Originally posted by: Jumpem
Originally posted by: ja1484
Once again: where is my story or aesthetic hook?
You'll excuse me for not being enthused about shooting stuff that looks different from the last stuff I shot. I think you're misinterpreting the point. Games can and are fun, but I see nothing about Borderlands that isn't generic. Feel free to enlighten me to what I'm overlooking.
FPS +
action RPG.
Maybe I'm not being clear, and I need to read a book or something to figure out what I'm doing wrong.
Let me try again.
I'm not saying this will be a bad game or no one will like it - I'm saying
I haven't seen anything - not one thing - in the previews that looks fresh, new, or interesting.
I have no interest based on the gameplay videos and trailers I've seen so far. Is there anything
I have missed in the press coverage, or is this game just not to my taste?
Having a shooter where I also have to manage a skill tree does not excite me. I'm kind of saddened that it excites anyone. That it's a coop experience also does not seem to be particularly special to me: Action RPGs and Coop games have been done before. A lot of previous entries streamlined the process - class based games like TF2, Battlefield et al are pretty much exactly that, except instead of picking a pre-defined class, you can spend hours in Borderlands grinding to create your own class. In other words, instead of doing it as part of game design, they left the player to do the labor. While this has the arguable benefit of being more varied and flexible than classes, it will probably misfire. Classes work well because they're balanced. Player-created "characters" will probably all be generic fighters with a few tacked-on skils (this guy can hack, that guy can heal, the female character can use her boobs to distract enemies, etc.)
If you want shooter combat with different player abilities, classes make a lot more sense. Here's your guy, here are his abilities, get to it. No need to fuck around with killing a bunch of rats (insert their equivalent grinder fodder here) to turn yourself into the HW Guy or the Pyro. Just pick him from the list and start playing.
I think the reason you saw plenty of class based team shooters but not whatever this thing is is because game companies recognized this during development. Most shooter fans don't want to dick around with grinding, loot, and skill points. Most RPG fans want more story, dialogue, and customization than an RPG-lite with shooter combat allows. The type of game Borderlands appears to be (again, unless I've missed something) is a game that does neither one well. I love both genres, but for their respective strengths. I think a game like this could work. But it would need to be rooted in something more special than a generic post-apoc wasteland.
For example, I'd pay, potentially with vital organs, for a Coop STALKER game in a second. THAT is an experience I would love to share with others, in no small part because it would decrease the amount of time I spent scared shitless. But Borderlands doesn't seem to have anything remotely approaching that level of uniqueness in either setting or combat.
It's like being thirsty for either water or beer and drinking Zima. I think it'll do several things averagely to below-averagely, nothing well, and be forgotten quickly.