A major case of style over substance.

Yes, I was reading up about Quiet and baffled at the notion that the reason she couldn't talk was because she might spread some sort of language parasite to whoever she spoke to. As you said, it seems like Kojima sometimes just has bizarre ideas that don't make any sense.

I've looked at gameplay videos of Human Revolution and the graphics seem much more primitive than in DXMD (which is probably why DXHR had more hub areas compared to DXMD, which basically only has one city to explore). The more advanced and detailed that the graphics get, the smaller the environments that you can realistically explore become - unless you're making a triple-A game like Grand Theft Auto or TPP etc, and even then a lot of triple-A open-world games end up being lacking in terms of immersion or the variety of things to do.

My main problem in DXMD was using the non-lethal approach (stun guns and tranquillisers), so my victims could be awakened by an ally if they were found. Of course, the simple solution to that is to knock out every enemy in the area.

[Jo']

Quiet is a sniper! The enemy aren't supposed to see her.

Yeah, the outfit of being completely golden (Gold Finger?) or silver is supposed to impress the enemy even more...
Kojima is known for taking from famous movies. Like the whole Snake character with the eyepatch is a copy of Snake Plisskin from some 80's Movie. Snake even used the Name Plisskin for himself when he meets Raiden in MGS2...

It boggles my mind (slightly) that companies won't bother to invest in licensing a proven third-party graphics engine that they know is tried and tested, rather than trying to develop their own technology

I'd love to know what's going on there. I read hi-end enginess are expensive, we talk $500.000 or way more than a million or two. I heard those engines are then paid through the profits the games make. Since it might not leave much for developer and publisher, perhaps they try to make their own engines...

'Detroit: Become Human' is a game from a French guy called David Cage. I've played a couple of his games on PS4 - 'Heavy Rain' and 'Beyond Two Souls'. In both cases, I think his reach exceeded his grasp.

OMG the guy who directed the game Fahrenheit. I played that on the original Xbox. It was so "Hollywood". In a way nice, but he tried too hard. He even had himself appearing as a 3D model in the tutorial, that's how modest he is... Maybe some spiritual relative of Kojima. Because if you replay the 1st mission rescuing Miller you then get *tadaa* Kojima... And now he's amongst the weakest on my base and I can't lay him off *damn it!*

Yes, I was reading up about Quiet and baffled at the notion that the reason she couldn't talk was because she might spread some sort of language parasite to whoever she spoke to. As you said, it seems like Kojima sometimes just has bizarre ideas that don't make any sense.

She carries the "English Vocal Strain". Means she could speak in any other language or even write without triggering the Parasite to spread. But the plot doesn't let her. Well she does talk to "Codetalker" in Navajo in the end and he "explains" it to the player. She even records a tape for Fake Snake, so she speaks after all

My main problem in DXMD was using the non-lethal approach (stun guns and tranquillisers), so my victims could be awakened by an ally if they were found. Of course, the simple solution to that is to knock out every enemy in the area.

Dude, you need to hide the bodies, man
I prefer the pistol with silencer and armor piercing mod. One head shot and you are good.

[Darkling]

Kojima is known for taking from famous movies. Like the whole Snake character with the eyepatch is a copy of Snake Plisskin from some 80's Movie.

Escape from New York. I haven't seen it. It sounds like Kojima is a bit of a Hollywood fanboy. Apparently he's been wanting to cast Hollywood actors in MGS games for a while.

I read hi-end enginess are expensive, we talk $500.000 or way more than a million or two. I heard those engines are then paid through the profits the games make. Since it might not leave much for developer and publisher, perhaps they try to make their own engines...

Yes, I guess that's the trade-off. The cost of licensing an existing engine would probably deter most publishers, since it would require either a larger budget or making the game design smaller / less ambitious. But I've read so many horror stories about developers trying to create their own engine and then encountering all sorts of problems in the process (eventually spending a huge chunk of their development time trying just to get the engine to work, let alone produce quality optimised content for it). I guess the problem is that games often have very specific (and different) needs, so it's not a case of "one engine fits all".

OMG the guy who directed the game Fahrenheit. I played that on the original Xbox. It was so "Hollywood". In a way nice, but he tried too hard. He even had himself appearing as a 3D model in the tutorial, that's how modest he is...

Ah. I thought the name of that game sounded familiar - it was called Indigo Prophecy here in Australia. I remember reading about it and the way you played the game via various quicktime events, jerking the sticks and pressing various buttons. I didn't like the sound of that, so I never played it.

Heavy Rain was also very much like that, with complicated gestures required on the controller sticks on standard difficulty. Beyond Two Souls was much simpler, basically highlighting things you could interact with and requiring you to move the stick in that direction.

Both of those games featured motion captured actors. Beyond Two Souls starred Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe. So at least Cage was able to move up from appearing as himself in his games.

The games had reasonable stories, but didn't really stand out to me as anything as special or significant as Cage obviously wanted them to be.

Because if you replay the 1st mission rescuing Miller you then get *tadaa* Kojima... And now he's amongst the weakest on my base and I can't lay him off *damn it!*

LOL, yes, I read that Kojima can be rescued in the game, but you can't play missions as him because he gets assigned to a different squad, or something. I didn't know that you can't fire him, though. I wonder if his stats are randomised at the start of the mission, or if he always has sucky stats?

Dude, you need to hide the bodies, man
I prefer the pistol with silencer and armor piercing mod. One head shot and you are good.

My problem was more when there were a lot of enemies in one location. I would take out a couple of them non-lethally, but then get spotted, causing a swarm of other enemies to start searching the area before I could drag the bodies away. So I would run away, and the enemies I knocked out would get woken up by their friends. Boo!

At least in DXMD there's apparently no XP penalty for taking the lethal approach. In some previous DX games (I don't remember if Human Revolution is one of them), you would get more XP for doing things stealthily. But I prefer to play the game stealthily anyway, using my stun gun and takedowns. I have a silenced pistol, but in DXMD the pistols can't take AP ammo - only regular or EMP. So I also carry a silenced combat rifle, which can use regular or AP ammo, for taking out turrets and robots.

Speaking of hiding bodies, I've watched quite a few gameplay videos of TPP now, and the players always seem to carry the bodies what seems like a really long distance (often running for ten to fifteen seconds) before hiding them. Is there a reason for that?

Anyway, for the moment I've found a new game to play. The 2013 Tomb Raider game is on special at the Playstation store at the moment (9 AUD!), so I figured I would give it a go. I tried playing it on the Xbox 360 years ago (since the game came with my console), but the PS4 version is nicer-looking and has a more attractive face for Lara. So I get to enjoy an actually attractive female protagonist in a game. Unthinkable!