Hello…fairly familiar with the dev of this game (on the Otherside Ascendant forum for years, general cheerleader-turned-pita).
Chris/Major…briefly, I disagree it’s just a question of mis-guided expectations…or people wanting a ‘re-do’. That’s too short. Not that there’s time to get into it a here, and certainy not now.
Not fair to autopsy either on the eve of general release, and certainly not fair to nit-pick a punch-drunk dev I know from the Otherside forum, but it’s clear from some of the buffering in interviews, that there’s more at stake than simply managing expectations.
The situation is quite compicated I suspect…lots of shifting sands.
Btw, to no-one in particular…people tend to pile into Steam users as this or that…whatever, it’s clear they have little idea in this case what ind of game they’re going to get. They seem to be at the innocent end of the scale…opposite the cynicism of RPGCodex, say?
Anyway, I think launch will be interesting, but a measured opinion will take a while, as usual. After 3.5+ years of closely and intently following this, I’m now sanquine about it all…
Given the context, Trespasser would have been a more apt comparison.
I backed UA, but haven’t tried any of the betas. Just watched a few of the videos. The last one I saw was what I’m guessing is the official intro video, with the “Welcome, Ascendant!” spiel. What struck me most about it was that it did nothing to immerse me in the game’s world. Instead it sounded like someone reading off the design document. UA has a faction system, and here’s this being literally talking about “factions”. Not tribes, families, armies, mercs, towns, or any other term that people who actually lived in this world would use. “Factions.” What the hell. Just lazy, lazy writing.
Funny you mention Trespasser…I brought it up on the Otherside Forum a while back, along with Flight Unlimited (…both of Seamus Backley fame if I remember)…both examples of deep-delve physics, and err, questionable other stuff. Or, to put it rosily…before their time :)
Based on looking at a couple of videos, it seems like the gameplay is mission-based from a hub, with portal travel to zones? Not what I was hoping for or expecting based on the Kickstarter pitch. I was thinking in terms of a massive interconnected dungeon complex with lots of biomes/settlements/etc. Maybe that was me extrapolating my wishes onto the game. I haven’t re-read the pitch.
But, maybe that gameplay will appeal to me. My younger self loved big, endless RPG’s, but my older self often relies on bite-sized game sessions. We’ll see. I’ll give it a fair chance. I suppose I’ve got a backerkit key in my email somewhere.
I came to Daikatana a decade late, and first played through it with the 1.3 community patch, which let you turn off the player companions. It felt like a fairly unremarkable late 1990s shooter (see Blood 2) with one really cool location - the Dark Ages in Norway - that doesn’t really deserve the hate. I guess the lengthy three year development cycle, the pedigree of Ion Storm’s co-founders, and terrible PR worked to kill the game. I flipped through a few contemporary scanned magazine previews and noticed most were very positive about the game right up until launch.
It’s disappointing to hear about the dropped features, but I guess cutting is shipping. I don’t understand what’s going on with the DRM-free version of the game though. It’s unusual to see an official developer account attempt to make arrangements via Tweet a day before launch!
Here’s a video from the Otherside forums of a guy going around and punching lizardmen to death. They don’t fight back, at all. This is from the most recent backer beta. Hopefully this bug will be fixed for release.
Environment looks nice, though! Love their hyper-real stylized art.
I really like the environment but my word, I hate the art style of the lizardmen. Their cartoony look sticks out like a sore thumb. Were they a new addition or changed after Nate Welles left to join Arkane?
As of the latest Backer Beta patch, combat is active outside of Marcaul. The Lizard Men WILL get upset with you and try to defend themselves, but more often than not, these are civilians not designed to be fighting you, and more often than not, they’ll try to run away.
So they’re supposed to stand there with their swords out, and let you kill them and loot their corpses?
C’mon.
On a side note, I applaud the Otherside’s community manager/marketing guy (Flarechess) for his community outreach, continuing to talk to a playerbase that’s becoming increasingly hostile isn’t easy. He’s keeping it professional and friendly.
This is all very disappointing to hear. I didn’t follow that closely and that interactive environments and dialogue was cut is news to me. As kickstarter money is play money for me I am just disappointed. If it isn’t good they at least delivered something. Maybe it will still be fun even though it is different from what was pitched. Looks to me like a developer seduced by Kickstarter money fueled by nostalgia. Not a great look though. Won’t back their next game if they go that route again.
maybe, we shall see.
There is fun to be had in the game. The magic system is pretty great, stealth is 80% of Thief. Interested in what people like and don’t like. In some ways this was more of a challenge than some of us thought, building a company, selling the game, keeping the lights on, and developing all at the same time was many hats to juggle. Its been a exausting 4 years. The company is on solid footing (which is good-very good) the future is bright…we learned a ton about the team, about what worked and didn’t and all we can do is move to the next thing, and fix this one up as best as we can. As with every game I wish we had another 3 months, 10 more people and unlimited funds, but sadly we have none of those things. I want us to get to Bethesda level, but that is going to take some serious time. The next game is already bigger and better funded (Shock 3) and the one after that we expect even more. Win or lose UA got us standing up, and the team that is here now is stronger than the one that started the journey. What can I say, I still love coming to work.
re: kickstarter for the love of god I never want to do that again for video games.
It works far better for more predictable, smaller ventures like boardgames.
Oh wow! - This looks awesome. I don’t understand why the gameplay in the trailer looked so bland, it doesn’t seem to do the game any justice. Actual in-game footage looks really nice. Love the environments and animation.
If this is anything like Dark Messiah which I think is a truly underrated gem then this could be a ton of fun.
