What a disappointment...

[Road to A+]

As a fan of Wadjet Eye games I have been eagerly waiting for the release of this game and now that it is finally out its pretty disappointing.

It seems that my fears were confirmed, the addition of RPG elements, branching stories and choice & consequences has been detrimental to the quality of the rest. The art style is beautiful and it is a shame that the rest of the game doesnt live up to it.

It is the only Wadjet Eye game where I found myself skipping through dialogue. The options that you have dont seem to matter a lot so you just pick randomly to move on. Overall the quality of the writing didnt feel on par with their previous games. For example your character is told some guy did something and you get the option of replying ''Wow really? This X guy?'' while both the player and the character dont have a clue of who that is, which sorta breaks the immersion and makes you want to skip lines. The 3rd option is to ask ''Who is X guy?'' which contradicts the first option and make the dialogue feel disconnected.

The story somehow didnt feel engaging at all, Im still early in it but have absolutely no desire to progress and see what happens next. I could not care for either the main character or the sidekicks.

The game throws some C&C at you early on that feels pretty black and white, you decide to kill a random alien or let him live. Its obvious that if you let him live he will reappear later on and be thankful and help you out in return. In the end I still could not care about his life and just let him live to see something happen. It feels like the devs threw a meaningless event for the sake of offering some C&C but sadly it just doesnt feel compelling.

There was a sort of classic puzzle sequence to neutralize the alien though the challenge offered was pretty weak and the logic was questionable. I assume that the rest of the game is composed of other small set pieces of puzzles followed by some C&C. Ill pass.

TL;DR No disrespect to Wadjet Eye Games but this game doesnt live up to their previous work like Gemini Rue, Resonance and the Blackwell series. Gemini Rue was a masterpiece.

Edit: Check out the GoG reviews for this game it seems like someone else wrote a similar review to mine but much better explained.

[Doctor Chad]

Publicado originalmente por Tellah:

I'm assuming you did the actor background, which is the only one I haven't tried- so the dialogue that annoyed you, OP, just isn't familiar to me.

It's possible it's the Police Officer background from the example they gave. I guess unless they say so we won't know, but in the grand scheme I think it's purely academic. It sounds like OP would rather continue to spend their time responding to this thread than either playing the game further to see whether their concerns are addressed later in the game or playing a different game that they actually enjoyed.

[Road to A+]

Publicado originalmente por Tellah:

To be honest, I thought that selecting what gender and background the protagonist had through dialogue was -more- immersive and not less. It's not like they just randomly blurted out their job- the guy performing the exorcism prompted them by asking if they remembered something about themselves like their profession. The point is that the protagonist is groggy and disoriented because they were possessed and all.

As to why the protagonist gets to make the decision about whether to kill or spare the monster in the prologue (well, besides the fact that it's the player character)- both options are just as correct, the sidekicks can't agree on which one to choose... the player character is the tie-breaker vote. It's an easy choice, I imagine, for the same reason it's an easy puzzle to defeat the monster- it's the prologue and it's setting you up to make tougher choices later on. The protagonist kinda proves themselves by defeating the monster and decisively deciding what to do with it, thus setting them up as someone who is good under pressure to make decisions throughout the game.

I'm assuming you did the actor background, which is the only one I haven't tried- so the dialogue that annoyed you, OP, just isn't familiar to me. But... most games that I can think of where you don't play a blank slate tend to make assumptions that you'll pick up on the player character's life as you go along. I mean, it's been ages, but I recall in Baldur's Gate 1 you kinda had to decide before you even met the player character's adoptive father what kind of relationship the player had with him? (again, sorry if I'm scrambled on that- I am just fairly sure in the Baldur's Gate series that there are places where you have to sort of guess and form your own opinion of people your character might know but you as a player have never interacted with yet)

But yeah, it's all really just opinion-based- I just think you might be jumping to dismiss the game a little early given it's like... fifteen minutes of a ten-or-so hour game.

Actually being able to become either man or woman by selecting an option really kills the immersion, I mean you got the girl gripped on the main character and they arent able to tell your sex?

Deciding the job wasnt too bad but they had to add a cheesy comment, like advertising an upcoming show during an exorcism.

"the player character is the tie-breaker vote"

While still not being qualified to take desicions on such matters. The game was starting to look like Skyrim with the special snowflake role.

By the way I chose the cop background, I wanted a classic experience and be allowed to investigate with authority.

Your comments on BG are vague, I dont recall any moment where the PC could talk about stuff that the player didnt know about, and vice versa.

Sorry but in the end its a lot more than opinions, there are some pretty big flaws in the story and writing.

Publicado originalmente por Dwight Knight:

Publicado originalmente por Road to A+:

Still the same in the end, you judged the cover page of my posts and didnt even read them.

I actually did read them, which is why I drew the conclusion I did.

Whatever, you're obviously of the mind to be a contrarian so this line of discussion isn't really going to go anywhere and isn't especially germane to the conversation. You'll insist I'm judging based on your profile, I will say I'm not and we'll go around and around in a circle while losing the actual thread of this post.

Publicado originalmente por Road to A+:

As for the good RPGs I mean the classic isometric stuff like Planescape, Fallout, BG1-2, Arcanum, Avernum...

All good games, which all have their flaws as well. In particular your inclusion of Arcanum is interesting to me, as the early story of both Arcanum and Unavowed are fairly similar. Aside from a couple opening movies, you find yourself in a very similar situation at the beginning. Arcanum too features an unvoiced protagonist. A key difference in backgrounds between Arcanum and Unavowed that you get to play through the background you choose here, whereas in Arcanum it's entirely based on some text during character creation.

Your first companions deliver exposition to you early in the game to world build (Virgil in Arcanum, Mandana and Eli in Unavowed) and face your first antagonist shortly thereafter (the Molochean Hand in Arcanum, the ligamental in Unavowed) pretty early in the game. After about an hour or two into the game, the entire story really starts to unfold (once you get to Tarant in Arcanum, once you deal with Galene in Unavowed) with some additional twists once you get about 2/3 of the way through that can totally shift your paradigm on everything in the story up to that point.

Really from what you've said, in the grand scheme it seems that you're less about the "P&C adventure with puzzle solving aspects"-type games and more about the stat-based RPG games. There is nothing wrong with this at all, as everybody's tastes are different.

If this game isn't your cup of tea, great. That is your perogative. Insulting it because you only have only just scratched the surface of the game though and refusing to concede that things might be explained later in the game, though? That's somewhat counterproductive to expressing yourself and your opinions thoughtfully.

The best advice I can give? If you don't like the game and don't plan to finish it, you've made your voice heard. Move on to other games that you feel are more worthy of your time and don't look back on this discussion board.

Arcanum is an actual RPG, those games dont need voice acting at all for the MC.

F4 tried to give voice acting to the MC and it failed pretty hard.

Good cRPGs dont need voice acted protagonists, but point&click games do.

The writing in Arcanum sits in a completely different league and is not comparable. Virgil in Arcanum was a proper sidekick because he felt like an actual sidekick, as opposed to Unavowed where the 2 guys are actually the main characters disguised as sidekicks.

I dont know why you say Im into stat based RPGs because those older games dont revolve around stats. You take a while to customize your character with the best stats and once you start the game you completely forget about those stats and focus on the story instead.

[Kilrathi lord]

While agree its not good to judge a game in the first 15 minutes, if it doesnt grab you it doesnt. A game vary rarely will turn that around, the last game that did that to me was horizon zero dawn, I thought the first half of that game was very meh, but the second half made me love zero dawn. I think the same thing about unavowed, the first half is extremely weak, like I hate logan's recruitment mission besides getting to meet kaykay. I thought it had too few screen, boring characters, a really weird story set up, bad writing, and puzzles that were really too easy. Contrast that with eli's mission at wall street which was a huge improvement. in all areas. the most fully fleshed out character by far is eli the fire mage, and to see his story come full circle was nice.

As someone who played the whole game and know the reveal the silent protagonist still does not work for me at all. I dont think it works in the adventure game genre where all the other characters are voiced. As the player it does make me feel like im an empty vessel with no agency in the game, which is sad bc its obvious the spirit does have a personality. To me the charm of adventure games makes you feel like the MC and player share the same thoughts. Guybrush in monkey island 3, ben from full throttle, and most def george stobbart from broken sword all felt like real characters in the world. The main Character here simply does not to me, and even the voice work that dave does provide, doesnt work to me...

I also agree with the OP that the writing and voice work in the opening are very very weak. the exorcism does come off as very cheesy and not in a good way, but in a bad sci fy movie of the week way. which is sad bc I think overall eli VA does the best in the whole game overall.

[Wadjet Eye Games]

Okay guys, this thread is getting a little hot. I'm locking it now. Sorry.