[Nemesis6]

I'll go first - in missions near the Capella jump node, you can actually see that it's a binary system. The developers could easily have slacked off and just created one big star, but there are clearly two. For me, that's a biggie.

[Dragon]

Indeed, but there should be four stars, Capella is not a binary, but a quadruple system.

[Aardwolf]

I'll go first - in missions near the Capella jump node, you can actually see that it's a binary system. The developers could easily have slacked off and just created one big star, but there are clearly two. For me, that's a biggie.

That's a mediavps thing. It wasn't like that in retail.

[Nemesis6]

I'll go first - in missions near the Capella jump node, you can actually see that it's a binary system. The developers could easily have slacked off and just created one big star, but there are clearly two. For me, that's a biggie.

That's a mediavps thing. It wasn't like that in retail.

You know I had that in the back of my mind as I typed it up. Credit where it is really due - The graphical geniuses behind the MediaVPS.

Also, yeah, forgot about those two extra red dwarfs in Capella. Chalk up another "gah".

[Polpolion]

Funnily enough, the little things are what really add to games. Freespace did a pretty good job at this, though it's probably mainly because I don't know too much about the topic to be annoyed by incorrect little things. The star thing with Cappella could be hastily rationalized by saying that you're positioned so you can only see X amount of stars at one time. Very unlikely, but it's still a possibility. Similarly, little things can ruin games, too. Take MW2, for example. ACOG sights do not run electricity; they would not go dark like they did. Privates are not put in charge of half squads, especially when a corporal is included in that half squad.

I think part of the difference here is that any major inconsistencies in FS would be rooted in FS's universe, and thus somewhat justifiable if you elaborate on the universe enough. Still, it's not good to have to do that, as I'm sure many of you are aware, and I am so painfully aware myself. MW2, however, takes place still in a different universe, but one MUCH more similar to modern day, and thus the little things stick out much more.

Still, little things are what they seem: little things. They're annoying and they really detract or add from or to the game, but they don't break or make the game. A game that I'm quite confident that did this in a stellar manner is Deus Ex. Everything is so thorough; for nearly whatever the player does, there is a reasonable consequence for it. The same can be said for Freespace I feel, but with much less persistence between missions. Even within missions, it doesn't quite match up to Deus Ex, but then again, not much does in these regards.

tl;dr little things are like bonus points for developers.

[Titan]

Funnily enough, the little things are what really add to games. Freespace did a pretty good job at this, though it's probably mainly because I don't know too much about the topic to be annoyed by incorrect little things. The star thing with Cappella could be hastily rationalized by saying that you're positioned so you can only see X amount of stars at one time. Very unlikely, but it's still a possibility. Similarly, little things can ruin games, too. Take MW2, for example. ACOG sights do not run electricity; they would not go dark like they did. Privates are not put in charge of half squads, especially when a corporal is included in that half squad.

See FS2, 1st playthrough of about half the campaigns available.

[NGTM-1R]

Funnily enough, the little things are what really add to games. Freespace did a pretty good job at this, though it's probably mainly because I don't know too much about the topic to be annoyed by incorrect little things. The star thing with Cappella could be hastily rationalized by saying that you're positioned so you can only see X amount of stars at one time. Very unlikely, but it's still a possibility.

The Binary we see in The Lion's Den is actually the wrong one. Most binaries, if you were close enough for one of them to look like a star, the other one's going to be about as bright as Venus is. Or less.

[Polpolion]

The Binary we see in The Lion's Den is actually the wrong one. Most binaries, if you were close enough for one of them to look like a star, the other one's going to be about as bright as Venus is. Or less.

Yup. I didn't know this. I can't say this is a purely aesthetic "little thing" though, when every time you look at a sun in the game you get a gigantic glare and can see very little. The little things that were messed up in MW2 were things that were messed up from a much more familiar viewpoint for me personally, and so I was annoyed by them more. Granted, both this business with the binary stars from FS2 and ACOG sights from MW2 are both extremely aesthetic compared to the "little things" I mentioned with Deus Ex and the rest of Freespace. I guess a solid comparison between Deus Ex and Freespace would be saving Paul in Deus Ex and killing the first Shivan in Freespace. Both aren't really intended outcomes, but they were both foreseen and handled appropriately. Neither made a major impact in the progress of the game, but they don't need to make major impacts in the progress of the game to be good. It's essentially the result of them paying attention to this kind of detail that makes these things great.

tl;dr the less obscure and more impacting detail, the greater the effect on the overall quality of the game

[Woolie Wool]

Still, little things are what they seem: little things. They're annoying and they really detract or add from or to the game, but they don't break or make the game. A game that I'm quite confident that did this in a stellar manner is Deus Ex. Everything is so thorough; for nearly whatever the player does, there is a reasonable consequence for it. The same can be said for Freespace I feel, but with much less persistence between missions. Even within missions, it doesn't quite match up to Deus Ex, but then again, not much does in these regards.

tl;dr little things are like bonus points for developers.

I wonder how many sci-fi games would benefit from a talented professional writer who would not only write the story but design the universe and game world and set the "rules" for it. After all, movies and TV shows aren't written by the camera crew and special effects technicians, so why should programmers and artists write the story of a game?

[Polpolion]

I wonder how many sci-fi games would benefit from a talented professional writer who would not only write the story but design the universe and game world and set the "rules" for it. After all, movies and TV shows aren't written by the camera crew and special effects technicians, so why should programmers and artists write the story of a game?

Everything can benefit from a talented professional writer.

Unfortunately, even when great professional writers are involved, there is still a heck of a lot of inherent quality loss when transposing works through forms of media. Actually, I shouldn't say quality loss, it's more of a distortion of the story, and thus all of the messages and things like that. But often times that does mean a quality loss...

[Scotty]

Sort of like Adaptation Distillation?

Oh, a combination of that and New Media Are Evil would probably fit better.

[Polpolion]

I dunno if I'd want to bind it to a specific trope. It's more of a law of media or inevitable phenomenon. Different forms of media inherently tell stories in different ways. I don't think you could get a story perfectly transposed from literature to film, even if you had two cloned authors brought up in identical conditions, except one works with literature and the other with film. Even if you remove all respective paradigms that goes with each medium, they're just too different.

Take Starship Troopers, for example. It's a perfectly fine casual action movie. Not exactly intellectually stimulating (unless you really call that intellectual...), but it's enjoyable in it's own right to it's target audience. The book, on the other hand, is simply completely different. It's not the greatest novel, but it's dang fun to to read. But if you've ever watched both the film and read the book, you know that they're completely different works. Same goes for I am Legend. Actually, moreso probably.

All this considered, I'd still highly recommend that any sort of work hire a professional writer, regardless of the medium it's working in.

[Woolie Wool]

I wonder how many sci-fi games would benefit from a talented professional writer who would not only write the story but design the universe and game world and set the "rules" for it. After all, movies and TV shows aren't written by the camera crew and special effects technicians, so why should programmers and artists write the story of a game?

Everything can benefit from a talented professional writer.

Unfortunately, even when great professional writers are involved, there is still a heck of a lot of inherent quality loss when transposing works through forms of media. Actually, I shouldn't say quality loss, it's more of a distortion of the story, and thus all of the messages and things like that. But often times that does mean a quality loss...

Video games are rather unique in that they very rarely have professional writers on the game dev team creating an original universe (rather than licensing an existing property), and in many cases they're severely constrained by the directives of the programmers and graphic artists. At least a professional writer could make a universe more consistent; most video games I've played are riddled with inconsistencies or even total nonsense. Even FreeSpace is crammed with inconsistencies and illogical things, especially in the first game: the Subach HL-7 replacing the obviously superior Avenger, the way the scale of the FS universe in FS1 seems to vary mission to mission (in some missions the GTA and PVN seem to control huge swaths of the galaxy (the Ribos system having nodes leading to "dozens of star systems", Terran Command's remarkably laid-back attitude towards three systems suddenly being completely overrun by the Shivans after the mission with the Plato, the ludicrous size of the Ancient empire in the cutscenes, the frequent references to "the galaxy" in the early game when in FS2 it is shown that the systems known to the GTVA are confined to an extremely small part of the galaxy, etc.), in others the universe more reflects FS2's fairly small scale, the Artemis D.H. (it's better! Trust us on this! Really!), the Lucifer (fluff says three SSLs, the model has two), all sorts of subspace-node-related plot holes, the way the GTA pulls technology after technology out of its ass in FS1 and the laughably small array of technologies they are canonically shown to have at the beginning compared to the Vasudans, and so on.