Elex Elex First Impressions

BrianOConnell said:

Its strange when you think about it that the voice overs are so poor (in English anyway) when you look at Larian getting very good voice acting and I'm guessing they are not spending millions maybe just put some care and attention into it where perhaps PB just contract it out and don't really care about the result. Translation has always been dodgy at best too when it comes to English with some dialog at times not making sense which again is probably to do with how much a developer gives a 'you know what' about it. All rather odd really. A game like Elex with some polish would be massive I think.

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Translation and localisation are classic publisher responsibilities. Both depend heavily on the budget allocated by the publisher. Larian is self-publishing and their game cost at least twice as much as Elex. Of course it's not clear if their loca budget, relative to the amount of dialogs, was bigger than PB's. It's clear though that for Larian the lead language was English while for PB it was German. Their German voice-overs are usually pretty good. It's not clear "just contracting out" would reduce the quality. Don't forgot that English is a foreign language for PB. Even if their English is good, there's still a language barrier.

I quite like it so far. Nice combat, decent graphics, nice exploration, interesting atmosphere. I just find the NPC's rather uninteresting so far. Would have been nice if Ragnar and his crew were inaccessible like in Gothic series and hade some more charisma. I also prefer fantasy rpg compared to this mishmash.

crpgnut said:

Probably true, so Take 2(?) instead of PB then. I'm not against the game at all, but the price point is wrong imo.

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Take 2 doesn't publish interesting games.

What sense would it make for THQ Nordic to leave 20$ from every hardcore fan lying on the floor? PB probably has a burn rate of ca. 140k€ per month, and the game took more than 3 years to develop. This is a mid budget title. They need the 20$ extra the 1-300000 fans are willing to pay. The price will sink fast enough.
See the interview with Feargus last week for the typical problems of A titles today.

crpgnut said:

This feels like a $29.99 title all the way.

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No way. The game is polished, enormous, 100% hand-crafted with a large attention to detail even down to the contents of every chest being hand-placed. To me, it's well worth what I paid for it. I'll continue to buy their games in the future if they stay at that price. Not many RPG devs I would pay that price for but PB is one of them up there with Bethesda for me.

And for the record I wouldn't spend anything on Witcher 3 or Prey though. They just don't interest me like Elder Scrolls, ELEX and some of the bigger indies like Obsidian and InXile RPGs do…

crpgnut said:

This feels like a $29.99 title all the way.

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In a world where all game are treated equally, one can say yes this game is $29.99 title all the way. However in the world we live in, if exact game was made by Bethesda, EA, Ubi etc, lot of game reviewers will be lining up to give blow job to the dev, the very least a hand job!

lostforever said:

In a world where all game are treated equally, one can say yes this game is $29.99 title all the way. However in the world we live in, if exact game was made by Bethesda, EA, Ubi etc, lot of game reviewers will be lining up to give blow job to the dev, the very least a hand job!

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Lol… funny, but true though.

crpgnut said:

The big thing for me, is that PB can't use the small team cry. They're charging AAA money for their game, not indie dough. If you charge $50 retail then your stuff needs to match up evenly with other games like Prey/Witcher 3/etc that charged $50. Though I like the little I've seen so far, no way this game is comparable to AAA titles. This feels like a $29.99 title all the way.

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Just curious, but how is it not comparable to AAA titles? The animations are sub-par, but then so are the animations in TES/Fallout. I think the amount of content is a better measuring stick when it comes to price.

Fluent said:

And for the record I wouldn't spend anything on Witcher 3 or Prey though. They just don't interest me like Elder Scrolls, ELEX and some of the bigger indies like Obsidian and InXile RPGs do…

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I think you tend to cheat yourself with a little narrow-mindedness sometimes. You should actually try playing those games instead of judging them by YouTube videos.

I play plenty of games doggie. And I don't watch YouTube gaming videos.

I'm just saying that Witcher 3 in particular doesn't interest me much, for several reasons. And Prey does nothing for me. I'm a diehard old-school type RPG fan.

Nothing wrong with being a fan of a particular sub-genre, but don't downplay games you've never played.

Also, don't lie, it doesn't suit you. You've talked about watching YouTube gaming videos more than once.

Who's downplaying? I'm saying I'm not interested in them, hence I wouldn't spend money on them. If you enjoy them then cool.

One thing I'm finding annoying about the game is that it sometimes doesn't recognize my controller is turned on and switch the input to controller instead of keyboard. I've had to restart the game several times sometimes, and get lucky for it to work. Seems like a bug.

They should just add an option that allows you to manually choose your input device instead of auto-detection.

wolfgrimdark said:

- Graphics are nice with some good lighting. But lens flare is too intense at times and can overwhelm the scene instead of enhancing it.

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The HDR lighting effects are the most intense I've seen in a game to date, but I like the realism. For example, when you walk into a dark building from outside and can't see crap for a few seconds until your eyes adjust. I wish more games would start doing that.

wolfgrimdark said:

- No ability to hide the GUI, just something I like for screenshots being a screenshot nut

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Options --> Gameplay--> HUD

The environment and location design is pretty nice. Just explored that weird building, Infinite something, that Ragnar stays in. Very high attention to detail there. Reminded me of a Fallout 3 location but in 3rd-person and no loading screens, complete with a lot of environmental storytelling.

I bought the game for more than $29.99 so even though I don't think it's worth it, I made the purchase. However, I think that price point is more accurate. This game looks old imo. Old and poorly designed too. It's big though and it has lots of macho dudes running around speaking very poor English. I think animations are better in almost anything over these too.

Still, the game has a little of the Risen charm and the exploration might be spades for this loot-aholic. Okay, I shouldn't multi-task while posting, but hopefully you get the gist.

I looked for that HUD thing under gameplay and couldn't find it. Will look again - been playing the game 4 hours solid so breaking to take the dogs for a walk. Must have missed it somehow. Maybe I was expecting a key command to do it.

The adaption (something ENB does well if used for Skyrim) is fine. That wasn't my issue with the lighting. Its the lens flare with the blue tint. It is to intense for scenes at times (depends on time of day, location, and all that of course). But that is just my personal view after doing so much with ENB based graphic work. Overall the lighting is nice.

It is a rather addictive and fun game and I don't really care that much if the graphics, animations, characters, or textures are not AAA. Sure it would be nice if you could see your HP and it had higher quality assets but after playing so many old style games it really isn't a big deal for me - especially since the overall game play is working fine and I like the content, mechanics, story, etc.

The content is excellent. The way quests start to entwine with each other is very well done and enjoying all the side stories going on in Goliet with the clans and people in them. I also love the day/night cycle and the less hand holding in many areas. Even the Adjunct is rather cool and getting a feel now for how much distance I need to look at it. Just means being discreet and that fits into the game nicely. Even the talk you have with Jora about it being in implant was nicely done.

Can't really rate it though as way too soon. Still in Goliet and haven't done much real combat. But my impression of it is very favorable at this point. A rough gem but still a gem.

Elwro said:

Unfortunately I do not have financial resources right now to really update my PC; it was enough for Risen 3 but last year it couldn't run Obduction so I fear that it won't run Elex properly. Without a demo I cannot test it so I'm thinking about buying the game for my non-pro PS4. Is anyone playing this on this console? Is it playable?

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I'm playing on a 6 year old AMD cpu @ 2.9Ghz and an R7 260X and with a little tweaking I get more than 40fps. Sometimes it dips to 30fps but it's fine.

JDR13 said:

The HDR lighting effects are the most intense I've seen in a game to date, but I like the realism. For example, when you walk into a dark building from outside and can't see crap for a few seconds until your eyes adjust. I wish more games would start doing that.

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Yeah, I as quite impressed by that simple effect as well, it's a nice touch.

I'm liking the skill-based dialogue options, but hell, I'm never developed enough to use them! Took me about three hours to get my scores up enough to wear some hunter armour, but still getting quite hurt by little beasties. I feel like such a n00b in a very dangerous world, and that's kinda exhilirating.

yeah the feeling in the first hours is that you grow very slow, every skill requires x and y attributes and gotta think carefully what to choose; i wonder around what level you finish it since there are a shitload of skills . I grabbed a shield earlier, now its a different life, i block the shit out of the nasty scavangers....i mean biters

I have been playing SimCity Buildit for the past 6 months, once you understand the mechanics that game is like crack. So very very hard to stop. I'm still dipping into right now as I start to explore Elex more and more.

But Elex has its own specials charm. I was running around the first city looking for weapons and a place to sleep and it gradually got dark. I will probably have to mess around with the setting a bit but some of the very dark evacuated building were too dark to check out at night. There were lights and sounds I could not identify. I thought I heard something and took out my axe and swung. The interface said I was swinging at a rat. It was highlighted by my swing but I certainly couldn't see it. Oh, and there was a rickety door between me and the rat that I did not see so my swing and a "whiff" didn't do squat. Can rats get injured from splinter debris???

Hmmm, I gonna have to explore this place better, F&$( SimCity Builit.

porcozaur said:

. I grabbed a shield earlier, now its a different life, i block the shit out of the nasty scavangers….i mean biters

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Dagnabbit, that's what I need! I went up a level before I last saved, so hopefully I have enough points to get my stats to what is required to weild one. Going in...