/v/ - Video Games

>>14784781

Pretty much every Valve game has this. It's pretty neat.

>>14784785

That's cool. I haven't played any Valve games besides L4D.

>>14784793

Can't blame you.

>>14784781

>>14784785

Most of the time they let you see how much better a game was going to be before they dumbed it down. L4D's original idea of you moving through a city with your own path was much better than the watered down coop shitfest we eventually got.

>>14784793

Jesus Christ how new?

>>14784803

There are basically no worthwhile games from Valve outside of original TF2 before the gay item shit and that's not available anymore.

>>14784803

What else is there? Portal? TF2? Half Life? None look that great, I just played L4D with friends.

>>14784800

Yeah, they had a lot of great ideas but had to dumb it down for the lowest common denominator. Probably happens to lots of games.

>>14784781

that's the type of commentary I want them talking about why they did certain things, hell even studio stories about shenanigans they did while developing certain areas of the game, or whatever would be cool.

Didn't one of the Halo games do this?

>>14784811

>I just played L4D with friends.

I will say that L4D still manages to be fun like this because anything even mildly playable is fun with friends. I just wish we got an actually good game instead of one that was passable and that only stands out because there are no other good coop zombie games.

I haven't player the sequel, so I don't know, but Deus Ex Human Revolution has an optional director commentary during gameplay and cutscenes. They usually talk about how they designed this, or how they wanted to do that, or how hard it was implement everything. For the gameplay part, they appear in certain places, and have to manually be triggered by the player(press X to hear commentary), however they are automatically triggered during cutscenes, and will lower the audio so you can hear them talk, so I can't really recommend doing, for a first play-through, I think they even spoiler the game.

>>14784766

Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar is an interesting read and the first I've seen of a proper documenting of a game. You can download a PDF of it easily.

But this shit drives me up the wall:

>game turns out to be immensely interesting to me

>can't find commentaries, behind-the-scenes, extras, or anything else that lets you understand the inspirations for the game's choices anywhere

>don't even know what to search for

This is the only thing that triggers my autism hard. It is absolute torture not to know about certain decisions, about inspirations, or happy accidents. It's through this kind of digging I found out that HL2's helicopters' super mine attack was a glitch at first, and the Gunships shooting at rockets was unintentional. I just wish for more thorough and easy to find documentaries about the games I love.

>>14785014

I think a big reason has to do with corporate rivalry in computer programming, especially in Japan. The horror stories involving all the shady shit going on behind-the-scenes is why they're dead quiet about game development.

>>14785057

>The horror stories involving all the shady shit going on behind-the-scenes is why they're dead quiet about game development.

I've heard about that, I've been meaning to read up on that subject. If we could even get some light documentaries out there for people to read, I'm pretty sure the video game industry could get itself out of their creative bankruptcy.

>>14785080

Pirate "The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers" by John Szczepaniak (don't buy the books, the writer is a leftist cuck) to read some of the crazy shit that went on in Japan. There's one where the yakuza abduct the sister of one developer to stop him from working for Nintendo so he dumps an arcade machine in front of their office and smashes it apart and tells them they're next if they don't let her go.

D&D Online had very decent commentary. It even had one of the founding member of D&D TRPG old man's voice. He died few years ago. Entering dungeon for the first time with your friends and hearing commentary was good experience.

>>14784800

Yeah, I've just listened to it and it felt really shit… Another cringy moment was when they said that player character crouches automatically when going into vents, because they didn't want the player to waste time crouching and wanted it to feel "natural" - Jesus fuck, if crouching in an FPS isn't natural to you maybe you should git fucking gud instead?

>>14784800

This.

But commentaries are good to know which developers to avoid completely.

>>14786231

They implemented a watered down version of that later, with a fast, low risk/low reward path, and a longer high risk/high reward path. Especially in L4D2.

>>14784800

they openly said that it was because players would just pick the best route every time retard, did you even pay attention? it would have been shit, cut the grass is greener contrarian garbage

>>14786231

>Having to pre-plan your route Rainbow Six style would have been fucking fantastic.

PWOAR I guess it would blow your mind if a multimap campaign would let you choose whether medical supplies or ammo stashes spawn, uh? Imagine the tactical depth and immershun.

>>14788021

Always do this, in order to know which developers you must never support.

>>14785429

> Another cringy moment was when they said that player character crouches automatically when going into vents, because they didn't want the player to waste time crouching and wanted it to feel "natural"

I thought that was specifically the second game. Some dumbfuck couldn't figure out how to get a hole in a fence in one of the levels.

Most Ratchet and Clank did this, man the museums were so fucking awesome once you finished the game. As a child it made me realize how much efforts they put into making a game, and also that good ideas didn't come like this, but rather you had to search and fail in order to have the good one. It also made me want to work in video games

>>14786231

>tfw no semi-random co-op FPS RPG about fucking off from a zombie overrun city

Most every Valve game. I consider L4D and TF2 commentaries to be extremely insightful into the multiplayer development process, and there's a lot to learn if you actually give a shit about multiplayer and understanding why some games(or just some guns) feel fair or balanced, and others don't.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution had commentary in the Director's Cut. It's basically "oh yeah we had this idea half-finished, but we ran into a deadline." repeated near constantly, even at the fucking ending. Deadlines are why they only have Lower Hengsha, why Panchaea is so short and lame, and why the ending is buttons.

>>14784766

>Why does it seem that the only game that has done a commentary Escape from Butcher Bay?

Maybe because you haven't played enough games.

rape