Dear Esther Artist Mulls "S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Without Weapons"

[Old Father Eternity]

FIRST PERSON SILENT HILL WITH NO GUNS!!!

I hope not, the only thing that they have in common really is that they are both Genius loci

 

[deathbydeath]

That was an entirely useless diatribe on fun that has no bearing on this conversation.

Pardon me for giving my two cents in two sentences rather than going on a 10 minute rant worth of pseudo-academic sounding details on "fun".

So, for you who likes to nit pick and sound smarter than everyone else, let me elaborate in another sentence or two:

For the game which this guy is talking about making, I believe he's going to have to take a slightly different approach to the design. Where Dear Esther and similar games like Dinner Date were interesting, a similar artistic style without other core game mechanics would probably cause a game like the one he's thinking of making to suffer. Simply put, there's a reason why games built purely on exploration, such as Dear Esther, aren't particularly popular. He'll probably have to elaborate on something somehow.

Now if you're done being a nit pickery of an troll (yes, whatever you're about to argue about what I just said, I already know. But again, I made a statement in a couple sentences, not a dissertation for your enjoyment) we can all move on and have a nice day with the quite easy and simple understanding of what both of us are trying to say.

Actually, I was attempting to get you to change your semantics. To quote you:

but will it be FUN. Dear Esther was an interesting experience that I'm glad I played, but it was not what I'd call fun.

As games mature as an artistic medium, I don't think all of them have to be "fun" (like Dear Esther, or Dinner Date), but if you're making a survival horror game, I think it needs "funnies".

You used the word "fun" four times, each one potentially having a different meaning. I was just pulling out that video because a) I wanted an excuse to find and watch that guy again, and b) I was attempting to subtly point out the issues with your word usage.

.............. it's still an entirely useless diatribe on fun that has no bearing whatsoever on this conversation.

But don't worry. This whole exchange has been fun. lol....... >.>

I guess, since the point was to get you to get your point across better, but since you refuse, it is useless. It has a bearing, though. (Talk better). Also, no. No fun.

 

[Therumancer]

To be honest I have this issue with the idea of exploring malevolent seeming enviroments without any real weapons, especially if you go there by choice, or are given the obvious means to improvise weapons in the enviroment.

I get what guys like the team behind "Amnesia" and "Dear Esther" are trying to say in their respective works, and wanting to explore the world and generate creepyness through vulnerability, but it just doesn't work for me, and when it comes to what amounts to little more than a tour and walking around an enviroment, it gets kind of boring as well. It's even worse when your talking about "Dear Esther" where the whole point is that it's just wierd for the sake of being wierd, without any genuine meaning behind anything.

That said, if the guys behind "Dear Esther" were to team up with say Bethesda to do some of the dungeon/region/landscape/town/whatever designs it could be pretty epic. Bethesda is already into having all these little stories in the areas you visit and I'd think Dear Esther's team could do something epic with that, leaving the actual gameplay aspects in the hands of a team dedicated to them.

To be honest I'll also say that I suspect half the reason for wanting to say remove the guns from STALKER in making a game, is that it takes a lot of work to develop a combat engine and custom models that can be fought and everything. Not to mention that it takes some clever design to have serious combat and still encourage a lot of enviromental awareness, if you were say fighting off wandering zombies in "Dead Esther" you probably wouldn't have noticed half of the enviromental stuff put down and the various details the game is built around... as ultimatly nonsensical as they happen to be.

 

[Don Reba]

I found out about STALKER back in the summer of 2002 when the project's lead artist Andrew PROF Prohorov posted this classic image on render.ru:

http://www.render.ru/gallery/show_work.php?work_id=12747

Back then, I didn't pay much attention. "A game based on the Roadside Picnic?" ? I thought. That could never work. Months passed until I started hearing more about the game and my interest was piqued.

That reflects the state of gaming back then. That a game could be set in a slow-paced lethal environment without shooting monsters was unthinkable. When STALKER finally came out, I greatly enjoyed the quiet moments of walking through its landscapes and exploring its structures. The mutants detracted from the experience for me, if anything.

Recently, the indie game scene came into bloom. It brought us Dear Esther as a wonderful experiment with the sort of game I originally imagined. That the idea of a proper Roadside Picnic game might even be on the table now is huge progress.