Are Gamers Fed up of the Post-Apocalypse?
- Thread starter vrbtny
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If it's overdone, then yeah it might get tiresome. The genre itself is not bad.
My preference would be optimism over pessimism. I kind of like it when the bad shit happened in the past and people have got on with their lives. New Vegas and Fallout 3 have people that survived and got on with their lives.
I cannot stand games where people do nothing to help themselves. That ruined the enjoyment of Skyrim for me, which I call a pre-apocalypse game. If the NPCs actually did something and not stand around, I would like the game more.
My preference would be optimism over pessimism. I kind of like it when the bad shit happened in the past and people have got on with their lives. New Vegas and Fallout 3 have people that survived and got on with their lives.
I cannot stand games where people do nothing to help themselves. That ruined the enjoyment of Skyrim for me, which I call a pre-apocalypse game. If the NPCs actually did something and not stand around, I would like the game more.
I think that post apocalypse, not every place on earth would be desert so I'd like to see post apocalypse jungle and arctic regions. Imagine having to fight mutated orang-utans with a self made knife and molotovs. Although that does sound like a friday night out in Glasgow.
To be fair, there are other possible apocalypses that don't make the world grey and brown. Enslaved: Odyssey to the West is a prime example.FalloutJack said:
But your point still stands since I do hear people complain about that very thing in regards to a nuclear post-apocalypse. I think I've made a few of those complaints myself. Or...not a complaint. It just bothered me more (in Fallout 3. Not New Vegas for some reason) than I thought it would.
Post-Apocalyptic is fantastic when done properly, but if they become the next 'Tolkien Fantasy' then I am afraid the genre will eventually break down into a generic waste of time
I agree with this. Just having a post-apocalyptic setting doesn't mean anything. It's how you use it, either in terms of the gameplay or story or both, that really matters.DustyDrB said:
I've been playing I Am Alive for the past couple of days, and I've enjoyed how they've done it. Sure, a lot of comes from other works (The Road, being the most obvious), but the way done in game is a way that's not really used often. The challenge comes from navigating the destroyed ruins in a way that doesn't kill you, and the story is told through the various folks you may help along the way. Sure, there's combat, but the game isn't about the combat. It's about conveying that sense of chaos and helplessness in post-apocalyptic world.
Ok, reading back, this might seem a tad bit like me brown-nosing Ubisoft, but I Am Alive is just a nice, albeit flawed, way of using the genre in way that doesn't feel derivative.
What I would think would make a great story for a post-apocalyptic game is that the apocalypse happens and you are one of a few survivors. One of the survivors says that they know of plans to develop a time machine and you spend a good 2/3 of the game searching for the plans and components for the time machine, in order to avoid or better prepare the people for the apocalypse. However, there are some in your group who want to either escape their inevital fate and others who want to travel to the past in order to wreak their own havoc in the past and change the future for their own selfish reasons.
That would be a great game if well thought out and executed.
That would be a great game if well thought out and executed.
The problem is that so many Post Apoc games are set in the IMMEDIATE future, right after the end, where everything is still shit.
Fallout 2 and New Vegas are so great because they not only show that the world survived, but it's actually getting back on its feet.
Post Apocalyptic settings are great for focusing on different themes of humanity, but so often these premises are disregarded in favor of showing what the world looks like after a bomb fell. Nothing about the reconstruction, or the dawn of new civilizations, just the remains of what came before.
They lack progress. The genre wallows in the past, instead of looking to the future. The focus is on what came before, when it should be on what is to come.
Fallout 2 and New Vegas are so great because they not only show that the world survived, but it's actually getting back on its feet.
Post Apocalyptic settings are great for focusing on different themes of humanity, but so often these premises are disregarded in favor of showing what the world looks like after a bomb fell. Nothing about the reconstruction, or the dawn of new civilizations, just the remains of what came before.
They lack progress. The genre wallows in the past, instead of looking to the future. The focus is on what came before, when it should be on what is to come.
I'm not particularly interested in the post apocalyptic. However Fallout is just such an awsome setting (with the exception of that one entry which I am frankly sick of bitching about) that I would like to see more done with it.
Besides, post apocalyptic doesn't need to look like that anyway. I mean Bioshock, while not really the same thing, was a similar concept and it had a terrific aesthetic.
Besides, post apocalyptic doesn't need to look like that anyway. I mean Bioshock, while not really the same thing, was a similar concept and it had a terrific aesthetic.
No, I want there to be a decent post apocalypse game. Dead Island was close, but was hampered by the story and cutscenes and everything being shithouse unlike the first trailer, and level scaling. The gameplay was damn good though. Fallout 3 was not bad, and New Vegas was kinda cool.
Actually, I Am Alive, before it became a linear Arcade/PSN game, looked really. You played a character befor, during and after a mega earthquake that rapes Seatlle, and then have to survive afterwards. Namely finding food and water and med supplies, helping random people, using an empty gun to threaten people, etc. The original concept was incredible and looked disgustingly entertaining. The final product was pretty weak. I wish there were more post-apocalyptic games that had no sci-fi/horror/supernatueral elements. Just entirely survival. That'd be cool (Assuming the developers don't bugger it up).
Actually, I Am Alive, before it became a linear Arcade/PSN game, looked really. You played a character befor, during and after a mega earthquake that rapes Seatlle, and then have to survive afterwards. Namely finding food and water and med supplies, helping random people, using an empty gun to threaten people, etc. The original concept was incredible and looked disgustingly entertaining. The final product was pretty weak. I wish there were more post-apocalyptic games that had no sci-fi/horror/supernatueral elements. Just entirely survival. That'd be cool (Assuming the developers don't bugger it up).
I see Post-Apocalypse in very much the same way as Medieval/Fantasy- there are so many different ways to do it, but every game is just the same tired old formula over and over again. With Medieval games its always magic, wizards, elves, trolls blah blah blah. With post apocalypse it is always, ALWAYS on foot, with mutants and oversized animals, with humans exactly the same.
I held no interest in RPGs until Mount and Blade came along and finally delivered a Medieval game without magic and fantasy elements. Now I'm just waiting for an Apocalypse game that has no mutants or any of that shit, and lets us drive around everywhere. Yes, I realise that's basically Mad Max 2, and you know what? if someone just made a Mad Mad 2 sandbox, that's be the best post apocalypse game I could possibly hope for. I Am Alive is a step in the right direction... but it also can't be a console exclusive.
I held no interest in RPGs until Mount and Blade came along and finally delivered a Medieval game without magic and fantasy elements. Now I'm just waiting for an Apocalypse game that has no mutants or any of that shit, and lets us drive around everywhere. Yes, I realise that's basically Mad Max 2, and you know what? if someone just made a Mad Mad 2 sandbox, that's be the best post apocalypse game I could possibly hope for. I Am Alive is a step in the right direction... but it also can't be a console exclusive.
I think making ruins look realistic and more fitting is easier than making good looking enviroments that are whole. There's also the issue of gameplay. Rubble and broken things can be any shape and size and don't have to conform to the enviroment around them meaning you can put a chest high wall, bridge, ledge, whatever, anywhere you like without it seeming out of place.
I'm fed up of half ass attempts to rip on games like Fallout, Rage comes to mind as one of these games....>>
I would love to just move on from zombies all together, its been done to death.MammothBlade said:
Oh, and to the escapist in general: fuck making me type a pizza hut advertisement into the captchca. That's just dirty and you fucking know it.
I think the problem is that it's always the same apocalypse, and thus the same setting afterwards. It's always nukes fall then Mad Max happens, which gets old. There are other ways that the world can end, for example JG Ballard's The Drowned World has the sun get much stronger which melts the ice caps (hence "drowning" the world) but also making the tropics extend to near the poles and increased radiation leads to widespread sterility. Now here its post-apocalyptic since most people are dead but it's not the endless deserts we normally see, here the world is a mass of lagoons and jungles filled with lizards and insects, a game set here would playand feel very different from the usual post-apocalyptic fare but still allow for all the things that make the genre fun. That's just one example, there are plenty of ways to end the world that leave it looking weird and wonderful.