War of the Roses - Paradox's M&B

Games
1

I could have sworn we had a thread on this already, but google search yielded nothing so here it is, perhaps again.

RPS has a hands on on War of the Roses, which is Paradox’s edition of Mount & Blade, taking place in England during the eh…yes, War of the Roses, which was a succession war between two great noble houses, York and Lancaster(No, not Lannister).

I’ve always been curious why no-one else has copied M&B’s combat and game type since its so damn popular and has spawned the biggest amount of mods I ever saw to a game.

The RPS hands on has me VERY excited though, and its things like this that makes me want this game now!

this is the multiplayer game where you’ll take time over every encounter. No weapon feels outright deadly, apart from a lance from horseback and that’s a massively difficult thing to do, so no-one just drops without having put up a fight. Every death at my hands took work, and I never gave up my own ground easily when overwhelmed. Everything takes time: aiming a longbow, priming a crossbow, loading a gun, swinging a sword. You have to be sure that you’re about to make a meaningful impact, because trying again means hopping through the same hoops. So it breeds a personal rivalry, even in huge multiplayer melees: if someone is that focused to take the time to load knock an arrow, to aim, to wait for the two little circles to rotate to the highest strength… well you have to respond. One fight I’d selected a Man at Arms, so I had a spear. I ran into a two-on-one fight, swinging so the tip of my staff was striking (if you hit with the wood it doesn’t do anything): as my team-mate backed up, keeping out of reach of the attackers, he led one into my spear point before pushing back into their cosy little melee. I danced around him, aiming strikes as and when he left an opening. We were a little clot of angry stabs and slices, in a world of our own. He died just as I landed a killing blow on one of the pair of assaulters. I backed up, trying to keep out of range of the other’s sword, but couldn’t get a good retort and fell to a slicing, angled blow to the neck. When you have the time, you can stand over your opponent and execute him. I watched from first-person as he flipped his sword over to prepare jam it into my eyeballs: I watched the point waver and he fell forwards. I survived: one of our archers had shot him before he could finish me off, and another closer player revived me.

I LOVE the fact that its slow, tactical combat that takes place, and not the insanely paced COD style of combat.

This is one to watch out for it seems!

2

Oh - Totalbiscuit has a videoreporting of the game with ingame footage!

Damn, that looks like an updated M&B game! So damn great!

3

Multiplayer only?

4

Nope- Both a singleplayer campaign and a multiplayer with different modes like Team Deathmatch (Lancs vs Yorks)

5

Ballock dagger?

6

If you were watching the video, you should listen to what he said as well - Its Pre-alpha right now, meaning absolutely nothing is as it will end up being. Its actually pretty crazy we get to see the game already.

that said

The bollock dagger or ballock knife is a type of dagger with a distinctively shaped shaft, with two oval swellings at the guard resembling male genitalia (“bollocks”). The guard is often in one piece with the wooden grip, and reinforced on top with a shaped metal washer. The dagger was popular in Scandinavia, Flanders, England and Scotland between the 13th and 18th centuries, in particular the Tudor period. In England the bollock dagger was commonly carried by many Border Reivers, as a backup for the lance and the sword. A large number of such weapons were found aboard the wreck of the Mary Rose. In use, the bollock dagger was similar to the Scottish dirk.

In the Victorian period weapon historians introduced the term kidney dagger, due to the two lobes at the guard, which could also be seen as kidney-shaped, in order to avoid any sexual connotation. (Blair 1962).

The hilt was often constructed of box root (dudgeon) in the 16th and 17th centuries, and the dagger was sometimes called dudgeon dagger or dudgeonhafted dagger in this period.

The bollock dagger is the source of the expression, to get, or give, a “bollocking”, meaning to give or receive a severe chastisement.[1][not in citation given]

7

I can’t help but wonder why they chose to call it War of the Roses, and not Wars of the Roses. I know I’m being a bit anal, but it annoys me.

edit:

Its Pre-alpha right now, meaning absolutely nothing is as it will end up being.

Well, it is a Paradox game. Sorry, I’ll shut up now. :)

8

This is my wishlist for a HD Mount & Blade:

  • The ability to use a torch to put buildings on fire. I don’t really need complete destruction, just making a building unusable and cool looking.
  • Rain, mud, perhaps a short spring rain.
  • More medieval ambient, like perhaps civilians running away from the combat, or hidden inside buildings, a baby crying somewhere, the sound of fire, perhaps rats inside barrels that escape if you break the barrel, perhaps a deer somewhere in a forest that wen see you escape running.
  • A slightly more realistic damage system. Perhaps have arrows break some of you arm, or make you half blind.
  • Make that pose “I have the weapon ready to hit you” have a small animation, where the weapon move up and down a bit, because humans are not robots or movie camera operators.
  • A lot of different sounds for grass, nature, metal vs metal, metal vs meat, short comments…
  • Some nice particle system that allow to have fog in towns,…
  • Make the engine/game exploitable so modders can make mods for it.

I like what I see on the TotalBiscuit video (its a fun video, and looks fun to play :D)

9

I am not convinced. Like in M&B, the combat looks like a bit ridiculous with people strafing and moving in weird ways, the animations looks too stiff, where the arms movement of the attacks are not related with the movement of the rest of the body, and the weapons doesn’t seem to connect really, unlike for example Witcher 2, where you can see the swords hitting each other parrying, the clash of the weapons against shields, etc. Another example of combat “connecting” well is the Batman games, but that’s more melee hand to hand combat.

10

pre-alpha…

11

Yes, but I don’t trust them in improving those areas in the final product, because I have seen these flaws in every melee multiplayer game I have played.

I would happy to be wrong…

12

Imagine Pre-alpha as proof-of-concept in general.

I think I remember the video saying they had about a years polish left, but that the game was pretty damn fun already. It looks like a lot of fun actually, and I’m very impressed with it being where it is already - I mean, something will improve over the next year so it can’t not end up pretty great if you are a Mount & Blade fan.

OH, but if you don’t like M&B because of the animations, I seriously doubt the game will be of any interest for you. Its a combat game, like M&B is a combat/medieval battle simulator.

The big thing here is, to be able to support large armies and not your usual 3-4 npcs at a time. I can play Mount & Blade with 300 soldiers on screen at the same time - Any more, and my game can’t handle it.

Imagine 300 soldiers in Witcher 2? Do you think your computer would be able to handle those animations and the AI requried for EACH and EVERY one of them, like it is done in M&B?

Its Emergent Gameplay I guess its called for every single soldier - not something preplanned that the computer can pre-process somehow.

13

I’m pretty sure Michael Douglas is in the game.

14

Lol, don’t trust developers so blindly when they just put a “pre-alpha” label in a video. You need more cynicism in your life :P

They game planned release window is Q3 2012. I would only consider it a “proof-of-concept” if the game was to be released in 18-24 months. Then I could imagine that lots of core stuff could change, but not when the game have five-six months to go.

15

I try not to become too jaded, although hanging out at gamers forums, its hard ;-)

And, Awww - I made such a nice post for your benefit, and its only the first thing you respond to?

Your precious Witcher 2 graphics CANT HANDLE IT!

;-)

16

This game appeals to me strangely. I tried M&B when it first came out years ago but it didn’t ‘take’. This looks like loads of fun and at a slow enough pace. This will be a buy for me, but now makes me want to try M&B again.

17

This is not so much M&B as it is the combat of M&B. One of the videos state there aren’t going to be sieges on release and it doesn’t sound like there is any overland map (although this is just a guess).

The combat did look good, but not enough for me to pay $60 for it. Now maybe if they could marry the combat to an actual metagame similar to M&B…

18

It’s M&B. Like, the multiplayer part of M&B, which also didn’t have overland map.

Because this is a multiplayer game.

19

No, it isnt - its a singleplayer game with Multiplayer as well.

20

It is? Oh. For now I always heard the multiplayer part.

Do we know anything about the sp?

edit: from paradoxplaza

Description

A team-based multiplayer melee combat experience, War of The Roses sees players and their band of knights going toe-to-toe with their opponents using authentic and visceral weapons of the time period including broad swords, long bows and battle-axes.
Built on a stunning graphics engine which vividly portrays the fighting from an up-close-and-personal third-person perspective, War of the Roses features both online multiplayer and a single-player campaign. Players will get the chance to lead their warrior through a rich progression system, gaining upgrades and unlocking new content on their path from filthy peasant to unstoppable armored killing machine.

…

The driving focus of the game is creating a multiplayer game with the same accessibility as the best competitive shooters currently out there, but in a medieval setting with a primary emphasis on melee combat.
The focus of the core gameplay is on the Multiplayer experience, but we will have an engaging and immersive story driven single player campaign designed to prepare and train players for the multiplayer experience. The single player campaign will give the players direct rewards to use in the multiplayer battles.

10 to 1 the single player campaign are the multiplayer maps played with bots and story inbetween, Brink style. Hell, that detail that playing single player also unlock rewards for multiplayer remind me of the same system of Brink, where matches with bots also leveled up your character.