I mean both. And I mean it in terms of plausible variety -- if the area is presented logically, you get very little difference in what you encounter there (and yes, objective would be -- as they are in the latest games -- very close to eachother).

In "one-map" everything needs to be downscaled and to fit in this one specific spot on the map -- there is no possibility to, for one example, plausibly present Denver and Salt Lake City both with different powerstructures, architechture and mindsets as they'd be five minute walk away from eachother, and they'd be smaller than a public schoolyard.



You didn't lack freedom of movability in the original games -- you could go anywhere you wanted to from the get go (but of course at your own risk, as it should be).

Absolutely right Undecaf! I still want to see the return of the originals style of map node travel.

So you're talking about a system where the PC can freely travel between areas, but everything just isn't on the same map?

Yeah. Like how it was originally.

Well, I never played the first or second games, but that sounds pretty cool as long as the areas themselves weren't ridiculously small, and still allowed for exploration. I doubt it'll happen though considering the last couple of games they made lol.

The areas were pretty small in the original games and the emphasis was not so much on random exploring. But the smallness is not something that couldn't be fixed. And yeah, it's likely to never happen, but there is always the 1% chance.

I mean, imagine entering a hub inside the ruins of - for example - New York. You'd have this about Point Lookout sized area to roam in. You get to an elevated position and see the ruins of the city open up and go for miles in every direction -- even though you'd only be able to access the specific portion of it, it'd give far greater sense of scale and "immersion" (yeah, I used the buzzword) than - I'd suspect - you'd get from a downscaled New York where all the landmarks (statue of liberty, manhattan, empire state building, etc) are cramped side by side in a small confined space like how DC ruins and Las Vegas were laid out in previous games.

And knowing that even if there is a lot to say about Bethesdas design philosophy, physical world design is one thing where they really excell -- imagine if they used their world building expertise in creating such places with lots of variety and actually focused content instead of lots of randomness and downscaling (like how it is now). I see only benefits there.

Here is an example of what we want (or at least what I want.)

http://gabriel77cortez.deviantart.com/art/Examplar-272111075

Now the green nodes are about the size of Zio, Big Empty or Point Lookout, preferably twice the size. Instead of one big map we have a lot of smaller but still big maps you can explore.
Then we have the gray nodes, those are walled off bigger cities, instead of placing these inside the green nodes so they take up too much place of the gameworld they're placed in their own nodes.

The green nodes can still contain outposts, villages and settlements and farms.

Now the orange/yellow nodes are quest nodes, not every quest takes place inside cities or inside the green nodes, and since some quests can become complicated if we can interfere with them before we actually start them they're placed in their own smaller nodes, like Golgotha, New Reno Stables and Smileys Cavern.

The pink nodes are dungeons you can find randomly by traveling the world map, they can also be found through NPC's, quests, notes and terminals.
Since there isn't going to be one big map the green nodes can't contain too many dungeons cause then the gameworld will feel very weird, so a lot of dungeons are placed in their own specific nodes.

I rushed this map and details so this is very very crude, someone else wanna take over from here?

@gabriel77dan: Basically Witcher with triple the maps (or more), and the ability to leave town at will; and go somewhere else. (Right?)

I have not played Witcher. :spotted owl:

You should. Both of 'em. :thumbsup:

I no have time though, and Yahtzee isn't exactly convincing me to play them. :cryvaultboy:

Lol oh dear I implore you to ignore his opinions on those games; he never gave them enough time to figure them out, and seemed to have considerably more trouble than most grasping the way they work.

Still, his reviews are funny..

Yahzee hates RPG's (and almost all videogames in general), so I would take all the intended comedyvalue out of him defecating all over any given game and still try it (if I was to base my judgement solely on his grades, that is).

Try them out when you have time. They really are good (if you liked Risen, I'm fairly certain you can enjoy these too), even with their own sets of flaws. Also, GoG is your firend (Witcher 1 EE $9.99 -- Witcher 2 2.0 $39.99).

I'll also throw my voice into the "play the witcher series camp" they where very good.

Steam recently sold the witcher for ￡3, which is around $5 or so I would imagine. Steam often has it on sale much cheaper than GoG; if you use steam, then it's probably the better option.

Have they changed their pricings for flat amount for every currency like GoG - like if a game is 5$ it'd be about 3,7€? An honest question as I do not know if they have.

Plus of course, GoG is DRM free completely while at least I've had troubles with the "offline" mode with steam when I've needed it.

/shameless marketingspeech of my favorite online gameshop

I never finished Witcher 1, even though I loved the atmosphere and quality of writing. The combat system just annoyed me to no end. I guess I should try reinstalling the Enhanced Edition and giving it another chance. I hope I won't grow weary of the "click when the mouse cursor turns orange" combat again.

The combat system is pretty bad, but it's just about bearable imo.. playing it on hard removes the orange cursor btw.

I don't think the combat system is bad per say, but I does need some work (other than what The Witcher 2 offered -- even despite TW2 combat being much more responsive).

Timing based sword clicks just annoy me to no end lol, and make TW2 so much harder if you play it straight after..

Imo Witcher 2's combat system was pretty damn good though, not perfect mind, but better than any third-person sword RPG I can think of.

It was good, even with its obvious problems it had it felt finely thought out and functional. But I would've, and do, prefer to-hit chances (which I think should've been the improvement over the timingbased attacks) and a bit more slowerpaced combat over a "click-quen-click-click-roll-quen-roll-roll-click-roll-quen..." any day -- I did enjoy it (I wouldn't have recommended the game otherwise as I do not think storytelling is the crix of these games), but I'm not a fan of twitching combat, Risen - and Gothics - for example had miles better melee combat [imo].

Merged post with #123 (please delete this one.)

Not only that, but GoG is a sister company to CdProject ~So buying it from them, is basically buying direct from the studio.

This was something I liked, and it annoyed the hell out of me that they omitted it from the sequel, (along with the high Iso camera. :banghead:)

I found it annoying (along with the method of potion use in W2); but its still pretty functional. The Sword RPG that comes to mind (to me) is 'Die By The Sword'. If you know how to play, there is no RPG with more freedom and personal control in melee; (and it offered full 3d TPP exploration & melee combat, with location specific wounding, limb severing, death by decapitation, and force/impact based weapon damage ~Meaning if you hit harder, the weapon hurt them more); and positional control of the weapon in 3d space. Die By The Sword shipped the same year as Fallout 2 (1998), from the same publisher.

** DBTS Melee combat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef2HVYW4Ez4 (the white shadows are not normal)

*** The game even came with a combat move editor in case the player wanted to customize their combat animation. :goodjob:

One thing not to do with FO4, is FO3/NV style melee combat IMO. While I am pro-PC skill in combat (as opposed to player controlled), I would not mind DBTS derived melee combat in FO4 (Its a shame they didn't make Skyrim that way.)

I watched that video, and while the aspects you described sound cool, the implementation of movement is pretty poor in comparison to the witcher; combat is disjointed in the sense you can swing as if you had a solid base underneath you while jumping, and the continuous backflips really put me off. Of course, that's just my opinion; the depth to the combat is something that should be used definitely, but I don't think that type of movement should be done. Something visible in the witcher 2 is that you're occasionally forced to wait a split second for geralt to attack because he has to get into a position where an attack would actually be possible.

(imo) A good melee system would require the PC to have sure footing or force momentum such as a forward lunge to hit hard, as well as the ability to take quick but realistically based sidesteps/backsteps/lunges by jumping in any particular direction while in combat range. I'd also like to see the technique change depending on how close you are to the target (ie. you won't be swinging a bat up close but you could hit them with the handle) - this could also be done in unarmed to make a contextual difference between straights and hooks.

OF course, this would all be moot if bethesda were to use Skyrim's hit detection, which makes sidestepping an attack useless on enemies with weapons because the hit detection will count it as a hit unless you backpedal a few metres backwards..

Witcher was designed with a 2008 desktop in mind; DBTS was ahead of its time and severely restricted by 1998 hardware (and peripherals) ~but they managed it anyway :trophy: .
I would not want a copy of DBTS' combat; but would love a system that were derived from it, but built for today's machine. There is a mod/ hack that lets DBTS work with a Wii controller, and its incredible.

* The backflips are entirely player & entity choice. What impresses me about the system is the physics based combat. You have to hit them, and they have to hit you, and you have to manually block or dodge their attacks.

** What not to do with Fallout: Do not write this off and ignore it... Look at the way this game was designed and see if it can influence some aspects of future melee combat in FO4 & TES6.