Day 2 of Freelancer: I…have some thoughts.
Like yesterday, this was streamed on Twitch, and Youtube upload will be available tomorrow morning (Youtube HD takes YEARS to process); for future reference, here’s a playlist of the VODS with fancy thumbnails.
Right, down to business:
Prestige objective titles are, and I use this word with no amount of pleasure IOI, fucking unhelpful. Some can be obvious (SA/SO the contract, Break open a safe with explosives), but some lead you on to think one thing, but you get a bait-and-switch, and your expectations are completely different (timed silent takedowns, Hide and Seek). In a Rogue Like game, the player chooses to accepts the risks of doing objectives because they know the risks. Three envelopes that you cannot open to see what the tasks are is not good design for this sort of genre.
I still don’t like the reward crates. I’ve already said why in the first days’ post, but the tedium of getting weapons you don’t/can’t find a use for was very prevalent. “Emetic poison the target”…the crate Diana sent over gave me sedative poison. That isn’t great.
Something I forgot to talk about yesterday were Map elements. As of now, there’s no way to see crates, safes or couriers unless you’ve “found” them. Please change this so they are omnipresent icons on the map ala the merchants. It’ll be less hassle for the player, as blindly running around the map that pads the play session is not fun, believe me.
To go to a positive point, I’m starting to get a feel for the mode now, i’m finally tuning into IOI’s reasoning for things. I still dislike Silent Assassin just taking a backseat, as the whole game was otherwise built around that rating. In the stream, I was of the mindset of “there’s no consequences for anything I do – If someone see’s me do anything illegal, I can kill guards and civilians, they can get spotted laying on the floor, and it won’t matter!”, which is ass-backwards to the proper game. There’s “freedom of approach” and then there’s “throwing core stealth game concepts the game is designed around into the bin”; freedom of approach should not mean compromising the core puzzle aspects of the game, otherwise I may as well be playing…well…Hades. That said, trespassing is now very lenient (think the SA rules prior to their rework in H2), so at least something good came out of this.
I dunno, maybe I’m the old man who’s yelling at the cloud.
The punishment for failing any mission is just too severe. I was the under the impression that failing a syndicate hit would put me back to the previous one, and not what it does in-game and just wipe four hours of gameplay off the face of the earth! Losing items you were carrying makes sense, losing half your Mercers makes sense, but losing stuff in your safehouse? Did 47 get robbed or something!? Why did a mastery unlock get removed?
Look, Roguelike games are about randomisation and risks and a path that can be reset if you fail (hell, it’s part of Hades’ narrative). But that game, and hell, most RL’s I know are not stealth games, they’re usually fighting or hack ‘n’ slash games that are usually rather quick. Levels in Hitman take a LOOOOONG time to do anything simply by the nature of the genre. It’s not a good first experience to learn your hours of playing is all for naught, save for mastery to open up arbitrary parts of the safehouse.
I finally got to see the upstairs of the safehouse and…fuck me it’s pretty. Like, well done art team, you absolutely deserve the praise you’re getting here. It’s only really marred by the aforementioned arbitrary mastery unlocking.
I’m glad my complaint of the syndicate hits being too claustrophobic with mechanics is something people seem to agree with. I got outed because there’s so many things to think about, and I just didn’t see anyone on the minimap. And, really, is that surprising? If my eyes are darting all over the place to check the other mechanics, then i’m gonna focus less and less on stuff I think I know from the base game experience.
Assassins and lookouts should be removed. They cause too many issues with the balance of the mode, and often back people into a corner, literally so in my case.
Right, that’s all for now. Seeya tomorrow!