Solid foundations

[Orius]

Generally very high quality, and I didn't experience any performance issues. The story and style was more gripping than I'd anticipated! I'm very curious about this now.

However, please look into backtrack-blocking and creating unnecessary invisible walls. I had several instances where I felt inexplicably locked off from content, such as registering the corpse in the end of the tunnel with the robot, not being able to walk off the tiny ledge after the plant-ridden vechicle and therefore not being able to go back to check out the edge of that map, etc.

This frustration compounds by only having a single autosave. If it were possible to reload to a previous point, this would lessen the effect, though ideally just allow for going back places unless anything drastic in the narrative has occurred.

[Wizard.AF]

Yes to all of the above! To the Developers, by all means thwart the speed-runners with some well placed invisible walls but let us regular astronauts poke around a little more freely and enjoy this masterpiece you are making, pretty please

[The Chaos Engine]

My thoughts exactly. The invisible walls and no backtracking are just outrageous.

Invisible walls
You walk up a ledge and you cannot jump or fall from it. I had the same problem with the game OBDUCTION (from CYAN) where I had to go around everything when it would be sooo much more convenient just to jump or fall below or jump up on something. Invisible walls are so archaic and also they break the immersion really hard. You walk, explore and BAM, invisible wall here, invisible wall there, invisible walls everywhere, and jumping and falling on Regis III should be no problem because according to the book gravity there is lower than or Earth.

No backtracking
So the game just lets you go forward, going back is not an option. I don't get it, it's so restrictive while the game has so much potential for, patrial at least exploration. One step to far and the previouls location is a no go zone.

These are my main gripes about the game. The game is advertised as an action and adventure game and judging from all the moody dialogs (I love the British VO) and scripted door opening and all of such stuff it's also an immersive experience but with invisible walls on every step, very restrictive exploring and no free backtracking whatsoever it's more like a strict corridor game so all this immersion is heavily counteracted.

[Moose37]

I second that. Devs, please do not use invisible walls and other such artificial blockers. We live in the age of open-world games, and while not every game has to be made like that, I do believe the player can expect to have an essential freedom of movement. If the player sees a place that should be accessible to the character, then they should be able to move there. If you don't want the player to go somewhere, then there should be a logical reason, like a sheer cliff or a pile of rubble, why they shouldn't. If you want specific scenes to play out a certain way, like when Yasna faces the Antimat, then, for example, make her paralyzed with fear and unable to move throughout the encounter. My first reaction was to run back to the tunnel, but I was artificially stopped by the invisible wall. This not only breaks immersion but the whole suspension of disbilief.

[[EGC-i]ThinIce]

Agree with what's been said here, I realise the movement speed and relatively low level of stamina fit with the setting, and you wouldn't want your astronaut bunny hopping around in a way that lacked gravitas (even if they are in a low gravity environment) it did feel a little bit like it was designed to decrease the tendency to wander back or "over there for a look" as well. Many of us older gamers are "one playthrough chumps" and are thus a bit paranoid about missing things just because we didn't go "over there" before we were locked off from doing so

[JLBlast]

I agree with OP

[OiNoob12345]

an exploration game that blocks you from basic backtracking, a few areas/rooms back...
Why? Compare games like this to skyrim/witcher3 etc and others.
No jumping/constrained by suit weight perhaps? I like the setting and having not read the books, its looking good, but im not going to buy it until it offers at £20 probably because I know itll be done in 5-10 hours with no replayability? Obviously, the situation might change but ill firmly be reading the reviews first like with all other games nowadays. Seems to be a little bit too much selfchat as well.

[Balmung]

I agree on invisible walls, but I think they are ok when placed right, some of them felt not so great. For example at the first at the first buried vehicle, you can walk on top of it from the other side but you can not fall from it down. At the other end, we can't jump and have no clue how heavy the gravity is on this planet, maybe it is higher then on earth and such a jump from this high would end not well, so this invisible wall is only there to let you not die.

No backtracking is Ok for me, when it is obviously that you can't go back. Then you simple follow that path until you didn't fully explored the area you are in.

[Orius]

Originally posted by Balmung:

I agree on invisible walls, but I think they are ok when placed right, some of them felt not so great. For example at the first at the first buried vehicle, you can walk on top of it from the other side but you can not fall from it down. At the other end, we can't jump and have no clue how heavy the gravity is on this planet, maybe it is higher then on earth and such a jump from this high would end not well, so this invisible wall is only there to let you not die.

No backtracking is Ok for me, when it is obviously that you can't go back. Then you simple follow that path until you didn't fully explored the area you are in.

Yeah that's the type of invisible wall I was referring to. And when it's obvious there is no backtracking, that's clearly OK. But there were many instances where this was not the case in my experience.