Yeah, even though Otherside is unproven in their current incarnation, I’m actually more excited that it’s them.
aw thanks! :)
First Psychonauts 2, now System Shock 3? What next, Anachronox 2? Freespace 3?
How about a remaster of Full Throttle?
Oh Full Throttle!
I’d kill for a new freespace.
Yeah, no kidding. I thought I was done with crowd funding for a while, but I can’t resist this. I’ve been pretty good this year about avoiding spending money on games that I don’t have time to play. And yet, now I’m spending it all on hopes and dreams instead.
The Underworld Ascendant I watched a few months ago was pretty rough, it clearly needed several months of development, so the news they are getting another project that should be even bigger provokes in me some skepticism.
How in the world is their team large enough to take on developing two simultaneous huge CRPGs? Are they copying the inXile plan to start pre-production on Shock3 while actively developing Underworld3? If so, we’re probably looking at 2019 for Shock3.
Who knows, they might take SS3 back to its roots and make it strictly an action-adventure FPS with no character leveling.
This would, incidentally, mirror the development progression Looking Glass followed from Ultima Underworld to the original System Shock.
No one ever said they would be in parallel. Underworld is still the priority. But…if we did get such a thing, it is a matter of getting our franchises back where they belong.
My worst fear for Anachronox 2, which I doubt will ever happen, is the combat. I seem to recall Tom Hall saying that he wished he’d doubled down on the combat in Anachronox, where for me it was the least fun and most tedious part of the game.
When I go to a website with a countdown, I don’t bookmark the page and check back, I hope I hear about it again when there’s something worthwhile. Is it really building hype?
A. yes it is building hype. Yesterday was strange, but it worked out far better than we thought. Happy accidents! That hack did seem to tick Shodan off she has been responding directly to the insects…
B. Krayz–man, we somehow slipped back into a shit world with graphics over gameplay–the exact opposite of the LGS design philosophy. The hardest thing is the look. But, we are fully committed to being as open as possible for a number of reasons, the biggest being is we are not some publisher studio and GASP can be. Sadly some people are not used to seeing the sausage being made. I’ve been thinking about this and how to solve it…and not by going dark to our fanbase for a year or two.
Anachronox 2- Would be cool–and Tom should have doubled down on the combat. It was obvious he was aiming from some JRPG goodness but just ended up with something really boring.
I am so excited to see this happening! And Major, I love the updates you send out to the backers about the sausage being made. It makes the game more interesting and helps ease fears about how such a big game can be done with such a small team with the designs of smart systems and intelligent AI interactions to flesh out the world and the design. Since getting out of tipping my toe in the world of game development, it is nice to stay on the periphery and get these updates.
As for graphics, there are games I expect and might even buy for their graphical prowess, especially FPS on consoles and such to show off their beauty. But for more involved game worlds, once I start playing the graphics just need to be there enough to make the world feel realized and not have to be at the front of the graphic wave.
Finally, with my limited knowledge of game design, it seems the right time to start a new game in the pipeline of a game company that wants to stay afloat. Games are very long propositions, and most decent sized developers team don’t have the luxury of only doing one project from start to finish before ever starting on the next project. Instead, it is more like a pipeline where a project passes through certain milestones, which opens that part of the pipeline up for the next project to start moving into it.
I feel more comfortable with a company that has more than one egg.
What is great for the next game/games is all the groundwork done for UA will carry over. We don’t plan on deviating and doing sports , RTS, Kart racing or flight games like LGS did. First Person Immersive Simulations, that is our bread and butter. Really as a team it is pretty much what we are interested in. Some of what has been seemingly taking longer than maybe what people expect is the team and I don’t want to go and rebuild systems in the next game. I want to be able to just ‘go’ and have 1/3 of the game already built. AI, sound system, combat, physics exc . All of that built to be reused. If you can have modular world building, why not the same for systems? So, that is how we are building them.
Inxile’s explanation of the pre-prod/prod pipeline made a lot of sense. I assume we’re dealing with something similar here.
Thanks Stusser, good reminder. That Fargo guy is pretty good at this. ;)
Ooooooo.
:)
Nice!
Not sure whether any of you noticed but if you sign up for email promotions/updates from that site you get a brief survey that asks at the bottom:
“On a scale of 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest), please rate your interest in virtual reality gaming?”
System Shock 3 as a VR game makes a lot of sense.