Diablo II: Resurrected

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

day 1 dlc says it all really.

"Day 1 DLC" says nothing, as far as I'm concerned. I've never understood why some wield the words as if they're something to be guilty about. Downloadable? Good. Extra content? You mean like if somehow Lord of Destruction had been available on the same launch day as Diablo 2? Hell yeah, no problem there. So the idea that "day 1 DLC" is inherently a bad thing has always struck me as most illogical.

I don't have a easy to remember catchphrase for what I think "says it all really." But I do have a kind of mental image for it.

There's a point in the early section of some very few games — the original Diablo 2 being one of them, Super Metroid for SNES being another — where the craftsmanship of EVERY facet of the experience is such that you begin to notice a conspicuous lack of flaws. Conspicuous, as in: while you can believe your eyes and ears that they don't exist now, you can't quite believe that the flaws never existed. So you begin to imagine parts of the game where you might have created flaws, flaws that DID, in your narrative, exist, but then were culled by a diligent game developer employee. You imagine this employee, quite visually despite having no idea what such employees actually look like, playing the game over and over to be irritated by the flaws, then removing them so they wouldn't irritate you, even though you can't quite know what those flaws were.

A truly great game is swimming with the ghosts of design mistakes. It doesn't feel inhabited, really — the dead do not inhabit — but neither does it feel like a place that has NEVER been inhabited. But you definitely get the feeling, from how things are arranged, that some intelligence had been here before you — and had loved the place very much. Perhaps dangerously too much. Enough to create a few ghosts. Enough to leave a piece of their soul behind.

A truly great game feels like trespassing, without ever setting eyes upon the owner — indeed, who knows if the owner will, or can, return? If I had to pick just one word for it, such a game feels haunted. Not in the nightmarish supernatural sense, but how it would feel to actually spend a night very much awake in a place local legend describes as haunted.

Ironically, it is the terrible game that feels like going where no man has gone before. If there is negative connotation to find in the phrase "day 1," it is in seeing a desperate last-minute scramble to first inhabit such places while you're first arriving in the game world. You simply know they won't be ready in time — not really ready. One does not simply haunt the new.

Or to put it another way, there's nothing wrong with your Day 1. But there's a lot wrong with playing a game during the development team's day 1. Or day 2. Or any day before you can feel the ghosts begin to swim.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

day 1 dlc says it all really.

"Day 1 DLC" says nothing, as far as I'm concerned. I've never understood why some wield the words as if they're something to be guilty about. Downloadable? Good. Extra content? You mean like if somehow Lord of Destruction had been available on the same launch day as Diablo 2? Hell yeah, no problem there. So the idea that "day 1 DLC" is inherently a bad thing has always struck me as most illogical.

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GusTheCrocodile wrote:

The core reason why "Day 1 DLC" is perceived as a problem is because gamers have allowed themselves to be trained into a "completionist" consumer mentality obsessed with the idea of owning the "full" game.

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Omnicide24 wrote:

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GusTheCrocodile wrote:

The core reason why "Day 1 DLC" is perceived as a problem is because gamers have allowed themselves to be trained into a "completionist" consumer mentality obsessed with the idea of owning the "full" game.

I mean it's interesting that you think so but... no? I don't buy special/collectors/limited edition packages for extra money over the base game, and I would if your reasoning held up.

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Mikrotherion wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

There's a point in the early section of some very few games — the original Diablo 2 being one of them, Super Metroid for SNES being another — where the craftsmanship of EVERY facet of the experience is such that you begin to notice a conspicuous lack of flaws.

Spoiler

Conspicuous, as in: while you can believe your eyes and ears that they don't exist now, you can't quite believe that the flaws never existed. So you begin to imagine parts of the game where you might have created flaws, flaws that DID, in your narrative, exist, but then were culled by a diligent game developer employee. You imagine this employee, quite visually despite having no idea what such employees actually look like, playing the game over and over to be irritated by the flaws, then removing them so they wouldn't irritate you, even though you can't quite know what those flaws were.

A truly great game is swimming with the ghosts of design mistakes. It doesn't feel inhabited, really — the dead do not inhabit — but neither does it feel like a place that has NEVER been inhabited. But you definitely get the feeling, from how things are arranged, that some intelligence had been here before you — and had loved the place very much. Perhaps dangerously too much. Enough to create a few ghosts. Enough to leave a piece of their soul behind.

A truly great game feels like trespassing, without ever setting eyes upon the owner — indeed, who knows if the owner will, or can, return? If I had to pick just one word for it, such a game feels haunted. Not in the nightmarish supernatural sense, but how it would feel to actually spend a night very much awake in a place local legend describes as haunted.

Ironically, it is the terrible game that feels like going where no man has gone before. If there is negative connotation to find in the phrase "day 1," it is in seeing a desperate last-minute scramble to first inhabit such places while you're first arriving in the game world. You simply know they won't be ready in time — not really ready. One does not simply haunt the new.

Or to put it another way, there's nothing wrong with your Day 1. But there's a lot wrong with playing a game during the development team's day 1. Or day 2. Or any day before you can feel the ghosts begin to swim.

Very well written. :)
However, I don't agree that Diablo 2 is such a game.

Spoiler

I played D2 for a very long time and some aspects of it really fit your description above. Sound design, for example. Everything has its unique sound, so you don't need to see the swirling dots on your head to know you've been cursed with Iron Maiden.

Monster and skill design, however, were not so swimming in ghosts of flaws. They were there in persona. Remember vanilla Corpse Explosion? Just blew up the whole screen at higher levels.
Being stuck at Duriel because the portal did not appear? Werrrrlll... we have a workaround, Duriel now always drops a Scroll of Town Portal.

So while I did and do love Diablo 2, I think it is far from being (or having been) flawless from the beginning.