Happy Birthday from Billy Cain (September 8, 2007)

[Pedro]

Well, yes, immersion is important - hence why maps are bad .

Not at all, whilst I had the map to hand I also knew how to reach each room without it, I had a mental map of how the various rooms linked together. Which is exactly why those transition scenes gave me a more personal attachment to my carrier than any other space combat title.
Of course once the mental map is established such scenes are superfluous, but without seeing all that once, exploring on your own, those locations are all just so many 2D images, or at best sets with a myteriously abscent fourth wall.

 

[AD]

Of course once the mental map is established such scenes are superfluous, but without seeing all that once, exploring on your own, those locations are all just so many 2D images, or at best sets with a myteriously abscent fourth wall.

WC4 is also wierd that way. There's a transition scene for every which way you choose to walk around the lexington but they're only available between the first couple missions.... They realized people would turn them off anyway so you don't have the option to keep them on, and then for whatever reason they never bothered to make any transitions for the Intrepid. (In another sense though, the hallway set was already made I guess so that they could have a dramatic scene of Blair ringing Eisens doorbell. More transitions would have meant more money on sets)

 

[Pedro]

In fairness most of the sets for the intrepid didn't recquire transitions as many of the doors directly led to neighbouring rooms. I thought that worked well, they'd be pushed down from the bridge into a smaller area.

I think what makes it really claastrophobic is the absence of any other doors, obviously they could be positioned out of sight but we don't assume what we can't see. Also the matching shape of the doors tricks you into thinking all 3 rooms are right next to eachother, no connecting corridors.

 

[Edx]

The map really took away from the immersion, though. People onboard a ship don't usually have instant access to a map displaying everybody that wants to talk to them at a given instant (not to mention that the map highlighted the excessiveness of the story by marking out which conversations you're allowed to ignore).

My point was that the complaint wasnt that it "took away from immersion trying to find where people where", its that fans apparently complained they COULDNT FIND PEOPLE. This just suggests they didnt know about the "m" button, like loaf suggests was probably the case.

Though to me if you can be bothered to write to a game company and actually complain you should have enough patience to read all the documentation which these fans clearly didnt, or else they would have moaned about the map "taking away from the immersion" rather than just not being able to find anyone, as using the map makes this matter very simple.

In short Billy Cain says the fans complained not being able to locate people they had to talk to, and says this is completely unacceptable. If that was true, then yes of course its unacceptable, but it isnt because you can easily locate people you had to talk to with only 1 button press. So because WC4 does have a map I would think its a bit over the top to say its "completely unacceptable".


Ed