Monday, December 17, 2012

Dragon Dogma - from dusk till dawn!

I'm still early in the play of Dragon Dogma, and was trying to finish of the kill ten spiders quest out in this misty area which wont auto map for you. It's an interesting idea to have both the known world, yet also these hazy bits of world where the game doesn't hold your hand. Slightly daring game design, even, for what is an mainstream title.

Anyway, I faff around in it for too long. Even more interestingly the area I'm in is overgrown so the telltale signs of nightfall aren't so clear, so it sneaks up on me. I think this happens in RL to a degree as well!

So whispy ghost shade things jump on my head that I think wouldn't have turned up if I'd just left before - I miss my pawns dire warning about it or observation of what it does, because they slap it off pretty quickly and we defeat them. Then eventually making our way out of the twisting forest and back onto the more regular path - damn, it's just a barrage of wolves! Lucky the lantern lasts a fair old time! These guys gnawed down my pawns quite a few times, which is a funny mechanic.

Given that you can just go pick up the pawn and they get quite a bit of health back, but if you go down they can't save you. So it's like each pawn is kind of like a hitpoint that you can self heal, if you can just get over to them. Which seems fairly straight forward to do (except when they are in a bush and are hard to see!). But given the distance, it could have no wolves, or a bunch of wolves in their 'grab and chew' pose. And supposedly you can lose the pawns permanently if you leave them for long enough. I don't know how long long enough is.

Perhaps it's just the illusion of threat? Given the chance of various forces blocking getting to a pawn (and maybe killing you) are low.

And you can reload anyway.

On the other hand, I have been killed a few times in battle. Once an enemy starts hitting you, you actually suffer flinch animations from the impacts. Which is usually something the main character for some reason gets to ignore while the bad guys all suffer from it. Doom, I'm thinking of you!

Anyway, waves of wolves and slow, slow progress up the hill, so as to go down it again, then right and then the safety of the fort.

Basically, after a semi continious wolf fight, to the top of the hill, then the distance looks funny. I'm wondering if the dark in this game isn't as dark as I thought. Oh wait, that's right, when the dark isn't as dark as you thought, it's this thing called DAWN!

It was really weird to see dawn coming up - and a relief.

I basically bought this game because the night cycle was pimped with fear in the reviewers voice. And this is just an account near the start of the game! Really interesting! Might try and use something like it in table top roleplay!

No comments:

Post a Comment