article thumbnail

Months Late Game Review, Part 2. Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Some Bad Things.

The Bottom Feeder

For example, you can make the same goblin (well, moblin) fort play entirely differently by placing it in ways that interact with the terrain around it. Playing with terrain is a relatively inexpensive way to stretch content, since you have to make terrain anyway. You need to look for ways to stretch the content inexpensively.

article thumbnail

Open world RPG design notes from Enderal, a big long Skyrim mod

Radiator Blog

This is a convenient diegetic way of locking the player in-place for a cutscene, while also priming the player for an extended cutscene. It is much better than the boring shot reverse-shot cutscene stuff going on in AAA RPGs these days, and makes Skyrim's "sit" mechanic more meaningful.

article thumbnail

The Lost Ark Has Found its Way

Deconstructor of Fun

Lost Ark has a glaring visual shortcoming: its lagging imaging engine. The engine of this game - released relatively recently - turns out to be UE3, a tool that is two generations behind. The map models are rich and varied in terms of items, buildings, and terrain changes, which offsets outdated graphics performance.