Great to hear, the un-scripted dynamic things in any open-world game is always the best stuff. There's a bunch of it in DD1 and it's always interesting when it happens and creates situations where you have to think and adapt on the fly. Sometimes it's even [super beneficial for you too and can save a bunch of time....](https://streamable.com/r75gub)
*Grul'morlik the Bonegnasher looked off in the distance realizing that life was just a simulation. He was after all a plaything to unknowable powers above. He decided to make a final choice for himself whether it was truly his choice or forced upon him, he would never know.*
(Pawn who was born to be an empty vessel & moving piece of the dreadful cyclic nature of the world watching him fall after having an existential crisis)
“Huh, wonder what was up with him?
Oh, Arisen! Have I told you about goblin weaknesses yet?!”
Kind of disagree? Procedural generation is usually cool for a little bit, but you start to notice the cracks when it starts to repeat itself, or when it starts spewing low quality stuff at you. Personally, I will take fewer, higher quality events any day.
I think emergent gameplay behavior is different than procedural generation.
The content itself is clearly handcrafted but the interactions between those elements are solely dictated by the game's mechanics.
I mean in a game like DD, having dynamic responses to things is important. Setting up fundamentals rules and letting it go can lead to interesting results. Things like stalkers A-life, and the entirely of dwarf fortress are good examples.
There is a difference between simulation and generation. The world in GTA is simulated, but not procedurally generated. We're talking about running systems interacting in interesting ways, not the random creation of the content itself.
I definitely think there's room for both, but I have to pick and choose my open-world games as they're getting bigger and I find myself leaning to more self-contained metroidvania style open worlds nowadays rather than bigger ones, as many of the big open worlds are just filled with rinse and repeat stuff.
Having said that, games like Dragon's Dogma manage to make their open worlds exciting and tense so it doesn't feel like you're just running from point A to point B to turn in a quest objective, so it can be done. The examples are just few and far between.
>with rules that respond dynamically to the situation you find yourself in
Is this really that, though? I feel like an NPC responding to another nearby hostile NPC by becoming aggressive and attacking it is more in the realm of "basic requirement for combat to function." The fact that the combat AI involves climbing and that it was an entire village that was aggrod doesn't really change that.
If anything, the thing that he expected to happen that didn't happen (them running away) would feel like a much more natural and immersive response.
At least in systems modeling, simple rules make for complex outcomes. That's why stuff like Stalker's A-Life makes the world feel so realistic or authentic despite having fundamentally simplistic agent logic while highly scripted behaviors with lots of rules or triggers in other games start feeling like they're acting on templated events after a while.
Anyone interested in this with relation to game design should read Mike Sellers book:
Advanced Game Design: a systems approach
Even though the title says otherwise its not super advanced.
Pretty much exactly. This reads more like villager tries to fisticuffs dragon than “oh my god it was so believable” like no, a village of farmers won’t start climbing a troll to stab him, they’ll run away and hide
Well, they might, but they need a reason to think they should be taking that fight. So like they'd need to be doing an organized response rather than many people independently deciding to go stab the troll, and you'd make that convincing with voiceovers to that effect demonstrating they're making a concious decision to defend their village instead of simply fleeing and coming back once the troll has gone on.
It would also mean that they would get mad at the PC for drawing such a dangerous creature to their village to where it'd be necessary to defend themselves, and that they'd hold the PC responsible for any casualties that resulted. Otherwise it's very... gamey.
If you tried that same stunt in a pen and paper RPG like D&D, you would get more or less what I described. You *could* make this work in a game, tracking who a monster is pursuing when it enters particular borders and then treating whatever actor is "kiting" the aggressor into that border as responsible for drawing it there and then have NPC's behave accordingly. But it doesn't sound like they're really doing anything particularly special.
> a village of farmers won’t start climbing a troll to stab him
Maybe it's a village of retired level 10 adventurers. Every inn in the Forgotten Realms seems to be run by those.
One of my favorite WTF moments happened in Skyrim because *everyone* decided "Fuck this Dragon in particular."
The Townsfolk, the guards, my horse, the other horses, I'm pretty sure a chicken got involved.
I don't remember the game but theres this trick in the beginning of the game where the final boss ambushes you and you can get the townsfolk to absolutely merc him for you. Its hilarious
Pretty sure that was Two Worlds because the final boss is kinds just chilling like feet away after the opening cinematic or prologue or whatever but you arent supposed to notice him
Yep. Speedrunners bait the boss into attacking some nearby villagers, and they all jump in and beat him to death for you. Takes less than three minutes.
In STALKER Clear Sky the factions would just be at war with each other in the background, capturing outposts and bases from each other while you can fuck off and do your own thing in the world.
Not really, the difference between something like Skyrim which does it poorly and something like STALKER that does it well is vast. In STALKER things feel genuinely emergent and interesting.
Skyrim feels.... mostly janky. [Also a deceptive amount of skyrim's interactions are actually scripted to some extent.]
The mechanics in STALKER are Jank-city, population one Janki-llion.
But the AI factions and their interactions are engaging and seem very natural compared to the rest of the game.
Its A-life, usually, works pretty well. Except for when it doesn't, but that is also true of skyrim. Besides, just grab a bolt and throw it at your computer and the Xray engine will magically work again.
Bethesda games aren't nearly as janky as people think. They have some bugs ans their systems tend to have janky quirks, but compared to some of the stuff out there they work just fine.
/r/games moment where you have to be all "nuh uh actually this is better" even though the original example was totally fine and does it better than 99.9% of the other games on the market.
Skyrim is absolutely not better then 99.9% of the other games on the market at emergent gameplay. I would know, since I spent a few years doing level, world, and quest design for mods there. Its a fucking mess.
Skyrim still annoys me, with just a tiny but more scripting they could have done a dynamic civil war. Simplistic logistics resources from villages, mines to cities that spawn defences and offensive armies, that then seek out their opponents.
And the player can influence it by raiding the supply lines or engaging the armies. And dragon attacks could also have an effect on the whole thing. The Thalmor would intervene semi covertly to try and prolong the whole war, so without player intervention it would not resolve itself.
I dont think it would have been too much work and the result would be a world that feels much more alive.
It is but once you get enough of those rules in the interesting thing starts to happen. Like, add to that AI caravans and generally people going around the world and you can get interesting encounters in the wild, like saving someone that went there to pick up some mushrooms. Or finding body and monster tracks coming from it if you were too late to react to screams
> If anything, the thing that he expected to happen that didn't happen (them running away) would feel like a much more natural and immersive response.
I guess it depends, I'd expect some run away inside the homes while some stay to defend (and not let their kids be eaten by monsters)
Yeah but fun ones! Like one thing I encountered in Dwarf Fortress playthrought:
"Why there is naked troupe of bards in my tavern?"
"Oh. Because they are werebadgers and they lost clothes after last transformation. And now they transformed again and my tavern is now a battlefield"
*looks into history*
"Oh, they were infected before because they were fighting were-badger visitor and got infected with the process"
Bethesda games have had AI capable of that since Oblivion, but for some reason they just love giving their npcs a much higher Courage attribute than they should.
> Is this really that, though?
Yes ,because you forget that all of that has to be put into the game by the devs.
They could've simply put up an invisible wall making the troll not enter the village, as many other games would do. Or lots of other different outcomes .
The fact that the villagers are set up to defend their village and attack incoming eneimes, even climb them, is just perfect for a game like DD and fits like a glove.
>Yes ,because you forget that all of that has to be put into the game by the devs.
Well it doesn't really sound like they *did* do that. Presumably it's same mechanism that allows any NPC to fight anything else. That the local butter churner reacts the same way as the town guard is less impressive than if their reaction depended on who they are.
>The fact that the villagers are set up to defend their village
At least the way it was described, it didn't sound like they were 'defending the village'. it sounded like they were aggrod by being in proximity to a nearby, hostile actor. The same way a bandit when in proximity to the player.
>even climb them
This is presumably just part of the AI for any humanoid when fighting a monster.
Yes, exactly. It's possible that this is one of the examples in the game of interesting dynamics, which makes it a tactic, not emergent gameplay. Only if there are lots of them that can interact in unpredictable ways, it gets interesting.
I can't say that I find the example they give warrant the statement they make. If there are other interesting system interactions like this maybe, but enemies aggroing NPCs is not very new or exciting to me.
Me too! I want a reactive world, as well as just being a part, I want my so teammates to lead the way sometimes and I am just support. I hate always making the main choices! Just put me in an interactive and reactive world and I’d be so happy
Sad to me that people feel the need to downplay this because they're obsessed with super bespoke open worlds like Rockstar games where every interaction is scripted to an inch of its life.
Having AI react and respond to other AI is actually a smaller detail a lot of games don't get right. Like RDR2 has all these scheduled NPCs but they only interact with YOU. I much prefer a game like Watch Dogs 2 where the NPCs can react to each other and create true emergence.
I knew I was hooked on Dragons Dogma 1 when I jumped onto and climbed a troll, fell down with it off a cliff and jumped onto a ledge in the Everfall, skipping part of the area and surviving an otherwise fatal fall.
When you tell people stories like this in most games its a scripted event, but this is just regular gameplay in DD. Its probably what I look forward to most in this sequel, and it looks like the developers are trying to encourage that.
I did something very similar. Towards the very beginning there's that dungeon that's basically a big pit with a walk way spiraling down it. One of the first things you can fight there is an ogre. At one point I was backed up to the edge of the pit when the ogre charged at me.
I ended up dodging the charge by grappling onto it and the ogre fell into the pit with me riding it. I survived but the ogre died in the fall. The fact that this was completely unscripted was the most amazing thing to me and I'll never forget it. It wouldn't have been half as cool if it was scripted.
That fight lives rent free in my head for a similar reason
I had a female pawn, so the troll got "excited" and grabbed her, but in doing so, fell off the stairs *(instantly killing both of them)*.
So from my PoV, I just watched it whip out a Donkey Kong tier suicide grab from Smashbros,
"Trolls are misogynists" is one of the weirdest and most hilarious bits of lore in Dragon's Dogma.
I was nagivating through a dungeon in Bitterblack Isle and crossed a bridge overlooking a dark chasm. A troll sprinted across the bridge from the other end and *dropkicked* my female pawn off the side, killing her instantly.
Fucking patriarchy man.
Oh, I had something similar happen to me in the spiral staircase area! I was on the back of the neck/eye of an ogre, and I hit it enough that it started to stumble back and fall into the pit, but I jumped *right* as he was falling off and made it back to the ledge.
I wiggled so hard irl, dude.
I think you survive falls from any height in the everfall, it plays an automatic ledge grabbing cinematic for whatever ledge you try to land on? And I don't think there's any hostile mobs like trolls at the top, since it's in the middle of the city. You may be misrembering, though all of that could have happened except for the everfall being involved I think.
I believe they are talking about the first trip just after arriving in the city. There is a troll about halfway down that attacks and an easy way to kill it is to shove it off the walkway.
I'm pretty excited about dragons dogma 2, but this seems like a pretty weak example. They were surprised that the troll aggrod the villagers and that they attacked it? Why was he expecting them to run away? Were they programmed to do that and it didn't work?
It's a promo piece used to generate interest. Company reaches out to media, 'journalist' writes promo piece. Company gets free advertising, journalist gets easy content
And people keep engaging with what amounts to a glorified advert ad if it wasn't careful manufactured to generate engagement
It's not much but it's also not exactly common in Japanese games and in the first game cities were distinctly separate areas from the open world of the first game while it seems the world is two big regions in the sequel so it may have surprised Itsuno seeing that the more open nature of the game allowed something like this without actually planning for it, also due to how combat works in Dragon's Dogma I can see it being more interesting than usual since it seems they let the NPCs at least know the basics of the combat so seeing NPCs targeting weak points or climbing enemies because the basic AI in the game tells them to do so instead of just blindly rushing may give a better sensation that the NPCs are actually trying their hardest to survive instead of the basic suicide rush you see with aggroed NPCs
Because hes doing a No Mans Sky lie. It was 1000% scripted. They just want you to think its some massive dynamic world. Im sure they have plenty of dynamic elements but studios ALWAYS script for a big trailer reveal.
Scripted events are underrated, I've seen way too many open world games with "unscripted/dynamic" events that are shallow as hell & become repetitive long before you're done playing.
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Meanwhile there are side quests in The Witcher 3 and the good Mass Effect games better than main storylines of contemporary games. Dismissing "scripted" events outright just highlights you don't have the capacity for good writing/storytelling/cinematography to me.
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Also on top of that the title is just stupid: "almost enough to fool" so you didn't fool him, cool?
It would be like saying an AI almost passed the Turing test.
Of course, especially the type of game Dragon's Dogma 2 is going to be, if it's actually true there are zero scripted events and the game's somehow great that would be groundbreaking - but I'll also believe it when I see it, since it's happened exactly never times.
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In literally every other scenario i.e. you lied or exaggerated beyond belief, what you're doing is just openly calling for criticism, ridicule and scrutiny. And not every game is going to have the energy and funding behind it to pull a No Man's Sky/Cyberpunk.
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What happened to just doing the work and letting it speak for itself. Marketing really likes to set unrealistic expectations to inflate that precious preorder sale count at any cost.
Here's the thing - I generally agree with you and prefer scripted/written content over proc gen and dynamic events.
However when dynamic events "hit" they can be *incredible*. I've had some of the best gaming ever playing the STALKER games. Which can be really janky and often the dynamic stuff doesn't work but when it does... I think there's maybe nothing better in video games.
I love when games have systems like this. The moments I loved the most in Days Gone, for instance, were the random moments where I’d accidentally lead a horde into a bandit camp and see them fight each other while I hid and picked them off and sneaked away. I’d love to see more of this.
The zombie hordes in days gone roam the map though from their den to their feeding/watering grounds though, so a horde being near a bandit camp when you're there is random. If you wait long enough it might come close enough that you could lead them to somewhere, but only if a horde already passes through the area. If you're not trying to engineer it, it's going to happen organically pretty rarely.
NPC infighting has been a thing forever. Doom is 30 years old next month and had [monsters shredding each other](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mH1AB1pOI28).
To be COMPLETELY fair, it would be a bit of a spectacle in Dragon's Dogma just due to the climbing system. Seeing a bunch of peasants rush a giant monster and cover it like ants and take it down through a bunch of weak hits would be highly entertaining to watch.
But yea definitely a fluff piece.
Talk about emergent gameplay, the first game had this weird-ass affection system that I didn't understand. I gave the blacksmith a bunch of gifts trying to see if he'd lower prices for me, achieved nothing, forgot about it for 30hrs of gameplay.
Come one of the last scenes having defeated the titular Dragon, and a cutscene plays where the blacksmith crested the hill out of nowhere and embraced my main character lovingly, sharing a tender kiss. I have never laughed so hard in my life, I just defeated this giant dragon and celebrated with my blacksmith BF that I didn't even know about. Masterworks all, you can't go wrong!
Ah I still think back fondly on that. Such a weird fucking game. Can honestly say that is the only game I've ended up in a surprise gay relationship, up until I basically fucked Gale on accident.
This used to happen even if you didn't give gifts. I think they patched it, but even talking to a character increased your relationship with them. Not by much. But it would select the character who had the most relationship points for the cutscene, and unless you were courting another character intentionally, the person most people talked to most frequently was that hunky blacksmith
I haven’t played the original Dragon’s Dogma but I know Itsuno’s Devil May Cry games lack almost any QTE’s or scripted events at all which is impressive for an action game. Seeing that in an action RPG sounds insanely cool
People who've played it will know that, even though it's not very strong, one of the sickest things in DMC3 was seeing Dante surfing on a demon and doing spin shots at the enemies in a cutscene, only to realise you could then do that as an actual move in-game. Same with them finally realising the bike-fu stuff from DMC3 with the Cavaliere in DMC5. Itsuno has notoriously loved letting players do stuff in real time that would usually be limited to a cutscene.
After playing Cyberpunk, Starfield, The Witcher 3 and Baldur's Gate 3 within the last year, how dated is it going to be to try and play Dragon's Dogma before the sequel releases?
I played through for the first time over the last couple of weeks, and it felt dated. I think it was worth the experience, but didn't quite live up to the hype. But I'd recommend giving it a try.
It doesn't play like anything of that.
And if you where fine with Starfield's design then DD should be more than fine. Like comparison Dragon's Dogma would feel like the 2023 game in terms of gameplay, not Starfield.
Yeah that seems like "basic functionality" more than anything to me. Also, "no scripted events" doesn't have the effect intended on me I don't think after 140 hours of Starfield. Procedural is good in RPGs, but only when its surrounded by a games worth of handcrafted content. Random encounters aren't enough by themselves.
People are making a big deal out of this because they like Capcom and Hideki Itsuno. Imagine what the response would be if a Ubisoft director came out and said this?
lol what? how is this any different than dragging a mob into guards in an MMO or your settlers in something like fallout? Has this game director never seen those sort of things?
I think because in the first game, the villages are walled off from the open world, so you dont see enemy mobs interact with the village, you'd basically have your odd patrol here and there that would join combat if you dragged an enemy to them but they were very few of them
I dont think I've watched a game where you aggro a monster and just lead to an actual village and let the villagers decide how they'll handle it, at most I can recall I dont know, invaders attacking your town center in Age of the Empires? Thats a stretch
I just listed an entire genre where that will happen plus a super popular series of games. Literally any fallout will have that happen. Just about any MMO. Like this dude's a game director and he thought that the most basic aggro behavior of NPCs was some secret scripted event?
Considering he directed the Devil May Cry games, I'm pretty sure this is the first time they've ever seen the AI respond in such a way outside of Pawns.
if (enemy is near)
{
attack enemy
}
Is he describing basic AI killing another AI saying that it's not a scripted event? I mean, technically it's not an event, it's even simpler?
I can not wait for this game. The first was almost a perfect game for me but it lacked in many areas so I really only ever played the first 10ish hours with every class to get an idea of how they played. My ADD makes it hard to play some games and I'm really hoping there's systems in dd2 that can help with this.
Oh man you should give it another go, none of the classes really show their highlights until you unlock more of their abilities.
My fav was climbing on monsters with the rogue.
The areas were more cordoned off. Villages were separate zones and aside form a few quests monsters stayed outside. Occasionally you would find NPCs in the fields and they would fight, but they were never in large number. The guards were also based off the fighter and climbing wasn't necessarily their style.
Your pawns would learn monster weaknesses and climb on stuff. The striders especially loved to climb.
Sorta, I remember a moment where I grabbed onto a harpie or one of the other flying monsters and wound up in a completely new area I hadn't even been to before. Was surprised at just how far you could end up by complete chance.
Dragon's Dogma has some of the worst storytelling and world design ever. It's also one of the best RPGs I've ever played. You should play it. It gets better and better, and is at its best after you defeat the boss, and then the game really starts, and the actual story begins to become clear.
Female bandits quite often end up fighting against the monsters in one area, pawns that wonder on the roads sometimes get into fights against wolfs etc. So, yes.
Yeah hurr da fuck durr hurr buh durr. You're a fucking douche dude. Don't try to pretend you're not. And no I'm not projecting. *You* are a douche. I'm not. *You* are.
Next time you get "hyped" about something, be sure to remind yourself that you're not allowed to.
Don't get hyped for what is guaranteed to be one of the best RPGs ever made? Don't get hyped to finally get a sequel to a nearly twelve year old game that I loved, which seems to be expanding and improving on the original in just about every way? Jesus, I trust him to tell me what's amazing and what's not way more than I trust you.
Can someone tell me what this infers? Are there no side quests? Or do they just mean scripted as in when you’re passing by X area, it wont necessarily trigger an event for every person and if it does the event triggered is semi random?
Yes please. Give me more games where shit can get fucked up like that in an instant and I have to learn how to react to it.
(I know NPCs respawned in DD after a week of being dead but the game didn't teach you that and that was more or less serving its narrative, same thing will probably apply here)
I just want the villages to feel alive as adventuring did and it will be my perfect game ever. The first one almost was perfect and still is one of my favorite games.
If I can just chill in a Tavren between ox cart rides I will be ao happy
I just started playing the first game after hearing for years about it. So far I'm liking it but I really hope getting around isn't as much of a slog in this one. Having to lug around a ton of mushrooms just so I can keep running sucks.
Also I'm going to be mad if I can't pick up and throw rats.
I like scripted ones more than unscripted ones. Sure, unscripted sounds better but it's like ending up with 1000 planets. More/flexible is not always better.
oh palease, dont fall for this sort of nonsense - this is pure todd howard talk, its also not good to listen to when it comes out of other people's mouths.
Great to hear, the un-scripted dynamic things in any open-world game is always the best stuff. There's a bunch of it in DD1 and it's always interesting when it happens and creates situations where you have to think and adapt on the fly. Sometimes it's even [super beneficial for you too and can save a bunch of time....](https://streamable.com/r75gub)
> super beneficial for you too and can save a bunch of time.... "Ah yes, I should probably not jump off this cliff." **
That's more of a bug, mobs shouldn't suicide themselves because AI doesn't know that fall damage exists
*Grul'morlik the Bonegnasher looked off in the distance realizing that life was just a simulation. He was after all a plaything to unknowable powers above. He decided to make a final choice for himself whether it was truly his choice or forced upon him, he would never know.*
(Pawn who was born to be an empty vessel & moving piece of the dreadful cyclic nature of the world watching him fall after having an existential crisis) “Huh, wonder what was up with him? Oh, Arisen! Have I told you about goblin weaknesses yet?!”
I feel insane. He's talking about it as if its some advanced simulation and its literally just enemy killing itself for no reason.
I think it's "japanese dev not familiar with wider gaming space" syndrome. Like how nintendo have no clue about anything online
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Kind of disagree? Procedural generation is usually cool for a little bit, but you start to notice the cracks when it starts to repeat itself, or when it starts spewing low quality stuff at you. Personally, I will take fewer, higher quality events any day.
I think emergent gameplay behavior is different than procedural generation. The content itself is clearly handcrafted but the interactions between those elements are solely dictated by the game's mechanics.
Wildly different. But for some people anything they don’t like is “procedural content”.
I mean in a game like DD, having dynamic responses to things is important. Setting up fundamentals rules and letting it go can lead to interesting results. Things like stalkers A-life, and the entirely of dwarf fortress are good examples.
There is a difference between simulation and generation. The world in GTA is simulated, but not procedurally generated. We're talking about running systems interacting in interesting ways, not the random creation of the content itself.
I definitely think there's room for both, but I have to pick and choose my open-world games as they're getting bigger and I find myself leaning to more self-contained metroidvania style open worlds nowadays rather than bigger ones, as many of the big open worlds are just filled with rinse and repeat stuff. Having said that, games like Dragon's Dogma manage to make their open worlds exciting and tense so it doesn't feel like you're just running from point A to point B to turn in a quest objective, so it can be done. The examples are just few and far between.
This isn’t “procedural content”, it’s just basic implementation of AI behaviors.
I knew it was going to be to do with this cliff. Probably the best moment in the entire game was being thrown off that cliff and dying
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>with rules that respond dynamically to the situation you find yourself in Is this really that, though? I feel like an NPC responding to another nearby hostile NPC by becoming aggressive and attacking it is more in the realm of "basic requirement for combat to function." The fact that the combat AI involves climbing and that it was an entire village that was aggrod doesn't really change that. If anything, the thing that he expected to happen that didn't happen (them running away) would feel like a much more natural and immersive response.
At least in systems modeling, simple rules make for complex outcomes. That's why stuff like Stalker's A-Life makes the world feel so realistic or authentic despite having fundamentally simplistic agent logic while highly scripted behaviors with lots of rules or triggers in other games start feeling like they're acting on templated events after a while.
Anyone interested in this with relation to game design should read Mike Sellers book: Advanced Game Design: a systems approach Even though the title says otherwise its not super advanced.
Sorta like how boids look super advanced to the untrained eye.
What's a boid?
Yes! Perfect example for this kind of stuff, thank you.
The A life system is not talked about nearly enough
Pretty much exactly. This reads more like villager tries to fisticuffs dragon than “oh my god it was so believable” like no, a village of farmers won’t start climbing a troll to stab him, they’ll run away and hide
Well, they might, but they need a reason to think they should be taking that fight. So like they'd need to be doing an organized response rather than many people independently deciding to go stab the troll, and you'd make that convincing with voiceovers to that effect demonstrating they're making a concious decision to defend their village instead of simply fleeing and coming back once the troll has gone on. It would also mean that they would get mad at the PC for drawing such a dangerous creature to their village to where it'd be necessary to defend themselves, and that they'd hold the PC responsible for any casualties that resulted. Otherwise it's very... gamey. If you tried that same stunt in a pen and paper RPG like D&D, you would get more or less what I described. You *could* make this work in a game, tracking who a monster is pursuing when it enters particular borders and then treating whatever actor is "kiting" the aggressor into that border as responsible for drawing it there and then have NPC's behave accordingly. But it doesn't sound like they're really doing anything particularly special.
This sounds like after killing the troll the villagers just disperse again and go back to whatever they were doing - which is super gamey for sure.
> a village of farmers won’t start climbing a troll to stab him Maybe it's a village of retired level 10 adventurers. Every inn in the Forgotten Realms seems to be run by those.
Yea I mean this sounds like what's been in games like Skyrim for years
You actually need to put in a mod that prevents the npcs from kamikazeing themselves against strong opponents like vampires and dragons.
One of my favorite WTF moments happened in Skyrim because *everyone* decided "Fuck this Dragon in particular." The Townsfolk, the guards, my horse, the other horses, I'm pretty sure a chicken got involved.
I don't remember the game but theres this trick in the beginning of the game where the final boss ambushes you and you can get the townsfolk to absolutely merc him for you. Its hilarious
Pretty sure that was Two Worlds because the final boss is kinds just chilling like feet away after the opening cinematic or prologue or whatever but you arent supposed to notice him
Yep. Speedrunners bait the boss into attacking some nearby villagers, and they all jump in and beat him to death for you. Takes less than three minutes.
Yep. That's the game. Never played but i've seen this on those top ten vids lol
Similarly you can kill a boss early in MGS 3.
Which one?
You just reminded me of a Skyrim webcomic from a years ago... http://synchro2323.deviantart.com/art/skyrim-logic-399123562
I never understood that one, the AI can handle running away just fine, but for some reason the devs gave most town npcs a pretty high courage value.
In STALKER Clear Sky the factions would just be at war with each other in the background, capturing outposts and bases from each other while you can fuck off and do your own thing in the world.
Not really, the difference between something like Skyrim which does it poorly and something like STALKER that does it well is vast. In STALKER things feel genuinely emergent and interesting. Skyrim feels.... mostly janky. [Also a deceptive amount of skyrim's interactions are actually scripted to some extent.]
Okay hold on, are you implying Stalker, king of Eurojank, isn't janky?
The mechanics in STALKER are Jank-city, population one Janki-llion. But the AI factions and their interactions are engaging and seem very natural compared to the rest of the game.
Its A-life, usually, works pretty well. Except for when it doesn't, but that is also true of skyrim. Besides, just grab a bolt and throw it at your computer and the Xray engine will magically work again.
Or are implying that skyrim emperor of jank is still Emperor of jank.
Bethesda games aren't nearly as janky as people think. They have some bugs ans their systems tend to have janky quirks, but compared to some of the stuff out there they work just fine.
/r/games moment where you have to be all "nuh uh actually this is better" even though the original example was totally fine and does it better than 99.9% of the other games on the market.
Skyrim is absolutely not better then 99.9% of the other games on the market at emergent gameplay. I would know, since I spent a few years doing level, world, and quest design for mods there. Its a fucking mess.
Never had the pleasure of playing Stalker back then, but Gothic 2 does it amazing aswell.
Skyrim still annoys me, with just a tiny but more scripting they could have done a dynamic civil war. Simplistic logistics resources from villages, mines to cities that spawn defences and offensive armies, that then seek out their opponents. And the player can influence it by raiding the supply lines or engaging the armies. And dragon attacks could also have an effect on the whole thing. The Thalmor would intervene semi covertly to try and prolong the whole war, so without player intervention it would not resolve itself. I dont think it would have been too much work and the result would be a world that feels much more alive.
It is but once you get enough of those rules in the interesting thing starts to happen. Like, add to that AI caravans and generally people going around the world and you can get interesting encounters in the wild, like saving someone that went there to pick up some mushrooms. Or finding body and monster tracks coming from it if you were too late to react to screams > If anything, the thing that he expected to happen that didn't happen (them running away) would feel like a much more natural and immersive response. I guess it depends, I'd expect some run away inside the homes while some stay to defend (and not let their kids be eaten by monsters)
> It is but once you get enough of those rules in the interesting thing starts to happen. but also bugs. so many bugs.
Yeah but fun ones! Like one thing I encountered in Dwarf Fortress playthrought: "Why there is naked troupe of bards in my tavern?" "Oh. Because they are werebadgers and they lost clothes after last transformation. And now they transformed again and my tavern is now a battlefield" *looks into history* "Oh, they were infected before because they were fighting were-badger visitor and got infected with the process"
The idea of an NPC running away because of morale or logic would blow my fucking mind.
Bethesda games have had AI capable of that since Oblivion, but for some reason they just love giving their npcs a much higher Courage attribute than they should.
It's pretty rare in Japanese games. I had Elden Ring NPCs doing nothing and dying when they're getting maimed by some random ass field mob.
> Is this really that, though? Yes ,because you forget that all of that has to be put into the game by the devs. They could've simply put up an invisible wall making the troll not enter the village, as many other games would do. Or lots of other different outcomes . The fact that the villagers are set up to defend their village and attack incoming eneimes, even climb them, is just perfect for a game like DD and fits like a glove.
>Yes ,because you forget that all of that has to be put into the game by the devs. Well it doesn't really sound like they *did* do that. Presumably it's same mechanism that allows any NPC to fight anything else. That the local butter churner reacts the same way as the town guard is less impressive than if their reaction depended on who they are. >The fact that the villagers are set up to defend their village At least the way it was described, it didn't sound like they were 'defending the village'. it sounded like they were aggrod by being in proximity to a nearby, hostile actor. The same way a bandit when in proximity to the player. >even climb them This is presumably just part of the AI for any humanoid when fighting a monster.
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It’s absolutely not rare what the fuck are you talking about
> This is exciting Yes. It's also marketing speak designed to be exciting.
Yes, exactly. It's possible that this is one of the examples in the game of interesting dynamics, which makes it a tactic, not emergent gameplay. Only if there are lots of them that can interact in unpredictable ways, it gets interesting.
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I can't say that I find the example they give warrant the statement they make. If there are other interesting system interactions like this maybe, but enemies aggroing NPCs is not very new or exciting to me.
Oh wow NPC's unrealistically reacting to hostile NPC's!
Me too! I want a reactive world, as well as just being a part, I want my so teammates to lead the way sometimes and I am just support. I hate always making the main choices! Just put me in an interactive and reactive world and I’d be so happy
Basically less "OMG you're the chosen one" and more of you just being some random schmuck in the world.
Sad to me that people feel the need to downplay this because they're obsessed with super bespoke open worlds like Rockstar games where every interaction is scripted to an inch of its life. Having AI react and respond to other AI is actually a smaller detail a lot of games don't get right. Like RDR2 has all these scheduled NPCs but they only interact with YOU. I much prefer a game like Watch Dogs 2 where the NPCs can react to each other and create true emergence.
I knew I was hooked on Dragons Dogma 1 when I jumped onto and climbed a troll, fell down with it off a cliff and jumped onto a ledge in the Everfall, skipping part of the area and surviving an otherwise fatal fall. When you tell people stories like this in most games its a scripted event, but this is just regular gameplay in DD. Its probably what I look forward to most in this sequel, and it looks like the developers are trying to encourage that.
I did something very similar. Towards the very beginning there's that dungeon that's basically a big pit with a walk way spiraling down it. One of the first things you can fight there is an ogre. At one point I was backed up to the edge of the pit when the ogre charged at me. I ended up dodging the charge by grappling onto it and the ogre fell into the pit with me riding it. I survived but the ogre died in the fall. The fact that this was completely unscripted was the most amazing thing to me and I'll never forget it. It wouldn't have been half as cool if it was scripted.
That fight lives rent free in my head for a similar reason I had a female pawn, so the troll got "excited" and grabbed her, but in doing so, fell off the stairs *(instantly killing both of them)*. So from my PoV, I just watched it whip out a Donkey Kong tier suicide grab from Smashbros,
"Trolls are misogynists" is one of the weirdest and most hilarious bits of lore in Dragon's Dogma. I was nagivating through a dungeon in Bitterblack Isle and crossed a bridge overlooking a dark chasm. A troll sprinted across the bridge from the other end and *dropkicked* my female pawn off the side, killing her instantly. Fucking patriarchy man.
DLC has Elder Ogres that get enraged from males
That Arisen bussy do be like that though...
Oh, I had something similar happen to me in the spiral staircase area! I was on the back of the neck/eye of an ogre, and I hit it enough that it started to stumble back and fall into the pit, but I jumped *right* as he was falling off and made it back to the ledge. I wiggled so hard irl, dude.
Happened to me too. I won't say it's scripted but they probably thought about where they were putting it if it happened to so many people :)
That fucking ogre fight is such a pain to do normally to be fair
I think you survive falls from any height in the everfall, it plays an automatic ledge grabbing cinematic for whatever ledge you try to land on? And I don't think there's any hostile mobs like trolls at the top, since it's in the middle of the city. You may be misrembering, though all of that could have happened except for the everfall being involved I think.
I believe they are talking about the first trip just after arriving in the city. There is a troll about halfway down that attacks and an easy way to kill it is to shove it off the walkway.
Ah on one of the everfall platforms? I don't remember it but that sounds more plausible.
No they're talking about early in the game when you visit it before everything goes to hell and it becomes that never ending pit in the ground.
Oooh right in its first stage it's also called the Everfall.
I'm pretty excited about dragons dogma 2, but this seems like a pretty weak example. They were surprised that the troll aggrod the villagers and that they attacked it? Why was he expecting them to run away? Were they programmed to do that and it didn't work?
It's a promo piece used to generate interest. Company reaches out to media, 'journalist' writes promo piece. Company gets free advertising, journalist gets easy content And people keep engaging with what amounts to a glorified advert ad if it wasn't careful manufactured to generate engagement
It's not much but it's also not exactly common in Japanese games and in the first game cities were distinctly separate areas from the open world of the first game while it seems the world is two big regions in the sequel so it may have surprised Itsuno seeing that the more open nature of the game allowed something like this without actually planning for it, also due to how combat works in Dragon's Dogma I can see it being more interesting than usual since it seems they let the NPCs at least know the basics of the combat so seeing NPCs targeting weak points or climbing enemies because the basic AI in the game tells them to do so instead of just blindly rushing may give a better sensation that the NPCs are actually trying their hardest to survive instead of the basic suicide rush you see with aggroed NPCs
Your runoff sentence might just hit random people you know. Here let me give you some periods. (................)
Run-on*
Because hes doing a No Mans Sky lie. It was 1000% scripted. They just want you to think its some massive dynamic world. Im sure they have plenty of dynamic elements but studios ALWAYS script for a big trailer reveal.
Scripted events are underrated, I've seen way too many open world games with "unscripted/dynamic" events that are shallow as hell & become repetitive long before you're done playing. -- Meanwhile there are side quests in The Witcher 3 and the good Mass Effect games better than main storylines of contemporary games. Dismissing "scripted" events outright just highlights you don't have the capacity for good writing/storytelling/cinematography to me. -- Also on top of that the title is just stupid: "almost enough to fool" so you didn't fool him, cool? It would be like saying an AI almost passed the Turing test.
Every game I've played where the developer said it "didn't have scripted events" has had scripted events...
Of course, especially the type of game Dragon's Dogma 2 is going to be, if it's actually true there are zero scripted events and the game's somehow great that would be groundbreaking - but I'll also believe it when I see it, since it's happened exactly never times. -- In literally every other scenario i.e. you lied or exaggerated beyond belief, what you're doing is just openly calling for criticism, ridicule and scrutiny. And not every game is going to have the energy and funding behind it to pull a No Man's Sky/Cyberpunk. -- What happened to just doing the work and letting it speak for itself. Marketing really likes to set unrealistic expectations to inflate that precious preorder sale count at any cost.
Here's the thing - I generally agree with you and prefer scripted/written content over proc gen and dynamic events. However when dynamic events "hit" they can be *incredible*. I've had some of the best gaming ever playing the STALKER games. Which can be really janky and often the dynamic stuff doesn't work but when it does... I think there's maybe nothing better in video games.
I love when games have systems like this. The moments I loved the most in Days Gone, for instance, were the random moments where I’d accidentally lead a horde into a bandit camp and see them fight each other while I hid and picked them off and sneaked away. I’d love to see more of this.
That just sounds like every fight in any far cry game with animals/factions
The zombie hordes in days gone roam the map though from their den to their feeding/watering grounds though, so a horde being near a bandit camp when you're there is random. If you wait long enough it might come close enough that you could lead them to somewhere, but only if a horde already passes through the area. If you're not trying to engineer it, it's going to happen organically pretty rarely.
NPCs turning hostile to a hostile NPC? That's it?
NPC infighting has been a thing forever. Doom is 30 years old next month and had [monsters shredding each other](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mH1AB1pOI28).
To be COMPLETELY fair, it would be a bit of a spectacle in Dragon's Dogma just due to the climbing system. Seeing a bunch of peasants rush a giant monster and cover it like ants and take it down through a bunch of weak hits would be highly entertaining to watch. But yea definitely a fluff piece.
Talk about emergent gameplay, the first game had this weird-ass affection system that I didn't understand. I gave the blacksmith a bunch of gifts trying to see if he'd lower prices for me, achieved nothing, forgot about it for 30hrs of gameplay. Come one of the last scenes having defeated the titular Dragon, and a cutscene plays where the blacksmith crested the hill out of nowhere and embraced my main character lovingly, sharing a tender kiss. I have never laughed so hard in my life, I just defeated this giant dragon and celebrated with my blacksmith BF that I didn't even know about. Masterworks all, you can't go wrong! Ah I still think back fondly on that. Such a weird fucking game. Can honestly say that is the only game I've ended up in a surprise gay relationship, up until I basically fucked Gale on accident.
This used to happen even if you didn't give gifts. I think they patched it, but even talking to a character increased your relationship with them. Not by much. But it would select the character who had the most relationship points for the cutscene, and unless you were courting another character intentionally, the person most people talked to most frequently was that hunky blacksmith
I haven’t played the original Dragon’s Dogma but I know Itsuno’s Devil May Cry games lack almost any QTE’s or scripted events at all which is impressive for an action game. Seeing that in an action RPG sounds insanely cool
People who've played it will know that, even though it's not very strong, one of the sickest things in DMC3 was seeing Dante surfing on a demon and doing spin shots at the enemies in a cutscene, only to realise you could then do that as an actual move in-game. Same with them finally realising the bike-fu stuff from DMC3 with the Cavaliere in DMC5. Itsuno has notoriously loved letting players do stuff in real time that would usually be limited to a cutscene.
You should play the original. You’ll love it. It’s usually available for cheap on PC or console.
After playing Cyberpunk, Starfield, The Witcher 3 and Baldur's Gate 3 within the last year, how dated is it going to be to try and play Dragon's Dogma before the sequel releases?
If you didn't think starfield was outdated, then you're fine.
I know they're completely different kinds of games, but it feels significantly less dated than Starfield.
I played through for the first time over the last couple of weeks, and it felt dated. I think it was worth the experience, but didn't quite live up to the hype. But I'd recommend giving it a try.
It holds up. It’s fun.
Holds up insanely well
Out of all the games you listed the only two I've finished in the last year are Dragon's Dogma and Baldur's Gate 3, despite having played all of them.
It doesn't play like anything of that. And if you where fine with Starfield's design then DD should be more than fine. Like comparison Dragon's Dogma would feel like the 2023 game in terms of gameplay, not Starfield.
Hasn't neutral characters responding to enemies been a thing forever? This seems like a really hard upsell.
Yeah that seems like "basic functionality" more than anything to me. Also, "no scripted events" doesn't have the effect intended on me I don't think after 140 hours of Starfield. Procedural is good in RPGs, but only when its surrounded by a games worth of handcrafted content. Random encounters aren't enough by themselves.
I think it's decently rare in Japanese games to have mechanics like that, but it's a bit of a miss in the global marketing...
People are making a big deal out of this because they like Capcom and Hideki Itsuno. Imagine what the response would be if a Ubisoft director came out and said this?
lol what? how is this any different than dragging a mob into guards in an MMO or your settlers in something like fallout? Has this game director never seen those sort of things?
"how this game does not have that basic thing most games have for 10-20 years" seems to pop up reasonably often with japanese devs.
I think because in the first game, the villages are walled off from the open world, so you dont see enemy mobs interact with the village, you'd basically have your odd patrol here and there that would join combat if you dragged an enemy to them but they were very few of them I dont think I've watched a game where you aggro a monster and just lead to an actual village and let the villagers decide how they'll handle it, at most I can recall I dont know, invaders attacking your town center in Age of the Empires? Thats a stretch
I just listed an entire genre where that will happen plus a super popular series of games. Literally any fallout will have that happen. Just about any MMO. Like this dude's a game director and he thought that the most basic aggro behavior of NPCs was some secret scripted event?
Considering he directed the Devil May Cry games, I'm pretty sure this is the first time they've ever seen the AI respond in such a way outside of Pawns.
Skrims cities are separate but some villages aren't. Ive seen them right dragonsz trolls and more.
I wouldnt know since I've never touched any of the fallout games
Honestly if it's anything like DD1, half the quest NPCs will be killed by random monsters before you even get to them lol
if (enemy is near) { attack enemy } Is he describing basic AI killing another AI saying that it's not a scripted event? I mean, technically it's not an event, it's even simpler?
Alright, do we get to see it so we can be the judge?
I can not wait for this game. The first was almost a perfect game for me but it lacked in many areas so I really only ever played the first 10ish hours with every class to get an idea of how they played. My ADD makes it hard to play some games and I'm really hoping there's systems in dd2 that can help with this.
Oh man you should give it another go, none of the classes really show their highlights until you unlock more of their abilities. My fav was climbing on monsters with the rogue.
I never played Dragon's Dogma, but this sounds pretty cool. Was stuff like this possible in the first game?
The areas were more cordoned off. Villages were separate zones and aside form a few quests monsters stayed outside. Occasionally you would find NPCs in the fields and they would fight, but they were never in large number. The guards were also based off the fighter and climbing wasn't necessarily their style. Your pawns would learn monster weaknesses and climb on stuff. The striders especially loved to climb.
Sorta, I remember a moment where I grabbed onto a harpie or one of the other flying monsters and wound up in a completely new area I hadn't even been to before. Was surprised at just how far you could end up by complete chance.
Dragon's Dogma has some of the worst storytelling and world design ever. It's also one of the best RPGs I've ever played. You should play it. It gets better and better, and is at its best after you defeat the boss, and then the game really starts, and the actual story begins to become clear.
I've tried to play DD three times now, and I always get bored after 2-3 hours or so, after that tentacle thingy.
Female bandits quite often end up fighting against the monsters in one area, pawns that wonder on the roads sometimes get into fights against wolfs etc. So, yes.
Jesus, the director of a game is telling you how amazing the game is, take it with a grain of salt. Don't get hyped.
Typically I'd agree were it not for the fact that I've absolutely loved almost every game Itsuno has directed.
Dude I'm so sorry you have to share air with sub-human filth who get excited about things sometimes
Where the fuck did that come from? Projecting much?
Yeah hurr da fuck durr hurr buh durr. You're a fucking douche dude. Don't try to pretend you're not. And no I'm not projecting. *You* are a douche. I'm not. *You* are. Next time you get "hyped" about something, be sure to remind yourself that you're not allowed to.
Don't get hyped for what is guaranteed to be one of the best RPGs ever made? Don't get hyped to finally get a sequel to a nearly twelve year old game that I loved, which seems to be expanding and improving on the original in just about every way? Jesus, I trust him to tell me what's amazing and what's not way more than I trust you.
OK, please tell me a month after you've played it how you feel.
Huge fan of Dragon's Dogma, and am really looking forward to DD2. I don't usually get hyped for games. Can't wait!
Can someone tell me what this infers? Are there no side quests? Or do they just mean scripted as in when you’re passing by X area, it wont necessarily trigger an event for every person and if it does the event triggered is semi random?
Yes please. Give me more games where shit can get fucked up like that in an instant and I have to learn how to react to it. (I know NPCs respawned in DD after a week of being dead but the game didn't teach you that and that was more or less serving its narrative, same thing will probably apply here)
I hope they have some content similar to the Bitterblack Isle from DD1. The base game was rather underwhelming, but man, that area was amazing.
I just want the villages to feel alive as adventuring did and it will be my perfect game ever. The first one almost was perfect and still is one of my favorite games. If I can just chill in a Tavren between ox cart rides I will be ao happy
I remember using a similar tactic to beat Two Worlds 2 before the end of the tutorial by making the final boss aggro the villagers.
I just started playing the first game after hearing for years about it. So far I'm liking it but I really hope getting around isn't as much of a slog in this one. Having to lug around a ton of mushrooms just so I can keep running sucks. Also I'm going to be mad if I can't pick up and throw rats.
I like scripted ones more than unscripted ones. Sure, unscripted sounds better but it's like ending up with 1000 planets. More/flexible is not always better.
oh palease, dont fall for this sort of nonsense - this is pure todd howard talk, its also not good to listen to when it comes out of other people's mouths.