Adventure Gamers - Forums

wilco - 14 September 2016 04:06 PM

...Not sure what s the problem you are talking about about games in a new computer

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A number of years ago, (perhaps before your time, dear Grasshoppers), there was an uproar about the overbearing DRM that said, in effect, that they owned your games and you were only “renting” them and you would have to repay for any copy. I can’t remember all the details but it has caused quite a few people to vow never to use them again.  I’ve even seen it on this site, but if it has become a thing of the past, then good.  Pretty unsustainable business model, If you ask me.

So it sounds like either would be fine unless there’s a difference in allowable resolution or screen size, etc.

For the record I’ve lately been downloading from Big Fish and playing other demos/free games.

Dara100 - 14 September 2016 08:54 PM

A number of years ago, (perhaps before your time, dear Grasshoppers), there was an uproar about the overbearing DRM that said, in effect, that they owned your games and you were only “renting” them and you would have to repay for any copy. I can’t remember all the details but it has caused quite a few people to vow never to use them again.  I’ve even seen it on this site, but if it has become a thing of the past, then good.  Pretty unsustainable business model, If you ask me.

That was a decade ago, didn’t apply to Steam, and was never an actual problem anyway.

wilco - 08 September 2016 01:46 PM

Wasn’t the plan to hide in the chamber because of the war until things are solved? CW just didn’t agree with the plan and stayed behind to work on his project to go back home.

My impression was that the people of Hunrath and their allies didn’t know how many bombs there would be, so each of the worlds were prepared to send an anticipated bomb back immediately if it showed up within their world/dome. One group (the Kaptar aliens) were successful in sending the bomb back, where it exploded, melted down a portion of Soria and almost killed the tree. The second group (the Maray aliens) managed to kill and/or block the invaders from Soria, but they weren’t successful in sending the bomb back. So one bomb was sitting in Moray just waiting to explode.

The third group (humans) had CW stay behind in Hunrath to send the bomb back if it came there. A bomb never came to Hunrath—maybe because the Kaptar bomb had exploded on Soria before the aliens had time to send one to Hunrath. After a couple of days, CW concluded that something had gone wrong because the people from stasis never returned. But an invading army didn’t come through either. So he went back to what he had wanted to do all along—figure out a way to get himself back to Earth.

My questions—why didn’t CW, when no one returned, find his way to Moray to see what had actually happened? Why did he make our job so much harder by, for instance, not telling us some of the codes? Who managed to free everyone from stasis after the bomb was disabled? The one alien was pinned down, and I for one didn’t help him up after defusing the bomb.

And another question—The bad ending. If you explore Soria you may see a bit of what looks like Earth—not Hunrath—and you get the “Raising Arizona” achievement. So apparently there was another bit of Earth on Soria, under a dome that was later destroyed by the bomb, that the people of Hunrath knew nothing about. When the bomb exploded on Soria, and then CW took everything back to Earth, did the other part of Arizona also return, releasing nuclear devastation on Earth?

Dienerstrasse—an intriguing explanation. I do remember Farley mentioning that incident and had no idea what it actually meant.

Finally able to join the party and play Obduction!  After a few setbacks like finding for myself that the lower requirements which my system had were not going to give me the full experience and deciding I needed a new video card*, doing the research, ordering it from Amazon and waiting for it only to find I needed a special cable that also had to be ordered, finally it all fit together and is providing the gorgeous visual experience I expected.
 
Cyan comes through again (I had no doubt they would)!

I love the game and am at around 10 hours.  It is totally worth all the trouble and now my system is up to all the newer games.  Not to mention I can now read this thread without getting spoiled!

* Here is the video card I chose in case anyone else is looking for a very capable upgrade that is also virtual reality-able.  It’s a Radeon RX 460 Sapphire Nitro 4G.  It got excellent reviews, some even rating it above much more expensive cards, and was only $139.

Temporarily switching to the node-based movement mode (in the options, or by pressing… M I think?) and back again should free anyone who is stuck in the environment. But I’m not sure if that’s what you meant? Too late anyway, I guess.

I finally finished this game yesterday.

I waited for Oculus Rift support before starting, and I’m glad that I did. The sense of awe you get from seeing these places for the first time in VR is not something a game has done for me in a long, long time. The worlds are beautiful, easily Cyan’s best yet. Played standing with free movement, which feels really immersive.

I’m glad to see them start fresh with a new series. Even though Obduction has a lot of really obvious Myst DNA—teleporting between sparsely populated surreal worlds, FMV characters, etc—the fact that it doesn’t have this mythology to contend with and it can once again thrust players into a situation cold, with no knowledge of the back story helps to recapture that intrigue the first Myst had.

I really feel like this is VR’s killer app so far. It’s long, deep, and lets you be transported and explore beautiful places at your own pace.

I finished the game recently and I have mixed feelings. At first I was overwhelmed by its beauty and vastness, but when I actually started solving the game there were a few things that could have been better. WARNING: if you haven’t played the game yet don’t read any further. Massive spoilers ahead.

[spoiler]+ The Story
When you compare Obduction to Myst you soon notice its lack of story. Myst had a very detailed background story that revealed itself during playing. This is also the case in Obduction, but I found the story much simpler and also lacking in information. Why is CW being such an utter a**h***? You come across some alien technology here and there but the relations between the people and the aliens in hardly worked out, except for some small documents here and there. There must have been many interactions between them but there is no evidence of that. Farley explains hat she thinks that because all the people were ‘captured’ in a decisive time in their lives this must be significant, and later in the same document she writes that maybe they are there for a ‘higher purpose’ in which the fate of individuals is irrelevant to the eventual goal. It’s also not very clear what many of the things you see in the different worlds were/are used for.
And what were those trees important for actually? The only thing we learn is something vague about their necessity.

[spoiler]+ The gameplay
Imagine yourself being plopped into the world of Obduction. You know nothing and at first think that the place is deserted, and then you meet C.W.; a very rude idiot who gives you assignments but doesn’t explain anything about the world and it’s dangers. I was pretty annoyed about that and if this were real I would have told him in clear words what I thought about it.
Furthermore there was just too much running and too much zapping around.

[spoiler]+ The ending
How in the world could I know that I had to disconnect the battery? I probably missed something. And then when you do it right C.W. just turns his back to you and lets you stand there in the lift without even thanking you. Uncivilised, I say!

+ But
Oh man what a beautiful game. All those details wherever you look! And everything worked brilliantly with almost no hickups. It was a feast for the eyes and a joy to play. I also needed to make quite a lot of notes, which I like a lot. I constantly lost my way and I needed a walkthrough a few times to point me in the right direction again but it was worth it. This game is up there between all the other Myst games (except the last one), Gabrile Knigt 3 and Life is Strange as one of the best adventure games I ever played.

tsa - 03 January 2017 01:03 PM

Myst had a very detailed background story that revealed itself during playing.

You’re misremembering. Myst had a very basic story (guy creates beautiful worlds, but his sons are dicks and they destroy everything), which was entirely revealed at the very start of the game (mostly through making you spend an hour reading journals), and which made almost no progress whatsoever afterwards. I thought Obduction actually did a much better job of slowly revealing the story, although the non-linear nature of the game made it hard for it to tell it in a nice and clear way.

And what were those trees important for actually? The only thing we learn is something vague about their necessity.

In this particular instance, they saved some of mankind (the player character included) from a nuclear holocaust.

Kurufinwe - 03 January 2017 01:34 PM

tsa - 03 January 2017 01:03 PM

Myst had a very detailed background story that revealed itself during playing.

You’re misremembering. Myst had a very basic story (guy creates beautiful worlds, but his sons are dicks and they destroy everything), which was entirely revealed at the very start of the game (mostly through making you spend an hour reading journals), and which made almost no progress whatsoever afterwards. I thought Obduction actually did a much better job of slowly revealing the story, although the non-linear nature of the game made it hard for it to tell it in a nice and clear way.

And what were those trees important for actually? The only thing we learn is something vague about their necessity.

In this particular instance, they saved some of mankind (the player character included) from a nuclear holocaust.

There was quite a bit more to the Myst story, which was revealed in all the other games. I should have been a bit more clear; indeed the first Myst game showed only a bit of the story (probably because most the rest hadn’t been invented yet).

About the trees in Obduction: That they helped survive the nuclear war was clear but apparently the trees were thriving before the war of the four worlds, and the one in Hunrath was important enough to build a whole structure and a water tower for it. Why?

tsa, have you thought that all the unanswered questions set up a sequel perfectly?