Comic: https://www.deathbulge.com/comics/441

Alt text: Yeah yeah, there's always exceptions, I mean look no further than the game in the 2nd panel, not the most thrilling gameplay, is it?

  • Allero@lemmy.today
    13·
    1 day ago

    Played Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora recently, and it struck me almost immediately:

    This is, without a hint of doubt, a Ubisoft game. The setting may change, the characters are swapped, but it is always the same gameplay. Like if they figured something that works with Assassin’s Creed and decided to never change it, ever.

    Whatever Ubisoft action RPG you start, you always play Assassin’s Creed with extra decorations. Again. And again. And again. Zero creative vision, just new textures on top of the same mechanics.

      • Allero@lemmy.today
        2·
        24 hours ago

        Well…it does have some good points. To provide an example without much spoilers, I’ll take one from the early game: while some RDA humans join the Na’vi resistance, and Na’vi are happy to have some help, they keep the original Avatar’s line of Pandorans’ mistrust towards the humans. You are being reminded that humans (the “Sky People”) might sometimes be allies, but they fight a proxy war, and you are here to protect your very homeland. This does get developed further down the story, and it’s a little gem, being a rare shift against humans in the game industry. It provides a nice shift of perspective, while being true to the original story.

        Or, the fact that Na’vi clans all have their own vision of war, and some are hesitant to join in again after past defeats. This adds more political complexity to the lore, as opposed to “good guys - bad guys” mentality.

        Also, on the crossection of story and game mechanics, there is a disharmony debuff granted when you get too genocidal towards local wildlife. It lowers your senses, makes you a pariah among na’vi, leads to your ikran abandoning you, and more. I think it’s nice, though they made a fairly poor job communicating what counts as a source of one.

        On the negative side, it often feels like game design came before the story itself. A lot of it feels like they first planned where the player should go, and only then - the actual “why” behind it. This leads to some awkward turns in the story that feel like a patched afterthought.