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Games where weapon choice matters in modern/future settings?

For discussing role-playing video games, you know, the ones with combat.
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rusty_shackleford
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Games where weapon choice matters in modern/future settings?

Post by rusty_shackleford »

One thing I frequently see in games(not even just RPGs) set in modern/futuristic settings is they'll offer you a choice between gun types — perhaps pistol, SMG, assault rifles, maybe energy weapon in a more sci-fi setting, so on and so forth. Typically there tends to be just one superior weapon type and the rest just exist. Sometimes the designers will attempt to alleviate this by ammo economy, or it's a party-based RPG and you want to split the ammo more evenly, but still unless the game has poor ammo/caliber selection this isn't that much of an issue.
This is much worse in RPGs where you're expected to specialize in a specific gun type and you can't just switch to another firearm because … reasons … Perhaps that's another topic in itself, I'm not entirely convinced on splitting gun skills.

I can't really think of any game that does this well in the least. Perhaps, Underrail? It has a lot of weapon-specific skills, weapons that benefit from e.g., science skill and so forth? :scratch:

Amusing how Underrail seems to do best on these sorts of questions despite being mostly made by one guy living in a basement with no budget


Notably, fantasy games tend not to suffer this because there is much more baked into the weapon type itself. You can't just decide you want to reload your sword with an armor piercing blade for this enemy and therefore obviate the need to switch to a mace.
Last edited by rusty_shackleford on April 4th, 2025, 23:08, edited 1 time in total.
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DagothGeas5
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Post by DagothGeas5 »

I would think Destiny due to the enemy shield types (which requires the gun being used to match the element of the shield, otherwise the damage is null or next to null that I recall, with some enemies requiring a certain type of perk or gun to destroy a special type of shield), but it has been quite some time since I last played so I can't say for certain.
Another that came to mind is Alien Shooter though, like the above, it is not an RPG. Unfortunatly, I believe I have some sort of "headcanon" for this game so my information might not be accurate. The dual guns (basic weapon) have infinite ammo and are useful against every enemy, while plasma, "lava" gun, flamethrower and that ice gun I also forget the name of I have come to believe have more effect against certain types of enemies. I use the ice or fire against the "spiders" and use the minigun on the big guys or anything with armor, the lava gun against the more brutish of the big brutes, but I cannot say if it truly does have differences between enemies. All in all though, every weapon is invaluable in the right situation as the game will swarm the player with enemies. Destiny I would also say every weapon is invaluable in the right situation, but they introduced a system that stunted many weapons and rendered them useless, among other such things, so I cannot say, and frankly I'd rather not recall about what they did as this affected many of the weapons I was most attached to as someone that doesn't chase the "current meta" :?

As for RPGs, I am unsure even ATOM had anything like this. Cyberpunk I have no recollection of as enemies felt like bullet sponges to me when I played so I evaded combat or tanked damage to go in with melee where I could.
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Post by rusty_shackleford »

DagothGeas5 wrote: April 5th, 2025, 11:38
The dual guns (basic weapon) have infinite ammo and are useful against every enemy, while plasma, "lava" gun, flamethrower and that ice gun I also forget the name of I have come to believe have more effect against certain types of enemies.
This is a good thing to bring up. Perhaps games are focusing too much on weapons that are too similar, and not enough on non-ballistic weapon types. :scratch-pipe:
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