I’m currently playing Saints’ Row The Third. In my time just running around, I sometimes engage in random carnage, mass shootings of pedestrians, etc. A moment ago, I caused such a scene, but hung around after clearing my police notoriety. As I was standing there, a cop came up, and started walking body-to-body, and bullet casing to bullet casing - he was examining the scene! It blew me away! I’ve also walked right into routine traffic stops, and observed as they either just end with someone driving or walking away, or escalate into shootouts, without my input, other than observing.
The Elder Scrolls are filled with these. I’m amazed that every book is readable and Skyrim feels like it has a real life to it. Yesterday, I came down to the river to collect some mudcrab souls and fournd them engaged in killing slaughterfish. I just kind of sat there and watched the feeding frenzy for a bit.
In Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl, I’ve been known to just hang around the camp fires and listen to the other stalkers chat in Russian, eat their meals and play the guitar/harmonica (Complete mod adds a lot of tracks).
The game has the NPCs all moving around and acting somewhat independent with or without you but one event sticks out. I was coming up on a location that I knew from previous games to have some enemy bandits and was always a tricky fight for me since I was poorly armed. This time, as I came up on it, I heard gunfire and then barking. A pack of wild dogs was attacking their location and winning the fight. I hid out for a good while, watched with my binoculars until the dogs were safely gone and looted the dead bandits’ weaponry. There’s a lot of “living world” stuff that goes on but that event stuck with me.
In Assassin’s Creed 3, the predatory animals will occasionally attack the soldiers marching around. I saw a bobcat kill two of them. (And then come for me.)
Fallout 3/New Vegas also has the NPC’s get into fights amongst themselves.
Yeah, I always love seeing NPC on NPC combat and other interactions. Really helps make the world seem alive.
Another thing from Fallout New Vegas. There’s a group of shady weapons dealers and you can get a quest to take them out. One very convoluted solution to that involves working for that group, and then getting a job guarding the door for them, which involves turning away or letting people in as you see fit. There’s one suspicious and twitchy-looking character that wants to get in. Clearly, you should deny him… But if you do let him in, he’ll actually blow the place up!
You’ll simultaneously blow the quest for the weapons dealer but complete the quest to take them out. And I did confirm that you can actually complete the door guarding quest (and other quests) for the weapons dealer, and later take them out at your leisure to complete the other quest, if you like. This little detail of intersecting yet independent questlines I just found absolutely amazing.
Fallout 3/New Vegas for sure. I remember coming on a group of bodies of NPCs that had had an entire battle while I wasn’t anywhere near. It’s a bit spooky sometimes…or when you go into a building and see where some NPCs were killed by automated guns or killer robots.
GTA IV had several details that impressed the hell out of me when it came out. The first time I saw spontaneous car accident after which the two drivers got out and started a fistfight with each other, and seeing a cop chasing a perp down the street— foot chases had been a game element for the past few GTA versions, but instead of generic-looking player characters, this cop was overweight and struggling to keep up.
In GTA4: the TV and comedy club. Even beyond the meta weirdness and “fun” of playing a character to passively watch TV in third person, the shows were a blast. Plus if you look up the original Kat Williams or Ricky Gervaise bits on YouTube, you’ll see the animation team did an awesome fucking job of translating skits that rely in good part on visual comedy.
I realize the Paradox strategy games are basically all nerdy details with a little bit of game thrown in, but I recall being very impressed by Crusader Kings II getting the patronymic naming conventions right in the Scandinavian countries.
It’s even quite useful for other reasons than pure loot, because you can take Legion Ears or Dogtags and use these to get influence with certain facitons and unlock some very interesting rewards.
I am always struck by the generous amount of detail in every tri-Ace game. A lot of people dismiss them as “typical anime fluff”, but they really aren’t. They always have really good character relations, even if the stories are either very simple or bafflingly vague.
But if you run around in any of their games, even their 2D games, you see so much detail on every screen. There’s a lot of connective tissue between NPCs, older games, places. I just enjoy the obsessive amount of detail. Definitely a “no stone left unturned” philosophy.
I’m pretty sure JPRGs aren’t popular on this board (just a hunch), but I really miss them, particularly tri-Ace’s fare. I was so looking forward to Beyond the Labyrinth.
Dark Souls from From Software (Atlus? I can’t remember who was developer and who was publisher) has a lot of really great touches. There is a HUGE variety of weapons…daggers, short swords, long swords, curved swords, great swords, “fencing” swords, a few types of axes, a couple types of clubs, maces, polearms, spears, etc…
Every weapon “category” (which is a lot…some categories only have one or two actual weapons in them) have their own animation style, and there are true to how the weapon would really be used. Not just one attack, either, weapons have a normal attack, a “strong” attack, a jumping attack…and then double that since they can all be used two-handed (which is the only non-realistic part, since how do you use a damn rapier or dagger two-handed?)
In addition, the weapons just look and “feel” right when you use them. Using a huge great-club? Your character rests it on his shoulder, and takes a bit of time to get it off before doing a big swing. And if you don’t have enough strength points, then you swing a lot slower, and the follow-through will throw you off-balance.
I’m not a fan of NetHack, but it’s well-known among roguelikes for having a lot of small touches. There’s a list of them on TVTropes under “The Dev Team Thinks Of Everything”, a phrase that, I gather, may have been coined in reference to NetHack. Many of them aren’t really impressive, like “If you’re blind, gaze attacks will have no effect on you.” Some are pop culture references, like how not naming your horse will lead to getting a message that’s a song lyric. Some are pretty involved, like the various goofiness caused by wielding, polymorphing into, or throwing a cockatrice. Plus nerd jokes. A lot of nerd jokes.
Max Payne 3 has some nice detailed touches. For example, unlike most 3rd person games, extra weapons don’t vanish when you switch to a different weapon. Max holsters them, and if he is carrying a rifle along with a pistol he’ll carry the rifle in his off-hand, and drop it if he switches to using two pistols. Max also has some amazing animation - you are almost never in an animation where you don’t have full control of his body; even jumping out a window you can twist around and fire back behind you, and the animations look realistic thoughout the entire process.
