Dragons as Big Daddy.

Post » Tue Feb 15, 2011 8:29 pm

Getting Special Powers from a Big Boss is an old Concept, the way bioshock did this was nothing truely ground breaking. Todd compared a battle with a dragon to that of a Big Daddy or HL2 Helicopter which required patients, skill, and determination. Crank up that difficulty level and I'm sure Dragons will be near impossible to defeat considering how difficult he's already comparing it to be. So expect for the weaker gamer to lower the difficultly level down ;p
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Alexandra Louise Taylor
 
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Post » Wed Feb 16, 2011 1:17 am

This guy has been totally vindicated. Todd specifically said dragons were a mix of "Big Daddies and the helicopters of Half-Life" :D
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Peetay
 
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Post » Wed Feb 16, 2011 4:14 am

What's funny is that in his recent podcast, Todd Howard actually did compare dragon boss fights to Big Daddies in Bioshock.


Todd has said a few times he likes to read the forums, who knows, maybe he read this topic at some point before going on the podcast and thought this was a good comparison.
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sam westover
 
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Post » Wed Feb 16, 2011 12:38 am

OMG, they ripped of Legolas and created Fargoth!
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Kelvin
 
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Post » Tue Feb 15, 2011 6:08 pm

This guy has been totally vindicated. Todd specifically said dragons were a mix of "Big Daddies and the helicopters of Half-Life" :D

:cool:
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Josh Lozier
 
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Post » Tue Feb 15, 2011 8:43 pm

Anyone notice the similarities between the story of Skyrim and Banjo Kazooie?

In Banjo Kazooie, you collect musical notes to open doors, similar to how you collect dead dragon souls to open up your abilities to perform dragon shouts. And Gruntilda wants to take (or "eat") the beauty of Banjo's sister, just like how Alduin is going to eat the world. Gruntilda also flies around in the final battle, similar to a dragon that also flies around.

I think the answer is clear where they got this story idea from.

First game I ever played.
This type of game story isn't original. Banjo Kazooie is satire and was making fun of traditional adventure games.
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Charlie Ramsden
 
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Post » Tue Feb 15, 2011 7:22 pm

Delete
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josh evans
 
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Post » Wed Feb 16, 2011 2:04 am

It was just a colorful allusion. Big Daddies and the Hunter Choppers were both scary big bads that seemed to pop up out of no where and cause a really, really nasty fight. Dragons are supposed to feel the same way. Basically, when you see a dragon, you say "oh crap."
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Ryan Lutz
 
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Post » Wed Feb 16, 2011 3:46 am

Ya FYI I made this thread before the podcast actually the day before.
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Nomee
 
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Post » Tue Feb 15, 2011 7:48 pm

I think most people in this thread misunderstood the OP just about as much as is possible. All they mean is that dragons serve a similar purpose gameplay wise to Big Daddies - they're both relatively uncommon quasi boss enemies that require extra effort to take down but power up the player character in some way upon their defeat. He's pretty damn right, and I think you'll all find that the Big T agrees.
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Nikki Lawrence
 
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Post » Tue Feb 15, 2011 10:29 pm

Am I the only one who didn't find anything profound about Bioshock? Very atmospheric, memorable setting, but compared to other self-proclaimed shooters with "RPG elements" such as Deus Ex and System Shock, it was pretty dull. Plot's moral issues and treatise on objectivism were nice, but nothing too profound. Maybe I'm just too desensitized to classy games because I rarely even take a look at bad ones. :mellow:


I'm with you man. I don't know what it was, but Bioshock just did not click with me. Pretty disappointed about that.

But as for the topic, must we compare one creature in a game to another because of one small, relative, and mostly irrelevant similarity?
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Jordan Moreno
 
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Post » Wed Feb 16, 2011 7:08 am

bioshock inspired them to change the effects of spells
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Sakura Haruno
 
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Post » Wed Feb 16, 2011 8:42 am

First game I ever played.
This type of game story isn't original. Banjo Kazooie is satire and was making fun of traditional adventure games.

I think she was just making a joke on rediculous comparisons. And how generic most game stories and mechanics are.

You have to collect these keys to unlock the final bosses fort!
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Eire Charlotta
 
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Post » Tue Feb 15, 2011 10:32 pm

If anyone hasn't played Bioshock, Basically it was a PC shooter and what you do to get special abilities in the game is to kill, what was considered the big bad boss in the game, Big Daddy.
Then you harvest life energy or whatever to basically purchase abilities at a vending machine. You could ignore them but you wouldn't be able to purchase the abilities.

So does anyone else notice the similarites here between Big Daddy and the Dragons? You got Dragon Shouts that seem only purchasable by collecting souls of dead dragons.
Anyone else getting that vibe? Are the dragons our new Big Daddy counter part from bioshock? Are we going to see little girls riding these dragons?


Todd was comparing the dragons to big daddy in the sort of mini-boss or unnerving enemy sense of you feel threatened by them.

Basically he was using Big Daddy and Boss fights in games to explain and reassure that dragons aren't just some hyped up baddie that goes down easy or has no unique sense in the game.

Also, enemies or bosses dropping some sort of item or skill isn't unique or special to Bioshock o.O.

Zelda comes to mind easily but it goes waaaaaay back.

Just an example of comments being taken a bit too seriously or sudden depth being put by fans when there's nothing there at all.

A good example is a teaser trailer for Deus Ex Human Revolution early on. It was some sort of heart or embro on it with a small name or message.

After it came out fans rushed to figure it out like some sort of hidden code. They came up with many exciting conspiracy ideas.

Only a little later the dev team responded saying it was all great but the name on the teaser trailer had no real meaning. It was just a nickname some members of the dev team gave just foe fun.

Ring any bells? Some things are complicated, but others really are as simple as they seem.
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Shelby Huffman
 
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Post » Tue Feb 15, 2011 8:55 pm

He said that dragons are going to be as hard as big daddies from Bioshock or Helicopters from Half Life 2.
I guess each of them are somewhat hard and make you feel somehow when you meet them,and that this is what Todd meant.
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Marguerite Dabrin
 
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Post » Tue Feb 15, 2011 11:11 pm

You get the ADAM from the little girls not the big daddy if I remember correctly, and in Skyrim you won't purchase shouts you get them by assembling words that you find on walls with dragon scripture, as far as I recall it hasn't been explicitly stated you get shouts from killing dragons. Only that you get some of the dragon's power when you kill one.


I'd say you're right, in Bioshock, ADAM, the stuff used to get new Plasmids, which were sort of like spells except explained as being the results of genetic engineering rather than actual magic, comes from Little Sisters, who you could choose to kill in order to "harvest" all their ADAM or save, which would give you less ADAM but would get you special rewards if you saved Little Sisters, it did not come from Big Daddies, you still needed to kill them to be able to harvest or save Little Sisters, because they protected them and would attempt to kill anyone who threatened them, but the source of Plasmids was not Big Daddies, they just protected the actual source. Now, in Skyrim, you actually absorb the souls of dragons to increase the strength of your shouts, from my understanding, and gaining new powers from defeating bosses is nothing new in games, in fact, if you expand it to just special rewards in general rather than just new or stronger abilities, than it's pretty standard in a lot of genres, including RPGs, where boss type fights often allow you to gain access to chests containing high quality items or something similar. And it sounds to me that you don't actually learn new shouts from killing dragons, nor do you "purchase" them, instead you find the words that compose shouts from draconic script on ancient walls and such, killing dragons just helps to make your shouts stronger.

While Todd does compare dragons to Big Daddies or the helicopters in Half-Life 2, he doesn't say they're inspired by them, he just means to say that they're powerful, sort of boss like enemies in the game, I think, drawing a comparison to enemies that fill a similar role in other games just gives players a clearer idea of what Bethesda is going for here.
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Chavala
 
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Post » Wed Feb 16, 2011 8:57 am

The difference is that Big Daddies have super power-drills of death and dragons don't
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Lucky Boy
 
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Post » Wed Feb 16, 2011 4:54 am

lol

They're similar, but I doubt they were inspired by Big Daddies.


Which were inspired by X Creature from X Game/Book.


Humanity emulates each other in order to evolve. I'm sure if it ends up being similar, it will be unintentional.
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Kate Murrell
 
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Post » Wed Feb 16, 2011 7:20 am

I'd say you're right, in Bioshock, ADAM, the stuff used to get new Plasmids, which were sort of like spells except explained as being the results of genetic engineering rather than actual magic, comes from Little Sisters, who you could choose to kill in order to "harvest" all their ADAM or save, which would give you less ADAM but would get you special rewards if you saved Little Sisters, it did not come from Big Daddies, you still needed to kill them to be able to harvest or save Little Sisters, because they protected them and would attempt to kill anyone who threatened them, but the source of Plasmids was not Big Daddies, they just protected the actual source. Now, in Skyrim, you actually absorb the souls of dragons to increase the strength of your shouts, from my understanding, and gaining new powers from defeating bosses is nothing new in games, in fact, if you expand it to just special rewards in general rather than just new or stronger abilities, than it's pretty standard in a lot of genres, including RPGs, where boss type fights often allow you to gain access to chests containing high quality items or something similar. And it sounds to me that you don't actually learn new shouts from killing dragons, nor do you "purchase" them, instead you find the words that compose shouts from draconic script on ancient walls and such, killing dragons just helps to make your shouts stronger.

While Todd does compare dragons to Big Daddies or the helicopters in Half-Life 2, he doesn't say they're inspired by them, he just means to say that they're powerful, sort of boss like enemies in the game, I think, drawing a comparison to enemies that fill a similar role in other games just gives players a clearer idea of what Bethesda is going for here.


Good reply, was well thought out and formulated.
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xxLindsAffec
 
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