Big Wrangle
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At this rate I'm starting to think Bethesda is considering shutting Arkane down.
At this rate I'm starting to think Bethesda is considering shutting Arkane down.
At this rate I'm starting to think Bethesda is considering shutting Arkane down.
What are you talking about? Arkane Austin was established in 2006 way before Zenimax grabbed them. You make a fair point on the other aspects, though I suppose Harvey Smith wouldn't like that and depart as well. Not that they'll care much, anyway.Beth must have invested a lot in building up two Arkane studios.
What are you talking about? Arkane Austin was established in 2006 way before Zenimax grabbed them.Beth must have invested a lot in building up two Arkane studios.
Streamers will start liking it 16 months after launch? Fuck that's optimistic. I can't see how a late addition prophunt multiplayer mode to a DLC that, judging from the meager amount of coverage and Steam reviews, didn't sell well will be anything other than DOA. Arkane won't be shut down (they have heaps of senior positions available across both studios), but Mooncrash was clearly a way to safely test a style of immersive sim they can build upon for their future multiplayer-centric games.and yea, I'm sure some streamers will like it.
I found the skins pretty neat as another unlockable for the roguelite mode, and especially there where you'll have a use for different copies of the same weapon, I used the skins to distinguish what were they for and whatnot so I didn't have to memorize. And as Zak said, they're sonething to keep the artists busy with to a relatively low effort addition that doesn't really take away from it.But who are they looking to appeal with hats and skins? Youtubers, streamers?
Streamers will start liking it 16 months after launch? Fuck that's optimistic. I can't see how a late addition prophunt multiplayer mode to a DLC that, judging from the meager amount of coverage and Steam reviews, didn't sell well will be anything other than DOA. Arkane won't be shut down (they have heaps of senior positions available across both studios), but Mooncrash was clearly a way to safely test a style of immersive sim they can build upon for their future multiplayer-centric games.and yea, I'm sure some streamers will like it.
Prey’s Mooncrash DLC randomizes its rooms and item placements to turn Prey into a roguelike experience, but developer Arkane Studios tells us some of that procedural generation was almost in the base game as well.
Speaking with IGN at QuakeCon 2018, Prey Senior Game Designer Ricardo Bare said that Mooncrash’s randomized room conditions were initially designed to be part of Prey’s campaign. They would have made it so different rooms along your path would have random states, like being on fire or out of oxygen.
“It wouldn’t have worked as well in Prey because most people don’t even play a single-player game all the way through,” Bare explained. “Most people just wouldn’t even get the payoff for that. They’d just be like ‘oh, it’s on fire, and I’m never going to see this room ever again.’”
This certainly explains why Mooncrash was so smooth.Prey Senior Game Designer Ricardo Bare said that Mooncrash’s randomized room conditions were initially designed to be part of Prey’s campaign.
I hate this approach to game design. Why do you some developers have to make sure players see as much of their game's content as possible? Can't they just have these details in for the players who would notice it?Speaking with IGN at QuakeCon 2018, Prey Senior Game Designer Ricardo Bare said that Mooncrash’s randomized room conditions were initially designed to be part of Prey’s campaign. They would have made it so different rooms along your path would have random states, like being on fire or out of oxygen.
“It wouldn’t have worked as well in Prey because most people don’t even play a single-player game all the way through,” Bare explained. “Most people just wouldn’t even get the payoff for that. They’d just be like ‘oh, it’s on fire, and I’m never going to see this room ever again.’”
Well, not when it comes to a game like PREY in this context. It's a 13-18 hour game. Having heavy procedural elements would be shit (highly optimised hand-crafted level design is better) and take a lot of time to implement across the whole game, only for 90% of players to not benefit from it. I agree not all content should be for the majority and only for the observant hardcore or fanboys, but the procedural gen is one of mooncrash's design focuses and selling points, which therefore should definitely be for all players. We're not talking minor elements here, procedural generated level design to a high degree all across the whole game is a big deal.
It's the procedural shit that puts me off playing Mooncrash. My preference is that they just made a longer, more wholesome DLC than a short, dynamic "replayable" one. Especially for an "Immersive Sim" with RPG elements and a heavy focus on exploration. But maybe I should jump in regardless and see if they were conscious of the pitfalls and had a solution. I may do that today actually, only because I want some friends of mine whom are Bioshock fanboys/girls that would never play SS2 to see a closer glimpse of how shit is actually meant to be done.
At least I never found the fabrication plan for the timer delay, which is what really messes things up. It's very fair as an in-world item to find in loot caches or by killing tough enemies, but it's broken as a purchaseable item because the prices are so damn low. It's weird, because the crafting resource economy in Mooncrash is scarcer than ever.
Prey: Typhon Hunter’s multiplayer mode exists because of Garry’s Mod
By Kirk McKeand, Tuesday, 14 August 2018 15:24 GMT
Prey’s upcoming DLC, Typhon Hunter, is about as experimental as DLC gets.
First off, it will be available to anyone who already owns Mooncrash, another piece of Prey DLC that messes with the immersive sim by mixing in roguelike elements – when you die, you die, and the resources you gathered are gone for the next run.
Secondly, Typhon Hunter is actually two modes. In one, you are immersed in VR inside memorable locations from Talos 1, attempting to solve puzzles. It’s a VR escape room, essentially, and it’s a great time, judging by the segment I played at QuakeCon, without audio and with someone on hand to stop me smashing my face into a wall.
In Typhon Hunter’s other mode, five players take on the role of Mimics – shapeshifting aliens who can turn into various props, such as mugs and lamps – while one player takes the role of Morgan Yu. It’s hide and seek on a timer, where Morgan must track down and kill all Mimics before the clock counts down.
“As a Mimic, you can either play defensively and try to stay out of sight, or you can play aggressively and try to get close to Morgan,” Arkane lead designer Ricardo Bare tells me. “If you get close to Morgan, you have this little meter that charges up, and once it fills up you can do a jump attack.”
It’s a multiplayer immersive sim – perhaps foreshadowing Arkane’s upcoming projects – in bitesize format. As well as retaining the freeform gameplay of Prey – Mimics can mess with props to make them look unnatural before taking their place as a totally normal, totally not-alien catching mitt – it also keeps hold of the jumpscares.
“If you do that, you knock him out for ten seconds or so – it’s penalty that runs down the clock – but it’s a risk because he could bust you and smash you with the wrench first,” Bare explains. “When you’re [a prop], you can roll around to different locations. You’re not stuck being the second mug next to this other mug.”
So, how exactly did this experimental DLC come to be?
“It’s kind of funny because when we were working on Prey, the Mimics became one of the more signature elements of the game,” Bare says. “They became super popular, and people love streaming getting scared by them. But when people started seeing how the Mimics worked, a bunch of them were like, ‘Oh, this is like Prop Hunt’. I was like, ‘What the hell is prop hunt?’.”
Prop Hunt is a popular Garry’s Mod game mode where players disguise themselves as furniture while another player hunts them down.
“We looked into it and were like, ‘This is a great idea, the Mimics are well suited for that kind of gameplay idea’,” Bare remembers. “So once we finished Prey, we were like, ‘Remember that thing everyone kept saying? Let’s try it’.
“One of the things I love about DLC is that you can turn things around really quickly and you can take more risks. I guess one of the reasons [it’s more experimental] is, after we shipped Prey, the team was broken up into different things. But first we did a little game jam. We were inspired by the Bethesda Game Studios thing – they do this thing occasionally where the team gets time to work on whatever they want to work on.”
Most recently, the BGS game jam gave birth to a photo mode for Fallout 76, allowing players to take goofy selfies over the corpse of a defeated player.
“So we took two weeks to work on whatever we wanted,” Bare continues, “as long as it has something to do with what we actually work on here. So everybody went off and came up with cool ideas, and some of the ideas are things that ended up in Mooncrash and Typhon Hunter.”