Comments - _sml

Yeah, like previous RA titles were any more serious than RA3. Such mods are retarded, seriously.

Definately the best mod I've played so far. I found the atmosphere even more suggestive than in STALKER, plus it's impressive what you done with that 11 years old game engine. The only thing that I didn't like is that metal music wich, for me, was ruining creepy vibe of the game.

Crashed on me 5 seconds after the overly long cutscene ended. **** this, I can't stand that horrible song again.

Also I don't agree that games are all about thrills and laughs, because you will find plenty of ones that aside from thrilling and making me laugh, provoked those "emotional reactions not traditionally associated with games". Games like Metal Gear Solid 3, Homeworld, Silent Hill 2, or Knights of The Old Republic, are all very special to me because they provoked strong emotions. Wether it was feeling sorry for Snake or James Sunderland, or rooting for Kushans to overcome the oppresive Taiidan Empire and return to their homeworld, it was the same experience that you want your players to go trough, only those games had solid gameplay to support the story. I know, I know, this mod is for free and didn't had the same production values and believe me - I'm completely aware of that, because if this would be a commercial release I wouldn't be so polite with my opinion. Besides, what's more helpful when trying to improve your abilities - wildly positive reviews or constructive criticism?

So OK, I get your point about the way of telling a story in Esther and the aspect of immersion, but I guess what I'm tring to say is that for me the gameplay aspect is too wanting to let me immerse in the experience. You say that building an immersive world is a very important part of gameplay, and I totally agree with that. I can't even count how many times, I've stopped for a minute to, say, look around the City 17 in Half-Life 2 and imagined how it must have been to live there (actually, I live in Eastern Europe myself, so the design of City 17 was even more appealing to me), or just to **** around with the physics engine or NPCs. But my problem with Esther is that it lacks even this. There are couple of things that are missing for me here. Most importantly: louder narrator. ;)

But thanks for your input, your arguments actually hepled a bit to understand what you've tried to accomplish here. I am willing to try out the new (and hopefully improved) version when it comes out.

What I meant is that calling Esther "interactive storytelling" is ********. Sorry, I'm self-taught in english and I didn't really perfected it yet.

Anyway, I agree that stories like The Road weren't meant to be fun, but I think that comparing movies/books with videogames kind of contradicts what you said previously about impossibility to make Esther in those forms. You see, the biggest selling point of videogames is gameplay, wich makes them the ultimate form of escapism. It doesn't matter if they entertain in a way of cheap laughs and thrills or more deep emotional reactions, if the element that makes videogames so unique is weak or made in a dodgy way, they automatically fail to deliver, no matter how engaging the plot is.

See, that's my point. I don't approach videogame the same way I approach movie or book, but I'll get to that in a minute.

By gameplay I mean giving player the ability to interact with given environment (either restritced by certain set of rules, or completely free of them) in wich action is a direct result of reaction. Now. In a game wich is driven by it's story it's fairly reasonable to assume that player is going to finish it just to unravel all the secrets and see the resolution of the events. But it's also important to give him something to do along the way. Even better if story is developing as a direct result of player's actions. I know that this kinda is what's happening in this mod, but I hardly see dull walking trough rather bland leves as something you could call "fun". There's barely any activity that player can perform here wich makes this game rather unnecessary, because it isn't using any potential of this medium. You could just have recorded an audiobook or something and it wouldn't make any difference. In fact, I believe that audiobook would do much more justice to this story.

So for me as a player, it is important that developer would give me means to interact with the world he's created, and tell me a story in entertaining way. Or not telling me the story at all, just entertain. Because that's what videogames are all about, aren't they?

I didn't really hated your mod, I just found it frustraiting that to hear the story I had to partake in mildly annoying and dull activity first. It was automatilcy disconnecting me from the experience and the longer I walked the more I drifted away. Some peeps here call it interactive storytelling, but since there's hardly any interaction in this game, I call it ********.

Level design is actually pretty good. If i didn't knew better I'd say that these were some kind of leftovers from the original game that didn't made it into the final version.

Great mod. Derivative as hell, but really well put together and very fun to play. Especially the scripted events are impressive. 9/10