Continuing with their week-long series, nos amis at X3F talked with Silicon Knights President Denis Dyack over some of Too Human's biggest perceived faults. Part 1 of today's video interview is embedded above. Some highlights:
On the community's early judgment: "People are trying to understand a game that's inherently interactive [by watching a video] ... All I can say is try the demo."
On clipping and texture issues: "There's glitches in all games. It's really interesting to me because, as an example, there's gonna be things you can always improve. To me, framerate's not really that essential in cutscenes and it never has been for us ... I don't think Too Human's inconsistent from any of our previous games ... So there's clipping. Oh noes. Bottom line is, does it affect gameplay and by how much? Are there ways to improve Too Human? For sure, but the overall big picture? Happy, extremely happy."
On the Valkyrie death scene: Dyack estimated it was a 15 and a 1/2 second scene. "If it's a sign that people love the game so much that they just want to get back in and play, could we make it skippable? Sure, it's an easy change. Is it something we ever would have anticipated since we thought it was faster than going to get your body or losing experience [which does not happen in Too Human] ... is that a change we can make in the future? Sure."
On comparisons to Diablo: "There's this tactical element. People think, 'oh, this is like Diablo with a bit of action. In Diablo I can just go up to an enemy and pound him away [until it dies] and move on to the next one, if you had the better loot, you usually win. In Too Human, if you don't use your tactics, it is a new kind of genre-bender, you're gonna die. And we're looking at some of the feedback and a lot of people are dying. [laughs]"
On future downloadable content: "I think that's gonna be unique to people who pre-order it, that's a one-time thing. But we've got tons of ideas that will far exceed the pre-order bonus."
Check out part two of the interview after the break.
"His insinuation that people who criticize the game are just suck is a defense you'd expect from a fanboy, not a top-tier developer."
Now this I completely agree with, and something where I think he completely screwed up. I also think his remarks about Diablo are headache inducing as well. He definitely needs to get better at interviews.
However, that pertains to the skill of the interviewee and not whether anyone should be holding interviews about a product which has been released, which was my argument against your post in the first place.
I do apologize about the 'naive bs' comment however, it was uncalled for.
"I do apologize about the 'naive bs' comment however, it was uncalled for."
And my own response was overly snippy as well. It's been that sort of day.
Of course I agree that it's good and often useful for a designer to do interviews, as a general rule. My own criticism was to Dyack's increasingly defensive approach. The harder he tries to convince, the less convincing he actually is.
""Dyack needs to realize this and let people make up their own minds about Too Human.""
This is nice aspect of console games.
So I have to "make up" my "mind" about a game???
And here I thought it is about gaming and entertainment: enjoy playing a game, after some time move to next interesting one.
Heck, that "making up mind about game" is the little detail about console games I seem to never really get. Because on PC we just, you know, play games. Without ever making up our minds about them.
I've actually played Too Human and I still think it's not that good.
God help me if I'm trying to use projectile weapons as it's the most annoying shite ever.
Btw, I may not be clicking a mouse to kill enemies, but I'm still mashing the RS to do the same thing. I see no difference in this and Diablo.
Why can't they make an action RPG with the same fighting mechanics as beat 'em ups where you might be able to survive high level encounters if you're good enough to do combos and evade attacks?
"""Why can't they make an action RPG with the same fighting mechanics as beat 'em ups where you might be able to survive high level encounters"""
In most good RPGs (on PC), in high level encounters you normally have couple of "turns" (or seconds) to evaluate your enemy and adjust your tactics. ("Duck now!" strategy popular on consoles isn't really used that much.)
e.g. on PC I have played NWN1 and I never once died. Game mechanics is so well made, that if you level up your character properly (what is easy with simple classes like warrior or barbarian) you would only die if you are complete idiot who can't adjust strategy/tactics to battle new enemy (and with barbarian you do not need to). In fact, in NWN1 (also true to NWN2), many challenging enemies were not really high level - many of them were simply using some abilities you haven't seen before. Attack using unknown feat, unless you can quickly come up with a way to counter it, means most of the time death.
Making game too dependent on reaction speed is of course sensible - considering number of Mario fans over here. But it leads to boring games where you do not need to thing, but mostly (only?) what you do is duck.
I actually like the game. Its not outstanding, but its a lot of fun once you get the hang of combat(Hint: 1 weapon and one gun will not work for every enemy type). My only have two problems with the game. The camera sucks and the voice acting is really bad. Seriously, I hope Silicon Knights didn't pay someone to write horrible dialogue.
Hey, I've wondered about that (the weapons comment). I'll come across some enemies seem to be impervious to the gun I'musing at the time so I'll have to approach quickly and melee. But you're saying that a different type of gun will work in those situations? That though has crossed my mind, but I haven't tried it yet.
Yes, some enemies will only take significant damage if the gun your using is greater than or equal to their level. Also the weapons have differnt fire speeds and effects. slugs have a change to ricochet and hit multiple targets, plasma is strong but slow, lasers have more ammo and can penetrate and damage all enemies in its line of sight but they deal the least amount of damage.
@Vidikron, if you notice, when you attack certain enemies with a certain weapon type, a coloured grid-shield thing appears in front of them and their energy bar doesn't seem to go down. That means the weapon you're using isn't effective against them and you need to switch it up.
It certainly isn't the best game ever, but I really don't get all the complaints about it, it's really not that bad. I thought it was enjoyable, and I'd play it over Diablo.
I have to say that after listening to this I understand the decisions that were made a bit more, or at least I have a better understanding of where the focus of the design team was, and the thought process was that went into the game.
And at the end of the day, I had a good time playing it, a friend of mine wanted to borrow it after I beat it and i wouldn't let him because my berserker was only at level 32.
are there parts that are frustrating, seemingly by design? absolutely. But at this point I feel it was at least intentional and not a result of shoddy design. I might not agree with it but I understand it.
Dennis Dyack needs to stop talking. The more he talks, the more of a dick he sounds like. His PR people need to gag him. Literally if necessary. Even when his answers are right, they come out wrong.
I like the game why don't you... I like the game you should too! Go Dyack!!!
I didn't like the demo but I think the game was a 7 out of 10. That being said the issue with the industry is that when a game is a 7 out of 10 you still have to pay $60 for it and who wants an average game for the same price as a AAA title?
Or better yet, make excuses for the complaints against the game or say things like "they don't get it". People shouldn't have to understand it to be able to tell if they like it or not. If its not fun or theres something they don't like about it, thats their opinion and he shouldn't tell them that they are wrong because blah blah. This guy is making himself look like a complete fool regardless of anyone's opinion of the game.
This thread only validates him. It's full of people saying "Just deal with the fact your game sucks". It simply doesn't, and that's the real problem. Reviewers drank the NeoGAF Kool-Aid and decided to punish the guy by giving him artificially low scores.
Sure, the game isn't great, but it's definitely above average, and the series is going to be pretty awesome when it's completed.
The only issue I had, was the game was a bit easy. I died a lot at the beginning when I wasn't used to controls, but now I can use almost any class and not die a single time save for a specific boss towards the end. Enemies were supposed to level up with you, and they do, but they're still impossibly easy. Trolls take a few seconds to dispatch. Commandos and Champions are a bit overpowered.
Can't really complain about the death scene. You really don't see it that much at all.
The game is averaging a 7 on Metacritic. Last time I checked, the general consensus for 7 was "above average, but not great." I don't see how this works with the first two paragraphs of your comment.
See, you hit the nail on the head. You, and I, can get through this game (co-op even, i don't know what that other poster was smoking) with deaths low enough that the death animation is not very bothersome. Personally, I keep a coke and a smoke around to sip and puff when I die, lol. Yet, some people complain about the difficulty of the game (i bet 90% of them played berserker too) and the annoyingness of the death animation. Personally, if they let you skip the death animation with a patch, that's fine, but if it stays the way it is I don't mind. I like the game a lot, and having to take a break when I die for a whole 15 seconds is not a big deal. Relax, let the frustration of the battle go away, and then get back to play. :D
Honestly, I've heard enough on forums from the "its too hard" and "it's too easy" sides to let me know that damn, this must be pretty balanced if you get an equal number of people complaining opposite points. :P
For the record, I beat through the game as a zerker, died tons, but on my 2nd playthrough on the expert-style levels with my better gear, I've died just a few times, almost no deaths in co-op. His point about utilizing the finishers, ruiners, fierce attacks and evasive maneuvers is dead on, because you definitely have to use every piece of the arsenal to survive. I understand there are instances where the sheer amount of enemies around you coupled with some ranged attackers and maybe a troll or two could get you into bad situations with no way out, but there is definitely a point that changing strategy in this game to fit the enemies, terrain, and enemy formation makes a massive difference.
Did this game really have alot of hype? When the demo came out is when everybody started talking about the game but before that its not like it was MGS4 or Halo 3. I hardly read about it in magazines and one of the only stories I can remember reading online or in mags was the lawsuit business.
Denis: I never watched the videos. I have played the demo.
I don't like the game. No amount of telling me I'm not giving it a fair shake is going to work on me. And I doubt I'm really alone on that.
It amazes me the game was so sloppily executed. Super moonwalking in the cutscenes. The camera is awful. The animation on the characters is poor, especially their faces, which really hurts it since so many people who try this will have played Mass Effect, which was great on faces. Also most games make the first level amazing so as to give a good impression. The entry hall in Too Human is large, but boring and repetitive. Easy to get lost in.
As a game, it comes off as an underfunded indie release that couldn't reach as far as it hoped, which is weird, because it's far from that.
"Well you see, in other games, hit detection isn't always perfect, and we thought to ourselves 'people like other games, right?' How were we supposed to know that bizarre hit detection wasn't the reason they liked those games?"
I don't think he's making excuses as so much as defending his work. We live now in an internet culture that makes it for us to make our opinion known and actually think it matters in a large scale. He's made some real valid points and I can respect that he isn't just backing down because we won't accept how they presented their universe to us. I haven't played the game but I want to play the game because he believes in it. Too human has been having this backlash on it since before it even came out. He's saying "Try the demo, play it". If you played the demo, and didn't like it and bought it anyway ask yourself this, who looks worse?
From a technology standpoint too human seems just as sloppy Eternal Darkness. Eternal Darkness was criticized highly that it was an N64 Port that looked like an N64 and NOT what the game cube could do yet it was a great game. This is another case where perhaps over hype destroyed a game before it's released.
"clipping and texture issues?" who the hell cares about that? i can't even focus on them since there is no USER CONTROLLED CAMERA for this 2008 release!!!
This is why Japanese developers are not irrelevant, we still have a lot to learn from them and vice versa.
Here is something we NEED to learn from the Japanese ones: Humility.
The way Western people take criticism is they make it all about a pissing contest so if something is wrong with your work you become offended and try to grill them out, making yourself look more like an asshole and emo when you complain. Dyack. Jaffe. Reggie. Ect.
The Japanese tend to do the Miyamoto approach: Any problem people state is a flaw and must be corrected. Miyamoto did not try to grill out gamers when they did not like Super Mario Sunshine, he instead listen to all the complaints and quietly put out the kick ass Super Mario Galaxy. When Kojima got so much heat for Metal Gear Acid, he re-assessed his design strategy and quietly made the awesome game that is Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops.
Spend a solid 8 hours playing the game with no cheats. Then make a list of what you want to change.
A 15 second death animation would never make it into a blizzard game, cos they play their games to death, they dont just impliment something and say, thats the way it will be. If anyone complains, they whine cos they are haters.
Play your own bloody game, then maybe you will see that cliping issues detract from the atmosphere. And that affects my gameplay!!! It affects me enough to not 'upgrade' my full demo version.
Check out all of our coverage of Too Human, including X3F's five-part video series with Denis Dyack, at our Too Human game page.
