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New Mafia 2 trailer...

Zeliard said:
In my view, a sandbox game denotes emergent gameplay first and foremost, while free-roaming implies freedom of movement. The vast majority of sandbox games are free-roaming, but not necessarily vice versa. Fallout 3 is a perfect recent example of a free-roaming game that isn't really sandbox.
wait, what?
 
BobsRevenge said:
OMG! Do you guys remember that hilarious mission in free-ride extreme where you had to hunt down this dude that ran extremely fast? I remember laughing my ass off during that mission, especially after the idiot got hit by a trolly and I won it (if I remember correctly, which I might not considering how long ago this was).
It's like the first mission or so when you get out of the house.
 
Haunted said:
wait, what?

You have to play by the developers' rules in Fallout 3. There's virtually no emergent gameplay. I guess we all have different definitions of "sandbox". I think it requires being able to bend or break the rules and accomplish things in the game as you see fit, and Fallout 3 doesn't really allow you to do that outside of the tools it already provides you.
 
Zeliard said:
You have to play by the developers' rules in Fallout 3. There's virtually no emergent gameplay. I guess we all have different definitions of "sandbox". I think it requires being able to bend or break the rules and accomplish things in the game as you see fit, and Fallout 3 doesn't really allow you to do that outside of the tools it already provides you.

wait, wat?
 
Zeliard said:
You have to play by the developers' rules in Fallout 3. There's virtually no emergent gameplay. I guess we all have different definitions of "sandbox". I think it requires being able to bend or break the rules and accomplish things in the game as you see fit, and Fallout 3 doesn't really allow you to do that outside of the tools it already provides you.
But the order in which you do things is totally up to you and how you solve things is undetermined.
As you solve more and more missions, others become available depending on your way of doing things, whole branches of the story develop independently from each other.

That's as emergent as it gets, right?
 
wmat said:
It's like the first mission or so when you get out of the house.
Wow, I forgot there was a house. This is all coming back to me now. I think I can remember having a garage full of all these awesome cars, even though the one I used most of the time was the tiny car with a shitload of torque with a name that involved the word "horse" or something. Crazy Horse maybe? I'm going to have to reinstall this game. Hopefully I didn't leave any of the disks back in my apartment at college.
 
Zeliard said:
What are you struggling with? There's nothing you can do in vanilla Fallout 3 to accomplish your objectives that the developers hadn't already considered.
I think you are more confused than you think you are, or are aware of.
 
Zeliard said:
What are you struggling with? There's nothing you can do in vanilla Fallout 3 to accomplish your objectives that the developers hadn't already considered.
Same is true for GTA3, the mother of all 3D sandboxes.

Edit:
BobsRevenge said:
I think you are more confused than you think you are, or are aware of.
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i don't think mafia 2 will have free ride extreme. think i read that somewhere a while back. it was really fun and outlandish but it wasnt nearly as polished as the main game.
 
Timber said:
i don't think mafia 2 will have free ride extreme. think i read that somewhere a while back. it was really fun and outlandish but it wasnt nearly as polished as the main game.
Oh yeah, I can't see them getting away with a free-ride extreme in this day and age. A shame really, because I would enjoy it immensely.
 
wmat said:
But the order in which you do things is totally up to you and how you solve things is undetermined.

I disagree that it's undetermined. There are options available to you to get through the game in various ways, but none of it is anything you can do outside of the core game design.

wmat said:
Same is true for GTA3, the mother of all 3D sandboxes.

No, not really. There were a wide variety of ways to get through individual missions in GTA3, some which the developers hadn't intended or thought about beforehand, which is my entire point. That's one of the reasons GTA4 was lambasted by so many - it destroyed the sandbox/emergent gameplay appeal of the series and made it so you could only get through a mission in a certain way, when people had previously come up with very creative solutions for doing so.
 
Zeliard said:
I disagree that it's undetermined. There are options available to you to get through the game in various ways, but none of it is anything you can do outside of the core game design.
Well.. I DID slaughter a whole town just because I felt like it...
Also, when I
let the ghouls into Tenpenny Tower
, everybody was already dead, so they didn't have much to do except stand around looking goofy..
No, not really. There were a wide variety of ways to get through individual missions in GTA3, some which the developers hadn't intended or thought about beforehand, which is my entire point.
Well, yeah, but to the same extent F3 lets you accomplish goals. For example, you could lure the dude you have to kill for money into his own traps or something.
 
Zeliard said:
No, not really. There were a wide variety of ways to get through individual missions in GTA3, some which the developers hadn't intended or thought about beforehand, which is my entire point. That's one of the reasons GTA4 was lambasted by so many - it destroyed the sandbox/emergent gameplay appeal of the series and made it so you could only get through a mission in a certain way, when people had previously come up with very creative solutions for doing so.
The only thing that makes the PS2-era GTAs possibly more sandboxy than Fallout 3 is the quirky side-missions and stuff like the "Rampage" things, extra car races, and random other stuff you could do completely independantly of the storyline or its missions. If you're talking about the main gameplay and storyline than Fallout 3 is much more sandboxy in nature as you have much more control over what you do and the progression of the story.
 
wmat said:
Well.. I DID slaughter a whole town just because I felt like it...
Also, when I
let the ghouls into Tenpenny Tower
, everybody was already dead, so they didn't have much to do except stand around looking goofy..

They were all dead? Aw, you missed something great. ;)

BobsRevenge said:
The only thing that makes the PS2-era GTAs possibly more sandboxy than Fallout 3 is the quirky side-missions and stuff like the "Rampage" things, extra car races, and random other stuff you could do completely independantly of the storyline or its missions. If you're talking about the main gameplay and storyline than Fallout 3 is much more sandboxy in nature as you have much more control over what you do and the progression of the story.

In that sense, sure, but "go around and do whatever" is ultimately something I consider to be moreso free-roaming. "Sandbox" is a pretty wide-ranging word and there's no one definition of it. I personally think the "do whatever you want" part is more powerful and meaningful when you can do things the game never expected or intended you to do, and that's what I think a sandbox game is. GTA3 (especially San Andreas) was filled with that kind of stuff. GTA4 dropped the ball when it came to that and was overly scripted to its own detriment (though it did do other things much better).

I was never remotely trying to insult Mafia by saying that I don't think it's a sandbox game, by the way. I just don't think it has all that much in common with GTA and its clones beyond a few broad generalizations. I think it was a much better game, too.
 
Zeliard said:
They were all dead? Aw, you missed something great. ;)
Well, I killed them. I couldn't find the fucking key, so I started killing people. It happens way too often. That's what F3 lacks: Psychiatric Help.
 
Zeliard said:
In that sense, sure, but "go around and do whatever" is ultimately something I consider to be moreso free-roaming. "Sandbox" is a pretty wide-ranging word and there's no one definition of it. I personally think the "do whatever you want" part is more powerful and meaningful when you can do things the game never expected or intended you to do, and that's what I think a sandbox game is. GTA3 (especially San Andreas) was filled with that kind of stuff. GTA4 dropped the ball when it came to that (though it did do other things much better).

I was never remotely trying to insult Mafia by saying that I don't think it's a sandbox game, by the way. I just don't think it has all that much in common with GTA and its clones beyond a few broad generalizations. I think it was a much better game, too.
I'm pretty sure the definition for sandbox is actually not that wide-ranging or ambiguous. The term clearly comes from how children play in sandboxes. It is not so much about emergent gameplay as it is the freedom to play how you want. The game gives you a set of tools and you go wild under a loose set of constraints. If you think about the sandbox modes in games like Rollercoaster Tycoon you get a clearer picture of what the word "sandbox" means in these contexts. I would consider the PS2-era GTAs sandbox games because it gave you so much random shit to do inbetween missions that were largely independant of the core experience. GTA4 has some of these like the friends system, the Brucie shit like car racing, and such but it obviously had many fewer of these elements than any of the PS2 era GTAs. Mafia has even fewer as far as the main game goes. I maintain that the free-ride extreme mode is a purer example of sandbox gameplay than any GTA game.

I realize that you are not insulting Mafia in any way, I'm just trying to elucidate some things.
 
wmat said:
Well, I killed them. I couldn't find the fucking key, so I started killing people. It happens way too often. That's what F3 lacks: Psychiatric Help.
I botched that mission up in a much more fucked up way.
I arrived at the tower to kill Tenpenny and the other dude to shove the megaton thing in their face, but I never intended to blow up the town. After I killed him I tried to do that mission and I couldn't figure out a way to do it the peaceful way with Tenpenny dead, and then after botching that up, the violent way too. In my quest to get that shit done I ended killing all ghouls (who I was routing for), then all the residents, then letting the evil ghouls in (even though everyone on both sides were already dead), then blowing up megaton in an emotionally charged depressed-yet-vengeful way, then jumping off the top of the tower to my death vowing never to return to that character because I had decided that her deeds were unforgivable.

That's what F3 lacks: Psychiatric Help.
Indeed.
 
I can't fucking wait, Mafia is one of my favorite games ever. For quite some time I never even dared to believe it would get a sequel, thank God it did.

Oh, btw, the racing mission wasn't THAT hard if you just gently rolled into the corners and accelerated out of them. When I got the hang of it the competitors fell way behind.
 
830920 said:
I can't fucking wait, Mafia is one of my favorite games ever. For quite some time I never even dared to believe it would get a sequel, thank God it did.

Oh, btw, the racing mission wasn't THAT hard if you just gently rolled into the corners and accelerated out of them. When I got the hang of it the competitors fell way behind.
If I'm not mistaken, people here are talking about the racing mission in the state it was in before the patch.

When they patched out the glitch that enabled you to skip whole sections of the track, they also made it easier.
 
wmat said:
Well, I killed them. I couldn't find the fucking key, so I started killing people. It happens way too often. That's what F3 lacks: Psychiatric Help.

What key?
 
wmat said:
For the cellar part you can enter from outside the tower, the guard at the counter has it if I recall correctly

Daring Dashwood stole a copy from him so he could explore the tower. You can get it from him. He is the one reason I found a peaceful solution to the whole thing.
 
HK-47 said:
Daring Dashwood stole a copy from him so he could explore the tower. You can get it from him. He is the one reason I found a peaceful solution to the whole thing.
I walked away from it and never looked back.

Sometimes I cry in my sleep, my dog says. I think I'll kill the dog.
 
wmat said:
If I'm not mistaken, people here are talking about the racing mission in the state it was in before the patch.

When they patched out the glitch that enabled you to skip whole sections of the track, they also made it easier.

I know, I'm just saying it wasn't that hard if you use the right technique. I can see why they patched it though.
 
The beginning of Mafia was complete crap and almost me quit an otherwise fantastic game, I'm hoping the second one doesn't start off by making drive from point to A to B over and over again without any action and virtually playing like a less fun speed limit enforced version of Crazy Taxi. I've never seen cops so on top of people breaking the speed limit, not even in real life.
 
Illusion Softworks (now 2KCzech) are probably my favourite developers. Hidden & Dangerous blew me away when it came out, and to this day I still think I've sunk more hours into that game (plus the expansion) than any other game I've played. Mafia was brilliant as well. I never got a chance to play Hidden & Dangerous 2 (I was out of the PC gaming field by then) but I'm sure Mafia 2 will be brilliant.

The only question mark will be whether the console versions can match up to the PC version. The original Mafia was terrible on consoles; having said that, I'm sure the consoles will be much more of a focus this time around than they were last time.
 
endlessflood said:
Illusion Softworks (now 2KCzech) are probably my favourite developers. Hidden & Dangerous blew me away when it came out, and to this day I still think I've sunk more hours into that game (plus the expansion) than any other game I've played. Mafia was brilliant as well. I never got a chance to play Hidden & Dangerous 2 (I was out of the PC gaming field by then) but I'm sure Mafia 2 will be brilliant.

The only question mark will be whether the console versions can match up to the PC version. The original Mafia was terrible on consoles; having said that, I'm sure the consoles will be much more of a focus this time around than they were last time.

Agreed. But you can bet the console ports will be extremely comparable this time around. The ports for M1 were very much an afterthought. This time the game will have been made with the 3 platforms in mind.
 
HiResDes said:
The beginning of Mafia was complete crap and almost me quit an otherwise fantastic game, I'm hoping the second one doesn't start off by making drive from point to A to B over and over again without any action and virtually playing like a less fun speed limit enforced version of Crazy Taxi. I've never seen cops so on top of people breaking the speed limit, not even in real life.
Dude, the game was trying to put you into that mindset that the guy didn't really have an interesting life. That way when the mafia comes and the shit goes down the player feels the same sense of release and adventure that the character does.
 
TheLegendary said:
Agreed. But you can bet the console ports will be extremely comparable this time around. The ports for M1 were very much an afterthought. This time the game will have been made with the 3 platforms in mind.
I think they are going to put more thought into the PC version than most developers do these days, even the more PC-oriented ones. I do have faith that the console versions will be far better than they were for the original. I think remember reading somewhere that they were trying to put in as much detail as Crysis, so I doubt they'd be able to translate the whole experience over to consoles to the same degree that Far Cry 2 did.
 
Did we play the same game? Mafia on the PS2 at least had impossible controls, especially aiming. It sucked big time.
 
{Mike} said:
Did we play the same game? Mafia on the PS2 at least had impossible controls, especially aiming. It sucked big time.

No, we didn't play the same game. You played the PS2 version and everyone else played the PC version.
 
BobsRevenge said:
I think they are going to put more thought into the PC version than most developers do these days, even the more PC-oriented ones. I do have faith that the console versions will be far better than they were for the original. I think remember reading somewhere that they were trying to put in as much detail as Crysis, so I doubt they'd be able to translate the whole experience over to consoles to the same degree that Far Cry 2 did.

I think that goes without saying. Graphics won't compare obviously but the experience will be identical between the platforms this time. I wouldn't get your hopes up about it being like Crysis. Crysis was clearly developed only with the PC in mind. Odds are that Illusion is developing for the 3 platforms simultaneously, and while the graphics will certainly look superior on the PC they're going to ensure the main game functionality works across the 3. There's no way they have a large enough dev team to make two separate versions.
 
Zeliard said:
You have to play by the developers' rules in Fallout 3. There's virtually no emergent gameplay. I guess we all have different definitions of "sandbox". I think it requires being able to bend or break the rules and accomplish things in the game as you see fit, and Fallout 3 doesn't really allow you to do that outside of the tools it already provides you.

Is there an accepted definition for "emergent gameplay"? Because to me, it means those times when you're doing something that's not part of any scripted sequence or narrative in the original game, like going into a town in Fallout 3 and killing everyone, then stealing all their shit and selling their children to the slavers. When you can tell a story about your last gaming session, a story which, like I said, has nothing to do with the one the developers made, then that's "emergent gameplay" for me at least, and in Fallout 3 you can create hundreds of these little stories. Far Cry 2 is another perfect example.
 
TheLegendary said:
I think that goes without saying. Graphics won't compare obviously but the experience will be identical between the platforms this time. I wouldn't get your hopes up about it being like Crysis. Crysis was clearly developed only with the PC in mind. Odds are that Illusion is developing for the 3 platforms simultaneously, and while the graphics will certainly look superior on the PC they're going to ensure the main game functionality works across the 3. There's no way they have a large enough dev team to make two separate versions.
Yeah, I think Illusion has to put more consideration into the console versions and I'm sure they will be excellent. I just think that the difference between the console versions of the game and the PC version will be more obvious for Mafia 2 than most games. Probably like a Far Cry 2, except likely moreso.

edit: Ugh, no one look at the post times of this and my first post in this thread. I need to go to sleep.
 
BobsRevenge said:
OMG! Do you guys remember that hilarious mission in free-ride extreme where you had to hunt down this dude that ran extremely fast? I remember laughing my ass off during that mission, especially after the idiot got hit by a trolly and I won it (if I remember correctly, which I might not considering how long ago this was).

Hah, Speedy Gonzales or whatever. And that invicible guy you had to follow, sweet stuff. And the bomb rigged car Speed-rip off :D
 
wormstrangler said:
No, we didn't play the same game. You played the PS2 version and everyone else played the PC version.

Zinnnng!

So the question arises, will Mafia 2 work well on the consoles this time around? I seem to remember Mafia 1 was first a PC game that was later brought to consoles... but if Mafia2 is being built for the 360/PS3 alongside the PC, maybe things will work out better.
 
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