Atomfall - Gameplay Trailer

[HiddenX]

Couchpotato spotted a new trailer for Atomfall:

Atomfall - Official Extended Gameplay Deep Dive Overview Trailer

More information.

 

[JDR13]

Can't wait to play this.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rlr4yVfSmb4


I like what ACG says about the exploration and there being very little guidance as to where to head off.
Sounds similar to how Hell is Us is going to try handle exploration. I like that.

 

[JFarrell71]

I like quest pointers. I hate wandering around aimlessly, hoping to stumble across your content.

There are ways to do it right, though. KCD does it right. I was skeptical at first when some NPC gave me a bunch of directions and set me loose, but Warhorse did an incredible job of a) giving useful directions, and b) providing feedback to the player (via Henry) when you're on the right track. I learned over time to trust it, and trust me, that if I paid attention the game would repay me by playing fairly and allowing me to follow clues to get where I needed to be.

Not every game does that, though. Morrowind directions were, for example, terrible, and there was no feedback. You could (and often did) walk a mile off course before you decided that you must have gone the wrong way.

Atomfall's "lead" system does sound promising.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

I like quest pointers. I hate wandering around aimlessly, hoping to stumble across your content.

Of course they will give some pointers. But I want those pointers to be in-world, either spoken, written, found, points of reference, etc. What I want is organic exploration. Ideally nothing through the UI.
The games that take this to an extreme are FromSoft games. There you have full-blown quests with NPCs, which progress at various stages, which also aren't clear; with no journal or any tracking whatsoever.
That's also fine for those game. Most of the time. Elden Ring was the first one where it really felt unmanageable due to the sheer scope of it. I think I had quests that even with a guide I wasn't sure in what state I had left them in, since they required multiple moving parts to be aligned.

There are ways to do it right, though. KCD does it right. I was skeptical at first when some NPC gave me a bunch of directions and set me loose, but Warhorse did an incredible job of a) giving useful directions, and b) providing feedback to the player (via Henry) when you're on the right track. I learned over time to trust it, and trust me, that if I paid attention the game would repay me by playing fairly and allowing me to follow clues to get where I needed to be.

I played KCD on hardcore mode, where you don't even show up on that map, and that was fun but also frustrating sometimes. I constantly had to find landmarks on the map and match them with what I'm seeing in-game to get an approximate point of where I am.
And the points of interest you do find as you explore also help, but only for the first time you find them. Afterwards, if you return to that location, it's even harder to find out where you are on the map. But I loved it. I'd even say I'd want most games to be like that and to be built to support something like that.

Not every game does that, though. Morrowind directions were, for example, terrible, and there was no feedback. You could (and often did) walk a mile off course before you decided that you must have gone the wrong way.

Yeah, I still have memories of trying to find some main quest dungeon in Morrowind, and it told me to go in a certain direction, and gave me some landmarks iirc, but I could not find my way there.
Took me a long time to finally stumble on a very well hidden door. And Morrowind was freaking gynormous. Just walking the town of Vivec was a struggle, also due to the sameyness of the platforms.
But man did that gameworld leave an impression and memories that I still remember. Not a lot of games do that. It's the only TES game that I stuck with and actually finished. Never finished Bloodmoon though.

 

[JDR13]

I despise the way most games do quest markers. If you think the player needs a quest marker, that's fine, but don't make it an annoying icon that constantly bounces around the screen. At least make it hideable. I prefer it being on a compass.