Uniquely video games have the option to make the player shape their characters, but in this case the options literally either make Aloy more sympathetic, competent or active, without exposing flaws, presenting dilemmas or anything that would make her interesting. Or rather you can, but it is hard to write for a character like that. There is this rule in writing that you can't have characters that are both sympathetic, competent and consistently taking action to make things progress at the same time. The reason the main character Aloy is not interesting is simply because she is perfect. Someone had to implement all those assets and effects and they ended up botching up that too because the earphones look weird covering your earpiece. At some point you need to use some kind of earphones to access a location (except if you try to do that the sonic trap doesn't even activate, instead you are stopped by a wooden door if you forgot to talk to a character, which let's you deactivate the trap, which makes the door magically open) and they come up in another mission where you have to destroy a sonic weapon, but otherwise the whole concept is useless. Speaking of cool, sometimes instead of cutting corners the developers tried to do the opposite and end up with unnecessary details, like when you are chasing a kidnapped woman who was captured with a sonic weapon. The game has many moments that could have been effortlessly made more realistic instead of just convenient or cool. Your rescuer offers you a disguise that let's you revisit the location without any repercussions, the disguise being an armor with a flimsy mask that doesn't hide your very recognizable face or hair whatsoever. You emerge in full gear from the dust and rescued shortly after. Your first task is to use the monster attacking you to bring down the platform with the box. One of the stupidest moment in the game is when you are captured and put into a cage on top of an arena, with your belongings conveniently put in a box next to the cage for no reason. To make things confusing many bunkers are exposed to the outside, which makes the premise of them not being accessible questionable. The bunkers don't even have enemies to make the crates necessary for gameplay purposes, except for one in which they weirdly keep rappelling down from the ceiling. Inexplainably all of them are filled with tribal crates full of crafting ingredients even though the story revolves around the bunkers being only accessible to you. The bunkers that do are part of the main mission. The open world doesn't offer much lore, not even the cauldrons. While the lore is very engaging the platforming and the puzzles both fail to elevate these parts of the game above a mere walking simulator. The main missions are mostly about scanning text and voice logs and watching cutscenes. To be fair fighting is one of the strong points of the game. The side missions and errands are mostly about following trails and fighting. I'm not complaining about that one though. In fact most boxes you pick up are useless, even gambling boxes, which were half-heartedly put into the game, likely to satisfy some contractual obligation. There is no reason to return collectibles or do hunting ground trials, unless for the challenge. The developers apparently didn't want to scale the enemies like you would in an RPG, but they still wanted to pretend that this is an RPG. The leveling, the skill system and upgrading your gear is largely pointless. Unfortunately most things in this game are pointless and undeniably immersion breaking. It looked like that the game would utilize the entire map to expand on it's unique lore. I was excited during the first few hours of the game, primarily because I didn't know about the Ubisoft formula. I just got a Steam Deck though, so nothing stopped me to play it at glorious 720p with motion blur for that cinematic feel. I was curious about this game for some time now, just not enough to buy a console or a graphics card.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |