this post was submitted on 04 May 2025
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French noises: the game is blowing up and not without good reason. It's beautiful (awful flickering hair TAA artefacts and weird gormless facial expressions aside), the story is more mature than the usual slop gamers settle for, the style is shamelessly traced from persona five's notes but with unique aesthetic flair. I am a known "video game stories are mostly actively a negative addition" hater and I've been moved to tears. Shit slaps.

I just have one question, what is the point of all the hours you are meant to spend holding down sprint running backwards and forwards through a sequence of empty corridors waiting to find the next actually interesting thing? What does it add? The best defense I can think of is that it gives you time to listen to the great music?

The pacing is whack, it's banging fight. 5 minutes twiddling a joystick and occasionally pressing X, banging fight, 5 minutes twiddling, amazing fight, story beat, time to stop having fun because the overworld section is next!

Can someone please explain?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Something being there because it's there is not really a reason to sink Dev time and resources into it.

Most games with a sprint involve decision making. Usually something like a timer or stamina system with some mechanical implication for depleting it. E.g. if I travel faster now I won't be prepared for combat later. This balances player concerns about moving fast when feeling safe or fleeing, while making it interesting by punishing reckless use.

Most worthwhile game mechanics are like this. Sometimes things are just there for play, like jumping in MMOs which largely just allows playful social expression in an otherwise extremely limited media. Emotes in multiplayer games serve a similar purpose despite having no obvious mechanical link.

One case for a sprint without mechanical trade offs is player movement control. Less relevant on games with a controller input but sometimes there. Usual practice to to have a run/walk toggle button though, and just build the world scale so running feels good in almost all circumstances and turn it on by default.