There’s been a bit of a media blowout this week on Factor 5’s new game Lair (out this July). These two vids below give a great demonstration on the capabilities of the engine. Looks amazing. It’s a little washed out but it kicks the pants of all the other vids out there.
Looks great and sounds fascinating. Some things I noticed from the voiceover: the PS3 is comparatively easier to program than the PS2 even when making full use of the Cell processors. The game has seamless 32x32 km areas with textures streamed from the BluRay disk and adaptive meshes computed by the Cells to refine visual detail as objects come closer. They also fully use the motion sensors of the Sixaxis controller – you steer the dragon by moving the controller, and you slam your dragon into another dragon by jerking the controller towards the target.
Please please please please Factor 5 dont fuck this up.
Dragons lately have gotten the shaft:
Dungeons and Dragons the Movie
Eragon
Dragon Heart (NEVER EVER EVER LET A WOMAN MAKE A DRAGON MOVIE AGAIN!!!)
that Dragon MMORPG that Codemasters blew
We need a real good Dragon experience with blood and guts!
Part of the gameplay I tried was swooping down and wreaking havoc in huge army formation. Sounds really cool but was absolutely underwhelming.
No blood, guts or chaos… just small soldiers milling about like a big fucking dragon hadn’t just decimated second battalion before their eyes…
Did you play this at the recent demonstration? Yes the footage they show of the dragon walking around swiping people left something to be desired (namely the f-ing chaos that would ensue if a dragon was walking around swiping at people).
That’s a good old-fashioned postmortem, with mea culpas and pointed fingers galore. I read about three quarters of it, shaking my head and wondering how they could have gone wrong, with such impressive concepts turned to such a… well, Lair wasn’t bad, as I remembered it, just kind of basic, almost the sort of game that could be played on a phone. Not that ambitious at all.
Then I realized I was thinking of Hoard, the 2d dual stick game of dragons gaining treasure, stealing princesses, and fighting other dragons. I’ve never played Lair, though I think I saw a trailer for it a decade ago. That’s the postmortem for my postmortem reading experience. Lair still sounds like a cool concept, especially with VR and better hardware now and so on.
(If you happen to be interested in Hoard, there’s a lot of info in this Soren Johnson interview with the designer, Tyler Sigman–who went on to make Darkest Dungeon.)
I remember being pretty disappointed in Hoard, but it has great reviews on Steam. I also see they sell 4-packs, so maybe the MP aspect of the game really outshines the lackluster SP?
Edit - Reviews looks like everybody is loving the MP.