Are there any games you don't play as it was intended to be played? If so, what game and how?
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I play heavily modded Elder Scrolls, where my character never touches the main story.
My favorite Morrowind run was a princess who ended up creating an agricultural baron, buying up every plantation and owning probably hundreds of slaves. She also got into the skooma business on the side (needed money for all of her dresses). Morrowind had a ton of wacky mods that were just fun to play in general - people made Star Wars and LOTR questlines. There’s also the work of Tommy Khajiit (RIP), which is something unique and which has never gotten the respect it deserved. (Or Lady Rae - she liked to recollect the game bright neon colors, and basically got bullied out of the modding community.)
Skyrim is a hunting/vagrant simulator for me. I usually play a Dunmer refugee and avoid the in-game quests entirely. Survival and economy mods to make the focus of the gameplay getting enough gold to afford a room for the night, tweaks to loot to make things more “mundane.”
I always like to see people who go all in on the roleplaying in RPGs.
I do wish people would leave mods that aren't for them alone. There are a bunch of mods extremely not to my taste that I just scroll past instead of intentionally clicking to tell the mod author just how much it is not to my taste and that they should not have made it because I am uninterested in the content.
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I play heavily modded Elder Scrolls, where my character never touches the main story.
My favorite Morrowind run was a princess who ended up creating an agricultural baron, buying up every plantation and owning probably hundreds of slaves. She also got into the skooma business on the side (needed money for all of her dresses). Morrowind had a ton of wacky mods that were just fun to play in general - people made Star Wars and LOTR questlines. There’s also the work of Tommy Khajiit (RIP), which is something unique and which has never gotten the respect it deserved. (Or Lady Rae - she liked to recollect the game bright neon colors, and basically got bullied out of the modding community.)
Skyrim is a hunting/vagrant simulator for me. I usually play a Dunmer refugee and avoid the in-game quests entirely. Survival and economy mods to make the focus of the gameplay getting enough gold to afford a room for the night, tweaks to loot to make things more “mundane.”
I'm not into mods but if I remember right, isn't Lady Rae the one who left the modding community and started making music?
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I always like to see people who go all in on the roleplaying in RPGs.
I do wish people would leave mods that aren't for them alone. There are a bunch of mods extremely not to my taste that I just scroll past instead of intentionally clicking to tell the mod author just how much it is not to my taste and that they should not have made it because I am uninterested in the content.
Modding is a really under appreciated art form.
Downloading unhinged Morrowind mods in the mid naughts exposed me to new franchises, music, ideas… Like this banger, which plays at some point in the Underground 2 along with this one. (btw, Dawnguard is Emil or whoever wrote it ripping off story beats from a 20 year old Morrowind mod based on the Underworld series lol)
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An argument could be made that Gwent offers better gameplay than the larger game in which it resides.
Are we certain Witcher is the larger game in which Gwent resides and not the other way around?
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I'm not into mods but if I remember right, isn't Lady Rae the one who left the modding community and started making music?
Did she make music? Holy shit - if you have a link I’ve been trying to figure out what happened to her for years. She’s genuinely a major inspiration for my painting and art.
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An argument could be made that Gwent offers better gameplay than the larger game in which it resides.
An argument could be made that you are a genius. Both arguments would be equally wrong.
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I know I remember seeing some people talk about how nice some of the environments in Hitman were, and that they'd just walk around as a tourist from time to time, treating it like a walking simulator/virtual tourism thing instead of the stealth assassination game it is. Curious about other things like that, where you play a game totally differently than it was meant to be played.
I like to play crusader kings II from the point of view of God. Using console commands, sketchy cheat mod, and knowing the right game mechanics you can make characters do all types of crazy stuff. Using the "observe" console command let's you play as a spectator, you can use the "play" command followed by a character ID and you will jump into playing as that character. I like to find a character, give them insane stats, and give them all of the best traits, make them immortal and then spectate for a few hundred years and see what my chosen one made the world into. I also like to try to determine before hand what I want them to do, like becoming emperor of brittania or whatever, and see how close I can get from just 1 or 2 interactions with them.
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Then you purchased a wrong game and should just play solitaire.
Witcher 3 is absolutely great, but if you just go through only the main quest, won't explore the world and won't do side quests then I can see you ending up disappointed.
What I like is that side quests can impact the main quest and even the ending.
Then you purchased a wrong game
Perhaps.
But you've made a lot of assumptions in your comment, and you're mistaken about most of them.
I played the side quests. Many came with a good story, but a story is not gameplay. Nearly all of them were copy/paste instances of a small pool of tedious tasks. There were a few good exceptions, but very few.
I explored the world, as much as one can "explore" something that is fully labeled with point-of-interest markers. They lead the player to a repetitive handful of uninspired encounters, cloned over and over again.
It has plenty of other flaws as well. If you loved it, then I'm happy for you, but I found the gameplay boring.
The strengths I found in The Witcher 3 were its story, lore, characters, and Gwent. Not its gameplay.
To each their own, I suppose.
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I know I remember seeing some people talk about how nice some of the environments in Hitman were, and that they'd just walk around as a tourist from time to time, treating it like a walking simulator/virtual tourism thing instead of the stealth assassination game it is. Curious about other things like that, where you play a game totally differently than it was meant to be played.
The only way to play NASCAR games is to drive backwards and see how many cars you can involve in a wreck.
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The only way to play NASCAR games is to drive backwards and see how many cars you can involve in a wreck.
Might as well play Flatout, you get nos from the damage you cause.
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I know I remember seeing some people talk about how nice some of the environments in Hitman were, and that they'd just walk around as a tourist from time to time, treating it like a walking simulator/virtual tourism thing instead of the stealth assassination game it is. Curious about other things like that, where you play a game totally differently than it was meant to be played.
The only way you can play soccer games is to see how many of your team can get red carded by end of match.
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I know I remember seeing some people talk about how nice some of the environments in Hitman were, and that they'd just walk around as a tourist from time to time, treating it like a walking simulator/virtual tourism thing instead of the stealth assassination game it is. Curious about other things like that, where you play a game totally differently than it was meant to be played.
For a while, I played the MMO Guild Wars 2 as a music simulator. It has playable in game musical instruments that you can equip, and play with the number keys. A-G are represented as numbers 1-8 with 9 and 0 swapping an octave lower or higher. Killing monsters? Doing dungeons? Raids and world bosses? Nah I'm just chilling in a beautiful forested cliffside near a waterfall figuring out an arrangement for the Lord of the Rings theme.
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I know I remember seeing some people talk about how nice some of the environments in Hitman were, and that they'd just walk around as a tourist from time to time, treating it like a walking simulator/virtual tourism thing instead of the stealth assassination game it is. Curious about other things like that, where you play a game totally differently than it was meant to be played.
Who amongst us hasn't played GTA at least once while trying to drive around and follow all the traffic laws for absolutely no reason at all
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Hah. As a kid I used to just hang out or make up stories in Lucasarts games, like Monkey Island and especially Maniac Mansion. I know I wasn't alone, because there were multipe contemporary games built around that idea, including form Lucas, even before The Sims came out. Toe Jam and Earl 2: Panic on Funkotron was also a good, weird roleplaying avenue.
And I did engage in some amount of "let's make my house in this map editor" back when games came with map editors. We all did, I think.
Oh, and some games I'd play just to listen to the music. It's hard to argue this was unintended, though, given how many games had sound test modes. I remember I'd fire up Panzer Dragoon just to gawk at the intro, which I realize seems silly if you look at it now.
Panic on Funkotron is a great for that. It has light platforming, chill vibes, and great tunes. It's a great game world to just hang out in.
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Who amongst us hasn't played GTA at least once while trying to drive around and follow all the traffic laws for absolutely no reason at all
Hmm. Nope.
That's what Streets of SimCity was for!
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Hmm. Nope.
That's what Streets of SimCity was for!
Well unless you did sunday driving... And put weapons on your car so you could go around demolishing the buildings you had built up in Sim City.
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An argument could be made that Gwent offers better gameplay than the larger game in which it resides.
There is no argument if the statement is objectively true
The Witcher 3's gameplay was so bad that I couldn't finish it (and the map so uninteresting, but that's another story). Gwent was pretty cool though
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I'm playing Overwatch but actually having fun while doing so /s
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I know I remember seeing some people talk about how nice some of the environments in Hitman were, and that they'd just walk around as a tourist from time to time, treating it like a walking simulator/virtual tourism thing instead of the stealth assassination game it is. Curious about other things like that, where you play a game totally differently than it was meant to be played.
I played stealth games like Hitman like a mass murderer.
I also play the "infiltrator" class in Mass Effect without tactical cloak. I mean it's a mix of soldier and engineer, why should it be focused on stealth ?
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Might as well play Flatout, you get nos from the damage you cause.
Or wreckfest
