So it will take another 2 days before I can play this game again and to double check my maps before another release...So while steam is repairing my ACU I have taken a look at my notes about the supcom2 campaign.
My background is from the PnP RPG scene (yeah, all those less than 30... There were a time when you played RPG by pen and paper and not computers! :) ) both writing and as "GM". Anyway, according to me there is a unique core of depressive view of war in all the four games (I do compare, TA, SC, SCFA, Supcom2). There are no heroes, only nameless heartless robots crushing eachother on rich untouched fields... It is like japanese war haikus or like stories from the first world war I have read a lot about lately.
The campaign in Supcom2 is not really good. One of the things is the storytelling. It is like then you are playing PnP as GM, you NEVER EVER tell the player how they feel or how they should react. You dont say -"You are scared, because you see a Illuminate ACU and 6 RS in front of you", you say to the player, "in front of you there is one Illuminate ACU and 6 RS stations".
The campaign of Supcom2 break this general rule of storytelling all the time, actually by modding/cut away cut scenes and dialogs you get small, nice, interesting "problems" you like to solve with your ACU. You play the map and think for yourself, what next?
This is what I want to do, remove the dialogs, remove a lot of the scripted happenings and update the rules, remove the achievement and stupid goals (there should be only one goal -to win) to get back the core feeling of this game back to the roots, back to the old roleplaying, back to basic.
Anyone agree? What more do you like to change in the campaign?|||Quote:|||The only thing to like about SC/SCFA/TA's stories were that they barely existed, so they didnt get in the way of the explosions. It's like Jet Li's film, "Kiss of the Dragon" :P
They might have had nice SETTINGS, but they had zero story/plot.
To appeal to the singleplayers (the majority market!), RTS needs more and better stories. SCom2 attempted this. I wont say it was entirely successful, but for me it did its job - provide a linear narrative to drive forward my playing the campaign.
To improve the story next time, they just need to improve the story - not remove it like you suggest.
--------------
Although, RTS is a tough medium to write decent stories in. Theres not much opportunity during gameplay for story events (except in linear RPG missions without base building etc), so you're stuck with long cutscenes or something.
I guess personally I tend to agree with you though - less focus on story, and more focus on setting, is what I prefer. The story can be a simple one, just a tale of a soldier getting success and glory on the battlefield, etc. But have an awesome ingame library feature explaining all sorts of interesting and consistent things about the fictional universe, backstory, etc.
Combine that with an interesting and original constructed universe, (rather than a tired formulaic one *AHEM DRAGON AGE COUGH*) and we have a winner.|||I don't think fransotto was saying that the story should be removed, he was saying that it should be altered to remove elements of direction involving the player - You can still have what you might call complex interplay between characters that the player is aware of, just the player himself mustn't be scripted into things|||I still remember how disappointed I was with the FA last mission. I played UEF my first run through and Fletcher seemed like a good General with a good head on his shoulders. When he mentioned that we shouldn't trust the Aeon commander and we should defeat her, I was on board with this idea. I wanted to take her out and carry a UEF victory against the Seraphim..... but the game told me know. It told me I had to be outraged at Fletcher and that he was the one I had to kill.
|||FunkOff|||Now theres an idea. How about rather than a game with a linear plot, instead it has a branching web of possible events which you explore via your actions? So nuke Fletcher early and see what happens :)Its kinda like a development onto Dune 2's system, but with more detail and proper consequences. Or a more freeform version of Langrisser 4's story.|||In all semi-linear campaigns there has to be a part where decisions are made for the player, since if you want the player to make his own decisions then there could be hundreds of different outcomes or different paths for the story to take depending on how many "decision nodes" there are, and it would be too expensive to produce.
I think the best compromise would be to make all of the primary objectives required and the same, but have the secondary objectives optional and affect the later portions of the campaign. So then different character would have different attitudes to you if you did different things for the secondary missions. So let's say you have to protect a town as a secondary objective. If you do that, you will receive the support of 1 character for saving civilians, but disapproval from another for wasting time. If you did not protect the town, the first character would become colder towards you while the second one would brush off the incident and reward you for completing your primary mission on time.
A corollary to this would be to make those ratings at the end of each mission (those medals that rate the time it took to complete the mission and other things) affect the campaign, so after taking a long time to finish one mission, your commanding officer would reprimand you at the beginning of the next for taking so long.|||fransotto|||When I first played the Supreme Commander 2 campaign, upon finishing it, I concluded that it was "average". It wasn't terrible, but it could have been better. The story was pretty contrived, none of the characters was particularly interesting, and the missions themselves could have used a little work.
In spite of that, it did it's job well enough, and I was satisfied with it.
Until I played the Starcraft 2 campaign and was blown away. Blizzard just did such a wonderful job with the plot, the characters, the cutscenes, the story, and everything; that looking back on the SupCom 2 campaign and story, I was severely disappointed, and wish they would have done more. Now obviously Blizzard has a lot bigger budget and a basically unlimited timeline for their production, but Starcraft 2 really showed me what a good story should be like. Plenty of character development, depth, and emotion; good missions that never played the same twice (literally), including a mission where your goal was to die. Yes, literally, die.
I just feel like GPG could have been a lot more creative in their story telling and missions, and made it into something great.|||AdmiralZeech|||I think its great that so many got so much to say about the campaign, but take it easy, this is NOT a thread about changing the plot/story, this is about how to improve the existing one.
So I start ask some questions;
1. How to introduce a character?
2. How to introduce a unit?
I will soon give example from the campaign compare what I think is the "correct" way.|||I like for #2 making it so the units get unlocked gradually and not like it was in this game and having them all basically unlocked from the beginning (with a few exceptions). I also like making each unit unique so it gives a bio on every unit unlocked as its unlocked. However if this was done I would like it in the option screen under something like bio. That way it gives people the choice so if u dont care about the units background or what it does then u dont have to look at it.|||Ok, this example is just quick, its from the UEF mission no 3 and after Maddox have won;
Dominic Maddox',
The Megaliths are in pieces.',
Colonel Rodgers',
Good work, Maddox. Now it\'s time for us to take things up a notch.',
Colonel Rodgers',
Coleman is working on the Cybran problem, and now I\'m putting together a team to fix things at New Cathedral.',
Dominic Maddox',
Fix things, sir?',
Colonel Rodgers',
That Illuminate colony is a breeding ground for extremists that are committing terrorist acts against the UEF.',
Colonel Rodgers',
Subdue the colony to send a strong message that this behavior will not be tolerated.',
Dominic Maddox',
Sir, my wife and son are there.',
Colonel Rodgers',
We\'ll get them out of there, away from those Illuminate...',
Dominic Maddox',
Sir, my wife is Illuminate.',
Colonel Rodgers',
What? Why didn\'t we know this?',
Colonel Rodgers',
You\'re relieved of your command. We\'re recalling your ACU.',
Dominic Maddox',
I\'m unable to comply with that order.',
Colonel Rodgers',
What do you think you\'re doing, son? There\'s nowhere for you to hide. We will hunt you down.',
----------------------------------
This is an example on a better storytelling (IMO)Colonel Rodgers',
Good work with the Megaliths Maddox*. Now it\'s time for us to take things up a notch.',
*Summery/results of the map instead of stars; ex poor done, ok done, well done, excellent done, took too long time, few losses, wonderful...*
Colonel Rodgers',
Coleman is working on the Cybran problem, and now I\'m putting together a team to fix things at New Cathedral.',
Colonel Rodgers',
That Illuminate colony is a breeding ground for extremists that are committing terrorist acts against the UEF.',
Colonel Rodgers',
Subdue the colony to send a strong message that this behavior will not be tolerated.',
Colonel Rodgers',
We\'ll get your wife and son out of there, away from those Illuminate...',*
*Start of mission, a love message from wife in New Cathedral, explaining that she is a illuminate and she wish Maddox home*
Colonel Rodgers',
Wait... I can see in your files, What? Why didn\'t we know your with is Illimunate?!
*Some units on map turns into hostile units walking towards player ACU*
Colonel Rodgers',
You\'re relieved of your command, We\'re recalling your ACU.',
*Transport arrives and without getting destroyed player need to jump in*
Colonel Rodgers',
So you refuse orders? There\'s nowhere for you to hide. We will hunt you down.',
The linear mission is not changed but it can surely become much longer if player army is huge at the end and with a nice proper placement of the transport. :)
Edit; Hmm, I dont really like my "style" in this thread. Whatever I say, the campaign is not that bad, its just that I would just love to "help" it a little bit :)|||The whole "you slowly unlock more tech as you progress through the missions" thing didn't work as well for supcom 2, IMO. In sup1's campaign, I got neat new toys and more powerful weapons to build with each new mission, and better ways to go about doing things.
In supcom 2, you get new tech that you rarely end up needing or wanting to research, especially when a larger blob of tanks almost always does the job better and faster. It might've worked better if they'd just flat out given you the tech in whichever mission unlocked it for you, so you had a chance to play with your new toy without wasting RS. Or even if they'd done a more meta-campaign system, where you don't have access to research stations, and earn RS for your ingame performance (completing secondary objectives, winning under certain time limits, good k/d, etc.) and then spend them outside of missions to permanently unlock tech through that factions campaign.
That, and the missions were far too repetative. Even missions that tried to be unique in their set peices (fatboys, ship raiding) just ended up being the same ol' sit in base and make enough tanks/planes to do everything. There wasn't enough variance in what you needed to do to win, and not enough variety in what situations the campaign threw at you. The vast majority of missions all started out with "you've arrived at this generic battlefield, build a base and kill everything". The cybran mission with the engineers deserves an honourary mention for breaking the mold nicely, but there wasn't nearly enough of that.
And, of course, the story was some god awful saturday morning cartoon bs.|||The campaign was just horrible. The only good part about it was that little act of colonel rodgers (rogers? roders?) where he's like "What? We didn't know she was illuminate..etc.". For some reason it reminded me of schwarzenegger and his lines, which are shown right here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDxn0Xfqkgw|||Why should the only goal be to survive? That goal is only fitting for survival missions. Surviving as a goal is implied, and unless it's a survival mission, it doesn't matter that the player survives, what matters is what is done. No military deploys a commander to a battlefield and tells him to just survive. Survive to do what? Hold the line until backup arrives? Take the enemy fortifications? Seize the supply route?
I don't agree that the only goal should be to survive, unless it is a survival mission.|||X-Cubed|||On the topic of unlocking toys; it doesn't make much sense to do so. Why would you hamstring a commander's ability to fight? It's like going to a fighter pilot and saying 'here is your aircraft, it only has a gun on it - you'll get to use missiles after we promote you a bit.'
A commander has done years of training, he should already have the qualifications to use KKs and the like.|||Fixing the story is quite easy,
Squaresoft and gpg fires their writing staff and they hire dots who has total control about all story aspects.|||BulletMagnet|||BulletMagnet|||BulletMagnet|||The economic side dowsn't count when you're pulling all you need to build something out of the goddamn ground.|||Z32
No comments:
Post a Comment