Dear Esther Released

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Re: Dear Esther Released

Postby Ark11 on Wed Feb 15, 2012 4:46 am

I've started playing it, it's awesome. Has anyone noticed the wierd stuff you see when you go under water?
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Re: Dear Esther Released

Postby Dives on Wed Feb 15, 2012 4:58 am

I thought that was a pretty clever solution, to scare people out of the water.
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Re: Dear Esther Released

Postby Kremator on Wed Feb 15, 2012 5:00 am

Liked it a lot, especially the environments, Robert deserves a medal and so does the composer and voiceactor. The story...not so much, kinda lost me and I got a feeling even if I pieced it all together it would not have been that interesting. Like MrTwo I played it back when it was ugly and I thought it was a little bit boring then - it still is boring now. I'm not demanding every game have like combat or puzzle elements, etc. but the ability to pick things up and inspect them would be nice. A lot of people rave about how this is revolutionary interactive storytelling and I still fail to see how that is.

1.) It is not very interactive at all, your ways of interacting with the environment is very limited.

2.) How is a voiceover playing when you trigger something revolutionary?

3.) If the absence of gameplay makes a game revolutionary and we're abiding by the "less-is-more" principle does that mean all games that posits themselves as an interactive storytelling machine just going to be all about walking around pretty scenery and have some pretentious dialogue playing in the background?

I mean, the Stanley Parable was a more interactive take on the storytelling aspect of it all and I'd rather see that beautified.

That said, I must also confess that I kind of expected this to happen so it's totally my fault to indulge in criticisms I have been expecting the game to warrant. I bought it mostly as a level designer and env artist because it interests me greatly to see how people do things, so that's 10 dollars well spent and a big hats off to the composer, programmer, and Robert Briscoe, top notch stuff. Everything else is just slow, meandering, and pretentious.

This is of course my opinion and everyone are entitled to their own interpretation of the piece, a great game by all means, just wished it was more of a game. :smt039
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Re: Dear Esther Released

Postby MrTwoVideoCards on Wed Feb 15, 2012 5:07 am

Yeah. With a game being entirely reliant on story telling you have to go in and create a story that fucking blows your mind. And in most scenarios it's either you don't or you do. There's not an in between. I think the greatest problem is that the visuals and audio design completely surpass the story telling that at moments throughout the game I caught myself completely ignoring narration.

I wanted to respect the work as best as I could,and so made sure to pay attention real hard. Though,it wasn't because I didn't like the story, it just wasn't really capturing my interest among all the other elements.
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Re: Dear Esther Released

Postby Armageddon on Wed Feb 15, 2012 5:27 am

While very much enjoyed the game, (I mean come on, those caves, best acid trip ever) and instead of beating a dead horse I'll say what really, really sucked about it.

1. They may have gotten the same guy to do the narration but not the same microphone, also the guy was breathing and moving forward and back from the mic making the sound terrible.\

2. The environments look amazing, in pictures and motion, but when your playing all the grainy textures tend to hurt your eyes and it's hard to focus on certain details.

3. Everything is static, one of the things I remember from Dear Esther was walking in the houses and throwing things around, made it feel like I could rummage through stuff. They could have made plates break and have ragdoll books. I also miss walking into the ocean by the ship and picking up the cargo. The physics just seemed different.

4. Where is the jumping! I can do without crouching, but I fell into the water on the coast of the first level and I couldn't get out because I couldn't jump onto the rocks or see anything.

5. Wave foam was blue, just sayin'.

But the game was great, the ending was different from the first but still pretty awesome (It was amazing). So yeah, go buy the game and feel like Source is awesome.
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Re: Dear Esther Released

Postby Phott on Wed Feb 15, 2012 5:37 am

2. The environments look amazing, in pictures and motion, but when your playing all the grainy textures tend to hurt your eyes and it's hard to focus on certain details.

I didn't notice that. I thought it was fine.

Of all the amazing environments, what really made me impressed was the first house on the shore you enter right at the start. It was absolutely.. Marvelous. It just exceeded my expectations completely, looking around this little house that really didn't play an important part in the game. But it felt so real, the atmosphere just inside that little building. Ahh, it was a pretty cool experience. Can't say I had "fun" with it, but it was just awesome to walk around the environment. I didn't care much for the story, and that was hardly the main focus. What kept me going was the sheer awesome look that Briscoe managed to get. I will still remain absolutely perplexed as to how he managed to do so well with displacements.. The maps were quite big as well. Needless to say, I was unable to pick up my jaw from the floor until ten minutes after I had turned off the game.
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Re: Dear Esther Released

Postby Dives on Wed Feb 15, 2012 5:49 am

I can't believe I'm haven't seen this before. The making of the first map.
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Re: Dear Esther Released

Postby Armageddon on Wed Feb 15, 2012 6:09 am

Delta got the .vmf's to decompile :3

Also I almost forgot to post this.
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Re: Dear Esther Released

Postby Ark11 on Wed Feb 15, 2012 6:11 am

Just finished it. Amazing story. Amazing environments.

Only negative thing imo, was that you couldn't go inside that beached tanker ship. It would have been so awesome exploring the inside of that ship.

Also, Arma thats some major 'nit-picking' there. ¬_¬
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Re: Dear Esther Released

Postby nub on Wed Feb 15, 2012 7:24 am

I bought this mostly because it's a Source game and because I wanted to see how it was all put together.

I was honestly a bit disappointed with the narrative side of things. While I thought the voice actor did a brilliant job, and the writing was pretty well done (though the "story" itself wasn't very coherent), it was really unsatisfying as a whole. They did so much to improve the visuals, but they hardly innovated on the narrative itself, giving many people little reason to buy it. I wouldn't call this interactive storytelling at all. You just discover little key "spots" in the levels which triggers a monologue.

On top of that, you're incredibly slow and you can't jump, so traversing the huge open levels is a chore. The complete lack of interaction with physical objects detaches the player from the world, which is a damn shame, because the environments in this game are some of the most incredible I've ever seen.

I'll be honest though, I was definitely expecting them to have improved all fronts of the original mod when they made this, but it's not a big deal since it only cost $10. I mean, after all, I bought RAGE for $60 when it first came out...
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Re: Dear Esther Released

Postby Kremator on Wed Feb 15, 2012 7:38 am

This review sums up my feeling quite nicely :

http://www.destructoid.com/review-dear-esther-221082.phtml
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Re: Dear Esther Released

Postby MaK on Wed Feb 15, 2012 9:33 am

Armageddon wrote:4. Where is the jumping! I can do without crouching, but I fell into the water on the coast of the first level and I couldn't get out because I couldn't jump onto the rocks or see anything.

There is a 'swim up' key in the keyboard controls that originally isn't binded to anything.
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Re: Dear Esther Released

Postby Oskmos on Wed Feb 15, 2012 10:32 am

I bought it, played it, then bought it again!
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Re: Dear Esther Released

Postby MrTwoVideoCards on Wed Feb 15, 2012 7:58 pm

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Re: Dear Esther Released

Postby Kuraivu on Wed Feb 15, 2012 9:38 pm

I loved it! Even though I've played through the original mod (several times), I found myself being constantly amazed by the story, sound and visuals. Well done to the Dear Esther team for overhauling this masterpiece :)
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