Watched it, listened to some nostalgic music, had some cookies, and nice bath, and a cup of tea, and a bit of a lie-down. I am prepared.
... I like the map. It genuinely looks good.
It felt maybe a tad too large to me (a slight tediousness to return to the area of relevance already), and I think that visual clarity is too often sacrificed in modern games for the visuals - yes, a crammed warehouse might look like that in real-life, but it's a game. It sorta becomes a noisy background with unclear gameplay implications, forcing the stuff you want player to notice to having to either be extremely signposted (see newspaper) or get lost in the clutter, making searching every location absolutely tedious (looking at you, Starfield).
But this is not even complaining; it's a bit of a fine-tune of personal taste. Again: looks great as it is.
I also appreciate the fairly minimalistic HUD.
The button prompts are a bit too obnoxious, but obviously we'll be able to turn them off, right? (/provocative ^^). I'd also like to think that if you don't play with a controller, the HUD adjusts, but who knows. But anyway. Generally: fairly minimalistic HUD. Good. Customization towards what the player uses or wants (different controllers, extra prompts/no extra prompts) etc., even better.
... now, first look at the new combat. I ... don't think it looks particularly good. Or "visceral". It looks "okay". The Gum Gum no Gatling punch looks right out of One Piece, though I'm not sure that's actually avoidable. The fight didn't feel very dynamic; the enemies borderline looked like linearly approaching punching bags. You then get a plain "normal/strong" attack combo, uh. I don't know. Honestly, I felt vaguely reminded of, say, the Bloodlines 1 garage fight (or maybe the train yard), if you go and just murder everyone. Better hit feedback, but not sure anything else does all that much.
I'd also say there's slightly too many enemies, and they already felt very clone-y (forgivable for the doll-types), plus the whole "big guy with strong attack" enemy type telegraphing (is this a serious game or not?). Usual caveats about alpha versions blabla who knows the rest of the game yaddayadda apply of course. Just, you know, an observation on what was specifically picked to be shown here.
Constantly being torn out of your immediate view with repeated animations of special actions (and also in dialogue ...) is just a bad technique; I really hope that's not done. BL1 had this too; there's only so many times you can watch the same singular feeding animation before it gets really cartoonish.
But, okay. So combat's kinda eh, at least to me, but probably nobody really expects too much here, so kinda within tolerances?
Unfortunately the rest ... urgh, that just remains depressing as the glimpse previously was.
Absolutely obnoxious Fabian AND(!!!) player. ->I<- am supposed to be playing this game. ->I<- am not sitting there having that need to comment on every stupid piece of scenery with an inane comment because ->I< am seeing that piece of scenery. I know what I think about it, if I think anything about it.
If you really want the player to not be their own protagonist, then just come out and say it. People hate Phyre already anyway. Might as well sink that ship altogether ...
... incidentally, have you followed the Gothic 1 remake? Were they did that inanely talking protagonist thing too? They ended up scrapping everything from their playable teaser over player reactions among other bits to this specifically.
The dialogue system still looks awful, and although of course it's far from clear, it seems unclear you can actually affect anything.
The writing - even aside from the inane commentary of both Fabian (still treating the player like an idiot) and Phyre - remains questionable. Specifically the way "the Nosferatu" keeps so stupidly obviously talking about "he" just to ... pretend this is some sort of mystery we're supposed to care about?! Even when asked directly, he's still vague about it, for no good reason. And then revolving in that "dramatic revelation" - that guy is standing there with a suicide vest on, and a phone in hand. Come on.
I'd also say that things like the generic classic music feel, well, just that. Kinda stereotypical for that sorta scene. Certainly not memorable, or particularly imaginative. In general, this wastes a lot of the atmosphere that might have been possible here.
It's concerning that this "extended gameplay" showcase shows absolutely nothing about any sort of RPG responsiveness; any sort of dialogue skills, actual different quest paths, anything.
It's a bit insulting (or whatever the word for that is) that there's this "pretend QA" that's just there to have a bit of an extra marketing chat at the end. If you want to talk a bit more about stuff, perfectly okay, but let's not pretend those are some sort of "questions players have". They are prompts to talk about very specific things the devs want to talk about at this stage. It's a different thing.
In summary, I feel the game - or this showcase - gets some things right that I don't care very much about, and then gets everything wrong that, crucially, made Bloodlines 1 a great game and that I still do care about.
The impression that this will be a shallow, quite linear action game with (ironically?) probably quite mediocre action, thus not actually satisfying people who do want an action game, and definitely not satisfying people who are looking for a Bloodlines 1 sequel (crazy, I know) on account of basically featuring nothing of BL1.
Of course, as usual; who knows what the complete game really is. Could be like Obsidian showcasing Avowed recently; everyone going "is this just going to be a clunky action game?!" and then the next showcase at least somewhat showing inkling that there might be some RPG somewhere in there, in reaction to that. But eh; only so much I can buy everything else being completely different from this part ^^
