Game News Ghost of a Tale Released

[Luka-boy]

Waiting for the Sherry review.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Tempted to d1p but it runs on Unity so I'm going to wait and see how it runs.

Runs at 1440p 60fps on max on my aging i5 3570k, GTX 1070 rig.

 

[Naraya]

Tempted to d1p but it runs on Unity so I'm going to wait and see how it runs.

I'd wait for a patch. Bugs too often for me (need to kill it from the Task Manager).

 

[mikaelis]

NO TRUCE WITH THE FURRIES!

(unless it is as good as Thief)

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Darth Slaughter]

Since it appears to be stealth game, can someone compare it to Styx?

I've been playing this. It's good. Visually it is kind of similar. the animation and the fact that it is a third person. Level design is similar to Dark Souls, in the sense that the whole world is just one big level with labyrinths, dungeons, forests, and they're all interconnected. You go on finding keys, doing quests that are all of the fetch kind - but it's never boring at all, since it looks like finding loot on thief games - and talking a lot with characters here and there, and dialogue is actually funny and humorous. Gathering items also gives an adventure/metroidvania vibe, since it involves a lot of backtracking. There's also a day/night cycle that influences in how some quests and puzzles are solved. Exploration is great, and you have to find the maps yourself.

Controls are very simple and stealth gameplay is not light/shadow based, more sound/visual based. Works more like a Metal Gear Solid stealth. Guards can only be knocked out, but you can outrun them easily. Your stats are improved by the kind of costume you wear, and there's specific pieces of gear like gas masks to avoid poison areas, a helmet with a candle attached so you can see in the dark (these two features are also similar to dark souls). You have a number of gadgets that help you complete your journey: A refillable oil-lantern, a candle on a stick to set fire, throwable sticks and bottles to attract guards attention (bottles knock them out, but only if they are helmetless), a flint and firesteel (haven't figure it out yet), and a slime jar that can be used on fire or to make the big rats slip. There's some skills to unlock as you level up (xp comes with solving quests and doing things like burning enemy flags around), and there's also stamina (another imported feature from dark souls), and food as health recover.

The visuals are impressive, it is a very beautiful game, and very detailed too. Not only animation and texture work are truly an amazing work, the books, notes, papers have all nice stylish font. And the game looks smooth (I haven't count the FPS but it runs very fluid on my rig - i7 2600, gtx 970, 16mb ram).Talking about books, the game seems to have a huge amount of lore. You get a lot of entries about characters, locations and slang. And the inventory/skills/lore ui is very simple and easy to use.

The only thing that feels indie in this game is the complete lack of voice acting. It's not a bad thing, but your character being a bard, sometimes he sing a song for a character, but it's only text and a instrumental music. At least these sequences should have been with voices. Finally, the story is that this bard mouse wakes up in prison and is looking for his wife, while trying to escape this prison.

NO TRUCE WITH THE FURRIES!

(unless it is as good as Thief)

Well, there's not much similarities, but the loot scattered is more like thief than Styx, which had always a fixed number of amulets in it's levels. And you find florins (the game's currency) and you can use it to buy information, like when you can do that before starting missions in thief.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Downloading now. Sometimes I just open my GOG Library for the feeling of pride I get from looking at the games there.

BTW, after 40GB KCD - that's what I call a good old game - 3.1 GB in one .bin

 

[Darth Roxor]

It's not a bad thing, but your character being a bard, sometimes he sing a song for a character, but it's only text and a instrumental music. At least these sequences should have been with voices.

I very strongly disagree.

 

[Urthor]

The vocals is a sacrifice of the budget. Can't translate vocals end of the day, also the issue of money. It's a minor point but it's there, good singing costs $$$

 

[Darth Slaughter]

It's not a bad thing, but your character being a bard, sometimes he sing a song for a character, but it's only text and a instrumental music. At least these sequences should have been with voices.

I very strongly disagree.

I actually agree with you. My point was that the lack of voices is due to budget reasons, and make it apparent that the game is an indie title, while visually it looks on par with high budgeted titles. I really like that dialogue isn't voiced. When I said should have been with voices, I meant that it feels strange when the lyrics appear on the screen and there's just an incidental music in the background. So you're just reading something, that's actually available to read in the inventory. Think of it as the bone song from monkey island 2 which didn't have the singing part, but you had a instrument really playing the main melodic line that was supposed to be the singing voice. The thing is, in ghost of a tale, this melodic line is not that apparent, and so the lyrics sometimes just feel random. It's not a complaint at all, more like an observation.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

The lack of voice acting is understandable given the tight budget, and a "flaw" you manage to overlook pretty quickly in general... But it's still a flaw, no matter what few gaming hipsters would try to tell you, as they brag about how smart they feel as they apply effort into reading fifteen strings of text.
It's a flaw because clearly detrimental to the goal to replicate the feeling of an old animation movie that the game chases constantly in other areas.

The good news is that the writing is very good, always as detailed as it needs to be without turning into some boring, over-verbose shit, and the characters are genuinely funny and lovable most of the time.
The pirate frog in particular had me laughing almost every time we had something to discuss. Which makes the impossibility to hear their line acted out even a bit more painful.

The setting is also incredibly well built and now that I'm finishing the game is leaving me wanting for more. I'd love for this to be successful enough to guarantee a "bigger and better" sequel.
Sadly numbers aren't pointing in that direction right now. Virtually no one is reviewing the game, so no one is talking about it and even among the few aware of its existence many are apparently taking a "wait and see" approach (as "I'll buy it for five dollars in 6 months as bugs are fixed") which means they'll be out of business soon and SeitCG will probably go back to some animation studio, dropping game development.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I'd rather have no VA than shit VA, and unless you have an AAA budget, you're most likely going to get appalling VA.

Sadly numbers aren't pointing in that direction right now. Virtually no one is reviewing the game, so no one is talking about it and even among the few aware of its existence many are apparently taking a "wait and see" approach (as "I'll buy it for five dollars in 6 months as bugs are fixed") which means they'll be out of business soon and SeitCG will probably go back to some animation studio, dropping game development.

Well, until he makes an official statement, I'll withhold any such thoughts, though it is a very good possibility, which is why I think the ending for this game was rather unsatisfactory. In general you should never make a cliffhanger ending for anything if it's not guaranteed that you can follow it up. Even big studios with huge money to back them up can never give you a 100% guarantee that a game will ever get a follow up.

 

[V_K]

unless you have an AAA budget, you're most likely going to get appalling VA.

Heroine's Quest did ok on no budget at all.

 

[NotAGolfer]

It's not a bad thing, but your character being a bard, sometimes he sing a song for a character, but it's only text and a instrumental music. At least these sequences should have been with voices.

I very strongly disagree.

I agree to disagree.
... Wait, I mean I agree with you disagreeing with that statement.
A little music plus some written rhymes is more than adequate.
Love how he thought through all that stuff that first-time developers always forget about, like a UI that's both immersive and functional. Or a tutorial area that doesn't bore you to death or is completely detached from the rest of the game. Or actually entertaining lore and dialogue that's not utterly retarded. Little things like that.

Should I rate your post agree or disagree now?

 

[Hobo Elf]

unless you have an AAA budget, you're most likely going to get appalling VA.

Heroine's Quest did ok on no budget at all.

I have not played Heroine Quest so I have no idea what the full quality is like, but based on the clips I listened to, I'm happy that Ghost of a Tale went for no VA rather than Heroine Quest VA. It's inconsistent and less-than-mediocre at best. Ghost of a Tale has an overall consistent quality and trying to shoehorn in amateur VA would shatter the veil.

 

[SerratedBiz]

unless you have an AAA budget, you're most likely going to get appalling VA.

Heroine's Quest did ok on no budget at all.

Heroine Quest had multiple, strong qualities to it, but its VA wasn't one of them.

There's much more to good VA than not sounding like you're on your dad's old microphone, or being able to speak complete sentences. It's related to the delivery of the lines, pacing, emphasis, among other things, which overall contribute to the idea that the person you're listening to is the character they're being portrayed as, rather than someone reading lines off a script. AKA, acting.

HQ's VA may be serviceable, but it's definitely not a good example of why you should include VA in your game.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I meant that it feels strange when the lyrics appear on the screen and there's just an incidental music in the background. Think of it as the bone song from monkey island 2 which didn't have the singing part, but you had a instrument really playing the main melodic line that was supposed to be the singing voice.

If you listen carefully, it's very clear that the lyrics in the songs are meant to follow the melody, the rhythm of the music fits the syllables and the words in a fairly obvious way. The two only diverge at the ends of every line, where the 'minstrel' is adding his own embellishments.

 

[V_K]

HQ's VA may be serviceable, but it's definitely not a good example of why you should include VA in your game.

Oh, I'm not saying that every game should have VA, just pointing out that it's not necessarily a budget issue.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

If you listen carefully

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

To be perfectly honest every time some mongoloid uses "VA can also be BAD!" as an argument to never include some in a game, I wish I could bitchslap that moron through the internet.

It seems pretty obvious to me that when someone says "This title would probably benefit from it" he's implying a scenario where the voice acting is supposed to be of good quality.

 

[NotAGolfer]

Unless it's for cinematic cutscenes like in Witcher 3 I always felt that VA is a waste of resources.
Maybe I read too much but I get impatient fast when someone is slowly spelling out stuff that I read in the subtitles in a quarter of the time or less.
And I don't care if it's good or bad, unless it has movie qualities and the corresponding flow it's just annoying me anyway.
I don't mind a narrator during some sort of cutscene slideshow though, that stuff is cool.

 

[V_K]

Unless it's for cinematic cutscenes like in Witcher 3 I always felt that VA is a waste of resources.

That's an interesting exception to have. I always thought that cinematic cutscenes are the definition of a waste of resources.

 

[NotAGolfer]

True dat, but when I think of it as sort of a hybrid genre between movies and games which I both like I can't find anything wrong with it.
I liked Twitcher 3 even though the leveling mechanics and itemization were horrible.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Unless it's for cinematic cutscenes like in Witcher 3 I always felt that VA is a waste of resources.

That's an interesting exception to have. I always thought that cinematic cutscenes are the definition of a waste of resources.

Bingo.

Anyway, people always nitpick their examples to prove a point and seem to ignore all the examples that contradict it. Like the fact Thief itself, in its ACTUAL GAMEPLAY, relies on audio design and voice acting a lot.
Or the fact that Vampire: Bloodlines would be half of the cult classic it is, without its voice acting and an excellent selection of audio cues.

 

[NotAGolfer]

Okay, you're right. Guards talking to each other and Garrett commenting stuff was an important part of the experience.

I guess Ghost of A Tale would also have benefitted from things like rat guards interacting with each other a little. The way it is now this gameworld often feels as dead as in a Dark Souls game.

Would have, could have. They clearly didn't have the budget for good VA and the game is already pretty great in its current state.