I liked what I played (however many years ago that was), but I quit about 3/4 of the way through it. I remember enough of it at least to understand why it is so intensely polarizing, at least.
I’ve been meaning to play it again for a while (especially with how much I like the author’s other hacks), but I haven’t gotten around to it.
“Vikings” being such a big part of the current gaming/nerd zeitgeist makes me look fondly upon the days when every damn thing was zombies (now only 15% of every damn thing is zombies – some with Vikings!).
I’m sorry I ever complained about pirates and ninjas, take me back
Anything, anything is better than “terrorists”
I had to drown the medievalist part of me when playing Assassins Creed Valhalla. Idk what the Ireland expansion would do to me.
Zombies are at least kind of inoffensive and don’t have the stupid deer anthlers headpiece crew cut pagan® aesthetic.
How my first character in Dark Souls 2 I named “Successor” just cause it sounded cool, and how I deleted them on accident and named their replacement “Predecessor”.
vikings are kind of like pirate ninjas in a way
The OG pirate ninja was Achilles. He plunders the shit out of the coastline and he’s ridiculously fast
I think a lot about how much I dislike the gimmick in games where you have the option to do a pacifist run but it’s incredibly difficult. It iss even worse when the game tries to convince you that it’s immoral to kill people within the game world. This is why Undertale always seemed totally asinine to me. I know there’s more to it than that but I’m still just like not interested. Anyway, my point is I’m living my own life on a pacifist run and it’s simply quite easy for me to avoid murder. Especially because I happened to be raised in a society that really treats murder as though it’s a serious crime. I don’t need a video game to tell me this. I think it would be more interesting to make a game where you need to kill exactly one person, and it’s very difficult to do.
i think this is literally hitman
Yeah I thought of hitman but the stakes aren’t high enough. Plus most of the videos of that game I see have the guy like piling bodies up in a closet so it kinda ruins the vibe
I’m picturing a game with like the scope and tension of something like Blood Simple
Like that alien survival horror game but instead of an alien it’s just some guy
I can find that vibe in videogames but it tends to be individual setpieces rather than an entire game of it.
The first thing I thought of is 90s adventure games often have sections where you are trapped in a closed loop of rooms and a slightly comical killer is hunting you down, and you need to find the way to kill it without lingering in any one room too long. I found those very tense as a kid
Also there’s the bit in TLOU1 where some guy named David chases Ellie around in a steakhouse
I often think about how this plot is a truer and more sublime way of understanding NES Donkey Kong than the action on the screen.
The ink has a really nice aesthetic but it would also be cool to have this running live on a second monitor as you’re playing, in the same way as oscilloscope visualizations complement music
I feel like I could see this going in either a Cask of Amontillado direction or a Crime and Punishment direction and I like both directions
Worth noting that a pacifist run in Undertale is significantly easier than killing enemies. If anything, the more bloodthirsty you are, the harder the game gets. Plus the pacifist run isn’t about avoiding enemies, it’s about solving little text adventure puzzles through a JRPG interface or just dodging their attacks. Sorry to pick on this in particular, but I really love Undertale and I think the way its deliberate, thoughtful construction of routes is frequently misinterpreted does the game a disservice. Also it’s just nice to do a pacifist run! The writing is very charming and cute and heartwarming.
Other games certainly do what you’re describing (cough Dishonored cough, especially if you pair it with Ghost or No Powers) but not Undertale.
Oh you’re totally right. I should have been clearer in that this is why I wrote the game off based on like hearing one minor aspect of it. Then I ignored it for years until I watched a video about it someone posted here that like explained the huge culture around the game and it made me realize it was unfair of me to dismiss the whole thing based on that.
I was going to add, this is pretty much universally true in my experience. Most games with a formal concept of pacifist runs are stealth games. Nonlethal attacks are quiet, while lethal attacks mean you have to deal with a janky half-baked combat system, so the easiness falls out naturally.
This contradicts my generalization to some degree, but I notice you paired it with additional conduct restrictions. I haven’t played Dishonored but am I wrong in suspecting pacifism on its own is not necessarily that hard, just like in similar games like Deus Ex and Hitman?
