Matthias Worch

“Environmental Storyyelling”: environmental storytelling that really hits you over the head.

I grew up on these streets

How DARE you.

🧵of my level / game design videos, talks etc:

Every game designer should understand Orthogonal Design:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW5s...

Dishonored 2 LD critiques Dishonored 1 level:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVQD...

Why Speed Level Design videos are so misleading:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcCF...

Indy’s Vatican hub was extensive, almost overwhelmingly so. Love the sense of place and the flow between the attached story quests. Some ancient contraptions are out there for Indy standards, but I’m going with it. The airship is “another airship” of course (Last Crusade). But it’s also very Indy :)

Indiana Jones is the Thief game I didn’t expect to see in my lifetime. I’m late to the party, I guess. But it’s been 11 years since the last Thief game, too 🙂

I don’t know if they actually changed the dungeon leveling logic in the remaster, but it *feels* like dungeons don’t auto-level as aggressively (and boringly) as they did in the original. Plenty of places where I feel out of my element, which is great. Feels more like Skyrim to me.

I‘m officially hooked on the Oblivion Remaster. I’ve known that feeling from Morrowind and Skyrim (and Fallout 3), of course. But it’s nice to fill that gap in my gaming history. Gameplay and compulsion loops hold up rather well.

Savegames and AI awareness in Oblivion are maddeningly inconsistent. Save while standing behind an unaware enemy (ready to backstab), reload… half the time, that enemy will be aware of you now. I think it’s because AI is making a pathing decision on reload, and half the time they decide to patrol.

Generally the Oblivion remaster looks good; texture streaming and Nanite see to that. But the game world retains a constructed quality because it’s full of areas like this: when stairs don’t follow the golden ratio, environments feel artificial. No human would put up with this.

That’s an unfortunate look.

Behold my goblin slaying skillz!

WIP screenshot of Eldritch 2. The player has the option to use a key or pick the lock on a door.

Today's Eldritch 2 devlog: shops, lockpicks, and UI!

www.dphrygian.com/wordpress/?p...

Hmm, maybe I’ll try a super jumpy abused Khajiit “alley cat”, just trying to survive in the world. Everything will be fair game.

On mechanics the remaster stays true to what made Oblivion Oblivion. Feels like exactly the same game, for all the good and bad.

I still got chills during Patrick Stewart’s narration, of course.

I think I’ll reroll a new character and go with a full-on roleplaying approach. And see how far I go.

It’s also bringing back memories of what I didn’t love about Oblivion: to build that game at scale, Bethesda relied on prefabs that made the dungeons feel too cookie-cutter and clinical. Sure, they used awesome (for the time) pixel shaders and normal maps, and the update looks way better than that.

The initial dungeon definitely brings back memories. IIRC it was Bethesda’s reaction to Morrowind opening up right away and leaving players confused. I must have finished that opening multiple times, and I still remember many areas.

So many feels playing the Oblivion Remaster, both good and ambivalent. I bounced off Oblivion rather quickly (compared to the insane hours I poured into Morrowind, Skyrim, Fallout 3), but I still played 10+ hours of it back in the day.

Let’s do it!

Of course I then played Skyrim a ton - like we all did.

Beyond feeling like it was more of the same, the main thing that turned me off about Oblivion were the auto-leveling dungeons: it destroyed the feel of “you shouldn’t be here (yet)”. Wondering if that dynamic got adjusted in the new version.

Considering playing the Oblivion remake. I never got much into the original, so this might be a good time.

I played Arena a ton back in the day. Tried to get into Daggerfall, but it never quite clicked. Played the hell out of Morrowind, but when Oblivion arrived, it felt like more of the same.

GDC completely sneaked up on me this year. Didn’t realize it was “that week” until people started posting about it on Monday. Will I make it to the city? Hopefully, but not sure 😅

That would have been mine :)

The CRPG Book Project Sharing the History of Computer Role-Playing Games

The PDF is on this page: crpgbook.wordpress.com

As soon as I saw the frozen video i thought “trapdoor spider”. But I still wasn’t prepared.

The CRPG Book: A Guide to Computer Role-Playing Games (Expanded Edition) The CRPG Book reviews over 450 defining Computer Role-Playing Games from 1975 to 2019 across 684 pages, such as Ultima, Wizardry and underrated genre treasures alike.

This is a very cool book on the history of computer RPGs, and you can download the entire book as a PDF before you buy a printed copy: www.bitmapbooks.co.uk/products/the...

Me: I'm tired of feeling shitty. I'm willing to do anything to just feel better and more healthy.
Brain: You should drink less, sleep more, get some exercise and eat less crap.
Me: IF ANYONE HAS ANY IDEAS, I'D LOVE TO HEAR THEM.

This is Blackberry. Most of the time she’s curled up somewhere. But occasionally, she’s going full-on cliché Widow like this morning.

I met George Lucas when I held the door open and he didn’t acknowledge it, and Robin Williams rounding a corner at Gamestop.