Game News Empyre: Lords of the Sea Gates is a phase-based RPG set in flooded Neo-Victorian New York

[MRY]

You don't even need a desalination plant. The city got its water via massive aqueducts even back in the time the game is set. Not sure why rising sea levels would affect, e.g., the Catskill Aqueduct or the New Croton Aqueduct. The Hillview and Kensico Reservoirs which held the water (brought by aqueducts) are both ~300 feet above sea level, so if rising water got to it, the world has bigger problems than rogue zeppelins. (As I understand it, worst-case-scenario global warming is ~30 foot rise in sea level.)

Maybe it was the work of supermutants?

 

[torpid]

FALLOUT
Post-apocalyptic
Finding water
Nuclear War
Retrofuturism
West Coast

EMPYRE
Post-apocalyptic
Finding water
*designer spins wheel* Rising Sea Levels
*spins wheel* Neo-Victorian
*spins wheel* New York City
"Looks like we have ourselves an amazing setting guys!"

 

[Wehraboo]

I hope this vaporware is not pure BS and that there is really a phase system.

In spite of what some say I think the art is p. good, definitely better than beamdog games or tranny.

 

[aratuk]

Neo Victorian isn't a reference to a specific period of time.

"Neo-Victorian is an aesthetic movement which amalgamates Victorian and Edwardian aesthetic sensibilities with modern principles and technologies. A large number of magazines and websites are devoted to Neo-Victorian ideas in dress, family life, interior decoration, morals, and other topics."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Victorian

The devs are on their own with 1911 being 19th century though.

Yes, but you wouldn't describe a setting that's actually contemporaneous with the Victorian or Edwardian eras as "Neo-Victorian" — only a modern setting that references that period. Or maybe I missed something in the game description. 1911, innit?

 

[MRY]

I thought the same thing, but the Wikipedia article Saduj links to says that Neo-Victorian applies to, for example, Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, Penny Dreadful, and Downton Abbey...

 

[aratuk]

It seems like that article might be conflating modern interest in Victorian things and modern things made with Victorian sensibilities.

That wouldn't make the Victorian things that modern people are interested in "Neo-Victorian." New fiction set in a Victorian time period would be Neo-Victorian fiction, but the setting for that work of fiction would remain just "Victorian," because it attempts to describe the event itself, not a modern amalgamation.

That's why it's confusing to describe the game as set in "Neo-Victorian New York." The game being made in 2017 is Neo-Victorian, but its 1911 version of New York isn't meant to be neo- anything. Bizarro- certainly, with the ice caps having already completely melted when Henry Ford was really just getting started.

Anyway, I apologize to everyone for my semantic quibbling.

 

[Dwarvophile]

Arg. This soundtrack... What were they thinking ?

 

[Jedi Exile]

Could be interesting. I like the setting, and if combat delivers - maybe I'll purchase it on a Steam sale some day.

 

[HoboForEternity]

The way i was taught is is 0 to 100 is first century so you always subtract a number from the millenium. Thus bringing us who live in the 2000s 21st century.

20th is 1900 to 2000 and 19th is the cowboys and dingos in america. You can argue if it said late 19th century, but it was never said so the dev were probAbly homeschooled and never learnt from real teachers i dunno