So, do you feel that Japanese gaming is back?

[MrJBRPG]

It seems that new articles are popping up that consumption tax in Japan will be raised for everything from 8 to 10%, and the exemption applies only for food, drinks, and newspapers. Arcade games are not exempt.

There is the assumption that the arcades are made about a single coin play with fixed price of 100 Yen for decades. However, there are guaranteed exceptions on pricing of arcade machines depending on location and the games. What are your thoughts for the future of the declining Japanese Arcades?

Links:
https://www.gamerevolution.com/news/439 ... ll-arcades
https://kotaku.com/how-the-japanese-gov ... 1829485595


One slightly related question on how it would affect Exa Arcadia's stance in Japanese arcades, besides touting exclusive content that cannot be found anywhere else plus possible in-game ads as some business incentive for operators?

[Obscura]

A bit of a bump, but I meant to get back to this earlier and RL got in the way.

Ok, that's one of my biggest disappointments in Prey. For all the different ways you can tackle the game, and the game actually recognizing your methods and having them affect who survives, etc. it's pretty dumb that none of it makes a difference. There is no "worse" ending, there is only one single ending which only varies based on a choice you make literally at the last few seconds of the ending itself. Even if I can subconsciously tell myself that I make a difference by saving this and that person, the game literally tells you that it doesn't actually make a difference.

Nope, if you manage to piss the four judges off enough by what you do in-game, they won't give you the option; they'll just say the experiment was a failure, and kill you outright. Furthermore, the judges have a ton of different dialogue for all kinds of weird scenarios. Also, when Dahl boards, depending on what you've done, it's possible to actually ally with him to kill off the remaining survivors, which changes the endgame up a lot.

I'm glad to see people around here have some insight into this series. I really want to start with it some time in the near future, so I'd say it's about time for a dedicated thread :3

You don't actually want to play UU -- it's basically SS1, but with somehow even worse interface and controls. Stick with Arx Fatalis, which is basically "UU with controls that aren't steaming hot garbage".

Especially on Nightmare mode you go down so fast that sticking with your losses and burning resources in the long run becomes impossible when you die outright

Not impossible at all, that's actually how I played my second playthrough (and my first, except my first was only on Hard). Yes, if you get careless for a moment, you can lose a lot of progress, so don't do that! Having a good reason to be cautious is a good thing, IMO.

[Sumez]

Nope, if you manage to piss the four judges off enough by what you do in-game, they won't give you the option; they'll just say the experiment was a failure, and kill you outright. Furthermore, the judges have a ton of different dialogue for all kinds of weird scenarios. Also, when Dahl boards, depending on what you've done, it's possible to actually ally with him to kill off the remaining survivors, which changes the endgame up a lot.

Meh. It's still just a change in "we have this opinion about you". The game would have been much better without that pointless (and frankly quite predictable) "twist" in the very end.

Stick with Arx Fatalis, which is basically "UU with controls that aren't steaming hot garbage".

Have had that game lying around for 10 years or so (PC version). Maybe it's about time I get around to playing it.

[Obscura]

Arx Fatalis is great. Two notes:
1. Make sure to get the Arx Libertatis fanpatch, otherwise almost nothing is going to work right.
2. When you get an item called an "akbaa rock" that seemingly has no use, make sure you keep it somewhere safe and don't try to use it as pressure-plate fodder (there's multiple of them, and you need all of them). Otherwise, you can get stuck in an unwinnable situation.

Re: Prey, it's better than the original ending that was planned! The game was originally supposed to be a System Shock prequel, and a SHODAN origin story. DANielle SHO. Turn that backwards. Yeah, the original plan was that Danielle Sho was going to turn out to have been the bad guy all along and was going to become SHODAN... somehow. I liked the twist ending a lot myself, but even if I didn't, anything was better than the original plan.

[Sumez]

1. Make sure to get the Arx Libertatis fanpatch, otherwise almost nothing is going to work right.

Man how I missed PC gaming <3

[Obscura]

20 years of hardware and OS updates can be a bitch

Arx Fatalis and Prey are an interesting study, for a lot of reasons. I know that a lot of people (even me in this thread) describe Prey as "SS2 modernized", but one of my proudest nerd-moments was mentioning on another forum how it's really more like AF than like SS2 (more strongly expressed RPG elements, both in character variety and quest/story structuring), and then seeing Ricardo Bare mention in an interview the next day that their main point of reference when designing Prey was AF, and they wanted to make something along the lines of "Arx Fatalis in space".

[Sumez]

They even reference Arx Fatalis almost directly in the game.
I think the game absolutely does wear its wanting to be System Shock 3 on its sleeve though... It even has a few hints of Bioshock that it could have done well without.

[Obscura]

[Part of me wonders if we should make a "first-person immersive RPG-like thing" thread to continue this because we're going kind of off topic for this thread?]

There's more than a few "hints" of Bioshock reference, but I've seen an interesting argument -- I can't recall where, so I can't provide the link -- that it's one of the very few cases outside of MGS of a game satirizing another game mechanically (as opposed to through text/dialogue or visuals). At the start of the game, you ride in the helicopter (Bathysphere...) to go to the office building; then when the game starts, you get the wrench (which, if you click on its item properties, is called the "Haphaestus Twist" wrench; "Haphaestus" is where the "Would you kindly" twist in Bioshock happens...), and what's the first thing you do?

You break the glass. The one thing you could never do in Bioshock. Prey literally begins where Bioshock ends. And the "world" outside of it?

Completely fake. Doesn't exist at all. Your apartment and the rest of the city is just a soundstage with some projections.

The intro keeps firing shots at Bioshock. The best example is the helicopter/bathysphere. It never took you anywhere, it just wasted your time to fake you out. The game comes clean that it just hid a loading screen. Then it even shows what could have been had Bioshock been the game it was advertised as, by letting you play with all of these elements. You can break all kinds of windows to the outside to see all kinds of weird passages. The game actively encourages you to play with the loading-screen container and see how it worked. Narratively, the game sells you on hunting down the mimics, while mechanically making it clear that you're free to do what you want with them -- the exact opposite of Bioshock's narrative selling you on freedom while the mechanics force you to shoot splicers.

Viewed like this, the intro a really clever send-up of the state of the "Shock-like" genre.

Out of curiosity, what were the direct references to Arx Fatalis you noticed? I've beaten AF multiple times and never noticed real references, just similarities in how the games are structured (although Prey is more ambitious in its layout) and how character builds are more strongly expressed than in System Shock 1 or 2.

In related news, Underworld Ascendant finally got a beta out. According to basically everyone who has played it, it's completely terrible, borderline unplayable trash.

[Sumez]

The in-universe pen & paper RPG that people on the space station are playing.

[Ed Oscuro]

I've got Bioshock Remastered installed right now...it's hard going, and I never was fond of the original to begin with. Prey sounds great then; glad I got that on sale. Pretty much nailed why Bioshock sucks, there. I too need to get around to playing Arx Fatalis sometime.

[Sumez]

When talking about the Bioshock elements, I was mostly talking about the mild art deco influences and heavy advertising of the neuromods, which feels completely out of place for the setting. I'd have appreciated a more cold, mechanical sci-fi mood akin to System Shock.