Backloggery! A less-than-inspiring collection of recent releases has given the VGH hosts an opportunity to dig into their gaming backlogs a bit. D.J.’s been playing through Aksys Games‘ “visual novel”, 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors, which inspires a conversation about memorable moments in games. Paul and Randy are playing through Sucker Punch’s inFAMOUS, which gets the crew a bit worked up about morality as a gameplay device (as well as the long-range accuracy of snipers). Plus: we’ve picked a winner in our “Free Ramen” PAX/Amazon contest, we’re easily distracted by Ninja Cat, and a new Video Game Community Theater wants your delightfully evil little brain!
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Episode Timeline:
Intro: 0:00
Hangover: 5:15
Memorable Moments: 33:15
VGCT – Psychonauts: 56:15
Tough Decisions: 59:00
This week’s music:
“Krakbound”, by Magnus “SoulEye” Pålsson
“Popular potpourri”, by Magnus “SoulEye” Pålsson (from the VVVVVV soundtrack)
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Ahahaha.
I’m going through all these in order finally, so I’m sorry that I’m so far behind. No one is going to read these comments any more but I’m posting anyway!
So!
I am like Randy in that I feel I am missing out on parts of the game if I don’t do certain things. For example, in Dragon Age 2, romances were available. You could romance most characters, which was a fun part of Dragon Age: Origins for me. I struggled so hard to win over Fenris, but all the choices I made just took him further away from me because of the way I wanted to play. I really feel like I missed out because I ended up having no romantic interest in the game at all since I was pursuing him with no result. I know that it was one of the reasons I liked Origins better then the sequel.
As for the question, have you ever done anything in a game that was against your morality and made you feel “icky?” One thing I can think of is that when I played Fable 2, it was the first game I ever played in which you could essentially sleep around or get married, etc. I carefully chose my husband (I picked the tattooed guy from the first village because he was the only unique male character in the game). Later on in the game, I really wanted to woo other men, and I had a really hard time doing that for some reason, because Tattoey and I had a kid together. But I finally did it. hah.
That thought lead me to think of another… In the Sims 2 and the Sims 3, I never experienced what it would be like to play a sim with negative personality traits like “mean,” “lazy”, etc. I always played myself in that game, so I never even went down career paths like thief or hacker. No matter how many times I play it, I’m always me. I don’t even know what it’s like to be purposefully mean to another sim.
Anyway, be prepared for more late comments from your biggest but late-coming fan! I have always been there in spirit. 😀
Good ol’ Tattoey, he was a good man. You shouldn’t have cheated on him! >:|
Your comments on DA2 are pretty interesting. That’s an obvious and fundamental misstep with how Bioware handled some of the romances in DA2. It was really silly how you had to play your character a very specific way to succeed at some of the romances. Since they are essentially side quests I think it would have made way more sense to make it independent of the moral decisions you had to make in the main story. I think Bioware tried too hard to tie everything into the big Mages vs Templar arc and it hurt the overall story because of it.
I remember shortly after completing DA2 I was raving about how great it was (don’t get me wrong, I love it), but some of the flaws really stick out like a sore thumb a few months later and after playing some other great rpgs in that time.
P.S. You should play as a psychopath in the Sims sometime. It’s fun.